You do know there is a silver lining in the recession, dont you?

Tough times, a downturn, or a recession. Call it what you like but it means the same for everyone. Generally speaking, wallets are zipped and bargains demanded. Credit is tight and retrenchment is on the cards. It’s harder to make a dollar, and can be harder still to collect that dollar. The results can be rather doom and gloom. The Press is filled with stories of staff layoffs, liquidations, receiverships, mortgagee sales and bankruptcies as a result of the recession. But there is always another side, and the current economic downturn is no different.

Tough times provide businesses with an opportunity to:

• Focus on building your business rather than working in it, by concentrating on marketing and promotion;
• Find expert people from a larger available labour pool;
• Create the potential to increase market share and/or diversify your interest while it is a buyers’ market; and
• Increase revenue/turnover if you happen to be in the service and advisory sectors.

Tough times also provide wage earners or unemployed with an opportunity to:

• Focus on building your life rather than working in it, by concentrating on other aspects of your life during your spare time;
• Finding the right people you need to get things done (there are more people wanting work now);
• Finding cheap buys, whether investments or things you need, while it is a buyers’ market; and
• Increase your income if you happen to be in the service and advisory sectors (where there should be more work now).

There is another opportunity, which on the face of it may not appear like an opportunity, and that's closing your doors, selling up, going into receivership or liquidation, winding up, or becoming bankrupt. Why can this opportunity be a good one? Because you can: reduce any further risk or exposure to loss; save whatever money, time and energy you have remaining – hopefully for a more positive future than you are leaving behind; and by doing so, there will be less stigma attached because you're just another recession statistic. Managed properly, you can avoid upsetting your suppliers or lenders.

How long will these tough times last?

Lots of people have been crystal ball gazing in an effort to identify when the recession will end, in the hope they can survive that long, or alternatively to be in the best position when it turns. Not surprisingly, the answers are as numerous as the people searching, which should be a good clue that no-one really knows. And the truth is, no-one does know because coming out of the ‘Recession’ requires the majority of the population to have changed their behaviours and no one person can control that.

Here’s another truth – It doesn’t matter how long the recession will last because the reality is … recessions come and go … just like the winter seasons of a year. So this current recession will end when it’s ready. So rather than worrying how long it will last, why not change your attitude and take action with your own life to find a new way to achieve your goals, notwithstanding the current ‘recession’?

Consider the change in economic climate another way. Life is like a game. You play it on a field subject to certain rules. Those rules have changed and we’d venture to say the field has also changed. You have a choice. You can accept the new rules that come with the new field and take your place on that new field to play the game again. Or you can sit on the side lines waiting for your old field to come back. Remember that the sooner you get on the new field, the sooner you can start playing the game and get used to the new rules while your competitors remain on the sidelines hanging onto the past.

What do you need to do to make it through the tough times?

Tough times don’t discriminate whether you run a business or not, whether you’re employed or not. We're all impacted the same. The same opportunities for growth exist for all of us. Which also means the best way to survive tough times will be the same whether you’re in business, employed, or unemployed.

The Government would have us believe that spending our way out of the recessions is the answer. Considering we are in this recession due to a history of overspending, and the Governments and Banks had largely turned a blind eye to that behaviour (because it suited them), we believe the Governments’ solution is somewhat hypocritical (and also a bad one in the long term anyway).

Blaming others, like Governments and Banks for this situation, will not make the recession go away. It also won’t get your money back, and nor will it result in you achieving your goals. If you want to reach your goals, notwithstanding the recession, then it has to be you who has to do something about it. This makes sense because ultimately it was you (and I, and the rest of us) that created the current recession in the first place.

If you want to survive the tough times, you will need to:

• Live sustainably (i.e. spend less than you earn);
• Be regarded as useful to others (do something that other people want);
• Build and cherish your relationships with others; and
• Seek out the simplicity in all things.

And you need to start now, not tomorrow and not next week. How you do this can differ whether you are in business or not so in the coming months we'll be posting our advice specific to whether you're in business or not, in an effort to helping you improve your situation in tough times. Come back in another month and find out more.

Brydon DavidsonJune 2009