COVID-19 Business Survival Guide
Here are some tips to help your business survive COVID-19
January 3, 2022: 2 years of this pandemic and new variant ‘Omicron’ is so contagious that we need more restrictions! Schools going back online, and so many things closed again … health clubs, restaurants, cinemas, ..! Now getting our 3rd ‘booster’ dose and seeing how important this is – learned that a study from Israel, found those over the age of 60 who had received a third dose of the vaccine were 19.5 times less likely to have severe COVID-19 than those of the same age who had only received two shots. Also learning how testing for antibodies is not helpful and that no-one is recommending this – in fact, everyone who knows is warning against it. But rapid tests are helpful – hope schools and employers and LCBO let us have as a many as we need. When people know within a few minutes that they may be contagious and then isolates for 5 days or so – we will be past this quickly!
March 2021: Get your vaccinations ASAP ~ and do everything you can to get your family, friends, co-workers, and everyone protected too – the sooner the better!
Comparing vaccines: efficacy, safety and side effects
https://healthydebate.ca/2021/03/topic/comparing-vaccines/
WebMD: COVID Vaccines Compared
www.webmd.com/vaccines/covid-19-vaccine/covid-vaccines-compared
Comparing the COVID-19 Vaccines: How Are They Different?
www.yalemedicine.org/news/covid-19-vaccine-comparison
Remain vigilant: impose protective measures with wearing masks and eye protection in close spaces, keep surfaces clean, do not touch your face with unclean hands, maintain social distancing. Do everything you can to keep you and yours healthy – even if you do have this virus it will wait undetected until your body is weak before it attacks – when it detects your vitamin C and D levels are low among other factors.
Now is the time to help out and build good faith with your customers and staff and community. Keep thinking “better safe than sorry” and “what can I do to help?” and “how do I keep the business moving forward?”
Keep the conversations going with the people you are close to … and listen, allow everyone to vent their frustration and express how scared and angry they are … and be real with everyone … and do your best to have fun and stay positive.
Get good at working remotely and doing everything possible via the internet, email, and phone.
Don’t be afraid to ask for help when you need it – we are in this together and will do anything we can to help each other.
Keep informed – be the person who only shares the facts – do not be the person to spread rumors or false news … or this disease!
Note: I’m watching the WHO COVID-19 Dashboard to see where we are.
See here for COVID-19 Projections – notice you can select country / state / province, examples: Ontario, Canada, New York, USA, UK, Global.
COVID-19 is a terrible combination of spreading quickly, able to hide undetected, and lethal to a high number of people – even young healthy people.
January 2021: As predicted, too many people failed to remain vigilant or pay attention to the warnings over the holidays and now we face stricter stay at home orders. This will likely be the case until we get enough people vaccinated – in Ontario Canada, predictions indicate we need to continue working remotely until September.
As of June 14, 2020 cases are still climbing at a steady rate around the world. Over 5 months since first reported December 31, 2019 and finally restrictions are being partially lifted allowing many of us to get back at work with protective measures in place. I compared COVID-19 reported deaths against populations and found the following – notice we should all have done as South Korea did and tested everyone immediately – as they have the fewest deaths and are already back to work and school. While these numbers are not as scary as the death rate against confirmed cases these numbers are still serious enough to remain vigilant – if South Korea can reopen schools with protective measures then so can the rest of us.
- South Korea: 1 in 200,000 have died
- Canada 1 in 5,000 have died
- USA 1 in 3,000 have died
- UK 1 in 1,700 have died
- Spain 1 in 1,700 have died
- World wide 1 in 18,000 have died
These numbers bring up more questions for me – mainly why is World wide so low? Is it because COVID-19 hasn’t reached everywhere yet – or maybe many countries are not reporting accurately?
As of May 9, 2020 cases are still climbing at a steady rate around the world. Over 4 months since first reported December 31, 2019 – see WHO info on COVID-19 and notice links to Timeline and Rolling Updates and more. I also found some helpful info when thinking about getting back to work:
- In Canada: CBC Returning to Work
- In USA: CDC Guidance for Businesses
My notes from April 18, 2020: In the past few days it looks like Italy who reported 1st deaths February 22 is now seeing a decline in cases with 13% death rate (deaths/cases) which is likely the worst case scenario. The best case scenario is likely Republic of Korea with 2% and maybe with their excellent testing this is more accurate. The world shows 7% and likely many countries are not providing accurate numbers. Canada (1st death March 11) shows 4% and USA (1st deaths March 3) shows 5% – with social distancing and staying home long enough we can keep these numbers down.
Our best case scenario is 2% death rate? How accurate is this? Did they test everyone so ‘confirmed cases’ includes those that don’t show symptoms? Can we get it again next year? Does it lay dormant until we are weak with other sickness or stress? Too many unknowns – no way am I willing to risk my family, my friends, the people I work with, or anyone.
When can we safely go back to work? This is difficult to calculate with so many variables – but in looking at the current numbers and past similar pandemics, it looks like staying at home orders will last about 12 weeks – for those who have a safe workplace and are a low risk.
Without vaccines and not knowing if this virus is contained, it depends on what risk is considered safe and if we trust how we calculate the risk.
