Being well into my 40s, this current economic downturn takes me back to my early career in the late 1980s. This was the time of shoulder pads, Filofaxes, and when cut and paste involved scissors and glue.
What did I learn from working through a recession?
- Never let your business get too comfortable. We tend to learn most from the most challenging times in our career. Working in a start up, a business that has changed radically or on a key business project with an immoveable deadline means that you focus on a few incredibly obvious goals and we keep things simple.
- Learning happens while you are working our socks off and innovation happens because nothing is too familiar. When you come out of adrenaline-fuelled times, it’s easy to relax into business as usual, moveable deadlines and waiting for others to come up with the answers to our problems.
- Owners of a business are there to make money, not provide employment. If you’re not sure whether or not an intelligent shareholder would agree with your current list of personal business objectives, change the objectives.
- Markets change. Get on with making sure you understand what customers and consumers want now and in the future.
- The emotionally resilient and flexible people come out stronger. Keep a sense of perspective, know which difficulties you made yourself and which are due to circumstances that are genuinely beyond your control. Do something every day that keeps you healthy, and something that makes you happy.
- Some people come out having made lots of money from a downturn, and that’s ok.
- Interest rates and access to capital are unstable things. Your businesses and personal commitments need to be able to cope.
Learning these lessons early has undoubtedly helped my career, both in the corporate world and in self-employment. There are some things I could’ve done without (mobile phone battery packs that needed their own carrying straps, for example).
Learning to survive in tricky economic times — I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.
