There’s no better time to start looking at different ways to do business and shed a lot of the business waste that can happen in “fat” times.
We have looked at things to watch out for when you start a small business in a recession:
- finding a recession proof business to start
- ensuring you have a strong business foundation in place
- avoiding common planning pitfalls, and
- getting aggressive about raising money.
In this fifth and final article, we will take a look at two important ingredients that will help your business startup grow, even in a recession.
Reliability
During a recession, good business ethics leads to a lot more than just a pat on the back.
Conducting a reliable business and staying committed to your clients or customers means that they have no reason to look elsewhere. Reliable businesses will keep customers even during a time when there may be dozens more businesses clamoring for their business.
Think of it in the same way as you might think of employees during a recession. During boom times, anyone can get a job. In fact, businesses must often hire candidates who are less desirable, simply because no one else is available.
When everyone is out looking for a job, though, even highly skilled candidates might have a hard time getting hired on.
The same principle applies to your business. If you don’t deliver what you say, when you say during a boom, you might be fine.
It’s not ethical, but the fact is you can afford to be lazy. However, a recession means that people are really looking twice (or more!) into who they are paying their, hard to come by, money to. If you let them down, odds are you won’t get a second chance.
On the other hand, if you stand by them they are likely to stand by you – so keep your word and do right by your market.
Flexibility
In previous articles we have talked about the importance of a target market and an adherence to a sound business plan.
A flexible business is the best small business to start in a recession. This doesn’t mean tearing up that foundation, just making sure that you have a flexible business framework within it.
For example, you might find that as you market your product or service to a 45-65 demographic, there are ways you can appeal to 20-somethings.
Just because they aren’t in your business plan doesn’t mean you have to pass them by. Instead, keep a flexible business and look for ways to expand your goals and include a new demographic, or new market opportunities, into your business framework.
Diversity is the key to success in business, and that means staying flexible enough to catch new opportunities as they come up.
In closing, we would like once again to point out that while a recession sounds bad for business, the fact is that they can still be a good opportunity for the entrepreneur.
Odds are that if you build a great small business during financial downturns, you will be able to live quite well once that ball starts rolling again.
