What’s going to happen to all those businesses if the wheels fall off the economy and we hit recession?
It’s in fashion to own a business. Trending you might say. Children are launching Tik Tok careers, Etsy stores and flooding the beaded homemade jewellery market. Even full-time corporates seem to have a side hustle (candles anyone?).
It seems everyone, and I mean everyone, is doing it.
Competition is fierce. Snake charmer marketing tactics are rife as the promise of a 4-hour work week and stories of 6-figure passive income while you sun on a beach swarm our social feeds, offering up false dreams in a land of BS.
Unemployment rates are at an all-time low with staff shortages causing issues for small business all across Australia.
I’ve spent the past few years travelling rural and remote Australia connecting with business owners who were torn between the gratitude of being so incredibly busy and staying financially afloat in a world crisis, but on the verge of extreme burn out because they had become their only employee.
Cranky customers irritate with slow service, reduced business hours, overpriced food, car hire and petrol. Hotels at half capacity and therefor double the price because they didn’t have the staff to service them.
Did I mention housing was nonexistent?
I’ve stood on the side lines cheering on and trying to help, but ain’t nobody got time to listen. No staff … remember?
Maybe you were one of those businesses where it rained money during the pandemic. You forgot what it meant to have to invest in marketing, build a culture, nurture your clients, ask for reviews, build an email database. You forgot those things mattered and will again someday be the very thing that could now, save your hide.
As I watch my friends in business give up the hustle, the grind and slog that is absolutely required to make a small business succeed in the noisy world we live in, to return to gainful employment, I breathe a sigh of relief.
This is the time where the time wasters drop out and the die-hards step up. Where only the strong survive and the weak get cut from the herd.
Small business now takes a deep breath as the staff return and the competition frees up.
If you ask me, this recession is right on time.
Elsa Mitchell is a serial entrepreneur across a diversity of industries from beauty to construction, a business mentor, Bossy Bitch podcast host, and rural/regional business advocate.