A recession is possibly the best time to launch a new business or to expand an existing one. First, the media goes nuts during a recession.

How To Make Money In A Recession - StartupTipsDaily

They turn a little bit of negativity into a mountain of pessimism. This makes a lot of people financially paranoid. People become socially conditioned to expect the worst. During such times people get scared and start cutting back on expenses.

They cut some of the fluff from their lives. We can live without new credit cards and gas-guzzling SUVs for a while.

Those non-essentials can be put off. We also become more sensitive to receiving genuine value. Consequently, businesses that provide genuine value can actually do better during a recession. More people will flock to those businesses in tough times, while the fluff businesses will become more and more paranoid.

In the USA there are a lot of fluff businesses. Many are based on the moocher mindset , trying to extract money without providing fair value in exchange. A lot of the dead or dying financial companies are like that.

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Erin and I own a Honda, despite the fact that we could have gotten a significant discount on GM cars because two of my family members used to work for GM. We looked at some GM cars and quickly concluded they sucked. They buy into lame money-making programs, join and promote useless MLM schemes, and fall prey to scammers. They make it their top priority.

They think about it constantly. In the end this sort of thing eventually self-destructs. The only way to succeed with it in the long run is to find lots of suckers and basically rip them off in order to enrich yourself. As a general rule, the people I know who are most focused on trying to make more money this year are doing worse, not better.

A few have lost or are in the process of losing their homes. The exceptions are those that are able to sufficiently kill their conscience, so they can remove any incongruencies about ripping people off.

But again, this is a pretty rare exception. Most people would rather deal with scarcity than knowingly rip people off to get ahead, so they just make the bare minimum to meet their needs and avoid getting ahead. Creating value means expressing your unique talents and skills in a way that can potentially benefit others.

So how can you receive value such as money in return? I see this problem a lot with creative types such as would-be artists, musicians, and writers. A goodly number of these people are currently seeing their homes in foreclosure now. The sad thing is that some of these people work very hard. But they spend too much time creating and not nearly enough time delivering.

They watch people they consider hacks pull ahead of them. I went down that road myself. In the late 90s, I went bankrupt, even though I was working very long hours and creating a lot of potential value in the form of a computer game my company was developing. I relied on publishers to do that, and for various reasons the game was never released. That resulted in years of wasted effort, aside from the valuable learning experience that is.

So I know where this road leads because I traveled it. Anyone can do it. Anyone can sign up for affiliate programs or join an MLM program or become a reseller. If this is your primary means of generating income, your long-term outlook is weak. The better this works for you, the more it will draw competitors into your field.

Eventually everyone will be working harder and harder for scraps. This happens all the time. This strategy can be especially weak during a recession, as more people turn to less expensive sources for the same value you deliver, squeezing your profit margins thinner and thinner. A year later their niche is flooded with competitors doing the same thing. And hardly anyone is earning decent income from it. The most viable long-term strategy is to create AND deliver value.

You can mix and match other strategies with it, but this should be your primary method of income generation. If you get good at creating and delivering value, you can basically write your own ticket and enjoy lots of abundance.

I know a lot of people are dealing with financial challenges these days. Las Vegas is basically the foreclosure capital of the USA right now. Generally speaking, people who CREATE and DELIVER value are doing just fine.

Many of these people are seeing their incomes go up during this time.

This leads many of them to panic, so they head even further away from creating and delivering value such as by chasing lame money-making schemes , which only quickens the decline to insolvency. People fall into this trap all the time. I used to fall for it too. This is absolutely the wrong strategy though. I know that must sound counter-intuitive. Money is simply a medium for exchanging value. Money is what you receive in exchange for the value you create and deliver.

If you can increase your outflow of value creation and delivery, you can increase your inflow of money received. This approach is untenable and will ultimately collapse. I actually figured this out right around the time I was declaring bankruptcy. I was totally broke, yet I found a way to focus my energy on creating and delivering value instead of on trying to scrape together more money.

Within about six months, I was back on my feet financially, and year after year my financial situation just kept getting better. The time is going to pass anyway, and this habit will serve you well for life. Be patient and get started. I expect that will be an even better year for us, regardless of what happens to the economy. How do I know? So our career paths enjoy much more stability. Secondly, while others are tightening up and cutting costs, Erin and I focus our attention on creating and delivering more value to people.

The way we go about this may seem a bit counter-intuitive at first glance. For example, I wrote a lot about diet and health this year, such as by sharing my experiences with the raw food diet. That may not appear to be a very sexy topic. Some people find it totally uninteresting and would prefer that I write about other things.

