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COPYRIGHT REMINDER This product is fully protected by US and International Copyright Law. All rights reserved. This book or parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form, stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise—without prior written permission of the publisher, except as provided by United States of America copyright law. Copyright © 2019 Donald Miller Words, LLC 2 Most business leaders are afraid of a recession— and for good reason. They remember the 2007/2008 downturn and are dreading the 20%, 30% or in some cases 50% decline in business. For some, this could mean laying off beloved team members, decreasing pay or running up their line of credit with the bank. For others, a downturn could mean the end of their business all together. We are currently 9 years into a 10 year cycle this means a recession is certainly coming. Stocks are volatile, trade agreements are up in the air, and both housing and car sales have stalled. Both London and Hong Kong are now participating in the global affordable housing challenge. Still, main street is strong and unemployment is at record lows. The signals are mixed. The outlook may not be terrible, but any business owner should be concerned. The Key is to Prepare Now When business is good, most leaders ride the wave without preparing for the inevitable downturn. But those who prepare will survive. And those who do what I outline in this essay may do even more than survive— they may thrive. I will share 5 things every business leader needs to do to survive and thrive during a recession. A fixed mindset is that the recession is going to kill us. A growth mindset is that a recession gives us a chance to refine our guiding principles, clean out our overhead, prioritize our sales efforts, create products that sell during a downturn and position our company to explode once the money starts flowing again. The change we need to make is going from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset. Copyright © 2019 Donald Miller Words, LLC 3 Body (overhead costs) Engines (marketing Wings and sales) (products you have in stock or are creating) Get the Business in Strong Working Order (Flight ready) I have always viewed a business through the metaphorical lens of an airplane. A business has 3 basic parts: the administrative overhead; products and product creation; and finally, sales and marketing. These three aspects of a business correlate perfectly with the three aspects of a fit-to-fly aircraft. The body of the aircraft is your overhead costs. The body should be kept as light as possible so the airplane isn’t too heavy to fly. The engines of the airplane represent your marketing and sales efforts. When these engines are running soundly, the airplane has plenty of thrust. The more thrust you have, the heavier the body of the airplane can be. The wings of the airplane correspond to the products you have in stock or are creating in your research and development department. The more surface a wing has, the slower the airplane can fly. If you have great products that people want, you create a smaller load on your marketing and sales department. Copyright © 2019 Donald Miller Words, LLC 4 The most important thing you need to remember to run a successful business is the three aspects of your business (the body, the wings, and the engine) need to operate in proportion to each other. If your overhead gets out of hand, the plane becomes too heavy and crashes. If your wings are too small (not enough products or your products are becoming irrelevant in the market) the plane will also crash. And, likewise, if you have puny engines (your marketing message is muddled or your sales team isn’t productive) the plane will crash. Most business leaders would look at these three aspects and immediately try to trim overhead. Trimming overhead is important, but it can also cause panic in the ranks. We definitely want to trim overhead, but let’s do that last. The first thing we want to do is let the team know where this airplane will be flying to and how we are going to get there. Unless the team knows we intend to fly this plane, they will not prepare the plane or have it flight ready. Your team has likely been longing for a challenge and now you’ve got one. If you see a recession as a chance to prepare for the eventual uptick in the economy, you’ll win in the end. Copyright © 2019 Donald Miller Words, LLC 5 Here are 5 things every business leader needs to do to survive and perhaps even thrive during a recession. Consider this a checklist: Refine Your Guiding Principles 1 (Create a flight plan) If you haven’t clearly defined your company’s mission and Next, define 3 core values that answer the question: core values, do it now. Nothing aligns a team like a vision “How are we going to behave in order to accomplish this for the future and a few principles that direct behavior. mission?” Team alignment is critical during a downturn because Thought leaders like Ken Blanchard recommend only every bit of efficiency matters. 3 core values for the simple reason that people can’t remember more than 3. If you have 10, you might as well Professional bike racers tweak every centimeter of their have none. bike and its components so that it provides the most return for every calorie of energy the rider pushes into The core values for my company are: the pedals. • Play the Guide: Do everything you can to help the customer win. Defining your mission statement and core values are how • Be Ambitious: What other people believe is you get your entire team aligned so there is less wasted impossible, we believe is realistic. energy moving forward. • Be Positive: See the bright side in almost every situation. If members of your team chase shiny objects down rabbit trails, you are losing efficiency and productivity. While that These values direct behavior amongst our team members may not be visible to the bottom line while business is so everybody knows “how” we will accomplish our “why.” good, it will be when resources become scarce. The values are also in rank order, meaning we will willingly To create a good mission statement, invite your team neglect a core value in order to execute one that is more into a story. Rather than using boring business speak, important. make sure your mission statement has two components: • State the customers’ problem. Recently, a member of my team found out a young man • State your solution. attending our marketing workshop was sleeping in his car in the parking lot. He could afford the workshop, but StoryBrand Example: Most business leaders waste money not a hotel room. My team member immediately got him on marketing because their message isn’t clear. We a hotel room and a $500 prepaid visa card so he could train business leaders to clarify their message so their afford to eat meals with the other guests and not worry marketing dollars actually grow their company. about gas money to get home. When you state your customers’ problem, your team Why? understands the need the market has for your company. Not only does this create a sense of urgency in your team Because the ambition of growing StoryBrand is not as (they are rescuing somebody from something) it also gives important as playing the role of guide in our customers’ each of them a strong sense of meaning and purpose when lives and helping them win. We forfeit our ambitions when they wake up in the morning. A good mission statement those ambitions interfere with our customer experiencing that positions your people as the guide to the hero (your a successful climactic scene. customer) will improve efficiency, productivity and morale. Copyright © 2019 Donald Miller Words, LLC 6 The key with your guiding principles is to invite your team members into a meaningful story. Too many companies use business speak to define their mission statement, so nobody on their staff can remember what it is. A mission statement nobody remembers is completely worthless to unite a team. Once your mission statement and 3 core values are defined, create a campaign to instill these guiding principles into the conscious and subconscious of every member of your team. Print them on the interior walls of your building, have t-shirts made, start a contest and reward team members who can state the mission and core values of the company. You should also open every meeting by reading the mission statement and Mission core values and publicly honor any team member who lives out Statement that mission statement or demonstrates the core values. and core values You must find ways of repeating the mission statement and core values as often as you can and in any way you can. In a rowing competition, one of the most important positions in the boat is the coxswain. The coxswain steers the boat and calls instructions to the rowing team. The coxswain defines the direction and cadence of the effort as a way of unifying the team. As a business leader, you define the direction and cadence of your team by repeating your mission statement and core values. Once the team is operating in unison and with great passion and energy, you will need fewer resources to accomplish your goals thus taking you one more step in preparing you for an inevitable recession.

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