Imagine for a moment that you’re at a standard networking event. An acquaintance asks you, “How’s business?” No matter what is actually happening in your business, you probably answer, “Oh, it’s great!” or “We’re just trucking along!” You never mention the horrible client who went over budget and is ninety days late on payment. You studiously avoid all discussions of not paying yourself so that you can make payroll. And you never ever never discuss the lawsuit that is keeping you up at night. You have an image to project. You are an island unto yourself. You can handle it all.
With all due respect, dear tribe, that’s a load of crap. It’s time to get real—time to share some hard truths and allow some vulnerability among your peer group. Isolation rarely serves your best interests or those of your customers or employees. Talking with other people who share similar priorities and have been through similar situations is how this tribe can learn, grow, and prosper.
b2bTRIBE talked to small business owners and entrepreneurs who shared some of their lowest moments and how they climbed out or are still working toward recovery. In this article, three in particular talk about pulling their businesses through major crises that could have shut them down. But they prevailed. We also talked to several legal experts who shared their perspectives on how small business owners can prepare themselves to prevent or better weather a disaster.
(Disclaimer: any legal perspective shared in this article does not create or constitute an attorney-client relationship nor convey or constitute legal advice.)
Crystal Provance
The Southern Gourmet and Southern Garden
Business had been steadily growing at The Southern Gourmet since Crystal and Randy Provance started their restaurant and catering business in April 2006. The longer they were business owners, the better they got at it and the better known in the community.
Randy handled the operations side of the business—payroll, invoices, bills, and technology—as well as the front of house working the register, greeting regular customers by name, and occasionally helping an indecisive magazine editor with her lunch selection. Crystal handled the fun stuff—the party planning, menus, dreaming up new ideas like Southern Garden, their event space that opened in 2014. Crystal felt fearless then; she could do anything because Randy would back her up. They were steadily building an empire that would sustain them into retirement. Married for twenty-eight years and together for thirty, they were eagerly planning the next thirty or forty years.
On Sunday, December 13, 2015, Randy had taken the day off. It was his turn during their busiest season when neither of them got much time to themselves. He was doing laundry and planning to spend the afternoon watching football when Crystal headed out that morning.
Crystal came home a little after 8 p.m. after working a holiday party. Upon her return, she found Randy lying on the bathroom floor. He was lucid and apologized to her for his condition. But he was too weak to get up. He told her he hadn’t taken any medication or hit his head or had too much to drink while watching football. He had showered and shaved and just wanted help up from the floor. After a few attempts, Crystal couldn’t get him up either, so she called 911. The paramedics came and took him to CMC Main. She never spoke to him again.
Randy was in an induced coma to control seizures by the time Crystal was able to see him at the hospital. After hours of back-and-forth discussion with several doctors, a neurologist finally told her Randy wasn’t going to make it. On Monday morning, December 14, Randy Provance passed away from an intracerebral hemorrhagic stroke. No amount of preventative health care could’ve changed Randy’s chances. He was a fit fifty‑something‑year‑old who ate well and hit the gym four to five times a week.
The Aftermath
Crystal closed the restaurant side of the business for several weeks. But she only took a few days off to spend time at home with her sister-in-law. She’d made promises to hundreds of people for the holiday catering season and had to deliver. She also had employees who were grieving Randy’s loss along with her. For a little while at least, she avoided seeing people and working the catered events, preferring to work behind the scenes and trusting her employees to represent her well. They got through the season with most of their catering customers not knowing anything was different. The restaurant re-opened the first Monday in January.
Had it not been for her employees, Crystal might have contemplated selling the business. But in her words, “They were rock stars!” Every member of her staff, even the part-timers, stepped up intuitively, taking on new responsibilities and supporting Crystal in whatever she needed. And that support was essential to get the business through the holidays and to give Crystal leeway to learn Randy’s side of the business.
She didn’t realize how much Randy did until he wasn’t there to do it. “Some things were lost forever,” she said. “We’re still figuring some things out.” She has a bowl of mysterious keys that don’t seem to belong to a particular lock.
Among the many things she’s had to figure out is how to access various accounts. Passwords weren’t written down. Some bills were set to paperless, and she had no idea they were overdue until someone called to collect. Most of the overdue accounts were smoothed over fairly easily with the payment of a late charge. The power bill was another situation altogether.
