6 Signs Your Company Needs an Extreme Reboot!

If you've been feeling like your company is struggling, you're not alone. In this episode, we'll be exploring the warning signs that indicate your company may need an extreme reboot. We will delve into six key indicators that it's time for a major overhaul. From stagnating growth to employee morale issues, we'll examine the red flags that signal your company is in need of significant change.

But don't worry, we won't leave you hanging. Throughout the podcast, we'll offer actionable tips and advice to help you get back on track. Whether it's revamping your company culture or rethinking your approach to marketing, we've got you covered so you can get back on the path to success.

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Read Transcript Here:

Mike: [00:00:00] If you clicked on this episode today purposely, I have got some really good stuff in store for you today. I think if you clicked on this one purposely, instead of it just rolling over the next episode, you are looking for some answers about your company. You're probably struggling with some things, and you just want to know for certain, Mike, Hey, I've got this gut feeling, but I just need you to tell me, is my company broken? Because if so, I need to know how to fix it. You're in the right spot if you clicked on this and you wanted to hear that, because I'm going to walk through six signs that your company needs an extreme reboot today. When I'm done with that, hang on to the end because I'm also going to talk about some things you can do to get it back on track. So let's dive in and let's talk about six signs your company needs an extreme reboot.

Number one, and probably the most obvious is, you aren't hitting your goals. In fact, you're not even close. Let's say for example, you want to be a 10 million company this year. Maybe you're only at a million and you can't figure out for the life of you how you're going to win that other 9 million. You just can't. And it's not just the [00:01:00] monetary goals. Let's say you're a software company and you're trying to roll out a new version of your product. You're like, Hey, you know, we should have rolled this out three years ago. What's going on? And you're talking to your team, you're like, I don't know. We got this bug and this problem. And this next thing you know, there's no end in sight for when you're going to roll this thing out because you just can't figure out what's going on, what the problem is. And that's just the way everything looks in your business. You can't hit a goal to save your life. That's one of the most obvious challenges that companies that need a reboot have.

The second one is, you can't keep customers. And it doesn't matter who you are, what you do, whether it's product or service based. You win a contract and the immediate reaction instead of celebrating is you stay up all night just waiting for that email or phone call that says, Hey, we have a problem. Because you know it's coming. You know in your gut that you're not performing and it's just a matter of time before your customers complain. So that's number two. You can't keep customers.

And the next logical one there is number three. You can't keep employees. Employees are not [00:02:00] happy. You can't pay them enough. Employees are just never happy. One of the things that's is a dead giveaway that your employees are not happy is low communication. The volume of communication with your team: as that starts to go down, you can tell the unhappiness is going up. If you've noticed that, you know, I used to get three or four emails a day from this person and that person, now I'm lucky I get one a week from that person. That person is probably right around the corner from leaving your company. If you know that and you dread that of every day of coming in and saying, well, who quit today? Or, who do I have to fire today? Or whatever, that's another sign that you need a reboot.

Another one is cash flow problems. This one's number four. If you are nervous every time payroll runs around that you're not going to be able to make it, that's a problem. If you are nervous that your line of credit has been maxed out, your credit cards are maxed out, you don't know what would happen if you won the next contract because you're not going to be able to fund it. If that's going on in your business, that is a massive problem. So cashflow issues.

The [00:03:00] next one here is a little less obvious, but it's an underlying thing that happens a lot. Number five is, your main motivation is actually fear-based. You fear everything. You fear going under, you fear your employees, you fear your customers. You fear not making payroll. You fear all of the problems, and so your decisions and your employee's decisions are all based on fear. They're afraid of losing their jobs. They're afraid of what you might say if a customer calls in and is not happy. So if a lot of your decisions are based on fear, there's a massive, massive problem.

The last one here, number six is, you're not happy. In fact, you're miserable. That's how I would describe it. You're absolutely freaking miserable. You're one step away from checking yourself into a mental health center because you know you're worried about yourself or whatever it may be. This happens a lot. When people start to fail in business, they typically take it very personal. And they look at it [00:04:00] as, well, I'm a failure. And if I'm a failure, my family is going to be out all this money and we're going to have to sell our house and move and all the things that are connected to your business. If you are not happy, or should I say miserable in your business, you need an extreme reboot.

