Identify those in your target market who will use this as an opportunity to leapfrog past their competitors.

Start moving up the food chain within your niche, either with more complex work or with larger clients.

Use this extra time to create authority products—such as a book—or productized services and work on building your email list and/or allies.

Look at serving markets adjacent to yours—the very event limiting your clients’ ability to hire you might have the opposite effect on those just next door.

How to avoid making moves from desperation (and what to do now to insulate yourself from future “surprises”).

Quotables

“A bunch of people are going to belt tighten and hunker down, but not all of them will. Find the ones who are using this as an opportunity to make a leapfrog event happen.”—JS

“If you are taking a consultant's mindset…then you've got an opportunity to do something that is perhaps less revenue, but higher impact.”—RM

“Perhaps you could create it (productized service or product) quickly enough to address the new current expensive problem in some way that is still very profitable for you, but is aligned with their risk tolerance.”—JS

“This could be the ideal time to take the step from thinking of yourself as a freelancer to thinking of yourself as a consultant and business owner.”—RM

“It might be that some of them (your clients) take the opportunity to speed up, get ahead of the pack. You could do the same thing for your own business.”—JS

“The tyranny of the checklist:  it feels so good for some people to just check that box off and convince themselves they're moving their business forward while they miss the real opportunity.”—RM

“It's possible that there's something right adjacent to it (your target market) that…is triggering an opportunity.”—JS

“The key when you suddenly have this big open slot of time is not to get desperate…that desperation just leaks out of you and everybody picks up on it.”—RM