"Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end." Seneca
Economic downturns are hard. People lose their jobs. Companies shrink. The global psychology becomes pessimistic. The recession becomes depression.
Now is the time to think differently. Now is the time to review your inner force on creating something on your own, with your soulmates. Something that you have been dreaming for so long.
Perhaps now is the time for your own business. Your startup, with its inherent agility, can take advantage of a weaker economy and come out on top. From day one your startup will operate an inherently lean business model while maximizing value for customers.
While economic uncertainty is never a desirable situation, some of the world’s greatest businesses have started during a recession or launched right before major economic meltdowns:
Walt Disney Productions 1929: The Great Depression
HP 1939: during the 1937-1938 recession and before WWII
Microsoft 1975: between 1973 and 1979 oil crisis
Arm yourself with courage and read below the top reasons to start your business during a financial meltdown:
[1]: Time for solutions
Every crisis comes from problems. Every crisis creates problems. Ordinary people, consumers, and businesses are looking for solutions to their problems.
Those solutions are opportunities for your business.
Identify the significant need, the opportunity that you explore or the problem that you resolve with your offering.
Specify the persuasive reasons that make you valuable so people buy your offering. Have a clear benefit for your users in time and cost reduction.
Start now and don't wait until things rebound. It might be too late!
[2]: The Force (aka Risk) Awakens
During the unstable times of crisis, risk-takers become more energized, searching for opportunities.
Those people can be your partners, employees or active investors.
Open your eyes wide and start looking for those people that create the new and bring change!
[3]: Cheap Assets
A negative economy lowers the price of everything. Things cost less. From grocery to real estate. From electronics to machinery.
Negative economic growth means ailing businesses are selling off certain assets.
Your typical overhead costs such as office space, furniture, consumables, tend to have lower base prices, and vendors are more likely to discount prices to move stock quickly.
Even the good people you find as employees or partners are demanding a lower salary and fewer benefits than they might request in a strong economic environment.
[4]: Unemployment creates opportunities
The word "restaurant" derives from the French verb "restaurer" ("to restore", "to revive") meaning "that which restores". The first use of the word to refer to a public venue where one can order food is believed to be in the 18th century. In 1765, a French chef by the name of A. Boulanger established a business selling soups and other "restaurants" ("restoratives"). Additionally, while not the first establishment where one could order food, or even soups, it is thought to be the first to offer a menu of available choices.
You may wonder, why starting this paragraph with the apparently irrelevant topic of the restaurant? Because of a major historical crisis, the French Revolution of 1789, that changed forever the restaurant businesses.
Before the French Revolution, feudal lords and nobles enjoyed the hight quality gastronomic services of talented cooks. The social change brought by the revolution caused a mass emigration of those nobles, either to other countries or to the "divine world" through the sharp guillotine knife.
Consequently, all of their cooks remained unemployed. The majority of them chose to open restaurants. And as can you imagine the new business provided a high quality of services and food, not anymore to the noble lords but to the ordinary French people.
Democratize gastronomy!
As a notable example, a restaurant run by a gentleman called Méot, the former chief of the Duke of Orleans, started in 1791 offering a wine list with twenty-two choices of red wine and twenty-seven of white wine. By the end of the century, there was a huge collection of luxury restaurants in the Paris area!
You might lose your job during those hard times. Don't consider it a failure. Turn this event of escaping from your daily working rathole, as an opportunity for creativity and great partnership.
[5]: Make Meaning not (just) Money!
Building your startup during the tough times you will embrace the mindset and the foundation to be lean, mean, efficient and responsible with the money you spend or you gain.
You will develop a sane relation with money, expenses, cash shortages, and sacrifices.
And ultimately you will stumble your face, the hard way, onto a brick wall, with the dilemma:
Do I want to make meaning or money?
This is a question you have to answer.
Times of crisis bring always a more clear view. It's up to you to decide!
Guy Kawasaki, in The Meaning of Meaning, uncovers in the clearest manner, the epitome of entrepreneurship:
So if you’re thinking of starting a company, your starting point is to figure out how your product or service will make meaning. Everything flows from the answer to this question. Gyu Kawasaki
Thanks for your time and always live your day with a smile.
The Cyclyst
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