ADVERSITY – WHAT CAN WE LEARN?

This is the 50th article I have written in 2020, and we have all gone through an enormous amount of adversity this year. I thought I would write about how this impacted me and how I responded and would be interested to know how you have responded and what you have learned. As the quote above says, it is how we react to adversity and what we learn from it that will determine our life’s story. 

I am thankful to my IT support company – Magikos IT and Tony Donoghue in particular – for convincing me to move all my business data to the cloud 10 years ago as this enabled me and my team to be able to pick up laptops and go home the moment the government announced that we should work from home back at the end of March. There were no ands, ifs or buts as we were all set up to be able to work from home. Many businesses were not able to do this and lost a lot of time putting processes in place. We already had them in place

TIP 1 – PLAN WELL IN ADVANCE AND USE EXPERT ADVICE.

Thanks to John Gower – the founder of OMNI Local Business Networking. Business networking has been an important part of my business life for over 30 years. The whole networking world was thrown into turmoil when face to face contact went out of the window. John Gower moved the whole OMNI networking programme online within a matter of days. This enabled me and countless others in the OMNI family to continue networking in a way we had never experienced before and the results have been phenomenal. Great relationship building, many one to ones to further those relationships and a great deal of business conducted between the small business community. 

TIP 2 – GO NETWORKING. IT WILL REALLY HELP YOUR BUSINESS

The networking events have kept so many of us sane during the last 8 months. We have been able to start each day with a positive upbeat group of people all in the same boat. There have been laughs, smiles and a great deal of support from those struggling in some way or another. Loads of people have offered to help other small business owners for FREE just so we can help each other through this process. One thing we have all realised is the importance of relationships and how much we are missing family, friends and business colleagues. Material possessions really count for nothing – its people that matter. Put people first

TIP 3 – BUILD STRONG RELATIONSHIPS. PUT PEOPLE FRONT AND CENTRE OF ALL DECISIONS

I am thankful that I built my businesses in the right way since I set up my first business in 1982, and that by doing this, it has allowed me in the latter productive years of my life to be able to offer help and support for so many business owners for free. I was taught when I first set up in business not to worry about making money and to just focus on building relationships and if I had a product or service in demand, money would come in and it always has. There are so many people to thank for me being in this position. All those who gave me help, advice and support in my first business where I first started my business education, my business mentor for so many years – Brian Smith, my networking mentor Mary Flavelle and literally hundreds of other people who helped me along the way

TIP 4 – DON’T TRY AND BE ALL THINGS TO ALL PEOPLE – ASK FOR HELP

TIP 5 – START A PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMME

Finally and to show entrepreneurship in the UK is alive and well, I found this comment – “According to analysis by the Centre for Entrepreneurs, nearly half a million companies were launched in the UK between March and September this year, an increase of 44,500 compared to the same period in 2019”. We are strong in this country, we do believe in ourselves. All I would ask is for more businesses to ask for help and stop trying to do anything themselves. 

This article was first published on LinkedIn by Richard Knight on 06/12/2020