Florida Is Reopening!!
Governor DeSantis announced we will begin Phase One of the process of reopening our doors “towards a more hopeful future”. Beginning Monday limited stores and restaurants will recommence business. This does not include Miami-Dade, Broward, or Palm Beach.
For all others phase one consists of;
- Restaurants can offer outdoor seating with 6-foot spacing between tables and indoor seating at 25% capacity.
- Retail can operate at 25% of indoor capacity
- Elective surgeries can resume
There have been no changes for bars, gyms and personal services (salons). Groups of 10 are still to be avoided and face coverings are recommended in all face-to-face interactions. Per Governor DeSantis, Vulnerable populations should continue to social distance. Visits to senior living facilities are still prohibited. Schools remain on distance learning.
Unfortunately, there will be some more heartache in Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade which are not part of Phase One for the time being because of the high number of Coronavirus cases in those counties. The positive is we know who will be needing ancillary services.
Get Creative!
For example, doctors’ offices will now be needing catering, office products, cleaning services, and more. This is a great time for us to attempt those ideas we were to busy to try before. Personalizing your services more focused on those businesses you know are now opening could help acquire new clients. Cleaning services are starting to offer cleaning of business entrances and increasing their billable hours. Retail stores are offering virtual store visits on Face-Time allowing customers to pick through the store as if they were there.
If I started my business over, I would BLANK…
We have all learned through experience in business as in life and there is always something, we could have done to make our businesses more efficient. Make a list of those things which have frustrated you for years and take the down time to streamline them now. There could be ways to automated repetitive activities. There are online tools to help productivity like Google’s G-Suite which offers tools to help with FR, Marketing Analytics, Sales & CRM. Streamlining will not only increase productivity but it also makes up for labor resources lost to unfortunate layoffs caused by the current times.
Get trimmed up.
We have more time on our hands these days, so touch up on your pencil sharpening skills. Go through your bills, see where excess spending is happening. Who knows, you might have a $19.99 subscription somewhere which you really didn’t use as much as you thought, or you find a less expensive option. Calculate what in-house processes are actually costing you in labor cost. Compare them to the outsourcing those same processes. You may find the cost analysis proves your in-house labor is better used doing more important tasks. An operations manager doing bookkeeping or payroll tasks may be better used contacting existing clients and finding out what they need more of. Revise your marketing plan, if you haven’t revisited your marketing plan, now couldn’t be a better time.
We have to continue to become better and grow through these times. These are times to get tough and grind it out in every way. After all, is there anything else we can control right now?