Men Work, that is What They Do. But in This Economy You Must Learn New Skills, or Perish

Men go to work, that is what they do. But in this economy you must learn new skills or perish.

My wife went away with her parents and sister today for a long weekend to visit out of town family. She asked me what am I going to do, and I thought for about a second and said...work, what else. To me and every other small business owner, work is not drudgery, it's not as if we are going off to the salt mines, it's what we do. It is how we become successful. It is who we are. We compete in the business arena, and success is our motivation, money may be our reward, but success our goal.

So what, you say, you all know this. I know that as well. However there is a point here and it is very important, as it will mean your success or defeat in the near future.

Many, many small business owners are fighting for survival. This requires new and different skills, not necessarily the ones you have developed and honed over the years of entrepreneurship activities.

The knee jerk reactions is to work harder, put in more time and sacrifice yourself, taking no pay check, investing your IRA, your insurance cash values, your credit cards and then moving on to absorb every other available dollar you can reach, from family, friends, whomever has available cash.

The problem is this will not work. This will waste all the dollars you invest and will put your family in harm's way, as home mortgages will not get paid, cars will be repossessed, savings drained, utter personal destruction, while the business fails to respond favorably.

The business owner must do things he abhors, but if he is to survive the current changing conditions, including massively reduced revenues, increasing overhead, choking debt, he must change his strategies rapidly, immediately, in order to survive and emerge.

You must downsize as soon as possible and as deeply as possible, most common mistake is to wait too long and not cut deep enough.

You must reduce debt by working it out, going in to default as soon as you see what is occurring. Stop paying on your credit cards and any other non survival debt obligation.

None of this is what you want to do and thus you wait...too long, absorbing losses you cannot afford, preventing the reinvention of your business so it may survive and emerge profitable again.

You need help, someone experienced in such procedures, downsizing, working out your debt, and reinventing your business.

The normal skills you have perfected are not the skills you need in such a situation.

The normal tendency, under such pressures, is to work harder and longer doing what you have always done, and this will not work in the current economy.

The objective is to understand where you are and further understand the changes you must make. It is not normal. It is not business as usual. It is upside down and backwards to what you have always done and thus is very difficult to do. Unfortunately failure to implement as soon as necessary can be fatal.

Call us for help. We can lead you through this mine field. We will arrange a no obligation teleconference. We can discuss your options.