Five things you can do to thrive in a recession

Times are challenging. But 1 or 2 % of businesses are absolutely thriving. This has nothing to do with industry, sector, size, location, niche… Successful people are doing something different, something smart. They are doing the right thing. In most cases it is not complicated to do, nor hugely expensive. The essence can be summed up, “get the basics right”. Read full article below.

{This is a transcript summary I have made from a webinar given by Chris Cardell, 22 October 2022. Personally, I think this is of significant value to every business. The principles raised go far beyond just business. Read it, think about it, and your business and your life (I want to say ‘will’ but actually it is ‘could’) could be so much richer. Of course, if you do nothing, and don’t act on anything, nothing will change. I found it really significant, and I’m taking action… What follows is my take on what he said. If you ever get the opportunity to work with or listen to Chris Cardell of Cardell Media - do so.} PS - thank you, Chris.

We are in tumultuous times. As businesses we face a double whammy. Inflation is going up, some predicting 18% into next year. Prices of so much are going up and up - fuel, electric, gas, our supply chain… We are under increasing pressure to pay our bills. The first of the double whammy is that our own prices are going up. The second whammy is that the prices are going up for all of our customers too - putting them under pressure. Putting them under pressure to reduce their costs - including paying us. 

All of this is a major problem, and the reality is that many businesses are unlikely to survive. Not being pessimistic, being real. 

Another aspect of this same problem is the media. You watch the news and there is so much doom and gloom, so much negativity. It is easy to look at all of that and become fearful, worried and negative. It is hard not to be negative on a diet of gloom. As you get more and more fearful, it is easy to freeze, hunker down, stop being proactive. This is absolutely the worst thing you can do. The very worst thing. Yet - this is what many people are doing, including your competition.

Look around you, note what you are seeing. Despite all of the doom and gloom, 1-2% of businesses are absolutely thriving. We are all in the same boat - so, how come some are doing well, and some not? Is it luck? Is it ruthlessness? Is it this particular niche, or that particular niche? What is it?

If you, as a business, can increase your profits by 100%, you can be pretty much immune to any economic down-turn. You might think, “What, increase by 100%? You can’t do that in these times!” Well, yes you can. He (ie Chris Cardell) gave an example of a client with profits increased by 1000%. You can do it … if you know how.

Being really blunt about it, we are facing a fork in the road. Option 1, look at the world around us, get lost in the negativity from the media, news of wars, government instability, inflation, utility prices, food prices, interest rates, pandemics, strikes - give up, stop being proactive, hunker down…  Or option 2, look around, see opportunity, act smart and get going, do what is necessary to thrive.

There is no moral judgement here. Is being successful bad? I think not. As with so much of life, it is a case of action and consequence. What consequence do you want? Well - what action do you need to perform to have that consequence occur? Consequence will inevitably follow action. How can it not? And the key, issue - if you want that consequence, are you prepared to commit to the actions that lead to that consequence? This applies everywhere in life - business, health, spirituality, career, relationship, sport, life fulfilment. It is not just a business thing. Consequence will follow action. And action will follow (or not) the decision and commitment to act. It becomes a matter of grasping personal responsibility … or not. Either way the consequence will follow. You choose.

So, what are successful people doing that others aren’t? He describes five things.

There are businesses that are doing very well. And it is not the industry, sector, size, location, niche… It is that they are doing things differently. They are acting smart and doing the right thing. So what does this ‘doing the right thing’ look like? Let’s take a look.

#1 - Have a clear goal

You have to have a clear goal and a clear plan to get to that goal. If you don't have this, how are you going to deal with the challenges? What will you actually do and when?

As you know, goals need to be SMART (S=specific, M=measurable, A=achievable, R=relevant, T=time based).

A goal of “just improve sales” is not specific enough. What does that mean? What resources need to be in place to do that? How will you know when you have done that? When does this need to be done by? Next week? In five years time? 

Goals need to be SMART. We all know this, but it is good to look at these principles again. 

There is another element of this. The first thing necessary to deal with a problem, is to know what you want. If you don’t know what you want, it is all too easy to simply go around and around chewing away at everything that is wrong, chewing away at the problems you are facing. We can probably all relate to listening to a friend or family member, telling you about a problem, and everything that every idiot has done along the way. And how often they tell you about it. 

