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Friends,
You know, it’s amazing it’s taken us this long to say “recession” again. Over a decade. Hell of a run. High fives around. But recession is back. And for me so are the memories of our last one.
I was 22. I’d just graduated school, and I was in my first real job. I was an auditor and my client was, of all things, a bank. And boy was it a bad time to be a bank.
It was a bad time to be anyone. I’ll never forget the Friday afternoon I watched dozens of my co-workers open mystery calendar invites for the following Monday. At first it was just a few emails. And then a few more. We assumed we knew what they were, but we didn’t know for sure. There weren’t any explanations. Just a few dozen ominous appointments.
Of course these were layoff meetings. And we were scared. None of us had experienced anything like this before. We were bracing for bad. Like - great depression, tumbleweeds in the streets, living in a hooverville - bad.
And you know what, it was bad.
And then it wasn’t. The worst of the recession happened in December 2008, and it officially ended in June of 2009. WPP’s stock, for instance, cratered in November of ‘08 but had essentially doubled by the end of the next year.
Don’t get me wrong, there was loss. Plenty of businesses failed.
But most businesses survived. And a select few actually thrived. Recessions are a feature, not a bug, of our economy. Running our businesses through one is part of what we signed up for. It doesn’t do us any good to hope they won’t happen - we’ve just got to be prepared for when they do.
I don’t know if we’re entering a recession. Honestly, I don’t know if we’re in a recession. But at Upsourced, we’re ready for one either way. We’ve got plans if things get bad, and we’re excited for the new opportunities we know we’ll find on the other side.
We’re not worried, we’re focused. We’re going to make it through. One way or another. And so will you.
- Ryan Watson, Partner