Overcoming difficult periods as a small business owner.

Aden

Hi everyone,

As a small business owner I've found this past year to be extremely challenging. What are some challenges you have faced, and more importantly, how have you overcome these challenges?

Me first - I have a dog training business and I like to work closely with my clients. In the beginning this seemed almost insurmountable in terms of how I wanted to do business, but as time passed I started to improvise meeting people in public spaces like parks or hiking trails, instead of meeting them in their homes. This proved quite successful, and I think I'll keep doing it even after Covid regulations calm.

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PSD

The stories that I read have been interesting. Many of us have had to make some changes in order for us to continue to operate. Since COVID-19 I have had to make some changes. Like you, I have had to meet many of my larger clients outside in parks, parking garages, and in smaller groups multiple times in their locations.

This for me has been a bit of an inconvenience as what I could do in a day now can take several days to complete. However, it has also been a good thing in the fact that for clients to may have had staff that couldn't have made one date now they would have more than one day to choose. This makes the training attendance go up and has also increased my hire rate.

Due to that flexibility, I am getting to work with more people and getting requests from more of those attending to do private training for them to continue to learn. So I even if things have not always been ideal I have made it work for everyone. Now I am working back at working on creating and completing my first e-course training program. It is based on one of my books.

Congrats to all that have kept an open mind and founds ways to continue to move forward. To continue to help and provide services to their clients.

Semper Fi!

PomeranzLaw

Hi Aden - Great post! The one consistent theme among the posts is perseverance. There is nothing like continuing to grind, try something new, pivot, and continue working until it clicks. I went from meeting with clients on a regular basis in my office to shifting to Zoom and phone calls. Also, the type of matters I would handle for clients shifted to addressing issues resulting from the pandemic. Regardless of the situation, nothing beats hard work.

Best,

Jeffrey Pomeranz

Pomeranz Law PLLC

pomeranzlaw.com

DustiO

@PomeranzLaw @PSD I love this. It's so true. This is the one thing that has stood out most to me over the past year - the resilience of our pros - continuing to work hard, pivot the way they do business, offer different types of services, etc. And I see so many pros generously sharing their knowledge and experiences to help other struggling businesses get by. Nice to see you in here sharing your knowledge to build up this Community, thank you!

ycc

What are some challenges you have faced, and more importantly, how have you overcome these challenges? One of the most significant challenges was the lockdown itself -- 95% of the folks that use our services need us to help with their pets during the owner's absence (the other 5% that need us usually are home). Since folks were not traveling or working outside the home, our revenue for certain services we offer from March through today took a significant hit. To offset the lose, we did a partial pivot, and added a consulting service to our list of services -- the focus was on remote consults regarding a number of pet-related / pet parent-related topics. This paid off for us big time, particularly as a resource for folks that adopted a pet during the lockdown, and had questions or concerns that just needed an experienced pet owner / handler to discuss with. This pivot has allowed us to stay in business, while a number of our competitors were forced to close shop. The fact that we were able to do the consults remotely, and either 1:1 or in a group, really helped our bottom line during this time.