The Arm & Hammer Baking Soda in the back of your grandmother’s refrigerator should have taught you a valuable lesson early on in life. She cooked, cleaned, kept the odors out the refrigerator, rinsed her mouth, and even settled your stomach with it. The cure for everything was “a little bit of baking soda.” Whatever her preference was, the house was not complete without a box of Arm & Hammer.

You see, the lesson in that orange box was that the success of any business or product lies in its ability to recreate itself. The same can be said for entrepreneurs.

No matter what business you choose to pursue, you must understand the very basic marketing principle of the “product life cycle.” Simply put, when your customers no longer have a need for what you are offering, you must come up with a new reason for them to keep coming back for more. This requires a great deal of creativity and flexibility. In today’s economy, as an entrepreneur, you will need it.

Whenever the Arm and Hammer customer thought they finally had enough of the little orange box, the company came back with, “I bet you didn’t know baking soda was also good for (you fill in the blanks).” So where is the flexibility in the product you offer? What other ways can your customer use your product that they may not have known? How can you recreate yourself, your service or product without losing the quality and product benefit?

As a real estate agent, I have found that having flexibility and recreating my services is the only way I can continue my business. Because real estate sales are so low, I have taken on additional projects on the side, such as writing real estate-related articles, giving free community workshops and becoming involved with real estate education. As a result, I am now establishing myself as an expert in the field and acquiring a little business on the side. I effectively found a way to give potential customers what they need at the time they need it. Yet I am still creating a need for my service both now and in the future.

Contrary to popular belief, there are still many entrepreneurs who are surviving by taking the Arm & Hammer approach. If you can find a way to recreate yourself in these times, you will find success every step of the way.