SME’s and Company Owners, you can recover and thrive…

As a business owner and entrepreneur for more than 2 decades, I know what it’s like to face troubling times in business, with facing financial crisis, or just trying to revive your existing business to make the wheels turn again, focus on existing liabilities, trying to sustain yourself and your family and then still showing a good face every single day.

Hence for that very reason, I continue to reach out to help individuals change their lives and it’s a gift, or a calling which I have embraced. So weekly I try to come up with different forms of inspiration, which is meant for you to view your debt-crisis situation from a variation of perspectives, so you can exactly pin-point:

1. Where did I go wrong?

2. How bad is my true situation?

3. Have I taken enough action to remedy this situation?

4. If you have, do you need more help and where to go? Have I short-listed possible new actions that I can take, or are am I simply vegetating hoping it will fall from the sky? Nothing moves until you do, a miracle will not drop from the sky if you are sitting around day and night, complaining, hiding away from creditors and beating the old story, which is already dead!

5. Have I reviewed your current business enough? Even if downsized now, surely there are possibilities to create new revenue funnels, or did you try to emerge yourself into available online information on how to master the art of Game-Changing?

6. What am I prepared to sacrifice to turn your situation around?

7. Do I need to secure the advice of an experienced Coach/Mentor, to enlighten me how to take alternative action and what my new options can be?

It’s not easy, but reality is that you created this situation, so by the same token you can become ‘unstuck’ and be on your way to creating abundance and prosperity for yourself again and you might say ‘it’s easy for you to say!’ and I know, but when you have walked the talk, then it’s realism, I have been there, so I know that the advice tendered is real.

The golden nugget when facing a debt crisis is ask yourself: ‘How can I create new abundance, prosperity and wealth for myself, because I believe I have the ability to overcome and achieve the success I set out to achieve?’ When you read this phrase it’s completely a total contrast to the story you have been beating to death for months or a few years. The tone sounds lighter, it makes you feel better, like there is hope, some new path available for you to persue. So why aren’t you pursuing it? Go for what you want, forget about the old story, because it’s not serving you, just deepening the hole you’re already in!

The keys are and I have repeated myself so many times over the past almost decade, writing on this subject and sharing my views, including tendering my advice, because I know that when you read this over and over again, it will resonate with you, because you are guilty of not taking concrete action to correct your situation and transform your life.

Most of you will say it’s impossible, let me share with you that there is no such word, when you say it’s impossible, then you are imposing limiting beliefs on yourself, so you will continue to remain stuck, negative situations will continue to present itself, and it’s not as you all think ‘Law of Attraction’, absolutely not, because something was left out and that very key is ‘Unconscious Competence’.

It takes approximately 21 days to establish a new belief, pattern or behavior, which means to ingrain new positive habits into your subconscious, because that is the ‘recorder of your life beliefs, patterns an habits’, you must do and repeat it over and over again, resulting in ‘unconscious competence’, like brushing your teeth every morning, or driving your car and arriving at your destination, only to find you don’t know how you got there!’, because it’s habit.

To progress, you must have a definite plan and purpose to derive at your final destination, so here are key tips for today.

1. Create a new plan, even if your debt has already been restructured, do your best at a new plan and ensure it makes logical sense;

2. Record all information, commercials, current outstanding dues and balances, cheques that have bounced, next EMI’s due, any information that will help you see a new picture, because most times people facing a debt-crisis turn a blind eye to the truth, as it makes them feel better, but for sure it does not make the problem go away.

3. Go back to your creditors, present your new plan, ask with much emotion for help, plead to the human side of them, because they are and many have huge empathy, just sometimes debtors approaches to creditors are entitled, arrogant, demanding and disrespectful, so leave those habits at home, as it will not serve you.

4. Take copies of all your legal documents with you, so you have everything readily available.

5. Most of all, start believing in your ability to overcome, you must burn yourself into a hot sweat of unraveled determination to set your financial situation right, believe in your plan and do not let anything move your focus from what you wish to achieve.

You might say ‘You’re joking, right?’ No, I am not joking because ‘What the human mind believes, it can conceive…’ and another great inspiration is ‘I will not stop, because men say no…’

Too often, we stop because men say no, we get despondent, we feel like our world is falling apart and we feel hopeless and useless to move an inch. Let me ask you today, don’t find yourself in this position stopped in your tracks because someone else’s realistic response to your determined plan, is negative. Never give up, keep on keeping on because the tunnel never stays dark, light overcomes darkness any day of the week.

You’re important to you, people don’t become useless because they’ve made a mistake to accumulate debt, it’s a lesson, where hopefully, once you got out of it, you would have learnt invaluable nuggets, setting precedent for your next new journey!

Creditors, it’s time for real change…

You can’t sway like the wind, first being co-operative and then not, because that same tide you’re creating, is negatively inflicting the lives of debtors who are really needing your help. If you want to see real change, then you must collectively start making a real concerted effort to realize that change, because recreating change with old habits is a door stopper!

