Nothing puts an business on edge like an economic downturn. Today we’re going to give you some advice on how to keep your business going through a rough time. Every business has to find it’s own way to survive, whether that be returning money, cutting budgets, or cutting your staff.

Now making cuts suck, but they have to be done. The key to surviving is diversify your client list and keep an eye on your revenue numbers. Downturns don’t have to be a time of stunted growth. As a matter of fact many successful companies have used downturns to pull in great talent that had been let go from other companies.

Other topics we talk about are:

How the economy has seasons

Why you can’t time “the best time for business”

The importance of making drastic changes in drastic times

How to go back to basics

The important thing to remember is no matter what the economy is doing you need to make your business work.

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As always, you can hit us up on Twitter @Steli or @hnshah, #thestartupchat.

 

Steli Efti:  Hey, everyone. This is Steli Efti.

 

Hiten Shah:  And Hiten Shah.

 

Steli Efti:  And in today’s episode of The Startup Chat, we’re going to talk about how to deal with economic downturns as a startup as an entrepreneur. So, here’s the deal, Hiten. I hear more and more this kind of a growing eco-chamber of people worrying and thinking about this year in specific being a year that’s going to be economically really, really challenging. We see all these “unicorn stumbling” and having real issues and difficulties and firing people and, you know, selling for a lot less than they raised and having all these issues. We hear all the ramblings on like fundraising is probably going to dry up and funding is going to dry up.

 

We hear about the all economy going down and this year being a shitty year. And it makes a lot of entrepreneurs and founders, you know, stress out. It makes them nervous, makes them wonder what to do and how to react. And I knew that you would probably have a pretty cool common collected attitude towards this, so I’d love to hear your thoughts. If a founder comes to you stressed out about this kind of—the market and the economic downturn and you’re seeing a bunch of this, you’ve seen a bunch of ups and downs over the years, what’s your advice? What’s your approach today when you see someone with these— I mean, how do you think about that?

 

Hiten Shah:  Yeah. I think it’s a very fundamental skill and many folks don’t have it but, you know, if you just hear it, it’s pretty logical which is like just figure out how to survive if you were going to survive. And if you’re not going to survive, figure out how to gracefully get out of it whether it’s an exit or an acqui-hire or even shutting it down gracefully and returning some money if you’re a funded company. And that’s just more on the funded side.

 

And if you’re a self-funded and all, I just realized that like some things are going to be harder for you. It might actually be harder for you to get customers at some point. Right now, I don’t see that affect you yet, but if you’re self-funded and you’re generally just tryin...