This blog post has been authored by Stand Out Online Member Kelly O’Neil, Innovate Media Services
People have been asking me all year, “Do you think 2019 is going to be the year of the recession?”
The truth is we just don’t know. What we do know is that there is strong evidence for economic slowdown. International trade has slowed, oil prices are declining, and according to Duke University, 48.6% of US CFOs believe the country will be in the recession by the end of 2019 and a whopping 82% believe that a recession will have begun by the end of 2020.
If this is on your radar, what I am about to share with you will be vital to moving your business forward profitably over the next few years.
SHOULD THIS WORRY YOU?
My short answer is, no. There’s absolutely nothing to be afraid of – unless you don’t prepare.
If you’re not properly prepared this can have a major impact on your business. Even if we don’t go into a recession, people psychologically react to the news of recession. It changes people’s buying habits. And that is something we need to be aware of in our businesses because we are selling to human beings that have emotions and are affected by the things going on in the market.
Those of you who are not taking into account the imminent market shifts might be in for some rough waters. But that doesn’t have to be you.
As someone who specializes in strategic positioning, I don’t advise my clientele to until things are topsy-turvy to make a change. I’m always looking ahead of the game and I’m making changes before things occur so that they aren’t a problem. What I want you to do is think about that for your own business.
Let me tell you a story to illustrate how powerful this practice can be.
WHY MY CLIENTS LOVED THE GREAT RECESSION
It was back in 2007, just before the Great Recession. I’d been watching market trends. Knowing that all this was coming and watching what was going on in the world, I started to work with my clients very intently on making some very strategic shifts in the marketplace to make sure that they were well positioned.
Long story short, when the recession did hit and small businesses were folding right and left, my clients were sitting pretty. In fact, most of them came out of the recession bigger and more profitable than when they went in. And, because so many of their competitors had left the scene, they were optimally positioned to take premium advantage of the rebounding economy once the recession was over.
PREPARATION IS KEY
That didn’t happen by accident, and it didn’t happen by waiting to see what the economy might do. We want to be able to make these shifts before it’s too late. Shifting in the middle of chaos is, well, chaos.
Fortunately, there is still time to prepare. I’m going to share with you the exact same strategies that got my clients through the Great Recession with ease. Taking action on these five recession-proofing strategies NOW will help weatherize your business against the impending economic storm.
RECESSION PREP 101: FIVE DEFENSIVE STRATEGIES EVERY ENTREPRENEUR SHOULD BE PUTTING IN PLACE THIS QUARTER
#1. Position Yourself as a Market of One. The first thing I do with every single one of my clients is position them well in the market. If you are not well positioned and you are a commodity in your market going through an economic downturn, you are going to struggle. I’m not saying this to scare you because it’s totally avoidable, but this is where we see people going out of business and filing bankruptcy. They are not well positioned, they sound like everyone else, and it’s really hard for them to stand out enough to bring in the revenue they need to survive in a shrinking market.
#2. Focus and Simplify. A common mentality I see among entrepreneurs is “more is more.” They think the way to growth is to add more and more product and service offerings. Nothing could be farther from the truth. In reality, less is more. Let’s look at the success habits of millionaires. One of the biggest reasons they’re millionaires is that they are highly focused.
So, if you tell people that you do a gazillion different things – and especially if you’re a newer business and you haven’t established credibility yet – it’s really working against you. People don’t want to work with jacks of all trades, they want to work with masters. Especially your affluent clients. In my work with my private clientele as well as my programs for high growth entrepreneurs, I am all about focus, simplify, less is more, and streamlining. Remember the Pareto Principle– 80% of your results are going to come from 20% of your actions? Focus on the 80-20 rule. Get rid of distractions, find what you’re good at, and align all aspects of your business to support that.
#3. Get Strategic. It’s not your fault if you’re operating tactically. You’ve been trained to operate tactically, you’ve been trained to hustle, grind, guess, try it out, do whatever you need to do to just take massive action. Yes, if you do that, eventually something’s going to stick to the wall. If you don’t kill yourself, or drain your bank account, first.
This “hustle and grind” model is NOT the way to run a profitable business, especially in a recession. It is expensive, it is guesswork, and it does not have to be that hard. So what do we do instead?
We have a saying here at my company: “Strategy is the New Hustle” In fact, it is so central to what we teach and the way we do business that we’ve made it our tagline for our Profit-ology Business Incubator.
And strategic planning is more important than ever before. Strategy is the map to where you want your business to be. It is the overarching way that you think things through and plan how you’re going to get to your desired outcome before you take action. Otherwise you’re going to be wasting a ton of time and money. And in a recession economy, that can be the difference between making it through and not.
For me, business strategy is super easy, which is why I built a whole business around it. It’s not easy for some people, and that’s ok. You don’t need to be good at it, you just need to be good at the service you deliver. But you do need to have a strategist on your team that can help you through.
#4.Use Integrated Marketing Communications. So many business owners want to put all their marketing online. We call this the “Curse of the Online Business Model” I’m not dissing online marketing. I am very active on social media. I have a podcast, a blog, the whole nine yards. The digital model makes up an important arm of our marketing, especially because we have an international brand presence.
But consider how my client and business development expert Tim Johnson talks about the way he built his multimillion dollar business: he gets on the phone with people. He goes to live events and meets people. The power of that in-person, offline type of marketing is vastly underestimated in today’s business world. Without a doubt we also do integrated marketing communications at my company and I highly encourage you to as well.
#5. Now is the time to master marketing to affluent clients. If you have a service-based business that solves a problem an affluent person would have, now is the time to capitalize on it.
One of the things that has been happening for some time is that the middle class is shrinking. And they’re not all getting poorer. The number of millionaires worldwide has increased by 155% since the Great Recession. If you’re currently selling primarily to the middle class, you might want to consider shifting up. Because once the recession gets into full swing, the bottom half of your client pool is very likely to drop off.
Millionaires are not going to be hit as hard by the recession, they have more disposable income, and they also have a different mindset for when they should buy. During a recession millionaires look for opportunity. Your affluent clients will tend to invest more strategically during the recession period because they know it’s going to help them in the long run.
Do you think we are heading into a recession?
Even if you don’t think it’s likely, the beauty of implementing these 5 strategies now is that it will position your business to win in the marketplace no matter what the economy does. Strong positioning, strategic focus, integrated marketing communications, and marketing to the affluent are all proven, time-tested strategies used by nearly every multi-million dollar company to beat the competition and thrive in any market.
The faster you get started implementing these strategies in your business, the more secure your business will be if and when recession hits.
To learn more about how we can help you create robust positioning and a weather-tight strategic plan for your business this year, contact us here today.
Kelly O’Neil is a multi-award winning entrepreneur, affluent marketing and brand-marketing expert for the next generation of innovative companies and thought leaders.
As a highly successful marketing consultant for service-based businesses, Kelly knows exactly what it takes to exit a recession stronger than when you entered it. Her ability to tap into and understand the affluent mindset has made Kelly America’s leading expert in selling to the millionaire market.**
She has been featured in Entrepreneur Magazine, Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Forbes, NBC, and Huffington Post among others! Kelly is a best-selling author, has shared the stage with industry legends including Tim Ferris, Jack Canfield and Brian Tracey, and was named by Seth Godin as “One of the Most Innovative Companies in America.”