I recently had a chance to interview Victor Cheng, who is the business coach behind the effort to bail out one million small businesses in the United States.

He’s the author of the book “The Recession-Proof Business: Lessons from the Greatest Recession Success Stories of All Time,” and he is giving away one million copies of it on his Web site, www.bailoutusa.com.

What follows is my interview with Victor, in which he discusses his research on the past 12 U.S. recessions and why some companies survive while others die–and how you can use these lessons to make sure your business survives (and even prospers).

Question: What’s the biggest mistake entrepreneurs make in dealing with a recession?

Most entrepreneurs don’t realize they need to fundamentally adapt, or risk dying. The key to survival and even success in a recession isn’t just to shrink, which I define as doing the wrong things, but doing less of them. The key is to do the right things and more of them. Adapt or die.

The tricky part of this is that customer priorities change very abruptly during a recession. So it’s often hard to figure out what customers want right now. But one thing is certain-in many industries, what customers want right now is not the same as what they wanted a few years ago.

So, the big mistake is not realizing that the rules of the game (e.g., what customers want) have changed. The second biggest mistake is not adapting to these new rules. The third biggest mistake is not adapting to these new rules fast enough.

Question: I know you’ve done a lot of research on recessions. What are some of the more interesting things you’ve discovered?

If you look back over the past few decades, the “typical” U.S. recession involves the economy shrinking 1%-2%. This recession is on pace to be a 5%-6% shrinkage from start to finish.

So, it almost certainly will be the biggest recession of our lifetimes so far-and three to five times larger than the typical recession.

But there is a different side to this coin that most entrepreneurs miss. If the spending in our economy shrinks 5%, it does mean that 95% of the spending is STILL THERE.

This is very significant.

When this recession hits rock bottom, we will have an economy with $13.3 trillion in spending. That’s $13,300,000,000,000.00 for those who like to count all the zeros.

That’s still a LOT of money. I mean, how much of that money do you need to pay your bills, right?

And to keep things in perspective, that $13.3 trillion in spending is still more than the spending of China, Japan, Great Britain, and Germany (the next four largest economies in the world) COMBINED-and this is after we hit rock bottom.

Some people say I’m an optimist … you know, the-glass-is-half-full kind of guy. In this case, the glass isn’t just 50% full; it’s actually 95% full. And even the most pessimistic economists will not dispute that number.

Most small-business owners think too much about the shrinkage and not enough about what remains. They’ll hear how the country has lost another one million jobs-people who no longer have money to spend on what is being sold. They forget there are still 154 million people who still do have jobs. My advice? Focus your sales efforts on those 154 million people.

Question: In your book you talk about a number of success stories-small businesses that prospered and became industry giants. What did these companies do right that the rest of us should be doing too?

In my book, I show how companies like FedEx, Walt Disney, Costco, Charles Schwab, Coors, UPS, Domino’s Pizza, and others were all small businesses that started during major economic crises.

Today, of course, most people know these companies as Fortune 500 businesses, and it doesn’t even occur to them that they were once small businesses like yours and mine-but they were.

There were a few things these formerly small businesses did right during a recession. First, they solved problems for their customers that their customers still wanted solved.

For example, UPS got started in 1907 in Seattle during a major economic crisis when there was massive unemployment. The big problem then was that package and message deliveries were notoriously unreliable. Not only would your package not get there on time, but often the fly-by-night courier picking up your package would just steal the thing.

So, 19-year-old James Casey started the United Parcel Service as the most reliable package delivery service in Seattle. And more than 100 years later, in the current recession, guess what almost every business continues to use? Yes, we all still use UPS because we still need to get stuff from point A to point B reliably. Whether it’s fulfilling a customer order or shipping a Mother’s Day gift to mom, we still need that problem solved.

The Walt Disney Company got started and grew dramatically during the Great Depression when people were desperate for a “mental vacation” from the times. The other success stories all followed similar patterns.

Question: Got it. Solve a problem customers still want solved recession or not. What are some of the other things these winning companies did well?

The second thing these companies all did was to offer something unique to their customers. It’s tough to survive when what you give your customers is exactly the same as what your competitors give to them. In comparison, when you offer something that’s unique, it’s not only a lot easier to survive, it’s actually quite possible to grow and prosper during a recession.

For example, Costco, known in the beginning as Price Club, invented the warehouse membership discount club.

The Costco formula was pretty simple. It gave you way more stuff than you needed at an absurdly low price. This was a lot different than anything else in retail at the time (and continues to be that way today). It’s also different than a retailer giving you exactly the amount you need in exchange for a low price (the Wal-Mart model).

So, by offering something unique, Costco got people’s attention. Customers couldn’t just rely on what I call their “automatic rejection mechanism” and ignore Costco. It was so different that it compelled customers to actually consider what was being offered.

What’s remarkable about Costco is that today it generates $70 billion in sales and the company doesn’t do any advertising-it’s all word of mouth. When you offer something unique, you give your customers something to talk about … and they do your marketing for you.

Question: I know you’re involved with your own small business bailout program and are giving away copies of your book. Could you tell me more about that and, specifically, how my readers can participate?

Sure. As a small-business coach with this huge fascination with recession, I’ve been doing a lot of research into recessions. And one of the things I discovered that really irritated me was how President Obama is spending trillions bailing out big companies instead of small ones.

Now this isn’t just an “it’s not fair” kind of gripe. I came upon this research from the Small Business Administration that showed that seven out of 10 new jobs created in this country over the past 10 years have come from small businesses like yours and mine.

Considering that small businesses make up only 40% of the economy, we’re more than doing our share of creating jobs. So, factually speaking, big companies are good at eliminating jobs (through layoffs) and small businesses are good at creating them.

So, if we’re serious about turning around the economy, the most efficient way to do that is to help small businesses create more jobs-which is the exact opposite of what Obama is doing.

I got tired of waiting for the president to do something, so I decided to create my own private small business bailout program based on the idea that “If you feed a man a fish, you feed him for a day. If you teach him how to fish, you feed him for a lifetime.” Of course, the same idea applies equally to women as it does to men.

I am giving away one million copies of the electronic version of my book “The Recession-Proof Business” to anybody who owns a business with fewer than 100 employees. Your readers could buy the paperback version in bookstores everywhere, but they don’t really have to. Instead, they can get the electronic version for free at www.bailoutusa.com.

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Follow up:  I am not a fan of Recession books but Vicotr’s book is actually relevant at any time.  Just because the general economy may be good or bad does not mean that your business is not in need of adaption.  Get his book.