1/ I've been thinking about this a lot the last few days ... mostly in the context of having run a small business for 14 years ... and how glad I am that I'm not doing that in the face of the pandemic. My advice to small business owners: >>>https://twitter.com/amyalkon/status/1238592397413470208 …
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2/ Act IMMEDIATELY. First, if your business was already faltering, consider SUPER strongly just shutting it down. I kept a small biz alive for 6 years longer than I should have. Biggest mistake I've made in my life. Should have killed it when crash of 2008 hit. >>>
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3/ If you think that you want to keep your business, sit down and do the math. What do your fixed expenses (labor, rent, insurance, etc.) look like? There is a very good chance that you are better off just going on vacation for 1 / 2 / 3 months than keeping the doors open.
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4/ Strongly consider putting it into deep freeze. Call an all hands meeting, tell all the staff that they're laid off, but you'd love to rehire them in 2-3 months. Hang a sign in the window "Shut down for pandemic ; follow us on twitter/ Facebook / etc for news"
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5/ Call your landlord and explain what's going in. Ask him or her for their thoughts. It's not that landlords are human - though they are that - it's that they're savvy small business owners. They WANT the rent ... but they also understand the art of the possible.
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6/ Landlords would rather work with you with maybe a rent reduction, or deferment, or SOMETHING, than have to deal with a small business that may just up and fold and leave them with an empty shopfront in the middle of a collapsing economy.
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7/ From one point of view, you're bloody !@# !@#-ed. From another ... EVERYONE is, and if you act first, and decisively, you're in a better position. Your laid off staff gets unemployment. Your landlord gets insight / knowledge. He gets the opportunity to work with you.
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8/ A mediocre plan executed with determination and vigor IMMEDIATELY beats the hell out of the best plan implemented weeks or months too late. I know, small business owners, that you wish this !@# didn't happen on your watch. But it has. There's only one thing left:
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9/ and that's deciding how YOU are going to react to it. I had a good conversation with
@amelapay the other day about self conception, regarding our identity. Are you a "writer", are you a "small business owner", etc? Do you have that role as an ideal, as a conception?2 replies 0 retweets 17 likesShow this thread -
10/ Make your identity small. http://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html Don't let your mental models ("I am the person who runs a book store") rope you into disastrous decisions that can put you hundreds of thousands of dollars into debt.
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11/ The music stops at some point. There are fewer chairs than dancers. The tide goes out. Think hard, make your identity small, make the hard choices, and execute crisply and quickly. Good luck, people.
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