When your business begins struggling, whether it is a simple downturn in income or the downfall of a recession, you are going to feel so many emotions.  After all, your business is like your baby. You worked hard to get your business up and running and you have spent hours honing your skills, so your business could grow and thrive.  

Once unchartered times, like our current recession, hit, you are going to want to instantly go with your gut when it comes to making all of your decisions.  However, I want to urge you to ignore your gut and focus on the data you are collecting. This will allow you to create actionable plans that will help, and not hurt, the future of your business.  

The 10-10-10 method is what I love to use when things are on a tailspin, because it allows you to focus on the next ten minutes, ten months, and ten years.  This is excellent, because what may seem like a fantastic idea right now, could be the worst decision for your business’s future.  

In the beginning, you may only want to focus on the first ten minutes, but you will want to determine what the long-term results will be from those actions.  

For example, laying off an employee now may make you feel horrible emotionally, but when you think about ten months from now when you can rehire them, you will feel much better.  Creating a new offering for your business might seem like a ton of work right now, but in the long term, all of that work will allow you to reap the rewards later on.  

One of the best things that the 10-10-10 method can do is stop you from taking out a loan.  While a loan may seem to be your best answer for the next ten minutes, in ten months, and even ten years, from now, you won’t be as thrilled when you are struggling to make the payments when they are due.

Of course, during this recession, you do have options when it comes to loans and they are the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) and an SBA loan.  You can also take advantage of the emergency disaster funds that are being distributed.  

It is important to note that you must place any money you receive from the three funding options above into a separate account from the rest of your business’s finances.  The reason for this is that the above loans can be forgiven, but only if you use the money for what it was designated for. Therefore, you must keep track of everything, even if it appears to be a small purchase like hand sanitizer.  

If you think you will qualify for forgiveness of a loan mentioned above, that might be the only way it would pass the 10-10-10 method for being good ten minutes from now, as well as ten months and ten years from now.  

Looking past the immediate future can be very difficult, especially if you haven’t been able to start focusing on what is truly important.  However, making rash decisions will not help your business, so start using the 10-10-10 method to see how every decision you are considering will affect your business now and in the future.  

If you have no clue where to start, or have so many questions, please give me a call!  I want to help you figure out what the best options are for your business.