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Growing Under Pressure

Written by: Guy Kingston

Article Overview: Courage is sometimes defined as “Grace under pressure”.

Growing Under Pressure

Courage is sometimes defined as “Grace under pressure”.

In business terms, it is “growth under pressure” that demands courage.

This is not as contradictory as it sounds. Growth is inherently a high-pressure activity at the best of times. It involves one or both of two stressful activities – either establishing a market where none existed before or seizing a share of an existing market from competitors.

This is clearly not the best of times. It might therefore seem to be insane to be even thinking in terms of growth when the top of the “To Do” list of every entrepreneur every day is “Survive”.
However, it is precisely when pressure is greatest that the opportunities for growth are most attractive.

Some businesses grow in recession. Insolvency practitioners and debt collectors are obvious examples.

Yet even in sectors that are being badly hit – that is to say, in the vast majority – there are opportunities for expansion.

Every business that goes bust leaves a vacuum in the form of previous customers who will need new suppliers.

Of course, the reason that the business went bust in the first place is probably that some or all of those customers disappeared, either because they stopped spending money or because they went bust themselves.

No matter. Just as night follows day and bust follows boom, so boom will again follow bust. It always does – in the end. It is simply a question of how long it takes.

People will eventually start buying and selling again. Old customers will start spending money once more and new ones will enter the market. Some may have been driven into insolvency, but even they will be back in time. So long as people are alive and in reasonable health, they will consume.
Those who have remembered this truth, and prepared for it, will then be in a strong position to take advantage of returning demand.

To achieve this, two things are necessary. First – and most obvious – they need to survive the recession themselves. They cannot do anything if they have not done that much!

Second – and this is the hard part – even as they are struggling to survive, they must not lose sight of the fact that the recession will end and that they need to be in a strong competitive position when it does.

In practical terms, that means marketing aggressively even in the height of recession. It is false economy to cut marketing budgets when times are tough. The best survival strategy is to maintain and, if possible, increase income.

As competitors go down, one must move immediately to secure their customers. If one does not, someone else will.

It takes guts to maintain this expansionist policy when struggling to pay the daily bills. It takes even more courage to buy failing businesses, or their assets, at such times. Yet it is precisely such courage that makes multi-millionaires.

The real challenge is to push that courage to the limit while still doing enough to survive the day. It is a fine balancing act.

Those who get the balance wrong either crash and burn during the recession, or crawl out of it, just about alive but in no condition to compete with those who embraced the opportunities that are to be found even in hard times.

Nietzsche, Darwin, and Conan the Barbarian agree: that which does not kill us makes us stronger.

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Article Tags: boom, business terms, bust, courage, debt collectors, entrepreneur, grace under pressure, health, insolvency practitioners, recession, sectors, spending money, stressful activities, truth, vacuum



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