ADVANCE PRAISE FOR BOUNCE BACK
Rich has put together a very comprehensive and useful guide to navigate through these unprecedented times. The challenges can be overwhelming, particularly when your personal livelihood and possibly your life savings are on the line. This level-headed and thorough approach, backed by years of Richs experience, can help pave the road for a way out of business difficulties and set the foundation for a sustainable prosperous business.
Chris Vasiloff
Retired Senior Vice President of
Ingersoll-Rand Company and current
small business investor and entrepreneur
Richard, with his vast experience and sound advice, has for years helped businesses not only succeed, but thrive. Richs newest release, Bounce Back: Survive and Thrive in a Business Crisis , condenses that knowledge into very easily understood and applied processes. This book will help any business owners to manage through constantly changing markets, reevaluate their strategies, and redirect their efforts to achieve the highest possible rewards.
Dan Brownlee
CEO, Brownlee Lumber, Inc.
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www.RichMowrey.com
This book was written and published for your personal edification and enjoyment based on the knowledge and experience of the author. It is sold subject to the condition that it will not be circulated in any form, including photocopying or recording.
Copyright 2020 Richard D. Mowrey
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof, in any form. No part of this text may be reproduced without the express written permission of the author. If you, however, want to use quotations or excerpts in reviews or other noncommercial uses permitted under copyright law you may do so.
Published by Groundhog New Media
Edited by Nina Shoroplova
Layout Design by Amit Dey
ISBN: 978-0-9978801-6-8
TABLE OF CONTENTS
W hen you are in the middle of a business crisis, it takes some courage to acknowledge the extent of the problems. Not to mention finding the energy and focus to work your way out. This book, Bounce Back , provides some proven historic wisdom and techniques that will help you survive a business interruption. Please take the time required to absorb the knowledge gathered and presented herein. This information was taught to me and taught by me. It was assembled and distilled over decades of business consulting. By applying this know-how you should be able to help your business bounce back with much less stress. And then, thrive in a changed environment!
When your business has internal problems, it is a little easier to create a revival plan. It is a lot more difficult when the entire economy is in distress. Quite often businesses experience disruptions from one of the dismal Ds (Disability, Divorce, Death, or Business Disruption.) All but the latter are associated with problems of the owner.
Business troubles can come from internal actions or lack of action. It is more likely for a businesss deep distress to arrive as part of a general economic downturn. The fact that other businesses are struggling makes it harder to regain lost ground and to return to profitability.
The problem addressed here is predicated on finding the right set of responses and actions to survive and thrive in a broad crisis. That is not to say that the principles and processes cannot be successfully applied to a less-demanding situation. When the problems are more internal, there are some advantages you will not have when the entire economy declines. In theory, developing a recovery plan is easier if the marketplace still has significant strength.
When all around you are in distress, it takes a larger measure of strategic and innovative thinking to find a way to survive. And ... finding the right combination of strategies and actions to thrive becomes more problematic. This is due, in large part, to the higher level of uncertainty about the future. When your customers customers are not honoring their invoices, their problems can quickly become your problem. This sobering reality requires a survival-first mindset to get the best results. The different general topics in this book are designed to give you the confidence that you can manage your way forward.
It may take a minor or major makeover of your business to ultimately thrive in a rapidly changing market. That may sound like a major task. It is not nearly as hard to do as it could be to persist with an outdated business model. We will take a look at a historic business failure that is often mentioned in discussions of this nature. This look back and other materials in this book may not be new to you. That does not mean these lessons are any less important to grasp. This information is here to help you create the series of plans and projects required to survive. Once you break out of the economic wilderness, you can establish a new foundation for success. That stride forward will help you create a new platform, one on which you can build a thriving enterprise.
The chapters are grouped to provide you with the option to look ahead or to look back. This structure should accentuate use of your own personal experience in this process. It will also help you to utilize your companys strengths more quickly. Within the text are lists of questions and other action-oriented discussions. These offerings are designed to help you accelerate your response to the crisis. There are also tools and templates provided herein to support your efforts. Their use along with other reference materials will shorten the timeline needed to outline the next step actions you must take. They will help you develop and execute your survive and thrive plans.
In a crisis, you do not have the time or the money to schedule an offsite strategic planning session. You simply must plan and act in the short term to position your business for the longer term. The information, tools, and techniques presented here are designed to match this imperative. To meet this challenge, use the twelve-twelve process. Plan the next twelve months of business change and improvement in the next twelve days! That is a two-week planning period. (Take a day off each week to clear your mind and renew your energy.)
Ideally, you should read through the entire book and then go back and begin the specific work. Each topic area is laid out to prompt actions to help with the survival of your business. This approach will afford you the benefit of broader strategic thinking and should help prompt the integration of creative, insightful, uplifting strategies. Identification of the right strategies and actions should carry you and your business to new heights on the other side of an economic crisis.
Do not despair when you realize that this is a difficult process. It will provide you with an opportunity to really assess where your business is in a changing environment. That knowledge can be golden! Once you have that analysis underway, you are ready to create both your survive plans and your change plans! You can plan a small or a large operating strategy shift in the next dozen days, a change that will help you develop a much more profitable business a year from now. Now is the time to plan twelve months of effective transformative steps for your business. You can do that in the next twelve days so your business can survive and thrive whatever business crisis you are experiencing.