The topic for today is how the pandemic might improve your business. I do not want to downplay the challenges you faced as a small business leader during the pandemic, because certainly, you could’ve been doing a lot of things right and still have had a rough time. To some degree, many things were out of your control, and you keep asking yourself: “When will the pandemic end?”.
But there are a lot of ways that your business may have improved thanks to the pandemic. And really, this is true for any type of economic recession or depression. Such grim conditions were forced upon many businesses, but the best ones will adapt, survive, and even thrive through it all. As I interacted with clients throughout the pandemic, I helped boost many of them out of this challenging time and propelled them into growth. Here are four things we’ll take a look at:
1. You’re forced to know your numbers
If you received any type of loan, such as the PPP loan from the government, you’re forced to look at your numbers more closely than usual. You have to look at how everything ties together. As you did that, you may have realized that there are areas in your business that could be cut because they weren’t absolutely necessary. You realized there were things that were perhaps overlooked. Knowing your numbers, in general, is such a great quality that’s vital for a small business owner. The pandemic helped bring this to light. If you trim unnecessary spending and efforts, you’ll undoubtedly improve your business!
2. You’re forced to evaluate your team
This is especially true for those of you with a lot of employees. There were people on your team who were unproductive. They didn’t live out the purpose of the company or they simply weren’t great at their job. The pandemic may have forced you to downsize and eliminate those individuals. I do not want to downplay the fact that there probably were some very skilled people you had to let go due to the circumstances, at least temporarily. For many of you, however, the pandemic gave you a chance to really look deeply at your team, at who is and isn’t a contributor in improving your business.
3. You’re forced to be more creative in your business
You might have had to adjust your product or service and deliver it in a creative way. Additionally, in many industries, you had to creatively market your offerings in light of the pandemic as well. Creativity is a beautiful thing, and the pandemic forced more of it out of us.
4. You’re forced to solidify your mission or passion
Many people love the art of creating a business. But for most of us, it’s really what we do as a part of our life’s mission or passion. What the pandemic did was it solidified this notion. What I mean by that is times got very difficult. Decisions became hard. You started questioning why you were doing what you were doing. Now, we at Entre Results encourage everyone to have a clearly-articulated mission statement for the company, and this pandemic helped test whether or not that was “true”. Did it drive you and your team to fight through to get to that next level? Having a mission is paramount, and difficult and trying times are what allow us to measure how dedicated we are to it.
So those are the ways the pandemic helped your business improve. Think about them. Maybe reevaluate them now that things are turning around. I know this isn’t true for everyone, and I don’t doubt many of you are still facing challenges, but sooner or later you’ll bounce back and start growing again in a major way. And as you grow, I want you to constantly reevaluate these four things. Not only do they help you during the pandemic, but they’re also tremendously helpful to your business in general. Feel free to contact us with any thoughts you may have!
Take action, and have a better than amazing day.
