This too Shall Pass
In business we face challenges every day, some appear harder to solve than others. Thinking smarter will help us through these. You know what won’t? Naïve positivity or indifference. A clear challenge is COVID-19 which is very, very real, and we need to deal with it in reality. On the other side we have excessive negativity and doom, which won’t do any of us any good.
We need to be realistic, have solid plans in place, and look for the opportunities. During the AEP alumni entrepreneurs’ webinar we discussed challenges as well as opportunities that we are faced with during economic recessions (such us the impeding one due to the COVID-19 situation). Challenges that came out clearly are; debt collection, employee management, integrity and survival. Possible solutions alluded to include; sourcing the help of debt collectors and lawyers as well as coming up with agreements between the parties involved and more so adapting with change.
Think about it, this pandemic is probably going to be the turning point for how we do business — people will be forced to do more things online, like conferences, and meet and plan and sell — and might just see a new world opening. This is the start of a new way of work — one we’ve all been very interested in for a very long time. We just needed the push to make the change.
As ISBI we see there must be a big call on society now to actively support small businesses. The corporates will be able to absorb the knock, but most small businesses won’t survive a month or two without active support… Every business we lose makes us all weaker as an integrated economy. Our way of creating an impact — helping you survive and thrive is to provide free individual consulting, personalized coaching and mentoring on business plan. Each value-add on is crafted to help an individual business with personalized attention.
Despite everything, we must not let ourselves use this as an excuse for getting sloppy, or not getting stuff done. It’s so easy to fall into a trap of mediocrity when the world around us is lagging a bit. Now is not the time to do that. It’s never the time to do that! Now is the time to give it your all, improve your business, get systems in place and come out better on the other end.
This too shall pass, and we can help!