Recession Anarchist
By Alan Forrest Smith
This is a true story of an entrepreneur hairdresser that beat the last recession!
The bank manager wouldn’t lend me a penny despite the fact I had a plan!
Okay it wasn’t quite a plan, in fact it was a fill-in-the-blanks ‘thing’ that I bought from a business consulting company. I simply got it, filled in the blanks and walked into the bank. What else would you expect from a school-drop out with no qualifications?
The guy was an total idiot. He told me how good his son was at fishing and how he had caught one of the biggest Carps in the local Bridge water canal. He then talked to me about how his other son was going to university to advance his teaching career. He told me some others stuff until finally he said to me …
"what is it you want?" in an elevated, you’re not as good as me voice.
I said to him…
"can I have £25,000 please, I have a plan to grow and move my hairdressing salon"
He slowly slid his cheap glasses down his oily nose, looked over the top of them with a slightly frowned look and asked for my business plan.
I nervously handed the plan over to him that I had filled out just hours before over breakfast!
He looked, he asked and he finally said …
"are you kidding, you’ll be B.U.S.T in no time!
And with that response I walked away from my bank feeling totally deflated and beat.
Around 2 hours later I decided to sign for the lease on the new building anyway. I had no cash. I really wanted it. I knew in my heart I could really make it happen.
After just 18 months I had the number one hair and beauty salon in a town saturated with another 35 salons!
And here’s a point worth considering … it was in the thick of the last recession in the UK. I proudly I moved my salon from 250 square feet to 2,000 square feet.
I made it happen.
HOW?
By becoming a recession Anarchist, a dissenter, a rebel, a mutineer, a nonconformist – call it as you want – I simply created my own rules and played by them, not theirs (the media and system)
So let me explain.
I was reading just yesterday in the news paper how one of the UKs biggest stores are now slashing their marketing budget. In fact it gave a huge list of stores doing something very similar.
And that is something most will do during a recession. It’s what I call ‘subservient-sheep-thinking’ or in others words, do-as-your-told, believe what we say, follow and say nothing mindset.
So because the ‘system’ the media, the shop next door, the financial times, the wall street journal say …
"tighten your belts, recession is coming" … THEY DO AS they are told!
And what is really interesting is who gives the reports of coming doom and gloom?
Is it twenty something reporters that have only ever worked in and office and have zero experience in real business?
Is it hardened wall street people that act almost like lemmings in any situation?
Is it a news guy looking for a headline to sell his/her newspaper or magazine?
Is it people that have never in their life taken a risk, run a business, put their life on the line for a business, risked everything to make business work?
The answer is simple most of the people that are feeding you endless crap of approaching apocalyptic downturn have no idea when it comes to being in business so my question is this …
"why do we hold on to almost everything the report?"
So back to my recession beating salon.
Although we grew a massive amount during this recession we hardly spent a bean on adverting and marketing.
Here’s just a few things we did.
~ discovered guerrilla marketing by Jay Conrad Levinson and used almost every page in his book to create zero cost advertising.
~ kept busy and focused on the job in hand.
~ ignored external reports from everyone that had nothing to do with my business about how crazy I was and how it’ll fail.
~ never once gave in (although I had moments) until the business was flying.
~ we had a list of at least 5 marketing strategies that cost almost nothing we would carry out 6 days a week!
So here’s what I think.
You need to be a media Anarchist, a recession anarchist to survive. Throw away the rule book, create your own success and remember what the guys that give all this news and bad reports usually have zero experience with what you are doing.
I believe 2009 will be one of my best years ever, do you?
It can be.
Take control of your own life. make your own decisions.
Become a…
Recession Anarchist!
I’d love your comment on this.
Don’t forget to add your website to the comment. This blog gets a lot of traffic. I’d love to send some your way.
Regards,
Alan Forrest Smith
http://www.OrangeBeetle.com
http://www.OrangeBeetleFamily.com
http://www.BecomeaCopywriter.co.uk
http://www.AlanForrestSmith.com/blog
http://www.OrangeBeetle.com/blog
http://www.SalonPunk.com
Oh yes! Thank You!
I’ve done the same and will do so again. Wasn’t quite like yours, but geez you’re right those who listen will go down the dreary lane and then wonder why.
I’m joining your media Anarchist group. Let’s keep moving forward on past 2009. I’ve taken control, than you very much.
Dawna Brown
dawnawrites.com
Running a business at the moment is hard. Very few are taking the risk of making a decision. My philosophy is in tandem with “Recession Anarchist” but Business Reality is pricisely that. However someone once said “In difficulty lies opportunity” and I believe this to be true. So follow your instincts coupled with a little caution!!
At last, a voice of common sense.I am totally fed up of the irresponsible way that the media are allowed to cover the recession, credit crunh or whatever you want to call it.No doubt things are bad, but I believe that you need to be responsible for yourself, so with all the gloom comes oppertunity.I love Napoleon Hills quote “With every adversity,there is a seed of equal or greater benefit”.
