100 Real Recipes of Success for Businesses After COVID-19

The start of businesses re-opening has begun, there is a question that is floating around in entrepreneurs’, laid-off, furloughs, and managers, and “Will things ever go back to being normal for businesses?”

According to the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) and resources from Wikipedia, since 1785 there have been 47 recessions in the United States. Economic expansion duration between economic slowdowns average about 3-years, the depression of 1929 is the one notable exception to that rule.

The challenge for many businesses will be to take each subsequent expansionary period as an opportunity to make structural shifts in their strategy that would mitigate the effects of the next downturn. Unfortunately many companies do not prepare for the unexpected.

According to the NFIB is that during this COVID-19 disaster, 92% of small business owners have said that they had suffered negative effects as a result of the pandemic; 5% of small business owners said they were not affected at all.

Here are a 100 ways to make the business successful after COVID-19

1. Assess the Financial Damage
2. Take a second look at your business plan
3. Consider whether you’ll need funding to recover
4. Revamp your budget to account for new spending
5. Develop a timeline for rebuilding
6. Create a contingency plan for the next crisis
7. Establish a remote work option
8. Reduce meetings and travel
9. Give employees flexibility
10. Communicate transparently with your customers
11. Volunteer on behalf of your company
12. Take social media and amplify messages
13. Choose credits over refunds
14. Order (More) take out & Delivery
15. Use your expertise to help struggling businesses
16. Organize your expert friends to share knowledge
17. Offer free office hours
18. Advertise free offers from SaaS (Software as a Service)
19. Provide free access to your service or platform for specific groups
20. Research & Recommend funding options
21. Extend payment terms
22. Shorten payment terms
23. Create a coronavirus resource center
24. Encourage your employees to buy from small businesses
25. Adjust your methods of support
26. Set up a cash fund or grant
27. Don’t panic, take care of yourself, and keep calm.
28. Tap into resources provided by government and financial institutions
29. Make a 3-month financial plan
30. Find the opportunities
31. Upskill your staff
32. Invest in your marketing if you can
33. Reassess & Reallocate your marketing budget
34. Change your delivery method
35. Focus on your existing customers
36. Establish a resilient culture
37. Create broader ecosystems based on social collaboration
38. Employ agile, elastic workplace models
39. Build a human and machine workplace
40. Adopt a distributed global services model
41. Adopt new ways of working: contact centers & remote access
42. Improve contact center management: Data, workflow and analytics
43. Augment and automate service: Virtual agents
44. Enlists partners for help
45. Let chefs be experts in their communities
46. Practice new safety protocols
47. Find inspiration in others
48. Stay in touch with staff & guests
49. Consider the whole restaurant supply chain
50. Be patient & prepare for the future
51. Advocate restaurants behalf
52. Communicate your safety measures
53. Get the word out that you’re re-opening
54. Bring back your regulars
55. Welcome neighbors’ and locals
56. Boost your visibility in search results
57. Rapidly identify the skills your recovery business model depends on
58. Build employees skills critical to your new business model
59. Launch tailored learning journeys to close critical skill gaps
60. Start now, test rapidly, and iterate
61. Act like a small company to have a big impact
62. Protect learning budgets
63. Smart security kiosks stop the spread of the threats
64. Adjust hours of operation
65. Back-up dependent cate
66. Community relief fund
67. Community services
68. Customer accommodations
69. Financial assistance
70. Government support
71. Relaxed attendance policies
72. Production, distribution, and logistical support
73. Supply chain impacts
74. Health & Safety
75. Hiring works
76. Remote work & modified schedules
77. Corporate leadership
78. Takes care of their employees
79. Takes care of customers
80. Maintains reasonable pricing
81. Giving back to the community
82. Go above and beyond the safety standards & recommendations
83. Don’t overreact or underestimate the circumstances
84. Communicates in a transparent and timely manner
85. Represents strong moral principles, such as integrity
86. Demonstrates expertise in their industry
87. Have an established track record of responding well during the crisis
88. Delivers a message of hope and optimism
89. They show compassion
90. Provides a sense of hope
91. Encourages hand-washing
92. Promotes social distancing
93. Rehire previously/laid off employers
94. Hire new employees
95. Communicates with your clients or customers more often
96. Find 20% of actions you need to take that will drive 80% of your results
97. Act fast with a minimum viable product mindset to quickly launch new offerings
98. Good team spirit
99. Focus on retention strategies and stopping the bleeding
Be Human.
100. Be helpful. Keep marketing but be mindful.

Conclusion

America is re-opening and many small businesses will be facing the challenge and will also need to re-adjust to succeed.