There has been a lot of discussion going around about the similarities between now and 2007. This conversation is happening in the marketplace, but I’ve also been involved in similar discussions with leadership teams throughout a fair number of industries. Despite organizational differences, the conversations are strikingly similar.

While we can name similarities (marketplace pressures, expected downside to the economy and organizational distress), I’m more focused today on what tactical steps individuals can take in order to be in a better position when whatever challenges come. 

There are two aspects that are relevant. First, and I’ve said this many times before, I believe that organizations have an absolute obligation to help their employees prepare for the market downturn and correction that experts are calling for. Secondly, that while that’s nice in theory, the reality is that the responsibility for preparing still comes down to you, the individual. 

My time working in Executive Communications, Public Relations and Investor Relations during the financial crisis gave me a unique perspective and strong lessons in what good leadership and effective communication looked like during times of difficulty. It’s where I earned my “chops,” and these lessons inform my work today. 

This week’s podcast outlines what executives did and did not do well during that difficult time. The successful executives were able to name and understand their multiple audiences; articulate value in a contextual way, and maintain a larger perspective that allowed them to make short-term decisions towards a longer-term vision. It was a tall order, and those who couldn’t do it well became, what I call, “victims of a down economy.” 

Today, we see similar stresses, especially for individuals in corporate who are “feeling” the difficulty around the corner. They can read the news, yet are unsure or feel overwhelmed on where to begin. 

While we can’t control when or how the next crash is coming, we know that one is guaranteed. And our focus shouldn’t be on when or how it comes, but rather stacking our deck so that we are in a better position than the masses when needed. This means taking the time to strengthen our network today, before the rest of the industry scrambles to do so. It means taking a short time to go through the exercise of understanding and being able to articulate our value in a meaningful way, and also understanding who our audiences are going to be. 

More details on the podcast, and I encourage you to begin the work. Those who get started sooner will have a much easier transition through the next few years.

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Click Here for an Unedited Transcript of the Podcast

