Naming the risk out loud is not giving up on the business. It is the opposite. Almost every option that helps a business under threat of displacement or closure has a deadline attached, and most of those deadlines pass quietly while an owner is still hoping the problem resolves itself. Writing down what is happening, with dates, is what keeps those options open.

It also matters because help is organised around documentation. Relocation assistance, legal aid, emergency capital, and public programs almost all begin with somebody asking what notice you received and when. If you have that in one folder, you can move quickly. If it is spread across your truck, your phone, and your memory, you lose weeks you may not have.

• Every notice, letter, email, or text you have received about the building, your lease, or the street. Keep the envelopes and the dates
• Your lease, including the clauses on relocation, demolition, termination, and holdover
• Your last three months of revenue, and the same three months last year
• Your cash on hand and what you owe in the next sixty days, including payroll and rent
• What has changed outside your door. Construction, street closures, a building sale, a new owner, a rezoning notice
• Your headcount, and what you would owe people if you had to close