I, Resolve

Are you insane?

This rhetorical gem frequently works its way into my awareness. It does so because I’m not immune to the widely accepted sentiments about the state of the US economy. I’m not, however, well informed enough to understand the intricacies of why things are collapsing, when they might get better, and what exactly is going to happen to Resolve in the mean time.

That being said, Barry, David and I want to grow our business this year. A lot. Partly because we want to, but mainly because we have to. Our plan is to build Resolve Digital substantially this year, and the fact that this plan coincides with the collapse of the US economy is unfortunate, but incidental.

Feel stronger, last longer! Grow by 37% in one year!

We’ve been around for a while, and we’ve been able to iron our some of the crinkles that exist in our business. Not all of them – this is a process. No business is crinkle free, but we have a number of things working well: low overhead, good ongoing relationships with our clients, good management systems, and most importantly the people working at Resolve are truly excellent.

So what do we do next? We get more good clients, we further improve our business management, and we attract more excellent staff members. Easy. We’ve shown we’re able to do it, now we just do it again, except more so.

In theory, the part of this that is likely to be least easy is attracting new clients – if businesses have less to spend on their web activities, we’ll have a harder time getting new work. But our experience over the past year or so does not suggest that this is the case. Perhaps it’s because developing a new website, or enhancing an existing site, is a relatively inexpensive investment that provides real and measurable benefits. Perhaps it’s because larger projects are deferred allowing businesses to focus on smaller projects, like their website. Perhaps it’s because we’ve become better at marketing ourselves over the past year, which has served to negate the down-turn that we would have otherwise seen.

Whatever the reason, or combination of reasons, we did ok in 2008, so we’re brazenly choosing to tell ourselves we’ll do even better in 2009.

No really, are you insane?

My response is innevitably no, I’m not. The question comes up because the economic environment compels me to ask it. But having asked it, and having rationally looked at all the component parts of our business, it’s clear that this is the time to put the effort in. The economy is consolidating (or will, some time soon), and having bottomed out people will allow the silt to settle and will ultimately find the confidence to get it growing again. We intend to be well positioned to grow with it.