Tough times never last, but tough people do. The good thing about the so-called recession is that it forces us business people to actually be great in what we do.
About 20 years ago I visited one of California’s redwood forests for the first time. The park ranger was describing the natural cycle of fires that had existed in the forests for thousands of years before man had taken over the care of the trees.
The fires killed the insects that would destroy the trees while hardening the tree’s bark to protect the tree from the insects and from fire, it killed the undergrowth that might sap the nutrients away from the tree while the burning turned the undergrowth into a nitrogen rich fertilizer.
Now man has kept the fire out of those forests for a hundred years. Are the trees better off?
It seems that nature has a similar story about everything we run up against; a little struggle makes us stronger. The fires, the problems of life need not necessarily be bad. “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so” – Shakespeare
Alan is saying take the recession as an opportunity and think a little differently about life, about our hopes and aspirations.
God says: “fear not.”
An old Spanish proverb says, “A life lived in fear is only half lived.”
Franklin Roosevelt said of the great depression, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”
Henry Ford said, “One of the great discoveries a man makes, one of his great surprises, is to find he can do what he was afraid he couldn’t do.
Emerson said, “we are prisoners of our ideas.”
Shakespeare said, “Make not your thoughts your prisons.”
Washington Irving said, “Little minds attain and are subdued by misfortunes; but great minds rise above them.
Churchill said, “A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.”
Let’s come down on the side of God and of Churchill and Roosevelt and of those who have succeeded greatly in history.
I worked behind the chair for 20 years for someone other than myself! When my baby was about to graduate from high school (in 2005) I decided to open my own salon…to make a difference in the lives of people! It has been one of the hardest things I have ever done, yet I am a fighter, one who never gives up, although I have found myself on my knees more in the last three years than durring any other time of my life! I opened a 3200 sq. ft. salon that is WAY too large…but OH so beautiful! I have had hairdressers come and go…boy do they GO! Most hairdressers want it all leaving very little behind to help cover the cost of running such a place…so they go! In April 2008, I was left with myself to make it happen! I felt I was at my lowest possible point and it was very hard on me! I had lost all the hairdressers that called Elequa home and faced with having to shut my doors. I gave it back to GOD! I asked him for help and told him that if it was HIS will that Elequa be there to help other’s, I would be there…if not, I would fight to the bitter end…but would face that end with courage! Well, it has not been easy nor do I expect it will however, I have learned so much about the busines side of the world and am better prepared to go into the future! 2009 will be wonderful and our salon is growing! I am hirring like minded people who will make lots of money working within Elequa’s walls…and they see that! I am excited for the future yet I know my work has just begun! I have found that marketing with postcards that we hand out personally works the best for us! We get such a return on those things and they are not all that costly! It is hard to put money out on marketing when you are not cover all the bills…so postcards are what we are doing and it so far so good! Thanks for your great work! Blessings! Tracie
Alan your story struck a chord with me.
Back in 1982, in my early thirties, as a company salesman, I yearned to start my own business and needed 25K to get going. My Dad lent me 10K from the sale of his house; all I needed then was a bit of help from my bank manager. He was in his late twenties, thought he was a whiz kid, better than most. I too presented what I considered to be a sound plan. After a condescending lecture all he would agree to was 5K, secured against my house.
Like you. I went ahead anyway, on a shoestring, short of lolly. Ten years later I had built a business employing 13 people with a turnover of £1.25 million. Then, during the last recession a plc entered the scene, undercut us and snuffed us out.
I started again, of course, but your story reminded me of the powerful inner drive that engulfed me. No one was going to tell me that I couldn’t live my dream. I was now determined to prove my first Bank manager wrong.
Sometimes it seems that we need adversity and a dose of external negativity to motivate us. He certainly lit my fuse!
This financial downturn is another challenge for all of us. Funny isn’t it how the people who have control over our financial affairs, who make us grovel and scrape when we need a leg up, are the ones who have now demonstrated their incompetence and lack of prudence and business planning.
Now we are witnessing the banks borrowing from us, the taxpayers!
Funny how the ‘rulers’ have created their own chaos.
Coincidentally, it is only just recently that I discovered you and your material.
So, luckily, I can draw on my own inner resolve from past experience to cock a snook at this downturn, and draw inspiration from you as a seasoned mentor.
As they say, see you on the other side!
It does not matter if there is a recession, when you start with nothing.I made money buying and selling houses in the last property slump after all I had nothing to lose, as the ad says Just Do it
I’m with you Alan!
Most definitely a Recession Anarchist.
The media make everything sound at least a hundred times worse than they really are. I don’t know if the thirst for bad news is just a UK thing or if it’s global.It does seem to be worse here. The press just love to go from one disaster to the next. So let’s ignore their scaremongering and make 2009 the best year yet!
Absolutely right!
To add another quote to the list – Sir Richard Branson, a dyslexic who left school with one A-level: “Screw it – let’s do it!”
When the going gets tough, the tough get going…
I got made redundant at the end of December and started my own small business making bespoke screen-capture videos.
It’s tough but so far I love it!
M