There’s no way to sugarcoat it—when your business is struggling, and when your venture starts sinking, the feeling is visceral. You feel it in your chest before you see it on a spreadsheet. Maybe it’s fewer clients calling back, a slow trickle of sales turning into a near standstill, or a once-thriving storefront now echoing with silence.
If you’ve built something with your own two hands, you know that watching it struggle can be like watching your reflection crack.
But here’s the truth: it’s not the hard times that define your business—it’s how you respond to them. I’ve talked to hundreds of business owners across industries and learned that resilience isn’t some abstract motivational poster. It’s a series of small, smart decisions made in moments when everything feels like it’s slipping through your fingers.
What to Do When Your Business is Struggling: Face the Numbers Head-On, No Matter How Ugly They Are
Let’s be honest—most people avoid their financials during hard times for business. It’s easier to stay in the fog than to read the fine print of reality. But if you’re going to get through this, the very first step is to look your numbers dead in the eye. You don’t need to be an accountant; you just need to get uncomfortably honest.
Where is the money going? What’s coming in, what’s bleeding out? Are there ways you can reduce your costs—say, when it comes to digital marketing? Open the books, all of them. Talk to your accountant. Build a real picture of what survival looks like in numbers—barebones, realistic, and unfiltered. Once you have that, you have your battlefield.
Investing in Your Own Growth
When your business is struggling, doubling down on your own education can be one of the smartest moves you make. Earning a degree to enhance your business acumen isn’t just about theory—it gives you the strategic tools to diagnose problems, seize opportunities, and lead with clarity under pressure.
A master of business administration program gives you a deeper understanding of business, strategy, and management, while also sharpening your leadership, self-awareness, and self-assessment skills. For working professionals, online MBA programs offer the flexibility to grow your knowledge base without stepping away from the business you’re trying to save.
Cut Emotionally, Not Just Financially
This part’s rough. You’ll likely have to make cuts, and the temptation will be to do it with cold efficiency. But here’s the thing—if you’re cutting people, services, or products without thinking about how those choices land emotionally (internally or externally), you might be creating damage you can’t repair.
Think about what your brand means to your employees and your customers.
Maybe you can let go of that fancy office space before laying off a longtime employee. Maybe you pause a product line rather than axing it completely. Being humane in your approach keeps your reputation and team morale intact.
Ventures can survive hard times for business, but they do it by rebuilding—and the people around you will remember how you handled this moment.
Over-Communicate With Everyone—Even When You Don’t Have the Answers
One of the biggest mistakes when your business is struggling, is silence. When business leaders retreat, everyone else fills in the blanks with worst-case scenarios. You don’t need a grand vision or polished speeches. You just need to show up and talk.
Tell your team what you know, what you’re trying, what’s keeping you up at night. Call your vendors. Email your clients. The more people understand your challenges, the more they might surprise you—with patience, with solutions, even with loyalty.
Remember, it’s not about having perfect answers in hard times for business. It’s about having the courage to stay visible in the storm.
Revisit What Made You Start—And What’s Still Worth Fighting For
In the day-to-day grind, it’s easy to forget why you started the business in the first place. But when things collapse around you, there’s strange clarity in asking: What part of this still matters? What core offering, service, or mission is still worth waking up for?
Sometimes it means stripping everything back to the bones. Maybe your café isn’t profitable with a full menu and a staff of ten, but a smaller version—just you and a barista, focused on killer coffee—can ride out the wave. The goal isn’t to mimic your past success. It’s to carve out a version of your business that’s still viable, still true, and still alive.
Let Go of the Shame That Comes With Struggle
This might be the most personal, least talked-about piece of advice. During hard times for business, you feel like you’ve failed. The world doesn’t make it easy either—we’re fed stories of meteoric rises and million-dollar valuations, not survival stories.
That said, some of the most respected, steady entrepreneurs have been through hell and back. They’ve lost stores, been sued, gone bankrupt, had to borrow money from family, you name it. Struggle doesn’t make you weak; pretending you’re immune to it does. Let go of the guilt, the shame, the comparison. You’re still in the game—and that matters.
Ask for Help Earlier Than You Think You Need It
One of the most powerful moments in a downturn is when you finally admit, “I can’t do this alone.” And you’re not supposed to. Advisors, mentors, coaches, former colleagues, even other business owners—they’ve all either been there or are going through it right now.
Tap into your network, whether it’s people you’ve known in real life for years or folks you’ve connected with on LinkedIn, even if it feels vulnerable. You might find someone who knows a lender that’ll give you better terms.
Or someone who pivoted their business model in a way that could inspire yours. Sometimes, just talking to someone who gets it can give you the clarity to keep pushing.
Find a New Lane—Even If It’s Not the One You Dreamed Of
This one takes guts. You may have started your business with a specific vision in mind, and letting go of that original image in hard times for business can feel like betrayal. But the market doesn’t care about our dreams—it responds to value. So if there’s a different lane, a neighboring industry, or a pivot that could save you, you owe it to yourself to explore it.
I’ve seen fitness studios become video production houses, bookstores morph into publishing consultancies, catering companies evolve into packaged meal brands. Reinvention isn’t failure. It’s adaptation. And it might just breathe new life into everything.
Burnout Is Real—And You Can’t Save the Business If You’re Running on Empty
Let’s talk about the sleepless nights, the endless to-do lists, the pressure to stay upbeat while your insides churn. That’s the emotional tax of entrepreneurship in hard times. It’s heroic, but it’s also unsustainable.
You can’t make good decisions when you’re fried. You can’t carry your team when you haven’t eaten in 12 hours. Take care of your body and your brain. It sounds like fluff, but it’s not. Get outside. Move your body. Talk to a therapist. There is no recovery strategy that works if you burn yourself out first.
Wrapping Up
Here’s what no one tells you awhen your business is struggling: this chapter doesn’t define the whole story. Sure, it might break you down, make you question everything, and force you to rebuild. But it’s also the chapter where you learn what you’re made of.
It’s the one where the fog clears, where your values sharpen, where the fat falls away and the core of your business finally reveals itself. Don’t waste time longing for how things used to be. Use this moment to reshape what they could become. You’re not done. Not even close.
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