Today’s topic is about making some swift and strategic business pivots.
All around us, things are changing at an insanely rapid pace. This varies county by county state by state but most small local businesses as of today are shut down.
There are some exceptions of businesses that are still operating. Grocery stores, for example, restaurants offering takeout, hospitals, doctors offices. There definitely are some businesses that are still able to operate. But depending on what state you live in what county you live in, your world has drastically changed.
And a lot of you have been writing in with stories that get my heart broken while reading. Like I’m just absolutely heartbroken. And this has caused me to realize many things not just about small local businesses, but also my business, my personality and a lot of other things like this has been such a trying time.
And these stories of businesses that were literally depending on cashflow day by day, for example. They can’t afford to close down and yes, the US government is going to try and step in. And there’s small business lending and potentially checks going out and different things like that to some people. I mean, they’re there.
Obviously, it’s not that the US government is standing by doing absolutely nothing. It’s not what I’m getting at. And this is not a political conversation whatsoever. But it definitely has brought most small local businesses to their knees.
What I’m encouraging you to do today, in the action item that I have for you today, is that I literally want you to brainstorm your strategic pivots and your Strategic Action Plans that You’re going to start taking today.
What are you going to start doing today?
And I’m going to give you some examples on what I’m doing. I literally did this exact exercise this morning. And I did it because I felt massively out of control. I do not like when outside forces or outside factors are essentially controlling my destiny, controlling my livelihood. I hate that feeling. And obviously, there are going to be some instances where we’re going to have to accept that.
However, this is not a time to sit on our hands and knees and do absolutely nothing. So I’ll give you some examples again of what I’ve been doing and what I’m seeing other local businesses doing as well.
Restaurants for example, obviously, they’re running ramping up takeout. But what I’m seeing a couple of restaurants do that I really love and it’s being well received on social media is looking at shifting from just take out, because a lot of businesses also weren’t set up to do takeout or they don’t have the staff to do take out that they’ve been focusing more on putting kind of together, meal ready kits.
So obviously pizza. I mean, that’s somewhat of an easy one. But there’s a local sub shop that started putting out some ads on social media that kind of make your own subs. Rather than you having to go to the grocery store and buying sub rolls and meat and all the toppings, you tell us what we want, you can assemble it so you put what you want on it. And you can come pick it up or we’ll deliver it to you.
So rather than being that business that continues to just sit there on their hands and knees and see their revenue continue to nosedive, they started acting.
Local karate shops down in Florida. Obviously, anything relating to kids is pretty much closed. They started doing virtual karate classes, and they’re getting together and I believe it was either a zoom or goto meeting. And they literally have the instructor doing virtual karate classes. What they’ve done to help is they’ve offered the first month completely free, they’ve paused everyone’s fees, and then they’re simply going to ask if you want to continue thereafter for a small fee or a small donation however it was phrased.
So simple little things like that.
Now, I know there’s certain businesses that can’t completely pivot. But I don’t want you to get pigeonholed in your thinking. I really want you to start thinking outside the box. So what I’m doing is:
- We’re looking at other areas and other niches that we can help that aren’t really being overly affected at this time.
- We’re looking at producing more content that we can continue to educate people on the importance of marketing.
- We’re moving forward with a course on how to market in a recession, because I firmly believe that that’s either where we already are or we are where we’re very rapidly headed. So we’re putting together a course there.
- We’re really looking at all the different certifications and courses and things like that, that we’ve bought over the years. And looking to see if there’s some other things like that, that we could leverage that we’re not leveraging enough.
- We’re continuing to look at how we can help people communicate through video. We’re just I mean, we’re doing things that we normally wouldn’t be doing.
And we could sit here and just say, “Well, I hope this covid-19 thing goes away in the next week or two more back to normal”
But I really don’t think there’s going to be a new normal for quite some time. So, you can either let the situation define you and potentially put you out of business which then has all of those ancillary effects to you, to your family, to your health, to your team members to the community.
There’s all these other downward effects of you going under. It just spreads. And I do not want that for any of you. I need you to start to look at how you can quickly pivot your business.
If you’re offering birthday parties, you might say, “Well, we’ve all of our parties for the next 30 days cancelled and we’ve got zero revenue coming in.”
What could you do that’s outside the box? What about offering to put together a party kit to go? And no, I’m not saying you want to have 50 people getting together but what if it’s just for the immediate family. You’ll arrange for a cake, presents, party games. What if you were to help facilitate a virtual birthday party? Yes, that sounds a little strange, but why not?
You have to take a step back. And you have to start thinking outside the box of what are some of the things that you could do that are different from what you have never been doing before. Spend a couple of hours today brainstorming on how you can start to strategically pivot your business.
