Lord, where do I start?! March 2020 is a watershed mom
ent that all small business owners will never forget. Those of us who have spent 20 years building our businesses, those who were halfway through their first 10 years, those who were just starting out. It didn’t matter. March threw us all together in the same Oh Shit boat. And we are still paddling along in it now.
I won’t lie to you. The first two or three weeks of lockdown v1 were a weird mix of feeling like I was on holiday and also feeling like having a massive panic attack. My diary had emptied, my day to day routine had gone to hell in a handcart, and I’d been in isolation already for a week anyway. My husband was at home because I was shielding and frankly, the first 10 days felt bloody strange.
Once I’d got a bit of a grip it was time to knuckle down and work out how this whole doing business in lockdown thing was going to work. I was lucky, in that my coaching has always been done online, so that area of business didn’t need to change. But I had been used to running workshops to complement the coaching sessions and now I couldn’t do that anymore.
So it was time for a rethink.
Whenever I am up against it I turn to planning & organising to make sense of it all. I love a good list and am a renowned post it note & Sharpie addict. So, I grabbed a pile of both and set to work.
The first focus I applied myself to was looking at what I wanted to achieve through lockdown. I lobbed those out there first and then started mind mapping my way back from that. How was my business going to not just survive, but thrive in this brave new world?
Like so many of us, it was time to circle the wagons and take this business fully online.
My workshops became webinars, my marketing re-embraced email, I had a plan. And, even better, I had an awesome VA who makes the plan happen (I’m great with the creative stuff, hate doing the detail stuff. Ugh).
My networking had already gone online, I was a Zoom/Teams ninja & I was good to go. That was 9 months ago. So what is different about doing business in lockdown?
You’re on mute!
Everyone is online. No one bats an eyelid about jumping on a zoom or teams call. We are all comfortable sharing screens, recording sessions, saving chats etc. And yet, so many of us were wedded to the notion that business was only really being done if you could see someone face to face. That those ‘meet up over coffee’ chats simply had to happen in an overpriced coffee shop drinking crappy coffee. How quickly things have changed. How quickly we have adapted. How quickly this has become the new way of doing business.
Flat spotted tyres...
Before lockdown I spent half my life in the car. I was putting shed loads of petrol in it and charging around the place going to meetings. For the first three months the car went nowhere. At all. And it was liberating! In the first few weeks of lockdown the air changed, there were more birds, there was no litter, no stupid twonk in his silver Citroen with it’s blow back exhaust using the roundabout as his personal racetrack. It was wonderful. Sadly it didn’t last long – but it has made all of us far more aware of using our cars. And that can only be a good thing.
Visibility is key.
Creating content, being available, adding value, sharing knowledge – yes, of course we were all doing that before lockdown, but it’s more important now than ever. Because we are all now fishing in the same online pond, it’s essential that we are easy to find. I know that I need to up my game with regards to content creation etc – and I’m committed to doing just that for the next 3 months. But that's just one part of being visible - getting out there networking online, engaging with social channels, posting more blogs etc - these are all ways of being visible - you just need to be consistent.
Adapt or die!
I’ve talked about this before – but it’s still very relevant. If you are waiting for things to return to ‘normal’, you are going to be waiting for a very long time. Using this as an excuse not to change how you do business is, frankly, pathetic. If lockdown has made you realise you don’t really love what you do anymore, then you have decisions to make. Do you want to change that? If so, work with a coach to create a new path, offering, service, platform – whatever it takes to reignite your passion for your business. If you don’t want to change that, then stop. If you don’t love what you do, it shows. So, adapt to survive lockdown – but plan to thrive afterwards.
Use time wisely.
When we first went into lockdown back in March, everyone suddenly had a shed load of time they didn’t know how to fill. Online networking went a bit mad for a start. And so many people were talking about the books they were going to write, the plans they were going to make, the changes they were going to put in place for their businesses, the jobs they were going to do that they ‘didn’t have time to do’ pre lockdown. Except, of course, they didn’t. All the things folks didn’t want to do before lockdown, amazingly, didn’t become things they wanted to do during it. So set a clear path. Outsource the stuff you hate to give you more time to add value to your clients. Write content that adds value, create giveaways that advise & guide, write books that showcase your expertise. Use that time to show the world how bloody amazing you are and build that tribe!!