I am seeing the stuggles of the small business people all over the place and keep wondering how long many of them will be able to last. The news is somewhat depressing as I saw an article in the Jacksonville Business Journal yesterday stating that the bankrupcies in Florida are running at about 3 times the national average.
So what are we to do? We just have to work harder to find te clients and meet their needs. We have dropped prices a little to lure clients and that has worked to some degree, but we also have to vigilently look at ways to reduce expenses. We moved into our new office 18 months ago when our revenues were twice what they are today. I leased a bigger space because I saw we were growing at a good clip. Unfortunately, the economy did not share our vision.
We also had a sub-tenet who leased part of the space we did not need at the time. He was a mortgage broker and now is mortgage broke -so he moved out resulting in less money coming in.
The thing that keeps us going is the belief that we have a great service to offer. The word will continue to get out but we have to make sure it does.
Tax season is almost over for the accounting firms and we will be agressively pursuing them for referral sources as well as what I believe to be our biggest advantage - taking clients out of Professional Employer Organizations. Four years ago, I saw them as a threat to our business as many companies could not wait to get into the co-employment relationship. Now payroll companies and benefit brokers are coming after us becasue they do not offer HR services. We fill that gap.
Here's to hard work and optimism.
