Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about the economy. And if you’re a small business owner, I bet you have too.
With inflation still lingering, the markets in a jitter, and political drama heating up, there’s a growing sense of economic unease out there. Whether or not a recession officially hits this year, business owners are already feeling the pressure: slower sales, more cautious buyers, and an increasing need to do more with less.
If this feels familiar, it should. I’ve lived through three major recessions in my career—the Dot-Com crash of the early 2000s, the Great Recession in 2008, and the COVID-19 freefall in 2020. And in each of those, I’ve watched the same pattern play out: some businesses freeze up or fall apart… while others find a way to grow. Yes, grow.
This series is about the second kind. The ones who leaned in. The ones who adapted. And the ones who walked out stronger than they walked in.
I’m not here to make economic predictions. I’m here to help you prepare.
If you own or run a local business—or lead a small team trying to drive growth—you don’t have time for theory. You need to know what works when the economy turns. You need perspective, not platitudes.
Over the next several posts, I’m going to share what I’ve seen work (and what I’ve seen fail) over the past 30 years—from media sales and advertising to tech startups and service businesses. I’ll cover the traits and tactics I’ve seen in companies that not only survived recessions but gained market share while others pulled back.
This won’t be a finance blog. I’m not a CFO. This is about top-line revenue, growth strategy, and what to do when your marketing budget feels tight but you know going dark isn’t the answer.
A few things I’ve learned the hard way:
- The worst thing you can do in a downturn is go invisible.
- Cutting marketing without a plan is a fast track to irrelevance.
- Your existing customer base is your best asset—protect it, talk to them, give them reasons to stay.
- There are always ways to pivot, package, promote, or partner that don’t require massive budgets.
- And if your competitors are retreating, that’s your opportunity to show up and lead.
I’ll also share a few stories from the trenches—like the time we turned a million-dollar loss into a profitable turnaround at an automotive lead-gen firm, or how we rallied an agency through the COVID chaos by going on offense when everyone else was pulling back.
And yes, I’ll talk about dentists and doctors too. Many of my clients today are medical practices, and while their business models are different, the principles are the same: visibility matters, trust matters, and your community needs to know you’re still here to serve them—even when times are tough.
Here’s what’s coming in this series:
- The 3 traits all recession-resilient businesses share
- How to keep marketing when the budget shrinks
- Recession-proofing your sales strategy
- Winning locally while bigger competitors pull back
- How to grow your dental practice during a recession
- Mistakes to avoid
- And what it feels like to lead through economic uncertainty (and why mindset matters more than you think)
My goal is simple: to help you walk into whatever comes next with more clarity, more confidence, and more control.
Let’s stop trying to survive the next recession. Let’s plan to grow through it.