Handling a Crisis: Part 1

When a crisis hits, the instinct is to go straight to the numbers. Cashflow. Costs. Exposure. Forecasts. That matters, but it is not the first thing that needs controlling. The first thing that needs controlling is you.

Teams mirror their leader. Walk into the room tense, distracted or visibly worried and that feeling spreads through the business faster than any bad news ever could. Fear travels quickly. So does confidence.

Winston Churchill understood this well. Whatever was happening behind the scenes, he projected certainty. Not false cheerfulness and not empty optimism, but steady certainty. People do not need to be lied to in a crisis. They need to feel anchored.

In moments of pressure, your most important job is not the spreadsheet. It is the people in front of you. The tone you set becomes the tone they carry into their own conversations. Small, genuine, consistent interactions matter more than grand speeches. A simple “Good to see you, Jim” or “I know you will handle this” lands harder than you realise. If people leave a conversation with you feeling more capable than when they walked in, you are doing your job as a leader.

This is not about pretending everything is fine. It is about showing that you are steady enough to deal with whatever is not. Calm leadership creates calm thinking. Calm thinking leads to better decisions.

Control yourself first. Everyone is watching, whether you realise it or not, and everyone mirrors you.

Today’s Step

Before you walk through the door tomorrow, take thirty seconds. Decide how you are going to show up. Then show up that way.

Why I record these

Let me be straight with you.

I’ve had huge success in business — and I’ve also made some absolute humdinger mistakes.

My life in business hasn’t been a straight line. It’s been a roller-coaster — big wins, painful lessons, and moments where I wished someone had pulled me aside and said, “Slow down. Think this through.”

Now that I’m older, I feel a responsibility to pass things on.

Not because I’ve got it all figured out — I haven’t. But because I’ve lived it. And if sharing what I’ve learned helps another business owner avoid even one expensive mistake, then it’s worth doing.

Later in life, I became a student again — and I still am. A day doesn’t go by without me studying for at least an hour.

I regularly learn from people like Darren Hardy, Napoleon Hill, Brian Tracy, and Jim Rohn.

Jumpstart is my way of passing those lessons on — quietly, simply, without the noise — so you can start your day thinking a little clearer than you did yesterday.