Pause. Rethink. Survive
Small business owners are going to be the hardest hit with the economic collapse due to the COVID-19 lockdown orders. Government help will…
Small business owners are going to be the hardest hit with the economic collapse due to the COVID-19 lockdown orders. Government help will arrive late, it will never be enough and there are countless barriers to access it.
The smallest businesses, those owned by immigrants or minorities who are just starting out and have no friends in their local government or banks will likely be left out of aid packages.
The feeling that we will have to lift ourselves up is becoming more widespread and it is scary. The need is clear: to safeguard small businesses and make sure they are equipped to react and thrive in the face of uncertainty and chaos.
We all have changed during these weeks. Time away from their customers will put many small businesses in perspective. The uncertainty of what will come next is what we are all feeling. This is the main reason I have created The Small Business Survival Kit and are presenting it now to you.
It is a collection of proven tools, skills and knowledge that will prove invaluable in the future, will help small businesses to pivot and reduce the anxiety of staring the process.
I come from a family of small business owners. I grew up in a place that prepared me to keep walking despite uncertainty. We learned the hard way that when the unthinkable happens we need to pause, shake the dust off and keep doing business.
In the 40 years that my family has been in the agricultural, tourism and bookselling businesses we have once had the country’s entire savings wiped out by a bank shutdown. We have been at war with a neighbor and we’ve had earthquakes and volcanic eruptions that disrupted supply chains and domestic travel. We’ve lost our national currency and just recently had violent revolts that have left our highway system and built heritage destroyed.
It has been rough for small businesses back home. And yet entrepreneurship and small businesses, just like everywhere else in the world, are the backbone of the economy and suffer disproportionately when times are rough.
One of the initial pledges, years before opening our doors, while still in planning phases, was to make a game out of the operation and always have fun. Sounds silly and, frankly, at times impossible, but in the end it worked in our advantage, it has made pivoting easier and smoothed out transitions.
We were open minded and did not reject any ideas, as crazy as they might have sounded. We took it as a game. We looked for hidden skills that each one of us had learned through life and never used. We committed to learning new ones as fast and well as we could to apply them to the recovery effort. We dusted a few old tricks that made some of us the life of parties long before and, the most important part, we held hands a lot and sang a lot and came up with a winning plan.
Pivoting requires a therapy session but not just any therapy session. Think of couples counselling, you being one spouse and your passion the other.
The Small Business Recovery Kit will help small business owners rediscover the strengths that helped them build their business from a raw idea to an institution loved by the community it supports.
The market we will find after the lockdown is completely different than the one we left. This tool will help business owners build skills to adapt.
The harsh truth is that pivoting might be what saves small businesses in the end. Diversifying their offer and their revenue streams will broaden their customer base and keep the cash flow coming in.
The tools included in the Survival Kit are the result of a methodology I have developed after several attempts and reiterations over many years.
Change is what is constant in troubled times and we can agree there seem to be more of those as we progress. I started as a Graphic Designer. Then became an Architect. I’ve done historic property redevelopment, economic development consulting, urban design, bookselling and zoning code analysis. I’ve moved and lived in four countries.
There is a liberating change in mentality that comes from transforming a sales-oriented business that relies on market preferences and weak supply chains and is very vulnerable to outside shocks into a creative, value adding powerhouse that relies on your own creativity and is ready to react and make necessary changes when circumstances force.
Sometimes, especially after catastrophic shocks, survival is the name of the game. The Small Business Survival Kit wants to change that. I want small businesses to thrive by being creative, innovative and work up from their existing skills, turning challenges into opportunities.
An offer will become essential when it plugs naturally into a business’ tribe’s priorities and provides what they need. We operate in an ecosystem just like a forest where manufacturers, sellers, couriers, suppliers, researchers and many others play a part in the balance of the system.
Supply chains are not necessarily linear. They can be networked, which means they usually intersect and support for businesses can be found in any one of the links. That support doesn’t need to be in the form of a service that you pay for.
By pivoting and adding as many branches as possible to your business you make sure that when external shocks arrive they hurt only one revenue stream so the others can keep you open for business.
The Survival Kit will be your first step towards that goal. Find out more in survivalkit.carrd.co
Keep jumping, keep playing and have a great time!