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It's finally here, the end of season 1 of the podcast is upon us! To celebrate, Santa is bringing something special - entrepreneurship advice for all the would-be founders of the world, ages 1 to 92.
Brian Singer, co-founder & CPO of Nobl9, sits down with Dev Interrupted to help us close out season 1 with a conversation on what it takes to found your own company. Having founded a pair of companies, one of which he sold to Google, Brian has a deep understanding of what it takes to successfully found and scale a startup. More than that, he knows what VCs are looking for.
If you have worked long enough, chances are you have encountered a bad manager yourself. What was it about them that irked you the most — were they unforgiving, critical, demanding, abusive, aggressive, neglectful, grumpy, lousy, or plain inept? Was it their attention-seeking behavior, attitude to blame and insult others, inability to trust, or lack of integrity that caused you the most mental agony?
Yes, bad managers suck so much emotional and mental energy from their people that there isn’t any energy left to do real work. The hard truth is as more and more time is spent on “pleasing the boss” and “dealing with their tantrums,” there’s less time left to do any quality work.
Before Kellet Atkinson was the Director of Product at DZone, he was flexing his entrepreneurial muscles by building custom-made guitar pedals for his friends.
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[Sumith Puri has 16y 04m of Experience and is at a Principal Software Level in the Software Industry. An Ex-Yahoo, Symantec, Huawei, Oracle*, OpenText*, Finastra* (*Original Product Firms Acquired by these Companies). His Deep Rooted Expertise in Product Development, Technology, Java/Java EE Architecture and Development, Programming, Software Engineering is Shared via this Series of Articles. Please Note that the Images, Videos, Artwork, and Quotes are the Sole Property of the Copyright Owner and Used Here for Non-Commercial Demonstration Purposes]
[Sumith Puri has 16y 04m of Experience and is at a Principal Software Level in the Software Industry. An Ex-Yahoo, Symantec, Huawei, Oracle*, OpenText*, Finastra* (*Original Product Firms Acquired by these Companies). His Deep Rooted Expertise in Product Development, Technology, Java/Java EE Architecture and Development, Programming, Software Engineering is Shared via this Series of Articles. Please Note that the Images, Videos, Artwork, and Quotes are the Sole Property of the Copyright Owner and Used Here for Non-Commercial Demonstration Purposes]
QUOTE A: INTERESTING AND RELATED QUOTE
The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has upended the way the world conducts business.
From social distancing guidelines, to limited store capacities, to the regular usage of face masks in public, changes have been made to ensure the safety of people everywhere.
All of this is new, confusing, and a little scary. This is especially true if you’re a business owner whose livelihood is now at the precipice of struggle. You need to keep your business running while making sure that you, your employees, and your customers are protected from the virus.
And if you’re thinking of starting a business now, you want to make sure that you can do so safely while juggling the hundreds of new tasks that come with it. Launching and running a business is hard enough in the best of times—it can seem downright daunting during a global pandemic
That’s why we want to help.
Whether you’re thinking of starting a new business or already in the thick of running one, this guide breaks down everything a small business owner needs to know in order to navigate COVID-19 safely and successfully.
Here are some jump links to the sections of the article. Each section covers a different topic, so feel free to jump around to the topic you want to learn more about.
By-the-numbers: How are small businesses doing overall?
How to navigate your small business through COVID-19
How to prep your business for COVID-19
Pandemic resources for small businesses
Pro tip: Bookmark this guide so you’ll have it handy when you need to refer to it.
Quick answer: Not great.
The massive impact on small business that the global pandemic and subsequent lockdown procedures have had cannot be overstated. For the vast majority of them, that impact has been resoundingly negative, resulting in layoffs and store closures across the world.
In the United States alone, 25% to 36% of small businesses are at risk of permanently closing due to COVID-19. Many of these businesses rely heavily on in-person services where social distancing is difficult to maintain, such as restaurants and gyms. Other industries heavily impacted include tourism and hospitality.
Here’s a graph from McKinsey that illustrates the industries impacted the most by COVID-19:
Small business income is down 12.3% from February 2020, whereas private industry salaries are down “just” 6.6%. That’s nearly twice as much as their private industry counterparts.
