These are wild times and a crisis like the one happening now has the potential to flip even the strongest businesses upside down. This season has left entire cities under quarantine, some businesses have completely shut down, events and conferences canceled or if lucky, just postponed or moved online. To add salt to injury, there are endless waves of speculations and presumptive forecasts even worse than the pandemic itself, that are hurting businesses even more.
But going through a global health crisis shouldn’t mean a rise in panic or disorder; neither should it mean there should be battening down of hatchets and binging life away, a crisis or downtime shouldn’t always mean doom and gloom. Business won’t be as usual and that’s ok. You and 99% of people out there are tapping into unknown waters and no one is prepared at all.
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It’s possible to make the best of every situation, particularly in how one frames it in their mind. For instance instead of feeling as if you’re entering a recession, think about a reset or re-evaluation and reinvestment in your brand, living through a pandemic for most businesses means that they (businesses) need to engage their sensitive gear in how they sell because this is a time of community building and service around the globe.
But how do you get here with all these uncertainties?
Here are 3 essential stages to help you build your crisis approach protocol. They’re interlocked phases that are effective in calming you during such a time, maintaining your business flow, and stimulating deeper creativity that you never knew existed within you.
Stage 1 – Take a Deep Breath and Put Yourself Together
As the owner or founder of the business, you’re its most valuable asset; therefore, unless you’re personally in a position of groundedness, capacity, wisdom, and strategy, you will not be able to hold together your team.
Keep Calm
It’s common for the global marketing community to create unhealthy patterns that can push you to operate in haste, panic, and create anxiety by making you feel as if you’re not doing enough, not being productive, or contributing much, this can trigger you to try and create more content, or panic produce in order to feel safe. This is wrong and unhealthy for both you and your business, and if you’ve been feeling overwhelmed, this is the reason.
You need to detach yourself from this modeled behavior and instead reserve your resources in terms of time, and energy and focus on only the very crucial activities.
Take time to be calm, focus on how you’re feeling and stabilize yourself. How do you do that?
Step i. Keep your feelings under control
Any sudden, unexpected and negative event that leaves you feeling overwhelmed, confused and helpless is a traumatic event. If an experience creates feelings of overwhelming nature and is perceived to be life-threatening then it’s considered to be a traumatic event. So, we can affirm without being wrong that what we’re experiencing globally now is a traumatic event.
Therefore because it’s hard enough, be gentle with yourself. What you may be feeling could be extreme stress or anxiety or even exhaustion accompanied by zero motivation. Be kind to yourself.
Going through trauma affects several parts of your brain including the prefrontal cortex which is responsible for decision-making. Another important responsibility the prefrontal cortex does is to slow down and become “clouded” when you’re going through a trauma. Why this happens is because there’s a lot of pressure on your brain when you’re going through such experiences. So, you need to take very deliberate care of your brain and nervous system so that it can work for you.
Do Less.
As our society model encourages us all to do more, contribute more, and show up more, at this point doing less will heal you, allow you to grieve, and help you up-level. This is what stabilizes you.
You’re able to process the crisis, be present and connected to other people and be present even for yourself, be realistic about your feelings. As you take these steps to prioritize yourself and care for yourself, you’re building your own personal capacity as you increase the capacity to be able to care for others in the nearest future. This is the regulation of your nervous system.
Here is a little deeper explanation.
Your energy isn’t something you can predict in advance, but it’s the one thing that your brain consumes a lot during the processing of the crisis. This explains why you may feel more tired during a crisis than at normal times. Rest is therefore extremely essential; rest can come especially through sleep. So, don’t be afraid to sleep enough or sleep more.
To know whether you’re stabilized you can do a quick check by identifying your feelings. That is, are you calm, connected, present, and feeling grounded? If yes then you’re stabilized, but if you still feel tense, anxious, overwhelmed, worried, and irritable, then you’re still unstable, and if you feel low energy, disconnected or like you’re shut down, take some time off and rest, until you achieve the calm feelings mentioned above.
