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During a ChamberRVA-sponsored online seminar Thursday, local small business owners exchanged strategies for dealing with decline in business, keeping customers safe and establishing policies for employees as the COVID-19 pandemic moves into its intermediate stages.
The chamber established the Zoom event as a way to evoke a discussion about how to adjust to, and deal with, the changes in business that the pandemic has caused.
“What we all need to be doing is anticipating what’s next,” said Floricane’s John Sarvay, who hosted the event with Todd Waldo of Hugh Hellen, LLC. Sarvay advised business owners to be cognizant of two possible timelines – one in which things will get back to normal relatively quickly, and one in which owners will need to adjust to doing business under quarantine for the foreseeable future.
“All of us need to be in a place where we’re talking about ‘Are we stabilized, and how do we sustain our business during this indeterminate time of COVID?’” he said.
A major point of the discussion was that whatever the outcome of the pandemic, business owners will have to think differently than they did before and make some changes in order to adjust to a post-pandemic world.
“What I’ve appreciated is how folks have tried to collaborate with each other,” said Waldo. “We’re all evaluating this market together.”
Although the pandemic has had a harmful effect on many lives, it also has shown the positive things that people are capable of achieving, Waldo said.
“It’s shown us how resilient we can be, how creative we can be, how courageous we can be,” he said. “This has really shown us what we can be and what we can do together.”
ChamberRVA has resources to help local businesses deal with COVID-19 on its website.
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