No better time than now

I've been through a few recessions. It's a sign of ageing that you can remember quite so many of them but one thing is clearer to me now than ever. This is the time to start a new business. I've seen a good number of businesses that started in boom time - when frankly you could have put a few chimps in a room with telephones and they'd have sold stuff.

It was fun, I'm sure, to be raking in the cash but it is rather like being the little rich kid - the lack of challenge can make you sloppy and floppy. And that's why so many businesses are falling off the cliff now. Never learning about keeping costs tight and customers happy, not having the discipline of good cash management and credit control, these are killers when things get tough.

So, maybe it's because I'm a Scot (although I fear that Gordon Brown and Fred Goodwin have tarnished our reputation for prudence - actually, scratch that, have tarnished our reputation, period) but I know that having to run a tight ship makes for safer sailing. So, with the banks not wanting to lend and investors like shy virgins, not wanting to take the plunge, thank goodness that it's possible to start a business with very little money at all.

And the recognition that there is no security other than the security you make for yourself means that more people than ever are at least considering the possibility that they can take control of their lives and income. That's no bad thing. Because those businesses will be tough little fighters and that's what we need now, businesses based in reality and run with integrity. I rather think this crisis may be the making of us all yet.