7 Business Reality Checks Every Owner Needs

Business disruptions don’t always look like massive disasters. Sometimes they look like a guest cancelling, a road closure outside your storefront, a staffing issue, a cash flow squeeze, or one unexpected change that throws your entire day off course.

In this solo episode of The Karas Wright Show, Karas Wright walks through the seven areas of business every owner needs to check before disruption hits: direction, decision integrity, structural readiness, operational chaos, owner burden, execution reliability, and business resilience.

This episode is for business owners and leaders who are tired of feeling scattered, reactive, or overly responsible for every moving piece in their business. If you want to build a stronger, more resilient business that can handle disruption without falling apart, this conversation is for you.

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WHAT YOU'LL LEARN

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→ Why most Canadian small businesses are not prepared for disruption

→ How small interruptions can reveal bigger gaps in your business

→ Why clear direction protects you from chasing every opportunity

→ How decision integrity reduces pressure and decision fatigue

→ What structural readiness really means for business owners

→ How to identify and reduce owner burden

→ Why execution reliability protects your revenue and team

→ How to start building business resilience before you need it

01:31 Why contingency plans matter

02:24 The Business Reality Check framework 

03:14 Why most businesses are not prepared 

05:05 Direction and business clarity

08:24 Decision integrity and decision fatigue 

10:38 Structural readiness

12:27 Operational chaos

14:23 Owner burden

17:58 Execution reliability

21:10 Business resilience

22:40 How to assess your business

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ABOUT Karas Wright

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Karas Wright is a Business and Leadership Coach and founder of Wright Step Coaching. Through her work, she helps business owners move from scattered to structured using practical frameworks that support clarity, decision-making, leadership, and sustainable growth.

Work with Karas:

Website: www.wrightstepcoaching.com

Instagram: @wrightstepcoaching

If this conversation helped you think differently about business resilience, decision-making, or how prepared your business really is, make sure to like, comment, and subscribe.

Share this episode with a business owner who needs to hear this right now.

#BusinessResilience #SmallBusinessCanada #BusinessContinuity #LeadershipCoaching #BusinessOwnerTips #EntrepreneurMindset #DecisionMaking #BusinessStrategy #WrightStepCoaching #TheKarasWrightShow #OkotoksBusiness #CanadianEntrepreneurs

Free Business Reality Check: assessments.wrightstep.ca/realitycheck

If you found value in this episode, don’t forget to like, subscribe, and share it with someone who’s on their own journey toward purpose-driven leadership.

