As COVID-19 jolted the world and brought on many financial and emotional hardships to the world, it also reinforced the importance of entrepreneurship. Many big and established businesses went belly-up, many lost their jobs, fresh graduates struggled to make their mark, and people got demotivated.
However, these grave times also presented the opportunity for you to be your boss; to take charge of your own fate, and to become creative with your means—and make a full living out of it! That’s essentially everything entrepreneurship is about. While the basic tenets of entrepreneurship may not have changed, you must adapt and navigate in the post-COVID world and its new normal to find true success. Here’s how you can do it.
Solve a Problem
The process of ideation in entrepreneurship has always focused on opportunity recognition. But how can you do it? Every opportunity arises from an unsolved problem that troubles somebody out there, but nobody has thought about solving it.
You can start recognizing these opportunities by looking at all your own pain points. What bugs you? Which of your problems do you want to solve? Does it bother other people? Can it be solved? Can you make money and create a sustainable business out of this solution? Answering all these questions should help you understand if the idea is viable.
COVID-19 presented the world with new problems that required creative solutions. When studying these problems, make sure to understand if it’s a temporary problem that you can only get fad sales with or it’s a long-term problem that needs a long-term fix.
Embrace Technology
COVID-19 brought to light the importance of technology and why a business cannot survive without appropriate technological infrastructure. When the pandemic hit, businesses that were operating in a traditional, technology-less setting struggled to stay afloat. Any entrepreneurial venture, despite its size, should now learn to not just embrace but also leverage technology.
You can look at the technological needs of your business by asking these questions: Is my business model tech-friendly? Will technology improve communication within the company? Will technology improve my product/service? Will I reach customers more easily through technology while maintaining a social distance? Answering these questions can form the basis of your cost-benefit analysis for embracing technology.
Plan for Change & Stay Persistent
Change and crisis management have never been more important than they are now. As an entrepreneur, you must know how a true leader handles a difficult situation. This will help you get a handle on what needs to be done in a crisis. Needless to say, the pandemic was one of the biggest crises of the era and it gave us very limited time to react. Businesses that had planned for contingencies didn’t struggle as much as those who were like deer caught in the headlights.
The pandemic has taught us that it’s now essential to plan for contingencies and unforeseen changes. However, as an entrepreneur, you can’t do it alone. If you know how to build a great team for your business, you can stay persistent in the face of potential troubles that may come your way. Your team will work together to not just plan for the changes but also execute the plan seamlessly when needed.
In the Post-COVID world, you can stay out of trouble and run a sustainable business only if you account for the changes that happened.
If you’re looking for business development and consulting, head on over to Manal Haddad’s blogs. I offer valuable insights to entrepreneurs on ways to develop and sustain businesses in today’s world. To start your entrepreneurial journey, check out my intro and read other entrepreneurship-related blogs.
