A SWOT analysis is used to evaluate strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. But what happens when a SWOT analysis doesn't go as planned? There are many times when a business might experience disruptions that can significantly impact operations. This article will highlight five adverse events that my business incurred over the years. I am also going to provide you with three important strategies I used to survive in business for more than two decades.

36,000-Member Email List Becomes Useless Overnight

I had a fairly large email list that became useless overnight. My business was launched in 1998. Very quickly, my email list grew to more than 30,000 members. The quality of an email list can depreciate with time because people change jobs, change emails, and other reasons. This results in bounce backs. What is a bounce back? When an email is sent to multiple recipients, if the email addresses are legitimate, they typically shouldn’t get rejected. If they get rejected or returned, we call that a bounce back. The internet service and email providers interpret too many bounce backs as potentially a bot-driven email list. In 2003, the CAN-SPAM Act was implemented, which formally imposed rules and regulations to curb spam. And to be safe, my business decided to stop sending emails to our 30,000+ subscribers.

Introduction of Google Panda

Around 2011, the Google Panda algorithm was introduced. Before Panda, one of the earlier ways to grow an online business was to create duplicate websites. Each cloned website would have a different domain name, but the content would be exactly the same. Sometimes, we would vary the colors and the appearance of the website. But long story short, the Google Panda algorithm made it so that duplicate websites would be suppressed. In Google's eyes, duplicate content had the appearance of being bot-driven. So, this was a major setback for my business. In fact, almost any logical domain name you can think of that centers around abdominal training, for example, I own it still today: absecrets.com, absworkout.com, abdominaltips.com... I own all of them. But I had to take most of them offline because they were essentially the same, duplicate content.

Google Wants Mobile-Friendly Websites

In 2015, Google again put websites on notice to go mobile-friendly. And they would give preferred ranking to websites that were in compliance with this new policy. At the time, user data suggested that within a few years, most internet searches would be performed via mobile devices versus on desktop computers. This of course was great for the mobile users, but not so great for webmasters because it meant we would have to spend more money to update our technology. Luckily, by this time, we had a significant level of repeat business. So, we were able to drag our feet a bit. But eventually, we had to spend more money to update our website.

Major Supplier [Suddenly] Sells Their Business

In 2017, we had a major supplier decide to sell their company. When this happens, the new owner can opt to keep certain relationships and protocols in place or they can go in a different direction. The new owners, not surprisingly, chose the latter. They didn’t recognize some of the preferential arrangements we had in place with the original owners. So this was a major disruption because it affected hundreds of thousands in annual revenue. We did have backup suppliers, but certain terms and dealer pricing didn’t compare to what we originally had in place.

2020 Pandemic

In 2020, we had the pandemic. Technically, as an exercise equipment retailer, it was initially a benefit to my business. With bars, gyms, and even many restaurants closed, we sold roughly three months’ worth of inventory within three weeks. But over time, the pandemic created issues like supply delays and shortages. In fact, many of our suppliers went out of business. Additionally, we were impacted in ways that were difficult to predict. One interesting thing that caused a disruption: in my business, certain products only sell at specific times of year. And if you miss those critical sales windows, it could translate to hundreds of thousands in losses.

I presented only five adverse events that my business incurred, but there were many more. Ultimately, since 1998, I managed to survive all of the major disruptions. The following are three strategies that helped me over the years:

The first is I always had a contingency plan. But no matter how strong your contingency plan is, realistically, it’s not possible to see everything coming that can significantly disrupt or even put you out of business. A good business owner should probably be a bit of a pessimist before they are an optimist. So ask yourself, if this service or this relationship goes away, what is the backup plan?

The second is I always looked to repurpose or get more utility from my core businesses. If you create exercise videos, can you turn that into an app for personal trainers? Can you sell posters or DVDs? Can you spin off a website that sells the exercise equipment featured in the videos?

The third strategy is to prioritize asset accumulation. Over time, I was able to accumulate enough assets to where even our warehouse is paid off. Rent is usually a company’s greatest expense but I found a way to eliminate it. So even if I were to lose everything, there are a number of both tangible and intangible assets that can always be liquidated.