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Over the last few months, billionaires from Elon Musk to Jamie Diamon have been predicting a recession. These warnings have only multiplied since the Federal Reserve decided to raise interest rates by 75 basis points.

Business leaders and major financial institutions have since echoed these earnest warnings about an upcoming recession for the end of this year or in 2023. For most business owners, recession is a scary word. Those that lived through previous recessions remember the disruptions and challenges that ensued. As our industry has grown, the number of new owners without this perspective has risen, as well.

Thankfully, companies still have time to gird themselves for this potential future. Here are five actions you can take to mitigate your risk during a recession.

Secure Capital

Many companies go out of business not because they are unprofitable, but because they lack enough cash for daily operations. In a seasonal industry like ours, managing cashflow is already tricky. In a recession, your business may decline, customers often tend to draw out payments and suppliers tighten terms only increasing the day-to-day challenges. Smart owners know the importance of being prepared and having access to capital.

Approach your bank now for an increased line of credit. If the answer is no, then shop your banking relationship around. Small local business banks tend to be more willing to learn and understand the challenges and particulars of your business than the large national players. Do not forget to investigate online credit loan providers. It is important that you do this now. It will be much harder to find available capital when a recession hits.

Develop a Strategic Marketing Plan

Often the gut reaction for owners during a recession is to cut all discretionary spending and erroneously, some think that includes marketing. Businesses must keep their competitive edge, even during a recession and a strategic marketing plan helps you focus where to concentrate your resources for the greatest impact. Customers typically spend less money during tough economic times, but they still spend it. However, they are far more discriminating in deciding whom to spend it with. You need to be the recognized, trusted expert they turn to. You must be top of mind. Your marketing efforts may include advertising, sponsorships, events, social and traditional media placement, and more. Make sure you target your actions to reenforce key differentiators.

Review Spending

Hard times cause companies to tighten their belts. Analyze your spending and understand what you need vs what is nice to have. In the end you may find that you need to freeze pay and/or 401k contributions or even eliminate positions, defer capital spending projects including putting off the purchase of new trucks and equipment. Look at renegotiating contracts with your suppliers if possible and identify areas of unnecessary spending that you can cut without too much pain.

Increase Customer Loyalty

When a recession hits, it is easy to focus on acquiring new customers but, be careful not to neglect your current ones. It is far more expensive to find and develop new clients then it is to keep your existing ones. Focus on customer loyalty and retention. A loyal customer is also more likely to refer friends and additional business opportunities. Thank your customers for their business and be sure to make it easy for them to do business with you. Be responsive and communicative.

Manage Vendors

Current supply chain and logistical issues are hard. A recession will only make these worse as suppliers face their own challenges and respond by reducing inventories and layoff their labor. Start now to work with and communicate openly with your suppliers. Understand their issues and cooperate on the best way to go forward for both of you. Plan as far out as possible, make sure to account for increasing material and labor costs for upcoming projects. Take the initiative and communicate expected timelines with clients.

Knowing a recession is on the horizon gives you time to prepare. Do not wait until it is too late. These steps make good business sense and will make you stronger and more profitable, even without a recession. However, the list is not all encompassing, so keep an open mind, be initiative-taking in your preparations and remain agile.

Industry veteran, speaker and consultant Joe Kujawa is the former president of KEI. He is 2016 Leadership Award recipient and a frequent Snow Magazine contributor.

Reprinted with permission. Snow Magazine  2022 (c)

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This can create challenges in navigating internal dynamics due to different communication styles, behaviors and expectations. But it also creates significant opportunities to strengthen understanding, build trust, increase innovation and make your company relatable to your clients, whose businesses are experiencing their own demographic shifts.

Here are six ways to set up a workplace environment that will empower your employees to find common ground:

1. Create a shared vision: It is impossible to effectively work together toward a goal unless everyone knows what the goal is. As a leader, you need to lay out your vision, articulate what you are looking to achieve and why that is important. You want to find people that share that vision and are excited about making it happen.

2. Set collaboration as an expectation: To start, be clear about individual roles and responsibilities as well as team expectations. Set attainable goals, report back on them and celebrate wins. People work more effectively when they understand how they contribute to the greater whole. Then, collaboration is not only accepted but expected. Improving communication increases understanding, decreases finger pointing and builds a stronger team.

3. Teach them how: Collaboration is a learned behavior and we typically don’t get any training on it, unlike the technical skills of our job (the parts we tend to do alone). Working effectively with others is hard. Recognize this, and as a leader, devote resources to help employees learn skills such as engaging in purposeful conversations; resolving conflicts proactively and creatively; as well as basic project management.

4. Create opportunities for sharing: Provide opportunities for people to get to know each other and step outside their comfort zone of working only with people like them. Use company social events, regular recognition, reverse mentoring — pairing mixed generational workers — or encourage everyone to share good news at the beginning of a meeting to build trust, break down barriers and start building a stronger team.

5. Build on their individual strengths: Build on your team’s strengths instead of working around their weaknesses. Just as cross-functional teams are better equipped to solve big challenges, so are teams with varied personality types. Successful companies will use personality testing (DISC profiles, Myers-Briggs, etc.) to balance teams and to help everyone better understand how to work effectively together. Sharing the results openly from these exercises will help build cohesion.

6. Model the desired behavior: As a leader, you must “walk the walk.” Your team not only asks you for guidance, but they also watch how you behave. What you do has far more impact than what you say. Team members will feel psychologically safer if they see you behaving in a collaborative manner. Frequently ask for your team’s ideas and then go further and ask about their reasoning. Let them see you appreciate and welcome input, and work toward the right solution — not just your solution. The connection will help them feel more valued and willing to help.

Creating a culture where collaboration flourishes is one way to help your company learn faster than the competition, which as Peter Senge said, is the only real sustainable competitive advantage.