What I usually see in companies that need an extreme reboot is, they don't have just one of these six. They usually have all, or a combination of 'em. There's usually four or five of these that are there every single time when I walk into a company that needs a reboot. They all just kind of compound on each other. And it's one of those things that again, it pushes an owner to the brink. It creates situations like suicide and mental health issues and all that kind of stuff. And it can just be extremely overwhelming.

 That's the bad part. Here's the good part. What's the worst that could happen? The worst that could happen is you lose your business and you have to start over. Maybe go get a job. That's the worst that can happen. And if you understand that's the worst thing that can happen [00:05:00] and how losing this business doesn't mean you can't go start another one in 5, 10, 15 years, whatever it may be. Once you understand that, it starts to take a little bit of the stress off. A lot of major successful people have been nothing but failures through a lot of their life and then finally hit their groove. Whether it was Colonel Sanders with KFC. I was reading the other day, Samuel L. Jackson didn't start acting till he was in his mid forties. He was doing like, I think painting or something. I don't remember what it was. But you know, the people that you see that are major successes a lot of times didn't hit their stride till their mid forties, fifties. Or I think Colonel Sanders was in his early sixties when he hit his stride. You have a lot of time. That's the first thing. You have a lot of time. And the worst thing that could happen, you lose your business. You got to go get a job for a while, and then maybe you start your business over again. That's the worst case scenario.

Narrator: Did you know we have our own government contracting community? It's called Federal Access. And inside Federal Access, you [00:06:00] have all the tools, tips, strategies, documents, templates, everything you're ever going to need to be a government contractor. But you also get brought into our ecosystem. You get into our private LinkedIn group and you get into our live events and all that kind of thing when you become a member of Federal Access. To learn more, go to federal-access.com/gamechangers. Now, let's get back into this episode.

Mike: I just want to give you a couple of things really quick that will help you to start the reboot. My number one thing is always, bring somebody in. I know you're sitting there saying, if cash is a problem, how do I bring somebody in? Find a way. Whether it's a credit card or loan, find a way to get some cash to bring somebody in. Even if it's just to do an assessment with you. Even if all they do is sit down with you and say, Hey, Mike, I'm looking at the business with you. I think you should just shut it down. I think you should shut it down and start over later. Go get a job, do whatever. I've done that [00:07:00] with clients before where I've said, Hey, this is too far gone. There's not a lot we can do here. Just, just shut it down.

However, a lot of times when you sit down with a coach or a consultant, a lot of times they're going to say, okay, we need to take some extreme measures here. We need to make some extreme changes here. Are you on board? Which is probably the biggest mindset shift you need to make. If you're in a situation like this you have to be prepared to look at everything in the business as, Hey, I might have to change this. I always go back to that whole sacred cow type of mentality of, there should not be any sacred cows in your business. When the whole thing is going under, when it's turning belly up, no sacred cows in the business. Everything is a potential cut in the business in order for it to survive. Because look, if you can make three or four extreme cuts in the business, changes in direction, you might be able to right the ship and actually make this thing work. You just have to be willing to do that. Sometimes that's an employee or two. Sometimes it's a product or a service. But you have to be willing to make [00:08:00] those changes. So having the right mindset of: I'm either going to shut it down or I'm going to do what it takes to make this work is where your mindset needs to be.

And often bringing in a coach, bringing a consultant is the first thing you need to do. Because here's the deal. You can't see what's going on because you're just too close to the business. You're just way too close to the business. If you could have fixed it on your own, this is the key here, if you could have fixed it on your own, you would have by now. That's the one sentence that you may need to take away from today. If you could have fixed it on your own, you would've done it by now. So now it's time to take extreme measures to bring somebody in and look at everything and say, okay, here are the changes we need to make. Step 1, 2, 3, and 4.

In order, the first thing you need to do is plug the cash flow problems. You need to stop the money. The money is the thing where if you are draining money every month out of your business and you can stop it, you can put some plugs in the holes of the boat, you've got to [00:09:00] do that first. Because money is the one thing that you can run out of, and then you're out of options. So if that means reducing your workforce, if that means slashing product development, if that means changing course on something so that you can save big budget items, if that means not investing in something, if that means going to the people that you're renting your office space from and saying, Hey, we need to look at our contract to get out of it because we can't pay the rent or whatever it is. However, you need to restructure things to conserve cash is number one for you.

