In 2008, I had roughly twenty-five active clients. By the end of 2011, I was down to five. Just as it did to those previous twenty clients, many whose businesses failed, the Great Recession rained devastation on all I had worked so hard to build. No doubt, those of you reading this suffered, as well.

Yet, I’m writing this post, which will appear on the website that represents that same company, Your.Virtual.Assistant. I am convinced I survived that calamitous economic downturn through two activities: controlling expenses, and I kept moving.

Expense Control

Cutting expenses was a given, both business and personal. There simply wasn’t enough money to cover my monthly outlay. On the personal front, my son, his girlfriend and I rented a house together, thus halving my housing cost. Groceries were much less expensive when planning meals for three, as were utilities. You get the idea.

When it came to my business expenses, I created a budget limited to what it took to serve five clients, with enough wiggle room to accommodate new clients (I hoped). I was fortunate in that my business was home-based, so I didn’t have to worry about office rent. Getting creative, I cancelled my landline phone service and began using my cell phone for all business and personal calls. My cable company and Internet service provider agreed to move my account to a discounted service plan. I applied this principle to every expense possible. In this way, I continued to whittle away at each individual business expense. Unexpectedly, it was an exercise that taught me one critical lesson: I had never really known how much revenue I brought in each month. Now I knew how much I needed to meet my new expense budget. I got real and I got responsible.

I kept moving

Without slipping too far out of the box, I learned a lesson from Thomas Edison. It was he who said, “The chief function of the body is to carry the brain around.” I surmised that his point was that the brain constantly needed new data to function and further develop, and that new data was found in movement from one place to another. I took that a step further by creating “psychological or mental” movement, investigating new ideas, opportunities and seemingly unrelated approaches to doing business (and living life). I opened my mind, put imagination to work, and began searching out new data. I came to believe that even the slightest movement caused everything else around it to move and change, as well. This, in turn, led me to understand that through “keeping moving” my circumstances would change, sometimes as small shifts in perspective or attitude, and often with significant results.

It worked. My business survived. And it still works! Today, I track every dollar that leaves my business and always know how much revenue I need to service my debt. And when confronted with difficult times or circumstances, I get moving.