Most entrepreneurs take the crisis times as something anomalous. According to them, this is a natural disaster that suddenly hit the entire city. However, it is precisely this attitude that can create much more problems in business than even the crisis itself.

Alexander Zimin is the owner of the Zimin Capital consulting agency and the UniTrust modular house manufacturing company. However, it is far from being his first entrepreneurial experience. Before that he used to manage a construction business, a processing company, and a company responsible for producing modules for GPS, and even research work.

All this experience helped Alexander to understand business processes from the inside, break through all the bureaucratic “circles of hell”, master the mechanism of management and business, and also learn how to work in a crisis.

We had an opportunity to talk with Alexander Zimin about what is really behind the crisis for most companies, and what is the emergency algorithm of action if the crisis is taken by surprise.

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Today, Alexander Zimin’s company; Zimin Capital assists many entrepreneurs who are going to open a new business in the US, scale to other US states, or simply would like to expand the list of services provided, and who require mandatory certification and licensing. Their services also include the optimization of international financial flows and workflow.

The main focus line of the business is assisting industrial companies and chain retailers at the stage of opening and obtaining all the required documents for starting the construction process. Consulting helps to significantly speed up this process, avoiding a lot of common bureaucratic red tape and possible issues in the future.

There is another service provided by the company, which is crisis management in case of arising issues that require quick decision-making in challenging situations for businesses and handling issues with official regulatory authorities.

The main clients of Zimin Capital are entrepreneurs with enterprises in the machine-building, food, and chemical industries, restaurant and club business, retail, etc. As Alexander Zimin notes, each case is unique and requires a non-standard approach, since most clients contact the company when all popular methods have been tried or a solution is needed “for yesterday”. 

All this became possible thanks to the rich international experience of the team in various business areas. Zimin Capital clients deal with specialists who have all the necessary licenses, as well as practical skills, and knowledge to solve different kinds of financial, legal, and managerial issues.

The ambitious plan of Alexander Zimin is to bring the company to the first echelon and compete with industry mastodons such as BCG, McKinsey, etc.

Crisis Is Something Totally Normal

Very often, people take “normal” as something positive, for example, the growth of a business, or at least its stable state. But in fact, “normal” is much more of a range of possible events. We should not forget that most crises are often natural feedback from society, the economy, or nature for obtaining certain actions. It means that they are also included in the concept of the “normal”.

Since this is the normal state, it is essential to include possible crises in business planning and strategy development. As often happens with business plans, the sections on risks and negative scenarios are worked out very superficially, focusing solely on what investors might like, which is a miscalculation of future growth and profits.

Therefore, one of the essential steps is to stop hoping that during the entire life of the company, it will never fall into a crisis, but to face the fact that the crisis is inevitable and the norm. Unpreparedness will lead to more serious losses than the crisis itself.

The second recommendation would be to start implementing scenario planning. It is important to work out several different scenarios, which are based on various triggers, and determine their likelihood, consequences, and level of preparedness for facing them.

Such alternative scenarios should be reviewed from time to time because situations will change over time, new data will come from the market, and feedback from society.

What Is Better To Do in a Crisis?

If it turned out that the crisis took the business by surprise, the first thing to do is to remove unnecessary emotions, and start acting according to the algorithm:

• Review spending and cut everything that can be cut. At the same time, it is desirable to do this without compromising the quality of products or services;

• Check for government programs and grants, as during difficult times it is better not to neglect any support;

• Continue to give feedback, no matter what the crisis is internal or external; every entrepreneur should always keep their team up to date and provide the right information to clients, target audiences, and business partners. Otherwise, this information gap may be filled by someone else;

• Never neglect marketing like many companies that stop investing in marketing and advertising. Most likely, some of the competitors will make this mistake, which will lead to lost visibility for their customers in the niche. Every business owner must do everything possible to get new clients and new orders.

The most valuable thing, especially during a crisis, is time. That is why, in such challenging situations it is better to turn to specialists who will help get out of a difficult situation much faster and with less loss.