Haylee Wrenn helps business owners in strife decide whether to keep going or pull the plug. Right now, she’s busier than ever.
Peter and Rosa Herron were ready to call it quits. The couple’s carpet company was in massive amounts of debt, their government Covid subsidies had run out and they were about to put their house on the market to help take the pressure off. Their lawyer and their accountant had advised them that the only way forward was to pull the plug on Peter Herron Flooring, the Timaru business they’d proudly run together for 14 years. “We were in big trouble,” says Rosa.
All that stress was affecting the couple’s relationship. “We were borrowed to the hilt, we were running up to the edge of the cliff and we were about to go over it,” Rosa told me recently. Neither of them could see another way forward. “I’d had enough. I was exhausted. I feared for our marriage.”
That’s when Haylee Wrenn stepped in. Through a friend, Peter had heard about the Napier-based advisor who runs Accountabill, a service that helps save small businesses that are struggling. The pair asked Haylee if she could help. Wrenn got them on a Zoom call and told them what she tells all her clients: “You’re about to go on an emotional rollercoaster …. I’m strapped into the seat right beside you. You need someone in your corner to walk this journey with you.”
Wrenn doesn’t promise that she can save every business owner she meets. Instead, she tells them: “Some of my stuff’s a bit brutal, but if you trust in me, if I can, I will get you through this.” From her chat with Peter and Rosa, Wrenn saw what she sees in many of her clients: financial problems stemming from years of stresses and strains, including two years of running a business during a pandemic. “They were in a really big hole,” says Wrenn. “They were verging on divorce. Their whole world was ending.”
It’s a scenario facing many businesses right now. If anyone should know, it’s Wrenn. She’s the last resort, “the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff”, the person people turn to when they’ve run out of all other options. Many are struggling to adapt to the current economic climate after five years of good times. “People have been able to bumble through business quite nicely, not done as well as they possibly should have, but they’ve still survived,” says Wrenn. “Covid hit, we had all those government subsidies, that’s kept a few of them afloat … now we don’t have government subsides propping them up anymore. There’s literally nothing left.”
That means another kind of epidemic is hitting business owners, Wrenn says. “It is an incredibly tough, challenging market,” she says. “Everyone is trying to do their best but nothing is working.” The day The Spinoff calls, she’s seen two businesses she couldn’t help go into liquidation, and says another five could fold because of those closures. All of that has an impact on those involved in running them. “It is actually heartbreaking the amount of mental health issues we’ve got out there.”
Wrenn got into this line of work after having her own health issues. She’d been working as a debt collector for the IRD and got sick of seeing the same situation play out over and over again. “Little Joe Bloggs made a dumb decision, or someone didn’t pay them, and they’d end up bankrupt,” she says. She wanted to help save businesses before they got to the point of no return, but that wasn’t her job, and her hands were tied. “There were things at IRD that I desperately wanted to tell people but couldn’t.”
A heart attack at the age of 37 forced her to make a change. “It was a case of, ‘I’m going to use my powers for good rather than evil,’” she says. Now, Wrenn answers the desperate calls of people like Peter and Rosa all day, every day. “Where I get the most excitement and exhilaration is taking a company that’s due for liquidation and turning it around,” she says. That meant diving into the carpet company’s books, analysing their financial history, examining their personal lives, combing through their spending habits, and setting new goals – often in intimate detail. “I don’t need to know your industry,” says Wrenn. “I need to know that you’re prepared to work on it and maybe do things differently.”
People can, and should, do this before Wrenn’s services are required. She says the grim economic forecasts could last a good while yet, and that makes it a great time to overhaul any parts of your business that may not be working. “My advice is to batten down the hatches, really think about where you’re spending your money, and protect your cash flow,” she says. “You can have the best business in the world with as many assets as you like [but] without cash flow, you’re going to die. You’ve got to start making some really good business decisions to make sure the money’s going to the right places.”
Thanks to Wrenn’s help, Peter and Rosa find themselves in a very different situation than the one they were in last November. They put up their prices, pulled in outstanding debts, and found that their business is profitable again. They’re not out of debt, but they’re paying it off at a nice rate and estimate they’ll be doing so for another year. Not only have they saved their house, they’ve even managed a holiday, recently travelling to Auckland to attend a Warriors match.
Wrenn says sometimes it’s as simple as changing a negative mindset. “When you start thinking, ‘This has all happened to me,’ it spirals out of control,” she says. “Let’s focus on what you can do, and do it one step at a time. You do that each day and suddenly you’ve gone a long way without realising you’ve done it.”
Rosa and Peter say it wasn’t easy getting to where they are now. “She pulled our business finances and operations apart. She pulled our personal finances and how we lived our lives apart,” says Rosa. “At times it was a bit upsetting. There were a few tears.” But she can’t speak highly enough of Wrenn, and has advised others she’s seen in trouble to pay her a visit. “Haylee has helped us save our business, save our house and … save our marriage.”