When your business faces a downturn, the priority is to act before your options narrow: analyze your finances honestly, cut what isn't earning its place, and get expert counsel early. Only 34.7% of business establishments born in 2013 were still operating in 2023, according to 2024 BLS data — nearly two in three businesses don't survive a decade. For entrepreneurs in St. Bernard Parish and across Southeast Louisiana, where disruptions can arrive from storms, supply chain pressures, or shifting markets, having a clear recovery strategy isn't pessimism. It's just good business.
The steps below won't fix everything overnight — but taken together, they give you a fighting chance.
Start with a Clear-Eyed Look at Your Financials
Before you can fix a problem, you have to understand it precisely. Pull your income statement, balance sheet, and cash flow statement and go through them line by line. Look for where revenue has dropped, which costs are climbing, and how much actual runway you have left.
Pay particular attention to your business credit score — the numeric signal lenders use to evaluate repayment risk. Most owners can't read their own credit score: according to Nav's Small Business American Dream Gap Report, 82% of small business owners don't know how to interpret theirs. That's a dangerous blind spot if you need emergency financing and can't afford surprises at the application stage.
Eliminate Costs That Aren't Earning Their Place
With a clear picture of your finances, start cutting — but cut purposefully. Cash flow preservation is the immediate goal: protect every dollar that isn't actively supporting revenue or essential operations.
Work through subscriptions, software, contractor arrangements, and discretionary overhead. The test for each line: "Is this helping us serve customers or generate revenue right now?" If not, it's a candidate for elimination. Some cuts will be temporary. Others will reveal spending that was never justified in the first place.
In practice: Freeing up 10–15% of monthly overhead creates a meaningful runway — and runway is what recovery requires most.
Find the Inefficiency in Your Operations
Cutting costs addresses spending; operational streamlining addresses the processes that drive costs in the first place. That means identifying where time, labor, or materials are quietly being wasted — and redesigning those workflows.
You don't need a consultant to get started. Document how work actually flows through your business, identify redundant steps, and redeploy your team toward higher-impact activities. The SBA's 2024 Business Resilience Guide centers operations documentation in its five-pillar preparedness framework — alongside vendor partnerships, cybersecurity, cash flow management, and risk mitigation. Businesses that clearly understand how they operate are best positioned to change quickly when they need to.
Get Expert Counsel Before Options Narrow
Too many business owners wait until the situation is critical before asking for help. By then, the available options are considerably fewer.
For St. Bernard Parish businesses, professional counseling doesn't have to come with a price tag. No-cost SBDC counseling is available through the Louisiana SBDC's Greater New Orleans Region, which offers confidential one-on-one counseling and group training across the metro area, backed by the SBA and hosted at Xavier University of Louisiana. A trained counselor can help you pressure-test your numbers, identify options you may have overlooked, and build a realistic path forward.
Renegotiate Contracts and Creditor Terms
Creditors and landlords generally prefer a paying customer over a defaulted one — and that gives you more leverage in renegotiation than you might expect. Reach out proactively, before you've missed a payment, and come prepared.
Have your financials ready, be specific about what you're asking for, and be honest about what you can realistically commit to. Request extended payment timelines, reduced rates, or temporary forbearance. When revising agreements, an online tool to sign a PDF lets all parties fill out and sign documents electronically without printing anything. After e-signing, you can securely share the completed file via email link or a password-protected document — keeping things moving without the delay of physical paperwork.
Bottom line: The businesses that recover fastest are often the ones that picked up the phone before the situation became urgent.
Market Strategically, Not Less
The instinct to cut marketing during a downturn is understandable — but often counterproductive. The right move is to market more efficiently, not less frequently.
Focus on your highest-relevance, lowest-cost channels: existing customer relationships, your email list, and your Google Business Profile. St. Bernard Chamber members can submit promotions and announcements to the bi-weekly newsletter that reaches the parish business community at no additional cost. In a community as close-knit as St. Bernard, a referral from a trusted peer often carries more weight than any paid placement.
Hold Your Team Together Through the Hard Part
A business downturn is as much a leadership test as a financial one. Your team is watching how you handle uncertainty, and their confidence — or anxiety — will show up in every customer interaction.
Build trust before the crisis deepens: business resilience experts at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation's 2025 Building Resilience Conference warned that reactive relationship-building during a downturn is far less effective than trust built in advance. Be transparent with your team about the situation without oversharing. Set short-term, achievable goals. Recognize progress publicly, and give people ownership where you can — small wins sustain morale when the bigger picture is still uncertain.
You Don't Have to Navigate This Alone
Recovery rarely happens in isolation, and St. Bernard Parish businesses have real resources at hand. The St. Bernard Chamber of Commerce connects you with fellow business owners who have navigated their own hard stretches — and those conversations are often worth more than any checklist.
Act early, think clearly, and ask for help before you have to. All three are available to you right here.
