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THE LEADERSHIP TRAINING/MENTORING CORNER - August Question Answered
THE LEADERSHIP TRAINING/MENTORING CORNER
In the August 2025 Newsletter, we started a series called “The Leadership/Mentoring Corner” in which we posed a thought-provoking situation for you to think about and put yourself into the situation, detailed and ask yourself – “What do I do now?” and “What precautions should I have taken?”. Below is the situation that was in the August 2025 Newsletter.
AUGUST LEADERSHIP SITUATION
30 days ago, you purchased a 20-year-old operating electrical contractor business from an owner who wanted to retire. The purchase included all assets (land, building, inventory, fixed assets, customer lists, etc.). All the business’ records were kept inhouse on a dell computer with no back-up processes in place. At 2:00 a.m. in the morning, you get a call from the chief of the local fire department that your building is totally engulfed in flames, and the fire department will probably not be able to save anything.
What do you do now?
- You have a crisis on your hands, so gather all your employees and detail the
- Contact your insurance provider as soon as possible and explain the situation to explain your plan and ask for help. Insurance companies usually have a team of experts that can help provide assistance and guidance to business owners through these crisis situations and the rebuilding process.
- Get in touch with your bankers and detail the situation to let them know your plans. If you had a loan secured by the business assets, the bank can usually provide a forbearance on the payments for some period. They also may be able to provide a short-term working capital loan to assist in the rebuilding processes. You can also ask the bank to provide you with copies of bank statements and checks that have been written and deposited so you can start to rebuild your data bases and files.
- Try to find a new space to lease so you can have a temporary facility for you and your employees to work out of and set up shop.
- Reach out to the former owner and seek assistance and support in rebuilding files and records.
- If you had an outside accountant who did your accounting work, contact that person and ask for assistance in rebuilding files, records and data bases.
- Gather data and records from e-mails that are likely on servers that were outside of the business, like Outlook or Gmail.
- Likely the business’ service trucks were outside in the parking lot or maybe even home with your employees. These trucks will be key to continuing operations. Further, these trucks likely will have supplies on them that can be used to continue jobs or start new ones.
- Take an ad in the local paper and explain the situation; let the community know you are still in business and that you are up operating and plan to rebuild. Flyers can also be made with the information for handing out to clients. Additionally, an e-mail campaign can be started with the details and positive messaging.
- Contact your suppliers and let them know what happened and ask them for their support in helping you get back in operation. They will likely provide you some kind of open credit to assist you in the process.
What precautions should you have taken?
- When you purchased the business, you should have determined what backup systems and processes were in place so you can be assured that all files can easily be retrieved and are not maintained on a single server kept on location.
- Being an electrical contractor you should have made sure the building had a working and state of the art smoke detectors and alert process in place and that they were functioning properly.
- Most businesses do not have a crisis management plan in place, but we recommend that document should be one of the items on any new business owners check list. No one plans for a building to burn down or a flood to occur but when they do, having a well thought-out and detailed crisis management plan (maintained off site) can be the key to any business’ (small or large) success and can also be a reflection on your leadership abilities and knowledge.
- Adding business interruption insurance coverage to your business insurance portfolio will provide much needed cash during rebuilding periods of this nature.
We hope this exercise provided you with some ideas if you are ever put in the position presented. Often great leadership skills are developed when real-life situations like the one described above happen. However, having thought through what you should do or should have done in some potential real-life situations and seeking assistance from trusted advisors can be some of the best leadership training and skill building you will ever experience.
If you need assistance in becoming a better leader, we recommend you start by contacting the Silver Fox Advisors. Silver Fox Advisors are former or present business owners themselves, and they have leadership experience in running a business, and in some cases several businesses, and have dealt with unforeseen and unplanned situations throughout their careers. We encourage you to visit our website at www.silverfox.org to select a Silver Fox Advisor and also to learn more about the Silver Fox Advisors, as well as our great programs and community outreach endeavors.