Welcome to bellwether. We’re gonna talk about similarities and processes and cyclical stuff. It’s all kind of fun, but it’s very, very relevant. What I wanna talk about today and what I’m going to talk about today. I wanna talk about similarities between now and 2007, which I’ve talked a little bit about in the past. I’m gonna talk about it again because it’s extremely relevant and every single one, every single one of my clients, I’m having a conversation in some way about this and this isn’t just relevant today. It’s gonna be relevant later. Everything is cyclical. We know about that, but I wanna chat about, uh, similarities between now and 2007. And when I say 2007, for those who may not, um, who may, it may not trigger particular memories, the same memories that I have 2007 was the lead up to the financial crisis and, and the downturn and, and all of that negative, uh, difficult time that, that people reference.Um, now I don’t wanna talk about similarities today in terms of investing, because that’s where most of it goes. When we talk about economy, we talk about how people can invest in different ways and prepare for it that way. I don’t wanna talk about that because this isn’t the form for that. What I, I do wanna talk about similarities between now and then I want to talk about what I learned back then, because what you may not know about me and my corporate career, I was working in executive communications, PR investor relations, business strategy, all that stuff in the financial industry during the financial crash. So I had a lot of exposure to executives who did things well and not. So I’m gonna talk about that, what they did well, and didn’t, and then I wanna talk about you as an individual, how you can set yourself up for, um, whatever it is that’s coming.So I will say two things right at the right at the top. Well, maybe three things, one, um, we know that business is cyclical. We know that it’s a process. So when we look at challenges that are coming, we could find similarities to the past and we make good decisions based on that data. That’s what we do. We take examples from what happened before, what happened? How is that relevant today? Let’s reflect, okay. How do we make decisions going forward? That informs our decisions today. Some of these cycles are extremely long. Like if you read the Ray Dalio books, he’s looking at ’em over centuries and, and everything else, some of them are much shorter, like market corrections and everything are every what, 10 years or so give or take 10 to 15 years. And that’s where we’re looking at ourselves now. Um, so that’s that two, I don’t wanna talk again.I don’t want to get into, um, investing right now because that’s, I just don’t want to do that. Right? Whatever, invest how you wanna invest. I’m not gonna tell you what’s right or wrong, but I want to talk about how you’re getting yourself ready personally, individually for this, because there’s a bigger picture than just how you’re investing, um, and trying to time the market. I’m not looking to time the market. That’s also stupid. Number three, I will say you as an individual. Well, you know, before I get to you as an individual, I wanna start everything right at the top. I have a belief. This is my number three. I have a belief that I’m all organizations have an absolute I’ve said this before. I’m gonna keep saying it. They have an absolute obligation to prepare their people for whatever change is coming. I’m talking to boardrooms right now.And these conversations are happening in, in every executive team is discussing it. This isn’t filtering down to the people in your organization. Yet they hear the experts talking about what’s coming. It is just, it’s not expensive to do this. It’s about telling them, you know, giving them insight into the decisions that are being made, but also giving them the skillset or ability to prepare for this on an individual basis. Um, one is the right thing to do. Uh, and two, it, it, it will build a loyalty, um, and is revamping your people strategy. And it’s setting yourself up for success later. So I won’t dive into that, but that is a firm belief of mine. If you are running an organization and you have not been doing this call me because I can, this is I have the plan. And the, the thing that we could structure this out, it’s a cascade.Every client is talking about this, but let’s get into number four because this is what I want to talk about today. You as an individual, right? It’s nice to think that the organization would have this obligation and do those things for you and, and take care of you and do all that stuff. Um, but ultimately most of them aren’t gonna do it. And that’s, that’s just a reality, right? We could, we could talk about the organization is supposed to be preparing you for all kinds of stuff and two-way loyalty and all kind of nonsense. Right? It’s great. In theory, it doesn’t happen. In reality, you, as an individual are solely responsible for preparing yourself for whatever happens in the next 12 to 24 months. Okay. You could blame people for what happened. You can blame people for whatever, but ultimately it’s up to you. And I’m gonna talk to you about that today.So we’re gonna talk first about similarities between now and 2007. I’m gonna tell you what the executives did well, and didn’t do well in 2007. And then I’m gonna wrap this up by what can you, as an individual take responsibility for what steps can you take to set yourself up? Uh, so that relatively against your peers and everybody else, you’re in a, a much better position to, to execute on whatever it is. You have to execute when, when things go haywire. So, um, we don’t know when, so let’s talk about similarities, um, between now and 2007. Um, I won’t get into to how it happens, but, but if we were to take just a big picture, look at now versus then the cycle, okay. We’re, we’re looking at the, the economic cycle without getting to very broad strokes. Um, there’s a debt bubble. Okay. We got it.Housing crisis back then. It’s credit today. Um, when we take a look at the buy now pay later stuff and, and all of that. And amongst the other things, money is cheap. There’s tons of money out there. Um, firms are taking hits, significant hits the economy. Like people are pulling back, they’re starting to feel it. They’re not spending money. It was financial back then. We’re seeing it’s already in technology. Technology firms have already been laying people off. Um, so there’s a lot of organizational distress that’s happening. Um, that a lot of employees are talking to me about. We feel it. We don’t know what’s gonna happen. I’m nervous. Am I still gonna have a job? Right. It’s it’s. And on top of that, do I have to go back to the office and all kinds of other stress? It’s, it’s crazy. Um, there’s a false confidence in people’s money, and they’re starting to realize it, uh, because they don’t fully understand how it works.So before it was in, in buying houses for like crazy mortgage stuff that, that blew up and then investing in things with mortgages that didn’t, they didn’t fully understand the tech, the financial firms didn’t fully understand it. Now we see it with, um, especially with crypto, um, people