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A friend called me yesterday on the telephone, yes it still does occasionally happen believe it or not. He actually was seeking some advice from me. I swear this has never happened before, but these are strange times we live in my friend.
“Rich, I have no money coming in, The government has closed my business. I still have bills coming in. What should I do?”
“What no small talk?” I exclaimed. “Fine lets get right to it then.”
I got up on my high horse and gave up some good ideas, deep down I am a good guy I guess. Here is a summary of what we discussed.
The most important thing you can do to save your business, is to keep as much of your money as possible right now.
Rich Cunningham, May 2020. Talking about COVID19 Pandemic
It seems obvious I know, there is nothing we can do now to go back and be more prepared, and every business is going to feel a lot of pain right now
Nobody knows how long this thing is going to last, so the most important thing right now is to make sure you last longer then everyone else. You need money.
Cut all your expenses you can
Cancel anything you can’t use.
This one might seem obvious, but you need to cut back all the expenses that you can. If you were going to advertise a big sale, but now your business is nolonger open you need to try to get some of that advertising money back and cancel any future plans of course.
Get rid of excess labour.
If you have employees standing around, in a closed business it’s time to let them go. Government programs and pay them for awhile. Hey that’s what our taxes are for isn’t it? Is your business is some what functional, why not cut hours if you can? Only you know.
Do everything you can do yourself.
This one seems pretty obvious, all those nice little things you pay people to do are over now. You can get your own damn coffee for once! Everything you can do, and im sure you got some free time now is one thing you don’t have to pay another person to do. Remember those scrappy days when you first started where you did your own payroll? well maybe start doing that again.
Did you work on your own ads back in the day, before you farmed it out to some internet hot shot? Well get cracking. You need to save money. Start doing things again.
Try to sell anything going to expire or not be useful anymore even at a loss.
If you have product that is going to expire, or nolonger be useful, what can you do to get rid of it? Are you stuck with a bunch of gardening supplies this spring, but nobody can come to your store?
Do you have a fridge full of food, and nobody is going to buy it?
You need to try to at least get some money back from these products.
Call your best customers, have a giant sale, just try to get your money back as best can. If you have to deliver to the customers house, then do it.
Offer Gift Certificates, or Rain cheques.
Believe it or not, most of your customers probably want your business to survive. Unless you are a debt collector (Stop calling me already).
Your customers probably intend to come back and support your business when this is all over.
Give them the chance to. You can offer gift cards online with services like www.giftupapp.com. My business did it, and it has been moderately successful. I highly recommend the service, remember every dollar counts right now.
Conclusion:
This is part one of what you can do to help have your business survive this COVID19 pandemic. Some of this advice seems obvious but sometimes you have to start with the obvious things first. I will be back with part two in the near future, I have to go watch some Netflix in my pajamas. Damn Carol Baskins huh?