Stop waiting for the perfect economy

Terry Ward, Publisher

There is always a reason to wait.

Wait for interest rates to come down. Wait for inflation to settle. Wait until hiring gets easier. Wait until consumers feel more confident. Wait for the housing market to improve or until we have a little more certainty about what comes next.

Business owners have become pretty good at waiting for normal.

I'm beginning to wonder whether normal is coming back.

Maybe the more important question is whether we need it to.

Over the past several years, businesses across North Central Washington have navigated a pandemic, supply chain disruptions, inflation, labor shortages, rising interest rates and dramatic changes in how people work, shop and spend their money.

Here in the Wenatchee Valley, we have our own pressures. Housing remains a challenge for employers trying to recruit and retain workers. Construction and borrowing costs affect decisions about expansion. Tourism and agriculture continue to evolve. Major investments in technology and data infrastructure are creating opportunities while also raising new questions about growth, energy, land and workforce needs.

And artificial intelligence is beginning to change jobs and business models at a pace we're only starting to understand.

Just when one challenge begins to settle down, another seems to take its place.

At some point, uncertainty stops being a temporary condition and simply becomes part of doing business.

That may sound pessimistic. I don't think it is.

I think it's an opportunity to reconsider what makes a business strong.

For a long time, strategic planning was largely about predicting what would happen next. Where will the economy be in three years? What will customers want? How quickly will the market grow? What will it cost to borrow money?

Those are still important questions.

But perhaps the better question for business owners today is this:

How quickly can we adjust when we're wrong?

That's a different way of thinking about the future.

It means maintaining enough financial flexibility to absorb a difficult quarter. It means paying attention to customers instead of assuming they'll behave tomorrow the way they did yesterday. It means developing employees who can learn new skills as technology changes their jobs.

And increasingly, it means being willing to change something that is still working before circumstances force you to.

We see versions of that happening throughout North Central Washington.

Employers are looking differently at how they recruit and retain workers. Businesses are finding new ways to reach customers. Educational institutions are adjusting programs to meet changing workforce demands. Agriculture continues to adopt new technology. Communities are wrestling with how to accommodate growth while preserving what makes them desirable places to live and do business.

Those aren't predictions about exactly what the economy will look like five years from now.

They're responses to the economy we have today and investments in the ability to adapt to whatever comes next.

I think small businesses should be thinking the same way.

We sometimes assume resilience means surviving difficult circumstances. That's certainly part of it. But resilience in business isn't just hanging on until conditions improve.

It's building a company that can change.

That might mean adding a new service because customers are asking for something different. It might mean using technology to eliminate work that no longer needs to be done manually. It could mean training someone already on your team rather than waiting months to find the perfect employee.

It might mean entering a new market, changing how you sell your product or reconsidering an expense that made sense five years ago but doesn't anymore.

It could also mean deciding that an old way of doing business has simply run its course.

None of those decisions require knowing exactly what happens next.

They require paying attention.

One of the advantages small businesses have is that we can move. We don't need six committees and a yearlong strategic review to change direction. We can listen to a customer on Tuesday and try something different on Wednesday.

That's easy to forget when uncertainty makes us cautious.

Caution has its place. There are times to preserve cash, postpone an expansion or decide that an opportunity isn't worth the risk.

But there is a difference between being cautious and standing still.

I've spent much of my career in the newspaper business, an industry that offers a pretty good lesson in what happens when businesses wait too long for the world around them to stop changing.

It doesn't.

Customers change. Technology changes. Competitors change. The economics change.

The choice isn't whether change happens. The choice is whether we respond to it.

That's true for newspapers, and I think it's increasingly true for almost every business.

The businesses that emerge strongest from this period probably won't be the ones that correctly predicted interest rates, inflation, artificial intelligence, housing costs or consumer spending.

They'll be the ones that built organizations capable of responding when those things changed.

As we head toward the final months of 2026 and begin thinking about 2027, that's worth considering.

Don't build your business plan around the assumption that everything will finally settle down.

Build a business that doesn't need it to.

Stop waiting for the perfect economy.

It probably isn't coming.

And maybe that's OK.