Small Business Talk
The Podcast to Grow your Business Faster
Lessons Learnt in 2020
Show Notes
I am recording this a few days before Christmas so if you are listening now Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. If you are listening later, I hope you had a good one.
In a lot of ways, the year has slipped past so fast especially these last few months so it’s time to reflect and recap on 2020, the year that was.
2020 The Year that was!
What is Important Now?
We have all seemed to do a reset this year in one way or another; whether by choice or circumstances. We have learnt that:
- community
- sticking together
- compassion
are traits that we had started to lose in our own busy worlds and have important they really are. That watching over your neighbours is a good thing, old-style values of respect and looking out for one another is how many people survived.
Business Lessons
Through times of adversity, diamonds are made and many businesses have thrived in these difficult times even ones that did have immediate setbacks or forced closures.
We are now once again using local suppliers in preference to the big chain stores or multinational. We what to know the owner’s story and how or where the products were made. New businesses or pivots have come out of these times. It has been such a time of upheaval that changes have been able to be made with little or no waves to businesses that would previously never have dreamt of such moves.
Business Loyalty
Is it time to just please your ideal customers, get raving fans, offer more quality over quantity?
It’s time to look at your offerings and make sure it really serves both and your customers. Stop trying to be everything to everyone and concentrate on your core service and doing it exceptionally well.
Business loyalty has become particularly important again. Customers want to do business with the same people over and over. They have come to understand how fragile our world really is and without business loyalty and shopping locally our choices can be cut very quickly.
Spreading Your Message
Do your ideal clients know you even exist and make the perfect solution to their problem? The world has become small again and word of mouth is not enough to keep your business growing and allow you to really thrive in 2021 and beyond. You need to think about how you can spread your message, your story out to your local client base and much further. Even though people are very keen on supporting local they are also very keen on building communities and being part of a tribe. The sense of belonging is huge. Often our communities are now far and wide.
Niching and Building Your Tribe
Humans are social animals, we depend on our herds, groups, and tribes to fulfil our basic needs and survive. Obviously today our needs and providers are very different from caveman days and come in many shapes and sizes now. Our instincts and our reptile brain hasn’t developed as quickly as our changing circumstance and we still need the acceptance of the herd.
This herd mentality can really help you with your business if you are prepared to niche down and help one group at a time. Remember Facebook didn’t start with world domination, they built it over time expanding initially with 1 group at a time.
By talking to your people, in their way you build that trust that everyone craves and you become “their one”.
You know the ones that just get you.
Hey, are they inside my head – that is me!
Talking to everyone is talking to no one.
Get good at helping your one group, you one avatar then start to expand into more areas.
Yes, depending on your services and products you might start off with more that one avatar, however, each group will be different and have different needs. How you deal with this situation will be the difference to whether your business can flourish in multiple areas or whether it just becomes a hot mess to where you are not serving anyone well.
2020 Taught Us!
2020 taught us to stop, reflect and how quickly things can change. It taught us to look after ourselves, our friends and families plus care for our community. We learnt many lessons some where bitter pills to swallow and others a breath of free air.
Old fashion values, community and respect are now high on many people’s minds.
Thank you to you our Small Business Talk audience and to the many guests that have given up their time to have a chat with us over the past episodes.
Merry Christmas to you all. See you next year.
Listen to the full episode of Small Business Talk Episode 098.
