I work at a radio station. The year started with our boss being fired because the owner wants to cut expenses. We were told to expect a rough year. They didn’t quite state we’d also get fired, but the wages will be “frozen” till they are capable of finishing all the “damage control” work they need to.

It’s a media company and these did get hit pretty hardly in my country. We still go to work each day but expect the day this reality will change. Let’s hope it won’t, but I am prepared for this since January.

My business is web related. I have lost some money already since the advertising revenue did suffer a bit. Not a lot, but still, I can feel this. My clients are less frequent than before, January was the worst month in 2 years of business. February was better and March came with some new contracts. I can’t say the income is as good as it was last year, but my business is not in danger. Maybe because it’s a very small one, operated by me with the smallest investments possible.

What we need to do now as web business owners is to not panic that much. The situation is bad, but it can be managed with a lot of care and some good planning. My huge mistake personally is to not save money when I have it. I still invest in my home improvements, I bought a car last year and made sure I keep my accounts pretty low money wise.

HUGE  MISTAKE. The crisis made me think more about this and now I am willing to spend less and save some more. As mentioned before the industry is affected,  but still there’s work to be done and money to be earned. If I was a better business owner I’d have money saved for at least 6 months of running my business with no earning.

If I keep my expenses low and also try to save money, I will survive this recession as a business owner. If not, I can try do all kinds of other jobs. I can do translations, write more articles, develop some templates and sell them with 5 USD (and sell many so that I can earn something) etc. In any business there are lots of jobs we can do, even if we weren’t too pleased with the idea before. When your business is doing fine you can be picky, when it’s a crisis, you can do jobs you don’t quite like, but they still put food on the table.

The main idea is that recession is the time for us to really work and learn. There will be people who’ll earn well and even come from these hard times better prepared and maybe successful. It’s not a good time to be defeated or see no options. It’s a hard moment and we need to focus more. We’ll make it.

So, do we sit on our butts and complain? Or are we really taking action?

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