On Friday, Oct. 10, I had the honor of delivering the keynote address to the annual meeting of Coastal Business Finance, a nonprofit organization that helps small businesses get financing on the Central Coast.

It was a sunny afternoon in Santa Maria and I was trying to strike an upbeat note as the stock market struggled to turn itself around. And my cautious optimism about the future was rewarded Oct. 13 with the stock market’s strongest gain in recent memory.

A big one-day gain like the 936-point whopper can keep an aging baby boomer believing that my IRAs are not going all the way to zero.

But I keep going back to the summer of 2001 when the Pacific Coast Business Times was a year-old company struggling against the severest of economic headwinds. Because of an advertising crunch that was the worst since the Great Depression, we were forced to lay off 40 percent of our staff, including the person who was supposed to manage day-to-day operations.

To view this column and all other full stories and offerings in the Business Times, see this week’s print version or SUBSCRIBE for $49.99 today