Is Your Business Prepared to Weather the Storm During the Next Recession?
Post-recession is when small businesses blossom. Newly laid-off visionaries muster up the courage to transform their idea into a business, and those who maintain their employment see the casualties at their jobs and decide they need a side-gig to fall back on. This is also a time of great uncertainty for small businesses as entire industries bleed. If a small businesses knows the storm is coming, how can they prepare?
Ivy Walker recently wrote a piece called “Recession Warning Signs Are Flashing. 4 Tips to Protect Your Small Business During a Downturn” and we could not agree more with her assertions. As a small business ourselves, we have taken note of the practical advice she recommends.
Below is a brief exert from her article published on Forbes. Please visit the link to find the full article on Forbes.com.
Selling cures everything - “Grow the top line and it will solve for a lot of your problems.”
Stress-test your business - “Do an annual SWOT analysis. Know what your strengths are and figure out how to strengthen your weaknesses. Think about how you’ll manage profitability, how you’ll retain employees. Look for additional streams of revenue.”
Focus on what you’re good at - “Focus is critical. You don’t want to get dispersed in too many different directions. Focus on what you are really good at and then build from there. We focused on employee benefits/healthcare insurance. We didn’t branch out into offering all other kinds of insurance products. We stuck to what we were good at.”
Get creative with how you service your clients - “We realized that smaller was better because what we lacked in size, we were able to make up with the ability to get things done. We didn’t have bureaucracy. We spent our time focusing on fostering incredible relationships with our customers, partners and vendors.