Batten down the hatches…

shipstorm
Batten down the hatches!

Weathering the storm is the norm right now.  Battening down the hatches is necessary to help ships keep water out and stay afloat in stormy waters.  In days long gone, the key elements “to batten” include the wooden grates over the hatches in the ships deck, the tarps thrown over the hatches, and furring strips nailed around the edges or ropes to hold the tarps in place.

Four key business elements that help batten down the hatches during troubled times include:

  1. Map out your marketing strategy – having this in place and effective implementation are critical always but especially during the storm.  Keeping your marketing active versus cost cutting approaches makes all the difference between businesses that survive and those that thrive.
  2. Diversify your customer base and service offerings – As a part of 1. above, diversity helps to keep your business off the revenue rollercoaster through tough times as well as any usual seasonal effects.
  3. Plan worst case…sound strategic planning includes what if worst case scenarios most of which won’t ever happen.  But if they did, you are more likely to have a contingency plan ready to go and even if you don’t have just the right plan, working through scenarios is good practice and helps to ensure you and your team can meet the challenge when the need arises.
  4. Set aside a rainy day fund – Every cent counts and even a small rainy day fund sets the right tone for your team from core values to daily cash flow management.

“If you would be wealthy, think of saving as well as getting.”
Benjamin Franklin

If you didn’t have these four key business elements in place before the Covid-19 pandemic hit, you might be feeling the pain.  If so, triage your business and get through as best you can.  When you get a moment and catch your breath, schedule a time for you and your team to take a look at the four key elements above so when the next storm comes, you can batten down the hatches!

Expand Your Network, Super Charge Your Opportunities!

We all know the fundamental principle that building your network is good for business.  The greater your reach, the more opportunities come your way.  What’s really cool is that you don’t necessarily need to expand your network all that much to find significantly more opportunities.  Here’s an interesting way to look at it…

Imagine your network as a sphere made of people and opportunities circling all around you, i.e. the phrase sphere of influence.  Mathematically speaking, the volume of that sphere (the people and the opportunities) is:

V = ⁴⁄₃π r³

The “V” stands for volume and “r” stands for radius of the sphere.  If the radius of your sphere or your reach, is 1, then V = ⁴⁄₃π 1³= 4.18

Now, imagine you extend your reach to 2, then V = ⁴⁄₃π 2³= 33.41….and that’s a big difference…8 times bigger!  If your reach is 3, you get 27 times bigger and so on!

Expand your reach by just a little bit and your network and the opportunities that come with it grows exponentially!

So, get out there and go to that networking meeting, meet that new person, and build those relationships!

Tell me…how do you build your network?

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