7 Tips to Keep Your Business Alive During COVID-19
My thanks to Carl from Jireh Communications for this timely topic.
Unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic has hit small businesses hard. What’s worse is that some experts are saying this is only the beginning. Small business owners need to be ready to buckle down, reassess and make changes to their business strategy in order to weather the storm (and beyond).
Tips to help you keep going
1. Analyze your ongoing expenses in both normal scenarios and ‘bear-bones’ scenarios. Look at where your business is currently spending money, and consider which expenses are avoidable (some are likely even entirely avoidable after a crisis). Think about excess marketing, rent, the size of your company and other expenses that may be reducible without affecting the quality of your business. Efficiency is crucial to being successful and out competing rivals. Many businesses run with lots of excesses, and this is the perfect opportunity to get a leg up on them by running more efficiently.
2. Adapting to current market trends in a complementary way. Current market trends are going to be difficult to understand and predict, but this might work to your advantage. If you quickly spend the time to understand the current landscape of your market and the world, you can re optimize your business’s positioning. Maybe your business can provide its product or services more remotely than you thought. Maybe a brand repositioning is even in order. If you’re able to capitalize on this now, then when quarantine lifts you may have an entirely new revenue stream to leverage or a whole new business pathway.
3. Look at your competition. Some businesses are suffering more than others right now. Study the ones that seem to be making it through this crisis and learn what they’re doing differently. Look at both your indirect and direct competition for the best understanding of what others are doing and which strategies seem to be the most effective. While some strategies may not apply cross-industry use what you can and shift these strategies to fit your own needs.
4. Consider the value of your time—is there something you can be doing, related or otherwise, that is a more valuable use of your time? One of the hardest things to come to terms with as an entrepreneur is knowing when a business pursuit is worth it. This pandemic is an excellent opportunity for introspection. Assess your business, look at how much time you’re spending, and understand how much money you’re generating (or could be generating). Then earnestly ask yourself: is this pursuit the best use of my time?
5. What is changing the way your customers are thinking? While the short-term will continue to be dominated by the pandemic, it is important to think about what happens in the midterm as well. Are your customers going to change how they think or act even after the pandemic passes? Maybe some of them will end up preferring using services or buying products remotely even after quarantines lift.
6. Use time at home to read, take courses, and learn—so that when things are a bit more normal, you can fly by whatever competition you have. Many of your competitors will be using this time purely as damage control and downtime. You should seize the chance to get ahead and make yourself into the best entrepreneur you can be. If you can, leverage this opportunity so that when the world starts moving like normal again you can fly past the competition.
7. Keep an open mind and stay positive.
The world is a scary place right now. Eventually, things will get better, most things will return to normal, and those things which permanently change are all things that you will be able to adapt to.
Entrepreneurship is always full of challenges and this is no different. Approach it like you approached any other roadblock.