Reinvention, It's What Americans Do

Online, September 29, 2009 (Newswire.com) - In the midst of this blistering economic downturn, Americans like Rusty Hoffpauir look forward, not back.

Rusty Hoffpauir has always been a salesman, a successful one at that. He left college to sell safety equipment for Bausch and Lomb and eventually became a Safety Director of Stewart & Stevenson Oil tools in Houston. He owned a business selling contract pressure washing services to trucking fleets, industrial, and residential customers. For the last 15 years he sold heavy duty dump trucks and dump trailers nationwide. In short, the man who originally entered college for a career in forestry realized there were greater opportunities in sales and business, made the leap and has never looked back.

Then the economy and Hoffpauir's life took a sharp turn. The demand for all things industrial simply disappeared. At Thanksgiving, 2008, he was laid off.

It didn't come as a huge surprise. Hoffpauir knew the numbers just weren't there. Demand was non-existent. He said, "People were having a hard time paying for the diesel to move the big trucks, let alone purchasing trailers to drag behind them. The decline of the financial sector made matters even worse. I found myself on the job market with not much happening. I can sell anything, but nobody can sell equipment when there is no market or financing."

Examining the business wreckage, he recognized that heavy equipment and industrial sales weren't going to recover for a good long time. Home services and consumer products were absolutely flat. It was a bleak picture across the board.

Hoffpauir saw his future in representing creative and technical services in the advertising industry. While advertising revenues had also suffered in the downturn, Hoffpauir determined it was an industry in flux, with fragmentation and change, due to the rise of the internet and digital technology. "Businesses absolutely must advertise, they won't survive if they don't," Hoffpauir said, "but they also have to advertise effectively, for bottom-line growth. It's not just a matter of a salesman on the road, a little TV, a little radio, or a little newspaper anymore. It is a new ballgame. I see myself as guiding businesses through this process. I've always had a knack for seeing the big picture and explaining the important points in layman's terms so the customer understands and can make an informed decision."

"The toughest part," Hoffpauir admits, "has been learning a new jargon, a whole new expertise. I enjoyed digging into a new technicality, because the better I understand something, the better I can explain it to other people. Take the web design industry for example, it is very interesting and complex. Good websites must be carefully created knowing the detailed science of search engines. If not built correctly, a website will be as effective as a poster nailed to a tree in the forest. No one will ever see it."

The road to economic recovery isn't found by sitting still and waiting, it is built upon knowledge, growth and innovation. Men and women like Hoffpauir prove it every day, they are the people who will lead the way out of this economic slump, with traditional American ingenuity and determination.