right now this is one of the scariest times to be an employee and I should know because when I worked a full-time job I lived through three downturns where there were Mass layoffs across many different Departments of my company already this year over 320,000 people have been fired from their jobs now I still remember the mass hysteria I experienced during the dot bubble at my last job I was sitting in my cubicle watching my friends and co-workers pick up everything they owned into cardboard boxes as over 25% of my company was fired people were in shock people were angry and people were crying and it was ugly one of my co-workers Vivien had just signed her daughter up for private school that cost $440,000 a year and was frantically trying to figure out how to avoid pulling her out of school it was horrible now as of right now the labor market remains tight companies are slow to hire and there are expected to be further Cuts later in the year not only that but interest rates are at 22-year highs the American outlook on the economy is getting worse by the month and recession is looming now economic downturns make a lot of people poor but if you position yourself right this is also a great chance to make the kind of money that most people could only dream about after I survived my third downturn I finally decided to go out of my own and since then I've started multiple seven figure businesses and quit my job altogether in 2016 now because I don't want you to experience the horror of packing up all your possessions in a cardboard box and losing your income overnight I went out and found five businesses that are recession resistant these are all businesses that you can start this year where you can win no matter what now the right Recession Proof business for you really depends on two things how much you are willing to invest and your skill level so let's start with businesses that require very little upfront money and very little skill if you don't have much money to invest then I would highly suggest starting a service-based business and specifically one that you can potentially scale right now there are three service-based businesses that I love Landscaping tutoring and delivery and the beauty of a service-based business is that it costs very little money to start if you're the only one running the business you get to keep all the profit and there's a low risk of failure because you don't need to spend much money upfront they're also beginner friendly which means that you can start with no experience and it's easy to find clients for example I have a good friend who is a singer on Broadway but during the pandemic Broadway was completely shut down there were no performances and when you can't perform you can't earn money but instead of just sitting at home doing nothing and going into debt she decided to give virtual singing lessons online by using platforms like upwork guru.com or tutor.com she used her Broadway credentials to attract a loyal clientele and ended up making more money teaching singing virtually than her real job on Broadway one of my former employees for bumblebee Linens owned a van so we decided to start doing deliveries for amazon.com on the side and over time he reinvested his earnings back into his business and today he owns multiple semi-trucks and he scaled his delivery business to several employees these people aren't outliers either I have multiple friends and acquaintances that have started six and seven figure businesses which cost next to nothing to start now the beauty of a service-based business is that your only cost is your labor if you decide to scale up this business you have no inventory and no big expenses and the risk of bankruptcy is actually quite small now after my former employee grew his Fleet of trucks he started targeting larger delivery contracts with commercial businesses and guess what a lot of those contracts pay upfront you get paid before you provide the service also you don't require any licenses or certifications for most service-based businesses and finding clients is really easy thanks to services like upwork you can then use your profits to invest more in equipment marketing and more employees so if you have no money start a service-based business and here's a dirty little secret to help you get ahead most service-based businesses suck at internet marketing so take a little time to learn local SEO and you'll be able to rank your service businesses in Google and attract clients on autopilot are you excited yet well not so fast here's the main problem with a service-based business any service based business requires your time to make money and they're only 24 hours in a day in order to create a business that can scale easily you have to sell a product online a product that you develop once and sell to many people without having to do any additional work and this is where e-commerce comes in now there are many different ways to sell products online depending on how much money you have to start with and in general the more money you are willing to invest the more money you can potentially make by the way if you're interested in starting your own e-commerce store make sure you sign up for my free sixday e-commerce mini course below now if you have very little money to invest you can start out by dropshipping Drop Shipping is an e-commerce business model where you take orders online and your supplier stores and fulfills the order on your behalf as a result you don't have to pay any money up front for inventory instead you only pay your supplier after you collect money from your customer now using the Drop Shipping business model my kids started their first online store when they were only 9 11 years old selling entrepreneurship t-shirts online over atkid inch charge.com by leveraging a print on demand company called printful they would create their own designs and when an order