Eric Hansen is one of several entrepreneurs Portfolio.com is following as part of the series The Great Global Adventure. All of the entrepreneurs will be blogging about their experiences. This is the fourth in the series of blogs from entrepreneurs.

Twenty-five percent of homes in the United States are worth less than their mortgages. Unemployment is 10 percent. War, deficit, businesses folding, more and more daily bad news.

If you listen to the media this year and formulate a strategy and a vision for moving forward in this economy, you might as well close the doors and sell off the assets: It seems that terrible.

This is how I felt in January of 2009 as we firmed up seasonal commercial and residential contracts for Competitive Lawn Service. We are just a small company in Downers Grove, Illinois, that shows up weekly and cuts, trims, fertilizes, and cleans up properties locally.

At the beginning of the year, this is what I faced:

All of the contracts could be canceled. The clients might not have any money to pay for these services this season. They might cancel all of the additional services and leave the company under water on the revenue side. What was going to happen? How can we prepare for this impending doom? Maybe we hire fewer employees this year, I thought, purchase less equipment that we will need to service these accounts, figure on losing 20 percent or 30 percent of our contracts because that is what our industry is experiencing.

OK, take a deep breath and do not think that way.

I would not want to work for a company with that kind of vision. It’s like walking backwards—off of a cliff. And besides, what about all that has occurred in the last few years? How can we use all of the good news in the economy, the local changes, and the ability that company leaders have to make “stuff” happen?

But where are the bright spots? Are there any? My gosh, they are all around us, and we just need to lift ourselves out of the negative muck and mire and look around. 2009 can be amazing, but it just depends how I take us down this road, I thought.

We already had started without even knowing or concentrating on it.

In 2007 and 2008, our company started playing around with alternative fuels and running lawn equipment on propane. Why?

Well, originally it was less expensive than the rising price of unleaded gasoline and was saving some money for us. Only a few pieces of equipment and maybe 50 bucks here and there, but was it worth the hassle? We had engines that blew up and equipment that we couldn’t get started sometimes. But this was a learning process, the same learning process that any new company would experience with gasoline engines getting started in our industry. We went through that 28 years ago when the company began.

Aha!

We can run with this. Maybe we can create the first commercial crew in the country to run on propane. We would be 60 percent less CO₂ emissions for our clients. The equipment is quieter. Propane is less expensive and more efficient to run. So how do we do this?

First we need a place to fill our equipment. We had been refilling containers at our local equipment-rental company. Let’s put a fill station on our site in Downers Grove. The first private fill station for lawn equipment in Illinois. But why is this so groundbreaking? Why is it so hard? Local and state regulations. Hassles, problems, and it took months to get approved.