Diary of a CEO: Entry #2
Dear Reader,
This week I’m thinking a lot about how your mindset impacts your business and your goals. It’s hard to run a service business amidst a recession, especially when your clients are small businesses– those being hit the hardest with inflation and seeing major shifts in their bottom lines.
The thing is, when you shift your mindset to the opportunities and abundance presented in every situation, rather than the challenges and scarcity, it makes it easier mentally to create solutions and support your team – at least that’s what I’ve found.
Here are some recession proofing tips for other service businesses;
Create a retention plan. During periods of recession it is much easier to sell to customers that have bought from you in the past. Slow investments in new client acquisition and instead focus on loyalty programs and email marketing to ‘suppressed’ client lists to r-eengage the audiences. Retaining customers is very important right now. Cater to their needs, ask them for feedback, and add value through free and paid add-on offerings.
Identify your consumer needs + how they change during an economic downturn. Ask yourself how you provide value for your target audience during this time. Identify + acknowledge their pain points, offer discounts on services that are going to be especially helpful to them right now, consider bundling packages so they do not need to evaluate the cost each week/month. Ensure your services are up to date to best serve your clients, reshape them if need be. Answer the question: why are YOU the best service for their needs? What makes YOU different?
Make it as easy as possible for customers to find you and show up online to grow your relationship with your market if they can’t buy from you as frequently as they normally would. Digitally, make your CTA’s and link in bios easy to find and ensure your website is simple to navigate. For brick and mortar retail and services consider drawing a map depicting where your location is or creating a reel that shows how simple it is to get in contact with you. If you offer services and are seeing a decline in frequency of visits, show up digitally with tips, tricks, and micro-lessons to keep your audience engaged and stay top of mind.
For me, I spent a lot of this week exploring how to rise to meet the opportunities and how to support people who I know are feeling drained. I decided to offer Ringlet’s first low-cost offering, a-la-carte consulting hours, because I know in an hour or a handful of hours Hannah and I can really help business owners navigate holiday season and setting 2023 goals.
This was a hard decision for me because I just spent the past 2 years working to raise Ringlet’s prices to cover our business costs and get us functioning at healthy business levels. The scarcity mindset crept in and I felt like a failure for putting something out that may cheapen our value I worked so hard to create.
But then I remembered that business is also about supporting your community, driving a mission forward, building the foundation for a greater vision, and ultimately making the world a little better than it was before. This recession is an opportunity to build better supportive relationships with clients, to rethink how we offer our services, and to help other companies stay in business by helping them make their company secure and stable.
So, if you’ve found yourself stressed at the thought of your bottom line, avoiding checking your business bank account, and resisting the thought of change to meet the new market– I challenge you to lean into the opportunities to do new things, to change your typical offerings, and serve your community how and where they need it.
Thanks for reading, I truly appreciate you! Have a wonderful weekend.
XOXO