It is pretty crazy to think how many years you have spent building your business, with all the sweat and tears, rejections, ups and downs and all your passion and soul to have had this Global Financial Crisis. You might have been in an industry that you thought there was no way you could be affected!

Yet as they say S^&* rolls down hill, so eventually you must be affected. Surely this only stands up to logic.

Your success lays in several issues:

1) Are people willing to pay you for what you have.

2) Will someone do it cheaper.

3) Will someone do it quicker.

4) So people need what you have these days?

I think of my own habits and how they have changed over the years. I use store outlets to test a product I want to buy and then I buy it cheaper online. Yes, I am guilty of that. For example, I cannot remember the last time I bought a CD or hired a DVD from Blockbuster. The rise of Netflix surely must be fall of a company such as Blockbuster. netflix is one central location and Blockbuster is franchised, so Blockbuster doesn't have the right business model to compete. Again, online though, Netflix goes up against iTune, and Google Play. In Australia there is the Telstra T Box, while in the U.S Apple TV has a great dominance.

The bookstore is virtually gone, replaced with Amazon, which is just one big warehouse where everything is sold as cheaply as humanly possible, thus cheapening the value of literature and relying on mass buying to make profit. Even Amazon have said to use a retail outlet to look and touch an item they want to buy and then get it cheaper with them online.

When people want to crack open a new market, quite often they find that it has already been cracked and that someone is already it better and cheaper. The big guys can do it cheaply and you, with your limited funds are forced to push your prices up just to survive.

Audio books can be downloaded easily onto any device. You no longer need a CD.

What good are business cards? People lose them ALL the time. If they remember your name, they will simply look you up online. If they can't find you they will find the guy on page 1.

There are more people on the planet than at any time in industry and there are much, much less opportunities to go around. Not only that, with the rise of the internet and places like ODesk and Elance, I can now hire somebody in Asia to work for me for $3 per hour! Can you believe that? Why would I hire YOU and need to pay your tax, superannuation and benefits, sick pay and leave, when I can just put an Indian or Philipino on who is just so grateful to get the job?

Now, I have also read that with the dying of older industries, it gives way to new industries, new opportunities and new jobs. But this is not about having a job. I am not writing about how you can use your skills on getting a job and helping to get a boss rich. This is all about you and YOUR business.

Technology can be the greatest assett to your business, but it might also be your downfall.

The very invention that connects the people of the world together is the very thing that has brought in workers from the borders into the country, yet it is virtual! The greatest invention the world has ever known is the very thing opens your business up to an entire planet of competition.

We can take a look at one insudtry that might fail in years to come, which is the world of record companies and book publishers. These two industries are already taking a major dive and both are struggling to catch up with technology.

Why would I need to beg P.Diddy for a deal when i can set up my own small studio for next to nothing, buy some editing software and create my own music? After I record my music at home, i can borrow a HD camera, which is just as good as the broadcast equipment available and I can create my own video clip. I then can upload the video clip to Youtube and share it to all of my facebook friends and get it to go global. While I am doing that i can go to iTunes and create a publisher account, upload my new album and start making residual royalties from the sales of my own tracks! I just share the royalties with Apple!

It really is that simple.

The advent of piracy means that your profits will be virtually wiped out by the black market and this will destroy many record labels.

Oh wow! Are you ready to hide under your bed and hope that the financial armageddon will pass? Are you scared of it all? Will you need to shut up shop and try and get a job with a big company and just admit you are a financial slave??

I HOPE NOT!

Now is the very time to get creative, inventive and turn your business on its head. Now is the time to start listening to Internet guru's. An audio book training session will be a perfect way to begin. Hear it from the guru's themselves of how they are turning the tides on their industries. there are so many business books on the topic of thriving in business in the digital age.

Let us look at some simple stuff you can do to lower your marketing costs and be quick to beat the competition in your business.

1) Forget directory style advertising that buries your business ad with a hundred others. These days are long gone. Who uses the phone book these days???

2) Get an awesome website that is professionally designed. People judge you by your website. getting your neighbors kid to bang up a website for a case of beer just won't cut it. People will think you are a backyard operator.

3) Get a Google Adwords account and set up a daily budget. Target the areas on the map that you want to cover and target those keywords that people would type in to find you.

4) On your website, ensure you contact form is on the home page. Write that contact form to say 'get a Quick Quote Now", and make them put their name, phone number and email address in.

5) Hook your email address up to your smart phone so that when an email arrives, your phone beeps. When people visit your awesome website, they will enter their details and click send. you will immediately get it on your phone and hear your phone beeping. open that email, gran the phone number and call your prospect.

Don't be scared of technology. It will destroy you and devour you if you let it overwhelm you. technology kills business dreams when you let it overwhelm your very existence. Wrestle your demons and your fears of technology. Hooking your website up to your phone is one of the simplest things you can do to help your business survive. There are so many more cool techniques that technology has given you access to.

I think training yourself in the latest technology is so important. Embrace audio book training. Embrace new ways of thinking.

Embrace the future!