Commonly the response is to give some advice. Usually, people don't need or want advice. What they want is clarity about what they want - “What do you want instead?” In the absence of this, the tendency is to repeat all of the things that they don’t want and don’t like. It is so easy to get stuck in the problem, get caught up in that endlessly repeating cycle of negativity. I call it ‘chewing at your own foot’. Stop chewing at your foot, and do something that can result in change. 

So, what is your financial goal? Be realistic. Go on, pen and paper, write it down. Make it concrete. How much do you want in a month, or a year? What is your goal? Could you imagine a goal of increasing profits by 100%? With that made concrete, you can look at how many customers that will need, and at what prices, and what needs to be in place to get to that level of customer activity. Make that goal concrete and it starts a definitive train of thinking, decision and action that leads towards making it happen. When you don’t make that goal concrete, all too easily, you get lost in a tale of woe, fail to take action, and listen to the gurgles as your business swirls its way down the plug-hole of might-have-been. A really simple starting point - set a goal, and make it realistically concrete … or don’t. There are no have-to’s here.

Doing this frees you up. It enables you to stop obsessing about the problems.

One feature of successful people - they know what they want.

#2 - Mindset and belief - be a warrior

You have to approach this as a warrior. You cannot let all the negativity get you down. You need to be mentally and psychologically strong.

A successful entrepreneur is a warrior energy person. This is not a gender thing. It is a person thing, a human thing. To better understand what this warrior energy thing is, let’s look at a non-warrior.

Look at a typical business owner, a non-warrior. They watch the news, getting bombarded by negative news, businesses going under, people unable to pay their bills, inflation, talk of recession, talk of war. It is easy to arrive at a conclusion, “everyone is suffering”. We suffer, what else can I do but suffer too. Why bother? 

There is a really insidious element in this. Look around, there is struggling, yes. But there are also people doing really well too. Are those doing well, doing so at the expense of those not doing well? Should those doing well, look around and think, “Oh, I shouldn’t be doing well either”? It has become politically incorrect to do well. Along the lines of, “if you are doing well, it must be because you lack compassion and are riding rough-shod over everyone else.” 

Is it wrong to do well? Is it wrong to have an aspiration? Or is it a case of action and consequence, of personal responsibility? Yes, bad things happen, things do go pear-shaped. But you either buckle under them, or you see the opportunity in them, act and thrive.

Consider an example of a town somewhere (pick a town). There are twenty pubs in this town, and the news crew focuses on one pub owner who is boarding up his pub windows to save warmth. He tells his tale of how bad things have become for him, and other pub owners might nod their heads in agreement. And, yep, things are really bad. 

But the news crew won’t pick up on the story of one pub owner, on the other side of town, absolutely thriving. That pub owner goes to every person eating in his restaurant, makes sure they are okay and are having a good time. He gives them a voucher for a free bottle of wine for their next visit. He gives them three more vouchers to give to three of their friends so that they too can have a free bottle of wine with a meal. He gets them to subscribe to a membership with his restaurant, to see special offers. He gets their birthdates, and anniversary dates, so that he can invite them for a special treat on their birthday and anniversary. He is actively taking steps and is thriving.

A warrior energy person will look around and see opportunity. A non-warrior energy person looks around, accepts the picture of bleakness, sits down, gives up, stops. And will tell you how everything conspired to bring him down. Then tell you again.

Do you want to be the pub owner boarding up his windows for warmth? Or the pub owner who is dominating the area and doing really well. Do you want to be a warrior? 

If you want to be successful, you really need to get steps #1 and #2 above right.

#3 - Plug the leaks in your bucket

Chris talks about plugging the leaks in your business bucket. Doing high tech, zingy, new things is fun. But have you got your basics buttoned down sufficiently? If not, you are simply pouring resources into a bucket that will just leak away. 

All businesses have costs. And reducing costs as much as possible is good. But some costs you simply cannot chop out. Like marketing. Stop marketing and you’re sunk.

Most businesses have big holes in their buckets. Big holes in their customer acquisition. For example, a common website conversion rate is 1%. So for every 100 visitors to your website, only 1 converts, or clicks the call to action button. Improve that by 10% and you could be well on your way to your goal of increasing your profits by 100%. In most companies, this website conversion issue is the single, biggest, easiest hole to plug.

