Morning Brew was founded in the midst of a decade-long bull market.

Here’s what I’ve learned as a co-founder facing his first bear market:

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1. Nothing else matters beyond your product and customer

There was a 72-hour period where it felt like all our advertisers were fleeing. But we never lost faith.

Product & audience are everything.

Make sure you have a great product that your customer obsessively fiends for.

2. Overcommunicate with your team

Recessions prompt uncertainty. Uncertainty prompts fear. Fear prompts hypothetical storytelling (what-ifs, rumors, etc).

People want to know if there will be layoffs, when we’ll go back to the office, etc.

Communicate with your team so you can address those fears head on.

3. Learn to do more with less

When advertisers pulled budget, we started to think about other ways to monetize our audience. We started building the foundation of our paid product.

We also had to rethink growth. We had become dependent on paid acquisition because it was highly scalable.

This forced us to create more original content & squeeze juice out of that content to grow.

It forced us to get smarter & more efficient in how we grow the Brew.

I discussed leading through a downturn on my podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/leading-a-business-during-a-recession/id1509276485?i=1000489863139