Page 20 - How To Avoid Going Bust In Business

I took my family to a simple motel on a quiet beach. We just had a relaxed weekend,
walking on the sand, cooking a barbecue, treating ourselves to a bacon-and-eggs
breakfast.

Make a conscious decision to leave the issues back in the office – forget about them
just for a couple of days.

Why? Surely this is a time to go harder. To get the head down and the bum up and
try to put a patch on the problems.

The probability is that by now you are already totally stressed out. The financial
worries have been gnawing away at you. You lie awake at night running the figures
in your head, using your brain like a living spreadsheet. Over and over and over
again. Looking for a way out. Trying to dream up a whole new set of lies to tell the
creditors who are calling every day.

If you are going to get out of this particular economic swampland you need a clear
head and a calm, rational approach to the problems. The last thing you need right
now is a frazzled mind that is so spooked by the problems that it can’t cope . . . it is
in no state to chart a course out of the trouble.

I’ve heard that when an airline is training its pilots they set up a situation on a flight
simulator where there are so many things going wrong with the plane, where there is
an avalanche of problems, that in the end the pilot can’t deal with them all and he or
she just freezes at the controls.

Sound familiar?

Take a break. Decompress. Get ready to fight.

On the wall in my office was a sign “It’s you and me against the world. When do we
attack?”

That’s the kind of fighting spirit that will get you through this.

There was another one that I loved. It was two Chinese words that translated as
“Crisis. Opportunity Riding A Dangerous Wind”.

Yeah!

3: Get some sleep

When the going gets tough, the tough go to sleep.

You can do nothing about your situation at 3am. There’s no point in lying awake in
the middle of the night churning the problems round and round and round in your
mind. There’s also no point in working crazy hours.