Typically, when you're having issues with your customers, you're having issues with your employees, you're having issues hitting your goals: you're not in growth mode. You're in that downward spiral mode, that sinking ship mode. You need to conserve the cash on hand because you're not growing enough, you're not growing quickly enough. If you were growing and having these problems, what I would say is, Hey, let's increase sales. Let's work on sales. Let's make sure that's working: our sales process, our customer service, different things. But [00:10:00] no, in this situation where you're, where you're going downward, you've got to conserve cash. That's number one.

Two is you've got to look at what's causing your customer service issue. You've got to fix that. And normally that is tied to what's causing your employee issues. And so that's where we go into that next and we're kind of addressing two problems at once. You're kind of addressing number two and number three, because they're equally important. Your customers and your employees are equally important. I'm just placing a little more importance on the customers because if you don't have customers, you can't have employees. That's really the big deal there. Now, some people would say it's a chicken and the egg thing. In my book, the customers come first because if we don't have them, we can't pay employees. Let's fix the customer service issues, so that we can keep customers and keep cash flow. It goes back to number one, we've got to keep the cash flowing or else the business is going to go under.

The next one is the employees. You know, what is it that's causing the employees to leave and all that. See if you can address that. If it's one or two things, great. If not, the next thing you need to do [00:11:00] employee-wise is look at who your rock stars are. Who are those people that are extremely valuable that, hey, as I start to form a new strategy, I've got to make sure that these employees stick around. These employees are going to be the key to our future. I would sit those employees down and say, Hey, I know the last year, 2, 3, 5, however many years. It's not gone really well. In fact, it sucked. I know it's been horrible for a lot of folks. Here's what we're going to do. We've brought somebody in, we're taking a look at the company. We're going to do an extreme reboot. You five employees are critical to the growth of the company. I put a lot of this on my shoulders. We're going to fix this thing, but I need your help. I need you to stick around. Give me six months to right the ship. And if I don't fix this, I'll write the best recommendation letter for you that a boss could write, or something along those lines. But sit them down and have that conversation. Let them know you're trying to right the ship. Ask them what the top problems are. If you were in charge of the company, what would you fix first? What would you fix second? What are some things that I don't know about the company that are causing the problems here? Get [00:12:00] their feedback in all of this.

The last thing here is now that you have kind of stabilized the patient, if you will, now it's time to sit down and actually form a plan of action. Initially I was more addressing this like a doctor in an ER. We're having cashflow problems. We're having customer problems. We're having employee problems. Let's address those things in order, like you're in the ER with a broken arm, right? We've got to address that right now. Once we can address that, then we can step back and look at the patient overall and say, What is the plan that we're going to put in place to get you in the place you want to be? Now we have the time to do that. Initially, you just don't have the time. That's why you've got to go in there, like I said, as an ER doctor, and go, there's three things we got to fix right away. Once we fix those, then we'll zoom out, take the big picture, and start to work on this.

And that's where you start to work on your long-term plan. And, and you look at, Hey, why have we been missing our goals? What's been the problems? And it could be some really, really simple stuff. Once you have the breathing room of cash flow, the [00:13:00] breathing room that your customers are happy, the breathing room that your employees are back on the right track. Now it's easy to sit back and say, in a perfect world, how can I redesign the company? How can I redesign it? From our products and services to everything else in the business: how do I redesign that? And that's how you go about starting a reboot.

So those were the six signs. That's how you kick off starting the reboot. And from there it goes a lot of different directions. That's where having an outside coach or consultant can really help with that. So again, I highly encourage that.

One final recommendation for you here today: if you are in this situation, just reach out to us. Reach out, let me know. I'm happy to have this conversation with you one-on-one. Talk through what's kind of going on, make some recommendations. If it makes sense for us to work together, great. If not, at least I'll have pointed you in the right direction.

 I want to make one final recommendation to you today. I'd like you to go listen to our podcast on your first year in government contracting. It's a really good one. If you're rebooting your business, that's the [00:14:00] podcast you need to listen to in order to reset your mindset and start to focus your business in a new direction.

Narrator: I really hope you enjoyed the podcast today. If you did, I would really appreciate it if you would like and subscribe to the podcast and screenshot it and tag me on LinkedIn or whatever social media you use. So thank you again for joining us today, and we'll see you next time.