The economy seems to be slowing down lately. To survive, savvy business owners must find answers to ride out economic downturns. Fortunately, there are several options.

One thought is to keep doing what you’ve been doing and hope everything will be okay. Another is to tighten spending and cut costs. Yet another is to invest in your business so that when the market recovers, you’re better positioned to take advantage of the upturn.

What direction do you think is the best one to take? I would argue that doing nothing and hoping everything will be okay is foolish. Changing with the economic conditions should be a way of life in any business. So that leaves two choices: tighten spending and cut costs or continue investing in your business.

Because I lean toward the selling and marketing sides of the business, I tend to gravitate toward a little of both. You should watch spending, but it’s a bad idea to stop investing or cut spending.

What do I mean by investing? Any company investing in or caring for its employees is far better positioned to eliminate economic pitfalls. My mentor taught me a long time ago that when you take care of your employees, your employees will take care of your customers and, in turn, take care of you. This is true because people do business with others; they do business with those who work for a particular company, not just the company.

Stop and think about it: If someone you did business with left one company to join another competing company, how likely would you be to follow that person to the new company? If all things were equal, you’d more than likely switch to the new company.

If you stop investing in and caring for your employees, sit back and see what happens. It’s a slow and painful road; worse, you probably won’t even know it’s happening.

Money comes and goes, but investing in good people is one of the most important investments for any company in any economy.

Are you going to invest in someone today?

My 2 cents.