2023: The Year Your Small Business Can Thrive

I've sat in the room for four recessions, two pandemics-adjacent downturns, and more than one "the sky is falling" client panic. Here's what I've learned every single time: the businesses that cut their marketing budget to zero in a downturn are the ones I never hear from again. The ones that go on offense are the ones still calling me five years later to write their next campaign. My friend Gary Vaynerchuk calls it "going on massive offense" when everyone else is playing defense. I've watched it work in rooms with real budgets on the line, and I'm telling you the same thing in 2023: don't blink.

Cut the Fat (Yes, You Have It)

Stop Wasting Money On Shit That Doesn't Matter

Here's the drill I run with every consulting client, no exceptions: pull twelve months of expenses, line by line, and ask one question of each one -- did this make us money or did this just make us feel busy? Nine times out of ten, the bottom 30% of spending is subscriptions nobody uses, "brand awareness" line items nobody can measure, and vendors kept on out of guilt. Cut that, and you've just funded a real marketing budget without touching payroll. I've done this audit with businesses doing $500K a year and businesses doing $50M a year -- the ratio barely changes. Waste doesn't scale down, it just hides better in smaller companies.

You're Not As Lean As You Think

But I Am Already Lean

I know what some of you are thinking, I'm already lean, I don't have any waste. Wrong, you do. We all do -- case in point. I consult with a bunch of businesses in different industries all over the world. One of my consulting clients runs a family-owned business specializing in sports protection gear. On a recent bi-weekly call with the owner and 3 members of the team, all family, by the way, I tasked specific members with important jobs and jobs that the owner still had his hands in. Two weeks later, I got on my call and expected to speak with those family members and not the owner. Wrong! He was still doing tasks other people on his team were assigned to do. He is micromanaging the process, thereby making it inefficient, bloated, and wasteful. That kind of shit has to stop if you're doing it in your business.

Confessional time: I am not perfect. I do this stuff too. After 40 years and 100,000+ ads written, I still catch myself rewriting a junior copywriter's headline instead of coaching them to fix it themselves. When I catch it, I hand it back. I've learned the hard way that when I stay in the weeds, the business doesn't scale -- I just become the bottleneck with better stationery.

Now Go Build Demand

Once you've cut the waste, the money has to go somewhere that actually builds demand -- not just "brand presence." That means SEO that's tied to what people actually search before they buy, social content that earns attention instead of begging for it, and brand storytelling that survives more than a five-second scroll. If your headline can't stop the scroll in the first two words, none of the rest of the budget matters -- I've watched a great offer die under a lazy headline more times than I can count. And if you're already relying on AI tools to speed up the process, know the difference between what it's actually good for and where it'll quietly wreck your brand -- I break that down in detail here. If you want a second set of eyes on your 2023 marketing plan, I do this consulting work myself, every week, with businesses your size. I've generated over $300 billion in client revenue across my career, and I still get the most satisfaction from watching a small business owner see their first real ROI on a campaign that actually works.

There's no trick to 2023. Cut what doesn't earn its keep, put real money behind demand generation, and get out of your own team's way. I've watched this exact formula work in a dozen industries and a dozen downturns. It'll work in yours too.