Crisis Management with Fexingo: Recessions, Layoffs, and Business Survival Stories

When a 20-person ad agency lost a client that made up 70% of its revenue, most observers expected it to fold within months. Instead, the agency's founder executed a brutal 48-hour triage that cut all non-client costs, converted three freelancers to part-time owners, and pivoted the remaining capacity toward a completely different sector. Lucas and Luna break down the specific moves the agency made...

In early 2025, a wave of mass subscription cancellations hit software-as-a-service companies as businesses slashed budgets. Most firms panicked with deep discounts or layoffs. But one mid-market SaaS company — a project management tool called TeamFlow — took a different approach. CEO Anita Voss refused to cut prices or engineering headcount. Instead, she launched a 90-day 'value audit' with every...

In this episode of Crisis Management with Fexingo, Lucas and Luna explore the remarkable story of Miller Family Farms, a sixth-generation grain operation in central Illinois that has never carried long-term debt. As the US unemployment rate dips to 4.2% and job openings tick up to 7.6 million, the farm's approach seems almost contrarian. But when commodity prices crashed 40% in 2023 and input cost...

In early 2025, a federal solar investment tax credit was slashed from 30 percent to 10 percent overnight. Residential solar installer SunVault Energy, based in Austin, Texas, lost 60 percent of its bookings in 90 days. This episode follows how CEO Maya Tran kept the company alive by pivoting to community solar subscriptions, renegotiating panel supply contracts, and retaining installers through a...

In this episode of Crisis Management with Fexingo, Lucas and Luna dissect the near-death experience of a 50-year-old industrial parts fabricator in Ohio that lost 85% of its revenue overnight when its sole customer—a major automaker—filed for Chapter 11 in 2025. No emergency loan, no pivot to consumer goods. Instead, the company used a combination of employee-led cost redesign, a rarely used suppl...

In episode 102 of Crisis Management with Fexingo, Lucas and Luna examine how a mid-sized commercial real estate firm in San Francisco navigated the office vacancy crisis of 2024-2026. With vacancy rates hitting 35% citywide and lenders pulling credit lines, the firm converted two aging Class B towers into mixed-use lab and retail space, cutting its exposure to traditional office by 60% in just 18...

In this episode, Lucas and Luna examine how a 60-year-old industrial component maker in Ohio navigated the 2025-26 tariff escalation without moving production overseas. Through specific decisions—pre-buying steel, redesigning a single valve, and retraining machinists for robotics—the company kept its margins intact while competitors scrambled. Lucas connects the story to the July 8 market data: th...

In this episode of Crisis Management with Fexingo, Lucas and Luna dive into the story of how a major US airline navigated the 2025 jet fuel price spike without taking government aid. With fuel costs surging 40% in six months and the S&P 500 hovering near 7,500, the airline used hedging, fleet reshuffling, and operational discipline to stay profitable. Lucas breaks down the specific tactics — from...

Episode 99 of Crisis Management with Fexingo: Recessions, Layoffs, and Business Survival Stories. Lucas and Luna examine how a small regional bank, First Horizon Bank of Knoxville, Tennessee, survived a liquidity crunch in 2023 without a federal bailout or a fire sale. They break down the specific decisions CEO Bryan Jordan made: selling off its mortgage warehouse lending division, cutting the div...

When a small liberal-arts college in Ohio faced a 40 percent freshman enrollment drop in fall 2025, the typical playbook of discounting tuition and slashing faculty wasn't an option. Instead, the school did something counterintuitive: it raised its sticker price and invested heavily in non-academic support staff. In this episode, Lucas and Luna break down how one college turned a demographic crisi...

In this episode of Crisis Management with Fexingo, Lucas and Luna dive into the surprising survival story of a mid-century furniture manufacturer in Grand Rapids, Michigan. During the 2008 recession, the company lost 45% of its revenue in six months. Instead of layoffs, the owners cut executive pay to zero, cross-trained every employee on the shop floor, and shifted production to smaller, cheaper...

Episode 96 of Crisis Management with Fexingo drills into the story of a mid-tier defense electronics contractor that lost 80 percent of its chip supply overnight in mid-2025. Lucas and Luna walk through how the company redesigned its supply chain around commercial off-the-shelf parts, renegotiated 60 contracts in 90 days, and kept a critical radar program from slipping. They tie the story to the J...

