There is an interesting thing that happens in business. You struggle. You experiment. You make mistakes. You lose money. You try something else. You finally figure out what works. Then one day you look around and think, We made it.
The business is working. Customers are coming. Bills are being paid. Maybe you’re making more money than you ever expected. Wonderful.
I’ve watched clients reach this place many times. And quite often, that’s the last time I see them. Which is perfectly fine with me. Great. No problem. I’ve done my job. Go forth and prosper.
But every once in a while, I hear from one of them again. And the conversation sounds considerably different.
Somehow, between We made it! and What happened? they woke up alone in the desert. Nothing in sight but sand.
Meanwhile, somewhere miles behind them, the business they thought was safely established is beginning to crumble.
Nobody Moved the Desert
That’s the strange part. Usually, they didn’t suddenly become stupid. They didn’t forget how to run a business. They may have been doing exactly what made them successful.
The world around the business changed.
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- The foreign supplier manufacturing a critical component goes under.
- The FDA prohibits an ingredient central to the product line.
- A manufacturer discontinues something you’ve built your entire offering around.
- Your biggest wholesale customer changes management and drops you.
- A competitor undercuts your pricing.
- Black-hat competitors attack your online presence.
- Your payment processor suddenly decides your perfectly legal industry is too risky.
- Your shopping-cart platform is acquired, “improved,” glitches repeatedly, and eventually becomes unusable.
- A social-media platform changes its rules and your reach disappears almost overnight.
- Search algorithms change and suddenly customers who used to find you easily can’t find you at all.
- Advertising costs double.
- Shipping rates make your previously profitable product difficult to sell.
- A tariff turns yesterday’s margins into today’s losses.
- A landlord sells the building.
- A key employee leaves and takes years of institutional knowledge with them.
- Your best salesperson retires.
- A trademark dispute appears from nowhere.
- Your bank changes its lending policies.
- Customer tastes change.
- Technology makes part of your offering obsolete.
- A new regulation changes how you’re allowed to operate.
- Someone who controls a piece of technology your company depends upon decides to shut it down.
Or perhaps nothing dramatic happens at all. Sales simply begin slipping. Five percent. Then another five. Nothing alarming enough to panic over.
Until one morning you look at the numbers and realize you’ve been walking into the desert for eighteen months.
Success Is Not a Finish Line
Running a business, brick-and-mortar, online, or some combination of the two, is rarely a do it once and you’re done forever proposition.
If it were, many of the brands we grew up loving would still be here.
Markets move. People move. Technology moves. Culture moves. Money moves. Your customers move. Even you move.
A business that remains exactly the same is operating in a world that doesn’t. That’s worth thinking about. Because one of the most dangerous moments in business can actually arrive immediately following success.
When something isn’t working, we’re curious. We investigate. We experiment. We ask questions.
When something works spectacularly, we have a completely different response:
Don’t touch anything!
LOL.
Understandable. But dangerous.
Yesterday’s Answer Can Become Tomorrow’s Problem
This doesn’t mean constantly changing everything. That’s another excellent way to destroy a perfectly good business. There is a difference between reacting to every gust of wind and noticing that the climate is changing.
The business owners I’ve worked with who tend to weather major disruptions aren’t necessarily smarter than everybody else.
They keep looking. They notice anomalies.
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- Why did inquiries drop this month?
- Why are customers suddenly asking that question?
- Why are returns increasing?
- Why did our advertising cost change?
- Why is this supplier taking longer?
- Why is everybody suddenly finding us through a channel that barely mattered last year?
Individually, these may mean nothing. Sometimes they are footprints in the sand.
The Early Warning System
You don’t need to live terrified that something will destroy your business. That would be exhausting. You can remain curious instead.
Periodically ask: What are we depending upon that we don’t control?
That’s a magnificent business question.
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- One supplier?
- One employee?
- One social platform?
- One search engine?
- One customer?
- One product?
- One payment processor?
- One advertising channel?
- One person who knows how everything works?
Then ask: If that disappeared tomorrow, what would we do?
You don’t necessarily have to do anything. You’re simply looking around. Curiosity is considerably cheaper than panic.
And Then the Desert Appears Anyway
Even with preparation, things happen. You can be diligent, intelligent, diversified, and paying attention… and still get blindsided.
Suddenly, there you are. Sand. Sand. More sand. Now what?
First, don’t automatically assume the business must be saved. That’s important.
Sometimes the price of rebuilding is greater than what you are willing to pay. Maybe you’ve changed. Maybe your priorities have changed. Maybe you’ve already given this business twenty years of your life and the disruption gives you permission to ask a question you’ve secretly wanted to ask for five: Do I even want to do this anymore?
Closing a business isn’t necessarily failure. Sometimes it’s completion.
But if you look at the wreckage and say, “No. I’m not finished yet,” then we have a different conversation.
There Are 200 Ways to Do a Thing
I say this all the time: There are 200 ways to do a thing. Probably more.
The problem is that when Way Number 1 made us successful, we tend to forget Ways 2 through 200 exist.
Supplier disappeared?
There may be another supplier, another material, another design, another manufacturing method, another country, or another product configuration.
Marketing channel collapsed?
There are other channels, audiences, partnerships, messages, referral systems, media, and ways of becoming discoverable.
Product became impossible to sell?
Maybe the knowledge surrounding the product becomes the new product.
Location disappeared?
Maybe the business no longer needs that location.
The original model may be dead while the value underneath it remains very much alive. That’s where recovery often begins.
Not with: How do we put everything back exactly the way it was?
But: What were we really giving people, and what other form could that take now?
That’s a much more interesting question.
Don’t Build Your House in the Sand
This isn’t a solicitation for consulting work. If your business is thriving, I’m delighted. Enjoy it. Celebrate it. Take everybody out for dinner. Just don’t confuse success with permanence.
Occasionally walk around the edges of what you’ve built. Look for cracks. Look toward the horizon. Ask inconvenient questions while you can still afford leisurely answers.
And if you wake up one morning and discover that somehow you’ve wandered into the desert… don’t immediately conclude you’re stranded.
Look around. You have choices. You can decide the journey has cost enough and walk away with your head held high. Or you can start looking for another route.
Because the disappearance of the way you were doing it does not necessarily mean the disappearance of what you were meant to do.
There are 200 ways to do a thing.
You only need to find the next one.
