The long term impact of COVID-19
Small businesses experience volatility even in normal times. What we’re very good at though is adapting quickly – it’s the killer advantage we have over big business.
Take as an example – now, nearly 8 months since the start of the first lockdown in the UK, one of our corporate customers has finally rumbled into life and started to make sweeping changes across its business.
While those changes are now dramatic and far-reaching, the fact remains that many small businesses we work with, including my own, have already done what we need to do to adapt and survive.
Not because we’re better at handling a crisis like this than the bigger companies, but because if we didn’t we’d be out of business already.
This is where there is such a huge opportunity for small business right now.
Businesses across the world are still only just starting to understand that they need to change. The simple fact is that there is unlikely to be any business, anywhere, that doesn’t need to.
For some, they may realise that that change is actually to shut down completely.
Either temporarily, in the case of Cineworld here in the UK. Or for good.
For everyone else though, that change involves adapting – either to find new ways of bringing in revenue due to a loss of business, or to handle the growth from an increase of business.
Whether needing to adapt to survive, or fortunate enough to be growing, all businesses everywhere will need to implement change
For example, recently I heard of a restaurant with a very expensive Michelin Star chef but that can’t open currently due to lockdown. What do they do instead? They’re very successfully hiring him out for exclusive home dining experiences!
Or how about at the other end of the scale, consider the massive potential for growth that Zoom’s online meetings solution now has.
Regardless of the size of change it will need time, effort and money put in for it to happen properly.
In the case of the Michelin star restaurant, they would have needed a whole raft of new things to handle the new business – potentially an online booking solution, a diary system, marketing collateral (leaflets, brochures etc) as well as time spent coming up with ways of reaching their new target audience.
In the case of Zoom they had a much different problem. There’s was how to massively scale up, quickly enough, so that they keep all their new and existing customers happy and continue to deliver the great service they’re known for. Their needs would have included large scale recruitment and rapid increases in server infrastructure – and not to forget also the R&D and process improvements necessary to keep ahead of the flaws that inevitably come to light whenever you scale anything up.
The opportunity for your business
So, herein lies the opportunity, and my question back to you –
What product or service could your business offer that would help everyone else adapt to this new normal?
If you can find the answer to that, and find a way of delivering it, then perhaps this pandemic might not turn out to be so bad after all.
