About a week ago, I had a very comprehensive conversation with Santiago, one of my teammates. We were discussing something that has been making our heads spin: Crisis management. We were not just talking about economic downturn, but about crisis in a broad sense. I mean, there is a whole range of different types of crises, from the global markets crisis to a simple but very annoying company leadership crisis.

At some point during the conversation, we defined that being in a crisis could feel like driving a car that is going straight to hit a wall and has no other future than being reduced to a piece of junk. Then again, crisis is not the act of crashing but the period of time before that, when adrenaline takes over your bloodstream and you start making your last prayers.

Our last question before cutting the chat and going back to work was: what is the right thing to do when you’re about to hit a wall? Pull the handbrake? Skid?

Last night, when I was about to start reading before bedtime, I remembered a very cool scene from one of my favorite SciFi movies of all time: Back to the Future. In the scene, Doc Brown tells Marty McFly something like “if my calculations are correct, when this baby hits 88 miles per hour, you’re gonna see some serious shit”. Watch for yourself.

Oh, my goodness, that’s what being an entrepreneur in the middle of a crisis feels like!

Why?

1. You feel like a damn freak going out of your mind. You engage in the kind of projects naysayers love. Very few people actually believe you’re going to make it.
2. You feel like you’re driving mindblowingly fast. The world seems to be too slow. You’re confident that your machine is going to make it.
3. You know that if something goes wrong, you’re going to be blown to pieces.

(Here, I think, is where an entrepreneur really steps up.)

4. You trust your calculations and hunches.
5. You’re gutsy enough.
6. You don’t pull the brake.
7. You don’t skid.
8. You just think about going 88 miles per hour, no matter what.

So, what’s the answer to the question about the right thing to do when you’re about to hit a wall?

Full throttle until you hit 88 miles per hour!!!

Remember that entrepreneurship is a matter of science (or SciFi if you don’t mind), but also a matter of guts. An entrepreneur is a person who is familiar with the concept of crisis because every day, their future is in jeopardy. If you’re going through bad times, don’t forget to keep accelerating until the gauge reads 88. God knows where you’ll end up.