Here’s the online version of my ad as published in
Fort Wayne Business Weekly on September 30,2011.

That sounds like a strange thing to say, right? Let me explain…

Whenever someone asks me how things are going, I always give them my stock answer — “GREAT!” It’s usually the answer they’re looking for and who wants to burden other people with your problems? Not me. But times are tough, aren’t they? So here’s the truth…Our business is down over 25% in the past 6 months alone and there’s no relief in sight.

I suppose we’re fortunate because we have no debt and little overhead. But we’re hurting anyway, and we’ve tried to streamline, focus, and (insert “buzzword” here) our business — much like you’ve probably done in the past few years. Little of it has worked, despite the quality of our work and services. That may be the case for you, too.

Lately, I keep hearing how things are turning around, but I can tell you that false optimism is simply not true. I’ve had plenty of friends and customers lose their businesses this year. Plus, the word from our clients is they’re holding onto their cash and not spending. Fair enough. My point?

There is a philosophy that I believe in that might help us through this economic crisis and I hope you can take it to heart and subscribe to it also:

“The job of a small company is to stay in business; the job of a large company is to support its community.”

What this means is if you’re a small business, you ethically do what you have to do to survive. That’s it. Stay alive. Build jobs. Grow. Don’t spend money if it jeopardizes your survival.

If you’re a larger organization, congratulations. You made it. Now you need to support your community by buying your goods and services locally.

No one is asking you to abandon rational thought and ignore your bottom line, but if you commit to buying local, you’ll always find someone that can meet your needs. And if it costs a little more, that’s fine. By buying local, you keep money in the community where more goods and services can be bought and sold, more jobs can be created, and more taxes can be paid to keep our city wonderful.

So if you don’t buy from me, please, buy from my competitors! In the long run, it helps me, our city and you. (I won’t even tell you what we do, that’s not the point of this rant.)

If you have questions about your website, change requests, you’ve found a bug or issue, have trouble with your e-mail or want to schedule a meeting, please do this through our new support portal.

Unfortunately, as a company grows and we stretch our resources to the max, it becomes necessary to make some changes and concessions. The concession we’ve needed to make recently is to convert from phone support to e-mail support.

We did this for a couple reasons that we think you’ll agree it makes sense, and more importantly, we think you’ll understand that’s it’s actually a good thing.

First, we did this because the enormity of phone calls and e-mails we receive on a daily basis began to distract us from things that a growing business needs to do — sales and production.

And second, because so much correspondence was occurring we were naturally prioritizing requests. Occasionally, we’d embarrassingly loose a request.

So we moved to an electronic support system (hey, we’re a web company) in order to prioritize e-mails, support requests, and other things better. But more importantly, we no longer can loose e-mails or requests.

An additional feature of our new system includes a Forum section where we’ll post Tip ‘n’ Tricks and announcements regularly.

To access our new support system, please click here.

Remember, we’re a small company and one of the reasons we can keep our prices so low is by streamlining processes. We know it’ll be hard at first, but in the end, we’re sure you’ll appreciate the simplicity of the system and how more responsive overall newsMOGUL can be to you.