Many small business owners are feeling the economic pinch right now. We get a lot of questions from business owners and aspiring entrepreneurs about creating businesses that can weather any storm. While the specific steps your business should take will depend on your situation, there is a common denominator — one of E-Myth's Five Core Principles — that can guide you:

How you think about business is how you do business.

Bottom line, if you think of your business as a job, it will be, and your actions will forever keep it that way. If you think about your business as an entity outside of yourself — or, as we see it, "A vehicle for your life" — you'll approach your business with the intention of making it just such a vehicle. Everything you do will be done with that goal in mind. It's a mind shift — a change in thinking — which can have a profound impact on how you do business.

As you shift your perspective, let's look at three key points that will help you recession-proof your business.

Focus on your core competencies

You're no doubt familiar with the whole flight or fight response. In challenging times, it's easy to choose "flight": chasing minor opportunities, grasping at straws, running off in multiple directions, trying to be all things to all people. Very often these panic-based responses are at the cost of what the business is set up to do best. Businesses that try to be all things for all people don't survive.

There is always going to be another business out there that does something better than you do. If you lose your focus and stretch your resources and capabilities too thin, you're unable to capture the attention of any particular market segment because your best target market segments can't relate to you anymore. The trick is to not allow your core competencies to become so diluted that you lose the competitive edge that makes you unique.

Re-evaluate and be flexible

Once you turn your focus to what you do best, you may find that it's time to innovate: to do what you do better. Seize the opportunity to strengthen your ability to deliver your product or service better than your competition.

At the same time, you must be ready to adjust. Don't be so rigid that you are blind to the messages that may be coming in from your target market that their needs and preferences have changed. Quantify what is selling and what is not selling. Listen to your customers. Trust your customers. I continually remind my clients that their customers know better than they do about what their needs are. Keep your eyes, ears and mind open to what they're telling you, and be nimble enough to adjust.

As the news from Wall Street and the financial sectors in general heated up earlier this year, I found myself calmed by a group of my clients who are financial advisors. People in an industry that, I thought, would be the most panicked and reactive were tired, but also the most calm. They were spending their days reaching out to their clients — reassuring, hand-holding, making investment adjustments when needed — but more than anything else, reducing personal panic.

As we moved into the spring together, they reflected on that earlier time and begin to reevaluate what it is that they actually do for their clients — and more importantly, how they express that to them. They understood more clearly than ever before that people were not coming to them for "investment opportunities." People became their clients because they were the whitewater guides through the shifting rapids; they'd been down this river before and knew where the rocks were. And without ever promising that they might not get wet, could assure them that they would likely not drown.

Think long term

Whatever is happening out there right now is not the way it's going to be forever. As Heraclites, the Greek philosopher pointed out around 500 B.C.: change is the only constant. For some people, that can be really exciting, for others it's a frightening concept; it all depends on how you react to the unknown.

The most successful business owners I work with every day are not engaging me in frantic conversations about how bad it is or how bad it's going to be. They're not afraid of change. In fact, they understand that in business (as in life) change is one of the only things we can count on... so we might as well welcome it!

To be positioned to take advantage of change, you need to take an objective view, or what we like to call, the "helicopter view" of your business. When you look at the long-range perspective, your current view changes. You're no longer trapped in today's busyness and reactionary mode, but can see your business from a higher elevation and realize that the landscape is constantly shifting.

My clients who do this are not engaged in reactive, short-term panic-induced moves. They're focusing their attention on their employees, making them feel as secure and valued as they possibly can. They're focused on their operations, and redoubling their efforts to weed out inefficiencies and duplicated efforts. They're experimenting with systematizing wherever they can. And they do all of this with an eye towards not only meeting their customers' immediate needs, but to position themselves to be the best in their fields a year from now.

Because when the turnaround comes, they want to be there. They want their vision to match their actions, to have their business so finely tuned that they have no trouble demonstrating to that anxious and willing consumer that they are the company to do business with.

I like to point out to my clients that whatever changes occur, there are some fundamentals you can count on: people are still going to desire things. And that means they'll need to buy products and services from somebody... Why shouldn't it be from you?

Share Your Story

What changes have you made to the way you think about your business in response to this economy? Post a comment and tell us about it.

Further Reading

Innovation, Quantification and Orchestration
Practicing Financial Leadership
Reducing Operating Expenses
Budgeting for Fluctuating Revenue