I caught up with my expert IT consultants on the Central Coast for lunch a few weeks ago. They’re a key part of our business and without their expertise, responsiveness and ability to pull rabbits out of hats, we wouldn’t be able to function as a business.

Last week, the Federal Government engaged in the biggest budget spend in the nation’s history. A massive deficit as a result of personal income tax cuts, business investment stimulus and infrastructure spending are all targetted at firing up an economy that has been impacted by COVID 19.

It’s funny some of the things family business owners put themselves through in their business life. Sometimes daily. Often sporadically. None of it actually that productive or strategic.

My wife recently participated in a fundraiser at her local gym called “Steptember”. The challenge was to raise funds throughout the month of September by her and a team of her friends walking at least 10000 steps per day. When she first told me about it, I didn’t know too much other than it was a fund raiser, but not necessarily who it was for.

It’s early last Friday morning. The ABC radio news is on in the background as I’m getting ready for the day. I’m half listening as I’m thinking through my tasks for the day when the newsreader mentions a “fire in Camden”. My wife, hears the same thing and when the reference is to a building on fire with an upstairs restaurant, we both call out to each other – “Fred’s”.

Who’d heard of the term “contact tracing” before March 2020? I certainly hadn’t and yet, here we are, six months later, and all of us know what it means and the importance of it in living in a COVID world.

The sharemarket is all over the shop at the moment. One day up, the next day down. Public company returns are impacted by COVID 19, positively or negatively, dependent upon the industry.

The media is full of bad news about business right now. Firms shutting up shop. Big staff layoffs. Large corporates fighting with their landlords over rent reductions. Forced pay reductions in large professional service firms. Massive losses being booked. A new day brings another dramatic headline that is doom and gloom.

It’s somewhat curious to me how a great number of family business owners decide, one day, to take a step back, but don’t actually prepare the business or their management team for that event. The decision is puzzling and often, the consequences can be devastating. Let me explain.

It was late April 1986. I’d just moved into my fourth home in less than three months, such was life in my first year of University. Precipitated by the last tenants of my share house deciding they were moving away from Sydney, I hit the Uni notice board and found my newest, new abode.