Closing Your Business Is Just as Important as Opening It (If Not, More Important)
By: Kaz Matsune
Tags: Restaurant Business, San Francisco, Entrepreneurship, Small Business, Business Tips

Image by Kaz Matsune

I heard this story of the Mount Everest guides.

I used to think the guide’s job was to help climbers reach the top. Isn’t that why all the climbers trying to conquer the highest mountain in the world? Isn’t that obvious? The mountain guides are there to help achieve that goal, right?

I was wrong.

The mountain guide’s job is to bring the climbers down to the base camp safely, or, it’s more like to make sure climbers don’t die. Reaching the top is not their priority. In fact, I don’t believe it’s their concern if climbers reach the top or not.

If you have climbed a mountain, you probably know this: climb down is more dangerous than climb up.

When you reach the mountain top, you feel like you’ve accomplished your goal. Now you just want to climb down as fast as possible. Finish your trip and go home. Go to the restaurant and have a cheeseburger and fries. You are tired because you spent your energy climbing up. When ascending, gravity is pulling you down. You are less energized. Your legs are fatigued. More chance to to fall and injure yourself. This is why climb down is more dangerous than climb up.

Climbing a mountain is not so much about going up; it’s about going down, or how safely you can come back. That should be your first priority. Reaching the top is second.

The same can be said about business.

When we start a business, we have a goal in mind: to be successful.

It is like reaching the mountain top. Once we reach it, then the ascend happens. No matter what business you are in, there comes a time when you have to climb down — whether that is closing it, selling it to someone else, or you leaving the company.

Like most amateur mountain climbers don’t think much about the climb down (because they are so focused on reaching the top), many business owners never think about closing the business. That is probably the last thing a business owner wants to think about. After all, no business owner starts the business thinking it will fail.

Since the pandemic lockdown in March 2020, well, I’ve heard so many stories on restaurant closing. One of the shocking news was the Tadichi grill, the oldest restaurant in San Francisco, announced closing the door after 171 years old in the business. This pandemic reminded me no business is permanent.

After that came an email from a friend of mine, telling me, “sadly. I am closing my restaurant after six years in the business.”

Like many restaurant owners, it was not something she planned. The business was going well until coronavirus hit the town. If it didn’t, her business would have been just fine with doing lunches and catering to the tech companies in downtown.

Then it hit me. Just like when I was climbing up the mountain and never thought about the importance of climbing down, I never thought about how to close a business.

No matter how well my business is doing, the time will come when I have to depart from it.

This is also when she emailed me a list of “How to close a business in San Francisco.”

Even if you are not a business owner, I would encourage you to think about how this may apply to your life. There will come a time when you have to “end” something — relationship, project, venture, or your life, death.

I realize death is not something most of us never like to think or plan about, but it’s inevitable.

It’s one thing that is absolute in life: it will happen to all of us.

So my approach is this: Plan ahead. You will be in a much better place when it happens.