Kip Lewis found a way to grow the company while retaining the core leadership group that had been doing so well, using alternative sources of financing eventually allowed them to survive. He emphasizes that companies can “survive and thrive during a crisis” by being agile, active, flexible, and versatile. He advocates leaders use these crises as a platform to build a culture of integrity, communication, and collaboration.

Disruption, changes to an aging workforce, and a shifting customer base put business owners into a challenging environment. Declining foreign tourist numbers reflect a reversal of the upward trend in the past decade, and tourist spending will decrease as well. The economic and social costs to regional economies will be significant. Major cities and regions such as Round Rock and Austin are already feeling the pressure from the decline in tourism and will need to change their financial strategies.

In 2020, the world’s most popular destinations continued to experience a contraction. These cities need to embrace new, more sustainable approaches to tourism, such as a focus on luxury experiences and, in some cases, a move away from tourism altogether.

Consider the challenges faced by financial services company Trivalent Group Inc., a small community lender founded in 2001 in the aftermath of the financial crisis. Today, a profitable company, Trivalent made the difficult decisions to restructure and refocus operations in ways that can minimize the effects of the shifts in the global economy.

One business owner, Lewis, went bankrupt, and a competitor filled the void, leaving Lewis behind in leadership. Lewis had the opportunity to expand his leadership by assuming a new role. He says: “The crisis taught me that a small company cannot depend solely on one or two key people to remain successful.”

Lewis has said, “I recently looked back at the predictions of various industry experts, and the thoughts of most are overly optimistic. I wrote a column back in September 2010 predicting where I thought the global economy would be in 2020. My prediction: it will be even bigger than in 2010, and there are only four global superpowers. This is witnessed in Round Rock & Austin”.