Other common holes include:

Not encouraging existing customers back Not e-mailing customers often enough Not doing anything about unconverted leads Not using Google Ads, missing keywords, poor bid strategy… Poor copy

Typically, these basic holes are not difficult to fix, nor complicated to understand, nor hugely expensive. Also, you do not need to be super excellent at this - just consistently competent. When these basic holes are not plugged, you are simply throwing profit away. 

A part of a warrior mind-set is to take a good long look at yourself, and be willing to fix what you see.

Consider - two business owners look at their website and conclude that their conversion rate is a bit rubbish. The first says, “Yeah, I know it is poor, but there is so much else to do. I’ll get to it when I can.” The other says, “Yeah, I know it is poor, and I’m going to fix that today.” 

One is the warrior. One will thrive whatever the economy is doing. Which one do you want to be? Which one are you? 

Once again, it is an attitude thing. It is the way we engage with personal responsibility. In this business sense we need to get the basics right and pinned down. If this is not done, you are in trouble. When economic times are good, you can get away with not doing this. You can afford to coast. When times get tight - and looking around today, things sure look tight - you cannot afford to just coast. We are talking about your business surviving or not, thriving or not.

#4 - Have multiple marketing and sales methods

A really important question to look at - how many marketing and sales methods are you using?

For example, some common methods of marketing and sales include:

Google Ads Facebook / Instagram Ads Trade shows Word of mouth Referrals Website conversion optimization Remarketing E-mails Telephone calls Direct mail 

There are ten, and there are a whole bunch more than that. How many methods is your business using? How many?  

A common figure in most companies is 1 or 2. For the really successful companies, the figure is more like 10.

It isn’t rocket science to ponder, if I’m doing okay (or not) by using 2 of these, how much better could I do by using 10?

This doesn’t mean you have to do all of it right now. Just make a start. Maybe test 1 or 2 a month. Test it and see how it goes.

Nothing of this is complicated. Okay, the innards of the Artificial Intelligence behind how Google Ads works is deeply complex. But you don’t need to understand that. Just that you need to use that.

Get the basics right in order to thrive. How do you get your profits up? Get the number of your marketing methods up.

#5 - Customer decision

Consider the goal that you set for yourself earlier. Whatever it was. Not everyone will reach their target. Why? A whole host of reasons. Unrealistic goals. Something side-swiped them from left field - a burst water main took out the server room and their backups proved inadequate. Their industry changed under their feet (think Blockbuster). Head office restructured, and your whole division is being wound down. A very real one is simply poor decision making.

For example, consider the goal of losing weight … but not making any decisions around eating. Probably, you would be unlikely to achieve the goal of weight loss.

So, when processing how to achieve the goals, it is important to make right decisions, especially in areas that will significantly impact the outcome. One of the most significant of these areas is around customers. Your number 1 priority needs to be the acquisition of customers. Get this one wrong, and things are unlikely to go well.

In today's economic climate, this principle is even more critical - your number 1 priority needs to be the acquisition of customers.

And what happens from here?

We are facing unprecedented times in many ways, with much uncertainty. One unfortunate fact is that some businesses will simply not make it. Why? A whole host of reasons. We’ve looked at some of these. Others will thrive. We’ve looked at some of the reasons too.

The difference between the two is not complicated. It is about getting the basics right, and being competent and consistent, and making that commitment to do it

Imagine, us debating in six months time. I ask you how your business is going? What do you want to answer? “Gone under”? “Struggling”? “Thriving! Best six months I’ve ever had”? 

In essence it boils down to how you engage with personal responsibility, and what you decide to do. In answer to the question, “Did you do everything possible that you could do?” will you answer, “Yep, got all my basic bucket leaks plugged, got over 10 methods of marketing and sales in place, achieved that financial goal I wrote done and gone way beyond.” 

Or will you say, “Naah, tried a bit of this, a bit of that. Costs simply got too high and I couldn’t cope. Folded - inflation did me in.” 

Be a warrior, or not. Thrive, or not. Grasp what needs doing, or not. You chose, and I think it really is a matter of choice.

Already got all of you business bucket holes plugged? Already got a good number of marketing and sales methods in place and running? If not, talk to me. I can help.

Dale

[email protected] / 0777 5604378