When the going gets tough...

A few weeks ago, I stepped out of my home to meet some of those who are key to the growth of a nation – local enterprises. It is well known that the pandemic brought the growth of these businesses to a screeching halt. Many of them collapsed, but some survived. I was curious to learn the stories of those who survived, the emotional impact of the lockdown and what kept them going. I met eight such women in and around Hoboken who worked tirelessly to bring their businesses back to life after a grueling three-months lockdown in 2020. This article is the first in a series of two which encapsulate my learnings. (Please see the second article here.)

My sincere thanks to these amazing ladies for being so generous with their time and insights to inform these articles!

Jessica Witte Dyer , Laurie Michelson , Diane Branco, Christina Dorando , Jillian Hernandez , Anna Novosyolok , Kristin Karotkin , Catherine Tucker Willhoit ,

Backdrop

#Hoboken – a city that inspires new ideas

I moved to Hoboken in February 2022, and since then, I have fallen in love with this city. It exudes a positive community vibe. With just over 60,000 population, people know each other well and are always willing lend a helping hand.

Hoboken also happens to be a place of many ‘firsts’ in the U.S. and the world. To mention a few –steam ferry, baseball series, ice-cream cone, zipper, chewing gum and Oreo cookie – find their origin in this city. I believe that this spirit of innovation and enterprise is what makes this city and its people unique. The city hosts nearly 1300 business enterprises and more than 300 of them are owned by women.

The eight business owners I met come from different socio-cultural and professional backgrounds, but they share the same passion, ambition, and commitment to excel.

Lockdown, people, and community

Lockdown happened almost overnight in March 2020, and no one knew for how long it was going to remain that way. After the initial days of “wait and watch”, the daily number of cases began to rise, and life came to a standstill. Businesses started seeing a decline in their customer base (and hence, income) and depletion of their cash reserves, as bills still needed to be paid towards rents, staff salaries and utilities.

Hoboken authorities and the volunteer community responded quickly. The local emergency response system was leveraged to share daily updates on Covid with the residents, a phone helpline was set up, food kitchens were put in place and meals were delivered to senior citizens daily, social media was leveraged for further updates with the community.

These initiatives served as the much-needed engagement channels for the residents and encouraged many to support the community. The authorities also reached out to local business owners to develop recovery roadmaps and to collect learnings and best practices and protocols from those who were proactively taking initiatives and actions.

The silver lining: Lockdown gave a chance to reset priorities and innovate

Lockdown deeply affected the financial health of local enterprises and some businesses faced greater challenges than others. However, despite this setback, these leaders used this time to reflect and assess the opportunities to transform their businesses, challenge conventional norms and set new normal for them and their staff.

Challenging conventional norms

Hair Cult salon owner Laurie introduced new human resource practices for her team, including a new remuneration structure (“team-based pay”). She shared the business performance numbers with her staff to build more transparency, introduced a growth plan for her staff, announced new policies around work-life balance including mandatory time-off for the staff. Daily morning meetings were made mandatory for the staff to attend and share ideas. Hair salon industry workers typically receive commission-based compensation, so this was a completely new approach for her employees.

It took Laurie some time and patience to make her team understand her vision and the importance of these changes. Her hard work has paid off and Laurie believes that the new strategy has led to a higher sense of clarity, solidarity, and accountability in her staff.

Daycare and Schools – Managing priorities, people, and operations

Lockdown resulted in complete shutdown of schools and daycare centers. With their children at home, some parents didn’t agree to continue paying the fees leading to a sudden drop in revenue for many such institutions and many scrambled to conserve cash as much as possible to continue to pay for basic expenses such as staff salary, rents, electricity, deep cleaning, and sanitization of the premises.

Daycare owner Diane worked hard to negotiate discounted rental payments with her landlords, and she was successful to some extent.?This offered her a brief albeit essential relief. She also took a hard look at the staff performance and their alignment with the vision and mission of the organization. Some of the employees who hadn’t been living the values of the organization were let go. These were tough decisions, but they helped Diane in resetting her business priorities, make judicial use of her critical business savings and focus on the development of high-potential staff.

Cresthill Academy owner Christina also had to make some of these hard choices. She quickly launched a remote teaching model to continue the learning of her students as much as possible. Additionally, her school kitchen pivoted to catering by preparing meal kits for the families of doctors and nurses, as restaurants and hotels were also closed during that time. This turned out to be an incredible move that met two purposes – a) keeping the kitchen operations team fully employed, and b) supporting the community and essential service providers.

Cafes – Providing a haven to the community

On the other hand, café owners received a pleasant surprise as they saw more traction from people working from home serving as a ‘captive’ audience (pun intended). Everyone was looking for some respite every now and then, and what better than a coffee break!

Jess and her business partner (her husband) were six months into business and still in the process of setting up the shop at the time of the lockdown. Without wasting any time, they pivoted quickly to running the café through a window of their shop from where people could order and pick up. The duo found creative ways to expand the menu including making muffins in-house. Word of mouth helped people discover the café.

Hive café too opened right in the middle of the pandemic and even before the team could finalize the set-up, they found themselves pivoting quickly to identifying creative ways to respond to the local guidelines that were evolving rapidly. The original vision of the company was to create a recreational space for families, children and the community, and that vision has continued to be its foundation. Rather than allowing open play for anyone, anytime within their coffee shop's playspace, Kristin and Catherine introduced private reservations to allow small groups of six-people-or-fewer to play in their "pod" for 45-minutes at a time. It allowed for them to honor their original vision, while still adhering to safety measures and government mandates.

What kept them going: Vision, Mission, and Values

Business decisions can be tough, and our biases and emotions come in the way to make it even more difficult to take an objective view of a complex situation. Through these conversations I learnt how these leaders overcame those barriers. And it all boiled down to being guided by the vision, mission, and values of the enterprise. They all asked themselves these key questions – What does my organization stand for? What choices support my organization’s values? What decisions are ultimately going to strengthen the business? What is ultimately important for me to accomplish?

It’s also critical to ensure that the partners and staff are aligned on these values because otherwise as a leader, it is impossible to achieve long term growth, replicate success and expand the business without a team that believes in the mission and is ready to take on new responsibilities with the right mindset. ?

Tougher than ever!

The lockdown lifted after three months although it left its impressions forever on these leaders. While many businesses are still recovering, there are signs of progress. For these leaders, there is renewed sense of confidence in their own resilience and ability to navigate tough times. They now have a razor-sharp focus on their priorities. Their hard work and sacrifices are starting to pay off and the whole experience has left them with a deeper sense of gratitude.

#womeninbusiness #womenentrepreneurship #womenleaders #leadership #covidrecovery #leaders #smallbusiness #localbusiness