A bus ride to town cost a nickel. Two hamburgers and a Coke at George Nichols Coney Island cost a quarter, if you had one. A new Chevrolet was about $600. A first class letter was 3 cents and you could send a postcard anywhere in the U.S. for a penny. This was in Galesburg, Illinois in 1934 when I was 12 years old. By that time, even our family car was but a memory.
This was the “Great Depression” and it had a dramatic effect on my life. When I read the dire stories comparing the present business slump to the depression I knew, I smile and say, “They have no idea how much worse that was.” Yet, I never heard anyone in our family refer to us as being “poor.” We were, but we didn’t know it! We were never on any government aid or help program, but we were on a family self-help program.
Bad economic times demand positive thinking, together with the willingness and courage to do things that haven’t been done before. That was true in our family and it is true in all families and businesses today. Those who serve the best, are the most honest, work the hardest, and work the smartest, will survive and prevail.
These are the questions to ask as we ponder how to make tough times work for us:
1. How can we provide better customer service?
This is an excellent time to retool. Schedule a group meeting to talk about what your team and customers are struggling with. Hold a brainstorming session on simple ways you can relieve stress and worry for the people you do business with. Go out of your way to make someone smile, each and every day. Let your clients know how you are going above and beyond the call of duty to make life easier for them.
2. What new product or combination of old products will be attractive to our old customers and attract new ones?
For example, I know of a company in a past recession that instituted a training program for customers on “preventive maintenance” for their present equipment and proposed new equipment. This shows the customer you care. Tough times are good education times.
3. How can we provide a more positive outlook to help counteract the negative messages that abound in a downturn?
This is not the best time to be a news junkie. Instead, spend more of your time reading daily affirmations and increase your positive self-talk. Make it a point to bring up good news with your customers, partners, and other people you network with. Pledge to be a beacon of hope with other people and express gratitude for the blessings that still abound in your life.
4. What can we do to educate our families, our people, and our customers, in ways that will better position us both when the economic weather improves?
When my high school graduation came in 1939 my mother said, “you’re going to college.” No one in our family had ever attended college. I said “How?” We had no money. She was one positive thinker. She said “I don’t know but we’re going there right now and find out how we are going to do it.” We marched into the registrar’s office and my mother said, “This young man wants to enroll at Knox College and we have no money, how do we do it?” One hour later I walked out enrolled as a freshman. Work at the school, summer work, and student loans did it. The loans were all paid off by 1950. The tuition? Just under $600 per year for tuition and books.
5. Do we have the self discipline and corporate discipline to continue the search for excellence in the face of tough times?
When I officiated NFL football for 15 years, this was key to maintaining top level concentration, play after play, game after game. Avoiding complacency is the number one challenge in achieving peak performance. In football, it’s one play at a time – in business, it’s one customer or one client at a time.
These are the questions we asked ourselves and faced as a family during the Great Depression. My mother worked clerking in a department store at 25 cents an hour. I mowed 8 yards a week at 25 cents to 75 cents per yard depending on the size of the yard. (And there were no power mowers back then, you had to push!) I made a box, insulated it, and in the Summer sold Eskimo pies and Dixie cups of ice cream to people in the hot office buildings. My father worked as a commissioned salesman and some weeks I made more at age 13 than he did.
Some say, “You have to be lucky!” but someone else wisely said “the harder and smarter we work, the luckier we get.” Many years ago, Charles Kettering, the great inventive mind at GM said “Luck is what happens when opportunity meets the prepared mind. ” The above two quotes go double in tougher times.
So make sure to care for your customer, care for your people, and care for your community and your nation. To paraphrase the well know slogan of Hallmark cards, “When you care enough to be the very best,” the chances are good you will be.
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Art Holst speaks about how to consistently strive for excellence, using examples from his personal experiences in business, sports and civic affairs.
