A Recession Is No Worse Than Any Other Time to Start a Business
Why you have just as good of a shot in an economic downturn
On May 6, I got a message from my cousin Stacey, who had just returned from a yearlong maternity leave to the global consulting firm where she’d been working for the past decade. “Well, I will be joining the entrepreneurial ranks shortly,” she wrote. “Got laid off today.”
It sucked. Stacey has a one-year-old daughter, a house that isn’t much older, a big mortgage and expenses, and all the stress that comes with unemployment. But this was also something Stacey had been expecting for a few weeks — and secretly hoping for. She had been kicking around a business idea for a while that was close to her heart — an automated device to disinfect wheelchairs in long-term care homes, like the one where her father (my uncle) resides. Like everyone else in our family, Stacey has a strong independent streak, which ultimately called her to entrepreneurship. (Until recently, she was my only relative with a regular job.) “This is just the kick in the ass I need to get started,” she told me.
Considering how awful it is to be a human now, it seems like an even worse time to become an entrepreneur. Unemployment is soaring. Bankruptcies, too. There aren’t nearly enough PPP loans to make the bleeding stop for…
