A female entrepreneur was running a successful business selling sandwiches and drinks from a van she drove around her local estate at lunch time.
She’d been doing this for ten years and her reputation for quality, variety, and service was impressive.
But she kept reading about the recession and how businesses needed to be cautious. She reflected on this but decided she was okay.
Over the next few days, she read post after post on her social media, about the looming recession and so many of her customers were talking about it too. Her confidence began to decrease.
So, she took a cautious approach and reduced her next food order by 5%. And then a further 5% the week after.
She cut back on the variety of sandwiches on offer, and the quality of the meats and cheeses she used.
A month later her sales were down 5%. It is a recession she thought, so again she cut back on her food order.
Over the next few months her sales continued to decrease and before too long she found she wasn’t selling enough to cover her costs.
It is a recession, you all got that right, she told her customers during her last ever sandwich round. Thank goodness I started reducing my spend when I did.
Our top three tips for business owners
- Be careful what you wish for (or inadvertently plan for)
- Don’t believe everything you read or hear. Learn to trust your knowledge, experience, and instincts
- Every tiny (or big) snowflake plays a part in an avalanche
Our top three tips for HR teams
- Look at your actual business performance not at what the media is telling you when considering resourcing needs
- It can take two weeks to lay someone off, but six months to recruit and retrain, so think before you start any redundancy consultations
- The success of every business depends on the quality of its leadership, so think about leadership development and support ahead of knee jerk reactions to media horror stories about recession
Our top three tips for people
- Delete all the social media accounts that do nothing but destroy confidence and self-esteem. You won’t miss them half as much as you think you will, and you have everything to gain!
- Surround yourself with positive energy. People who drag you down are not good people to be around. Check out Vanessa Van Edwards’ TED talk ‘You are Contagious’ if you want any convincing.
- There are enough people in the world who continually catastrophise, so make sure you are not one of them. Fight back against negativity and start each day by focusing on something you have to be grateful for.
Thoughts, ideas, opinions, all welcomed of course. Please use the comments box below.