While most people learnt to bake banana bread during lockdown… Pavlo Phitidis wrote a book. His second book within 9 months!
Listen to his discussion on 702 and CapeTalk about the book, and how it relates to our economic recovery:
The book, called Reset Rebuild Reignite, was born out of the hundreds of conversations that Pavlo hosted and participated in with other business owners during the early days of lockdown. Thinking about what we do as businesses in a time of crisis he realised that as South Africans we have become remarkably crisis fit and resilient.
In many other parts of the world, pre-Covid, you could quite simply and easily open shop and trade. These businesses had not suffered in a zero growth economy, with load shedding and all the political turmoil we face everyday. We take it for granted that we have an innate ability to cope with uncertainty.
In business, in effect we move from one crisis to the next and the next. Pavlo remembers burst waterpipes destroying all the stock in one business he ran. Or splits in partnerships that ruin a business, or a major customer who goes under.
Change brings opportunity
It became clear to him that there is a mindset and strategy that can be applied in any crisis. The word crisis means a change of state of health, and change means a shift in the status quo, and a shift in status quo is the crack that opens up opportunity. As business owners we need to learn how to see it, read it and engage with it.
In Reset Rebuild Reignite Pavlo’s starting point is that in crisis there is opportunity. If we look at the Economic Clock, everyone pours money back into the system during a crisis. We’ve also seen that SMEs who took the right action, stabilised and most importantly, at the end of last month, that SMEs that made the right calls, hit the bottom and are now starting to grow again.
The common threads among businesses that took the right actions include, when things change, what you did pre-crisis can’t work in a changed environment. You have to change. This is the Reset phase. Among the things you can do is codify your changed customer behaviour.
Recovery
Whether the economic recovery is a V, W, or Nike Swoosh, Pavlo’s approach has always been, and remains, that the right actions are more important than the economic circumstance.
In each industry, you have three tiers:
- Early stage start ups, which are right on the edge of survival.
- Mid-tier SMEs, classically between R10m and R250m
- Corporate businesses
Depending on the size of your business, the shape of your recovery is going to be different. From a corporate perspective, that shape is fundamental. Corporates keep restructuring to meet the shape of economic growth, but it takes a year to change, they need economic GDP growth to stimulate their growth.
The smallest businesses are simply struggling to stay alive.
Mid-tier businesses, with the right mindsets and actions, is the tier where we are seeing greenshoots of our economic recovery. The mid-tier business that reset and rebuild now, will be at the forefront of growth next year, relevant in their market and primed to take advantage of opportunities.
If you reset and rebuild now, by next year you will have made the tough decisions and choices, resetting your team, keeping the people you could afford to keep and sadly letting go of those you could not. You will find yourself in an economy where 30% of your competitors no longer exist, you can buy stock for 30c in the Rand, plant and equipment for 40c in the Rand, acquiring smaller businesses, absorbing new staff and customers, access to new markets. Opportunities are out there.
Get the book
Find out how to Reset Rebuild and Reignite your business in the book, for details of where to buy, visit https://aurik.com/pp-books/
