It has been over 6 weeks since all of us in Los Angeles and the rest of US have been dealing with current Covid-19 pandemic. As a small business owner, we are facing the same challenges that all business owners are experiencing. Some of us are experiencing tougher challenges than the others. The cash crunch, the layoffs, working from home and slew of other obstacles.
Early on I created a list and every day I am going over the list that I created and modifying it if necessary and trying to stick to it. This is my list and I would like to share it with you:
- Stay healthy and make sure all around me are healthy (family, employees, partners, vendors, etc.)
- Know what I have control over and what I do not. Worry less and work harder. Be positive and believe in yourself and the country and our leaders.
- Communicate with clients and let them know, “I am here and willing to go the extra mile and help them no matter what”.
- Be proactive and use the downtime positively. Learn new things, clean up, and connect with people that I have not connected for a while. Train my staff on new technologies. Read the books I always wanted to read and listen to Podcasts, etc.
- Work on cash flow, apply for a loan, tighten up the belts and see where we can save. Look for other sources of revenue if possible. Test new products and see if they can be a new source of revenue for us.
- Help the community. This is the dearest item of the list to me. We have been requesting laptops, tablets and Chromebook (old or new) from our clients and the businesses so we can work on them and give them to the local schools. We recently received over 500 brand new IPad-minis from Coty Professional Beauty. Since we got this shipment, we have been distributing them to local LA Unified schools to assist with distance learning and other learning challenges our local schools have been experiencing. We know our teachers and school administrations are working extremely hard to help our students and this is small gesture from us to help them.
We also have been helping the Food banks and other local charities to help the homeless and people who have been economically affected by this crisis. We encourage everyone to help others no matter how small. Especially the frontline workers that are so selflessly putting their lives in jeopardy for everyone. We offer Free IT support to them as a token of our appreciation.
While helping others, we feel less anxiety and feel better knowing that helping others has made a difference in their lives.
We would like to remind everyone to practice social distancing and stay home as much as possible to flatten the curve. We are all hoping to get back to our normal lives as soon as possible and like before see the economy back in action and people can enjoy themselves doing what they like.