Bob Adolfson says he’ll always remember a party he catered in the early 1990s in Seattle. It was an end-of-the-year bash for a company with 12,000 employees held at the Washington State Convention & Trade Center.

Perhaps in graduate school or soon after you sought out seasoned and successful people in your field and took them to lunch. You told them candidly that you’d appreciate their advice regarding your career.

The economists have spoken; it’s looking like a rough year ahead, with the economic climate getting worse before it gets better. Business owners and executives can hope the analysts are wrong, but they better not be betting on it.

The current business climate in our region is better than that of the national economy. We have managed to be somewhat insulated from the worst of the effects that have taken place elsewhere. While I don’t believe that we’ve seen the worst, I do believe that, in large part because of our economic-development efforts during the past two decades, we will be spared the worst of the current recession.

As the old adage goes, the three keys to success in business are location, location and location. Washington Restaurant Association President and CEO Anthony Anton says that, for restaurateurs statewide, the biggest issues right now are minimum wage, minimum wage and minimum wage.

Fired. Laid off. Let go. Downsized. The words reek of loss. But losing a job can also be the catalyst for gaining a new career. It can be the push that propels people to stretch and grow. It can be the spark that starts an entrepreneurial fire. For some, a job loss is an opportunity to become the boss.

My role in life now is to get up, polish my shield and go out into the world in search of dragons. I live in an often-rough world of trial work, and I try and bring principles to life for the people I serve. It’s complex, intense, challenging and meaningful. And this is what works for me.

Business has always been social. Building relationships and trust with an eye on eventual profit is the implicit goal behind client-wooing practices like wining and dining prospects, hitting the links with industry colleagues or issuing invites to catch a ball game in the company box.