A feeling of optimism for the future was the prevailing mood of businessmen and women attending The Herald�s small to medium- sized enterprise Business Advice Workshop last week, despite the economic outlook.

A feeling of optimism for the future was the prevailing mood of businessmen and women attending The Herald's small to medium- sized enterprise Business Advice Workshop last week, despite the economic outlook.

"For every one person who will be out of a job, there will be another 10 who have a job," said Andrew Mickel, director of construction firm Mactaggart & Mickel. "And they will still need goods and services."

The morning event, which was attended by about 100 entrepreneurs, and headed by some of Scotland's biggest business names, offered workshops for companies looking for ways to beat the downturn in the economy.

"Small-to-medium sized businesses are the lifeblood of our times," said Alf Young, assistant editor of The Herald. "This is a good time to have a discussion about the economy."

The panel was made up of Robert Graham, managing director of Graham's the Family Dairy; Tom O'Hara, managing director of TSG, and sponsor of the event; Andrew Mickel, director of Mactaggart & Mickel; George Morris, chairman of Morris and Spottiswood, and Peter Tay- lor, owner of the hotel group the Town House Company.

Helping host the event were Colin Donald, business editor of Sunday Herald; Kenny Kemp, business writer; Ian Spinney of Spinney & Partners, and Alf Young.

The businessmen and women were divided into four workshops, and encouraged to seek advice and help from not just the panellists and hosts, but also from each other.

Kemp, who is a business writer and corporate media adviser, said his group came up with suggestions to help battle the downturn such as: try to barter, lead from the front, do not compromise, try to give more to existing customers and share the truth of the company's situation with the team.

Overall, he said, the feeling from his group was "be positive".

Spinney, who runs a specialist PR and business consultancy, said his group had thrown up the problems of cash flow - keeping hold of cash and getting paid.

His group had also sug-gested keeping investing in marketing, particularly targeted marketing.

Young, who has been a journalist for most of his working life, pointed to the need to keep a tight rein on profit margins, the strengths of family businesses and on cash flow.

Donald said his groups had dwelt on issues such as should I be getting rid of people or hiring?' "Crisis management should only be part of the picture," he said. "If you are thinking of just battening down the hatches, something is not right."

He also said that this was a time to look around for opportunities and "don't follow the crowd".

Mickel agreed with this. He said it may be a good time for product innovation and for hiring really good staff who had been laid off by competitors.

He also suggested using the time when work was quieter to look at how the business was run, and where big cost savings could be found.

"Don't follow the herd," said Mickel. "And if you have to, cut back on staff to survive."

Morris, who is third genera- tion of Morris and Spottiswood, the specialist fit-out and facilities management company and has guided the company through a period of rapid growth, said having a family business was a help in these times of difficulty as there was a "collective"

memory of hard times that had worked itself into the company's genes.

Graham added at the end of the session: "Like all things, this is just a cycle, it is not the end of the world yet."

Graham, the third generation boss of Scotland's largest independent dairy, said the downturn in the economy will not severely affect his business.

With a turnover of £40m, it has grown rapidly since he joined in 1991 after studying finance and accountancy at Heriot Watt University.

The company is now the UK's seventh-largest liquid milk producer.

"For us, we don't make a lot of money, but hopefully we make it every year," said Graham, who works with his father, Robert senior, who is chairman of the company. "We don't have the peaks that you get in other industries, so hopefully we don't get the troughs."

Despite the huge growth seen by the company since he joined, he and his father are still very hands-on and are in the office every day.

Most of the 17 or so staff who were there back in 1991 are still working in the business, and now with 320 plus staff, Graham tries to know the names of all his employees.

"If I don't know someone, I'll stop them, ask their name and what they do," he said.

He added that the success of his business came from managing costs and recent severe rises in oil and plastics had hit its bottom line.

Graham's now supplies shops, restaurants, homes, wholesalers and supermarkets, and currently only produces milk, butter and cream - with a large increase in the demand for organic milk. He added that the firm was in product development to increase its range of goods.

When asked about working in the family business, and how decisions were made, he said that while there were disagreements, there was an agreed desire to grow the business. "Dad is still dad," he added.

Graham said the dairy firm stumbled across a path for growth which worked, and that it is a family company first and foremost. He still considers the Grahams a farming family.

He said that decisions were much more long term because the company was being built up with the next generation in mind.

Andrew Mickel is the fourth-generation Mickel to be at the helm of his family construction company. He says it is well placed to weather the current economic storm, as there are people in the company who have experience of tough times.

Mickel said the firm started in 1925, amid the economic convulsions that followed the First World War and presaged the Great Depression. He pointed to the credit squeeze it weathered back in 1966 which saw companies going to the wall and people unable to sell their houses.

"There is nothing new under the sun," he said. "It is at times like these that we really need to put our shoulder to the wheel."

Mickel, who is also chairman of Homes for Scotland, the representative body for the residential industry, said that as government in Scotland was small, it could listen to businesses more, but he was not sure what it could do to help the economy.

Before taking on the job at Mactaggart Mickel in 2000, he worked in a London-based consultancy on commercial and residential projects, and said this background has resulted in a more objective outlook when it comes to directing the company's land and planning department and driving joint ventures.

Mickel said that he has given some staff the opportunity to take sabbaticals and has redeployed others to work on infrastructure and developing the company, but has not stopped working on future projects.

He said that the economy could turn around in the next six months, and that projects take years to develop - with buying land and getting planning permission to build. But he said that the one thing for sure was the country still needed houses and the economy would get better again.

"It will turn round again," he said. "These challenging times do call for initiatives."

His company was now acting more like an old fashioned bank, helping first-time buyers buy their homes.

"There is a problem in shutting down and hunkering under - because you could well miss a trick," he said. He suggested that laying off staff was better than going under, and that keeping the business going was the most important thing.

The Town House Company founded by Peter Taylor is better known in the east coast as the collection of luxury boutiques hotels based within the city centre of Edinburgh. In the west, however, Taylor's name will soon be better known as he is developing the former Royal Scottish Automobile Club in Blythswood Square, Glasgow, into a five-star hotel.

Taylor, a graduate from Strathclyde University, plans to open the hotel in May next year, and says that he is very optimistic about his £20m luxury hotel, despite the economic slowdown. "It will fly," he said.

He revealed that the deal struck to buy the RSAC building came after meeting a fellow businessman at an earlier event for small-to-medium-sized enterprises hosted by The Herald on mentoring.

He said they had looked at the building in 2005, but the deal was struck after speaking to a colleague at the event in 2006 and Taylor jumped at the chance to buy the building for £5m from developers who failed to turn the building into flats.