Restarting Britain

As we contemplate the end of lockdown, you as the business owner will need to work hard to get your business back to full strength.

Mindset:

Concentrate on the things that you can control. What are you doing daily to make sure you are as strong as you can be?

  • Work at your daily routines.
  • Plan your day; carving out time for you, your exercise, personal hobbies, and keeping in touch with your important persons. Plan your work time, what tasks will you do this week, tomorrow, today? What is the most important thing to do first?
  • Keep a gratitude diary listing all the small and large things you are grateful for that day. It will help you to recognise the good things in your life and will promote a feeling of wellbeing.
  • Work out what habits you would like to change and work on small steps to shift your habits.
  • Have clear goals for your business.
  • Acknowledge your achievements and reward yourself when things go right.

Reality Check:

If you do not know where you are – how will you know how to get to where you want to be. Have you ever looked at a map to see where you want to go? The first thing you do is to establish where you are now and where you want to be. Having those two points you can then work out the best route to move between the two. It is the same with your business.

I suggest that you look at 4 key areas to establish where your business is right now.

Finance:

  • Get yourself an up to date cashflow statement. There will be lots of unknows at the moment, but you know your business better then anyone, take a best guess. Then keep checking in to see what actually happened. This will allow you to get better at forecasting.
  • Review your budgets, what has changed, do you still need the same figures in that you had before lockdown?
  • Get to know your new break-even figures, your costs make have changed you may have more interest and loan repayments that need to be taken into account.
  • Work out what figures need to be reported on a daily, weekly, or monthly cycle.

Market:

  • What does your marketplace look like now? What has changed, who are the big players now, who are the customers, your competition, and your suppliers. There will inevitably be changes, businesses who have not survived, or who have thrived. Who are they?
  • What products and services will be in high demand now? What stock do you have that you need to shift? What can you get hold of?
  • Are there any new markets that you can now access that you could not before? Online for example?

Workforce

  • What are your team doing now? How are they faring in lockdown? What do you have to do to ensure that they have a good strong mindset?
  • Do you have the right resources for your current marketplace? Do you need to retrain, replace or reduce your workforce?
  • How are you as a leader, have you been communicating with your team, can you manage the team remotely?
  • What technology do you need to run your business now?

Operations

  • What is happening in your supply chain?
  • Are there any new restrictions you will have to incorporate in your working practices?
  • Do you have access to services you have been relying on?
  • What do your customers know about you now and how are you going to ensure that they have the best customer service.

Be ready to change:

Your business will change! There is no business in the UK or indeed globally that has not been affected by this pandemic.  Get used to the idea that your business will not go back to the way things where before, your customers, your team and your marketplace will not allow it!

Plan for your future:

The value is not only in the plan, but in the process of thinking through the options, weighing up the opportunities and deciding the way forward.

Review the Reality Check. What is good, what is not, what can you change or what can you work around? Plan for the next phase of lockdown. If you have repositioned your business to thrive in lockdown, plan for continuous improvement and taking advantages. If you are waiting for lockdown to end, plan for what you can do now, and how you exit lockdown.   Plan your marketing and your communications, internally and externally. Plan for how you will manage the pent-up demand and the maximum push that will need to happen to regain your business.

Next Steps: