Unless you live under a rock, you’ve been watching the Bear Stearns debacle.  To add to all the other Stock Market woes, the dollar continues to drop and the Feds keep dropping the fed rate to little avail. 

What does this mean  for small business?  It probably means that the Business Community, our clients will start to tighten their belts yet again.  What to do?  I suggest you start to put a Plan in place now and take several actions steps.  The Inner Circle Newsletter currently being written will address these steps and since it is requiring a lot of research and input from plantscape companies arouns the country, it will not be available til next week.  Trust me it is worth waiting for.

Meanwhile, for all of you, here is one ploy that you can set in motion right now. 

Do you owe money to your Bank?  Do you carry a Line of Credit currently maxed out?  If so, I’d like to tell you a tale from another ’scaper.  He owed his Bank $200,000 and the Bank held a lien on his home.  The home had a mortgage of 130K but was worth 250K.  He had tried to sell the home to get the difference for the Bank but in these times he could not sell it.  Imagine his surprise when the Banker came to see him and suggested that he refinance the Home, give the Bank the money from the refi and if he did so the Banker would forgive, that’s right I said forgive, 100,000 of the outstanding debt to the bank!!!!!

I’ve checked around and found that unlike in past times, Banks are much more interested in cutting deals.  Anything to get back loans paid down.

My advice?  If you can cut a similar deal with your Bank, consider doing so.  To wipe out a huge chunk of debt is a dream.  Look to all your assets to do this.  At the very least, ask to have interest rates on your loans lowered, go interest only for a time, whatever works. 

Most important is just ASKING.  What have you got to lose???????