Reinventing a business forces you to think and act differently than you did before. The transition can be difficult to make. For most people, business reinvention is a one-time, or at least once-in-a-long-time, type of activity.

It’s in these situations that seeking outside guidance from someone who constantly reinvents businesses on a weekly basis can be helpful. Here are some resources of mine that you may find useful. I’ll share each one and explain what it is, and if one resonates with you, I suggest that you consider taking advantage of it.

Resource #1 : Free Email Recession Survival Tips and Strategies

The first resource you should definitely take advantage of is my free email newsletter. My email articles and alerts provide tips, reminders, and case study examples of how to survive, and even thrive, in a recession.

I publish issues when I have something useful to say; otherwise I prefer to not waste your time. I hate it when people waste my time and especially hate it when useless email newsletters clutter my email inbox, don’t add any value, and distract me from real work. This is a pet peeve of mine. So I aim to keep the issues in my newsletter actually useful – a refreshing change for you.

The other nice benefit of my free email newsletter is that I answer questions from readers. If you have a question, ask me. If you don’t know what to do next in your business, ask me. Like a newspaper columnist, I write and publish my answers for all my readers to see. If your situation and question are specific to your business, I tend to restate the question so that the answer is useful not only to you, but to others as well.

To subscribe to this free newsletter, just visit www.askvictor.com. Notice that the website address reflects the spirit of the newsletter. When you don’t know what to do, just “ask Victor.”

If this sounds valuable to you, I would suggest visiting www.askvictor.com now while you still remember to do so.

Resource #2 : Current Business Reinvention Case Studies

In this book, all the examples I provide are based on historical success stories. The natural tendency for some people is to assume that what has worked for the past 136 years might not work today.

To prove that it does work, I’ve assembled a number of case study videos of companies that have successfully reinvented themselves recently. These are small and medium-sized businesses that made dramatic improvements in their business during the recession that began in 2008.

These modern-day case studies have two commonalities. First, these business owners followed the four recession-proof rules covered in the first part of this book. The second commonality is that they are all very different from one another.

No two success stories are the same. They come from wildly different industries. Some are bigger companies. Others are smaller ones. But all of them are unique in their own ways. This is precisely the point I want to emphasize. The proven path to recession survival is to not take the most common path.

The video case studies I’ve assembled convey this key idea. To see how business owners like you successfully reinvented their businesses, visit www.victorprocess.com.

Resource #3 : Seminars, Tool Kits, and Home-Study Programs

If you are interested in acquiring more skills to recession-proof your business, you can find my resource library and a schedule of upcoming seminars at www.victorcheng.com. The resource library and event schedule are continually evolving to meet the needs of my clients and are kept up-to-date based on current economic conditions.

Feel free to visit www.victorcheng.com to see the current set of available resources. However, expect those resources to change.

To be alerted of changes without having to visit the website regularly, sign up for my email newsletter at www.askvictor.com, as major updates to my main website are announced in my newsletter from time to time.

Resource #4 : Individualized Business Coaching

Finally, I do provide business coaching services to business owners and CEOs who are fairly determined to ensure that their businesses survive a recession.

There is a wide range of coaching programs available. To request more information about these options, visit www.victorcheng.com/coaching.

Closing Thoughts

When I’ve given speeches about the topics discussed within this book, people often come up to me afterward to share what they thought were the big ideas from my talk. Invariably, the feedback tends to center around three key takeaways. Since it’s a fitting way to recap everything we’ve covered, I thought I’d share them with you.

The first takeaway is that there really is hope for businesses to survive even the severest of recessions. This isn’t cheerleading, rah rah, be enthusiastic for no good reason. The feeling of hope comes from the reassuring certainty provided by history, facts, and guidance.

The second takeaway is that you can’t just sit back and take a recession passively. You have to be proactive, deliberately seek out opportunities, and adapt to new circumstances.

I’ve had people come up to me after a speech and tell me that in the middle of my talk they made major decisions about their businesses. Some decide to drop certain parts of their businesses, where the demand isn’t there and they reluctantly admit they have nothing unique to offer, in order to focus on fledgling but much more promising opportunities where they see demand and a chance at offering something unique.

Other business owners tell me that their businesses have been doing well, but they aren’t sure why they are doing well. Now that they understand the principles behind a recession-proof business and realize they have one, they’ve decided they’re going to stop worrying for no good reason. Instead, they’ve decided on the spot to aggressively push their advantageous position rather than hunker down, which is what they thought they were “supposed” to do in a recession.

All this feedback encourages me. Because the overall lesson to this point is that taking proactive measures is much more likely to solve your problems than will passive worrying.

Finally, the last big takeaway is having the “aha” moment that reinventing your business is the solution to a business that’s struggling because of a recession. The process of figuring out what your market wants right now (not two years ago), taking that information to heart, and reinventing your business around that new information seems to resonate with many people.

It helps them understand why their businesses, or parts of their businesses, are struggling. It also allows them to channel any anxious energy they have in a productive direction. If your business is outdated given the times, it’s time to reinvent a “new” one to better match what buyers now want.

In closing, let me make a final comment. When I began writing this book, it was my goal to share stories and concepts that would open your eyes to an alternative perspective on running a business in a recession, provide you with some reassurance based on history, and be genuinely useful.

More than influencing how you think and feel about your business, it was my real hope to influence the actions you take in running your business – helping you survive if you’re struggling, and encouraging you to be more aggressive if you’re already doing well.

The downside of authorship is that it’s historically a one-way communication medium. Did anyone read the book? Did anyone use it? Do they love it or hate it? And why? These are the questions we authors ask ourselves, but we rarely get complete answers. So I have a favor to ask of you. Email me at [email protected] and send me your feedback (I’ll take the good and the bad) and especially your success stories. And if you’d like to stay in touch, consider subscribing to my free email newsletter at www.askvictor.com.

Finally, I want to wish you the best of luck in creating your own recession-proof business.