Transcript

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If it's something that is happening over and over and over again, be honest. Why is this happening? Why does this keep happening? And what is the one or two things that I need to do differently or my team needs to be doing differently so this doesn't happen again? Be ruthless, be critical, and stop the gap. I am Karis Wright, and I am so thrilled to have this opportunity to sit and chat with you solo style this week. Although that was not what the plan was originally, I had an incredible guest that was going to join me, but I woke up this morning and had to pivot as many business owners have to. And so unfortunately, my guest today had to cancel due to an illness. And that happens to many of us. We wake up or start the week and we're expecting one thing, and then all of a sudden, it gets shifted. So, what do we need to do as business owners? How do we navigate through not those big disasters that I was talking to Angela last week about, but those small disruptions? The reality is how this affected me, I still pay for this space to hang out with my podcast producer. And although we have some great conversations, that's revenue out of my pocket. And so I need to make sure that I make use for this time and have it be effective. Now, how did I get to this point? Well, I sat down and we recognized very early on doing the podcast that there are going to be times where something is going to show up and we're going to have to navigate a shift in our schedule. And that's exactly what happened today. Sarah and I had a contingency plan because we know that things happen. And so when you do anything, or how you do anything, I should say, is how you do everything. We plan for the worst and we hope for the best. And so I'm sending positive vibes to my podcast guest that was supposed to be here today for speedy recovery, but we're going to continue on today. And what we're actually going to do is we're going to extend out a little bit of the conversation that I had last week on how do you navigate disaster recovery, but in a little different fashion. I run a reality check on my website. And this is actually seven different aspects of business to keep in mind that you might be working really well at. Maybe it's a little rocky, or maybe you are in serious panic mode. And so I'm going to walk through what these seven different elements of business are and give you a few tips on how to actually improve those different areas. And if it resonates with you, head on over to the website and take a look at the right step reality check. So let's dive into it. So I want to look at a couple of different things. Last week, when I was talking to Angela, we talked about what happened in the 2013 floods in High River, Alberta and some of those things that she learned about businesses during that time. What I think is really interesting is that sometimes we've run into business disruptions and we're not prepared. As a matter of fact, the majority of business owners have an idea, but they don't actually have a disaster recovery plan. And that doesn't just include those big moments. It also needs to include some of those small moments. So I want to bring out some stats here. And this is from the Business Development Bank of Canada. And they talk about the fact that 11% of Canadian small businesses have a formal response plan for disasters. 37% have something that's informal. So they've got some guidelines, they know how to pivot if they need to. But here's the astounding fact: 52% of Canadian businesses have no formal, informal plan. As a matter of fact, they're probably flying by the seat of their pants. And so what I'm here to do today is to hopefully give you some tips on how to actually navigate in case something happens. Why is this important? I'll give you a big example that happened just earlier today, not just about my having to pivot my guest show, but I was coming down to grab a coffee this morning and meet up with a potential client. And well, I had a detour, not just a little detour, a big detour, because Main Street here in Okotokes is shut down, wasn't really prepared for that. But it got me thinking about those poor businesses that are being disrupted as a result of that. And that's that 52% that we want to avoid. So let's run through the seven steps. Now, step number one, it's direction. Where is your business now? And where is it going? This is important because if you don't know where you're going, you may run into paralysis. One of the biggest things that I see with business owners who have lack of direction is that they're capitalizing and grabbing on to every opportunity that pops their way. And they are gambling about like a bunny. I've talked about this before. It is an important aspect to know where you're going. And so it's not just where you are now looking at the short term, the next 90 days. It's even looking longer term, three years, five years, 10 years out. This allows you to have something to measure against. So then you know whether you are heading in the right direction, or you're heading in a direction you don't want to go, or maybe it's a side trip that you need to take. When you're running into business disruptions, these are really important. Now, I want to give you a real life example that just I had to navigate this morning as a patron. I went to go grab a coffee and sit down with a client. We had made the arrangements two weeks ago, coffee shop that I've been to many times over the years, know exactly where I need to park and how long it's going to take to get there. This morning, however, I was met with detours and a closed street. Turns out that the city is doing some road repair and shutting down the street for probably four or five, maybe even six weeks. Now, I immediately started thinking about how is this going to affect that business's direction? Well, on the table right in front of me, they had a business interruption strategy in action. They actually wrote down information for their patrons to know that they are going to continue to be in business during this construction that was happening right outside the door. I had to park two, three blocks away, but that was okay. I wasn't interrupted. I love this