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Avoid Becoming Victim of a Recession

Written by: Mark Skelly

Article Overview: There is a lot of discussion right now about whether there is going to be a recession. The scare-mongers are in full swing and stress levels are rising for the many business owners that are buying into the stories. If a recession does in fact happen, it doesn’t need to have any affect on your business – just as long as you choose to be proactive, take responsibility for your own business and take the appropriate actions. In fact, your business can still grow.

Avoid Becoming Victim of a Recession

There is a lot of discussion right now about whether there is going to be a recession. The scare-mongers are in full swing and stress levels are rising for the many business owners that are buying into the stories.

If a recession does in fact happen, it doesn’t need to have any affect on your business – just as long as you choose to be proactive, take responsibility for your own business and take the appropriate actions. In fact, your business can still grow.

A good example is one of our clients, Benn Milne, the owner of Vogel Motors, a medium sized motor mechanic workshop in Lower Hutt.

Ever since Benn had bought the business he had found February was the quietest month of the year.

It was a stressful month as it put a real squeeze on cash flow. Initially Benn simply believed this was just the way things were and there was nothing he could do about it.

After working with us and learning to look at things from a different perspective, Benn identified that he was allowing himself to be a victim of circumstance – acting as if he was at the mercy of circumstances beyond his control.

With ambitious plans for his business, he wanted to change the results and no longer allow the month of the year to dictate his results.


Benn saw that if he kept doing what he had always done – he’d keep getting the results he’d always got. So, instead, he took a proactive stance and decided that if clients weren’t coming to him in February – he’d put together strategies to go out to them.

These included setting up a strategic alliance with Hell’s Pizza giving away free WOF vouchers when customers bought pizzas.

He set up promotions with parents at local schools, began approaching vehicle fleet companies directly to pitch for their work, and ran free educational workshops for women.

In my experience, in any industry and at any time, there will always be some business owners complaining about how tough the industry is at that time.

These businesses will always find people prepared to agree with them and take part in ‘pity parties’ to bemoan how unfair things are and how ‘when the economy changes’ everything will be better.

Unfortunately, such conversations rarely touch upon what they could all be doing differently to change their results.

Right now, the automotive industry is full of people complaining about the lack of new imports coming into the country and associated lack of flow-on mechanical work.

And yet in the same industry, at the same time and in the same area you are likely to see at least one other business doing very well.

Usually, what makes the difference is that business is taking proactive actions to get better results.

Benn’s original belief that he couldn’t change his results couldn’t have been more wrong. This February turned out to be the busiest month he had ever had.

If you feel that you can’t influence your current results, because of an impending recession, or for any other reason, then perhaps you could also be taking the opportunity to change your perceptions.

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Article Tags: ambitious plans, business owners, different perspective, educational workshops, fleet companies, full swing, local schools, lower hutt, milne, month of the year, motor mechanic, own business, proactive stance, recession, squeeze, strategic alliance, stress levels, vehicle fleet, victim of circumstance, vouchers



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