How to stay in business in 2009 (and some new site features)

The economy is freaking everyone out. We're all feeling it. Some poorly-run companies are laying off thousands of employees. Some of the more frightened business owners are freezing purchases and contracts. And yet, we all need to stay in business, survive, and perhaps even thrive.

So, how do you do it? What are the strategies and tactics you can begin to deploy NOW that will help keep you afloat in these incredibly uncertain times? What are ten things you can begin to do right now, this month, this week, even this morning that will combat the financial crisis blues and ensure that your bottom line is more line than bottom?

How to stay in business in 2009 webinar

These are the questions I was asked recently by Joyce Burkard, the incredibly nice Executive Director for the Independent Computer Consultants Association. She asked me if I could put together a webinar to help her members not just survive, but thrive, in 2009.

That webinar is running on December 10th at 8PM EDT, and you're invited to attend. Details are on the webinar sign-up page.

Many of you know that I wrote The Flexible Enterprise: How to Reinvent Your Company, Unlock Your Strengths and Prosper in a Changing World back in the 90s. It's out of print right now, but I'm working on updating it, and I'll be announcing the updated version soon.

You also know I'm a small business owner myself. In this webinar, I'll showcase techniques and tactics I've used to weather down time over the 20 years I've been in business and techniques I've used to help other companies succeed when all around them were failing. I'll also give you a set of action items you can begin on now, to make sure 2009 works out just pretty darn well for your business.

In particular, I'll discuss the ten things you can begin to do right now, this month, this week, even this morning that will combat the financial crisis blues.

The webinar is $25 for ICCA members and $50 for non-members. Just so you know, I'm not hawking my own seminar here to make a quick buck. I'm actually donating my time to this good cause, and all the proceeds go to the Association. It'll be well worth your time. Actually, for most of you, joining ICCA itself will probably be worth it.

To learn more about ICCA, just visit their site at http://www.icca.org.

New site features

One way you can combat the financial crisis blues is to listen to your constituents. For ZATZ, probably our most important constituents are our readers - you. Every so often we get requests, comments, demands, and other feedback about the various ZATZ sites. Usually, those requests are valid and helpful (however, once in a while, we're advised to do things I don't think are actually anatomically possible to do).

Figure A shows two new features we've added in response to a few of the more anatomically-plausible reader requests. In fact, they're good ideas and their implementation into features will make our sites better and more valuable to you.

RSS articles-only feed

Although we were one of the first publishers to offer RSS feeds, we didn't offer full-content feeds until about two years ago. We created a feed that included full news items from our news page and a reasonable chunk of articles as they published.

Some DominoPower readers didn't like that format. Richard Schwartz, on his Power Of The Schwartz blog, didn't like that our news covered general interest IT news. I disagree, of course, which is why we carry it - I think it's important for Lotus people to be aware of the rest of the world, but I digress.

Anyway, some other luminaries weighed in and, eventually, the post reached me. Being ever the responsive editor, three months after the posts showed up, I responded, saying we'd add an articles-only feed, putting the request on our programming to-do list.

Well, uh, our programming to-do list was loooooooooooooong. It still is. But we finally, almost two and half years later, got to the request. Since Richard's site has the tagline "Never Underestimate The Power Of The Schwartz", I'm proud to announce that DominoPower has been influenced by the Power Of The Schwartz and an articles-only feed is now available.

You can subscribe to it from any article, and the only items you'll see in the feed are articles. No news. After all, no news is good news, right?

Email a friend

Having friends is good. After all, isn't that what Facebook is all about? I get emails from people I've never met, wanting to "friend" me on Facebook. I'm not sure if I'll ever be accused of "palling around" with someone, just because I let them "friend" me, but, hey, it seems polite.

Anyway, back in the day, we had an "email a friend" feature for our articles. The idea was that you had friends and we had articles, and this feature brought the two together. Unfortunately, when we changed server technology, the friend feature didn't change along with us. It broke.

Remember that to-do list I talked about? Well, it was loooooooooooooong. It still is. But we finally got around to building a new "email a friend" feature and it's now live and seems to work.

So go ahead and send your friends our articles. Send them this one. Let them know about the webinar. You'll be doing them a big favor.

My new site

Along with things on our to-do list was my personal site at http://www.DavidGewirtz.com. It hadn't really been updated since 2001 or so. After all, we had a loooooooooooooong to-do list. We still do. But with all the radio interviews and speaking work, it seemed fair to make the site more appropriate to helping people.

If you're interested, feel free to check it out. You'll find another link to the ICCA webinar, but you'll also find a big button that'll take you to a very helpful page with Ten Tips for Online Safety. In today's crazy times, it's worth making sure you're safe online.

So there you go: one webinar designed to keep you in business, two features designed to keep you happy, and ten tips to keep you safe.

Have yourself a happy rest-of-Thanksgiving weekend!