Businesses need to stop giving COVID-19 as an excuse when clearly its greed and lack of empathy

I am posting this using 4G internet finally today, since there has been no internet service since two days at our location (apparently, if it rains, internet doesn't work here across many of our locations including teams). During the past two days, we have been unable to use even 4G since network connectivity was so poor across locations at local community levels. Most of were trying to somehow struggle and work with 2G internet service which hardly got us even connected to the net to check emails with great difficulty.

For most part of the day yesterday, there was no power & with so many other issues of daily essentials including water supply.

For business to survive, all entrepreneurs can do is work, but if there is no infrastructural support, client support, how will anyone survive?

Source post here https://www.dhirubhai.net/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6674154674054164480/

I have been seeing posts of small business entrepreneurs mentioning they have shut down due to ongoing situations, extremely poor support from institutions they trusted, from their clients who stopped paying, claiming they no longer had money even though their posts were mostly about how during tough times they have enough liquidity & how they were making sure they paid their vendors, employees on time

Coupled with, extremely poor infrastructural support, frequent failure of power, internet, water supply including essentials at local community levels, high digital costs of maintaining home offices in addition to having pay rent for premises which you can no longer use due to safety reasons

#thursdaythoughts

1) Digital isn't free: Problem with digital is, since it's not exactly tangible, people assume costs are low. Good clients know that isn't true, nothing valuable is cheap. In fact, with the tough ongoing situations, entrepreneurs and small business have to bear additional costs of paying rent for their offices which they clearly cannot use anymore due to safety and lockdown situations, but have to also bear additional expenses of setting up home offices across for their team members so that they can deliver.

2) Empathy: Work only with people who have empathy understand your condition & give you a break when things become inexorable due to situations beyond human control. Now many of our clients have gone out of their way (especially those out of India) to write to us, enquire about our safety, even mention that till things settle down, our teams can take a break & it wont affect our business services and we wont be expected to compensate in case there is even a long delay. Such clients make you want to work harder for them when things settle down, don't you just love and adore them. It's simple, the better you treat someone, the better you want to treat them and the more you want to do for them. There have been quite a few such wonderful clients who have gone out of their way and shared such emails with us over the past few days.

3) Stop: When bills become extremely difficult & clients refuse to pay, stop delivering. You are not here to invest in their business but to help them grow better & that can happen only if you survive! The costs of managing home offices, digital devices, additional digital tools, secure measures etc have doubled suddenly for small business. During these difficult times, if they can't or won't pay you, remember, simply stop the services, you can't survive if you don't get paid and you can't pay those depending on you and working for you!

4) Cheap: Yes, that is exactly what it sounds like. Hundreds of calls and requests from prospective enquiries who seem to expect the world when it comes to services but are clear that they are on a budget and looking for cheap. Some big businesses even had the audacity to quote COVID-19 as a reason and excuse to ask for massive discounts while they clearly had huge PR expenses that praised their organization across media channels for giving raise or paying their employees on time. Many came forward asking for "free webinars and free trainings". Remember, if you as a brand or an organization go looking for free or cheap, chances are that's exactly what you will find or get. In the long run, cheap and free is always way more expensive than value!

As I just finished typing this line, we lost power (electricity) at our place again and my hotspot internet is now showing 3G slowly flickering towards 2G. Hoping I can post this before I lose even that.

I am Thankful and grateful that I belong to a section wherein we can at least afford backup generators for few hours, may be 3-4 more till we face power outage the rest of the day, evening and night like yesterday and manage to get at least few essentials delivered. During this time, I am thinking about those across the globe going without food, water, medical, infrastructure support in any manner whatsoever.

Who is to say what is essential for anyone anymore! I am positive, I can't decide sitting inside four walls fighting to make it and survive, while there are millions out there without any hope!

I guess the more privileged one is, the more they get to decide by posting on twitter, what is important for anyone else and that is just a sad reality! This is clearly visible by the thousands of brilliant opinions (sense the sarcasm here please) from people on twitter who are apparently experts on what should be done to fight and be successful during these tough times while simultaneously sharing about the next movie they will be streaming online or that they miss going out!

It's simply about survival of the fittest, it's a dog eat dog world, truly sad!

Just praying that things get resolved and for safety and health of our fellow beings, not only in India, but across the globe.

Stay safe Take care

Ananth www.ananthv.com/

#life #health #empathy #business #entrepreneurship #hope #digital #training #speaker