At first, I was afraid, I was petrified….kept thinking how would my small business ever survive? The initial fear of COVID – 19 was overwhelming. Our lives were changing very quickly. We could no longer do business the same way we had been. Our business environment had changed and our reality shifted. I had many burning unanswered questions rolling around in my mind. Will I lose clients? Will I have to lay off employees? Do I have to change my business model? All of these unanswered questions rolling around in my head. It was dizzying. After a few days, I meditated on it. I made some decisions and took back control of my reality.
Here are some of the things I did to be productive during a world pandemic.
#1 START A BLOG
I started a blog. I have always wanted to start a blog, but I just never had time for one. Now I have a blog and I am ecstatic about how much that is going to help my business. This, by the way, is my first blog post. Yes yes, it is an article on Linkedin, but I will also use it as my blog. ( 2 birds with 1 stone)
I have accepted the fact that we are not going to have a ton of sales right now. Companies are not lining up to add non-essential programs to their budget during a world pandemic. So instead of spending my time trying to obtain new accounts/clients, creating a blog allows me to provide my target audience with INFORMATION. Now that there is no more FACE TO FACE INTERACTION, my business needs to provide value through content and information.
Also, our website is more likely to appear higher in the search engine result pages if we have a blog than if we don’t. By the time this pandemic is over, we will be at the forefront of our audiences’ minds. They will be absorbing all of our amazing online content we are putting out on our blog postings.
#2. Improve your SEO
Start a blog! lol If you’re relying on people to find you through a Google search, search engine optimization (SEO) needs to be at the top of your priority list. It is difficult to generate leads if no one can find you on google. Here is a great article that helped me understand HOW I could improve my company’s SEO.
#3. Take a class
Improve your own skills and/or the skills of your team- Never before have I seen so many FREE classes being offered online.
I always have an excuse for not taking the time to expand my skill set. In the past I have thought about trying to improve my soft skills, interpersonal skills, organization and leadership skills. I just never seem to have the time. After scrolling through the internet, I have found SO many different classes that are 100% Free. For example, I found that Training Companies Offering Free Products and Services During the Coronavirus Pandemic. Never before have there been so many opportunities to learn. I think I would be remiss if I did not take advantage of these workshops and trainings.
Tomorrow – I do my coaching training through Google to become a coach for their #iamRemarkable Workshops. I will be able to use that as an added value to offer potential clients in the future. I am super excited!
#4. CLEAN & ORGANIZE
I capitalized this because this is one thing I have been doing – little by little day by day. Every day I am in self-isolation, my life is becoming more organized. I am not only referring to cleaning my workspace. I am talking about cleaning and organizing my whole life…..from my car to my bathroom, to my clothes. I am finding that the more organized and clean my house is – the easier it is to be organized and clean with my business. Again, this is something that I have always procrastinate about. I have a maid, but she does not organize everything in a coherent and sensical manner. I think that #4 has made the biggest positive impact in my life since this whole COVID – 19 pandemic began.
#5. Create a Management Plan
My COVID – 19 management plan is in 3 phases. Plan A , Plan B and Plan C. Our generations have never experienced anything like this. The “new normal” is not something most of us were prepared for. One of the first things I did was to create a plan. Plan A was a plan created for the month of March. We changed our face to face business to an online business, we contacted all of our clients to ensure that we had their business for the next few months and we began to train our workforce to do their job online. Plan B was created in case we began to lose clients – which we did at the beginning of April. This was the part of the plan where we stopped almost all expenses, we laid of 1/2 of our workforce, and we did some serious budgeting. We are still currently in Plan B phase and I sincerely hope we stay here because Plan C sucks. lol
If we get to Plan C – we may be in a bit of a mess. If we have to execute Plan C, it means we have lost even more of our clients. I will have to lay off more staff and take the excess workload onto my shoulders. I have looked into some small business loans. Plan C is what I call the “doomsday” scenario. Let’s just hope we don’t have to unroll Plan C.
The situation is not hopeless, just make sure to plan carefully. Here are some tips on how to create a coronavirus crisis management plan.
Entrepreneurs need to re-evaluate how they were doing business and create a new model that will help them thrive going forward. So take this time to learn something, clean something, manage future risk, write a blog. Above all – take care of yourself. This too shall pass, and when it does your small business will still be standing.
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