Emerge Victorious! The Keynes to Your Success

Paige Worthy is the Managing Editor of Lawn and Garden Retailer, and my go to networking contact for talking about the fast moving world of social media. Seriously, next time you see her, pick her brain about Facebook, Twitter and blogging. It will be well worth your time! Can't wait to talk to Paige? You can reach her at pworthy@sgcmail.com. PS She'll be at the Clinic.

I'm not an economist. Far from it, actually.

I've written about the consequences this downturn has had on businesses for the past year and change, but I'm really just another consumer looking out for my bank account. I've cut back quite a bit on my spending. I'm...part of the problem.

But enough about me. Let's talk about you. The retailers, the suppliers, the growers. How are you feeling now, as we head into 2010?

You've got a lot riding on this supposed economic recovery. The lives of your businesses hang in the balance. So how can you emerge victorious from this recession?

Like I said, I'm not an economist...but I know of one pretty famous one who happened to pass away last week. His name was Paul Samuelson. NPR gave him a lot of air the day after he died. He was the first American to win the Nobel Prize in Economics and wrote a successful textbook on economics, based largely on the thinking of John Maynard Keynes. Who was a pretty smart guy himself, if you ask me. One of his biggest ideas was that, at the first sign of an economic downturn, governments should nip it in the bud by employing people themselves and running a deficit for the greater good -- private sector businesses are afraid to invest, so the government makes up for it.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt was the first to try this concept out -- he did it with the New Deal's Works Progress Administration during the Great Depression. And it worked. I'd like to grossly oversimplify now by suggesting a theme here: Spend money to make money. Sometimes you have to take a leap and make a risky investment to survive. I took a bit of a leap myself, I know. Keynes' ideas were pretty revolutionary, and he had a lot of critics. So, I'm sure, did FDR. I'm not suggesting you hold some huge event and hire the entire high school to staff it, thus saving your entire town from financial failure and turning the municipal economy around single-handedly. (Though...that would be pretty great. If you save your town like that, give me a call. Lawn & Garden Retailer would love to write about you.)

Emerge victorious in 2010 by continuing to make investments and following them through. Don't cut back on everything out of fear. Don't scrimp on the things that your customers loved about you before this recession started. Do keep in touch with consumers with social media. Do hold events that could draw in a new audience for your garden center. Do try out shocking new varieties in your greenhouse that could really captivate at retail. And do keep learning: Attend events like garden center tours and ANLA's Management Clinic. It could be the...Keynes to your success. Get it?

See you at the clinic.