- Be frugal – determine where you can reduce your costs; for instance switching to a less expensive phone and internet service can save you hundreds or thousands per year (depending on your business size).
- Streamline processes from using external resources to internal. For instance, if the workload of your support staff has decreased, it may make sense to do shredding internally rather than paying a shredding service. That way you can save jobs for your business associates.
- Evaluate your business time management and usefulness of your tasks. For instance, assess internal reporting practices. Do all the reports that take your associates’ time really serve a function? Can this time be used for more functional tasks?
- Be realistic – recession might not the best time for your business growth and expansion. Your “growth” definition maybe “status quo” for the next couple years.
- Take care of yourself and your employees – it’s important that your employees are valued and respected regardless of the economy. Ultimately the recession will turn into better economic times; thus pay attention to retention before it’s too late and your business starts losing its most valuable resource – people.
- Do not panic – even if your business shrinks. The worse businessman is a panicked businessman. Use newly discovered time in your schedule to develop future business strategies, and spend more time with your family.