coffee shop. They have great coffee and a wonderful selection of tea. What they did indicate was that, hey, we know that this is tough for you guys. It's also tough for us. They addressed the situation and they also informed their patrons that they were changing their hours from eight to eight to eight to five to accommodate that because they recognize that that pressure means that they're going to run into an income disruption, which is going to cause some challenges to pay for their employees. So they're navigating that. They took the time, they recognized what do we need to do? What are the different aspects that we need to take into consideration? And they probably also talk to their neighbors who are also affected. This is looking at that business interruption really well. And so it's a great example of what to do when you have clear direction. Area number two, decision integrity. This one is exceptionally important. Decision integrity runs through every different aspect of your business from big decisions to the small micro decisions. If you are a business owner and a solopreneur, it's understanding how you make decisions at your best. When is a good time for you to make a decision? What do you need to take into consideration of that decision and how you need to act in accordance to whatever the decision is? Decision integrity is also important if you employ other folks to make decisions. This is an important aspect because if you are giving them a decision authority limit, you need to take into consideration how they make decisions, what type of decisions they can make, being able to communicate that very clearly and bookend what is their decision authority limit and what is not. And what do they need to do if they've made a decision that maybe go against what the protocol is that might have backfired? Being able to understand as a business owner, a leader, how you actually respond to that is an important aspect of it. Also, if you have a partnership, what are the partnership decisions? Who can make what decision, when, and how do you communicate together? These are all very important aspects of decision integrity. So taking the time to understand, do I have a solid decision integrity strategy in place? And if I don't, what do I actually need to do in order to create it? Take a moment, jot down. If I was to make a decision today, what elements do I take into consideration? Is this something that I revisit consistently? Is it something that needs to be repeated? Or do I need to actually put a framework in place so that it actually reduces decision fatigue? Because that is a real thing. Structural readiness is the third step or the third area of focus. This really is understanding what structures you have in place in your business now and how do they relate to how the business runs. Structural readiness allows to understand if you were to make a pivot in the business or something to happen, are we ready to absorb that impact in the business? And if we're not, maybe we need to sit down and figure that out. So one of the things that I want you to do, if you're kind of questioning whether your structural readiness is in place or maybe a little shaky, is to actually stop and ask yourself, in 90 days, it do I have the right structures in place to pivot? And if not, how quickly can I put those in place? So when I talk about structures, I'm talking about the financial infrastructure, I'm talking about potentially the structure that if you have a physical location, am I ready to take on an expansion? Am I looking at, oof, if there is a change in my employee resourcing, can I absorb that structural change? So whether that's through attrition or in the needs to hire, what is my specific response and how do I navigate through that? And so my encouragement and my tip on that is to actually schedule some time to look at what is my structural readiness, what needs to change, and what do I need to put into place? So jotting that down and spending some time with that so then either you can have the conversation with yourself or look at, well, what's the conversation I need to have with my team? That is putting structural readiness into action. Area number four, operational chaos. This one lights me up because I love talking to business owners who are running into chaos in their business. They're sitting and going, I'm scattered and I need some structure. Operational chaos pops in either because we don't actually have the structures in place operationally to be able to run smoothly, or as an example, using the coffee shop example from earlier, well, if they didn't actually sit down and have that operational planning, they may have been in chaos and having to pivot very quickly. The question isn't whether or not you have some chaos that's gonna happen, because every single business owner, myself included, we're gonna run into some operational chaos. It's do you have structures in place and an understanding of how you need to pivot and what that looks like? A lot of us, it's the mindset. How are how am I, how is my team going to be able to navigate through that? Now, this may be an unpopular opinion, but I always found when I was running teams is that a little bit of chaos actually brought everybody together because everybody has a common goal to get to the other side of that chaos. So, what do you need to do in order to bring yourself together to navigate through that uncertainty? I want you to look at and ask yourself if it's something that is happening over and over and over again, be honest. Why is this happening? Why does this keep happening? And what is the one or two things that I need to do differently or my team needs to be doing differently so this doesn't happen again? Be ruthless, be critical, and stop the gap. Area number five. This one I see very often, and it's owner burden. A lot of us as business owners that have and run teams, we have everything locked up in our busy little brains, and we just magically expect our teams to understand what we mean when we ask them to do something. Well, here's a good test to know whether you have owner burden issues. If you were to go away unexpectedly, let's say maybe getting um hospitalized for an extended period of time, would the business still