came in printful would print and fulfill the order and even though my kids were still in elementary school at the time they managed to make $1,000 in their first month but the disadvantage with Drop Shipping is that the margins are low typically on the order of 10 to 30% so once you find out what products sell well on your website you should create your own custom branded products so using my kid store as an example if they found that one of their designs was selling exceptional well it would make sense to have a large quantity of shirts pre-printed in China for Less so instead of paying $12 a shirt to printful they could literally Source their printed shirts for as little as $2 per shirt now right now my kids are selling their shirts for 20 bucks so instead of making only $8 per shirt they could be making $18 per shirt if you look at my online store over at bumblebe linen.com all of our products are sold under our own brand and as a result our margins are upwards of 90 plus% % and the best part is that the amount of money we can make has nothing to do with the number of hours in a day we create a product once and continue to sell it over and over again to new customers now you're probably wondering how to attract customers to your online store well the secret is to build an online presence what do you do when you want to buy something online you search for it so one of the things that you can obsess over is search engine optimization now one of the best ways to rank in Search and build an audience of potential customers is to create content around your Niche most people just throw up a website and list their products online but the successful store owners have a YouTube channel or a blog or a social media presence for example my friend par grew his online store selling pu rings by creating content on Tik Tock my student Angela grew her jewelry business over at auro jewelry to seven figures from organic Instagram alone my online store grew by creating arts and crafts content for wouldbe brides once you start creating content you'll establish Lish a connection with your customers which will greatly improve your sales here's another example my wife follows many Beauty channels on YouTube and she tends to buy what they recommend and many of these Beauty content creators sell their own branded products as well this type of marketing is the future of e-commerce now the beauty of creating content is that other companies will find you and pay you to endorse their products as well for this YouTube channel that you are all watching I can charge between $5 to $10,000 per sponsored video in addition I generate between $5 and $30,000 every month on Advertising alone not only that but my YouTube channel is a major lead gen into my paid online courses because I've created an audience over time I can literally sell anything I want having my Blog podcast and YouTube is what has allowed me to launch my annual e-commerce conference nearly a decade ago I simply sent out a couple emails to my list and my conference sells out and it's sold out every single year for the past 9 years now now aside from creating content you also have to focus your energy on getting referrals people like to talk and believe it or not most businesses only get 10% of their sales from referrals now to increase the number of referrals to your shop you can use a service like referral candy which allows your customers to provide a coupon code to anyone they refer and here's how it works if the referral buys from your store the referee also gets a gift card as well it is a win-win and programs like referral candy incentivizes everyone want to refer your business to their friends now to create a solid foundation of customers you must also focus on getting repeat business most business owners spend so much time and money acquiring new customers that they neglect the most important people of all the people who have already bought from you before and in general it is 65% easier to sell to people who have bought from you before after all they've already opened up their wallets and they trust your store so getting them to buy again is often as simple as just sending them an email every single time you get a new customer you must have a post-p purchase autoresponder sequence in place to follow up with everyone immediately for example our post-p purchase sequence sends people automated emails depending on exactly what they purchased we sell matching styles of napkins in our store cocktail tea and dinner napkins if a customer purchases cocktail napkins but not tea or dinner napkins we automatically send them an email that looks like this basically we remind them that we sell matching napkins and encourage them to purchase the full set for our larger customers who purchase a large quantity of Linens we always call them up on the phone and here's what we say we notice that you purchase a large quantity of handkerchiefs are you by chance an event or a wedding planner and if they say yes we offer them a special coupon code and a dedicated representative to take their future orders we take care of them and they stay with us for life now you must use both of these strategies for every single customer but overall whether you start a service-based business business or an e-commerce business is up to you but one thing is for sure the economy is in a bad State and you don't want to ever be blindsided with a layoff as I mentioned before this is one of the scariest times to be an employee interest rates are at 22-year highs and there are Wars across the world and crazy inflation now there's an old saying that I like to live by market downturns always offer opportunities for those who are prepared and ready to seize them so be prepared but now that you understand what's going on on make sure you watch this video here on how to get started with your own e-commerce business from complete scratch