Cycles
Stories about people building companies may be inspirational, but what if your business is dying?
That was the message from a reader that brought me up short last month. He had read my column called “sooty,” which urged business owners to find what they are uniquely good at and outsource the rest, lest they end up frustrated by banging away at the tasks they hate.
What if you’ve invested in expensive equipment, but it’s become outdated and impossible to sell? What if your industry has changed so much, you were left behind?
What if, as this business owner poignantly wrote, “Everything is changing faster than we can dream. I’d really like to meet someone who could help me figure out what I’m uniquely good at and incorporate that back into my life. I just can’t see outside anymore.”
I felt the pain in his remarks, and I know he’s not alone with those feelings. That’s the flip side of building a business. For every success there’s at least one failure, and maybe more. For every growing business, one is dying in the inevitable life cycle.
For every reader who finds useful tips in an article about how to get bigger, there’s probably a reader who rages: “Take this perky little piece of feel-good advice and shove it.”
I replied to this business owner, urging him to seek out people who could help him figure out his next move, and sort through his broken dreams. They exist everywhere in the Twin Cities, including among those who right now are experiencing the positive side of things.
I can’t think of a single business owner I’ve met who has never had a failure, and I think every one of them could put the emotions in perspective. Also, experts all over the area can suggest practical ways to cut one’s losses.
He was kind enough to suggest a story idea for Upsize, which I plan to pursue in a future issue. He likened owning a business to parenting a family through all the stages of life: the excitement and struggle of the young years; the hard, repetitive work of the middle years; and finally, aging and declining with dignity.
In life, we recognize there’s honor in going through every part of that journey, and in fact we are needed more and we grow more in the bad times than in the good. In life, we learn to show up at the birthday parties and at the hospital beds, and if we do so we’re doing our job.
In business, the same holds true. That is the message his thoughts left with me, and I hope the message that he and others whose businesses are in decline can embrace: It’s all a part of the cycle.
— Beth Ewen
editor and co-founder
Upsize Minnesota
612.920.0701, ext. 11