However, such articles can provide a lot of value to people who are interested in those topics. For some people the benefits have been amazing. They certainly do a lot of good. Many bloggers post content with the intention of getting something, such as links, attention, or sales. Instead I remind myself to stay focused on creating and delivering value.

I know that when I keep my focus on that side, the rest takes care of itself. This is an example of such an article. But I also know that for many of the people who take the time to read it, this article has the potential to create some subtle yet helpful shifts. It may give someone the extra insight needed to get moving in a new direction.

Someone, somewhere will receive positive value from it. Just provide some kind of benefit to someone who could use a little encouragement in the right direction. So how does one generate income from creating and delivering value? As it turns out, making money is the easy part. If you can create and deliver value to people, the income opportunities will literally come to you. People will practically line up with ways for you to make money. If you get good at creating value, you can connect with other people who are good at delivering value.

They deliver your value, such as by selling it, and they pay you a royalty, commission, or licensing fee. For example, Hay House offered me a book deal last year, so I wrote a book called Personal Development for Smart People , and it was published in September. I might even receive royalties from this book for the rest of my life, especially since the content is timeless. Also, writing a book has lead to other opportunities, such as paid speaking engagements. So in this case I created the value the book , but others deliver it.

Now suppose you get good at delivering value. For example, my blog is great at delivering value. Then I split the profits from sales with the publisher. I earn six figures a year just from doing that. The product publishers come to me. I get way more offers for this sort of thing than I can handle. This is easy residual income.

You pay them a royalty on the sales, or they pay you as an affiliate. Once again you generate ongoing residual income. Thirdly, you can plug your value into your own delivery system. This is something I intend to explore in It simply means that I could create and sell my own products direct. Many other bloggers have already done this with great success, releasing e-books, audio programs, DVDs, etc.

They create the value and sell it directly to their visitors. A big chunk of the income I received in was from work I did in previous years.

I could do no work for all of and just live off the residual income I know is coming. Years ago I decided that this is how I wanted to set up my financial life, and then I focused on creating and delivering value to make it work.

Distraction is perhaps your biggest obstacle. Getting sucked into a job, where you have to trade hours for dollars, is just as bad. These are dead ends you should avoid by any means. You have to stay focused on creating and delivering value. Everything that detracts from this focus should be viewed as an expense, obstacle, or just plain evil. Getting a job is such a bad idea if you want to enjoy long-term financial abundance.

Seriously, you are better off being broke and homeless, so you can focus on creating and delivering value from that place. It will only distract you further. Having a job would be 10x worse. As a homeless person, I could stay hungry and focused on creating and delivering value. I might not have the means to produce much value at first, but at least I could get out there in front of people and deliver something. It would be a good start on the right path. Homelessness is a huge upgrade from traditional employment.

Have you ever talked to a homeless person? Some of them find the idea of having a job insulting — it represents a loss of freedom. Sure you smell better and can get a nicer place to live, but you lose your humanity in the process. Fortunately, employment is an easy problem to fix. If you have a job, just stop showing up. The rest will take care of itself. Is creating and delivering value harder than getting a job?

I would say no, not at all. Having a job is a lot harder. With a job you still have to provide some form of value usually, but all the residual benefits you produce turn into residual income for someone else. I could get a job as a writer and get paid a certain amount for each word I write.

But then someone else owns my work, and all the residuals from that work go to them. Alternatively, I could write articles for my own website and retain the freedom to republish them as books someday, use them to generate traffic and thereby income , license them for various publications, use them to promote my book, etc. The correct strategy is a no-brainer really.

Trying to make money is itself a distraction. When you focus on making money, too many things will catch your eye. Creating and delivering value is simpler. This focus is well-aligned with truth, love, and power. Despite having written some popular articles on the subject, I spend little time thinking about money these days. The reason this works for me is that I focus on creating and delivering value.

New opportunities just keep showing up. I remember when I was at a conference in where Dr. Wayne Dyer was speaking. He went on to say something along these lines: At the time it was hard for me to relate to this mindset.

It seems a bit too unrealistic and exceptional. But still… I wondered what it would be like to live at that level, where you could just assume abundance and it would be there for you.

No striving or struggling. I doubt very much that Dr. Dyer focuses a lot of attention on trying to make money. I think most of his attention is elsewhere, wrapped up in the material he writes about. Dyer has internalized the concept of creating and delivering value. I have it on good authority that his books sell quite well too. We share the same publisher.

Incidentally, Erin and I finally had the chance to meet Dr. We only spoke with him for a few minutes. He was very warm and friendly. I can totally relate. Ironically the real problem was that by focusing on making money, I was making a huge mistake. The key is where you focus your attention. If money is really what you seek, good luck with that. Another corrupt form of thinking is to focus your attention on attracting financial abundance.

