A recession, simply explained, is when the economy gets smaller. And because there's less economic activity, recessions can be hard time periods for businesses. To know how well a company can perform during a recession, I like to look at past recessions for clues -- specifically the Great Recession of 2008 and 2009.

Two companies that had strong results during the Great Recession are rural lifestyle company Tractor Supply Company (NASDAQ: TSCO) and vehicle-auction platform Copart (NASDAQ: CPRT). As the chart below shows, Tractor Supply's revenue didn't dip at all in 2009. And Copart's was down a measly 7% -- quite resilient.

CPRT Revenue (TTM) data by YCharts

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Source Fool.com