Survival strategy: Take a step back and think

Regular transactions form partners dependent on each other’s success. When times are tough (like now) renegotiating agreements benefit both.

My piano teacher when I was a kid was a fat old German named Mr. Illig. After an early career playing euphonium in the Kaiser’s band, he became a cobbler, and made extra money introducing surly preteens to the mysteries of the keyboard. Lessons were several layers deep: they entailed the actual piano, for which I never cared much; the tiny house, with its dusty jungle of plants and dim light; the accent, which was as thick as doppelbock; the neighborhood; the uniform and the attitude.

He and his wife lived in Bowie, a small Maryland town whose population was almost entirely black. I don’t know how much a part of the neighborhood the white Illigs felt, but during the second World War, when Germans were treated with some disdain, I think it may have been more comfortable living with other discriminatees. Better for business, too; poor people get their shoes repaired, while most other folks just throw them out and buy something new.

He was an unfailingly kind teacher, never berating his students no matter how much they (I) deserved it. He’d lean over the music in his suspenders and stained white T-shirt, peer intently at a particular measure, and make a suggestion that the passage might be best played with the fingering on the page, without reminding me that he had just written it in at the last lesson. I finally realized I had to quit when I could no longer just sit down and bluff my way through the music: the choice became regular practice or punt. I punted.

I am now about to draw tacky analogies, so bear with me. Perhaps what got me thinking about Mr. Illig was the gloom that is swirling through so many restaurants at present. He was a hard-times guy, losing his job after the first World War (no Kaiser, no band), and moving from Weimar Germany to America in the depths of the Depression. He talked about it matter-of-factly, regarding it like a farmer regards bad weather: what can you do but shrug and get on with your work.

This is not to say that there were no strategies for hard times. There was personal belt-tightening, communal buying, a lot of barter—but it was understood that a little guy cannot control big events, just his reaction to them.

All of which makes me think about our own strategies, and where they will lead us. The reactions that I am seeing tend to bear tinges of panic, and you find them throughout the industry: aggressive price-cutting on menus, calls from liquor purveyors to make accounts current now or be posted, banks cancelling the line of credit you had for your expansion. We could write songs about it: Hunker in the Bunker. Reach Out and Squeeze Someone.

Panic, however, is generally a poor guide. The quality of individual decisions may seem reasonable when considered alone, but they may not fit into a plan for survival. If you fire your best cooks because they are the most expensive, your food will suffer. If you cut your waitstaff too far, your service will suffer. If you go back to working 90 hours a week, everyone who knows you will suffer.

So it’s best to step back from it for a period of time each day and look at your business through an objective lens (in the old days, this was formed from a haze of alcohol and smoke. I hear there are other methods now). Remember that everyone you pay money to is just as worried as you are, and that common worries are best assuaged communally. These guys are thinking that they’ll go out of business if a bunch of their customers do, and their credit is drying up so cash is all they can hope for. However, it does them no good to squeeze too hard—that’s eating your seed corn.

Look at it this way: A transaction forms a partnership, however briefly. The simplest kind is an agreement on value given for value received. When these transactions are regular—you and your landlord, you and your beer vendor—each partner has an investment in the success of the other. So, is your lease killing you? If you doubt whether your landlords can get another tenant, renegotiate. They only profit from your success, so make them a clear part of it. That’s probably the simplest expression of a transactional partnership, but look at your other relationships that way. What do they do for you, what do you do for them, and what adjustments can each of you make to help the other keep on doing it?