Aaron J. Crowley
Stone Industry Consultant

DO YOU REMEMBER THAT SCENE FROM STAND BY ME, WHERE THE FOUR FRIENDS FIND THEMSELVES CONFRONTED WITH THE REALITY THAT, COMPLETE THEIR JOURNEY, THEY HAVE TO CROSS THE TRAIN TRESTLE?

If you do, you’ll remember that they muster the courage to venture out onto the suspended railroad ties in the thin air above the ravine, only to get halfway across when they hear the whistle of a steam engine.

As the main character screams, “Train!!!” the camera violently pans to the beastly, black locomotive careening around the bend towards the bridge where they’re trapped. There’s no time to turn back so they run for their lives hoping to make it to the safety of the other side before the train runs them over. At the last possible second… they jump…to the embankment and safety.

Classic!

In a way, I feel a special kinship to that now famous foursome, having survived four full years of this downturn. But as much as I’d like to believe we’ve just jumped clear of the train, there is a lot of talk about “another” recession so I wonder if we are only halfway across the trestle.

The train is still gathering momentum and the safety of the other side may be years away, but there is a silver lining to the circumstances we find ourselves in.

While a shock to the system, these difficulties present us with an opportunity to improve as visionaries, and grow as leaders, and develop as individuals as it forces us to operate in a climate that businesses in mature industries experience every day.

Manufacturing had to get lean or die, because of the fierce overseas competition. The grocery business operates on almost non-existent profit margins and only the masterfully managed survive. This recession is moving us in that direction and along the way I’ve been learning some things…

This recession has forced me to learn lessons I would never have learned voluntarily because my nature seeks desperately for the path of least resistance.

This recession has brought me to the brink, literally to the end of myself, but also into a peace and rest in the Almighty god that has pushed back the stress, fear, anger and anxiety that at times overwhelmed me.

This recession has taught me lessons that can’t be learned from a textbook (or an article for that matter) and has produced wisdom that is only acquired through extraordinary trials experienced during a prolonged and difficult journey.

In the trailer to the movie mentioned earlier, the narrator opens with the line, “In all our lives, there is a fall from innocence. A time after which, we are never the same.”

The innocence of operating a business in a bubble has completely fallen away. The way we run our businesses will never be the same as we complete the journey from naiveté to knowledge.

So as we face this upcoming year and all that it has in store for us, let us embrace, instead of resent, the difficulties we’ve experienced and those still yet to come.

Aaron J. Crowley is the founder and president of FabricatorsFriend.com, the exclusive promoter of Stone Sleeve fabricator sleeves and Bullet Proof aprons. He is also the author of Less Chaos More Cash. You can reach him by email at Aaron@CrowleysGranite.com