Let’s Wrap It Up! A 2020 Year End Review
If you’re like the rest of us, you relate to these lyrics: ‘I don’t know about everyone else, but I think I’m done, can we just get to 2021?” ("F2020” by Avenue Beat). Let's take a moment to look back at 2020: the year that steamrolled every aspect of our daily lives. Social distance, quarantine, pivot, mask-up, work from home are all terms we never used before but suddenly became commonplace. This has been a year like no other! So how did a year that should’ve been the new “Roarin’ 20’s” go so off-kilter?
There’s a lot to capture about 2020. Simple things we routinely accomplished became cringy. There’s a Tik Tok trend depicting things we used to do that we now think of as gross. On Tik Tok demonstrates activities like bowling before COVID-19, eating food, licking your fingers, and using the “same three holes as everyone else.” Bowling is just one of the things that seem so distant now. While we focus on the negative impact, we should also look at many of the positive aspects, the things that helped us to weather the pandemic, made us flexible, adaptable, and resilient.
COVID-19 and What You Can Do
Companies such as retail, food service, and small businesses, were some of the hardest hit because of reduction in demand for their products, employee and customer safety concerns, and disruption of supply chains. Some businesses that depended on the general public for music venues, restaurants, clothing, and grocery stores began to temporarily close their businesses with some never reopening. Others that relied on vendor contracts found their services were no longer needed. William Duffee-Braun and Cory Klose, owners of Valiant Marketing, were employed by a small company that was no longer able to operate in the Covid-affected Atlanta market. Duffee-Braun says, "At the beginning of the pandemic we noticed a huge shift in customer requests. Almost immediately any demand for in-person marketing and meeting materials or event printing halted. Overnight.”
Businesses have had to pivot to keep their company alive in a world where the rules have changed. Living with ever-changing health and safety standards, managing potentially hostile customers, and spending money to resolve supply chain issues have taken their toll on many businesses. Small business owners are surviving the pandemic by using digital content to keep in touch with customers, scrutinizing every cost, and concentrating on the best profit opportunities.
You probably have many actions that you need or want to do to take to recover from COVID 19, both professionally and personally. But, as you recover, take it step-by-step to develop long-lasting strategies to get back on track. To help you determine the best way to go, try completing a year-end business recap to evaluate the negatives and positives. This will help you see the takeaways and set aside that negative 2020 energy. You may develop outcomes and situations that will help your business become more adaptable. Some useful tools to help you determine your new normal are:
HOW TO THRIVE POST-PANDEMIC
Decrease cost. Take time to evaluate where your money is being spent. Are you wasting dollars on big corporate subscriptions that aren’t proving useful? Could a less expensive and more valuable local vendor prove to be more fruitful? Every dollar counts! Make sure yours is being spent well and in the right areas.
Expand your bottom-line. Look at where you are spending your time. Could part-time staff help free up your time so that you can focus on what really matters (and what really makes money)? There is an abundance of folks who are eager to learn a new trade or start fresh. Look to these folks as a resource that will grow your revenue.
Market yourself: Stay visible and connected by using social media, your website, and blogs to connect with clients and drive new customers to your business. Encourage repeat business by communicating with your existing clients and keeping them updated on your latest products and services.
The challenging world of 2020 provided Valiant Marketing the opportunity to take a good look at the outside world, forcing us to adjust our concepts for business. Duffee-Braun says, “We saw this as an opportunity to build, for our customers, a digital marketing experience that was simple and inexpensive. Because of this, fortunately, Valiant prospered.”
As we develop strategies to survive and thrive, we need to make sure that we remain sensitive to the current reality and realize that customers are still struggling, anxious about venturing out of their homes, and have high expectations for businesses. Therefore, we must look for creative ways to reimagine the customer experience.
WORKING WITH SMALL BUSINESS OWNERS AND NON-PROFITS
We believe that one of the greatest values a company should cultivate is giving back to the local community. By helping others, we can truly make a difference. We should grab every opportunity to be proactive in community involvement. Here are some of the many ways that your business can give back to the community.
Volunteer at non-profit organizations that have lost funding. It will help boost your company’s reputation, raise your visibility, provide opportunities to learn a new skill, and develop potential roads for networking.
Contribute to the local economy by buying supplies and material from local vendors and partnering with local businesses for services and other business-related purchases. This will establish strong relationships with local businesses and may prompt small-business owners to recommend you to their network.
Promote local businesses by referring your customers to patronize them. This will create a sense of community among other business owners and shows your customers that you are actively engaged in their success.
Build a sense of community by building personal relationships with other business owners, knowing them by name, or forming casual relationships that could spread an optimistic, upbeat attitude.
Mentoring local people in developing skills that encourage them to start their own small business. Hire folks to perform jobs that you don’t like doing.
Small businesses have suffered the most, yet are the key to a prosperous local community, and supporting them creates a vibrant and prosperous economy. “We do well when we all do well,” says Klose of the greater business community. “It’s always been a mantra of mine, but it’s been an essential consideration of how we’ve worked with other organizations this year.”
WAYS TO KEEP A POSITIVE OUTLOOK
It’s easy to let negative thoughts take over during COVID-19, and if you’re feeling negative, you’re not alone. This is a natural response to fear of things out of your control. Here are some ways to help you through these dark times.
Maintain a forward-looking mindset. Having an attitude that looks for the positive and optimistic will help filter out the constant barrage of discouraging thoughts. We’ve known for some time that practicing meditation will create a more positive mood.
Maintain a physically healthy lifestyle. Treat yourself to some self-care every day. If you’re not exercising, make it a priority to incorporate it into your daily life. Exercise releases all the good endorphins that will keep that attitude upbeat.
Remove the word ‘no” from your vocabulary. It’s unproductive. People don’t like being told no and it ends conversations immediately. Try to look for compromise about what needs to get done and change a negative situation into a positive one. Example: Use the word “and” instead of “but”. Watch how productive life becomes.
At Valiant, we found that without hard work and re-framing our own mindset, our company would not have thrived during the pandemic. Just like our community has learned how to coexist with the virus, we too, as a company have learned new skills. Patience, being solutions-oriented for our clients, and maintaining positivity have all proven beneficial.
Duffee-Braun says, "I think the 2020 keyword of the year was 'patience' and 2021's word of the year will be ‘thrive'. With political stability, a vaccine, and our new resources, living in a post-pandemic world (mask-up ATL), should see improvement all around. It is going to take a community effort to re-ignite the engine, but folks are ready to see progress. Because of this, hopefully, we will all thrive according to our own objectives.
“This year tested our resilience in ways we didn’t expect. I look forward to seeing the payoff for these seemingly endless months of bad news.” says Klose. “The “Roarin’ 20’s” were likely a pendulum effect from the 1918 pandemic - I’m confident that we’ll get that swing-back soon and am looking forward to a 2021 full of abundance and prosperity.”