So, here are a few real changes you need to revisit and apply:

1. If a debtor has presented their entire financial exposure, where they qualify for consolidation and/or restructure, but they’ve told you that right now they can’t meet the full overdues or high pending EMI’s, then I am sure you can make allowances to approve for them to pay a realistic partial overdue EMI and apply remedial to the remaining. Why is it necessary to apply victimizing actions and attitudes, including ego in most instances, just because you can? You don’t think that if you can recoup your organizations assets over a period, that you may just be able to see an improvement that would ensure you of some form of future stability? Or don’t you care? Don’t you assume that one day you could arrive at your office to find out that it is no more?

2. If the debtor has visited your office, met with you, is willing and able by presented commercial statements to meet he’s liabilities and you have done your due diligence and considering remedial, then on the flipside, why is it necessary for your team to continue calling the customer 58times in 20minutes most days?

3. In addition, to bounce their guarantee cheques and file legal action, whilst the case is submitted for review and approval by your management? Why are your systems not updated with this activity whilst the customer is awaiting your feedback? There is no consistency or handover from one months allocation to the next, regardless if you profess that all interactions with customers are recorded, it’s clear the ones where the customer requested help is not, because a remedial request can be pending from 6m to 1year, simply because how many really take an interest except to secure their target, then the same cycle continues with the next collector allocation.

4. Why once the legal action is completed, do you not follow your legal procedures, but instead harass the customer at their workplace, knowing that if your team specifically request to meet with your customer’s HR Manager, that they could be terminated? Am I correct in assuming that you don’t care and that it is irrelevant to you that the customer can lose their employment? So, if you have a good many customers in 1 month that you apply these measures to, how long could you hold onto your job? To be frank I have escalated such instances to senior management with no action or outcome.

5. Why is it that in many cases escalation to senior management is ignored and never actioned? I hear the excuse of being too busy, well, I don’t accept it, not when you are in a position of strength to make a difference and save a life and however much my sentiments have no significance to you because you have no empathy or compassion, then it’s time to do the full circle of the job assigned to you, because it’s not just about targets, or allowing internal power struggles and politics to affect key decisions made for debtors accounts, simply because you don’t like dealing with the remedial company requesting such reviews. We are not here to like anyone, but to build sound relationships to try to restore human faith and lives so everyone can recover, so it’s never personal, neither is what I am writing today.

These examples are not referencing debtors who are intentionally under-handed, rather the sincere debtor who has not only sought your help and was refused, but proceeded to seek alternative help from a remedial company who can review their entire exposure with the sole aim of reducing their DBR in line with their current monthly income, enabling them to service their EMI’s and not default.

I am saturated about customer’s having to hear from creditors as to why they are seeking the help of remedial companies, so let me inform you, here’s why, because if you did your job correctly in the first place, the customers would not have to seek alternative solutions and support out of sheer desperation.

Therefore, remedial is a full circle, it does not only pertain to the norm of consolidations, restructures or buy-outs, but also to the human factor of coping with psychological debt emotional fear, depression, anxiety, anger and also credit mentorship, because they get to understand how to transform themselves, hence, changing their situations where they learn how to emerge from their dark hole and recreate themselves and take ownership and responsibility of their lives in a full circle. It’s a serious issue, where it does not matter if a debtor opts to remain here or skip, even in the latter instance it can also be soul destroying if the debtor has a conscience and I know many have, so the choice some creditors had in the past should be a lesson today, rather to fully support until the debtors situation improves and realize that time is the healer of restoration, the debt was not accumulated overnight, so how come you want an overnight solution right now, when it is impossible?

When people are at your mercy, regardless of whether you assume that the situation was self-inflicted, the fact is that it won’t serve you to continue beating the old drums, rather your job is to save the moment, whilst saving your organization and yourself, because nothing else matters, except that the debtor is willing to repay he’s debt.

I find it very hard to consume when a debtor is offering to pay a partial EMI, where there is no legal action, just he knows that he is expecting income soon, but right now, he is willing to pay what he has in he’s hand, then the creditor refuses, in some cases, the collector will even demand that the creditor ‘go and lend it from someone!’. Really? So that you can achieve your target? The other big issue is demanding and EMI with a promise that once it is paid, the restructure will be processed, where once paid the debtor finds the account is then allocated to a new collector and history starts repeating itself and finally, the debtor faces legal action due to accumulated EMI balances.

When will we learn as human beings that being happy and in peace, also helping others to create that same equilibrium, will serve us all and that we are all on this one planet, supposedly to help each other, but some of us have cocooned ourselves in special aura of ego, that seems to be impenetrable, where those around us are already well trained not to cross that line. Realize that you’re not in an ego cocoon, just a delusional bubble that will burst in its time, then you will stand alone, unable to help yourself, because that’s the law of life.