BLT (17/7/20): How to thrive in the ‘new normal’

Q. The pandemic is likely to affect our lives and businesses for longer than we thought. How is your business going to change in order to remain successful in the ‘new normal’?

“In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had 500 years of democracy and peace − and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.”

Harry Lime, The Third Man

Whilst the global pandemic and ensuing lockdown has come a huge shock for most businesses, can we take any positives from it going forwards? Might the stress make our businesses stronger and more resilient, or could it signal the end for many of us?

1. How Six Entrepreneurs Unleashed Their Best Business Ideas During Lockdown

This Forbes article celebrates the ingenuity, adaptability and resilience of six entrepreneurs who managed to survive (and thrive?) during lockdown.

To summarise, the actions taken fell into three broad categories:

• Embracing the online
  • Raising personal profiles using new outputs, such as a podcast (author, coach and PR consultant Elaine Harrison)
  • Marketing on a larger scale (Yena, a startup community that provides accelerator-like business benefits via subscription)
  • Running online surveys to gauge business sentiment in a specific niche
• Developing new skills
  • Becoming certified in new fields such as sustainability (the aim of the The Wood Life Project is to replace everyday plastic items with beautifully designed, eco-friendly, British-made wooden products)
  • Running surveys and studying for a PhD in translation (online business translation business Inbox Translation)
• Unleashing an entrepreneurial spirit
  • Doing something different whilst furloughed, such as writing apps; Supermarket Check-In was an app created in lockdown by Paul Hulatt – it lets people check and share shopping experiences at their local supermarkets and other shops

2. How have BLT members changed

Echoing the actions outlined in the Forbes article above, BLT members have themselves:

• Expanded online
  • Henley Scan (Eva Rickett) had previously limited its marketing to a local 10-mile radius, believing that people would only be prepared to drop off cherished photos and documents in person. However, during lockdown it transpired that customers were happy to use mail and courier services; this has enable Henley Scan to expand its marketing to national level.
• Learnt new skills
  • Enterprise Doctor (Mark Harris), previously had a radio slot on business topics broadcast on Marlow FM, which was cancelled during lockdown. Mark subsequently learnt how to produce and promote his own business podcast indepedently.
• Opened up new lines of business
  • The Trusted Coach Directory (Helen Isacke) started running Zoom calls for her business coaches to keep in touch with them at the start of lockdown. However, this soon developed into a schedule of weekly calls covering an additional 3x weekly service

3. How will we need to change going forwards?

“Winter is coming”

As was pointed out, the vast majority of us in BLT are self-employed, and therefore risk-takers by definition…or entrepreneurs for want of a better word!

At the time of writing (23-Jul 2020), the government is planning for a quadruple whammy of four separate winter emergencies: COVID-19 , a no-deal Brexit, a flu surge and flooding. So, there is a good chance that everything will not be going back to ‘normal’ anytime soon, and businesses will have to remain flexible going forwards.

Conclusion

“If anything puts us out of business – our customers will.”

There are a lot of ‘zombie businesses’ out there, bobbling along for now on furlough, emergency loans and payment holidays. Such businesses are not viable in the long-term − if they constitute most of your customer base, then your business is likely to suffer in equal measure.

Hence the importance of re-examining your business proposition going forwards in light of the new environment, anticipating change rather than waiting for it to happen.

One’s thing for certain – the ‘new’ normal is here to stay.