By Woody Kaye

When you turn on the news, open the paper or skim the headlines in your daily email, you probably are reading some pretty depressing and frightening stuff. In fact, it may be enough to make you consider just battening down the hatches and hoping that the bad news somehow passes you by until things change. While this may be tempting, if you do it you will be passing up one of the potentially most life changing periods that you may experience in history.

There is no doubt about it: the economy stinks. However, when the economy stinks, that means that there are a million opportunities that normally would get overlooked, undervalued or just plain missed in the happy, prosperous shuffle that can mean the difference not just between being in the red and being in the black, but in hundreds, thousands, or even millions in your profit margin. When the going gets tough, you have to look more carefully to see the good things, but that does not mean they are not there. Use this lesson to help yourself keep a success mindset and focus on building your business and your wealth rather than just holding on for dear life.

Step One: Evaluate things carefully

Always look at things from every angle, and do not elect to use the negative angle just because it appears to be the "safest" way to prevent a bad thing from happening unexpectedly. Just because you know something is coming does not make it any less unpleasant, so instead of spending your time focusing on waiting for the sky to fall (and probably hastening it on its way down in the process) look for a way to make the best of matters - for example, sell steel-plated umbrellas. While this is a lighthearted approach to a serious matter, keeping an eye open for opportunity is the first and most crucial step in taking advantage of opportunity when it comes along.

Step Two: Believe that you can alter your own circumstances

Often, simply changing the way that you are looking at things, you can alter the way that you interact with them to the point that you have literally altered reality to suit your needs. Here is a classic example. Read the following sentence: "Opportunity is nowhere." At first glance, it looks like a pretty grim assessment that probably also sounds pretty similar to a lot of other things you have been hearing recently.

However, if you read it again, this time refusing to let yourself be influenced by your negative fears and the general negativity that is surrounding you, you can make those words read completely differently: "Opportunity is Now Here." Let this be your motto, and always remember to look for the things you can change.

Step Three: Take action.

All the positive thinking in the world will not affect your balance sheet or your profit margin if you spend all your time thinking. Once you have gotten yourself out of the rut that you may have fallen into thanks to negative news coverage and an understandable uncertainty about the future, it is time to act. However, act wisely when you do. For example, hone your budget until it is a fine-tuned waste-fighting machine. One of the best ways to do this is to make sure that every single one of your marketing dollars is working overtime for you. In a time when everyone is cutting back on advertising, you have to make sure that your promotional efforts are hitting hard and working when you are not even in the room. One of the best ways to multitask your promotional budget is to use merchandise that is emblazoned with your logo or your contact information.

A physical object literally campaigns for you and your business like nothing else - except you personally - can. It helps a user recall the positive feelings that they got when they were working for you, and will keep on selling (unlike even the best sales copy) long after it has been put down. While few people will pick up a sales letter for a second read, they will pick up that pen, mug or magnet over and over again for second, third and hundredth glances. Even better, promotional merchandise does not stop with the person you give it to, but can take on a life of its own and promote your business and services in arenas that you may never physically enter.

In the end, just like the famous Charles Dickens wrote, the best of times are the worst of times, and vice versa. In order to grow your business into success regardless of the economic environment, you simply have to look at the worst of times through the lens of success.

Woody Kaye is the founder of Corporate Values, Inc. a distributor of promotional products offering more than 600,000 imprintable items that can be fully customized with corporate or business unit logos, and/or conference or event information. For more tips on using promotional merchandise or promotional printing just click on one of the links to check out Corporate Values blog.

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Looking at Your Business Through the Lens of Success