By now it should be clear that there won't be any economic bail-out money for small businesses. There will be no hundreds of billions of dollars spent propping us up. Although small business is the backbone of the American economy -- we really do make over half of everything that happens in this country happen -- it turns out that, unlike our "big business" cousins, we are not, in fact, "too big to fail." It seems that, once again, no one is coming to our rescue, and we are on our own.

And that's just fine! On our own is how we do it best. On our own is how we can be inventive and clever. It's on our own that the most intense passions of our entrepreneurial spirits flourish. We're always at our best when we are on our own -- and they leave us alone. On our own is how we bootstrap our way to something real and true. If big business is forever screwing things up, then we are forever putting things back together. Oh yes, they have really screwed things up this time. But as long as small business still gets up in the morning and makes something happen, as long as we continue to follow a dream, to fill the craving, to reach and to stretch, as long as we still have a vision and the will to pursue it, we'll be ok. Our children will be ok. Our country will be ok. We will all be ok, because we can do this thing, however daunting it may seem just now. Small business can rebuild our economy and Express is here to help. Now let's get to work!

So if you're reading this, you've probably heard about how quickly Express can pull your site together, and about now you are wondering "So how fast is Express, really?" The short answer is that it is faster than .... well, YOU. We say that we can deliver a heavily branded, thoughtful, well architected and highly effective small business web site in just 2 weeks, and that's very true. But that assumes a lot. It assumes that clients make decisions quickly and get back to us in an expeditious way, etc, etc. But the naked truth is that -- very often -- that's just too fast for most of our clients. And while we are proud of our ability to respond and deliver quickly, it's been our observation that most of our clients are uncomfortable moving that fast. There are a lot of decisions to be made, and options to mull over. And something else: we find that in many, many cases, our process becomes food for thought for our clients, and they find themselves digging deep to answer compelling business questions they've never really contemplated before. Questions like, what part of what I do do I really want to do more of?, and what kind of client do I really want to attract?

So give yourself a break. It's a good idea to take the time to think things through. But if you must have an answer to the question How fast can we create a web site for you, let's just keep it simple and say .... we can go as fast as you can.