5 Tips For Business Owners to get through a Recession

I'm going to be sharing with you my five tips for business owners to get through the recession. 

The time of recording this is October 2022. And we have had a hard few years with Brexit in the UK, we've had COVID, obviously, we've had so much going on. And now we are facing the recession. For those of you that have been through recessions before in your career in your business, you will know what it's like, and it is challenging. 

For some people, this will be the first time they've gone through a recession in their business. So I wanted to give you my five top tips to get through the recession, because it is actually a time when businesses can thrive, businesses can come out the other side of a recession. But in order to do that, they need to have gone into the recession with a really strong foundation. So I'm going to share with you today my five top tips for getting through the recession as a business owner.

I'm also going to be sharing with you my question of the week. So this is something new for my podcast that I'm introducing. And I'll be sharing my question obviously on here, but also on my social media. So please take a look @JenListerCoaching on LinkedIn and on Instagram. And I would love love love to hear your responses to the question, which you'll hear at the end. 

And next time, I will also be looking to share with you some of the great responses that I've got from you in the podcast. 

My top tips for surviving the recession are:

1. Connect with your clients. 
2. Create a new lead generator in your business. 
3. Look at your financial position
4.  Review your prices and your offers 
5. My favourite - create a plan. 

Following on from my discussion with the incredible Pariss Sailsmen... this weeks podcast question is 'What things can we do as business owners to promote black women in business?' I don't have all the answers. What I realise is collectively, we need to be brainstorming, we need to be co creating and coming up with what changes need to happen in order for us to get to this point where things are more equitable. I will be posting this on my social media @jenlistercoaching. And some of the responses will be mentioned in the next episode.

Thank you so much for listening to The Jen Lister Podcast. I truly appreciate every single one of you. If you'd like to leave me a review on your podcast app, I would love that. And if you'd like to follow me on social media, it's @jenlistercoaching on Instagram and LinkedIn.

