How To Create Business Opportunities During a Recession
TL:DR – We know stuff about surviving the coming recession that you don’t. Find out more HERE
We are going to show you how to create opportunities during a recession, both for your business and for you as a person.
Using a skill you not only posses, but have used MANY times before.
Create Your Own Opportunity Engine
Times are going to get tough…As they say here in Manchester PROPER tough.
I am sure you have seen quite a lot about this on the news (I’m looking at you older people) and on your social feeds (everyone else)..there is a LOT of panic in the air.
So, I thought I would help you out by giving you some good news and some frightening news.
Luckily, they are the same thing….here it is.
You have created every single opportunity in your life.
Yep, everything good that has ever happened to you, is because of you.
But here is the kicker. If you aren’t happy with the number of opportunities you have had in your life, that is ALSO because of you.
What this means is, during tough times, if you want more opportunities, you can choose to make them.
Let me tell you a story about two people to explain
Jake wanted a fish. So he spent all of his time visualising fish, sending out his ‘intentions to the universe’, and hoping beyond hope that he would get his desired fish.
He told his friends what he was going to do with his fish and what a difference it would make to his life and asserted that he was the best possible person to get a fish while sitting in his house doing all of this very important internal work
Jack was very disappointed when a fish didn’t magically fall into his lap.
Sarah wanted a fish. So she bought a rod, dug up a worm, put it on a hook, sat by a river and dangled her hook in the water.
Sarah caught a fish.
OPPORTUNITIES IN LIFE COME BY CREATION. NOT BY CHANCE
"Lottery winners all have one thing in common. They all bought a ticket"
Hope is not a particularly useful thing – unless it is backed up by relentless action.
So what Neil…?
If you want your business to survive you need to get clear on what you want exactly.
More customers? meh…what kind of customers exactly…what is your fish?
Segment = musicians
Niche – Bass Players
Super niche = female heavy metal bass players from Manchester
How much easier will it be for you to target a super niche than trying to get ALL the musicians in the world to work out whether what you are saying is relevant to them?
YES… it’s hard
But we have two ways of looking at the hard stuff, as a threat or a challenge
Some interesting new research by Elizabeth Blackburn suggests that this simple change from seeing hard stuff as a threat, to seeing it as a challenge, is one of the things that can affect the length of our Telomeres.
Telomeres are DNA complexes at the end of our chromosomes that can impact our longevity, youthful appearance as well as risk of heart disease and cancer.
Seriously check it out! (Article HERE)
You can also check out ‘The Telomere Effect‘ book – which has a lot of useful guidance.
So... building your own opportunity engine.
How we see things matters
Who we hang out with matters
What we spend our time doing matters
What we focus on matters.
What specific action we take matters.
Over the coming year, people are going to lose their shit (they always do when time gets tough)..but you know who always succeeds?
The one with the clearest plan and the requisite agility to keep pivoting to get where they need to.
Just like in previous recessions and in the pandemic, the ones who committed to being agile enough to find a way to make money using their existing know-how, resources and customer base are the ones who came out the other end in the best shape.
The Takeaway...
If you only take one thing from this article the following sentence is the most effective…
Decide now if you want your business to survive, decide to find a way
and then keep flexing and changing until you find the way that works.
Remember to do yourself a favour and swap threats for challenges.
Threat Challenge
Customer budgets drying up How can you find something they will pay for?
Exports being harder What can you sell to the domestic market?
Your current market disappears Who else has a problem you can solve?
You can see where I am going with this.
THEN….
Once you know what opportunity you want to create, make sure that you buy a rod, get a worm and find a river to sit beside…as soon and as often as you can.
Worrying and wishing will get you nowhere.
At KiN we have spent the last 6 months analysing the data from the last 7 recessions and the global pandemic to clearly identify the characteristics and strategies of the businesses that not only survived…but thrived.
And now we would like to share that with you…check the link.
Thanks for reading
Neil
