How I plan to survive the Coronavirus pandemic

It's certainly been another surreal and anxiety-ridden week.

There's a huge amount of information and content floating around concerning COVID-19. I've done my best to educate myself, from reputable sources. For this week's newsletter, I thought I'd give you my current strategy. I feel confident that this is currently the best approach I can take in terms of health, business and sanity.

I hope that it helps you.

Think of this as a variation of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. This ranges from most important to least important:

1. Critical health: myself, loved ones and the general public

2. Business/finances: ensuring our business and personal finances can ride out this difficult time, and we can continue to pay our staff 

3. General well-being: My exercise routine, anxiety levels, daily routine, social life

Essentially, you would rather be bankrupt or unemployed than in intensive care, and you would rather be slightly out of shape or more lonely than usual than financially destitute. 

Let's dig into each of these:

1. Critical Health

By far the most important thing to me is the health of my loved ones, myself and of course the wider public.

We all have our part to play, and I encourage you to check out the following content, for both a scientific insight, and human insight from someone within the UK health-service (they are already at capacity in ICU, before the imminent spike hits).

The Hammer and the Dance: What the next 18 months could look like (If we act now)

Dr Jack - an insight into the impact on the UK health service

The worrying thing is, most of the world still seems to not be doing enough. Whilst some are taking action, from our apartment balcony we get a full view of the public disregard for strict government advice in this country. Even some of my loved ones have been failing to take this seriously enough. The number of people I know going to visit their elderly mother today on UK Mother's Day is enormous. My concern is that without total government enforcement, the public action will always lag behind the point of necessity. They will always push for maximum social freedoms, rather than err on the side of caution. The numbers of deaths and disease as a result is terrifying to think about. So as people beneath our apartment continue to mingle socially, I feel a deep sense of dread and frustration.

My fiancee Maxine gets more insight to health-service data than the average person, given her professional in the industry (PA to a London doctor). The numbers she's already seeing internally for our health system and hospitals are hugely worrying. But seemingly until the police force people into their homes, social distancing measures remain vastly inadequate.

Here are our current steps:

1. Stay inside, totally.

I'm literally only leaving the house to take our bins (trash) to the communal disposal room on our floor. When I do this, I use a disposable tissue to open doors, and wash my hands thoroughly once back in our apartment.

2. Avoid supermarket and order food online.

Supermarkets are rammed with panic buyers and crowds. Statistically some of these people will be spreading the infection. People also commonly handle produce and put it back on the shelves. We accept online orders, and then disinfect everything, before packing it away. We wash our hands after doing this.

3. We wash our hands thoroughly and frequently, just in case.

This is a fantastic video. Turns out I wasn't washing them sufficiently until a couple of days ago.

The advice we have hard from medical experts has always been implemented by the wider public weeks later. I would rather we be implementing the steps now that most may not be taking until 2-3 weeks time.

2. Business/Finances

Last week I covered the steps we're taking with our business to protect us through the imminent recession/potential depression.

That newsletter got such an overwhelming response that I decided to publish it publicly on my LinkedIn, to help more creative entrepreneurs. I will be sharing regular articles via LinkedIn for the foreseeable, so I would really appreciate you connecting and sharing that article to help your fellow entrepreneurs.

Read and share the article here

This week was a rollercoaster.

Here were the steps I took:

1. We calculated our runway. 

As detailed in last week's newsletter, it's so important to know how long your business can survive during tough times. The directors at Design Cuts ran every worst case scenario (including making $0 revenue for months - which won't happen). We know our exact position, financial buffer and ability to protect the business and the jobs of our team. 

2. We discussed strategies to help maximise opportunities during this time.

We are doubling down on live events, as these are so in demand from our community. Whilst they are free to attend, they should provide positive exposure and revenue to help the business. We're also focusing on targeting segments of our audience who are less financially hit by the current situation, and who value escapism through learning and working with new resources/tools.

3. We adapted to our entire team working remotely.

It's been a week of adjustment, but the team have been superb, as ever. I was open to accepting feedback from them in terms of what was working and what wasn't in terms of ongoing communication. We are finding it effective to have a 10am video call for 10-15 mins, just to chat and support one another. I'm also actively encouraging team members to avoid relying entirely on text chat, and pick up the phone to work through projects in real time.

4. We recouped what money we could, and are looking at further cost savings

I recently completed a comprehensive cost-saving exercise, which is something I advise all businesses do right now. We are continuing to look into costs to see where any further savings can be made. After 2.5 hours on the phone, our operations manager managed to recoup $6000 in flights/accommodation from our planned trip to Creative South conference.

5. I successfully launched a beta coaching-version of our first course

I was hesitant to launch anything during this time, but as SeanWes rightly said this week, there is a difference between making money from this pandemic, vs making money during this pandemic. As per last week's newsletter, I believe that we should be working hard than ever to provide for ourselves, our teams and our loved ones. I'm also confident that this course will provide enormous ROI to all the students, to help their creative businesses this year.

