There’s a lot of talk about a recession in 2023, but we’re not sure we buy it.

For starters, as my uncle Dave Loehwing, the long-time editor of Barron’s would say, ‘if you think you’re going to be in a recession, you will’, meaning that you would pull back from opportunities that you’d take if you were feeling more optimistic.

Personally, when I ran my first company through two recessions, we’d use the opportunity to ‘put the hammer down’ boost marketing expenditures and hire more sales representatives as my competitors were shedding theirs.

We also boosted our support for the sales reps, usually by giving them more pricing flexibility than our competitors did, usually with good results. Yeah, we had a series of people in Los Angeles that specialized in giving away the store in pursuit of market share, but we eventually curbed that.

We also found out that at times we were in danger of expanding too rapidly, when our plans worked too well.

We also did a major product introduction during one recession, which worked very well, because we were able to expand our margins, which helped keep the financial wheels on.

It might be necessary in 2023 to pay more attention to keeping the financial wheels on, because we understand that some of the big banks are pulling back in lending.

On the other hand, smaller banks, seeing what the bigger banks are doing, might see ’23 as an opportunity to pry quality customers away from their competition.

On the government front, it appears that the investment tax credit is dead for the moment, as is accelerated depreciation. Thank you, Fancy Nancy and Chucky Cheese.

Pay attention to what’s going on in your state government too, because they can whack you with state taxes. Not here in AZ, but we’re an anomaly.

We’re starting a new small business program at Solutions Forum which our San Diego licensee has tested and done well with, and launching a new division of our School, called the Small Business Success School, so you can see that we’re putting our money where our pen is.

And, lastly, pay attention to your personnel: keep the good ones, compensate them well, and counsel the less than stellar performers.

So, all in all, we’re keeping the hammer down, listening the customers and our licensees (a good idea came in from one of them this morning) and are optimistic about what we see in ’23.