Should You Start a Business When Recession Is Looming?

Plus: Costa Rica's Gold Coast, Panama City, and how to make your 401(k) work.

Welcome to this week’s issue of Further, a newsletter for people in their 50s and 60s looking for a more satisfying alternative to the mythical “golden years” retirement.

If you’re here and haven’t yet subscribed, join 19,000+ people looking to live their best life at midlife by grabbing our free resource: The Further Guide to Unretirement Planning.

---

Munich, Germany: September 25, 2008.

I had just wrapped up a speaking gig at a search engine marketing conference that was tightly integrated with the city’s annual Oktoberfest celebration.

Nursing an exquisite hangover, I stood in the lobby of the chic boutique hotel in which I had been staying and stared at the television in the rear corner. I speak no German, but the subtitles told the story.

Back home, U.S. regulators had just seized Washington Mutual — the largest bank failure in American history. The bank had $307 billion in assets and $188 million in deposits, and its collapse represented a watershed moment in the 2008 financial crisis.

Just ten days earlier, Lehman Brothers had declared bankruptcy. What became known as The Great Recession intensified well beyond its official starting point in December 2007.

Less than a year before that Munich event, I had bootstrapped a startup that helped people create viable digital businesses.

And just a month before the conference, I had launched a second bootstrapped business, this one featuring a design framework that made building WordPress websites much easier for non-technical people.

So what happened as the world watched financial calamity accelerate?

The first business crossed the million-dollar mark the next month. The second business went from $10,000 a month in revenue to $10,000 a day.

It’s not that I knew a financial crisis was coming.

I simply created companies based on my expertise to help a small but viable market. The recession turned it into a much larger market, and we were perfectly positioned to capitalize.

But other people did, in fact, start companies because of the crisis.

Many were due to layoffs, but others were based on raw opportunity. Marketing departments were gutted first, so corporate refugees became freelance content creators and digital marketing consultants.

The counterintuitive truth about mass layoffs is that companies may be downsizing, but the demand for experienced labor remains.

Even as they cut employees, companies often hire high-quality freelancers and consultants to meet their design, marketing, accounting, coding, and other needs remotely. And because everything is on fire, they’re open to new ideas and approaches:

“A recession can be an excellent time to start a business because there are problems within existing businesses that need to be solved,” says Ted Wolf, co-founder of consulting firm Guidewise. “When times are good, many businesses don’t even look at innovative solutions to problems because they really don’t have to — we innovate in the tough times when we are forced to figure out a ‘better way.’”

And these days, the market of solo and very small businesses that need outside help has grown exponentially. Businesses thrive by solving problems, and as long as you understand the new set of problems that comes with an economic downturn, you succeed.

With a laptop and the right skillset and experience, you can offer freelance and consulting services from anywhere in the world. It primarily comes down to landing the right clients.

You wouldn’t be the first person to turn a job loss into an ideal lifestyle. And you’ll look even smarter if you see what’s coming and plan ahead before the axe drops.

Keep going-

Brian

P.S. Those two bootstrapped businesses of mine succeeded because I attracted an audience first. If I were starting today, I would use the personal enterprise strategy that I'm sharing in Further Premium.

further: destinations

For those who dream of living that beach life, Costa Rica's North Pacific Coast (aka the Gold Coast) offers up paradise without sacrificing professional momentum. And if you’ve ever been to Costa Rica on vacation, there’s a good chance it was here in the Guanacaste region.

+ Live Your Best Life on Costa Rica's Gold Coast

The media narrative says you need to be based in tech hubs like San Francisco, Austin, or Miami to succeed with a startup. That's not true at all.

But what if there was a thriving international metropolis that offers world-class infrastructure, a strategic global position, and significantly lower costs?

That place exists. And it's Panama City, Panama.

+ Panama City: The Cosmopolitan Hub that Connects Two Continents

further: podcast

In the second episode of the Further Podcast, Brian and resident financial advisor Denver Nowicz discuss the current financial landscape, marked by market volatility due to tariff whiplash and historically low consumer confidence.

The conversation delves into the challenges and opportunities of starting businesses as a means to create sustainable income streams amid economic uncertainty. Brian and Denver also highlight the potential of multi-generational entrepreneurship and the importance of flexibility and nimbleness in adapting to rapidly changing economic conditions.

+ Building a Sustainable Financial Future in Your 50s... Beyond the 401(K)

further: flashback

🎶 Beck - Where It's At, Odelay, 1996 🎶

Think back to when you first heard Where It's At. It's safe to say you'd never heard anything like it, and the mashup of different samples and genres probably shouldn't work. But then later you realize it's a single eclectic genre known as Beck. For those who nerd out on such things, the sample of the robotic voice that says "Two turntables and a microphone" comes from Needle to the Groove by Mantronix. (YouTube)

further: sharing

Enjoy this issue? Please forward this email to friends or share by clicking below:

Thank you for sharing Further!