It’s also crucial to note that there is a disproportionate impact on marginalized communities. In fact, low wage workers, minority business owners, and those without a college degree are much more likely to experience financial strain due to the global pandemic.
While this looks rather dire, it should be noted that things are getting better, albeit slowly. In June 2020, the Census Bureau discovered that the number of small businesses reporting a negative impact from COVID-19 was at 38%—down from 51% two months earlier in April.
Applications received for new businesses have also jumped since the height of the global pandemic in the spring.
In fact, by the end of August 2020, the United States saw a 47% rise in business applications when compared to the same week in 2019, reaching a historic high point.
This should be incredibly heartening to any small-business owner. When a vaccine is readily available (and all evidence points to a historically fast vaccine production), the economy will be primed for massive growth.
Think of the economy as a fleet of airplanes. When the weather is bad—winds blowing hard, thunderstorms raging—the pilots can’t fly. Instead of letting the airplane rust while they all wait for the weather to get better, though, the pilots are going to make sure there’s plenty of fuel in the tanks, the engines are running smoothly, and that the electronics are working.
Once the weather clears, they’ll all be ready for take off.
If you own a small business, you’ve undoubtedly experienced the pandemic’s effect on you, your customers, and your bottom line.
You’ve also had to make changes—some large and some small. All of these changes can be confusing and scary.
To help make it a little less complicated, here are a few tips to keep in mind to help guide your business through this bad weather.
This is one of the most crucial things you can do mentally. And it not only applies to the pandemic, it applies to the rest of your life as well.
It’s easy to get caught up in the constant firehose spray of bad news, doomscrolling until our eyes tire. There are so many things you feel like you need to be worried about that it can be overwhelming.
Instead, you should focus on the things that you can directly control. That might include things like:
What that doesn’t include are things like:
Actually, obsessing over anything really is bad. While things like lockdown procedures and rising cases will impact your business, you should take that news into consideration and then focus on how you can respond to it.
Of course, that’s easier said than done. This is your livelihood after all. And if you have employees, this is their livelihood as well.
By adopting this mindset, you’ll not only be able to help your business adapt to the changing time but you’ll find that it will take you much further than any amount of doomscrolling will.
The early bird gets the worm. That tried-and-true aphorism applies to this life-altering global pandemic.
It is crucial to recognize the areas where you have to adapt, and then do so quickly. For example, many businesses—from grocery stores and clothing shops to coffee shops and breweries—began to offer curbside pickup when lockdown procedures were implemented in spring 2020.
In fact, curbside and delivery saw a 145.6% surge in the spring when compared to the same period in 2019.
These businesses recognized the inevitable changes because of COVID-19, adapted, and are now making money because of it.
No, many of them are likely not making as much money as they were before. But some of them are even seeing that their “new reality” is better than what they were doing.
In fact, many companies are finding that remote work is better suited for their operations than coming into an office. Other businesses are finding great success with curbside pickup and deliveries. There’s even evidence that consumer habits are forever changed by these events.
While you should take necessary steps to adapt your business to the changing climate, you should also take care to make the right kinds of adaptations.
You don’t want to do something like buy a bunch of state-of-the-art sanitation and air filtration systems only for your business to be closed anyway due to lockdown measures.
Firing or furloughing employees is never easy and it shouldn’t ever be easy. These are the people who keep your business running—they depend on you for their livelihood and, in many cases, they can be your very good friends.
However, when it comes to extraordinary circumstances like a global pandemic, sometimes you need to make the incredibly hard decision to let them go or furlough them to keep your business afloat.
That might mean different things for different businesses. For example, you might discover that you are able to keep some employees on after looking at your numbers. Some of you might need to make the tough decision to fire a lot of people.
The important thing is that you recognize what you need to do and follow through. There’s no use dragging it out and hoping things will change. In all likelihood, that change won’t come until there’s a vaccine. Focus on what you can control now and ignore the rest.
Tough decisions also might involve taking stock of your business as a whole and deciding whether or not to keep it going. That might seem inconceivable. After all, you put your heart and soul into your business.
But, once again, it’s important to be honest with yourself and not drag it on. Not taking earnest stock of the situation might result in even bigger financial problems for you later on.
