Turning Around a Failing Business

We are adamant believers that your business is not dead, until you bury it. That being said, it is far too often that staying in business is far tougher than getting into business. While many struggling entrepreneurs overcome their problems, survive and eventually prosper, too many others fail. In their wake, they leave vanished hopes, lost investments, destroyed aspirations and unpaid creditors.

Our experienced attorneys will implement survival strategies that have helped numerous financially troubled companies regardless of their type or situation. Salvaging your business takes plenty of hard work, luck, and determination. There is no quick fix and no business is beyond redemption. You may think that your business can't be saved, but we have salvaged many businesses that were about to be auctioned by the bankruptcy court.

Any troubled business can find success by finding the right turnaround strategy. Business is the foundation of American life, but so is business failure. This entrepreneurial heritage dates back to 1610, when shares of stock were sold in the Jamestown colony, America's first permanent settlement. Within several years, the young Jamestown colony was defunct, leaving behind a swarm of angry British investors, one Indian tribe still awaiting payment for foodstuffs and seed, and our nation's first downtrodden band of failed entrepreneurs.

Our services will provide an in depth look at your business. We tear down the structure of your business, create a sturdier foundation, and then build it back up successfully. We will guide you through each critical step for fixing your ailing business: cash management, internal controls, personnel, marketing, and pricing and selling.

Our goal is to help you through this nerve-wracking process. Once you see your problems more clearly and gain a fresh positive outlook, you will bail out your business with a new determination and purpose.

There is no one way to bail out of trouble. Yet from our experience with hundreds of troubled businesses, we have found significant differences between successful and unsuccessful recovery attempts. Listed below are a few key recovery strategies:

• Financial Controls: Successful recoveries improved their financial controls. Failed companies may have tried to improve their financial controls, but did not use their financial data intelligently.

• Cash-Generation Tactics: Successful recoveries prioritized cash-generation tactics throughout the workout. Cash generation was sporadic, weak or largely ignored among failures.

• Improved Marketing: Both successful and unsuccessful companies attempted to improve their marketing; however, successful firms made fundamental changes to products, services and prices. Failures were more status quo.

• Cost Reduction: Cost reduction is attempted by nearly every troubled firm, but failures relied on cost-cutting as their primary strategy. Cost-cutting, while always important, is only one of many strategies survivors employ.

• Selling Part of Your Business: Selling profitable parts of business to raise cash is common among successful turnarounds. Failures more slowly shed their winners.

• Decentralization: Improved communication and decentralization characterize surviving companies. Failing firms are more autocratic, uncommunicative and centralized.

• Improved Management: Larger firms that succeed usually bring in new management to spearhead their turnarounds, while failing firms generally do not.

• Combination Strategies: Survivors use many turnaround strategies. Failed firms rely upon few or solitary survival tactics.

Having a plan and implementing that plan correctly is important. A good job on one or two central strategies beats dabbling with a dozen, yet every successful turnaround must do enough important things well.

If you own a business and you find yourself asking, am I losing money? Am I up to my neck in bills? Is my business giving me headaches? Then give us a call. We will welcome the opportunity to help you get back on track.

• Back to Business Entities Overview

Yes, You Can Lose Everything!

You may think that your wealth is safe and that you don't need protection. But don't delude yourself and accept reality — for every 60 minutes you spend making money, spend 60 seconds thinking about how to protect it!