As I explain to my clients – a recession is the best, easiest and least expensive time to start or grow a business. At our Advanced Business Mastery and Exponential Business Building Bootcamp, I explain exactly WHY this is the case and HOW to leverage it. That is a discussion well beyond the scope of a blog post, but if you’re keen to peak into a recent Bootcamp, check out this segment called How To Recession-Proof Your Business.

Let’s look at a few recession success stories:

The Walt Disney Company

In the summer of 1923, Walt Disney arrived in Los Angeles to find a distributor for one of his first animations. With America two months into a recession this seemed, at best, hopeful. But by October 1923 Walt Disney had signed a contract with a well-known film distributor. The deal marked the formal beginnings of a film studio which started in a garage, went on to survive the stock market crash of 1929 and today The Walt Disney Company is one of the world’s biggest entertainment businesses in the world.
The Walt Disney Company was not the first to launch in a recession. Of the 30 companies on the Dow Jones industrial index, 16 started in a downturn. Household names like General Electric, Kodak, Hewlett Packard, Microsoft and Burger King all launched in tough times. So did some of the most successful
products—the iPod, Sellotape and Monopoly.
There are some advantages to launching a company in a recession. Start-up costs are lower, with real estate, computer equipment and labour more abundant and cheaper. Also in a recession there is less competition so less advertising is needed to get people’s attention—all of which, undoubtedly, helps the
a company to grow in its early years or helps an existing company get a lead on its competitors.