During the lunch rush one day in May, everything suddenly went dark in the restaurant. She peeked into the adjacent event space and saw the lights were still on—same for the dentist’s office next door. She got on the phone with the power company and found that the restaurant had been disconnected for four months of nonpayment. After much confusion and frustration with telephone customer service reps, Crystal discovered that she’d only been paying the event space bill, which didn’t include the adjacent restaurant. The restaurant’s bill was set to paperless but wasn’t coming to the email address she and Randy shared. She still has no idea where that bill had been going.
She paid the four months overdue by phone but did not, however, pay the $1,400 reconnection fee the company tried to charge. After reaching out to her network, Crystal got a call from a woman higher up on the power company’s customer service chain who apologized and waived the reconnection fee. Three cheers for great networks!
The New Normal
Randy’s absence has taken the fun out of the business for Crystal, who said, “I know I feel that because my loss is still so fresh. But I didn’t realize how much fun building this business together was for the two of us. When you’ve created and built something like this with the love of your life and you lose that, it’s just—what then?”
A short time later, she answered her own question. “If my partner wasn’t my husband, it could’ve been worse. At least I understood how his mind worked and knew where to start. And having the business is helping keep Randy alive. The customers and staff keep him alive. Staff won’t let me take Randy’s voice off the answering machine even though it has the wrong business hours. Some of them still call after hours and listen to him.”
Crystal is still grieving and will be for some time yet. She plans to sit with that feeling for a while and allow the business to ground her. “One of the biggest mistakes anyone can make is making decisions when they’re in a state of grieving over a loss. So we’re just coasting. Business is awesome. Business is better than it’s ever been. He would be very proud of us.”
She wants to be sure other business owners take steps to protect themselves from the loss of a partner or key employee. Share all the information—passwords, accounts, account numbers, processes. Write everything down and make sure key personnel know where to find it. And don’t forget to hug the ones you love.
Angela Key
Premier Resources and Premier Healthcare Resources
If Angela Key were made of softer material, she may not still have her business. She survived breast cancer and complications from chemotherapy in 2006. And more recently, she went up against a poacher and emerged with a positive attitude and an even stronger commitment to her code of ethics.
Angela is the founder and president of Premier Resources, a sixteen‑year‑old full-service staffing firm, and Premier Healthcare Resources, a nine-year‑old full‑service staffing firm that provides clinical and non-clinical staff to the healthcare industry. She and her eleven employees were slowly but steadily growing the companies. They held steady even through the recession in 2008.
The day after Thanksgiving 2013, Angela was on the road heading back from meeting her in-laws to be. It’s a moment that will forever remain stuck in her mind as the turning point from normalcy to a constant state of high alert that has yet to subside. Once back in cell range, she checked her phone and found an abrupt resignation email and text from an employee—let’s call her “Defendant”—whom Angela had trained and trusted to work directly with clients. Angela had a sinking feeling that something was wrong but didn’t know quite what. A week later, she started getting calls from clients saying they’d heard from Defendant who said she was working for a new company but wanted to continue supporting them. The majority of those clients had been with Premier longer than Defendant had. Angela contacted her attorney who set in motion a two-year journey through the court system.
Predatory Poaching Practices
While Angela will not offer many details about the case, preferring instead to focus on moving forward and serving her clients, b2bTRIBE accessed an unpublished opinion by the North Carolina Court of Appeals that offers a wealth of detail. Out of respect for Angela’s preferences, b2bTRIBE will repeat only as much detail as necessary to convey the situation.
Defendant signed both a non‑compete and a confidentiality agreement with Premier. In October 2013, a national company with annual revenues exceeding $100 million approached Defendant to build its practice in the Charlotte market and assured her it would handle any legal issues she encountered from violating her non-complete. She accepted the job offer but did not immediately resign from Premier. She stayed on an additional month and gathered Premier clients’ contact information. Shortly after leaving Premier, she began contacting those clients to offer her continued services. Premier filed a complaint with the court and was quickly awarded a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction that prevented Defendant from continuing her work in the local market. Defendant, still supported legally by the national company, appealed the ruling, which drew out the process for another year. The parties eventually came to an undisclosed settlement.
