5 Tips To Keep Your Business Running During COVID-19

Unfortunately, the COVID-19 has already hit small businesses where it hurts the most. What’s even worse is that some experts have been saying this is only the beginning. Whether the pandemic ends within a month or two or stretches multiple years, small business owners need to be ready to bear down, reevaluate and make changes to their strategies in order to ride the storm (and beyond). Some advice:

1. Review your ongoing burn-rate in both normal scenarios and absolute "bare-bones" scenarios.

Look at where your business is currently allocating spending, and consider which expenses are unnecessary (some are probably entirely unnecessary after a crisis). Think about excess advertising, rent, the size of your organization, and additional expenses that can be reduced without affecting the quality of your business. Efficiency is imperative to being successful and outcompeting rivals. Many businesses operate in large amounts of excesses, and the pandemic is a perfect opportunity to get a leg up on them by running more efficiently.

Consider where you can capitalize your burn rate. Maybe there are areas where you can cut back spending and account for that by increasing your own effort levels. Make sure that any decisions you make are well thought through. As a CEO/owner, you only have so much time to expend yourself. The key is to run as lean and mean as possible without giving up quality.

2. Think about how you can adapt to the current market trends in a way. good way

Current trends in the market are going to be very hard to understand, much less predict, but this can be to your advantage. If you quickly spend the time to understand the current climate of your market and the world, you can re-engage your business’s positioning. Maybe your business can provide its product or services more online or remotely than you initially thought. Maybe a rebranding is even in order. If you’re able to capitalize on this now rather than later when this blows over you may have an entirely new vertical and revenue stream to leverage or a whole new business opportunity. Your business could transcend from one that is focused exclusively on the face to face services and sales to one that approaches it from two different angles: in person and/or online.

3. Check out your competition – Is there anything you can learn or maybe you have an advantage?

Some businesses in certain industries are suffering more than others. Look at the ones that are making it through this crisis and learn what they’re doing differently. Look at both your indirect and direct competition for the best greatest understanding of what others are doing and which strategies seem to be working the best. While some strategies may not apply across certain industries use what you can and change these strategies to suit your own needs.

There are infinite opportunities to adjust the macro and micro strategy and to position your business in order to better match the competition. If you evaluate your competition and how they position themselves during and after this crisis then you can position yourself to have an advantage when things do return to normal.

4. Consider how you value your time—Could there something you can be doing, or otherwise not, that is a more valuable use of your time?

One of the most difficult things to come to terms with being an entrepreneur is knowing when a business pursuit is worth it or the lack of. This pandemic is a perfect example of that and an excellent opportunity for introspection. Re-assess your business, evaluate how much time you’re spending, and much money you’re generating (or could be generating). Then make a resolution to determine if those things are the best use of your time?