I started my own consulting business in 1995. I've thus been through two recessions -- in 2000, and then in 2008.
In 2000, I had just hired five people to work for me, as I expanded my Web consulting agency. For about a year, we had lots of work, from clients all over the world. The phone was ringing off the hook. We were making money. I was learning how to sell work done by other people, not just by myself.
And then the bottom dropped out.
It was very difficult, since I had to pay salaries, office rent, and the like. I was scared. I was upset. I even worried that the debts would force my family to lose our house. (We didn't actually come close to that, but I did worry about it.)
I mean, when I started my own business, I figured that if things didn't work out, I could always get a "real" job, at a real company. But now I was on the hook for other people's salaries.
I ended up firing everyone, and taking no salary for several months. I had enough work for myself, most of the time, and much of that money went toward paying back the bank's line of credit, as well as (to some degree) paying my own salary.
As a result, I promised myself (and my wife) never to have full-time employees again. I did have a bunch of employees whom I hired on an hourly basis, giving them a generous proportion of whatever money they brought in . (Too generous, my accountant consistently told me.) This meant that in bad times, I wasn't on the hook for their salaries. I should note that this arrangement wasn't for everyone -- but I was very straight about it with potential hires, and also told them that it was completely OK for them to be doing other jobs while working for me.
So yeah, this recession really hurt. And it made me much more cautious. There were months when I had literally no work, but that was pretty rare -- again, I was generally able to get enough work for myself to get by. But I was putting out feelers everywhere, looking for whatever development projects I could find.
Fast forward a few years, to recession #2. We were living in Chicago, where I was finishing the coursework and initial research for my PhD. I would walk with my eldest child to her kindergarten, and we would see a growing number of homes for sale. Moreover, we saw that they were for sale for a long time. We had a very clear view of the US housing market turning sour, but it wasn't clear at that point that things were going to be as bad as they were.
We moved back to Israel in the summer of 2008, and it was immediately clear that things were bad, and getting worse. Lots of high-tech companies were laying people off. I was worried that I would get swept up in this, and not be able to find work. And indeed, it was hard (but not impossible) to find projects.
The good news was that I had enough of an established reputation by this point that I managed to find projects. Again, I wasn't filling my calendar 100%, but it was about 75% full, which was much better than other people. I also got into training more heavily, and that turned out not only to fill my calendar pretty consistently, but also showed me how much I enjoyed training and could/should specialize in it.
One of my worries was that lots of people would get laid off, and then start their own consulting businesses, competing with me. My accountant laughed when I said this, telling me that most people who have full-time jobs done then want to go into business for themselves. And he was right.
I do expect a recession -- or if nothing else, a slowdown -- in the coming year, and I'm starting to prepare myself for it. I'm now doing training in Python and data science, and constantly reach out to companies to find out if they're interested in such things. But I also have a large (14k subscriber) free, weekly newsletter about Python that gets my name out. And I'm selling a growing number of online courses to individuals, which will (I expect) cushion any problems I might have with my in-person corporate training.
But each recession is different, and teaches us different lessons -- so I'm hoping that my previous experience will be helpful, but I'm sure that I'll discover all sorts of new problems as the coming year unfolds.