A nine-year-old design business is drowning in debt, struggling with time and personnel management and the owner stressing as she tries to keep up with payments.
A seemingly successful restaurant faces an uncertain future as expansion has brought increased debt, responsibility and bills that have all but eaten away the bottom line.
These kinds of stories are all too familiar within the small business community. But starting next month, stories like that will play out each week on Chek TV as 12 struggling Victoria companies seek help from a new program called The Hard Way.
The 13-episode series — the thirteenth will be a where-are-they-now finale episode — is basically Kitchen Nightmares for the small business community as a panel of business mentors and technical experts try to help guide entrepreneurs back to profitability.
“The program hopes to look at different problems faced by these businesses and tell compelling stories,” said producer Karen Davies of Cedarwood Productions, who helped develop the idea with local entrepreneur Chris Gillen of Dial-a-Geek.
The première episode airs Sept. 14 at 6:30 p.m. on Chek TV. The rest of the episodes air the same time on following Saturday nights. A second season is planned and the application process will start Oct. 1.
Davies said the idea behind the series is to both help the companies that are featured and the business community as a whole by addressing the kinds of issues that come up everywhere. “We tried to bring out the different elements of business struggles,” Davies said, noting they tackle marketing problems, hiring, communication within family business and a theme that ran through many of the companies — a lack of financial literacy.
The issues faced by each business play out over a 30-minute program that covers about half a year in the life of the company. Company owners are questioned and held to account by a panel of mentors, with one mentor being assigned as an adviser to each firm.
Throughout, the companies are assigned tasks designed to get them to realize their internal issues and overcome them.
By design it’s tough as companies and their founders are forced to look hard at themselves. Even Davies was surprised by the emotions stirred.
“That will resonate with viewers,” she said. “These are real people. There’s a tendency to see business as impersonal, but these are real people struggling.”
Annika Sibert, founder of Fusion Creative, said doing the show was difficult, emotional and rewarding. Her firm, which specializes in branding, graphic design and marketing, was drowning and she was forced to face some tough questions.
“I told people I got Simon Cowell-ed by the panel,” she said, likening her grilling to Cowell’s ruthlessness on American Idol.
Sibert said as her business prepared to turn nine, she realized things were “out of control” with debt problems and overwhelming stress. “It just wasn’t working,” she said.
She applied for The Hard Way having wasted thousands of dollars on coaches and consultants looking for an answer. “I was hoping they would give me a magic formula on how to rectify the issues that were causing me to fail,” she said, quickly adding there was no formula on offer. “[The answer] ended up being something very different.”
She won’t give away the ending, but Fusion Creative is still a going concern, with Sibert believing she is now on a much better track.
Some businesses don’t make the “big change” that helps them turn the corner, Davies admitted, though they are all still in business.
Cabin 12 restaurant, which is featured in the première episode, is one of the successes.
The five-year-old eatery had been struggling since a move from a small downtown spot to a larger floorplan outside the core in 2012.
“Last winter was our toughest. It was a scary time,” said co-owner Dan Del Villano. “When a little place downtown makes a mistake it’s only so bad. When you double or triple your size and make a mistake you double or triple the mistake.”
Del Villano sad they were looking at an unsustainable future as debt grew and bills piled up.
“We looked at the opportunity to have mentoring from people who had already made those mistakes as too good to pass up,” he said. “Even though it is terrifying — you’re airing your dirty laundry with a TV camera recording it — we knew it might be uncomfortable but it might help get us to the next stage.”
Del Villano said they were asked hard questions, forced to face ugly truths and make difficult decisions.
“I don’t know if we would have made it without [mentors] and The Hard Way. It was getting to be pretty tough. It’s not over but we know we can do it now.”
