Amanda Vickers, owner of Mountains to Sea Skincare, gives her advice on managing risk as a small business owner, which is to have tough conversations upfront. Sit your family, friends, and business partners down before you get too financially involved with your business venture. Ask the hard questions, like, "What if this doesn't work? What if we don't make a profit by the time we budgeted for? Will we close the business? What is our exit strategy if all else fails?" Doing this first can help negate a lot of those risks when handling these tricky situations.
I guess the tough thing about being an entrepreneur is one taking on risk that can trickle down to risk for the people who depend on you financially that is a tough thing to do, requires a lot of communication at home, and it's something to be really mindful of. I think we all tend to be starry-eyed at the beginning, but it's really important to kind of sit down with your loved ones and say like, "Well, what if this doesn't happen? Your loved ones and your business partners? What if we don't make a profit, by the time that we've budgeted out as our runway, then what? Do you close the business down? Do you keep going? Do you sideline it, what do you do?" So it's, you know, it's tough. It requires a lot of work.
