Steering Your Small Business Through Trying Times

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Adam Witty is the founder and CEO of Advantage|ForbesBooks and the ForbesBooks co-author of the book Authority Marketing. He discusses the steps small business owners can take to steer their companies through these trying times.

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Witty says, “One of the most important things is to be transparent with employees about where the business stands. Share with your team, in calm and rational terms, what impacts you expect on your business and what the business is doing to try to mitigate those negative impacts.”

Tips To Steer Small Businesses Through Trying Times

  • The efforts business leaders should make to communicate with their employees during times of crisis.
  • How leaders can project calm, when they themselves have concerns and may be anxious.
  • How to identify opportunities that could arise for businesses in troubled times.

“In times of great uncertainty, communicate more not less,” he says. “In the absence of information, people tell themselves stories, and I can promise they are bad stories.”

Also, now is a good time to get innovative, Witty says, so brainstorm with your team about alternative ways to bring in revenue if your usual sources have been disrupted. Witty’s own company created new publishing and marketing products aimed at potential clients who may be more cost conscious during these tough economic times.

Finally, business owners and CEOs need to project calm, he says. When a leader is anxious and fearful, everyone will pick up on that and they, too, will become anxious and fearful.

“If your employees see that you are worried, they will begin to think it is all over,” Witty says. “We can't control the situation we find ourselves in. But we can control how we react to the situation, and how we react will dictate our results.”


About Adam Witty

Adam Witty, co-author of Authority Marketing: Your Blueprint to Build Thought Leadership That Grows Business, Attracts Opportunity, and Makes Competition Irrelevant, is the CEO of Advantage|ForbesBooks. Witty started Advantage in 2005 in a spare bedroom of his home. The company helps busy professionals become the authority in their field through publishing and marketing. In 2016, Advantage launched a partnership with Forbes to create ForbesBooks, a business book publisher for top business leaders. Witty is the author of seven books, and is also a sought-after speaker, teacher and consultant on marketing and business growth techniques for entrepreneurs and authors. He has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Investors Business Daily and USA Today, and has appeared on ABC and Fox.