Reprinted with permission. GIE Media. Lawn & Landscape March 2022 (c)

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Collaboration has always presented challenges to groups and individuals. Too many people are interested in seeing their idea is taken forward rather than implementing the best idea. Others are afraid to contradict leaders or risk speaking out for fear of rejection or reprisals. Less-experienced team members believe they already have the best idea or can come up with the solution on their own.

But think about it: When stuck on a problem, we often turn to someone else for help. We may bounce ideas off them, we may better understand the problem after trying to explain it to them, or their objective point of view may bring forth a better idea that we hadn’t previously considered.

This collective approach to problem solving is effective because it works as a crowd sourcing model. By tapping into the wisdom of others, you not only access a diversity of thought but create a team that can work together on a solution. Doing this at your company may be easier said than done, but the effort will pay out great dividends.

I often do a simple exercise with groups to show the power of collaboration. I give the group a minute to individually identify possible uses for a simple object, like a paperclip. After a minute, we compare lists. Each person generally comes up with between eight to 20 ideas and when we consolidate the list, we find the number of ideas to be more than four times that number, and as the number and diversity of the participants grows, so does the final list. As an owner, it’s important to harness this power for your business.

This is the first of two columns on the power of collaboration. This month discusses the advantages of collaboration and two types of collaboration you should take advantage of at your company. Next month will focus on key considerations for implementing a collaborative culture at your company.

There are two primary types of collaboration that you should be taking advantage of in your business — external and internal collaboration.

External collaboration. External collaboration happens when you as a leader or members of your team network with their peers and resource experts outside of your company. This can occur informally at professional trade events or through a personal network. More formally it occurs in professionally managed peer groups.

Many leaders read business and trade books, magazines and websites to help solve problems, and to inspire or bring innovative ideas to their companies. Peer groups go beyond just reading about ideas. The owners collaborate with each other on real problems in their own businesses. They bring their experience to share, to challenge, to help and to learn. Talking over ideas with other smart business owners is where the real learning takes place.

Internal collaboration. Internal collaboration is what happens when you empower individuals to seek help, or help others with problems by fostering a sharing and open culture within your company.

Companies will often set up a cross-functional team or task force to work on specific problems, but it is important not to think of collaboration as a tool only to be used on special occasions. It should be part of your culture and used daily to bring the most value to your company.

This year, take the time to collaborate and focus on solving key problems at your company, work together on figuring out how to stay ahead of your competition. Work to build trust, empower your teams to cooperate, and as an owner, learn how to harness the power of resources within and outside your company.

Reprinted with permission. GIE Media. Lawn & Landscape Feb 2022 (c)

The post The Collaborative Advantage: Part 1 appeared first on Bruce Wilson & Company.

Job openings are at record highs, yet many landscape businesses can’t fill positions and struggle to keep up with demand. In a “Help Wanted” market, maybe the solution is right under your nose. If you have a promote-from-within culture, you’re in luck. In fact, promoting from within not only benefits your business, but it’s a tangible way for your company to show employees you are willing to invest in them as emerging leaders.

The upside:

• Promoting from within keeps employees engaged and aspirational
• Career advancement opportunities keep employees motivated and less likely to leave for career advancement elsewhere
• Internal mobility saves time and money on the external hiring process and there’s less risk involved
• Internal candidates are better prepared and more likely to accept new responsibilities
• There is a shorter learning curve
• The ripple effect of watching colleagues grow within has a positive impact on morale

But because every upside has a downside, there are also challenges that come with internal promotions. Moving an individual out of the team into a position of leadership over former peers can cause stress and uneasiness for both the team and the one promoted.

I recently had a client ask me to talk with someone that had just been promoted above his peers to manager. He asked me if I had any advice for the guy, who would be overseeing his former colleagues. Here is some of what I shared:

People are human.

It’s normal that work friendships may change. Sitting at a lunch with the gang complaining about leadership is not an option anymore. You are now the person you used to complain about and that changes a lot of things, including what people expect from you, how people treat you and how they react to you. It will also change what people are willing to share with you (good and bad). Be sensitive, adapt your communication style, be open and honest. Expect that everyone may be awkward at first, but being transparent will go a long way to build trust and respect.

Change is hard.

Don’t try to change everything at once. Give your team time to adjust. Figure out your new rhythm, and be strategic and thoughtful about making structural or personnel changes. If you are too quick to reshuffle positions or terminate an employee, you risk making the rest of the team insecure about their positions.

Self-aware is good.

Ask for objective feedback on your performance as you start in your new role. This will also show your team that you are willing to take and act on constructive feedback. When a leader can do this, it helps set a positive example for the team that continuous improvement works for everyone.

With the current labor shortage, promoting from within may be a viable way to move forward, plus doing so can help team morale.

Before your promotion, you were probably closer or more friendly with some people than with others. As the leader, you need to make sure you aren’t playing favorites. If the team thinks you have a closer relationship with one person, even though you don’t think so, some members may feel slighted and ignored. Make sure you are treating everyone equally, especially as it relates to opportunity and information-sharing.

Rise to the challenge.

Think about how you have behaved in the past. What traits made people like you? As a leader, you may need to modify your behavior to be successful. Set boundaries, communicate, be fair and objective, act in the best interest of the whole and acknowledge the success of your team. The more you allow your team to shine, the more you shine. No one gets promoted in a vacuum. Acknowledge the co-workers who have been there for you on your journey to success.

Keep learning.

You got the promotion because you demonstrated that you were always willing to learn and try new things. The skills for being a good boss aren’t necessarily things you are born with, so keep learning. Find what works best for you and your team and don’t be afraid to adapt your style as needed.

Reprinted with permission. GIE Media. Lawn & Landscape Sept 2021 (c)

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