We won't feel it for a while, but a new dawn will begin in spring of '09

The first recession that I noticed was in the early 1980s, I had just finished my apprenticeship in the U.K. The Thatcher Government delivered shock and awe in overthrowing the socialists and defeating the trade union movement. The long term results were 20 years of prosperity, but the initial shock was brutal. Unemployment went from 3 million to 4 million in a matter of months, there were riots in the streets and we watched Liverpool burn. My Father's company employed 200 people, when all of the major British companies were de-nationalized, we lost millions in contracts overnight and were forced to close the doors, 20 years of hard work and 200 jobs were lost.

I headed for the U.S. and picked up work immediately in the Bay Area, but I was young, I didn't make skilled rate, and I moved several times, at each place learning new skills, I was eight years in the trade with a college degree, before I ever made journeyman pay.

I got spoiled and cocky in the Bay Area job market and in 1985 felt my second recession. The Japanese were dumping semi-conductor chips at below market rate to put their competitors out of business, it worked well, the Bay Area job market collapsed, it took legislation from the Reagan Administration to end the ploy, and I spent three months out of work, the longest period of my life. I never again became cocky in my work and learned one of the most important lessons of my life. Everybody is replaceable.

Four years of prosperity ensued and I started my own business in 1989, this of course triggered the next recession. I remember August of '89 as being the month that I didn't see the light of day and didn't get paid, it was hard work, but we survived.

I picked up a customer or two and within two years we were doing close to a million dollars a year in business. This was when I experienced my first customer betrayal. Spectra Physics was pushing us to do more and more work and we invested heavily in CNC Machining equipment. In '95 they sent a team of specialists to see how we manufactured one extremely difficult laser housing, I was happy to show off our skills, not realizing that they were building their own manufacturing facility in northern California and that they would soon pull every job from us. I dealt with several buyers in the firm and one of them resigned when they told her to cancel all of her vendor contracts, of course everybody is replaceable and other buyers finished her work.

This was where I learned another valuable lesson, your customers are not companies, they are the people within companies, we had done good work for many people within Spectra Physics, and as they moved to other companies, we picked up new business; we soon put '95 behind us.

'98 began the toughest years I had in business, the dot.com boom was in full swing, 25 year olds with no experience were becoming millionaires, on paper, overnight, everybody thought they were owed a piece of the action and prices skyrocketed. My lease came due in 2000 and my landlord doubled the rent, he told me that he realized I would have to move, but that was no problem because he would sheetrock the warehouse and rent it to a dot.com; we moved our company.

We weathered the dot.com bust, as we were in telecom and medical, but the attacks of September 11, 2001 crippled our customer base, we had five main customers and four of them disapeared overnight, literally on September 12. The telecom industry bust was destined to follow the dot.com bust, and as the human genome was finally sequenced at virtually the same time, the market for DNA scanning equipment went away just as fast.

Again, we survived with our one customer, and again people left to other companies, and brought us new business, but there was a new challenge; Globalization, our customers were going overseas for machined components, and they were open about it, they had to be, because the quality was terrible. We made a nice living for a while, just repairing the parts they bought from China, the prices were so low that they were willing to turn a blind eye to poor quality, of course this was short sighted, and our customers began to see their reputations suffer.

This was where I learned another valuable lesson: it takes years to build a reputation of quality, and only weeks to see it disappear.

By 2004, I had seen the business from every angle I could imagine, but don't get me wrong, every angle was different and will continue to be different, good managers must be hardened by experience, on June 1st I decided that I had taken the business as far as I could and that I would seek new challenges, I had a buyer within a month, my priorities were to walk away free and clear financially, and to make sure that my employees and customers were taken care of, I managed to make all of that happen, and walked into the latest challenge of my business life. I will tell you more about that on another day.

Back to the point of this article, the recession is over, because we have already been in it for a year, if you live in another region of the country, you have seen your own cycles of good and bad times, it's different everywhere, but one thing is certain, the pendulum always swings, we are at one place in the arc today, and shear momentum will begin the next arc. Pessimism is driving this downturn.

It doesn't matter what your politics are, just take a good look at this new President, he is as busy, as any I've seen, he picks the top people he can find, regardless of their ideology, and that's a good sign.

The astronomic energy prices of the past year will become the tipping point for new technologies and environmental safeguards, this means opportunity for business.

The swing toward cheap prices in Asia, have run their course, yes, many items, where price is the number one driver will still be made in Chinese factories, but Western companies will be forced to ensure humane working conditions, and the Asian worker will soon demand parity, in the world of global communication, you cannot keep people in the dark forever.

Housing prices are low, and a new generation has an opportunity to get their foot in the door for the first time in years.

Look alive; Americans, hard times are the catalyst for opportunity. What are you doing to prepare yourself to ride the next wave?