It’s a heartbreaking thing for any entrepreneur to have to accept that their business — that thing which they have dedicated such a huge share of their time, resources, and attention to — is faltering, and may well fail. Yet this is the unfortunate reality that faces the vast majority of all entrepreneurs at some point in their professional lives, with no exceptions being made for the rich and powerful.
If your business is faltering, you may well find yourself in a state of panic and depression — wondering how this could possibly be happening to you, and taking it as a sign that you simply aren’t cut out for professional success. But that’s an unproductive and unrealistic way of looking at things.
When all is said and done, many companies which are experiencing trouble or turmoil of various sorts can, in fact, be turned around, and even if yours can’t, that doesn’t have to mark the end of your entrepreneurial life. In fact, it’s almost a necessary rite of passage.
Here are some things to do if you find that your business is faltering.
Consider closing down the business and starting again
No one wants to accept the reality that their company might be beyond saving, yet this does, unfortunately, happen with a pretty high degree of regularity.
Rest assured, though, that one failed company doesn’t mean that you, yourself, are a failure or that this is the end of your entrepreneurial road. In fact, many of the world’s most successful and well-regarded entrepreneurs have had numerous failed companies in their portfolio. The key is that they didn’t define themselves according to those failures, but instead kept moving forwards and making a success of themselves through different endeavours.
Richard Branson, for example, has had more than a dozen failed businesses, but no one considers him to be the epitome of failure.
You need to take an objective and sober-minded assessment of things, and if there’s no saving your company, it may be well worth your while getting in touch with a company such as Dissolve, and beginning the process of liquidation.
Take a look at how — and what — the competition are doing
It might be that your business is in trouble because you haven’t properly heeded a fundamental change in the way your industry does business. Perhaps a new trend has seized hold of your would-be customer bases imaginations, and maybe your competitors have managed to come up with a winning strategy that has made your services or product if not redundant, then at least less competitive.
Taking a good, long, hard look at your competitors, and identifying where you might be offering less than them, can help you to correct course in a hurry and make whatever adjustments might be necessary in order to salvage things for your company.
Then again, if all of your competitors are struggling dramatically, that may be your cue to cut your losses and leave an industry which might well have no real future, all things considered.
Begin to redirect resources and focus to a side-hustle or side-project
Perhaps your business isn’t on the very doorstep of death just yet, but things are trending downwards, and you have reason to suspect that the future doesn’t look to bright either for your business specifically, or your entire industry, more generally.
In this case, it might be a good idea to start redirecting some of your resources and focus to a side-hustle, or side-project, whether that takes the form of a fully-fledged new business, or just serves the role of allowing you to begin branching out.
Even if things turn around for your main business, and even if your side hustle doesn’t come to fruition as a full-time job, running a side-hustle can nonetheless give you a lot of insight that will benefit your professional life as a whole.
Bring in outside help
Sometimes, you will be unable to see the forest for the trees. As the founder and proprietor of your business, no matter how hard you try to make it otherwise, you are bound to have a certain degree of bias and wishful thinking tied up in how you see your business, and in how able you are to identify and rectify glaring problems.
Since it’s so hard — almost impossible, really — for us to remove ourselves from our own frame of reference, in order to begin approaching issues from a radically new perspective — hiring outside help might be a game-changer when it comes to turning your flagging business around.
Professional advisors, analysts, and problem-solvers exist, and the best among them will have a good deal of experience in handling companies which have found themselves in dire straits. They will have a good sense of some of the negative patterns that manifest themselves in these situations, and they will have a wealth of experience to draw on when seeking to rectify these issues.
Even if you don’t hold out very much hope that such an outside professional might be able to save your company, it’s still worth consulting with them before calling it a day.
Consider making radical changes to the company culture
In many cases, the downfall of a company has a lot to do with the company culture itself, and the way things are habitually done within that company.
David Allen, creator of the famous and much-beloved “Getting Things Done” productivity system notes that an overly strict and “results-oriented” company culture is antithetical to the free flow of ideas and, to a large degree, to innovation.
If, for example, ideation is handled through meetings where a stern manager demands that the team members come up with “good ideas” to resolve an issue, and then derides and shames anyone who’s idea isn’t “good”, the atmosphere will be far too constrained and negative for the generation of many good ideas — as “good” idea are discovered through a trial and error process including the creation of “bad” ideas.
Take a look at your company culture, and see how it might be changed to improve your situation.