Business Turnaround podcast

One of the most dangerous things in business isn’t a big crisis. It’s the quiet, creeping loss of margin that looks small on paper — but adds up to disaster. And if you run a blue-collar business, where cost control and delivery are everything, this should keep you up at night.

If you're running a blue-collar business, you know the drill. The phone won’t stop ringing, deadlines are brutal, and you’re always three hires short. But here’s the truth: chaos is expensive. And worse, it’s invisible until it's too late. Most distressed businesses I step into have one thing in common: they’re addicted to speed. Rushing to quote. Rushing to deliver. That’s not momentum. That’s mismanagement in disguise.

Growth can be a gift. But it can also be a trap, especially for blue-collar businesses where the pressure to take on every job, say yes to every opportunity, or underbid to win market share can break the very core of the company.

In nearly every business turnaround I’ve led, ego has been one of the biggest barriers to success. Not market conditions. Not lack of funding. Not even competition. It’s leaders who can’t get out of their own way. When your company is in decline, your ego is not your friend. In fact, it’s probably your biggest liability.

In the world of turnarounds, nothing drives action like pain. And I don’t mean minor discomfort—I’m talking about real, undeniable, existential threat. The burning platform. That moment when staying where you are is no longer an option. Most businesses drift into trouble. Slowly. Soft decline. A missed target here. A cash flow squeeze there. Blame gets passed around. Excuses are made. And by the time leadership realises the real danger, the fire’s already licking the floorboards.

Every struggling business I walk into has one thing in common: everyone’s busy. Phones ringing, machines breaking, orders running late, customers shouting. The MD is running from one fire to the next - plugging holes, fixing chaos, answering questions they shouldn’t even be involved in. But here’s the real problem: when you’re always fighting fires, you never get to build the fireproof system. And that’s where leadership comes in.

When your business is in trouble — cash is tight, team morale is low, clients are slipping away — your first instinct might be to blame external forces. The economy. The market. Your staff. Maybe even luck. But the real turnaround starts inside the mind of the leader. That’s where the bleeding either stops or continues.

In a struggling business, chasing more revenue without fixing your margins is like pouring water into a bucket full of holes. You’ll work harder, sell more, stress more — and still sink. Sales feel like momentum. Sales keep the machines running, the phones ringing, the invoices flowing. But here’s the hard truth — revenue without profit is just busy work.

In nearly every turnaround I’ve led, there’s one consistent truth — the old rules no longer work. But the team? They’re often still playing by them. When your company enters a downturn, everything shifts — cash is tighter, priorities change, and urgency goes up tenfold. But if your people are still operating like it’s business as usual, you’ve got a serious disconnect. And that’s dangerous.

If you reviewed all your clients today—every contract, every recurring order, every long-standing relationship—how many of them are truly helping you move forward? And how many are quietly dragging you down? This is one of the hardest but most critical truths in turnaround work: not all revenue is good revenue.