Running a business in a crisis. Week 4.

As I reflect on last week it does seem like there’s a sense of people moving on from the ‘panic’ phase. My friend and mentor Robert Craven made a video (in a private Facebook group) on the last few weeks, relating it to the Kübler-Ross Model, also known as “The Grief Curve”.

If I look at my own reactions over the last few weeks, the one phase I don’t think I’ve really hit is the Depression phase. I seem to have gone straight from Anger (two weeks ago) to Bargaining and even into Acceptance already.

MONDAY 6 APRIL

Six hours sleep. That will ‘do’.

Had an order confirmed over the weekend for ￡3,400 of technical SEO work for one client. And then picked up a new client for ￡12,000 of website and SEO work over the next 12 months.

Great to see some firms ‘doubling down’.

Spent most of the day looking at variations of our cashflow model. The key thing for not just me, is when does lockdown end? But how quickly does the population get back to ‘spending’ and how long does it take for that money to start circulating through the wider economy?

TUESDAY 7 APRIL

Woke up at 2am, tossed and turned until 2:30am. Got up. Worked until 6:30am then went back to bed. Slept soundly until 8am!

Three calls with clients today. All in relatively positive spirits given the situation. One told me that with their ‘downtime’ they wanted a quote for adding 128 new pages to their website and could I give them a quote. Yes, yes, I think I can do that and of course given the current situation, we took a bit off it and ‘fixed priced’ it.

Club Tropiconscious drinks ‘after work’ (whatever that means nowadays). It was nice to catch up with, amongst others, Ray McLennan whom I have lost track of over the last few years.

WEDNESDAY 8 APRIL

Slept for 7 hours….it’s a miracle!

Great call with a client re. taking online payments and what else they can do in their business to weather the storm.

Two good catch-ups with other agency owners to hear what they are doing.

No exercise today. Bad David! Where was Stephen Brown when I needed him?

THURSDAY

Wide awake at 4:30am. Wake up to Monday @ 5am then out running at 6:15am. Beautiful morning.

Bit of Status Quo on Spotify. Please don’t judge me :-)

Our weekly Zoom call with clients. The 4th week we have done this. One thing I am pleased we did was get ‘ahead of the curve’ in terms of getting these set up in week one of the crisis.

Then a call with a client who needs help with getting their 300+ events per year moved ‘online’ for the foreseeable future. It will be a nice project that I, Sahra and Katie can help with.

As of close of play today i.e. the end of the working week we are ￡39,727.40 down on monthly retainers i.e. 20% of turnover. Bad, but not as bad as some agencies.

Then in a REALLY annoying end to the working week, I discovered a ￡60,000 hole in our cashflow forecast! Not until August but was still REALLY annoyed with myself for not spotting it!

Did an end-of-week quiz with the whole team with Liam as Quizmaster ably assist by Sahra. Then a few of us did one run by Burlington Media with Tracey Stevenson as Quizmistress. Third place was ‘OK’, but no cigar!

FRIDAY 10 APRIL

Woken up at 3am by someone running down the road. Overly sensitive since the garage got broken into. Crikey, that was three weeks ago, seems like an eon.

3:30am got up. Faffed on my phone downstairs. Snoozed a bit. A ‘one kiss’ text from Manda at 6:30am(ish) so went back to bed and dozed on and off until 8:30am.

Weird day. Is it a Friday, a Saturday? Not sure, but should really be guided by what’s on my feet as I explained last weekend on LinkedIn!

Mid-morning run and lots of pottering on the computer. Had a look at a few agencies for sale on https://www.dealopportunities.co.uk/, unfortunately, I think there are going to be a number of casualties in the agency world. Businesses who were badly run before the crisis and who do not have a resilient business model and decent cashflow will not get through to ‘the other side’.

SATURDAY 11 APRIL

1am wake up. 4am wake up again. 6am wide awake. 6:30am get up. 7:50am food shopping done. 8:40 am at my desk.

Mid-morning run. Computer. Lunch. Computer. Dinner. Film. Bed.

Did two Zoom calls late afternoon. One with a few customers from one of the Mastermind groups that I run. A couple of them have been temporarily furloughed so it was nice to catch up with them and make sure they were doing OK.

Then virtual drinks with ‘good pals’ from the legal sector, Claire Smith, Sally Holdway & Amy Bell. We even managed to not just talk ‘shop’. How was dinner Claire pal?

SUNDAY 12 APRIL

2am wake up. But back to sleep until 6am. Am going to try staying up later this evening. I’m not usually an ‘in bed before 11pm’ person. And I am definitely not burning as much energy as my usual ‘office + travel’ routine.

I spent five minutes this morning updating a spreadsheet I am keeping to track my ‘views’ on LinkedIn. I ‘do’ Facebook and Insta, but purely socially with friends. But, my biggest ‘social network’ is on LinkedIn. Here are some stats.

• Sunday 5 April = 60,216 views of all my LinkedIn posts since the start of the crisis
• Sunday 12 April = 118,944 views of the same posts and those done that week

And an update on the number of ‘views of my profile’.

Do you need any more proof that upping your LinkedIn activity during this crisis is a sensible thing to do?

Mid-morning run. Computer. Lunch. Computer. Dinner. Film. Bed. Groundhog day!

Although I did watch while MrsG painted the front door!

Virtual drinks with “Robin’s Rebels” who are the gang of fabulous people in my growth group as part of the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses program.