Click here to get my 7 mindset steps to starting or scaling your business

Music and production by the amazing Strike Productions

Transcript

0:04

Hello, and welcome to The Jen Lister Podcast. Here I'll be chatting about life, business growth strategies and sharing my personal journeys along the way. And we'll also be interviewing some incredible guests who are experts in their field, see it as my little black book of business. Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the Jen Lister Podcast, I am so excited to be in my cousin Tom's music studio. His business is called Strike Productions, and I am just so grateful to be able to record these episodes for you in such an awesome place. This first episode that I'm recording today is really close to my heart and really important for business owners everywhere at the moment. So I'm going to be sharing with you my five tips for business owners to get through the recession. The time of recording this is October 2022. And we have had a hard few years with Brexit in the UK, we've had COVID, obviously, we've had so much going on. And now we are facing the recession. For those of you that have been through recessions before in your career in your business, you will know what it's like, and it is challenging. For some people, this will be the first time they've gone through a recession in their business. So I wanted to give you my five top tips to get through the recession, because it is actually a time when businesses can thrive, businesses can come out the other side of a recession. But in order to do that, they need to have gone into the recession with a really strong foundation. So I'm going to share with you today my five top tips for getting through the recession as a business owner. I'm also going to be sharing with you my question of the week. So this is something new for my podcast that I'm introducing. And I'll be sharing my question obviously on here, but also on my social media. So please take a look@JenListerCoaching on LinkedIn and on Instagram. And I would love love love to hear your responses to the question, which you'll hear at the end. And next time, I will also be looking to share with you some of the great responses that I've got from you in the podcast. My first tip for surviving as recession, connect with your clients. The most important thing you can do when we're about to go into this recession, is make sure that you've got strong connections to your existing clients and your past clients, your past clients have already bought into you before. So assuming you've still got that positive relationship with them, building that relationship up with them, getting in touch with them, could trigger for you to have sales in your business in the future. So make sure that you've got really good relationships, not just with your existing clients, but past clients that you might want to work with again in the future. Make sure that this is really genuine when you reach out to them and find out how they're doing. Be personal with it. Make sure you ask them relevant questions, make sure you've done your research, look at their social medias, look at what they've been up to have a look at their website and their latest blog, and engage in conversation with them that's meaningful. Ask them questions like, what are their challenges at the moment? You obviously know, as a business owner, we're going into the recession, what challenges are you facing? And what goals do you have for the next six months, by asking questions like this, you'll actually get a much stronger insight into where your clients head's at. And you'll also get a much broader understanding of what's important to them. Often when we work with clients, we might just work with them in one part of their business. But actually, there's so much more going on across all different areas of their business that you might be able to help them with in the future. I had an example of this recently with one of my clients. They were working with their client on a certain part of their marketing strategy. But actually, when you think about it, when you have those conversations with clients and ask those open questions like What challenges do you face at the moment? Or what are your goals for the future, you learn that they might want to launch a new service or launch a new product. And then you can go okay, maybe I could help with that in the future. And maybe I could position myself as the expert and work even more with that client in the future. That's a really powerful way to engage with your existing clients, your past clients, and have interesting conversations with them. It's always about building that relationship. I honestly believe that in 2022 and going into 2023 relationships are absolutely key for growing your business. It's all about relationship marketing, being genuine, being yourself and finding those people that are aligned to your values and that you want to work with together. Finally, on this first point, I want you to think about how you can step up your customer service. Customer service is something that gets ignored often in business, but actually if you can plan to be the best in class in terms of your communication, how you resolve any queries, how you get back to your clients, when you've got questions, you will set yourself apart. So make customer service, something that is really a priority for you in your business. So point number one is connect with your clients. My 2nd tip is to create a new lead generator for your business. This might be some hints and tips that you could give to your clients, your potential clients. This could be you creating a thought piece which has got relevant market perspective and market research. And then this could be a free resource that you develop, that could be a questionnaire or it could be done as a freebie style PDF document. But create something that you feel really aligned to going into the market as we are at the moment. So going into that recession. Put yourself in the perspective of your ideal client, and think about what would they really value receiving, from your expertise? What is the thing that if they read it, if they looked at it, if they used it as a tool in their business, now, it would actually genuinely help add value, and then share it as much as you can, use it as a lead generator on your social media. Reach out directly to potential clients, your past clients, and even existing clients. I hate it how some brands treat their new customers really well. And that old customers don't get the great deals. I really do think when you're creating these resources that you should think about your existing customers, those people that are loyal to you at the moment, and what they would benefit from. That's tip number two, create a new lead generator for your business. Number three, look at your financial position. As you probably know, if you've heard from me before, I'm a big fan of facing into the numbers and your finances is something that as business owners, we don't do enough of. I want you to going into this recession be really clear on your numbers and where you're at in your business and be really honest with yourself. Look at the financials, what revenue have you made in the last six to 12 months, look at the costs in your business and look at your profit levels, your profit is your revenue minus your costs. I also want you to look at your forecast in your business. This is something that not every business would be doing. But again, it will stand you in good stead against your competition. If you have done forecasting in your business. Look at what revenue you can foresee coming through in the next three to six months. Look at what costs you've got going out and assess what costs you can maybe reduce in your business and to increase your profit going forward. And finally, on the financial side of things. And this is really, really important because I speak to clients that have got outstanding invoices, make sure you go through your outstanding invoices and chase them in a kind way and make sure you get those paid. Because the last thing you want is to go into this recession, and be in this recession with many many outstanding invoices and cash that's owed to you, because we need to be focused on cash flow and ensure that you've got that sorted in your business. So number three was look at your financial position. Number four, review your prices and offers. This one is all about looking at what you are putting out in the market during this recession. Absolutely, I believe you should stay true to yourself and hold firm on your prices during the recession. And in fact, we've got inflation rates of around 10% at the moment. So upping your prices is not a bad thing either. What I would say is, before you do anything, do your market research. Look at your