Covid-19 and Small Business: How to Minimize the Impact

The news is disturbing.

Everywhere you look, there’s bad news that echoes the eerie familiarity of a Zombie movie.

Stop over-consuming the news. Keep calm.

It is time for leadership, personal responsibility and community care. We’re all going to be impacted by coronavirus, whether or not we personally contract the virus or not. Let’s create a circle of community and commitment around the people, businesses and causes we care about.

 Flatten the Curve: Medically and Financially

Flatten The Curve helps us understand the importance of acting NOW.

By taking precautions, like washing our hands and cancelling non-essential healthcare visits, we can allow healthcare system to ramp up. By slowing the influx of new patients, all patients requiring medical care during this time will receive better care.

We also need to flatten the curve for small businesses and service providers who may be hit hard financially, and not have much cushion to fall back on.

I ask you to do what you can to:

• Support the local businesses and causes in your community
• Support your friends and family
• Support small businesses

And at the end of this article, I’ll share what steps small businesses can take to pivot their businesses for this new “socially distanced” reality.

1.    Support your small business community

To the extent you are able, continue to support your local community small businesses.

• Continue your gym membership. Ask your gym how they’re adjusting their practices and cleaning schedules to minimize the spread of germs.
• Keep ordering from your local restaurants – just order it to go. You get your food with less risk and your favorite restaurant can stay in business (win-win)!
• Move meetings online. I work from home nearly 100% of the time. It’s easy.
• Support charitable causes. Send money instead of attending in-person charity events.
• Realize 1:1 Services are low risk. Unless you have health conditions that put you at high risk, don’t give up getting your haircut or a massage. You’ll feel better, you’re likely providing needed income for the service provider, and you’ll both benefit from some much needed social interaction.

As time goes on, businesses will come up with creative ways to continue to serve you, while keeping risk low, but they need money to stay in business. If you are able, please continue your memberships.

2.    Support Family and Friends

I count myself lucky that I can work from home, but I recognize that not everyone can.

Some people don’t have vacation time or sick days. Some industries are going to take a major hit. Waitstaff. Uber drivers. Service workers with no clients. A vast number of people are living paycheck to paycheck. Without savings, they’re at risk financially, but also emotionally.

Many people are already coping with anxiety and depression. Added concerns about health and finances can become overwhelming to those who are already in a precarious situation.

Reach out. Kindness matters. Make sure people know they are loved. Provide financial and emotional support if you can.

3.    Keep Your Small Businesses Running

For small business owners, I have specific advice for you:

1. Make sure to communicate with your customers what steps you are taking to adjust your business, and the additional cleaning protocols you’ve added.
   
   
2. Explore how you might pivot your business model – at least temporarily – like a gym could start offering virtual training classes.
   
   
3. Look for opportunities to improve the foundations of your business. Accounting. Marketing. Technology. If you have downtime, take the opportunity to “sharpen the axe” so you’ll be ready when life is back to normal.

Hang in there, people! We’ll get through this more easily if we do it together. 😊