GOOD MONEY AFTER BAD?

Are you even getting a salary from your business? Is the answer No, I wish.

Alright then, here's another for you- are you in fact propping your business up by doing any of the following?:-

* borrowing against your house
* depleting your personal savings
* using your spouses income or income from elsewhere
* loading up personal credit cards
* taking out personal loans.

As a one off considered decision as part of a plan of action, then fine,

but is it happening monthly? weekly?

Then you need to ask this question- When will it stop?

If this is what you are doing, it is probably because your business is losing money, and three things will inevitably happen.

1. You will turn around the business so it starts paying you.
2. The business will fail, taking down all the money you put into it and possibly you.
3. You run out of personal funds, taking both you and your business down.

But it doesn't have to be that way.

You can break the cycle, and there is more help than you can ever imagine to help you solve the problem.

Go talk to someone (me if you like)- there is plenty of support around (some good, some bad, but you got to start somewhere)- find people who have been through what you have been through and come out the other side- you'll be surprised how many people will tell you their story.

But don't go and drain more of your depleted personal resources unless you know how you are going to get it back- it is the road to ruin.

Is it really so bad? Why me?

How about is it out there? Well, pretty bad actually. Banks are reducing facilities and increasing margins at the expense to their clients. Businesses are falling like flies. Orders are getting cancelled.

Bad isn't it?
All the banks fault, isn't it?
Why us?

Well,
yes,
probably, and
why us?

For many of us, we do have essentially profitable businesses.

But do all of us?
Have we made any real money?
Or even during the good times, when markets were good, were we just getting by?
Were we (and are we still) always moaning about how bad it is?
How many of us talk ourselves into a hopeless state?

My experience, and this is experience forged out of 2 recessions, is that if you have essentially a good business (do you?), you can and will get through this, providing you do enough of the right things.

What are enough of the right things?

There are many, but let's take 5 to stir your emotions.

1. Is your and your business cloth cut accordingly? Really?
2. Do your clients know you are still here? Are you sure?
3. When your competitors go down, where are their clients going? To you?
4. How do you value and make the most of the one real commodity you have- time?
5. Are you confusing motion with action?

Answer those questions, honestly, really honestly, and you might be on the way to getting through this and, just as many businesses I work with, actually buck the trend and make some good money.

An Introduction...

Hi there,

Welcome to my blog on turnarounds in business- given the current climate, quite a relevant topic.

My experience was forged in my mid-20s when at a relatively young age, I became a Finance Director of a group of companies that were turning over £5m and losing £2.5m- quite a feat really. Lucky for the business, it had a property portfolio which provided cash and funding to by the time required to restructure the business. To be quite honest, I was out of my depth but being single at the time (and younger!), I was able to work 7 days a week, often 20 hours a day to do enough of the right things to get the business back on track.

Within 2 years we were able to turn the whole thing around into a £500k profit, the owner has gone onto become a multi-millionaire and I learnt what it took to turn a business around.

That experience has held me in good stead for some 22 years, and was invaluable in the early 90s as I worked with businesses that actually grew during a recession.

The first thing I would say is that I am not an asset stripping son of a gun- I work with the managing director owners of the business so that as far as practically possible, they retain control and ownership of the business.

The second thing is that the current climate is extremely volatile- you only need to read the daily swathe of business failures and scale downs to know there is a serious issue out there but they are survivable if you have a sound business model.

Lastly, although the current economic climate is at least as severe as it was in the early 90s and maybe more so, I get a real kick out of not only helping businesses to survive such times, but to actually grow- and it is not as hard as we sometimes make it- it is purely a question of doing enough of the right things consistently and persistently while others are floundering around.

So with that in mind, I'll be putting out a weekly blog which will provide three things-

1. review of some experiences during the week which may be valuable

2. tips, actions and ideas that can be used to survive these times in business

3. information on what is available to help


If you would like some more information or contact me, please look at http://www.tgba.co.uk/ or contact me at mel@melloades.co.uk to find out more.