be able to run without you? And if the answer is no, then you've got owner burden. So what you need to do is you need to actually catalog and understand what are the key things that you need to actually get written down and transferred over to the rest of the team so that the owner burden reduces. This will do a couple of different things. One, it will reduce the amount of responsibility that you have. It will also free up some space so that you can do other things by cataloging it, writing it down, creating a standard operating procedure, policy, or manual to help others understand what your expectations are, how you do the things, you're actually making everybody else, well, responsible and you're reducing your owner burden. I want to share one stat here with respect to them. And so Stats Canada actually talks about that nearly one in four rural businesses, that's 23.6%, were impacted by a weather-related disruption in the last 12 months. And those one-third had no preparation in place. Now, a lot of this was due to owner burden because the owner is the one that knows how to do a lot of the uh a lot of the functions. And so we really do need to take that into consideration and offload a lot of the resources and a lot of the expertise that we have as business owners and recognize that that is not where our it's not worth the best amount of time to keep that internally. Our egos shouldn't be getting in the way. We need to make sure that we are sharing that information because that is how we are going to grow businesses to the next level, not by hoarding information and harboring that information. It's by sharing that dissemination and being able to have more people in the organization understand how to do that. That's how you reduce owner burden, and that's how you create strong businesses that are resilient. Area six, execution, reliability. This is the ability for your business to actually execute on the ideas that you have. One of the pitfalls is that we can create multiple ideas and not have a clear execution strategy in order to implement them. When we run into that, where we might have a visionary that has a number of ideas that happen on a daily basis, but they fail to execute on it. Where that can cause some real interruption to the business is that the revenue doesn't come in because there's no clear understanding of what the sales structure, what the execution or the customer service needs to happen. It may be as simple as what the follow-up strategy is. So having clear understanding of what your execution reliability is will actually protect your business long term. I want you to think before you start and stop anything in the business, what is the actual cycle that my customer, my user experience is going to be for that? What is the employee experience going to be behind that? Both of those questions, in addition to how am I as a business owner or the leadership team going to navigate through that and help support the team so that they thrive? That's what's going to be really important. You don't have to have all of the nuts and the bolts figured out, but you do need to have a clear understanding or a simple repeatable process so that there is execution reliability. Otherwise, you run the risk of being on that never-ending cycle or revolving wheel of coming up with an idea, think it's a great idea, I'm going to move forward with it. And then all of a sudden everything putters out because there's another great idea. For your teams, this is really disruptive because they're going to wonder, oh my goodness, they've got another flavor of the month. And we don't want to see that happen. So the tip is create the structures in place for the business so that when you do have an idea, well, what does the market viability look like? How am I going to support my clients? What how do my employees need to be supported through this? And what do I need to do? Pretty simple. That way you are starting and finishing something and you have measurements to be able to understand, hey, was this a good idea or not? Business resilience. How resilient is your business if something should happen? Now, this interruption could be large, small. Do you have enough cash flow to be able to navigate through a short business interruption or a change in your employee status? Or bringing back to the coffee shop, something happens that's an external factor and you need to pivot. What is your business resilience like? It's not just the structures in place, but it's also the mindset that we have as leaders and business owners over this. Business resilience is the thing that's going to allow us to get back up when life knocks our business down. So, business resilience, the biggest tip I can give is understanding how do you actually navigate through other storms in the past, what's worked, and what do you need to pivot and shift if. Something isn't. One of the stats from Business Development Canada in November 2024 is that things like fires, floods, and heat waves, are Canadian businesses actually ready? And the reality is, unfortunately, we're not. So business resilience is something that we all need. And this is at the heart of the business continuity plan. So having a business continuity plan is really important. Understanding where to get started, well, that's something that I can actually help you out with. So if you're curious and this was really helpful, I would love to hear from you. John in the comment, if you've had some experience with business interruptions and you navigated through it well, maybe not so well, I would love you to share some of your comments in because there may be somebody else that can learn from what you experienced. If you're just curious to know how resilient is your business, check out the business reality check at my website, www.writestep.ca slash reality hyphen check. And it'll take you 10 minutes to go through. You'll have a great understanding of where your business is and a couple of resources to be able to navigate through that. I really appreciate you joining me today as we navigated through a small business interruption that I had with my guest that wasn't able to show up. I'm hoping to see you next time, and I really appreciate the time. Until then, lead with heart.