Things You Need to Do to Keep Your Business Afloat in Times of Uncertainty

 

By Dan Maycock

 

Today is a tough time for a lot of the country, as many business owners woke up to a local and global economy that is uncertain. Talk of recessions and depressions, stocks dropping, and global financial markets talking of dire times ahead. Yet, as a business owner, the need to stay afloat and thrive remains even in a turbulent time such as this.

Like any setback in business, the key is to take a step back and assess where you are then make a plan and move forward. Businesses all across the world now are doing that very thing, as no one has a clear idea of what's ahead of us.

In uncertain times though, there are steps you can take to stay on a successful path. Here are just a couple tips to help keep on that path, and thrive regardless of what comes our way.

1) Focus on a historical perspective, to gain a better understanding of what's in store

The world hasn't had anything exactly like this happen before, but things similar to this have occurred. Looking at history, we can see where Ronald Regan was elected as an actor with very little prior experience, with a good number of Americans dreading what would happen with him at the wheel. In the early 1900's, America was reacting to the industrial revolution and too much change occurring and hit the breaks on more progressive policies taking root. We've been through difficulty before, but America will weather whatever storms may come. Keep in mind as well that historically, some of the greatest business opportunities surface in times of difficulty and uncertainty.

2) Focus on micro-economic factors vs macro-economic factorsIt's hard to know for certain all the ripples that'll come from the changes taking place at the Federal level of our country. However, your customers live and shop in local communities so keep your focus there. When you take all the complexities of what could happen globally or nationally into account, you can miss the local trends that you need to focus on to stay strong as a small business. This is not just overwhelming emotionally, but pushes you into rhetoric vs reality. Stay hyper-local in the short term, and keep an eye on trends shifting within specific metro areas, or even neighborhoods in some cases, vs considering what is happening at a larger, more uncontrollable level. Not only will you be able to sort fact from fiction, but you'll be able to react and pivot as customer sentiment or demographics shift.

3) Build an objective list of things to monitor in your business, with a plan on how to pivot

If you don't have key indicators for your business, sit down and make that list today. People will be reacting and feeling a lot of things in the coming months, but you need to focus on customers coming in the door and not the broader picture of what could happen. If sales start to drop, or customer interest starts to wane, focus on analyzing customers the same way you have before and don't give into uncertainty or national turbulence as the default go to explanation.

Despair and depression are powerful agents of change, but life will continue on in the midst of that and people will continue to buy things and invest in things while we see what kind of changes will take place. Stay focused on those objective metrics though, and prepare for what you'll do if those metrics start to shift. If you take the subjectivity and emotion out of the bottom line of your business, you'll find staying afloat emotionally is much easier to do.

Finally, take a deep breath and know that in any intensely emotional time such as this, things are often not as good or as bad as people think. If we band together in a hyper-local fashion, with small businesses and start-ups supporting each other, these next four years could go much better than anyone expects.

The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com.