When you’re a business owner who is so used to being on top of everything from customer reviews to the state of your marketing, finance and employee morale and then all of a sudden, everything becomes a wreck, this experience will definitely be an eye opener for you.
This is what happened to me. Day by day my business started to break up. At first, my website started going down then my emails stopped working. I also had issues with my Instagram account and to make matters worse, my bank froze my account which blocked my access to all my funds.
Some of these issues are still ongoing and here’s what I learned:
Business Relationships is a useful asset
When my emails stopped working, I still had people reach out to me through actual text messages and calls. These are the people who are dedicated to contacting me. Despite all the issues I was facing, having these people contact me was a relief. This meant that I had built a meaningful relationship with my clients which money cannot buy.
Show People that You Have Power and Authority
Sometimes threatening other people might be useful for some business owners. However, this experience was kind of new to me. I’m the shy-type, polite girl however this “politeness” only got me “Let’s see what we can do”. My company was already running out of funds and my bank told me to wait for 30 days before I can unblock my account again. So what I did was, I threatened my bank that I will cancel my account asap if I don’t get access to my funds right away. And guess what? It actually worked! They got me their bank manager and I was able to access my bank account after 24 hours. From telling me to wait for 30days to unblocking my bank account in 24 hrs is already an accomplishment for me. However, I am not saying that you should use threats all the time but when the right time calls for it, be ready to do it.
Can your business run without you closely monitoring it?
For almost 3 months, different problems with my business started piling up. I had to put my focus on some aspects leaving some parts behind to my team. If I was not able to get back up on track, most likely my business would not continue functioning anymore. It is important to have someone from your team who you can trust in case these types of emergencies happen. Be prepared to have someone take over you and manage some aspects of your business that will be out of your focus.
Always have a back up plan
Having a business is risky so as much as possible try to diversify your investments to lower down your risks. Instead of keeping 1 bank, try to keep 2 – 3 banks for safety. Make sure to have a primary and back up server, primary payment processor and a back up payment processor. All of your efforts will be put into waste if there’s no way for your customers to see your websites, communicate to you or even get payments from them. Make sure you are ready with your backup plans so your business will still continue to function even if the primary tools are down.