Angela has very litt
le to say about the Defendant or the company that poached her. What she did share was the feeling that a larger business might have been able to handle the situation with little damage. For her small company, however, the situation was almost insurmountable. “I don’t want to discredit our industry in any way. This was just such an aggressive strategy; I didn’t realize how much time and money that company was willing to invest and how fast they would move to try to take our clients. It took everything I had to fight it.”
Angela worked 100 hours per week throughout the ordeal both to cover regular duties and keep the business going and to handle the volume of research and paperwork necessary to support her case. She eventually had to hire someone to help with the paperwork as she started fearing for her own health. And of course, legal costs strained her finances.
Onward and Upward
Perhaps her biggest regret was not informing her customers of the situation early on. “I might have pushed a little more to let our clients know what happened early on. Perhaps the outcome would have involved less time and money, been less intense. And maybe I could’ve recaptured some things for our internal team more quickly.” She felt she was protecting her clients by not dragging them into it. She did lose some business, but she’s very grateful for those loyal customers who stuck by her.
“The individuals who work here and were here at the time pulled together,” said Angela. “We worked hard and long and made sure we continued to do everything we could for our clients because if it wasn’t for them we would have nothing. So you still have to make sure they come first. Fortunately, my staff has the same core values and commitment and dedication. That was our saving grace. They know I’m loyal to my clients and loyal to them, and that loyalty was reciprocated.”
Premier has yet to completely recover the revenues and growth rate it had in 2013. Angela estimates the business will be completely recovered by 2017. She encourages other business owners to make sure they have all the proper employment agreements and other legal protections in place.
Of course, even if you have the proper protections, something awful can still happen. She encourages other businesses to play fair: “I agree with making sure there’s healthy competition, but it has to be done the right way.” Poaching employees and clients in order to enter or expand in a market is not the right way, in b2bTRIBE’s opinion. Angela agreed and said, “I believe in karma, so I’m going to keep doing it the hard way. I can lay my head down at night and sleep with a clean conscience.”
Dericus Scott
Standing Ovation Barbershop
While insurance is a great start, nothing can really prepare you for a car crashing through your front door. On October 30, 2015, all was well at Standing Ovation Barbershop in downtown Matthews, where thirty-three-year-old Dericus Scott has provided professional haircuts and hot towel shaves to a diverse clientele since 2013. Suddenly, glass flew everywhere, and dust filled the air. An elderly woman driving through the parking lot had been blinded by the sun and drove straight into the shop’s storefront. Fortunately, no one was injured.
Crisis Management 101
Dericus shut down the shop temporarily for repairs, which were fully covered by his insurance, and thought he’d be back open in a few weeks just in time for the busy holiday season. Then he learned those few weeks would be more like three months. A business interruption of that sort could have wiped out many businesses. But Dericus advocates turning to other small business owners for support and advice. The first calls he made were to his friends and mentors Ron Jacobs, a regional manager at McDonald’s, and James and Jermonica Lindsay of Shining Star Childcare Center in Pinehurst, NC. They said all the right things to motivate him to move forward quickly and decisively.
He set up temporary shop in a ten-by-twelve-foot office where he kept the business going. One employee was preparing for maternity leave, so she planned an extended leave. Another went to visit family in Vietnam during the hiatus. The fourth employee decided to seek other employment.
While Dericus didn’t lose any of what he considers his personal clients, he did lose clients of the barbershop, those who drop in irregularly. He also lost revenues during the holiday season when lots of people have time off and want to look extra snazzy for the festivities. The biggest hit, however, was to his family life. Keeping the business going required Dericus to go in an hour early and often stay two to three hours later, leaving his wife at home alone with three small children.
Relationships and Positive Attitude
He’s now back full force with his three remaining employees and fully recovered from the business interruption. He attributes the quick bounce to his faith in God and to his practice of building relationships with his clients. He learns their names, their children’s names, and their pets’ names and treats them like family.
Throughout the interruption and repairs, Dericus kept his customers informed with a monthly newsletter sent through Constant Contact. He also uses that service as his database, storing mailing addresses and birthdates to send birthday and holiday cards. “Always have a service mindset,” Dericus said. “That’s such an attractive attribute for people. As long as you serve people, they will want to support you.” Additional advice he offers to other small business owners is to get well insured, have some reserves built up, and build a strong team you can trust.
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Melisa Graham is the communications director at SPARK Publications, editor of b2bTRIBE magazine, author of Used Cow for Sale (a collection of poetry, mom, and wife.
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