Hello {First name},
"Athena canceled their Christmas party", "Athena let go of their mascot" and more.
I wanted you to hear directly from me the reasons why.¹
It is not a secret that when we took over, Athena is heavily in debt. This can be hard to imagine on the corporate level on the scale of millions, so putting this in perspective.
You have a friend who is seriously in debt. It would help enormously to sell the expensive house, sell the expensive cars.
But this can't be done tomorrow, this can't be done next week. It takes time to find the right buyers willing to pay fair prices.
So what can they do right away? Stop eating out, pause nonessential services. Of course, these costs can be said to be a 'drop in the bucket' compared with the big ticket ones but they add up over time.
More importantly, they signal a very necessary mental shift, that to survive, the era of overspending has to be over.²
We made these very hard decisions over our first few months, as part of a long-term plan to make Athena sustainable and profitable again, so you can count on its future.³
The press is releasing this news in dribs and drabs to keep generating clicks so it seems we're constantly making new cuts.
This of course does not change how much these cuts have impacted people.
I had one-on-one conversations with many of the people this has affected to hear from them firsthand. I did not make decisions locked away in a boardroom and I would not have made them if they were not absolutely necessary for our survival and climbing out of debt.⁴
I look forward to seeing you at our upcoming town hall and directly answering your questions and concerns.⁵
Sincerely,
{Name}
{Title}, Athena