How to recognise if your business might be failing

Many people come to see me for business coaching when they’re worried that their business might be failing.

One of the tricks of my trade as a business coach is to recognise when the company is failing, and can’t be revived or to see when it just needs some TLC.

The TLC might consist of working on an entirely new strategy, bringing in some investment because the business can only work on a bigger scale or just a shed load of much better marketing.

But sometimes, the business is dead, and it’s only being kept alive by the business owner giving it constant CPR.

Your business might be failing if

• It is in one of the risky areas such as restaurants/cafes/pubs, hospitality or retail
• Money has been poured in from your savings/credit cards/friends and family, and the business is only keeping going because of your director’s loan
• You’ve tried taking yourself out from the company and working on the business, especially the marketing but it hasn’t made any difference

How to tell if your business is failing

The problem is that you won’t be able to see the wood for the trees. None of us can be objective about our own business, and how it is doing.

You need somebody else, somebody who is an expert in business to tell you what’s going on. You need to be ready to share with them deep dark secrets of your accounts, which means that you need your accounts to be up to date. A lot of the time when I talk to business owners who are in trouble, they don’t have a clear view of what’s happening with the business financially. They’ve been so busy running around desperately trying to get money in that they have not spent time doing their bank reconciliation, so the accounts are out of date.

Here are your options to get some expert advice to find out what’s happening with your business.

Go and talk to your accountant. Sometimes business owners are a bit shy about going to their accountant. A bit like how people with a health problem are shy about going to their GP about that persistent cough. Your accountant, like your GP, wants you to come and talk to them sooner rather than later. If you do have to close the business down, your accountant is your first call anyway, so you might as well talk to them now.

Get a trusted friend, one who has experience in running their own business, to look at the accounts with you. They should be able to tell you whether you’re worrying about nothing, or whether there’s something that needs serious surgery.

Book a call with me,  I promise to give you a completely objective view of the business, based on my experience of working with hundreds of companies. I’ll be able to tell you whether you should take it off the life support machine. Or as often happens, give you some immediate tips on how to resuscitate it.