6. I worked to cut personal expenses

During these uncertain times, the lower my personal expenses, the less pressure upon my business. I spent 1 hour earlier this week auditing and cutting non-essential expenses. From Sky movies to obsolete subscriptions for my personal brand, the total annual saving was $1700. These little costs here and there were easy to ignore previously, but this situation is forcing me to look closer at my finances. It's also worth noting that everyone's living costs seem to be reducing drastically. Asides from my mortgage/bills and a food shop, there is literally nothing else. No public transport, Ubers, restaurants, nights out, trips etc... My living costs are the lowest they've been in years. When I coach people I tend to refer to this as 'ramen profitable'. Calculate the lowest amount you can live on, and your required business revenue will reduce in turn.

Whilst we are faring well so far, as are many of my creative friends, I'm still living with the expectation things will get much worse economically for us all. There has been an abundance of posts focusing on the lighter aspects of the situation. Whilst we all need positivity right now, I equally don't want anyone to be an ostrich. Every single day I hear from a community member that has been laid of, or their partner has been laid off. This will happen with increasing frequency over the coming weeks. This shit is serious, and so much like my approach with the health precautions we're taking, I would rather you took every financial precaution you could now, not later.

3. General Well-Being

Finally, I don't want to diminish the importance of general well-being. Our physical and mental health is hugely important. We are social creatures, and the coming weeks and months will be incredibly tough on us.

Here are the steps I've taken this week:

1. I've eaten well and drunk plenty of water

This is good practice in general, but especially when my daily step count and exercise is well below my average, I want to keep track of what I'm consuming.

2. I've worked to recover (and will exercise soon)

I still have a persistent cough, although it's slowly on the mend. It's gone from me coughing horrendously each day to it just being an annoying niggle. I don't want to launch into a home exercise routine until feeling 100% better, but I definitely will asap.

3. I've relaxed in the sun

We have a sun-facing balcony and the weather has been glorious some days. Getting some warmth and a bit more colour makes this whole thing much more bearable, and makes me feel much happier. If you're lucky enough to be getting sun where you are, take advantage. If this was happening in the bleak cold of winter I think I'd feel 1000% more depressed.

4. I've talked with loved ones often

Maxine and I have been communicating a lot. It's been really lovely spending more time together at home. When she's down I'll pick her up and visa versa. I've been chatting regularly with family members on the phone. I even had Facetime drinks with my best mate yesterday. For now, everyone is fixated on discussing Coronavirus, but soon enough these discussions will be replaced with general catch ups, laughing and normal conversation (I hope).

5. I've been reorganising my entire house!

This one is huge. I've had quite a few moments of anxiety over the last week. I've found it near impossible to sit through a movie or TV show, as I feel so constantly distracted and on edge. Staring at screens doesn't help much with this. I've always found during moments of peaked anxiety that doing something with my hands is the most helpful thing. Each day, whenever I feel anxious, I'll reorganise/fix 1-3 things around the house. So far I have reorganised our living room furniture, setup a home office, cleaned and reorganised our food cupboards, cleaned out and organised the freezer, unblocked the shower drain, reorganised the clutter in the TV cabinet and organised our book cabinet (previously a complete dumping ground for all the crap around our flat!). In my anxiety avoidance I even slipped into ordering our books by colour! Yes, I think I may have gone stir crazy already...

6. I'm getting to the jobs I typically don't

Beyond these odd-jobs around the house, I'm also tackling things that typically remain on my to-do for months. I cleaned up my LinkedIn profile after not being on the platform in months. I'm now committing to posting regularly there. My theory is that during times of anxiety it's helpful to focus on things you can control. There's so much in the world that currently uncontrollable, but I can control these jobs. That provides me with reassurance. 

My personal aspirations when this is all over:

The world is a scary place right now. For the most part, I can't control any of that. But I can take actions, small and big to protect myself and others.

I want to emerge from the other side of this knowing:

- I was healthy

- My loved ones were healthy

- I had no negative impact upon the health of others

- My business survived and potentially flourished

- I protected my team

- My business is leaner and more efficient than ever

- My personal expenses are sustainably leaner and I'm more financially literate for the rest of my life

- I've grown even closer to my fiancee

- I've supported my friends and family

- I've gotten in better shape than ever

- I've grown my personal brand and tackled many projects I simply never found time for previously

- I've gotten a tan!

- My house is an organised, beautiful haven

- I've created, learned and grown personally

The results of this virus globally will be devastating. We will likely never be the same afterwards. But we have a responsibility to ourselves and each other to look after our personal bubble and those within it.

If you found this article helpful and feel others would too, I would kindly ask that you share it with your followers.

Thank you so much, and stay safe!

Tom.

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