This one is non-negotiable. No matter where you are or what business you conduct, you need to enforce hygiene standards—and they need to be strictly enforced.
This pandemic has killed hundreds of thousands of people in the United States alone. You don’t want your business to be the reason that anyone dies or is infirmed. You definitely don’t want your business to start making headlines because it resulted in a super-spreader event.
That’s why it’s imperative to create a COVID-19 policy for your business.
This is going to be specific to you and your business, and will depend on what services you provide. Restaurants need to have different policies than an accountant’s office, after all. You’re also going to need to take into account the regional restrictions your business will have.
Here’s a handy chart that gives you a rough idea of what occupations are most at risk for COVID-19.
Remember: This is only a rough idea. That means what you ultimately need to do will be tailored to your business.
Our biggest piece of advice would be to stray on the side of overpreparing rather than the alternative. It might mean slowing down your work processes to make sure everything and everyone is sanitized—but it’s worth it if it means keeping you and your community safe.
To that end, we’ve prepared something to help…
The Center for Disease Control has prepared a set of guidelines to prevent and reduce the transmission of COVID-19 among your employees. It is quite long, so we’ve summarized the big points for you below.
However, we highly recommend you read through the entire page yourself in order to get a deep understanding of what you need to ensure your business’s safety.
Your employees are the backbone of your business. Without them, your business wouldn’t run the way it should.
They’re also people who deserve to be safe and healthy even outside of your business.
That’s why it’s so important that you enforce strict standards to reduce the risk of transmission amongst them. The CDC recommends seven things to help keep your employees safe:
As a business owner, you’ll want to balance the importance of keeping everyone safe while keeping your business running smoothly and effectively. The CDC has identified a number of areas to help you do just that:
The CDC also provides guidelines for ensuring the physical workplace of your small business is optimized for safety against COVID-19. Below are a few tips they highly suggest you implement:
Below is a list of resources from the CDC that you should have handy. They’ll help you answer any questions you might have about running a small business during the pandemic.
Managing your small business in the middle of a global pandemic is no small task. It requires a combination of resilience, focus, and discipline to make sure that your employees and customers are adhering to the strict standards in place to keep us all safe.
We won’t lie to you: It’s going to get hard. You’re likely going to see your profits tighten. You might even have to make difficult decisions to let go of employees.
But remember to focus on the things you can control and ignore all the rest. That means creating and enforcing sanitation and hygiene policies while maintaining social distancing. Also, support your employees financially and mentally when you can.
That’s because the most important thing at the end of the day is everyone’s health and well-being. With the right resources and systems in place, we’ll all be able to get through this challenge together—and hopefully, stronger for it.
Good open-ended questions encourage people to indulge in storytelling and forming new connections. It motivates action, builds trust, and promotes accountability.
Yet, people who have all the answers are favored over those who indulge in deliberate thinking. Answers and not questions have become the hallmark of great leadership.
Yet, there were days when I was occupied with overthinking and being stuck in analysis paralysis without being productive. The moments when unwanted thoughts would pop into my mind without my own knowledge and drift me away from the task at hand. These little voices in my head would circle in a loop like a preset playlist often draining me of my mental resources.
I was completely unaware of them at first and would often wonder where the time went by. Later as I started consciously noticing them, I realized that most of these thoughts were related to over-analyzing my past actions and decisions or worrying too much about how the future will unfold - Why did I say that in the discussion, how will others think about how I acted the other day, did the meeting go well, what if my decision didn't turn out as expected?
Without being deliberate in my choices to do effective work and developing a process to do it efficiently, I achieved some short term goals. But, I struggled to find meaningful patterns that could advance me to achieve long term productivity.
With time, patience, and lots of learning along the way, I realized that doing more is actually doing less by focusing on things that matter and having a solid control over the process to achieve desired outcomes.
Time is something we all need more of, but how can you get more of it when there is only 24 hours in a day? Sadly there is no way to put more hours into each day, but what you can do is be more efficient with your time so you can follow your dreams. Here is how I was more efficient during my college years, which allowed me to run a business at the same time.
Saving time creates time to focus on you and your goals. But finding time is only half the battle. You need to remain as productive as possible with the time you have to make the most of it.
Need help? Here are 51 free productivity apps that can help you out.
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