1. Invest Your Money – Now is the time to throw your savings account into the stock market. Consistently performing companies like Apple and Microsoft are significantly undervalued. Once the market makes it’s cyclical burnout prices will return to pre-crash levels. Quick and safe gains can easily be made by investing in any company that will survive.

2. Expand Your Network - Spend time meeting new people, start Twittering, attending local business meetups, and growing your contacts. During tough times people are more open to meeting new people, collaborating, and sharing ideas.

3. Help Others - Do favors for those who are hurting, especially those in your immediate network. When they are back on their feet they’ll remember and lend you a favor when you need it most.

4. Learn - As businesses are downsizing and employees are taking forced vacation, more free time than ever is available. Don’t waste it and instead increase your value by taking classes at a local college, apply to MBA programs, read instructional books, or even consider completing the Personal MBA.

5. Expand Your Business - During recessions companies are liquidating assets for pennies on the dollar hoping to live another day. An example is Sirius Satellite Radio which was forced into a very high interest rate loan to stay afloat. Look to acquire office equipment, divisions of a business, whole businesses, and even top performing employees all at significant discounts as businesses aggressively downsize.

6. Take a Vacation – Your opportunity cost is at its smallest during a recession, and your time is least valuable. Take the time to explore and take those trips you’ve always been holding off, and look for deals as tourist destinations are offering substantial discounts off regular rates as they seek to remain at operating capacity.

7. Look for Ways to Earn Extra Cash – Desperate times call for desperate measures. Dust off your old toys or unwanted possessions and list them on CraigsList or eBay, donate plasma to the Red Cross for $20-30 per visit, list your freelance services on CraigsList, participate in scientific experiments at local universities or research labs, donate sperm for $30-200 per vial, or donate an egg for $5000+, or sign-up as a mystery shopper. There are plenty of ways to pad your pocket and compensate for that reduced bonus, cut hours, or lost job.

8. Create an Emergency Fund – Avoid using a credit card for those rainy days and hopefully you have an emergency fund already in place. If not, put aside a set percentage of your paycheck to prepare for the drop in income.

The last two recessions averaged eight months and while they certainly aren’t fun, knowing how to navigate the choppy waters can make for a bearable, or even successful recession. While others might be hurting, this is an opportunity to succeed for those who are prepared.

Here is the criteria that a co-founder must fit:

• He or she must offset your skills. It’s important to have a co-founder who has different strengths than you, because it would be wasteful to have someone who has the same skills as you. It’s essentially giving away half your business because if you can do everything your co-founder can offer, than you should just do all their work yourself.

• Strong relationship. You can’t just meet someone online through a forum and start a business. It just won’t work. In one of Paul Graham’s essays, he writes that it’s important to know your partner for at least a year. I agree with this as well. The idea is that if you need to know your partner’s tendencies, you need his or her trust, and you need a strong relationship. Creating a business is no easy task and knowing and being able to trust your business partner is crucial to a business’ success.

• Have time. An easy way to kill a startup company is to have one person do a lot of the work, while the other person is busy with other projects. Lopsided time investments can easily kill any business, and its certainly happened to me. Here’s the story: I was super excited about a business, and worked long hard hours for about 2 weeks. I was getting tasks done, setting things up, etc. My partner was busy and had other activities, another job, and loved our business and was dedicated, but just lacked the time to invest. I became frustrated because I was doing all the work, and basically things dissolved quickly. Case in point: Work with someone equally dedicated.

• Motivation/Optimistic. Both partners must be motivated. I have been in both sides of the situation. One startup I was very motivated and passionate about the business, while my partner lacked such motivation. His lack of motivation killed my motivation, and the startup died. Another startup, it was vice versa.

Here is an excerpt from Paul Graham’s essay titled “Why to Not Not Start a Startup“:

Not having a cofounder is a real problem. A startup is too much for one person to bear. And though we differ from other investors on a lot of questions, we all agree on this. All investors, without exception, are more likely to fund you with a cofounder than without.

We’ve funded two single founders, but in both cases we suggested their first priority should be to find a cofounder. Both did. But we’d have preferred them to have cofounders before they applied. It’s not super hard to get a cofounder for a project that’s just been funded, and we’d rather have cofounders committed enough to sign up for something super hard.

If you don’t have a cofounder, what should you do? Get one. It’s more important than anything else. If there’s no one where you live who wants to start a startup with you, move where there are people who do. If no one wants to work with you on your current idea, switch to an idea people want to work on.

If you’re still in school, you’re surrounded by potential cofounders. A few years out it gets harder to find them. Not only do you have a smaller pool to draw from, but most already have jobs, and perhaps even families to support. So if you had friends in college you used to scheme about startups with, stay in touch with them as well as you can. That may help keep the dream alive.

It’s possible you could meet a cofounder through something like a user’s group or a conference. But I wouldn’t be too optimistic. You need to work with someone to know whether you want them as a cofounder. [2]

The real lesson to draw from this is not how to find a cofounder, but that you should start startups when you’re young and there are lots of them around.

Working with a business partner instead of working alone increases your chances of success because often an entrepreneur will have a period of no motivation, doubt, or fear of failure about his or her business, and having a business partner can counter those feelings that could potentially kill a startup business.

Related: What’s The Optimal Number Of Co-Founders For A Startup? 2.09!