For many small businesses — mine included — the effects of the credit crisis playing out around us day by day, hour by hour, have not changed what we do. Many of us have felt no impact — at least not so far.

Oh, sure, we might have started to feel a little pressure with the stock market results. The stock market is one of the most visible symbols, because we see every 3-digit drop plastered across TV screens with red arrows and screaming headlines. And we start to see the impact in our IRA and SEP portfolios, as they experience sharp drops as the market drops. It’s hard not to be affected just a little by the fear driving the stock market.

However, most of us will do what we always have done: ride it out.

We go about our businesses everyday, for the most part oblivious to high finance. Wall Street seems far removed from the reality of our daily business activities. What happens on Wall Street, we feel, stays on Wall Street.

In a way it is surreal. For some of us, our reality and the condition of the economy are two different things. It feels like some weird other dimension out of a Star Trek episode. As one business owner confessed to me the other day, “I know the economy is bad. You’re confronted with it every time you turn on the news or pick up the paper. But honestly I haven’t felt it in my business.”

Maybe you’ve started to feel the effects of the credit crisis … or maybe you haven’t. Either way, I expect that you’ll do what small business owners always do during challenging economic times — ride it out. Our blood, sweat, treasure and tears are tied up in our businesses. We have employees and their families relying on our businesses for their livelihoods. We’ll put our heads down, dig in, watch our bottom lines, get more aggressive at sales and marketing, and do what we need to do to get through it. We will do it because we don’t have any other choice BUT to ride it out.