Micro businesses in a recession

Oh, man, this has been a busy day. I've been out straight since early this morning, sometimes having one person on hold while helping another and responding to emails between breaths. It was slow all week and then this morning my office turned into Grand Central Station.

One of the calls was sad. A customer I've known for a decade or so called to tell me that he's out of business and can't pay next year's support bill.

What do you do? I can't just say "Oh, ok, have a nice life" - I've known this guy for too many years. I told him not to worry about it - to call me anyway if he needed my help. I can't do that for everyone, but sheesh: this guy is my age and he's sitting at a desk looking at an empty checkbook trying to figure out how to reinvent himself in an awful economy. I just can't not help him if he needs me.

I did recommend he buy my Hard Truths book if he can afford it (if he can't, I'll just send it to him). He's a competent guy; he should be able to make something from that.

The other calls were mundane. Windows machines that were being blocked by a misbehaving transparent proxy. Mysterious virus infections and spyware junk. Setting up Amazon S3 for Microlite Edge customer, talking to a prospective Edge customer and a prospective Kerio user. Helping a friend with Wordpress, making corrections to my Psst book, scheduling work for next week, sending out some W9's, making one collection call.. but there were so many calls that I jokingly said to my wife "Every single customer has called today - except Joe B.!"

I picked Joe because he and I had been talking a lot in the previous few days but that was all fixed up now so I wasn't expecting to hear from him. Two minutes later the phone rang - it was Joe B. I had to laugh.

It's poker night - I lost about $20 last week and hope to make it back tonight. I'll be cosing down in a few minutes to head out for that.