EP 12: When Everything Goes Wrong in Your Business, Remember This
How to Stay Motivated as a Small Business Owner Through the Hardest Seasons
I'll never forget walking into my office one Monday morning and finding my entire cleaning team refusing to go to work. Every single one of them. I remember thinking we were going to lose the entire company. Looking back now, it's wild to think about what actually came out of that day.
What Actually Happened That Monday Morning?
This was early on at Primavera, back when we had around eight cleaning technicians and a field manager overseeing them. Tension had been building between her and the team that I hadn't fully registered.
When I walked into the office that morning, the cleaners had gathered and basically gone on strike, upset that she'd been too hard on them. We had customers expecting their homes cleaned that day and no backup cleaners.
I felt pure fear, certain we were about to lose our customers, our team, the whole business.
I didn't handle it perfectly. I mostly just listened, tried to understand what was going on, and told them we'd do something about it. Everyone ended up going to work that day, but the experience stuck with me.
What Was Actually Causing the Conflict?
Our field manager was trying to make sure the cleaners did good work, but we'd never established a clear, documented cleaning system.
There was no standard for how to clean a bathroom or a kitchen or what order to do things in, so everyone had their own way, and she'd correct people who genuinely believed they were doing it right. Nobody felt heard.
After that Monday, we went looking for an actual cleaning system, found one, and trained the whole team on it, top to bottom, one pass per room.
Inspections stopped being a fight because everyone finally knew exactly what was expected.
I don't know if we'd have gone looking for that system without that terrible morning.
Is That the Only Time Something Difficult Led Somewhere Good?
No, and the harder example is personal.
Years ago I went through a season of anxiety so bad I couldn't even go into my own office, even with a business and people depending on me. I didn't know how long it would last.
During that time my dad kept telling me the same four words: this too shall pass.
Eventually it did.
Looking back, that anxiety was the wake-up call that got me to deal with a drinking problem I'd been ignoring, one that was affecting my business and my family. I've been sober for six years now, going on seven.
I wouldn't want to go through that season again, but I'm genuinely grateful for what came out of it.
How Do You Know If You Should Make a Decision, or Wait It Out?
When things get hard, it's easy to start thinking about closing the business or firing everyone, driven purely by how overwhelmed you feel in the moment rather than what's actually the right call.
If I'd shut everything down that Monday morning, I'd have missed everything that came after it.
There's a real difference between a decision made because it's genuinely right and one made because you're exhausted.
Why Do the Hardest Seasons Tend to Produce the Most Growth?
Pressure makes diamonds for a reason: carbon only becomes something valuable under heat and pressure over time.
When everything's going well, you rarely think about making major changes. It usually takes something breaking, someone quitting, or a health scare to force you to actually look at how you're doing things.
That's exactly what happened with our cleaning system.
I heard an analogy once about a ladder: if you're on step two and a problem sits on step three, it feels enormous, because you haven't grown to that level yet. Once you grow to step five, that same problem feels easy, but a new level-seven problem shows up.
Eventually you're amazed at the level of problems you can handle without them even feeling like problems anymore.
What Should You Actually Do When You're in the Middle of Something Hard Right Now?
Ask yourself three questions.
First, what's really going on, in one or two sentences, since it usually feels bigger in your head than it actually is.
Second, what can I learn from this, what is it trying to show me.
Third, what can I do with what I have right now, which is an empowering question because it reminds you that you do have options.
Take the next step, whatever that is, and remind yourself: this too shall pass.
If you're a home service business owner somewhere between half a million and $750,000 in revenue, you may be in what's sometimes called the valley of despair, growing, but without the support systems to match.
Don't give up. Keep your vision in front of you and keep taking the next step.
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