Starting your business in a recession may seem counter-intuitive. In some ways you’d be right. In others, however, you’d be completely wrong.
One of the things I enjoy doing is seeing when different companies were started as reported on the Wikipedia listings. A quick scan of the years from the Great Depression will show you how many turned into Big Dogs that we all know. I realize your dream may not be founding the next megalithic international conglomeration, and I can relate. That’s not my thing either. What this does highlight, however is that even the worst of times can be a good time to start your business.
One of the reasons this is true is most of your competition is pulling in, doing less, getting smaller. When you find creative, inexpensive ways to promote your business, you can actually acquire customers for less money that during a growth cycle. Statically, the clients who come to you during a down market are very loyal.
In fact, the Challenger, Gray & Christmas report indicated that over 8% of people who were looking for jobs during the 2nd quarter of 2009 employed themselves: they started a business. Owning your own business has the potential to be like beginning to the famous story: it can be the best of time, it can be the worst of times. And many people, myself included for over 20 years, prefer to make our own version work that rely on others to maintain employment status.
So why do you hear so much about how many businesses fail and how hard it is to start you own business?
This question gets right to the heart of the matter for me. Typical business experts and advisers are steeped in the perspective of the wisdom of Large Business. From structure and organization to priorities and timelines, most of the advice you can get is driven from the definition that being like and getting to Fortune 500 is success.
Imagine if Warren Buffet had simply followed the standard advice about investing and managing money? He has completely revolutionized this reality for those willing to listen.
One of your challenges as a Bootstrap Entrepreneur in this market is NOT thinking and doing like the established methods. Even Einstein told us that the thinking that creates a problem isn’t going to solve it. One of the easiest ways to make this work for you is to go in the opposite direction from all the advice. Most people are going that direction...consider going in reverse.
If you’re considering starting your own business, or you know it’s something you really want to do but aren’t sure how to proceed, take a survey of the standard advice out there. And there’s a ton of it you can get for free!
Once you’ve gotten grounded in the typical stuff, you can be looking for ways that match your heart and dream that allow you to do it in a different way.
Heidi Sue
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