Keep Selling Or Pause The Business? What To Do Next During A Pandemic
Keep Selling Or Pause The Business? What To Do Next During A Pandemic
This isn’t about recessing into the fear, it’s about leading in times of fear.
It is a strange time to run a business right now.
As a small business owner, it may be confusing to decide the right next steps during a pandemic like this.
Especially if you have an online business or an online arm that enables you to do business as usual — do you keep selling? Do you put everything to a halt?
There’s a lot of fear-mongering, shaming, a lot of silence, and some folks doing business as usual. There’s a mixed bag of paths you can take right now.
This mixed bag may be precisely why as a small business owner, you’re not sure what you should do next to move forward.
Here are two major, teachable moments that the current pandemic provides and how it can guide you on next steps —
Embrace The Down
If you are currently feeling paralyzed watching the news, are constantly refreshing your feed for new news, and entertaining every terrible future for your business, I want you to pause and breathe.
Even though a pandemic of this scale isn’t a frequent occurrence, as a business owner, another down moment of this size will hurt your business in the future. This is a teachable moment for you.
When you are faced with challenging moments in your business, do you keep recessing into the fear or do you take a step back and reflect on how you can lead during a moment like this?
Do you take this opportunity to strategize a Plan B to put into motion, or do you throw your hands up and give up when the going gets tough?
Use this moment to reflect on who you are as a leader of your business, and how you’ll conduct yourself during a time like this.
Will you cancel all your contracts and put your freelancers and partners out of business because of recession fears, or will you be supportive and continue working with your partners because you’re in a financial place to do so?
Will you contribute to the noise by continuously releasing fear through your content or will you lead by example and be a ray of light and empowerment for others?
You will have a moment like this again in the future of your business — use this current moment to reflect, learn, and embrace your power to create the next scene.
What Feels Right For Your Business Right Now?
With that being said, let’s talk about what may be the right next step for your business right now.
Many of you are probably juggling two options:
keep selling, keep doing business as usual or
take a pause.
Whichever option you choose to pursue, there are no wrong answers here.
As a business owner, you have to learn how to listen to yourself and to make decisions for your business during difficult times like these. You can’t solely rely on what the news is telling you or use other people’s fears to guide your decisionmaking.
This means making decisions on how to move forward with your business from a place of integrity rather than fear. This also means listening to your gut and making decisions that are best for your business and the community you serve at large.
A large responsibility of being a business owner is making the tough calls — step up to the plate and own whichever decision that you make.
If you decide to keep selling and doing business as usual, that’s great, keep at it. You’re doing your part in keeping the economy going, we’re rooting for you.
(Note: obviously if you are a brick and mortar or in-person business, please do not violate social distancing recommendations.)
If you decide to take a pause from your business because that feels right to you, that’s great too — please take this time to reflect and kudos to you for honoring your need for pause.
Respect The Decision Of Other Businesses
Once you’ve made your decision on how you’ll move forward as a business, please respect the decisions other business owners decide to make for themselves as well.
Many businesses must do business as usual because they’re not in a place to take a pause and many businesses have to pause because they’re a brick and mortar business and their city has placed restrictions.
Respect each other, and please remember to support your small businesses during this difficult time. Big corporations like Amazon will survive during this time, but a lot of small businesses will not — when possible, please always opt to buy from a local small business instead.
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