How To Lead Your Team Through A Downturn | Vol 92

Welcome to Volume 92

Let’s get straight to the good stuff. 

• How To Lead Your Team Through A Downturn
• The Unsexy Strategy Carta Uses To Drive Over 1M Web Traffic

B2B LEADERSHIP

How To Lead Your Team Through A Downturn

Winter is coming, no doubt.

We’ve been hearing about a possible recession for many months now. Company stocks are plummeting, share prices are dipping, and employees are losing their jobs. 

At the time of this writing, over 51,000 employees have been laid off across 300+ tech startups this year alone. Surprisingly, Big Tech companies like Microsoft recently hopped on the layoff train. As a result, the remaining employees’ trust batteries are running low. 

Seeing colleagues laid off with little or zero context from management can put your team on edge. You might notice direct reports expressing their frustrations in different ways. Some can’t help feeling unsafe—wondering if they’re next on the list. 

Verbal reassurance is good, but it isn’t enough. You have to work hard to boost trust and morale company-wide. Your team’s contributions have the most impact on customer retention because they interact most with customers. So if you rely on layoffs alone to extend runway and neglect employee experience, you risk losing customers.

So, how do you lead your team through a downturn? 

Here are nine things you can do right now to boost trust and morale company-wide:

1. 1. Schedule 1:1s with your team to break the news before it hits Slack, email, or social media.
   2. Be honest with your team about the reason for the layoff without giving away too much information. 
   3. Encourage your team to ask questions and be as transparent as possible while answering those questions. 
   4. Encourage your team to share their thoughts, concerns, and feedback. That’s how you make them feel heard.
   5. Openly celebrate and reward your team’s efforts, no matter how small the win.
   6. Prioritize frequent check-ins with your team to know how they are doing. That’s how you know if their needs are being met and concerns addressed.
   7. Educate them about company benefits and encourage them to take advantage of those perks. For example, you can remind your team to take time off if they haven’t already done so.
   8. Invest in your team’s career growth. Also, educate your team about the recession and how they can help stay afloat before, during, and after the storm. 
   9. Encourage and support employees to seek professional counseling to manage stress better. 

B2B CASE STUDY

The Unsexy Strategy Carta Uses To Drive Over 1M Web Traffic

Carta is an ownership and equity management platform that boasts:

• A portfolio of 28,000 companies, including big names like Intercom and Axios
• 1+ million investors, law firms, and employees using the platform 
• 10 offices across 3 continents 
• $7+ billion valuation
• An average of 1.2M organic sessions every year

Carta found product-market fit by doing the work competitors, and investors avoided. Its team turned messy cap tables, gritty 409A valuations, and legal paperwork into valuable tools and resources. As a result, Carta went from nothing to millions of users in less than a decade. 

We did a deep dive into Carta’s marketing strategy to uncover the gems that earned the company its unicorn status. These gems include:

• Leveraging branded keywords to dominate the SERPs
• Experimenting its way to awareness and customer acquisition
• Treating content as an investment
• Building a customer-centric content marketing engine

If you’re a new startup looking to drive initial traffic or an established corporation looking to scale, Carta’s content marketing strategy can teach you a lot. Hit the link below to read all about this strategy and how you can apply it to your content engine.  

Steal Carta’s Unicorn Marketing Strategy →

NEWS OF THE WEEK YOU SHOULD KNOW:

📱You can now remove yourself from conversations on Twitter. The social app’s latest “unmentioning” feature allows you to do this on all devices. 

💻Instagram is testing a new feature that will allow you to go live via desktop. But you can only use the Live Producer feature with streaming platforms such as Streamyard.

Microsoft kicks off the new fiscal year with layoffs. The Big Tech company laid off less than 1% of its 180,000 employee headcount. 

Foundation is hiring! If you’re interested, check out our careers page to see which role best suits your expertise.

BRAIN FOOD OF THE WEEK:

Should you cut costs or keep investing in content marketing during a downturn? 

I would say keep investing but with a slight shift in perspective. 

The truth is that people will keep seeking solutions to problems. That’s because problems don’t stop showing up because of a downturn. Instead, new problems are created. So you have an opportunity to control the narrative and influence a typical B2B buyer with accurate, timely information. 

You don’t have to cut ties with your marketing team. Nor should you ask them to churn out new content all the time. Instead, repurpose evergreen existing content into different content forms. Update older stats report to show the latest happenings and solutions. Refresh older blog posts with new information readers will find relevant. 

Ensure you’re repurposing and updating existing content with recent, actionable information. That’s how you stay relevant in the minds of your customers.

TWITTER THREAD OF THE WEEK:

12 Google Drive plugins that will save your time by Zaafir Salam

NICE FINDS YOU SHOULD BINGE:

• What to Do If You’re Worried About a Layoff
• Why Most Managers Aren’t Effective Coaches
•  How To Discover The Right Timing For Your Innovative Idea
• Take Control of Your Desk,” And Other Career Tips for ICs, Managers & Founders

WHAT WE’RE WIRED INTO THIS WEEK 🎧:

Summertime

This charcuterie board of insights is brought to you by me, Jessica Tee O. ✌!