Part 1: Utilize Your New Found Time to Build Your Business
The uncertainty of life in the time of COVID-19 has left many of us wondering what’s next for our work, our kids, and our lives. On the one hand, the experience can be quite isolating. On the other hand, we know that people across the globe are experiencing the same thing—so we are truly all in this together.
Why are these uncertain times a great time to start a new business or dust off one that you may have started in the past, but have not operated for a while?
The biggest reason: You Have the Time.
Across the globe, people are living under stay at home orders. Even if you are able to work from home, you are saving time by not commuting and that time may be used to create your new business. If you are staying at home, but not able to do your job from there, you may have even more time to work on developing a business. What can you do with this extra time to create a new business:
- Brainstorm Business Ideas – if you don’t already have a business in mind, this is the time to think about your knowledge, interests, passions, and skills that could make a great business. If you already have a business idea, this would be a great time to map out the various pieces of that business idea to turn it into a reality.
- Develop Your Business Plan or Map – Depending on the type of business that you want to start, you may need a full business plan or just a chart that lists your business goals and the strategies, activities, deadlines, and resources needed to accomplish each goal. Create your plan and identify the steps that you can take right now.
- Learn Something New – Do you have an interest that you think could make a great business, if only you had more knowledge or skills in that interest area? This may be the time to gain that new knowledge or learn those new skills.
- Utilize Social Media – While using social media to connect with family and friends has become part of our daily lives, this is an opportunity to practice using social media to market your business or business idea. Run a social media ad or ask your connections on social media about their need for a great product or service. You can test the idea without even telling family and friends that it’s your new business idea.Learn how to use social media for your business:
- Use Facebook to Market Your Business
- Use Instagram to Market Your Business
- Use Twitter to Market Your Business
- Develop Content – Will your business share information with your customers? This is the time to develop advance content. This includes articles, newsletters, blogs, and social media posts.
- Learn New Technology – During this COVID-19 pandemic, and beyond it, technology is critical to delivering services as well as connecting people to products and services. You may need to learn various technologies in order to build your mailing list, do outreach to potential clients, or push out new offers to potential customers.
- Build a Website – These days, it is difficult to run a business without having a web presence. Some groups are successfully doing that through social media. Still, others find great benefits to having a website that can fully explain the products or services offered by your business.
There is a message that is making its way around the Internet. It says: ‘If you don’t come out of this quarantine with a new skill, your side hustle started, or more knowledge, you never lacked time, you lacked discipline.
Now that you have more time, do you have the discipline to start your business?
Read Part 2 Why This is a Great Time to Start a Business: Utilize Your Clients’ Time to Engage Them
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