One of my favorite quotes is from Mike Tyson.
“Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”
As a business owner, who works with 20 other businesses across the US right now, COVID-19 has been like getting punched in the mouth and kicked on the ground and so on and so forth.
But something I think Mike Tyson was trying to get at, is that being good at this is more than having a plan, it’s your ability to endure and make fluid and quick decisions during a time that matters.
My team took a day of planning out a few scenarios throughout this season, from best case scenario, a few in-between situations, all the way down to what’s the worst thing that could possibly happen. We spent our time doing this so we wouldn’t be caught off-guard when another punch lands on our business.
Flexibility > Outcomes
Every business, pre-covid, had plans for how 2020 is going to look. Well since everything has been flipped upside down for the past two months, it’s impossible to predict how the rest of the year is going to look. Right now focus on making changes to your business to be as flexible as possible. The goal right now is to stay afloat and prep for the worse!
A good process you can follow to make quick decisions:
Run an assessment.
What aspects of your business has been most effected?
Most of the time, we are assuming what these problems are. The best thing to do is to run an assessment with your team and your numbers and ask about specific needs or issues currently happening and make decisions from this.
What’s working best? What’s not at all?
What has been working well for us is staying diversified in the work we do. That has helped us still have business and shift focus as other parts of the business either die out or slow down.
Communicate!
Your customers right now probably feel a bit lost. Are they open? Has anything changed for the businesses we also shopped at? Is it safe?
You need to make sure your communication is open and consistent during this time. Make use of bio sections of all social media channels, posts, blogs, short selfie videos, etc. Use anything to communicate what’s going on with your business!