Step ii. Address the basic needs
These are food, water, shelter, and medicine.
One way to calm your nervous system is to address your most basic needs. Here is where Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs comes to play. Your basic needs according to Maslow are categorized into different levels of human needs, the most basic or baseline needs are food, water, shelter sleep, medicine, and the like. So, what’s the connection between your baseline needs and crisis management? Simply because until these needs are met, your brain will have a very difficult time focusing on any other actions.
Step iii. Ensure that elements related to your personal safety are in proper order
These include your finances as well as your mental health.
Do you care enough about your body and your health? This is the next aspect as importance after the basic needs are met. Good health is a great privilege that shouldn’t be taken for granted. Things to check here are health coverage, supplements, preventive care, and so on. This is especially of concern if you have to purchase or pay for them at this time.
Another key component in your health care is the daily routine that you do to keep healthy. This may include daily work-out, drinking sufficient water, at least 8 hours of sleep, yoga, and so on.
For your financial safety, you just need to know how much money you need to cover the baseline needs mentioned above. This number is very important because it will guide your next course of action.
Your emotional and mental safety is very pegged to the baseline needs mentioned above. If you feel you need any support, do not refrain from reaching out to trusted sources.
Remember that a complex part of any crisis particularly a global crisis is that there’s often very little any individual can do to escape, no amount of “busy-ness” can distract you, nothing can mask you enough, and sometimes all you have to do is care for what is an immediate need.
So how do you cushion yourself in this fourth step?
Assess your physical needs by ensuring environmental safety for you and your loved ones, if safety is not guaranteed then a move to a safer location would be a good option. Ensure also that you have access to good healthcare. And finally, ensure that you have finances for your basic needs. This can be helped by cutting out some non-essential expenses such as holidays, clothes, and participation in events, and saving these amounts for later since the crisis may not have a definite end date.
When all these are in place, but you still feel mentally or emotionally strained, it’s ok to seek additional help at little or no cost.
Step IV. It’s OK to ask for all the support that you need
Self-care is great, but when in a crisis this is not even half enough. A crisis is not a time for solitude. Social support is super essential for your sense of security and safety. At times such as during the Covid-19 global crisis, the kind of community care that you need may be difficult to achieve due to health concerns, but this makes this need even more important.
Although the truth is that people often don’t know how to ask for help because they don’t want to bother, they also don’t know how to offer it. Thus, in order for you to get the social support you urge for, the emotional isolation must be broken. Do not withdraw during these times, break the cycle of guilt within yourself. So, what can you do?
The first thing would be to analyze your feelings and identify where you need support. Whether you’re feeling sad, inadequate, or even unable to describe what you’re feeling, it’s recommended to try to identify them because this is an essential step in self-stabilization. And this is how you’ll be able to know the kind of support to seek. And when you seek help, you will most certainly get it and possibly be able to help other persons as well.
Source: YouTube
Stage 2 – Stabilize Your Business
You’ve successfully passed phase one and are now a stable person. This next phase is all about your business’ stability. It’s about taking stock of where it is at the moment and taking any possibility of moving it forward and helping it thrive. Even though the uncertainty that surrounds us all is way beyond your control.
This is how to go about this phase:
Step i. Future-proof your business finances
A crisis can wreak havoc even with the best-laid waterproof business plan. Here you should asses the current financial state of your business. Armed with this information, you’ll now be able to make wise-fitting decisions that can future-proof your brand in order to cushion it from the unpredictability that comes with the crisis and enable you to move forward.
An assessment of your business involves knowing how much cash you have reserved, identifying any outside funds that your business can access if the need arises, how much revenue you are bringing in at the moment and in the near future, how much you’re spending currently and whether these expenses are essential and finally establish how long your business can keep running with the currently available funds.
All this information is the foundation of your current business decisions.
