My Strategy For Surviving Coronavirus

By author Sadie Sharp, of Sharp Transformations who is also founder at The Platform Project and has recently published her first book, Breakthrough: Sometimes Things Have To Fall Apart To Fall Into Place.

Sadie has worked for 15 years specialising in organisation transformation, helping large corporates and not-for-profits to become more adaptable and future proof. Two years ago she reduced her consultancy to launch The Platform Project, to help young people who haven’t thrived in traditional education. The aim is to develop them through enterprise and allowing their entrepreneurial spirit to evolve.

When did you realise the Coronavirus could be a problem for you and your business? 

Almost all of the work I do through my consultancy is event based – training sessions, keynote speaking at events, facilitating corporate away days etc. Towards the end of February my speaking events started getting cancelled, and then at the start of March every single one of my training bookings for the rest of the year were cancelled. 

Unfortunately, the only income I receive at the moment is through my consultancy (as the Platform Project isn’t big enough to pay me yet), so overnight I was without income for the rest of the year. 

What has been your plan to continue? 

The Platform Project has fared ok, because all funding and invoice payments for our projects are received in advance, so we moved our engagement activities online and the group have responded well. 

My consultancy, however, required a complete overhaul to be able to operate online, so I knew I needed to take this time to digitise my services and overall business model in order to survive.

I have been using the past two months to redesign a range of training and consulting services that can be offered online and face to face. I've been meaning to do this for ages, but have never actually had the time - now is that time. 

How have you changed your business as the weeks have passed? 

My instinct has always been to jump in and get to work when presented with a crisis, and I have in the past prided my ability to maintain productivity levels and compartmentalise in times of crisis. This pandemic has, I have to confess, completely floored me! 

Not so much because of the money, as I figured I have always found SOMETHING that will see me through, but because I REALLY struggled to see a clear pathway for what I wanted to do with the business moving forward…

So for the first couple of weeks I faffed around doing emails and general stuff off my “to do” list. I couldn’t really face the thought of the future as everything seemed so unclear. 

Around week three of lockdown my head seems to have adjusted and I am now starting to rebuild my marketing on Linkedin, developed free resources to generate interest in paid service options, and am developing longer programmes of work that I have just had as ideas in my head for a while now, but never had enough time to work on properly.

Have you been able to access any government support or funding?

I’m not eligible for the £10k grant as I don’t have property. As I take my income from my consultancy through dividends with only minimal PAYE salary, I’m also not eligible for self-employed support. 

I’ve spoken to the bank about the Government backed loan, but they won’t consider applications below £25k, and as my fixed company overheads were minimal due to it being a services based consultancy, and the main cost to the business was my profit drawings, therefore they are not willing to lend me any money. 

I'm also not able to access support in the way that other self-employed people can.  

What have you seen about business which has been positive? 

I’ve been amazed at how supportive everyone is of each other – I’ve had so many people check in with me, companies offer free support for things like social media services, and I think lots of people are adapting to see the bright side of the situation where possible. 

We’re all overworked and too busy, but now we are working at a different pace. People are doing big picture planning, taking time for themselves, and I believe, starting to evaluate some of the “overcommitted” lifestyle choices they may have made before this happened. 

I myself am seriously considering that when things go back to normal that I don’t want to be spending time travelling round the country and living out of a suitcase when I can achieve the same goals in a different way when sat at home in my PJ’s! 

And now I have more of a virtual offer I am able to offer it to more SMEs and not-for-profits, whereas it wouldn’t have been financially feasible before. 

Have you seen any negative behaviours in business? 

I’ve been relatively lucky with a lot of my business connections being very understanding and flexible where possible. I think the main difficulty I have experienced is where everyone is scrabbling round for work virtually, some people have been desperately sending unwarranted information, LinkedIn messages etc to tout for work, or others feeling the need to shout people down on social media when they are posting offers etc. 

It’s sad to see, but I guess when people are at their wits end it's difficult to be the bigger person.

What advice would you give to other business owners? 

If you can, see this as a (somewhat painful!) evolutionary growth spurt. 

It's made me realise that I was too comfortable “doing ok” before, but being put on a cliff edge really has spurred me on to see what I COULD do with the business, and what I really WANT to do with the business. 

What can we do to help each other?

As a business owner I’ve realised now more than ever how isolating it can be.

I’ve had so much benefit from just having a rant with someone else running a business and then sharing thoughts about how to do things differently, whether that be about tech to use, practices to consider, or being a critical friend when someone undervalues what they are offering because they are desperately worried about their survival. 

So if we could do anything to help each other I would say to keep in touch and offer your ear. 

Your parting thought?

Rather than just trying to find a way of surviving, is there a way we can use this to jolt our thinking and be more creative?

For more information visit www.SadieSharp.co.uk