S3E2: What a Recession Means for Your Biz
Welcome to Women Rocking Business, where we are here to help you rock yourself, rock your life, and rock the world as a woman entrepreneur, because the world needs you and the time is now. I’m Sage Lavine, CEO, trainer, unretired camp counselor, and best-selling author of the Hay House book Women Rocking Business. We’ve had the honor of serving over a hundred thousand women entrepreneurs around the globe just like you, who are here to do more, be more, and have more by giving your gift to the planet. So let’s dive in.
Hello beauty! I know a lot of the women in our groups have been asking, “How is this recession? How has this kind of imminent financial winter that people are talking about going to affect my business?”
Sage Lavine
00:00:46
So I want to attempt to answer this question Sage-style and support you to be thinking in a really healthy and hopeful way about your business and remembering that this is like the time to rise and show up and give your gift and support other people and invite others to invest in themselves as well…because it’s the investments in ourselves that are going to actually make us resilient to whatever happens in this crazy world we’re living in.
First of all, recession is defined as two quarters where the growth is negative in a particular country, you know, Gross Domestic Product in the United States.
Sage Lavine
00:01:31
If it’s negative two quarters in a row, that is the definition of a recession. So I think it can just help to actually understand from an economy point of view, a little bit about what’s going on… because we can remember that we’re all going through this together.
What it means for the climate that we’re in. Like, let’s just talk a little bit about what’s going on in COVID the government pumped money into the economy. So we were kind of living on a lot of borrowed money and that’s part of what caused inflation and supply chain issues and people having all kinds of extra money to spend on products and now with a war going on, right?
Sage Lavine
00:02:16
Russia grows wheat. The price of wheat has doubled. When all of this happens in our economy, it’s like, there’s this heating up energy. We can probably feel it as sensitive women entrepreneurs. We can feel the uncertainty, consumer confidence has dropped. It’s 28% down from where it was last year. And with the job market overheated people are also asking for more money. There’s going to end up being unemployment rates going up. The housing market is experiencing inflation. The government actually raised interest rates, partly to cool down the economy.
Sage Lavine
00:02:57
Because if prices keep getting jacked up across the board, that’s going to be an even bigger problem. Interest rates are also high on borrowing money across the board. It makes it harder for people to borrow money. So that creates an environment where consumer confidence is down and people are experiencing, you know, some increased amounts of fear and anxiety.
Now, that being said, I know that you are here in many ways to support people with the very things people are struggling with right now. If part of what you do is help people transform the fear, transcend the fear, transform the overwhelm, transform the grief…
Sage Lavine
00:03:41
If that’s part of what you’re here to do, that’s a good thing because your business can continue to be competitive even in an economy that’s being slated to be a little bit more of a winter economy. Many businesses do so well in a recession. I think that the way to think about this is not all “rah, rah, the recession is not going to bother me. You know, I decided, no thank you. I’m not attending the recession.”
You know, like there’s some of that going on. Then there’s also some people freaking out. And I really believe that like the path to success and helping people navigate this time is somewhere in between those two polarities because you know, people are scared, justifiably scared.
Sage Lavine
00:04:31
That being said, those of us that have been on a more spiritual path, those of us that have been working on ourselves and applying the tools that we teach to ourselves for the last two years, five years, 10 years, 20 years, we know there’s something bigger happening here. We know that there’s spiritual order. We know that our souls came in for such a time as this. We want to be able to speak to people’s fear and then lovingly scoop them up and bring them with us into hope and be steadfast and be steady and put our own roots down in a financial winter. We might end up doing a little bit of pruning when a plant is growing.
Sage Lavine
00:05:12
When you go to prune trees, you prune the trees back in the winter because that causes them to root down deeper, to pull the energy in. So if there’s ways that we are potentially pulling our energy in, if there’s ways we need to strengthen ourselves by, you know, unsubscribing from certain subscriptions or, you know, looking for where we get distracted or choosing one or two communities to belong to rather than peppering our energy all over the place that pulling in that trimming back and pulling in can be really wise because that allows us to grow our, our roots down deeper. Now, understanding and knowing that the hard things that we go through make us stronger.
Sage Lavine
00:06:00
We’re all going to be stronger on the other side of all of this. Who do you get to become as the sharp edges of you? The sharper edges get more polished. And as the fire inside, you burns away that which is unnecessary.
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Sage Lavine
00:07:29
Some of the things that people are looking for in this economy now more than ever before are resiliency. That’s a great word to use in your marketing.
People are looking for a sense of belonging. More people are reporting, feeling a lack of fulfillment or belonging or community than ever before. More people are feeling isolated. And so if you can create a business where people feel that connection, that belly to belly connection with you, that sense of belonging, that’s going to really help you stand out in this market.. and for you to also find the communities where you feel that sense of belonging, find the communities where you feel that deeper sense of resonance and stay with those communities. Put your roots down in the communities where you really feel a sense of resonance because your business it’s going to be so much easier for your business to grow and for you to use the strategies and skills to get your message out there if you’re surrounded by other people that are doing that, taking those same steps.
Sage Lavine
00:08:17
You know that you have that accountability, you have that holding. You know, in a time like this, it can be easy to kind of start to spin out or, you know, question our investments and more than ever, I know truly inside myself. I have re-upped with a couple of my mentors. Now is the time to go all in on ourselves to get ourselves, whatever the support that we need to be able to hold steady and to be able to thrive in any circumstances, in any environment.
The great news. The best news is that the personal development industry is growing faster than ever.
Sage Lavine
00:08:59
It’s growing faster. It’s growing. The second fastest growing industry is the personal development industry. It’s the second fastest growing industry to technology. You might’ve heard me say this before, but we might not be that big of an industry for those of us in the personal development field, where mentors we’re authors, we’re coaches, we’re consultants, we’re visionaries, we’re healers, but it’s the second fastest growing industry for a reason. More than ever, people are waking up more than ever. People want the tools that we have more than ever. People want to transform. So speak to the fear, speak to the uncertainty. Don’t sugar coat it. Don’t turn a blind eye to it.
Sage Lavine
00:09:42
Be willing to look at right in the face and let people know… This is even more reason to go all in on yourself, on your relationship with yourself, your intuition, your relationships with others to go all in on your career, your business, to go all in on your health, so you’re not dependent on some external, you know, system for your care of your amazing body temple. Your message is needed now more than ever. So keep rising, sister, keep shining and keep bringing in that key marketing language to help you stand out online, especially in this time, speak to what people are going through and let them know there are solutions I’m so proud to be among every single one of you.
Sage Lavine
00:10:25
I know that whatever you’ve gone through in your life, it has prepared you for this every moment that we’re in together. Thank you for being the very best part of Women Rocking Business. And I’ll see you next week.
You’ve been listening to Women Rocking Business. I’m Sage Lavine. The next step is to join our private Facebook group, The Women Rocking Business Sisterhood. Introduce yourself over there for the real and vulnerable conversation of what it really takes to launch and scale a business you love in that Sisterhood group. We have each other’s backs, each other’s sides and each other’s fronts. This is true collaboration. So go grab a seat in the Sisterhood because we can go so much further when we go together, you’ll find a link to the private Sisterhood group and to our upcoming events in the show notes.
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