Recession-Proof Your Branding Agency
Yes, it’s that familiar tune - either there’s a recession coming, or it’s already here.
And you’re probably thinking this maybe isn’t the right time to invest in your business.
Well, this post is for you. I’ll show you how to recession-proof your branding agency.
I want to tell you a story of what happened in our businesses the last time the proverbial shit hit the fan: March 2020.
I’ll tell you how members of my 2020 group coaching program responded when COVID hit, and what the most successful strategies were.
Tripling down, refining the Lead Product and generating $100k in new business for Q1 2021
The last time we went through something that was really traumatic for all of our businesses was March 2020.
I was coaching a group of entrepreneurs in a year-long program with 10 people, and March 2020 hit.
And of course, nobody knew what was happening.
Nobody knew what was going to come.
All of these people in this program had committed to working with me for the year, and I got to watch how everybody responded.
There were a variety of responses and I’m sure you had your own.
A couple of people said, “I'm out, I can't do this. I'm scared. I want to go back to something that I feel comfortable with.”
A couple of people were scared, but stayed and kind of timidly worked through their business, but they stuck with what felt safe.
And then a couple of people were terrified, but they did what I also did, which was time to double down, right?
Because even if COVID has hit, we have no idea what's going on.
What's the one thing I do know - there are still going to be people that need my services.
There's still money, there's still an economy, there's still services being traded, and there's probably going to be fewer of them.
So what do I need to do? I need to be even better.
So I'm going to tell you two stories - one of them is Alana, and the other is Rachel.
Alana was terrified. She had a lot of money mindset issues. And in March, April, and May 2020, she tripled down on her content.
So she started writing more articles than she already had been.
She was kind of implementing our Authority Machine already, she didn't have any business - a lot of her contracts went away.
So she tripled down on it.
She wrote a ton of articles.
She did a bunch of webinars. She set up a webinar that was specifically catered to what was going on, and what are we all going to do about this?
She did it for somebody else and got like 900 emails just in one webinar - so she grew her email list.
She read all this content.
Over the summer, she got a bunch of Lead Products, but they weren't quite closing into bigger projects.
She felt people were still scared - they didn’t want to spend money on the big thing.
So I coached her and I finally looked at her Lead Product, and I could see why they weren’t closing. She was making all these mistakes, so I showed her what to do and she started closing those Lead Products into Intensives.
This was August of 2020, and by the end of the year, all of a sudden, things started to turn.
I am not exaggerating when I say this (I have the email to prove it). In January of 2021 - six months later, she closed $130,000 worth of business, just in January alone, Q1.
So all these people that she had been nurturing, and all this marketing she had been doing, all of it kind of came to fruition.
And all that business that she got was nurtured through all of the content.
These were people who were reaching out to her and saying “I want to work with you.”
It was insane.
The next year she did $600,000 in sales.
So if I told her that this would happen in March of 2020, she would have not believed me even a little bit.
Going all-in and bouncing back after losing her biggest client in March 2020
Now let me tell you about Rachel.
Rachel Wunderlin (follower her on Instagram @dementiabyday) is hilarious and also a brilliant person in the dementia world.
She was also terrified. She lost her biggest client, like everybody lost clients. All this money that she was counting on - gone, poof, in an instant.
So what did she do? She doubled down on her content.
And she doubled down on making a program that she was going to sell in addition to her services, something that she was planning to do all year.
She spent a concentrated month putting that thing together, and the idea was that she would have something an additional way to work with her.
At the end of April, she sold that programme as a tester to somebody for $15,000.
Now, she had all that content and she had all that created - what could she have done?
She could have shrivelled up like some of the other people and just said, “You know, I can't do this, I'm scared, I'm gonna go another direction” or “I'm just gonna hustle and start trading my dollars for hours again”.
Instead, she doubled down on herself
I just love our DMs back and forth on Instagram, because she'll just send me stuff just like “I just closed this $75,000 client” and she has amazing clients, because she is such an authority in her space. And she doubled down at the time that it was scariest.
Now is the time to double down and invest in your business
Now let me tell you about my own business.
2020 was smaller than 2019, that's for sure.
But I still did Brand Ups for months after a pandemic hit - I did a Brand Up for $30,000 for somebody who didn't even mention the pandemic.
They said “Yeah, we need this brand” and we just did it.
I do a couple of more towards the end of the year - just because a lot of people are shrinking doesn't mean everybody's shrinking - business goes on.
If you are somebody that is rising to the top, if you are being seen, if you are honing your skills, that's the only thing you can do when the economy goes down, or something traumatic happens. There’s still business to be done.
So the question is - are you going to be one of the people that does it?
When people say to me, “Well, I don't know if now is the time to invest in myself, or invest in my business or work on these processes and stuff, because what if the recession happens, and there are less clients, you know…”
I say - there is always so much competition!
The idea that a recession is gonna make more competition only means that you have to be better at what you do, not shrivel up.
And plenty of people just closed their businesses during the pandemic.
But I remember some of the really big dogs in marketing were saying - this is the time to double down. This is when big industries are built.
And if you are one of those people who goes all in on yourself in times when things are shrinking, when things open back up, you're gonna be at the front of the line.
And I saw it so many times. Eight months after the pandemic happened, we completely went all in on the No BS Agency Mastery Program.
I basically erased 10,000 people from my email list, and I decided to go all in on the niche of small agency owners, and I decided to build a programme just to teach those people how I still do Brand Ups.
But I said, I'm pivoting and focusing. And it was a big bet, right? It was a big bet.
Eight months after COVID hit, I said, I'm going all in on this.
Within a year - 2021 was my best year and 2022 has tripled that.
I had to bet on myself, go all in on my skills and my business in order for that to happen.
So I've seen it so many times.
I just want to encourage you. If you have a fear about the economy shrinking, that there is always competition, shit hitting the fan it just means there's gonna be more competition.
That's it.
There's already competition. What are you doing now to rise above the crowd and make sure that in a sea of sameness, you stand out?
Because if a recession is here, or if it's coming, you're gonna have to do that even more, not less.
So do not shrink, expand.
Take that fear and refocus it on being better and more prepared.
I hope this puts a fire under your butt right now because I'm fired up about it. I have seen people make a lot of money by doing this, and I hope you're one of those people.
Here’s what you need to get…
We may be approaching a recession, or we may already be there.
It doesn’t really matter. There’s always something you can do - you can take that fear, that uncertainty, and channel it into something great. You may even generate the best year in your branding agency yet.
P.S. You can always jump on a call with my team if you want to fast-track your results, and learn all my other tools and strategies to scale up your agency - just go here to get started!