Moving Words – Digging Out
Timothy Brady
“If you dig a hole and it’s in the wrong place, digging it deeper isn’t going to help.” – Seymour Chwast
As we enter the 8th quarter since the beginning of the pandemic in February/March of 2020, and the beginning of the 3rd year since the drop in available workers and the Great Resignation; if you’re still in operation with trucks picking up and delivering your customers’ household goods or special commodities, give yourself a pat on the back.
But if you feel you’re still burying yourself in a deeper financial hole, the first step is to put the shovel down. My point? To dig yourself out, you’ve got to stop and assess your financial circumstances. Here are five actions you can take to improve your business situation:
- Develop an emergency fund to help get you through the unexpected occurrences that are bound to happen in a slow economic recovery. Work on setting aside $1,000 for every truck you have on the road. This should only be used in worst-case scenarios; for example, a driver abandons a truck and you need to fly another driver or yourself to retrieve it.
- Vow that you will not take on any new debt for the next 18 months.
- Get to work on collecting past-due invoices. If you don’t have the staff or the time, get a collection agency on the job. Even getting 20 cents on the dollar is better than zero. Note: It’s better to have a collection agency retrieve this money than to waste too much of your valuable time on this. Besides, they have the skills and tools to get the job done – and you can move on to Step Four.
- If you’ve tried to increase your company’s market share in the past and failed, circumstances have changed for many customers. What you need to do is take some bold steps. Start making those sales calls to companies who have turned you down in the past. The economy is different; their situation has most likely changed, and opportunity may be just waiting for your knock on their door.
- Develop an exit plan. Most companies never think it through to the end. We all hope to retire from the business to a nice relaxing life of leisure and volunteering. But to do this we must have an exit strategy. Are you going to sell the company to outsiders, to your loyal employees, or leave it to your children? Any of these require the company to have a monetary value. This includes an excellent Profit and Loss Statement (sans any losses), low to no debt, quality customers and collectable Account Receivables. Or do you plan on liquidating the company’s assets to finish funding your retirement? Any of these ways require planning, then action.
We’ve all been hit hard by this pandemic and its collateral damage to businesses worldwide. We need to climb out of the hole into which we’ve fallen. But as we know, it’s a lot easier to fall than it is to get up. So take it one step at a time, and while a bit bruised and battered, we can come out of this in better condition than we came into it.
