How To Be Recession-Oblivious

DAN SULLIVAN

What you’ll learn in this Multiplier Mindset blog post:

1. What a recession really signifies.
2. Why you shouldn’t be scared of recessions.
3. Two strategies for transforming recessions into opportunities for business growth.

Few words are scarier to the average person than “recession,” and as an ambitious entrepreneur who’s invested enormous financial and emotional resources into building your dream business, you may be wondering what steps you can take to protect your business growth—and your confidence.

Fortunately, I’ve never met a single entrepreneur whom I’d describe as average. You became an entrepreneur because you wanted the freedom to dictate your own life, and you did it knowing you’d be sacrificing the certainty of a steady paycheck. That means you already have the skills and mindset needed to handle risk and transform adversity into opportunity. It’s in your DNA.

Protecting your entrepreneur confidence.

That said, entrepreneur confidence can still suffer during a recession, which is why it’s important to recognise that recessions are a natural part of economic, commercial, and technological growth. I’ve lived through five or six since I started Strategic Coach, and I expect to see many more in the years to come. What I’ve learned in that time is that a recession is just a correction in the marketplace. There will always be businesses, jobs, and services whose price eventually outpaces the value of what’s being created, and when something stops providing value, it stops being relevant.

What that tells me is that the secret to not just succeeding during a recession but becoming recession-oblivious is to focus on creating value because your business will only grow to the degree that you can remain useful and relevant. It also tells me that, even though recessions may feel like a sudden, scary period of uncertainty you’d like to avoid, they’re fairly predictable—and you can plan for them.

Your Recession-Oblivious Business Growth Strategy:

1. Pay extra attention to your team.

It’s tough to feel confident in times of economic uncertainty, and any anxiety you’re experiencing is going to show up in your team twofold. If you’re worried, they’re worried, and they’ll really struggle to produce the creativity and innovation your business growth relies on. That means your number one responsibility as an entrepreneur and a leader during a recession is to protect your team’s confidence so they can continue doing what they’re good at and passionate about: using their Unique Ability to contribute to the growth of your company and support your future goals.

Start by prioritising communication. Nobody likes working in the dark, and when your team knows what you want done, how you want it done, and for what purpose, they’ll feel a lot more confident that their livelihood is secure.

Next, take time each day to offer genuine praise and appreciation for their efforts. Celebrate their wins, reward their heroism, and show you’re paying attention. Even something as simple as saying “thank you” goes a long way toward making your team members feel valued—and ensuring they stick around. The stronger your team is during a recession, the stronger your company will be coming out of it.

2. Pay extra attention to your existing customers.

Giving your undivided attention to your existing customers is a winning business growth strategy at any point in the economic life cycle, but especially during a recession. At Strategic Coach, we rely on a value creation process we call The D.O.S. Conversation to get at the heart of what our members need to feel confident about their bigger future, and it’s made up of three questions:

1. What are the biggest dangers you have right now that you’d like to eliminate over the next year?
2. What are the biggest opportunities you have right now that you’d like to capture over the next year?
3. What are the biggest strengths you have right now that you’d like to maximise over the next year?

Most entrepreneurs respond to periods of economic uncertainty by pressing harder for sales and then wonder why they’re getting shut down by clients and prospects. If you want to become recession-oblivious, you have to give your clients the one thing they’ve lost during this time: a future they want to invest in. By having a D.O.S. Conversation that illuminates their personal dangers, opportunities, and strengths, you make yourself an invaluable part of their future—and make your sales-focused competitors seem irrelevant. It’s one hour of your time for an enormous amount of business over the next year (and the secret to creating your own economy that’s oblivious to the outside world).

The truth is, all really great companies make their biggest market gains during scary times because they view it as an opportunity to create value, to leverage their current capabilities, and to develop new capabilities they wouldn’t have had the time or motivation to discover when things were going well. And if you really want to become recession-oblivious? Download our free Ultimate Entrepreneur’s Goal-Setting Tool Kit to start setting (and achieving) bigger and better goals today.