Step ii. Activate the maintenance mode
So, because this is an uncertain period, it’s best to rationalize your resources and energy, as well as your time, to last you as long as possible. A maintenance mode is a period where only the bare minimum is used to keep the business running.
This may include minimum sales required to generate the minimum revenue needed to pay minimum bills. So, what this means is that you may also be required to run a minimum team that will handle minimum business. This is not to shut you down; rather, it’s an essential mode to help you survive during difficult times and most importantly, allow you to explore other profit-making tasks that your business can venture into that match with the times.
Just like you need to calm down and be stable, your business too requires a calm moment for it to keep standing; you don’t want to keep running high production with zero sales as this will just destabilize everything. This is the baseline for your business too.
With that said, you need to define what maintenance mode is for your business. Here are key factors you should consider:
Business expenses – This will vary depending on seasons, during a crisis you want them to be as lean as possible. You can go through your expenses to see some recurring expenses for things such as office supplies or subscriptions that may not be necessary at this time, you can cut them. Leave only the essential bills.
Your Team – Although this should be a last resort, in some cases you may have to reduce some roles and only keep the essential members to keep the company running.
Your Business Revenue – This should be your new goal, just make enough to keep the lights on. To figure this out you already identified your baseline expenses and know exactly for which interval you’ll be able to keep the business running in a lean mode.
Remember, no business can stay in maintenance mode forever; this is just a short-term measure to keep your business surviving until the crisis diminishes or is over.
Source: YouTube
Step iii. Spread some care/ love
With the above steps checked, your business is on the rails, you can breathe, and it can survive. So, now it’s time to extrapolate this calm to your people, be it staff, partners, or customers. It’s in your best interest to know that people who are part of your business network whether directly or via proxy are ok and will be there when your business will take off again! Who are these people?
a – Your Team – Organize weekly catch ups
Check-in on them to find out if they’re safe and ok. Show them they’re valued and offer any support that you can. At this point, it’ll also be a good idea to communicate any changes happening in order to keep them focused on the maintenance tasks you’re working on.
b – Your Existing Clients or Customers
These are people that are already committed to your brand, show them support and ensure your customer service is at the highest possible level. Show them empathy and encourage them, making them feel they are your business’ top priority.
c – Your Potential Customers
Extend your care to this segment as well, be compassionate, and offer a message of hope. This may be the impulse someone needs to make it through the day, and they may never forget you for that.
Stage 3 – Create a Strategy for the Future
This final stage is about leading your business forward into the future during and past the crisis through revenue generation. It’s the transition period from your maintenance mode to a growth mode. This involves having both short-term and long-term strategies; here are a few steps to walk through this:
Step i – The Short-term strategy
Pick the path with the least resistance – create simple but quick or fast wins; easy sales that will require as little from your business as possible.
Create relevant offers – pick the ones that will be most profitable to you and the easiest to sell offers. If you don’t have an offer that’s relevant at this time, it’s time you create one.
Other ways you can generate revenue in the short term include creating digital versions of your service or improving an already existing one. Offer lower tariffs for some of your tickets or DIY versions that are hybrid. It’s all about innovation that fits with the current situation using the least resistant route.
Step ii – A long-term strategy
Every crisis eventually does come to an end. Having achieved all the difficult parts above, your mind is now in a healthy state to consider the future.
Have a futuristic view of your business, look at all the emerging trends, you may notice technology taking over and thriving where humanity cannot. Consider such options, how much can you automate? if the case.
Besides the trends, as a business, you can look out for weaker hands looking to sell or merge, or, you as a business may consider merging to stay alive. Whichever long-term strategy you pick, let it be sustainable, thoroughly thought through, and able to see you on the other side of the crisis.
Wrap Up
No one can say with certainty just how long a crisis such as the Corona Virus pandemic will last. Its effects on the economy in general as well as our individual lives continue to be visible. You can do something by adapting to the circumstances both as an individual and as a business. This is how new trends and ways of living are born.
