How to Make Sure Your Small Business Thrives During Pandemic

There’s no denying that this pandemic has thrown a wrench into everyone’s plans, both personal and professional, for 2020. A lot of small businesses have already had to shut their doors, and even more are wondering how they’re going to make it to 2021. But it’s not enough to just survive. I want your business to thrive during and after this pandemic, so let’s go over some things you can do to make sure that happens:v

Flexibility is Key

Flexibility and the ability to adapt when things change is a key trait for any small business owner, so put that flexibility to work now. No one saw this coming, but there are still ways you can adapt the way you run your business to take into account all the ways our world has changed. We’ve heard about clothing companies that started making masks and conferences that went virtual. Zoom had privacy issues, so they quickly added options for passwords and a waiting room to give event hosts more control over who they let into their meetings. MeetUp created an option for event organizers to provide a link instead of an address for the location of their events. Your ability to adjust what you offer and/or how you offer it is key to making sure your business has a chance to, not just survive, but thrive during this pandemic.

Hope for the Best, Plan for the Worst

While I don’t encourage dwelling on worst-case scenarios, I also don’t advise my clients to ignore them. Have a disaster plan in place, but focus most of your energy ​​on the best-case scenario and concentrate your time and energy around making that best-case scenario a reality. What if all your old customers came back? What if they didn’t, but you gained enough new customers to make up for the lost ones and then some? What if 2020 turned out to be your most lucrative year yet?

Plan for the Future

The business owners who are taking the one-day-at-a-time approach are the ones who are just trying to survive. The ones who plan ahead are the ones who are going to thrive. ​It’s clear this pandemic isn’t going anywhere any time soon, so we all need to have a plan in place for the long haul, but we also need to have a reopening strategy. Just like shutting down required small business owners to reevaluate their business strategy and adjust accordingly, reopening will also require a strategy, and it won’t necessarily look the same as your strategy for adjusting to the beginning of the pandemic. If you have an idea now of what reopening will mean for your business and what, exactly, your clients will need from you, you’ll be able to put a plan in place you can implement as soon as this shutdown ends instead of scrambling to figure out how to adjust to this “new normal”.

You’re not the only one who has struggled to keep their doors open during these challenging times, but I firmly believe that 2020 does not require us all to struggle financially. We can survive this, but better than that, we can thrive. Schedule a call with me now so we can discuss how I can help your small business thrive during the pandemic and beyond.