Right now, there are a lot of businesses of all sizes on the brink of permanent closure. They are on the brink because the business owners are unsure whether it is worth it to keep those businesses running. This is a terrible fence to sit on because there are no easy answers. For many, business ownership was a lifelong dream. Some of those dreams were realized in January 2020. By late March, those dreams transformed into nightmares. The first payment on those business loans were due and the Open sign had already been flipped to Closed.
Of course, nothing like despair had set in. There was still plenty of confidence and hope. As they have all learned by now, hope is not a strategy. Confidence fades. What remains is the cold, hard fact that your business is hemorrhaging money faster than you can slow the bleeding. When there is no more money and the bank forecloses on your house, it is obviously game over. There is no coming back from that. But there are other signs you might have missed along the way. Here are just a few of those signs that will let you know when it is time to throw in the towel:
When None of the Expense Optimizations Help
Every sufficiently sized business has outflow inefficiencies that can be addressed. That is just the way of it. Many businesses can be saved just by plugging those leaks. With TEM services, you can “gain expense optimization, efficiency, and transparency across your entire IT infrastructure.”
“Many organizations are challenged by an increased reliance on technology and a consistent need to reduce IT budget. As teams grow, so does the amount of mobile devices, fixed line costs, and cloud expenses. IT teams with full transparency over their IT expense ecosystem are able to optimize costs and deploy more resources to strategic technology initiatives.”
These types of optimizations have been like gold mines for many businesses. They suddenly found money that had been slipping through their fingers. Seriously, professionals who specialize in this can save your business. Of course, your business might have bigger problems than TEM services can address. You can plug all the leaks and elevate efficiency to an art form and still have to close your doors. There is no shame in that. But before hitting the panic button, be sure to try the optimization solutions available to you.
When Your Heart Is Not in It
Knowing when to close your business largely mirrors when to know when it is time to leave a high-paying job. Running a business is harder than it seems to someone who has never tried it. Everyone thinks their boss has an easier job that pays more money. They believe that up to the point when they become the boss. Suddenly, their boss wasn’t as big of an idiot as once believed.
It is not just the workload. It is also the fact that running a business takes you away from doing the thing you love. You might have started a hair salon because you love doing hair. But when you own the business, you will have to spend a lot more time doing tasks you hate and a lot less time making beautiful hair. Even if the money is good, the satisfaction is not. When the thrill is gone, it might be time for you to go back to doing the thing you love.
When Safety Is a Factor
It costs a lot of money to operate some businesses safely. In your company, safety cannot just be another consideration. Safety has to be a priority. This has always been true for restaurants. It is hard to require masks in a setting where people have to eat and drink and laugh and reconnect with friends. A mask is antithetical to that enterprise. That means putting up partitions between tables and finding ways to protect your servers and other front of house personnel. Some places of business have decided that closure is the safer option for now. Closing your business for safety purposes does not have to be the end of the story, just the end of a chapter.
When you have done all the available optimizations, or find that your heart is no longer in it, or realize that the risks are too great, it is perfectly reasonable to close your business. There is nothing wrong with retiring the field so that you can live to fight another day.
