The news this week should make you uncomfortable Up to 150 former WH Smith stores are facing closure. Thousands of jobs at risk. The business, now trading as TG Jones after Modella Capital bought and rebranded it, is asking for rent holidays and radical restructuring. You read that and think: that is a big company problem. Not mine. But the same dynamics apply at every scale. I have worked with people running two locations, three locations, sometimes just one that is clearly not working. The question is always the same: do we keep going, or do we close this? Most people I talk to already know the answer. They just cannot bring themselves to say it out loud. Why closing feels harder than opening Opening a new site feels like progress. Closing one feels like retreat. But they are the same skill: allocation of resources. When you opened that second location, you were betting that the opportunity outweighed the risk. When you close it, you are doing the same calculation in reverse. The problem is that closing comes with emotional weight. You hired people there. You told your family it was working. You signed a lease. None of that changes the numbers. And the numbers are what will keep your business alive or kill it. I have seen someone lose £47,000 over eighteen months because they could not close a site that was clearly dying. They knew by month four. They closed at month eighteen. That is fourteen months of pretending. The Decision Matrix approach A Decision Matrix is not complicated. It is a structured way of comparing options against criteria that actually matter to you. The point is to force yourself to weigh things explicitly, rather than letting the loudest emotion win. Here is how I use it with clients at ALIRA. when they are stuck on a location decision. First, you list your options. Usually three: keep the site open as is, restructure the site significantly, or close it. Second, you list your criteria. These are the things that matter for this decision. Not generic business metrics. The specific things that will determine whether this works for you. For a location decision, I typically use: Monthly cash drain or contribution Management time required Impact on your other sites or core business Lease obligations and exit costs Staff situation and redeployment options Market trajectory for that area Third, you weight each criterion. Not everything matters equally. If cash is your biggest constraint, weight it higher. If you are drowning in management time, weight that. Fourth, you score each option against each criterion. Use a simple scale. One to five works. Fifth, you multiply the scores by the weights and total them up. The option with the highest score is not automatically the answer. But if your gut says keep it open and the matrix says close, you need to interrogate why. What the matrix reveals The value is not the final number. It is the process of making your reasoning visible. I worked with someone last year who was convinced they needed to close their second location. When we built the matrix together, they scored it. The close option won, but barely. What we noticed was that the restructure option scored almost as well, and they had not seriously considered it. They cut the opening hours, moved to a smaller unit in the same area, and kept one staff member instead of three. That site now contributes £800 a month instead of draining £1,200. Not a huge win. But a £2,000 monthly swing that they would have missed. The matrix forced them to actually look at the middle option. Other times, the matrix confirms what you already know. That is also useful. It gives you something to point to when you have difficult conversations with staff, with landlords, with your partner. When the matrix is not enough Sometimes you run the numbers and they say close, but you cannot bring yourself to do it. That is a different problem. Usually it means one of two things. Either you have not included something important in your criteria, something emotional that you have not named. Or you are avoiding a conversation you need to have. The first one is fixable. Add a criterion for personal meaning, or legacy, or whatever it is. Weight it. See if it changes the outcome. The second one is harder. If you are keeping a site open because you cannot face telling your brother in law he is out of a job, that is not a business decision. That is a relationship problem dressed up as strategy. The cost of waiting The hospitality sector is buckling. JD Wetherspoon just issued its third profit warning this year. Costs are climbing. Fuel surcharges are spreading. If you have a site that is marginal now, it is probably going to get worse before it gets better. Waiting is a decision. It is a decision to keep paying rent, keep paying wages, keep spending your time on something that might not work. Every month you delay closing a dying location, you are taking money from the parts of your business that are actually working. You are taking time from the opportunities you could be pursuing. You are taking energy from yourself. I am not saying close everything that is not perfect. I am saying make the decision consciously. Use a structure. Look at the numbers. Then act. What to do this week Build your matrix. Open a spreadsheet or use the Decision Matrix tool at alira.london. List your three options for the location you are worried about. List six criteria that matter for this specific decision. Weight them. Score them. See what comes out. Calculate your actual monthly drain. Not your estimate. Pull the real numbers. Rent, utilities, wages, stock, your time valued at whatever you would pay someone else to do it. Write down the actual figure. Set a decision date. Put it in your calendar. Two weeks from now. By that date, you will have made the call. Not deferred it. Made it. The matrix gives you the information. The deadline gives you the accountability.