Ah, the credit crunch. The current economic climate. The bear market. The recession. Nobody has any money and none of us have jobs and we’re all poor and disenfranchised.

Life sucks, doesn’t it?

We’re not spending ONE RED CENT more than we actually have to, right? Housewives across the country are dusting off their Granny’s old copy of The Ration Book Diet. And when little Tiffany celebrates her Sweet 16 next month, we’re not going out for dinner. Oh, no. We’re going to have Spam on toast and water with a squeeze of the juice from a tired looking lemon. You know, because it’s a special occasion.

And what do we do with our evenings now that God has confiscated every Visa, Mastercard and American Express in the country? We’ve stopped discretionary spending so we don’t have internet, satellite, or long distance phone service. It’s kind of nice, actually — families all over the Western world are playing charades and Yahtzee or reading library books by the light of candle stubs.

No?

That’s not what’s happening? You mean the media might be lying to us? Making things sound a smidgen worse than they might actually be in order to sell a few more papers? Say it ain’t so!

Yes, fellow IttyBiz owners, spending is down. Do you know WHY it’s down?

Because down is the fucking opposite of up.

Up. Down. Ebb. Flow. 80s. 90s.

The economy is a CYCLE and cycles go around. Can we please stop acting like this is the goddamn apocalypse?

OK. Rant over. Now I’ll get to the productive part.

Historically, when the economy suffers, individual spending cuts come in stages. The stages last a long time each, and they are based on the economic status of the individual, not the collective.

Go back and read the bit in italics again, because it’s important. Ah, the hell with it. I’ll just repeat it.

SPENDING CUTS ARE BASED ON THE ECONOMIC STATUS OF THE INDIVIDUAL, NOT THE COLLECTIVE.

This is the first thing you will need to remember from today’s post. You might want to write it down.

Spending cuts become more and more drastic the worse the individual’s financial situation becomes. Some people make 10 rounds of cuts. Some people make one. Three or four is pretty normal. Then the economy goes back to being good again and the media does everything in its quite considerable power to convince us this never happened.

(This helps later, when this whole thing happens again, and they want to convince us that it’s never happened before. Shit, I think I said I was done ranting. Sorry.)

Anyway. What was I saying? Oh, right. Personal spending cuts.

The thing you need to understand as an IttyBiz owner is that personal spending decisions are based entirely and completely on the priorities of the individual. You might want to write that one down too.

This means I will happily give up my gym membership because, let’s face it, I wasn’t going anyway. You might cut out Sunday morning lattes with your friends from university because the caffeine makes you hyper and if Jason spends one more minute talking about his fertility rollercoaster, you’re going to drown him in his own babyccino.

So we cut things, yes. We cut the things that weren’t important to us. The things that ARE important to us? We keep buying them.

The spectrum of importance is long, and there are some things that are nearly inviolable.

Your highlights, maybe. Your golf membership, perhaps. I would personally perform oral sex for money before I gave up my moisturizer. I have a feeling my husband feels the same way about his XBox.

“But, but, but, Naomi! My business is brand new! And really small! I’m not important to anybody yet! I can’t compete!”

So change your fucking marketing.

Make it important.

And stop using so many goddamn exclamation points while you’re at it.

There are lots of ways to position your product or service so that it seems important. We’ll talk about a lot of them in the course I’m running, and you can read about many in the books Charlie talked about on Friday.

You can also cheat a little and use what you know about people in general. Think about what’s ALREADY important to them and piggyback off that.

Money. Time. Security. Freedom. Comfort. Self-esteem. Fame. Power. Health. Family.

There’s 10 to get you started, anyway.

(Example: In economic boom times, I position my products and services as a way to attain freedom. Sure, everybody’s making money, but are they free? In economic down times, I position my products and services as a way to attain security. Yeah, running your own IttyBiz might seem risky, but isn’t the alternative a hell of a lot riskier? Same stuff. Different angle. Sales are steady.)

Think about this for a few days and stay tuned. Later this week we’ll talk about solid, practical ways to move your IttyBiz up the ladder of importance and get people to spend their money on YOU and not the gym, the lattes or the face cream.

Well, maybe not the face cream.