It hasn’t been difficult to find bad news in the past year if you’re leading a business. Whether reading the paper, scanning the Internet or watching TV, the state of the faltering economy has been more than evident.
You can’t help the state of the economy, but Ryan Stephens says you can help the mentality with which you and your employees approach it. The co-founder, president and CEO of Perpetual Technologies Inc. says the spiraling economy presents definite challenges, but it also presents opportunities for a well-positioned business.
“One challenge during this economy is avoiding the temptation to be driven by fear,” Stephens says. “Instead of pressing forward, holding back. A lot of companies are doing that. It’s been a chain reaction.”
A proactive approach has helped Stephens continue growing Perpetual Technologies in spite of the economy. The company of nearly 100 people generated $10.2 million in revenue in 2008.
Smart Business spoke with Stephens about how you can position your business to persevere in the current economy.
Stay aggressive. Now is the time to change. If any company can effectively change during this economy — find a way to step up and be a leader — I think that company stands a better chance of success in this economy.
This is a time when many businesses start pulling back into more of a defensive mode. We’ve seen that to some degree, but what we’re trying to do is not pull back too far, not be driven by fear and to go forward full steam ahead within reason. Since we’re a technology company, we need to stay on the edge of technology, be proactive and be diligent. That will allow us to make wiser decisions for ourselves and for our clients. Most of all, we need to adapt our business model and our services to better support our clients during these downtimes, which will help us build stronger relationships with our clients.
This is a time of opportunity, even though times are hard. You can choose to be more proactive and go into an offensive mode. Obviously, you have to sharpen your pencil in a degrading economy, and there may be many ways to do that beyond cutting costs, such as refocusing your business, streamlining operations and maximizing resources that you have on the inside.
For example, we don’t plan to cut any positions. We plan to refocus and better utilize our staff so that everybody is working toward a common goal and everybody’s job somehow affects the bottom line. It’s all about staying focused on the customer and adapting to what their needs are, getting down to that routine of having it be the way you always do business.
