As a business owner, are you weathering the economic turmoil with dignity and grace? Have you taken the steps to ensure your company’s continuing viability? Have you been able to maintain stability and the status quo? Are you ahead of all of this calamity? Or, are you one of so many who have been hit in the gut with assault after assault?
I think at the best of times, the life of a business owner is a lonely journey. It all comes down to decision making. As business owners, we make decisions without the benefit of perfect information, we evaluate the risks, calculate returns and roll the dice. It’s not so much a crapshoot as it is a tight rope act, balancing resources against competing forces to get to safe ground. You are judged by those around you based on the outcome of your decisions. If you succeed, it follows that you chose well, and you are a hero; if you fail, then it follows you chose poorly, and you are a zero. The truth is that you may have chosen well given the information and your evaluation; however, you will always be judged based on the outcome.
That outcome has repercussions for all of the people who depend upon your business, and, therefore, you have this larger audience to please. If the outcome is less than successful, perhaps catastrophic, through no fault of yours, it will be your burden alone to shoulder. It is said that success has many parents, but failure is an orphan. If your business is struggling right now, perhaps failing as you stand mired in fear and uncertainty, then that pain you feel is real. It is the assault on your self-esteem that comes first, then the loss of self-confidence and constant second-guessing, which can cripple you and pull you down faster.
As a business owner, surviving through this battle will be the hardest thing you’ll ever have to do. I won’t soften it by offering trite cliches. There are no easy answers or easy fixes. Recovery is a process, whether it is recovery from illness or economic recovery. It requires dedication, direction and patience.
I think that the hardest thing for business owners experiencing economic uncertainty is to accept that it was not their fault. You were swept up by the same wave that caught everyone else. You can’t stop it, you can only ride it. You didn’t necessarily make any mistakes, but you find yourself here and you don’t know where to turn. The abject despair is magnified because you are a person on whom others depend and you have always provided, but now you are unable to do so. You can’t write the cheque and you don’t know where to find a solution.
It may not help you to know that you are not alone, but that is a reality. You are not a lone casualty floundering in a sea of success; rather, you are one of so many who have been caught, through no fault of your own, in a perfect storm.
You need to look at reasonable solutions that can carry you through this turmoil. If you have taken steps to protect yourself, perhaps by structuring your business and personal affairs defensively, then you are better off than most of the economic casualties. If you haven’t done that, now’s the time. Even with a train bearing down upon you, it is still infinitely better to step off the track, than to sit there and do nothing. If you do nothing under that particular scenario, you will get rolled over and the outcome is fairly certain, but if you make the slightest effort to remove yourself from danger, you live to fight another day.
It is important to avoid succumbing to panic. The poorest decisions are made in moments of haste without the benefit of analysis and deliberation. Even in business, there is a difference between economic suicide and economic death. Winding a business down gracefully will ensure that you can recover personally. Decisions made precipitously will cost you. There are so many benefits that may be generated by properly winding a business down that disappear when you look for quick answers. Those benefits may be carried over into your next enterprise, which at the moment may seem far off, but will endure and may yield significant savings and improve your cash flow as you move forward. The bottom line is don’t rush; don’t look for quick answers as they are generally not the best solution. Try to get a perspective of your options, and look to hang onto tax benefits and cash flow benefits of your former business, which may carry over into your new incarnation. You may feel broke now, but you are not broken. The only difference between who you were yesterday and who you are today, is your capacity to write a cheque.
While this article may seem dour, my wish is that you read hope in it. There’s always a solution, no matter how bad it appears.