Just saw this post and it painted a bleak picture of the current economy. https://old.reddit.com/r/smallbusiness/comments/17vi8c5/worst_time_for_everyone_this_is_my_worst_november/
So I thought I’d flip the question and see what industries are prospering.
During the pandemic shutdown, I came up with a short list of industries that were probably posting record high sales numbers.
- Home hair coloring
- Casino carpeting manufacturers
There were a few more, but those are the ones I remember!
I started my business when our state had the WORST unemployment in the country…yet we grow every year regardless. (lawncare, home improvements)
My bar is up 15% over last year, which was our best year ever. The worse the economy gets, the more people need to drown their sorrows, I suppose. Though a recession is never consistent, there are always businesses doing well. A recession just means a higher proportion of businesses suffering than normal.
The moment covid hit we pivoted our services to strongly focus on distribution/industrial. Thankfully those are absolutely booming. That said, things are definitely slowing down. It’s not drastic, but it feels a LOT like 2007/08 when it first started to slow down. A lot of our stuff is fairly directly tied to the fed loans rates, so we are starting to see a bunch of unusual funding deals (private equity, foreign markets). All of the banks are now requiring really bizarre consents for everyone to sign that is involved. Basically this feels like ~2006 right before SHTF
I cannot keep up with demand. And I raised my prices a ton this year.
Accounting (specifically fractional CFO).
Cybersecurity here. It’s only going to continue to grow. I left a full time job running IT and security at a startup in late 2020 to help a friend of mine get his consulting company off the ground. That year, we did over $2M in sales and I grew the service delivery team from just me to 7, including myself. My friend focused on sales and I did sales engineering and delivery. I stepped away after that year to start my own consulting company. Did $65k in sales in the first year. This year I’ll break $200k in sales, all by myself. I’m working on some stuff for next year that will probably have me doing some hiring, scaling it farther, and generating passive revenue, too. I don’t want to say that it’s recession proof, but I guarantee the cyber criminals aren’t going to close up shop because the economy is rough.
My company is booked completely from now until 2025. Every business is different but interest rates are not helping anyone right now.
I think a lot of it is regional. We’re brick and mortar retail and having our best year ever, but our local economy is still strong. Negative unemployment. That’s just luck.