Law of Attraction promoters often present this as a good idea. I once thought it was a good idea too. It will just run you in circles.

The irony is that in order to enjoy real financial abundance, you want to be thinking about money as little as possible. I know it sounds like focusing on money is the right idea.

If you need to take several years to figure that out the hard way like I did, be my guest. And it leads to a really fun and exciting life too. The nice thing about having plenty of money is that you can largely ignore it. You can focus your attention on doing more important, more interesting, and more enjoyable things.

Then you come full circle and realize that you never needed money at all. You just needed the courage to go after your dreams full steam ahead, even when you were dead broke. You needed to stop hiding behind a lack of money as an excuse not to live your best life.

I learned that I could create and deliver value even when I had no money and few resources. I focused on creating something people would like and enjoy. Then I got it into their hands and made sure they enjoyed it. Back then it was a simple computer game. Today I do pretty much the same thing with blogging.

The content is different, but the overall strategy is the same. If you just create something and share it online, other people will spread it around if they like it. Let it encourage you to go deeper within yourself, so you can be more genuine and authentic.

Become more real and less phony. Keep working at becoming a more expressive creator until people start to take notice. Personally I think that economic recessions, including the current one, are a good thing.

Many of those companies were doing a good job at one time, but they failed to keep pace. As our values change, our companies need to adapt.

Consider the notion of bailing out the failing U. Is this a good idea? An auto company bailout is definitely not in the best interests of our country, nor is it in the best interests of the auto workers themselves.

And FWIW I think the whole financial bailout was just as dumb. I have family members who used to work for GM for years not in the automobile division of the company though. As I mentioned previously, Erin and I bought a Japanese car in even though we could have gotten a great price break on a GM model with the family discount. During a recession some companies are going to die off.

To artificially prop up the proven market losers is just dumb. Sure, it will have some rippling consequences. But those ripples are necessary.

How to make money in a recession

We need that sort of self-correction to prevent bigger problems down the road. We need to send a message that if you fail to create and deliver value people genuinely want, your business will ultimately fail, and no amount of political lobbying will save you. Of course we get the opposite result when too many people think that the point of life is to chase dollars, especially our politicians. Can you blame them though? Have you ever been known to fall into the same trap?

If it takes years, it takes years. Giving more money to the losers is a stupid strategy. Similarly, if you work for a company that is falling out of sync with creating and delivering value that people want, you should indeed lose your job. Becoming obsolete is a trap that can be avoided.

Ask yourself these questions: If you stopped doing what you do, who would care? Who would object loudly? People will definitely care. Your contribution will be seriously missed.

There will practically be rioting in the streets. If, however, hardly anyone cares that you stopped, that should tell you something.

What you were doing was either unnecessary or easily replaced. You held back from shining as brightly as you could have. You have a choice of whether or not you want this to be your fate. You may have been conditioned from a young age to view your life path in terms of getting a job and making money. But in order to get there, you have to focus on doing what really matters. You must clear your head of all that socially conditioned nonsense and stop doing what everyone else is doing.

Start living as a conscious human being, not a mindless minion. Focus on expressing your child-like creativity on a daily basis. Stop thinking so much about making money, and focus on connecting with people and sharing your creations with them instead. You learned it in kindergarten. My five-year-old son and eight-year-old daughter pretty much have it figured out. It took me about 5 hours to write and edit this 6,word article. But I got inspired by an idea, so I sat down and wrote the whole thing in a single sitting.

My investment of time and energy on the creative side was fixed. But this article will keep delivering value to people for many years to come. Money is basically a non-entity. It all starts with the choice of where you focus your attention. You just needed the courage to start expressing the real you under the conditions you find yourself in this very moment. But somehow I think it still fits. Receive Steve's new articles by email. Here are my recommendations for products and services I've reviewed that can improve your results.

This is a short list since it only includes my top picks. How to Make Lots of Money During a Recession December 9, If you buy into this social hysteria, you become a victim too. The Smart Approach to Making Money There is a smarter approach, however.

Take note that the keywords here are CREATE and DELIVER. A Choice of Mindset I know a lot of people are dealing with financial challenges these days.

A Record Year Financially, was the best year ever for Erin and me. Why are we enjoying increases while others are experiencing decline? Turning Value Into Income So how does one generate income from creating and delivering value? A job is just a monstrous distraction. Employment is the ultimate form of destitution. That seems totally pointless to me. What About the Economy? You made my day! Stay in Touch Join more than 80, subscribers to receive Steve's personal growth updates by email.

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