Business Turnaround podcast

You’ve built this company. With your hands, your time, your weekends. You remember every supplier meeting from 10 years ago. You know how to fix the machines yourself if needed. Your people respect you. Or they fear you. But one day, something shifts. Sales flatline. Staff turnover creeps up. You feel like you’re pushing harder, but nothing’s moving. That’s when Owner Blindness kicks in.

Most business owners I meet don’t go bust overnight. They survive the big shocks – COVID, interest rates, raw material hikes... But what finishes them off? The slow, quiet drip of profit they never knew they were losing.

You know the one I mean. The one that’s been around forever. The one your team has an emotional connection to. The one your customers used to love... but now it’s just kind of there – barely moving the needle. And still, you keep it alive.

Momentum isn’t on your P&L. You can’t measure it on a dashboard. But every founder, every CEO, every operator who’s lived through tough times knows exactly what it feels like. When momentum is gone, everything becomes harder. Sales calls don’t convert. Staff move slower. Decisions get delayed. Emails sit unanswered. And then the worst thing happens: nothing happens.

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.”