Productive Struggling
What do you do when your business is struggling to stay alive, struggling to get healthy or struggling just to get off of the ground? Who should you ask for help? Maybe it’s your spouse, your accountant, your banker, your lawyer, or even yourself. Typically, even though you trust all of these individuals, they may not have the needed answers or solutions to your problems. Too often, they aren’t qualified, or their biases get in the way, or they love you too much to be honest, or maybe it is a combination of all three.
So, where do you begin? My suggestion, before you do anything, is to begin a process of self-examination. Start by deciding to become completely honest with youself and anyone else you may bring into the equation. Be willing to invest significant time into analyzing the entire business model top to bottom, and be willing to step outside of your “comfort zone” for solutions and be prepared to make difficult changes.
The process is called working on your business and not in your business, and oh yes, you get to continue to work in your business as well. And the most important person, place or thing you must be willing to honestly assess is you!
There are some easy questions to be asked, but honest answers require objectivity. Does my business have a revenue problem, an overhead problem, a debt problem, and/or an employee problem?
These questions can be confusing sometimes because of how they camouflage the real issue and overlap each
other. For example, the debt may be too high but that is because the revenue was down, and adjustments to the overhead were not appropriately made, but now the revenue is up again. Maybe it never was a revenue problem!
Another good example is the revenue is growing rapidly but the overhead is growing more rapidly, and that may be creating debt or reducing the net profit. The question then becomes—will the increasing overhead level out eventually to bring more money to the bottom line?
Then there is always the competition between sending money home and keeping cash in the business. Too often that is the most difficult question you have to answer.
Sometimes, the fresh eyes of a wise friend or experienced consultant can help to set you on course. That requires admitting that you don’t have all the answers and are in need of help—which is called wisdom, not weakness.
