How to prepare for a change in direction

Let’s be honest, running a business can be incredibly challenging. It can have a huge impact on your physical and mental health, as well as those of the people around you. At times that can mean you either need to move away from the business or take it in a completely different direction. Easy to say but difficult to do.

Over my career, my businesses have evolved and changed, sometimes due to a shift in the environment, sometimes due to personal circumstances. Each time has developed my understanding of how to perform the change efficiently, as well as the mental load that it brings. 

Starting a business is relatively easy. You decide what the business will do, chose a name and, hey presto, you are now the proud owner of a baby business. Like all babies, it grows fast but can then run away with itself, and before you know it, you have too much work and you need to take on some staff.

On and on this goes until one day you wake up and realise that maybe this isn’t what you want to do any more. So what happens now?

Take action

Whether you shut down completely, sell the business or just take a step back to learn to enjoy it again, having even a loose plan of action can take the pressure off. 

There are a series of steps you will find useful when creating this plan:

Outgoings: Go through your bank account and list all the payments you made in the last year, listing each one individually and the date it left your account.

List all the contract end dates: That’s rent, utilities and any staff notice periods. A spreadsheet is useful as it can be set to automate a lot of the calculations for various reports, but a pen and paper will work fine if that’s what you’re happy using.

Operating costs: Once you have your end dates then you can work back from the furthest date and start calculating the costs.

Final cost: This gives an idea of what it would cost to get out and how achievable it is.

Assets: These can be sold to offset the costs, but be careful not to overvalue and leave yourself short.

What you’ll keep: This is where you must be disciplined. Slowly thinning down the items you have collected a little each week soon adds up and it suddenly becomes a manageable task.

Taking the time to develop a plan can have enormous benefits to mental health. Being in business is often about being in control of your own destiny, and this is an important tool in making sure that you are agile so you are ready for whatever life throws at you, be it disaster, a new opportunity or just wanting to do something new.

This is an edited extract from IMI's new MotorPro magazine, received free as part of IMI membership.