When Will It End?

Welcome to PR Coach -- my thoughts, opinions and advice on issues important to agency leaders. I’ll try to make this helpful and practical based on my years in agency leadership and my current role as an advisor to public relations and integrated communications firms across the country.

I certainly welcome your comments (pro and con); questions, ideas, and tips for agency heads and others in senior management as well as those of you who may be considering starting your own agency business.

When will it end? That’s the question that many agency heads are asking themselves. It’s not a bad question, but I think it’s the wrong question, a question borne from the frustration that many of you are feeling. Your clients are cutting or terminating budgets and you are laying off employees, and reducing or eliminating marketing, training, and other expenditures.

This recession will end as it began – prior to any of us knowing it. But, we’ll feel it. Clients will be more positive and open to new ideas, new business activity (yes, there is plenty of business out there) will pick up. The media will become more positive. The country’s mood will be begin to lighten.

The better question today is how can we use this time to make us stronger when business does begin to pick up?

It is a big question and there isn’t just one answer. I’ll be addressing this question in future blogs. For now, a big part of what agency heads can do is sustain an attitude of abundance and prosperity, not fear. When you operate from fear you operate by necessity from a mindset of scarcity and limitation. And, if that’s the way you think that’s what you’ll get. If you operate from a mindset of abundance you will get abundance. I’m not sure why this works. I do know it does work and I have numerous examples from both my own life and those of my clients.

So put aside doom and gloom. Think abundance; stabilize your finances; accelerate your business development and marketing and take care of your current clients.

This too shall pass.