I love a bad economy.

Not because of the pain it causes. Far from it. A lot of people and industries are suffering as never before, and there's nothing positive about that. Instead, I see the silver lining to an economic slowdown like the one we're experiencing today.

When you move beyond worry and fear, you'll discover that areas of growth are actually more plentiful than they are during boom times.

In a bad economy, you can walk all over your competition, lap the field, run circles -- you pick the metaphor. The main thing is that you can win easily . . . if you know how to benefit from bad times. Everyone else is dropping out of the race, and you're seeing the checkered flag. You're looking forward, and everyone else is looking backwards. They're terrified, and you're making a fortune. You're seeing opportunities and overlooked markets, transactions, and areas of thinking that no one else saw in good times, so they certainly won't see them in times of financial struggle.

Anyone can show you how to succeed when all the indicators are up. But I'm going to show you how to succeed as never before . . . when the nation's and the world's financial picture looks bleak. In this article, I'll give you three ways to think about increasing your success right now.

1. Wave Goodbye To Former Competitors

As a business owner or professional, you should be anything but fearful in a bad economy or a recessionary period. In a good market, almost all anybody has to do is suit up and wait for business to arrive at the doorstep. In spite of all your competitors' ineptitudes and flaws, they will still grow along with the climbing economic trend.

But in a bad economy, these people become paralyzed. The music stops, and they don't know what to do. They retreat. They stagnate. Such businesses are like hang gliders or hot air balloons. Once they get moving, they can go for hours. But when they find themselves buffeted by changes in air pressure beyond their control, their crash landings are scary to watch.

2. While Your Competitors Are Struggling To Survive, You're Planning To Grow

A handful of businesses actually become strategic during hard times. By taking on a growth-minded strategy, these businesses capture the vast majority of new clients in the market -- people who weren't already buyers or who weren't ready to move forward, or perhaps those who didn't have the need for a given product or service before. But even more important, strategically minded companies will capture -- "steal" in an ethical manner, if you will -- 15-20% of the best buyers from all of their competitors.

So if you're attracting all the new buyers in your market and you're appropriating, say, 15-20% of the best, most profitable, and most repetitive buyers from half a dozen of your competitors, you're doubling what you might have done even in an up market.

3. Find Your Business's (eX) Factors

In addition, every business has at its disposal 20 to 50 or more highly "upside-leveragable" impact points -- or (eX) factors. These (eX) factors can create exponential income if you recognize them and harness them. They make people more likely to call you or go to your website. They make it easier for you to close sales and deals. They turn one-time buyers into clients who buy every quarter, and they turn non-buyers into people who buy something. These are the surprisingly, even embarrassingly, simple things you can do to bring in more prospects, more sales, more profit, more conversions, more markets, and more ways to start and sustain a relationship.

If your business has 50 such (eX) factors in it and you increase your effectiveness in, say, just 10 of those leverage areas, you will be poised not just for survival in challenging economic times but in fact to thrive as never before.

These are three reasons why you can learn to love recessions. You can have your best years while those around you are facing disaster. You'll come out of this downturn stronger, more prosperous, and poised to grow faster than you ever hoped, or even imagined, if you hold the mindset that you actually have less competition than you think and more clients waiting to be served.

Jay Abraham, author of The Sticking Point Solution: 9 Ways to Move Your Business From Stagnation to Stunning Growth In Tough Economic Times, is founder and CEO of Abraham Group, Inc., in Los Angeles, California and has spent the last twenty-five years solving problems and significantly increasing the bottom lines for over 10,000 clients in more than 400 industries worldwide. Jay has won high praise as a marketing genius in USA Today, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, OTC Stock Journal, National Underwriter, Entrepreneur, Success, Inc., and many other publications. Jay's clients range from business royalty to small business owners, many of whom acknowledge that his efforts and ideas have led to an increase in profits ranging into the millions of dollars. He lives in Los Angeles.