What To Do After A Bad Patch In Business

A bad patch in your business can, if you let it, define the rest of your working life. How do you stop that happening?

At the beginning of this month I went to a creative meet up in a craft beer warehouse where all of us - writers, designers, artists, photographers - were randomly put into groups on trendy plywood tables to chat about creative life. This is where I met Carla (not her real name).

Carla had been through a bad patch. I know this because in the space of an hour and a half, Carla talked about her bad patch five times.

She talked about how her income had nosedived a year or so ago, to the point that she’d had to get a job in a coffee shop to pay the mortgage. She talked about how unsettling business is, never knowing what’s going to happen with her income. She talked about how she had been so confident in what she was doing before, and that was probably the reason her business had crumbled.

She seemed scared. She wanted to love what she did but felt she had to do what other people wanted her to do. She had ideas but the risk was terrifying her into inaction.

 We ended up chatting because we just so happen to be getting married in the same place a month apart, and again she spoke about her money worries and whether she could trust her income to be able to afford the wedding. 

I couldn’t help myself.

“You really need to stop letting that bad patch define your business. For as long as you are worrying about it and acting out of fear, you’re always going to be stuck there.”

Because actually, it turned out, the bad patch wasn’t representative of Carla’s business. At all. She had been successfully making money with it for six years before the bad patch. The bad patch itself didn’t last a whole year. She no longer worked at the coffee shop and was back making the money she needed in her business.

But mentally she was still in it, and that meant every action she took, every thought she had, was rooted in fear.

“Don’t let those bad months dictate the rest of your life”, I told her.

 As so often happened in my business coaching, the words I needed to tell myself tumbled out of my mouth in the direction of someone else. 

Because, of course, I went nuclear after my bad patch.

I believed I’d lost it, I wouldn’t be able to make money ever again, I was irrelevant and didn’t know what I was talking about. I closed down the business, I stopped posting, I got a full time job.  I changed my entire working life because I had a bad year in business.

Which is actually quite funny, on the other side. What an overreaction. Girl, chill.

But the financial panic was real and intense and in that moment I simply could no longer think clearly about what to do because all I could think about was how I needed money. I did the right thing to get financially safe. And it also gave me some perspective that I can take into business after the bad patch:

1 - The business is your job

My problem was always that my business was me, it had to be my whole purpose and represent who I was as a person. If I’d actually treated it as my job, not my essence, I would have been able to make more prudent decisions, be less emotive and also have a better balance in my life. Perhaps this is a question to ask yourself: how much am I treating this as my life vs treating it as my job? How would things be different if this was just my job?

2 - Pay more attention to everything that came before

Carla’s brain had put her six years of successful business in the bin; as far as she was concerned, they were gone. I too put my years of business building and making an income down as a fluke, retelling the story to make it seem like a downward slope rather than a blip. What if that’s not true? What if, just maybe, everything that came before is more exemplary of what you’re capable of than that bad patch?

3 - Your recovery tells you something

Carla got back to earning in her business. I got myself two consecutive jobs based on the skills gained in my business, and managed to return to financial comfort. Whatever it looks like, you have recovered. You are safe, and doing well, no matter what your head tells you. This is testament to your resilience, your ability to adapt and your skillset. There is nothing to be ashamed of.

4 - Make friends with the bad patch

For as long as your relationship with the bad patch is one of fear and shame, it will control you. For as long as you feel sick when you think about it, or even can’t bear to think about it, you will make all your decisions from a place of avoiding risk. This means you won’t grow, it means you won’t enjoy what you’re doing, and it means you won’t learn the lessons of the bad patch.

Perhaps if you can sit down with the bad patch and have a frank conversation about what led you there (“I coasted on my marketing for too long” or “I worried myself into inaction”), the bad patch can actually show you how to avoid another one.

It has so much to tell you if you only look it in the eye.