As we all know, ever since the Coronavirus had hit every inch of the world, major changes had occurred. The pandemic had affected every angle of human life including business and made 2020 the hardest year.
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Anyone who had a business whether it is small or big was somehow affected in 2020. Even though some businesses survived, it didn’t happen without difficulty. Since 2020 had a one of a kind crisis that hit every business sector, it still taught every business owner huge lessons.
So, if you are a business owner, here are some lessons that COVID-19 and 2020 had imposed.
1- Expect The Unexpected
We are in a time where anything can happen, and we all learned that the hard way.
Who could’ve thought in a million years with all of this technology and brilliant minds that we’d suffer from a global pandemic? Probably no one!
No one thought that this could happen and that it can put the whole world on hold for months. Every business sector was in shock because this is the first time it faces this type of crisis.
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So, the first lesson that business owners can learn is to expect any crisis to happen so they can be properly ready to face it.
2- Taking Risks and Making Serious Decisions
This was the right time for every entrepreneur to take a leap of faith.
Business owners who always put themselves on the safe side wouldn’t survive this crisis. It was time to take risks and to try new ideas in order for the business to make it without major losses. Also, this pandemic had forced business owners to make some serious decisions.
For example, some companies had to cut down costs to lower their budget, while others laid-off employees or cut down salaries.
It was a moment of “do or die”; so risks and serious decisions had to be made.
3- Compromise to Survive
When you face a crisis, you have to do everything to overcome it in one piece.
In other words, you will have to compromise some of your rules and take the road that has fewer losses. For example, if your business is all about selling products, then you have to make some offers to make them handier. If you are dealing with clients and they wanna talk budgets, do it, and meet halfway.
It’s survival 101.
4- Create Backups for Everything
When you expect the unexpected, it will help you create many backup plans to survive whatever comes in your way. And you don’t just create backup plans for your work system, you can also create a backup budget.
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A backup budget will solve any financial problems, but make it your last option after reducing costs. As for the backup plan, you already know what happened when the pandemic had hit the first time; so whatever the crisis could be, you know how to cover every angle and how to be a problem solver.
5- Benefits Of Flexibility
Any company that couldn’t apply flexibility, had to apply it when it needed it.
Many people have expressed their opinions on social media stating “who knew that work can be done from home”. So, applying flexibility is beneficial whether there is a crisis or not. So, always have a flexible system and make your employees get used to it in case another crisis happened.
If this happened, your employees won’t face any problem trying to adapt to the new situation, they already have adapted. So, this will make you ahead of your time and ahead of other business owners.
As a business owner or employee, what did you learn from 2020 and the crisis?
