In every business there’s one constant that shapes the company’s culture more than anything else. Not your brand. Not your P&L. I’m talking about you. The founder. The owner. The person in charge.
I’ve seen businesses with strong profits – on paper – fall apart months later. I’ve seen companies making millions collapse under pressure. Why? Because profit can hide a problem.
Don’t get me wrong – I live and breathe financial models. My team builds dashboards, tears apart P&Ls, optimises working capital to the decimal. But I’ve been around long enough to know this: the numbers can look “okay” while the business is quietly dying.
If you’ve been running a blue-collar business through tough times, you’ve probably said or thought something like: “We’ll fix it once demand picks up.” “We’ll invest once cashflow improves.” “We’ll hire the right people when we’re more stable.” The truth is, though, in a turnaround, the conditions will never feel perfect. You’re not operating in calm waters – you’re trying to patch the ship in a storm.
Most business owners I meet don’t realise how dangerous complexity really is. They think it shows how far they’ve come – multiple product lines, departments, systems, maybe even multiple locations. But in a turnaround, complexity is the enemy of speed, clarity, and control.
Growth is supposed to be a good thing. You’re taking more orders, hiring more staff, expanding your space. You’re busy, working hard – it feels like progress. But here’s the reality: some of the worst cash flow problems happen when business is growing. Because most SME owners aren’t prepared for what I call “profitless growth.”
It’s something I see in almost every struggling blue-collar business I walk into. The owner is usually hard-working. Loyal. Respected by the team. But they’re also too close – emotionally and operationally – to see where the real problems lie. It’s like living next to a slow gas leak. You stop noticing the smell, until the spark comes.
Loyalty is a value we’re taught to respect. Be loyal to your staff. Your customers. Your suppliers. Your old ways of working. But here’s the uncomfortable truth: In turnaround situations, loyalty can kill you.
If you’ve been in business long enough, you’ve had that moment. You walk through the workshop, or the warehouse, or the site, and you think, “Where’s the fire in people’s eyes? Where’s the pride? Why am I the only one who seems to give a damn about this company?”
One of the most dangerous things in business isn’t a big crisis. It’s the quiet, creeping loss of margin that looks small on paper — but adds up to disaster. And if you run a blue-collar business, where cost control and delivery are everything, this should keep you up at night.
If you're running a blue-collar business, you know the drill. The phone won’t stop ringing, deadlines are brutal, and you’re always three hires short. But here’s the truth: chaos is expensive. And worse, it’s invisible until it's too late. Most distressed businesses I step into have one thing in common: they’re addicted to speed. Rushing to quote. Rushing to deliver. That’s not momentum. That’s mismanagement in disguise.
Growth can be a gift. But it can also be a trap, especially for blue-collar businesses where the pressure to take on every job, say yes to every opportunity, or underbid to win market share can break the very core of the company.
In nearly every business turnaround I’ve led, ego has been one of the biggest barriers to success. Not market conditions. Not lack of funding. Not even competition. It’s leaders who can’t get out of their own way. When your company is in decline, your ego is not your friend. In fact, it’s probably your biggest liability.
In the world of turnarounds, nothing drives action like pain. And I don’t mean minor discomfort—I’m talking about real, undeniable, existential threat. The burning platform. That moment when staying where you are is no longer an option. Most businesses drift into trouble. Slowly. Soft decline. A missed target here. A cash flow squeeze there. Blame gets passed around. Excuses are made. And by the time leadership realises the real danger, the fire’s already licking the floorboards.
Every struggling business I walk into has one thing in common: everyone’s busy. Phones ringing, machines breaking, orders running late, customers shouting. The MD is running from one fire to the next - plugging holes, fixing chaos, answering questions they shouldn’t even be involved in. But here’s the real problem: when you’re always fighting fires, you never get to build the fireproof system. And that’s where leadership comes in.
When your business is in trouble — cash is tight, team morale is low, clients are slipping away — your first instinct might be to blame external forces. The economy. The market. Your staff. Maybe even luck. But the real turnaround starts inside the mind of the leader. That’s where the bleeding either stops or continues.
In a struggling business, chasing more revenue without fixing your margins is like pouring water into a bucket full of holes. You’ll work harder, sell more, stress more — and still sink. Sales feel like momentum. Sales keep the machines running, the phones ringing, the invoices flowing. But here’s the hard truth — revenue without profit is just busy work.
In nearly every turnaround I’ve led, there’s one consistent truth — the old rules no longer work. But the team? They’re often still playing by them. When your company enters a downturn, everything shifts — cash is tighter, priorities change, and urgency goes up tenfold. But if your people are still operating like it’s business as usual, you’ve got a serious disconnect. And that’s dangerous.
If you reviewed all your clients today—every contract, every recurring order, every long-standing relationship—how many of them are truly helping you move forward? And how many are quietly dragging you down? This is one of the hardest but most critical truths in turnaround work: not all revenue is good revenue.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned after years of turning around businesses—from logistics to retail to homecare—it’s this: speed beats strategy when you’re in trouble. In normal times, it’s okay to debate. To polish the PowerPoint. To wait until you have 90% of the data. But in a turnaround? That luxury is gone. Delay is the enemy. If you wait for the perfect plan, you’ll miss the window for any plan to work...