I have been in business long enough to watch the same thing happen three times.
The trigger is always different. The response is always the same.
The first time was the early 1990s.
Australia was living through the recession we “had to have.” Paul Keating’s words. Mortgage interest rates climbed to 17 percent and beyond. I had just started my business. Every month felt like a test of whether I had the nerve to keep going.
There was no stimulus. No safety net. No rescue package. Just the decision, every single day, to keep going or stop.
A lot of businesses around me closed. The ones that pushed through built something that outlasted the downturn. I watched that happen in real time and I never forgot what it taught me.
The second time was the introduction of the GST.
When Australia moved to a goods and services tax, businesses across the country had to change how they operated. Quarterly reporting. New obligations. New systems. New conversations with clients.
For tax agents and accountants, it meant rebuilding their entire service model.
What happened next was remarkable and sobering in equal measure. A significant number of experienced tax professionals chose to retire rather than adapt. Not because they lacked the knowledge. Not because the change was beyond them. But because uncertainty, even manageable uncertainty, can feel like a wall when you have been doing things one way for a long time.
An entire generation of expertise quietly left the profession rather than make the shift.
That is what unchecked uncertainty does to people. It disguises a decision as an impossibility.
If this is resonating and you want to talk through what is sitting unfinished in your business, book a free 15-minute call at yoursuccessshift.com
The third time was 2020.
The world did not just slow down. It stopped.
Coaches, consultants, trainers, speakers. Anyone who worked face to face lost their entire operating model overnight. The medical world was no different. Routine check-ups cancelled. Cancer screenings postponed. GPs scrambling to move to telehealth with almost no preparation time. Entire healthcare businesses that had operated the same way for decades suddenly had no path forward unless they moved, and moved fast.
For many it was devastating. For me, it was a moment I had already prepared for, even if I had not known that is what I was doing.
Back in 2016 I had made the move to online coaching and virtual events out of necessity. My clients were global. Waiting until we could be in the same room was not a viable model. So I learned the tools, built the skills, and made it work. By the time the world went online in 2020, I had already been living there for four years.
That mattered. Because when the disruption hit, I was not learning how to operate online. I was helping others do it.
I ran webinars every fortnight in those first months. At the peak, over 70 business owners and coaches were showing up every two weeks to learn how to take their work online. How to hold attention through a screen. How to keep clients engaged. How to rebuild their income in completely new conditions.
It was one of the most energising periods of my career. Not because the circumstances were good. They were not. But because when people decide to act, they discover capabilities they did not know they had.
The ones who adapted quickly came out ahead. The ones who waited for things to go back to normal lost months, and in some cases businesses, they never recovered.
Now here we are again.
Not a recession. Not a tax reform. Not a pandemic. But a squeeze that is tightening across Australia, New Zealand, the United States and most of the developed world.
Rising costs. Higher interest rates. Consumer confidence at historic lows. Businesses under pressure. Owners second-guessing every decision.
And yet, in my conversations every single week, the most common thing I still hear is this:
“I know what I need to do. I’m just not doing it.”
That sentence has been true in every single economic climate I have worked through. But what changes is the cost of saying it.
In a boom, the gap between knowing and doing is an inconvenience. Revenue covers a lot of sins. Margins absorb a lot of delay. You can park the opportunity that hasn’t launched, the system that hasn’t been built, the offer that hasn’t been priced, and still survive.
In a squeeze, that gap becomes a liability. Every week an untapped opportunity sits untouched, the cost compounds quietly. The income stream you were going to launch six months ago. The client base you were going to re-engage. The priority that would have bought you back ten hours a week. Those are not small things anymore.
Three decades of working with business owners has shown me one pattern that holds across every economic cycle.
The businesses that come out ahead are never the ones with the best ideas. They are the ones that kept executing when the conditions gave everyone else an excuse to stop.
I pushed through 17 percent interest rates by refusing to stand still.
I watched tax agents walk away from careers they had built over decades rather than face a change that was entirely navigable, if they had kept going.
I helped over 70 people rebuild their businesses in the middle of a global pandemic by choosing action over waiting.
The principle does not change. What the economy is doing does not change it. What the interest rate is does not change it. Uncertainty does not change it.
Action is the answer. It always has been.
So here is the one question I want to leave you with this week.
What is the one opportunity or priority that, if you acted on it in the next 90 days, would materially change your position?
Not the most comfortable one. Not the easiest one. The one that matters.
That is the one worth moving on. Now. While everyone else is waiting for conditions to improve.
Because the gap between knowing and doing is always expensive. In a squeeze, it is the difference between the businesses that come out standing and the ones that didn’t quite make it.
If you want to think it through, drop me a message or book a free 15-minute call. No pitch. Just a conversation about what’s possible when you stop waiting and start acting.
Until next time, keep moving forward.
Glenis
Business Strategist, Mentor and Author |Your Success Shift
The Cost of Inaction Is Greater Than the Risk of Change
In 15 minutes together we will identify your most important opportunity and what is blocking it. Book your free call at yoursuccessshift.com