Over the last hundred years the life expectancy of people in the United States has increased dramatically. Although health care can be extremely expensive the scientific breakthroughs that have been made are amazing. Today if someone has a heart attack and they get the proper care there is a good possibility of extending their life. Doctors today can even look deep inside your body to diagnose a problem.
You may ask what this has to do with business.
The July 1st edition of USA Today, on the front page of the Money section reads with the headline: Small Businesses Vital To Economic Recovery Go Bankrupt.
The headline illustrates how we are going through a significant economic downturn that we’ve not experienced since the Great Depression. According to past history we should be coming out of this recession but it appears that we are not. Statistics are mixed and not consistent. Economists and financial experts can only speculate at best about the numbers being reported.
Many businesses are closing their doors and filing bankruptcy because of situations beyond their control. There are many other businesses who find themselves in economic difficulty because they just weren’t paying attention to what was going on in the marketplace. They never looked at their financial statement on a consistent basis or maybe they never even had one. So when the business started to slide backwards they didn’t have a clue till it was too late because they just weren’t paying attention to some basic business elements.
Since many economists believe it will be quite a while till business returns to “normal” this is the time to give your business a thorough check up to make sure you are on track and that your business can so to speak, hold its own, during this extended period of economic downturn.
Sit down with your CPA or accountant and go over your financial statements of the business to determine where your weakness is, where you are spending more money than you should and what areas of your business need to extra attention at this time. That’s the first step.
The next step is to get in action, dig deep, and start changing what needs to be changed. There’s a good possibility you won’t be able to do this on your own. You’ll need to bring in expert advice to get you back on track. Business people usually cringe when they hear the word “consultant”. But the right consultant can mean the difference between business success and business failure.