Time to be proactive!

For many small business owners, there isn’t too much to smile about at the moment. Everywhere you turn, its doom and gloom here and Coronavirus there. Not only is this going to impact everyone’s bottom line (including ours of course!), there are all the feels and warm and fuzzies that go along with such a negative trend in the economy.

Common sense and calm seem to have dropped off completely while fights over toilet paper, hand sanitizer and spaghetti have increased dramatically!

Here at LLBS, we have spent quite some time reading articles, reading blogs by other established business minds and watching the news. A lot of stuff relates to keeping a positive mindset. A lot of stuff relates to remembering to wash your hands…. But not much of it relates to what you should be doing now with a downturn in motion.

Previous to operating this company with Alex, I worked in the travel business for one of (in my opinion) the greatest travel companies around. For a moment, cast your minds back to 2011. The Middle East was in a terrible state. The civil uprising and armed rebellion across the region was in full swing and at that time, over 50% of our business operated in Egypt alone……..50%! Government travel warnings abounded, media hype did the rest and of course, mass cancellations ensued.  

Were we worried? Of course! But you know what? Not once did we pull our operations from that region or stop producing tours to be sold there. Not once did we stop being passionate about the region or our product there. In fact, we were probably one of the only Australian tour companies to stick it out during yet another trying year in their tourism history.

We looked after our clients, strategically maneuvered our marketing money around, took the opportunities to advertise the benefits of the region when we could, kept it front of mind for a lot of people and wouldn’t you know it……… eventually the bookings started to come back. Other operators were not so “lucky” as they chose to withdraw their operations from the Middle East altogether, pulled all marketing spend and watched from the sidelines when the business returned to us……. Because when it did return, they were too far behind the game to take advantage.

So what is the moral of this story I hear you say? 

Keep doing your thang!

The first reaction is to pull back on as much spending as you can and wait it out. But if you do that, you may shrivel up and die, or be too far behind when everything rebounds….. and it will rebound as history has proven.

We are a small business just like a lot of you, and we are in the same boat as a lot of you. Keeping things going in terms of your marketing activities (as best possible of course), using the time to analyse your business and plug any holes if there are any, reviewing product lines.  These things are proactive reactions to the uncertainty.

Stopping what you are doing altogether and waiting for the storm to pass?  

Game over if you ask me.

Maybe we can work together! Check out our website if you want to check us out by clicking here.