In mid-2026, with the S&P 500 near 7,500 and unemployment at 4.2 percent, most automakers are still wrestling with bloated dealer lots and margin-crushing incentives left over from the post-pandemic swing. But one brand—Subaru—never built the inventory in the first place. This episode unpacks how Subaru’s deliberately constrained production model, its refusal to chase market share with volume, and...

In episode 94 of Crisis Management with Fexingo, Lucas and Luna examine how a regional fast-casual restaurant chain weathered the sudden loss of its founder and CEO. When the founder died unexpectedly in 2024, the company faced a leadership vacuum, a 30 percent drop in same-store sales within weeks, and pressure from activist investors to sell. The hosts walk through the specific moves that stabil...

When COVID hit, concert promoter Live Nation saw revenue collapse by 90% in weeks. But instead of filing for bankruptcy, CEO Michael Rapino pulled off a $2.5 billion refinancing with no rehearsals, no events, and a balance sheet that looked like a horror show. This episode unpacks the specific decisions that kept the company alive through 18 months of zero revenue: the strategic layoffs that prese...

When PJM Interconnection, the largest power grid in the US serving 65 million people, declared an emergency on July 3, 2026 to avoid rolling blackouts during a severe heatwave, they didn't build a new power plant or fire up a mothballed coal unit. Instead, they used a 'demand response' playbook developed over the past decade, paying large industrial users and data centers to temporarily shut down....

Episode 91 of Crisis Management with Fexingo looks at how a mid-size coffee roaster and retailer survived the 2025 coffee commodity price shock. With arabica beans hitting $4.50 a pound - more than double the historical average - the company faced collapsing margins and the risk of mass customer defection. Lucas and Luna walk through the three specific moves the CEO made: locking in long-term cont...

In this episode of Crisis Management with Fexingo, Lucas and Luna dive into the story of Silicon Valley Bank's collapse in March 2023 and how First Citizens Bank stepped in to acquire its deposits and loans. They explore the critical 72-hour window when regulators raced to prevent a systemic crisis, the role of social media in accelerating bank runs, and the lessons for modern financial institutio...

In this episode of Crisis Management with Fexingo, Lucas and Luna explore how a small tech startup in Austin navigated the mass exodus of talent during the Great Resignation without raising salaries or offering equity. The company, called BoltGrid, lost 40% of its engineering team in six months. Instead of panic-hiring expensive contractors, the CEO restructured workflows, promoted from within, an...

Episode 88 of Crisis Management with Fexingo. Lucas and Luna look at how a mid-sized specialty coffee roaster in Portland survived the 2025 arabica price spike that hit $4.30 per pound. They walk through the moment green-coffee costs tripled, the week the CFO froze new supplier contracts, and the decision to launch a subscription model that shifted risk back to the consumer. Along the way they tou...

In this episode of Crisis Management with Fexingo, Lucas and Luna examine how a regional bank weathered a modern bank run by focusing on trust, transparency, and rapid communication. They break down the playbook used to stabilize deposits in three days, drawing lessons for any business facing a sudden crisis of confidence. With the S&P 500 near 7,500 and the VIX below 17, the calm markets of mid-2...

In this episode of Crisis Management with Fexingo, Lucas and Luna explore how a regional restaurant chain in the Pacific Northwest navigated the 2020 dining shutdown without taking any government loans or grants. They dive into the specific financial decisions made by the CEO, including inventory liquidation, landlord renegotiations, and a pivot to ghost kitchens. With the S&P 500 now above 7,500...

Today, Lucas and Luna dig into a CNBC headline from July 2026: employers who laid off workers citing AI are already starting to regret it. They examine why companies rushed to replace humans with AI, the hidden costs of that decision, and how one firm—a midsized customer-service platform—quietly rehired half its laid-off staff after its AI chatbot drove away clients. Lucas brings data from the Bur...

In June 2026, the S&P 500 is at 7,497 and the VIX sits at 16.58 — calm markets, but the scars of the meme stock frenzy remain. Lucas and Luna revisit the story of GameStop, not as a speculative mania, but as a real business that had to survive its own stock price. They drill into how the company used the 2021 capital raise to pay down $500 million in debt, shutter underperforming stores, and pivot...

When COVID-19 hit in 2020, elective procedures plunged by 60 percent in weeks. GE Healthcare's imaging division lost nearly half its revenue almost overnight. This episode examines how the diagnostic imaging giant — then still part of the broader GE conglomerate — built a survival playbook that future-proofed its business. Lucas and Luna walk through the specific decisions: redeploying field engin...