Bridger PenningtonFund Launch & Investment Expert

What Industries are Hit Hardest by a Recession? Here's the Short Answer

15 Jan 2023 · 1 min

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In this brief commentary, the speaker explains that the industries most vulnerable during a recession are those that rely heavily on consumers' discretionary or disposable income. To mitigate the impact, businesses in such sectors should pair their core offering with opportunities that help customers generate or justify additional income, such as multi‑level marketing (MLM), coaching, or mastermind programs that surged during the last recession. The speaker illustrates the idea with a ski resort example: combine a ski day with business learning or networking events, allowing customers to rationalize the expense as both recreation and a chance to earn money. The overall message is a pragmatic strategy for recession‑proofing discretionary‑income‑dependent businesses.

Chapters

What industries are most affected by a recession? Any industry that depends on disposable income being spent. Now, if I was in a disposable income type of industry, I would couple whatever I'm doing right now with something that helps people make money in a recession. If you look back at the last recession, MLMs, coaching, masterminds actually took off like crazy because a lot of people lost their job and were looking for other ways to make money. So if you're a ski resort and you rely on a lot of disposable income, I would maybe couple a ski day with, hey, come learn about business or other ways to make money, or maybe it's an MLM or whatever it is, but other ways that people can find discretionary income and not justify this as a play. I'm going to play at the mountain and ski, but also I'm going to learn and network and try to make some money. So you can justify it in your brain to spend that type of money.