When the World Shut Its Doors: How a Crisis Becomes a System

Tamkeen launched its business continuity support program, and the support was there. But I saw early on that the problem was not the availability of support. It was the ability of businesses to reach it. Many small business owners had neither the time, nor the expertise, nor the management structure to deal with the requirements of a program of this size, at a time of such pressure.

At that point I made my decision: I would not wait for the crisis to end. I would build inside it.

I founded a consulting company to be the bridge between businesses and the program. I did not treat it as an individual service for each client, but as an integrated operating system: clear procedures, defined stages, and a team in which everyone knew their role. That is what allowed us, as an organized team, to serve more than seventeen hundred small and medium-sized businesses, a scale that is impossible to reach through personal effort alone, however great.

Then came the hardest decision, the one I consider the heart of the story: the exit.

Many people build crisis ventures and then cling to them after the crisis has passed, and a temporary success turns into a permanent burden. We designed the exit before we needed it. I knew this project was born of an exceptional circumstance, and that its value was tied to that circumstance. So we exited at the planned time, with a return that exceeded the capital many times over.

What I learned

• A crisis does not create the opportunity; it reveals the gap, and the opportunity belongs to whoever sees it first.
• Rapid growth cannot tolerate improvisation. Without the system, the project would have collapsed under its own weight.
• Exit is neither defeat nor escape. It is a strategic decision designed from day one. An entrepreneur who does not know when to exit may not know when to lose.