Making your business more resilient is important for surviving a tough economy. The resilience will mean being better able to handle drops in revenue, economic uncertainty, sudden changes in customer preferences, and having increased access to liquid assets such as cash and credit. Naturally many businesses have seen a drop in revenue and profit or shut down due to restrictions around COVID-19. Some economists, governments, and financial institutions expect things to become more challenging before the economy truly turns around and begins growing again. This is despite the reopening of businesses as COVID-19 restrictions ease as of this writing. Aside from the virus, there are also some economic cycles at play which are affecting and will continue to affect the economy. You can learn more about them in The Sale of a Lifetime and in Zero Hour by Harry S. Dent, Jr as well as some interviews with Ray Dalio. Note that the dates Harry S. Dent, Jr. predicted things would happen need to be pushed back due to the central banks continuing to print money to prop up the economy before the pandemic.
One way to make your business more resilient is to grow and increase your market share. While some of your competitors are struggling to survive now is the time to make a push to grow. Ideally, businesses would have done this before, but now is the second best time. If your business is struggling to survive, then growing is probably a requirement for surviving.
Businesses often cut marketing when times are tough. It’s one of the first expenses to go however it’s also the way to keep your business known in the marketplace and to generate leads. Do the opposite of what others do. If your budget is tight, you might need to find creative and inexpensive solutions for marketing and sales.
Increasing your market share and revenue allows your business to be better able to absorb potential drops in the future. We recommend growing at least 30% in case there is a significant drop in the economy in the near future. With the increased revenue, pay down debt and build up savings to increase your access to cash and credit when you need it.
The savings and credit can be used to invest in relatively inexpensive solutions that will help your business be more efficient so that it costs less to operate and to increase the volume of customers your business can serve. An example would be new processes or automation software. In the future the prices of useful assets such as business, equipment, labour, real estate and more will drop. The savings can be used to purchase those at the lower price when the time comes because you will be prepared. Those assets will help your business be stronger and to grow further than before.