don’t fully get it, and there’s gonna be a lot of people holding the bag, uh, and it’s gonna be empty. So there’s a, there’s a significant, and we’ve been saying this for a while. Um, it hasn’t happened yet. That’s fine. This isn’t about timing it. We just know most people will recognize there’s going to be a crash. Okay. Um, we don’t know when it’s gonna happen.We just know it is going to happen. And relatively soon, anybody who tells you exactly when is gonna happen is, is wrong, right. Or at least, you know, broker clock is right. Twice type of deal. Right. They can guess. Um, but it’s nothing more than a guess. And that’s why I’m not telling you about investments in how to invest. So, um, but we know it’s a guarantee that the market’s going to crash at some point how much it is. Nobody knows. Um, but as it collapses firms will collapse with it. They will stop spending money. They’re gonna lay off people and it’s the swift correction and layoffs, whether it’s the next 12 months, 24 months, who knows. Um, but it’s going to happen. So that’s the similarities between now and 2007 and the feeling you have, the uncertainty you have, there’s volatility. Things are getting a little crazy markets down a little bit.You’re looking around at your friends who might be getting laid off and you see the LinkedIn things more and more putting open to work. And, um, there’s just disruption everywhere. And so you just, you know, kind of like your, your spidey senses are up. So, um, it happened before in 2007, it happened before in 2000, it happened before, you know, we can look back in all of these shorter cycles, right? 10 to 15 years. We know it’s happened before, what can we learn from it? So what did I learn back in 2007? Um, here’s what I learnedIn 2007. Well, you don’t probably don’t know about me. I don’t talk much about my career, my corporate career. So I’m gonna talk about it just for a minute. The majority of my corporate career, 20 years, whatever, um, was spent in the financial industry doing before the financial industry, I did a lot of international training and, and corporate training and stuff like that. But I evolved into executive communications, public relations, investor relations, business strategy, like those four kind of things. And it, it evolved into different, different things. Um, whether it was preparing for earnings calls to writing speeches, to let’s put together the strategic plan for the next six months, 12 months, five years, like those were the, that was the type of work I was doing in 2007. I was doing public relations, investor relations, communications, work, executive communications work in the financial industry during the financial crisis.It was, it’s where I earn my chops, uh, burn myself out. Um, worst possible job at the worst possible time you could probably have. And fortunately for me, I was at a firm that had a very strong executive leadership team, and we were in a relatively good position compared to other financial organizations. So, um, that being said, it was a ho it wasn’t a horrible job, right? It was, it was a stressful, difficult job. Right. I worked with great people. They were wonderful people. Um, but, but my, my fortunate aspect of this, when I look back and think about it is that I, I learned so much from good executives, these men and women who were able to navigate it in such a good way, that it impacted everything else that I continu to continue to do in, in my career. So, um, I learned a lot, there were executives who did it well and executives who didn’t and the ones who did it well survived.Um, and the ones who didn’t, I mean, they’re still alive. They survived, but <laugh>, but they became victims. I call it victims of a down economy, right. They weren’t working there anymore. And, um, and that’s what I want to talk about today. Let’s talk about what those executives did well, because there’s a big difference between today and 2007. And the difference today with the next downturn is that companies have invested in technology. That’s going to backfill gaps. So it’s going to be a little more abrupt. Normally, when you got laid off, you just landed at another company within the same industry and doing the same kind of job, but whatever, right. Small industry, small world, whatever technology is not, not going to allow for that anymore. So let’s talk about what the executives did well, who survived. And this is translatable to any industry, has nothing to do, um, with your industry.It has nothing to do with your organization. It has nothing to do with any of those. It has to do with the individual as an executive C-suite MD, I would say director and above. These are the people who did extremely, extremely well. And if you’re below director level, right, middle management, and below translate this to articulate your value in the moment. We’re gonna talk about that in, in a, in a second, because it’s going to become survival time. And that survival time comes from starting now. So here’s what, what the executives did. Well, number one, uh, they understood their message and their audience, and the message was different by executive. But we had three audiences when we were talking during the financial crisis, we were talking to employees of the organization that, yes, we’re strong enough. You’re gonna be okay. We had clients, your money safe here.And we had investors. So, and, you know, please continue investing us. We’re we’re solid and everything else, same message, but nuanced based on the audience, now you can translate that. That was for just finance. You could translate into retail, you can translate that into, um, consumer goods. You could translate that into law. You could translate that into anything based on who your three audiences are. Okay. And I’m, I’m talking about it from an executive standpoint, but even a little bit below, right? Are your clients, people within the organization, are the people working for you? The people you’re reporting to like all of these are different types of audiences, what’s your message in terms of value in what you’re doing, uh, which leads me to number two, those executives understood their value, not on the work they did, but where they fit into the bigger picture.So there were two aspects. Yeah, you’re doing work day to day, but where do you fit into the bigger picture? And that’s what they, they were able to articulate that extremely, extremely well. In addition to that, they understood a larger cyclical vision and understood where they were in the context of the world with this smart kind of this two shall pass, right? They’re thinking ahead for five years, the world will be better. In five years, we have to make short term decisions to get us to there. So they were able to do this efficacy exercise, put their value on top of it, and then communicate it to three different audiences. That’s what they did. Well, those executives who were able to do that skyrocketed throughout the organization, throughout the industry and, and continue to be successful today. And I’m gonna talk about how you can, how you can translate that into yourself.But when we think about what you can do today and what those executives did, it really