Death. Taxes. Advice. You can always count on the first two, as the saying goes. But advice—usually unsolicited—can be added to the “inevitables” list whenever things go sour. As in today’s economy.
Said advice will be all over the map, too—everything from “cut your losses and head for the hills” to “double up and buy big when valuations are low and sellers are desperate.” A lot of it will be from hucksters and not worth the paper (or HTML page) it was written on. But some of it will be good…damn good.
We’ve been keeping our eyes open for that last category of advice. Much of it comes in the form of lists—10-Things-to-Do-to-Thrive-During-a-Recession kinds of lists. The editors here have scoured the web, including our own three sites, compared notes, and put together our own list of the best of these lists.
Yes, I’ve taken a bit of poetic license in the headline because not all the chosen entries include 10 items—some are shorter, at least one is longer—and some of them aren’t really lists. But they’re all in the spirit of lists, in that they lay out a series of recommendations. Not all specifically deal with the recession, either: items like our own publisher (and angel investor) Steve Woit’s list of Top 10 Mistakes by Entrepreneurs provide insights that are good no matter what the economic climate.
With those caveats aside, in no particular order, our choices are listed below. We only found nine that we liked (well, there was a 10th, but that publication decided to put its list in a members-only archive that costs $124 a year—a decision that probably belongs on a list of what not to do in a downturn). So please drop a note in the comments section if you know of a good one we missed.
1). E-mail From Jason Calacanis: How to Handle Layoffs (Erick Schonfeld, TechCrunch)
Favorite item: Don’t sugar coat it: You need to be 100% honest and up front with people about why you’re doing it and what your decision was based on
2). 10 Tips for Building Revenue in the Ad Recession (Mike Hirshland, Polaris Venture Partners, writing in GigaOm—Hey Mike, What’s up with that?)
Favorite item: Turn remnant inventory into premium