competitors and look at what offerings they've got in the market, look at what their prices are in the market. If you can't find that on their websites, do some mystery shopping, which I absolutely love to do. What that means is basically calling up or sending email inquiries to competitors, and finding out a little bit of information about the pricing and how they work and all that kind of stuff. It can just be a really good way for you to benchmark in your business. It is something that lots of businesses do all the time. And lots of bigger businesses do all the time. So don't be afraid of doing it. I've done it in the past. And it can be quite fun. You learn some really interesting stuff. When you're looking at your prices and offers, think about what value you are giving to your clients and think again about your clients mindset in this recession, what is it that they're looking for? Why would they invest in working with you? As you're doing this, ask your existing customers for some constructive feedback so that you can build that into your offers for the future. For example, one of the things that I'm doing in my business at the moment is I'm looking at lower value options where people can start to work with me at a lower fee. My view on that is it is still valuable because those clients could be really strong referrals in the future, they might give me an amazing testimonial, or they might go on to wanting to work together with me longer term in the future. Look at how you can structure your business and your offering in creative ways to open up to working with your ideal client. Depending where you're at in your business, you might have multiple offers. But I would always recommend keeping things simple and really get into the zone of what is your customer mindset. And don't be afraid of sharing your draft offers that you're developing with potential customers to get some insights and some feedback, or even your existing customers, to understand what they think of it and hear their feedback too. Don't feel like you're doing doing this alone, you can get so much input from your existing clients. So that was number four, reviewing your prices and your offers. Number five, create a plan, I bet you could have guessed that I would have creating a plan as one of my top tips for your business because that is what I am absolutely obsessed with. Have a plan in place. If you want to thrive in a recession, you need to do the stuff that other businesses are not doing. When you are a smaller business, planning is not your priority. Let's be honest, I am not shy or afraid to say that. But if you do put some time into planning, and it doesn't have to be loads of time. But if you do value it in your business, you will stand head and shoulders above your competition, it will come through in how you operate, it will come through in your level of professionalism with your clients, it will come through in your decisions that you make, it will come through in your marketing that you put forward because you'll have a plan. Now you might be thinking, What do you mean, what is the plan. So at a really high level, it's a couple of pages. Have a couple of pages written down about your business, make sure you've got on it, what your goals are, what your commitments in your business, focus on the next six months at least. Either focus on the next three to six months, if you've hardly got any time, and you just want to do a really quick plan. If you've got the time, I would really recommend focusing on six to 12 months. But even a really high level plan for the next three to six months will be valuable going into the recession, make sure you're clear on your long term vision. One element of your plan that I really, really want to stress is the marketing element. When it comes to your business and growing your business, which ultimately is revenue and sales in your business. What you do now will always show up in the next three months or so. If you kind of sit back and stop pushing your brand forward, you stop putting things out there on social media. And you kind of just let things flow a little bit, there will be a point when the inquiries and the business starts to dry up. This isn't the case for all businesses, some businesses might rely really heavily on word of mouth, and that business might just keep flowing. But my belief is what you do in your marketing will show up in three months. You need to be consistent, you can look at lower cost options when it comes to marketing. For example, you can ask people for Google reviews, this is completely free, assuming you've got a Google My Business account set up which is also completely free. So when it comes to having a plan written down, make sure your marketing plan is part of that make sure your overall vision is part of that. And write yourself three to five clear goals that are really tangible. Give yourself some clear targets that you want to achieve in terms of your revenue growth, your number of clients, your social media presence, give yourself some really tangible goals and make sure that plan is written down. Anyone who has worked with me in the past will know that me and my clients always work on plans together, developing their strategy, developing their business plan, making sure that they've got a really clear business roadmap for the year ahead. If that's something you want to talk about, please do get in touch with me and I would love to have a chat. But that is number five creating a plan. Just to wrap up I'm going to go through those five points one more time for you before I go on to the last part of the podcast. Number one was connecting with your clients. Number two was creating a new lead generator in your business. Number three was looking at your financial position number four was review your prices and your offers Number five, my favourite was create a plan. Okay, so now I'm going to share with you for the first time ever, my question of the podcast to give you a little bit of context, we're all passionate about different things in life, right? We've all got different passions and different things that really get us fired up. And they just get us they get us angry, almost, they make us angry, because we're so passionate about these issues. And for me, one of those things is diversity, inclusion, and particularly black women in business. It's an area that I'm really passionate about, because I really want to change how the world is when it comes to black women being represented in business. So my absolute dream would be having a female black Prime Minister one day. I really, really think that would just be an amazing achievement for us. I am learning all the time, I am speaking as a white woman, I didn't really fully understand how privileged I was being born as a white female. Until recently, when the Black Lives Matter movement happened during the global pandemic, actually, God what a crazy few years we've had. And it was only at that point, and you'll have heard this, if you've listened to my podcast interview with Pariss. She was such a brilliant guest interview. Pariss is such an inspiring entrepreneur. We've got a really exciting thing going on at the end of this month, which is a black women in business workshop. Please do listen to Pariss in my podcast episode, because we do talk about this issue. I'm always learning. And I'm really open to learning more about this topic and what I can be doing. So that is what my question is about. Surprise, surprise. So my question, let me tell you before I go on anymore. My question is, 'What things can we do as business owners to promote black women in business?' Because I don't have all the answers. I honestly don't have all the answers. But what I realised is collectively, we need to be brainstorming, we need to be co creating and coming up with what changes need to happen in order for us to get to this point where things are more equitable, will they ever be fully, fully equitable? I don't know. Like we can only hope. I'll say that question again. What things can we do as business owners to promote black women in business? So this question will go onto my social media. And I really can't wait to hear people's ideas and answers to this, and I will be sharing it in future episodes. Thank you so much for listening to my episode today all about the recession, which I know can be quite a negative topic. But I really hope that I've uplifted you with ideas, and giving you food for thought about stuff you can do in your business to grow and thrive off the back of this recession. Thank you so much for listening to The Jen Lister Podcast. I truly appreciate every single one of you. If you'd like to leave me a review on your podcast app, I would love that. And if you'd like to follow me on social media, it's at genista coaching on Instagram and LinkedIn