How to prepare your company for recession: systems, hiring, and growth

Executive overview

Businesses are cutting budgets, credit is tightening, and the hiring market has shifted back toward employers. The instinct to pull back is wrong. Downturns are when focused operators gain ground.

Three levers matter most: keep or increase marketing spend while competitors retreat, fix your hiring process to filter for quality fast, and lead by the same core values you demand of your team.

Founders who get maniacally focused on the right things during a downturn come out ahead — those who coast or blame conditions fall behind.

Reading the economic signal

• 17 of 21 clients at one marketing firm made cuts last quarter — a reliable leading indicator.
• Rising interest rates are reducing consumer and business credit appetite.
• Government messaging downplays recession risk; actual business behaviour tells a different story.
• The Bay Area layoff wave has created a trickle-down effect — employees are now more worried about job security than chasing offers.

Marketing through a downturn

• When competitors cut marketing, available mindshare gets cheaper — spend more, not less.
• One CEO redirected his ad budget entirely into making in-person events world-class, converting existing clients into referral engines.
• Referral activation works better when you script the message: tell customers exactly what to say.
• Women make 85% of household buying decisions and share referrals far more readily than men.
• A woman over 40 influences purchasing decisions for roughly six people (her household, her parents, her in-laws).
• Target referral messaging to women; use female copywriters for that segment.
• Polarising ad copy ("if your lazy husband won't clean up the garage…") outperformed neutral messaging in home services.

Hiring for quality, not volume

• Require a short video submission before reviewing any resume — 30 seconds of video reveals fit faster than a 30-minute interview.
• Send candidates your Vivid Vision first; only those who respond enthusiastically are worth pursuing.
• Cast a wide net to find candidates, then spend time only on the seven best — not screening out the other 93.
• When listing job requirements, women typically won't apply unless they meet 6–7 of 7 criteria; men apply at 3 of 7. Be precise and intentional.
• Structured referral bonuses work: set the payout at ~50% of first-year comp, paid in tranches at months 12, 24, and 36 — it doubles as a retention programme.

Core values and systems leadership

• Core values must be short phrases, not single words and not acronyms.
• Be willing to fire people who break them — otherwise they are aspirational values, not core ones.
• Entrepreneurs often set systems for others but exempt themselves; employees notice.
• Lead by example: show up on time, follow the same processes, live the values visibly.
• If you can't commit to enforcing values, rename them "guiding principles" and stop pretending otherwise.

COO-to-CEO transitions and leadership tiers

• At 100–300 employees, companies build a first true senior leadership team — different from the managers who got them there.
• Senior executives bring strategic insight, P&L accountability, and leadership soft skills that line managers lack.
• COO and CEO DNA differ sharply: COOs are high fact-finders and high follow-throughs; entrepreneurial CEOs are high quick-starts.
• A COO moving to CEO must shift from tactical execution to vision, culture, and strategy — and learn to grow people rather than solve their problems.
• Most COOs do not want to be CEOs; the profiles rarely overlap.