fundamentally comes down to what’s the big picture and having perspective, understanding where you fit in that bigger perspective, and then communicating to who it matters to communicate it to in a way that they will pick it up, understand and embrace honest and, and of course truthful and, and doing it, um, with sincerity and authenticity and all of that good stuff. Um, so that’s what the executives did. Well, the ones who survived any kind of, of down economy. So let’s talk about you, let’s talk, let’s talk about you as you sit on your run or riding in your car, as you listen to this and sit in traffic and play this in the background while you do work in multitask, um, let’s, let’s make it real. How can you prepare for the downturn so that it’s not as impactful to you as anybody else?And, and there’s a larger program, I suppose you could call it that I do a corporate that we can, it’s like a full day thing that we can get people really ready, but I’m gonna give you kind of a shortened version. I want you to, to do, um, three things and these are not difficult or, um, it’s just not difficult. Okay. It just takes a little bit of time. These are maybe, um, two 15 minute exercises and then a longer bigger one, but we’ll, we’ll talk about that. The longer, bigger one, I’m gonna start with first network. Um, we want to set ourselves up for success when that downturn happens. And that happens today. Okay. Oftentimes when the market crashes and there’s a downturn and people get laid off, everybody scrambles into the networking world to try and find a job and start networking. And it’s too little too late.The point of a network is for people to share their network with you when you need it. But you have to be tapped into that network already. Nobody’s gonna give it to anybody fly by night. Um, we don’t hit up our networks for sales or jobs or anything like that. Those people who already have meaningful relationships are then able to use their network for meaningful introductions that will put them at the head of the pack. So that is step number one, pull out the Rolodex and get in front of people today with no agenda, other than building a relationship. It’s a, a relationship economic thing that you can start today. Every day, pick three people or, or every week, pick three people, whatever, like it’s not, or every day, just send out one note, find one person, send a day, Hey, checking in. Hope you’re doing well.How about, uh, zoom call just to catch up or let’s grab coffee. I’m gonna be in your neighborhood, whatever it is it’s, it’s going to be, it’s, it’s a task item that you’re gonna have to do. And I highly recommend you do it immediately because your network is going to get stressed. There’s gonna be a stress test on your network as well. It’s not gonna be as strong as you think it is when the market collapses. So you need to really invest in that today. That’s number one, that’s gonna be the most amount of work that you’re gonna have to do, but you can do it, have fun with it, right? It’s not, you’re not selling anything. It’s literally checking in with people and saying, hello, number two, and meeting new people right there. There are ways to meet new people. Uh, number two, articulate your value.This is one of the 15 minute exercises, right? You could sit it down. We gotta talk about your message. And I’m not talking about a message in terms of your elevator pitch, it’s gonna be scripted and blah, blah, blah. You know, you’re gonna say it. Nobody really listens to it. And, and you know, we’ve completely bastardized, um, how we amp ourselves up for networking and, and everything else. Let’s just talk about what value you bring. It could be bullet points, but sit and do it so that you can articulate and think about what value you actually bring and recognize it. So you could talk about it in just a matter of fact, way, not a recitation of stuff that you do, but value and curiosity into to why you can bring value to your organization, because you may not be doing that right now. You may be able to articulate or bring a value that you are not doing based on the way that your job has evolved.So think through the value that you can actually bring and then think about how to message it, right? Not as a script, but it’s just, this is what I do. Well, this is what I enjoy doing. This is, you know, oh, this is whatever, right. Remember when I did this, as you’re talking about reviews, getting credit, taking, you know, taking credit for the value that you bring is going to be a very important aspect to, to the downturn. And you wanna be prepared to do that. You’re able to do that when you understand what value you bring, and then finally, number three, who’s your audience? Think about who your audience is, who do you need to be in front of 15 minute exercise? And when I think about not just individuals categorize them, right? I talked before in finance, we had shareholders and, um, uh, and employees and clients.What are your three buckets? And how does your message, the value that you’re articulating? What nuance goes in based on those three audiences. And that’s another quick 15 minute exercise. And once it’s done, you literally sit down. It’s 15 minutes. It can evolve over time. As you think about it, go for a run, think about it. You know what? Yeah, scratch that. I don’t wanna do it again. You’re going to have it and dust it off when you need it. It’s a one time, 15 minute exercise that could be dusted off later. It will put you miles ahead of any everybody who’s scrambling. When something happens in the next, I don’t know, 6, 12, 24 months, whenever it’, who knows when it’s gonna happen. Right. But it’s gonna be done. Do it this weekend. Why waste your time?You know what I mean? Why, wait, why, wait, why? Wait until it’s too late. That’s what I say. Um, <laugh> so that’s it. Lot of similarities, sorry. This went longer than I thought it would. 20 minutes. Um, a lot of similarities. I’m seeing it. I’m talking to clients, I’m talking to leadership teams. I’m talking to all of these people about how to save the business, but nobody’s, you know, well, some of them are right. We’re actually putting together people strategy items, and what’s the program that we can teach their people. And, um, how do we set them up for, you know, a three, four kind of session thing, just to get people thinking about what it is that’s coming and how are they preparing themselves in this type of work. And there’s, you know, plenty more that we could do. But, um, so organizations are, are talking about this, your responsibility, however, is going to be taking care of yourself.And so I encourage you to do that. I hope this was helpful. I hope you enjoy it. And good luck with everything as the world, as the world turns and evolves. I hope, uh, I hope this is meaningful and helpful and, and sets you up for much, much, much success. As we continue to navigate this crazy world as always I’m here. If I could be helpful, feel free to reach out. I look forward to seeing everybody at one of our events. We have some events coming up in person, virtually check out the website, bellweather hub.com for more and as always, I look forward to seeing you out there. Thanks.