The Competition is out there
It's a well-known truism that when the economy goes south and people start losing their jobs, the numbers of new small businesses go up. That pink slip is often the motivation that is needed for otherwise closeted entrepreneurs to get out and give their big dreams of independence and success a shot. Some of them make it, some of them don't, but for those who are already in the market, or have been planning a bootstrapping move for a long time, this surge can represent an unwanted wave of competition.
As a consultant, I am always leery of these downturns, because every laid off geek in the region is going to print up business cards and create a cloud of chaff that I will have to fight through to get the attention of prospects. This has been true in the past as well, particularly after the dot com implosion in 2000. From experience, I know that when the economy picks back up, most of those erstwhile entrepreneurs will disappear back into the mainstream woodwork and I'll have my market back to myself again.
This time around, there has been record growth in new businesses. The competition is fiercer than ever, and the nature of the downturn is such that, quite possibly, many of those jobs that disappeared will not come back; those that will may not come back for a long time. So I will have to buckle down and get used to operating in a more highly competitive environment than the past, and so will many other bootstrappers in my position. If you've been hunkering down as I have, waiting for the wave to pass, it's probably time to realize it's not going to: this is the new reality. Get your game face on!