There’s much talk these days about a recession and what that could mean for our own businesses. Recessions can be tough for some and yet others thrive. What’s the secret? Is there one?

In my research I’ve identified strategies that can help businesses not only survive, but thrive during economic downturns.

What I found can be summed up in three main areas:

Growing your business can be fun, challenging, rewarding and all-encompassing. It can also feel frustrating, never-enough and like spinning your wheels.

An interesting question to consider if you have aspirations to expand is: how are you measuring growth?

There’s the traditional metrics of using revenue and profit. Those are great measures.

However, measuring growing using only the metric of growing top-line sales is using a very narrow lense.

AND these metrics are lagging indicators. They are the result of the activities you’re engaging in.

What are your leading indicators? (These are the actions you’re taking that LEAD TO the results you’re looking for.)

There are many tips and how-to’s in the marketplace about how to market your company.

It’s almost too much to wade through, isn’t it?

One thing I would invite you to consider is: if you own a business, you’re a marketer…And a salesperson. Whether your marketing and sales are sophisticated or fairly simple; if you have customers, you’ve engaged in some sort of marketing.

Even if that marketing is based on word of mouth and referrals. Your customers are doing your marketing for you in this case.

Marketing isn’t sales and sales isn’t marketing, but they do work together.

One of the common topics that I notice come up from Founders and Owners is how to manage the multiple priorities they have.

There are so many hats we wear that we often have many similarly prioritized initiatives going on at the same time: from managing a newer member of your team, to pricing your services for next year to planning marketing initiatives. The list can be endless.

And they’re all important.

Sometimes, it feels impossible to chose what to focus on next because it IS nearly impossible. They all have to be done!

While everyone’s situation can be somewhat unique, what I do know is this: when we focus on the many, progress is slow; when we focus on the few, we speed up.

Are you making decisions aligned with your Mission?

First off, do you have a clear sense of your mission now? If you’re a business owner, what is your business’ mission?

If you’re a leader, what is your personal mission for leadership? What are you trying to accomplish in your organization? Is it aligned to your company’s mission?

If you are clear on your mission, then that’s the first step to ensuring that your decision-making is aligned and you move each day to fulfill your mission.

If you’ve ever had the thought:

“It’s too much work to take vacation, so I’m not going to bother,” then you need to read this.

How can we prepare to be absent from work or business without it causing too much stress so it negates the positive effects that time away can bring?

It’s about planning ahead and creating processes for the things you regularly do so they are more easily teachable and repeatable by others.

The more planning you do, the less stress going away will be.

Is your business satisfying your ‘WHY’?

In order to fulfill your WHY for being in business, the company you created has to be able to make the impact you had intended it to make.

Whether that’s impacting families through therapeutic approaches, providing housing for seniors, providing financial security for families, or helping others build healthy businesses, without your own healthy business, it becomes harder to fulfill that mission.

That’s why I love these markers of business value. It’s not only your own business you’re building, but having a healthy business means that you can change the lives of your clients and customers.

That’s the real and compelling legacy here and a huge reason why I do what I do. One of my big WHYs is to help you to be successful in growing a strong, healthy, and sustainable business that impacts others.

I’m deeply motivated to improve the lives of others through economic growth and supporting businesses that make a difference in our communities so we all thrive.

One of the markers of a healthy business is how cash flows through it. (This is the fifth driver of business value.)

One of the most common pains I hear from business owners is that there’s not enough cash. Or it shows up as their desire to ‘do more marketing’ or '‘increase sales’.

Is your business a cash suck?

Or does it generate cash quite handily?

If cash is rarely on hand in your business when you need it, you may want to consider exploring these areas:

A few months ago I was searching dog breeders and their websites….yes, it’s happening. Something the kids have been wanting for years is finally going to happen :). We are now on a list to receive our puppy in the Fall.

The point of my sharing this is that as I was looking at breeders’ websites, they started to sound very similar - they all offer puppies of a particular breed, they all guarantee the pedigree, most offered first shots, and so on. But a couple of websites stood out. Some offered more resources than others after you received the puppy. And this got my attention.

We will be first-time dog owners and this was very reassuring to me. Having shopping lists and resources for new pet owners was right up my alley. One breeder offered support through a community page.

The point I’m making here is about differentiation. They all really offered the same or similar ‘offering’ (a cute little puppy of the breed I was looking for) and yet a couple really stood out to me as a buyer.

Have you ever heard the quote:

“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them” by Albert Einstein?

Einstein suggests that shifting how we look at things provides us with the clarity to find solutions. In order to shift our thinking though, understanding our behaviours can help identify how we think or feel about things. So, let’s look at your leadership behaviours.

First, what do I mean about next level behaviour?

This is the higher level behaviours we use when we are at our best selves and step into a more evolved or expanded version of the role we are striving to inhabit.

As an example, for the business owner, next level leadership behaviour may come when you consider what you would do if you thought about what your business needed from you. Or, what you would do if fear wasn’t in the way?

What behaviours would you need to lean into more fully in order to execute in a critical area? This could be what your business needs to enhance it’s marketing or sales process, for example. Or, it could be what’s needed to improve any process in your business, for that matter.

As a business leader there are behaviours that contribute to the success of your business and there are behaviours that are neutral (may not have an impact either way) and then some that may even put up challenges to achieving success.

Here are some behaviours I have observed that can prevent us from evolving in our leadership effectiveness:

A few weeks ago I mentioned that I would share the year-end review that I conduct in my business to close out one year and move forward in the next.

By sharing my process I hope this supports you to hone in on what’s important in your business. 

My mission is to help Leaders and Business Owners create sustainable businesses. In order to create a sustainable business, knowing the metrics that convey the health in your business is so important. This way you spot problem areas that need to be addressed and successes that you can leverage or lean into.

If you chose to grow your business, you know whether or not you have a healthy foundation in which to do so.

I like to keep it simple.

This chance encounter was not so 'by chance'. And, it reinforced a concept that I learned early on in my sales career...

This power is not to be underestimated.

Your Intention can make profound things happen. It can create changes or actions that may feel small at the time but can have a big impact on how your life events unfold.