Today’s guest blogger is Michele Pariza Wacek of www.MichelePW.com. Recession has become a common word in today’s vocabulary but Michele recently attended a workshop and shares some tips she learned:
In the book “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,” after
Earth is blown up, Arthur (the main character) is presented
with a small computer (not unlike an iPhone I’d imagine)
with these words on the front — “Don’t panic.” Arthur finds
this oddly comforting, even though Earth is gone and he is
on a spaceship with a guy he really didn’t get along with
too well when they were both on Earth.
Although no one said those words, that was the underlying
theme of this past Dan Kennedy/Bill Glazer Superconference.
Don’t panic. Yes we’re in a recession. Yes the government is
doing crazy things. Yes we have pirates and pig flu and
everything else. But you shouldn’t be panicking because it’s
very possible for us to not just survive but thrive. (Hey,
if Arthur can keep from panicking after watching the end of
the world, we should have no problems.)
So what can we do? In a word — lots. Here are 3 things to
get you started:
1. Don’t allow what’s going on to paralyze you. Over and
over again we kept hearing stories about business owners who
have just stopped doing anything. Whether it’s from fear or
because they believe it’s not going to make a difference so
why bother or they think this is smart to hunker down and do
nothing while they wait things out, the end result is
they’re frozen. And because they’re frozen, their businesses
are dying.
Now is not the time to be doing nothing. Now is the time to
be doing something. Lots of things. Like marketing. Lots of
marketing. In fact, this is an excellent time to be
marketing because your competition is probably panicking and
frozen and hiding in a closet somewhere, so you have the
chance to not only solidify YOUR position but take customers
away from your competition.
2. Work harder. Ivanka Trump came and spoke to us, and the
biggest thing I took from her is she works 16-hour days. Yes
she’s rich. Yes she has a trust fund. Yes she’s in the
family business. And she works her little tush off.
Now, I’m not necessarily advocating ignoring your family and
your health and everything else and just focusing on your
business. What I AM saying is if your business isn’t where
you want it to be, rather than shutting down or doing less,
try doing more. Whether that looks like hiring someone to do
a marketing campaign for you or you get some systems in
place to free up your time so you can focus on other things
or you roll up your sleeves and do things you wouldn’t
normally do, you might need to do more right now rather then
less.
3. Fix any fundamental flaws. Dan said what’s really
happening right now is the recession is exposing flaws in
businesses that were always there, it’s just before the
businesses were making money despite those flaws. So, again,
don’t panic, don’t shut down, and look at this as an
opportunity. You’re able to fix problems in your business so
when we do come out of the recession, your business will be
that much stronger.
And the most important thing to remember — don’t panic. You
CAN not only survive this but thrive.
My cousin is a caterer, and she’s recently started opening up her kitchen a few nights a week to host cooking classes with some of her clients. Some people have criticized her for doing this because they think that it will ultimately take away from her business, since people will know how to cook what she prepares. Her belief, which I think is fairly correct, is that people are willing to do the catering themselves now that money is tight, does not necessarily mean that they will want to do it when they can afford to pay someone to do it.
Gift business owner could do something like this, particularly if they own a shop or work out of their own home. Give people some classes on how they can create custom gifts. You can offer classes on creating custom gifts on a budget, on presentation. Basically, here the sky and your imagination are the limit. Doing things like this, let’s you tap into another market. You could even offer consulting services. There are lots of guys out there with wives or girlfriends and have no idea what to get them for a particular occasion.