For those of us who are young and healthy and able to minimize our exposure and resist touching our face until our hands are clean… our risk is acceptable if we believe we can avoid getting infected … but if we do get infected what are the chances of not surviving (if best case rate is 2% then 1 in 50 die) and is the risk still worth it?
For the elderly and those with health issues that are at high risk – how long do we need to keep them isolated?
For students and those who normally sit among and cross paths with 1000s of others each day – how long do we need to keep them studying at home?
Do we need to remain isolated and minimize our exposure until we have a vaccine which can take over a year?
It might take 2 years like the 1918 pandemic before we have no more cases.
Looks like we can learn from 1918 pandemic to better decide when to lessen up on social distancing to save the most lives, click the graphic copied from National Geographic article “How some cities flattened the curve …”
Some tips:
Financial Relief & Info
To our clients: let us know if you want us to stop your payments and/or reduce your non-essential services – we will do everything we can to minimize your costs and help you and your business get through this.
To our prospective clients: take advantage of our free consultation and ask us if we can give you a FREE TRIAL – in most cases we are happy to get things working and won’t charge you anything until you start seeing new money coming in from our efforts.
To everyone: Obviously, AFTER making sure you and yours are doing everything you can to stay healthy, the next most pressing issue for business survival is to make sure we have the finances to get through this. This is especially difficult when we don’t know how long before we can expect business as usual, so – within reason and without causing panic – plan for the worst and watch your expenses and do your best to cut costs on non-essential services where you can – as soon as you can.
Go to the source for information and double check your facts and verify the sources – talk to your team, partners, accounts, lawyers, insurance company, and suppliers.
Help for our fellow Ontario Businesses:
Ontario’s Small Business Support Grant
January 2021: Province Providing up to $40,000 for Eligible Businesses Impacted by Provincewide Shutdown – 2nd payments expected in April.
Hint: legal business name is ALL CAPITALS and no punctuation – login to your CRA account to see it has been changed recently.
Some info for our fellow Canadians:
Government of Canada – COVID-19 Economic Response Plan
BDC – Support for entrepreneurs impacted by COVID-19
QuickBooks – Backing you during COVID-19
Some info for our International clients & neighbours:
QuickBooks – Small business help in the USA
QuickBooks – Small business help in the UK
QuickBooks – Small business help in Australia
More helpful info for small business:
Facebook Business Resource Hub
Ad credits for Google Ads Small and Medium-sized Businesses
By July 1st, 2020 these ad credits will be launched and auto-applied to all eligible customer accounts globally. The ad credit automatically offsets future spend; no action needed.
Give the best online presentations / meetings / virtual classes:
We highly recommend using either Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 solutions for your business as the meetings work better, cost less, and have many more features than others such as gotomeeting.com, join.me, webex.com, zoom.us, …
Take advantage of our free consultation to get the most suitable services working for your business – we have partnerships and much experience with both Google and Microsoft so we can provide you with unbiased advice and insider info.
Depending on if you use Google Workspace or Microsoft 365, select the following to learn more – notice both have included solutions with no additional costs that are easy for you and your staff to use … that you can take advantage of right away!
Microsoft Teams
Microsoft 365 Business accounts include ‘Teams’. Make time to see what this is as it can change the way you do business. You will be impressed by how easy it is to use, how it has everything to help you do more with your time, and how it makes it easier for you and your staff to work remotely.
Get started here: www.ourfingertips.com/solutions/microsoft-365/
Users login here: https://teams.microsoft.com
Help: https://support.office.com/teams
Microsoft Education Empowering every student on the planet to achieve more.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/education
Google Meet
Use your Google Workspace ‘Meet’ for your next presentations / meetings / virtual classes.
Get started here: www.ourfingertips.com/solutions/google-workspace/
Users login here: https://meet.google.com/
Google Meet training and help
https://support.google.com/a/users/answer/9282720
Helping businesses and schools stay connected in response to Coronavirus
https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/g-suite/helping-businesses-and-schools-stay-connected-in-response-to-coronavirus
Share your videos on YouTube:
Strongly advise sharing your videos on www.youtube.com. If you haven’t done so already, setup your free YouTube Channel(s) for your business and upload your videos. You can set your videos to public, unlisted, or private – so you can easily control who can watch them.
Consider making many (if not all) of your videos public so it will be easier for people to connect on their own and this will do much to build your brand and organic ranking – Google likes it when you have YouTube videos in your content!
You can easily embed your YouTube videos into your website and can make it so only your paying customers can see certain videos. You can control how they look for different devices and make sure only your videos show in your pages. Contact us if you need any help getting this working for you.
Keep your customers and staff up to date
Add an alert notice to your website so everyone knows you are open and what you are doing to keep everyone healthy and safe.
- If your website uses WooCommerce you can simply use the Store Notice, login as WP Admin > Appearance > Customize > WooCommerce > Store Notice: add your notice, enable, publish.
- If you have a WordPress website try the plugin Sitewide Notice WP as it works great, is easy … but we had a hard time finding it.
- If you need help ask your webmaster – or ask us, we will be happy to help!
Send a newsletter to your customers letting them know what you are doing and if you have any good advice that will help – along with a link to where you will be keeping your updates. Do not send too many newsletters – try to send no more than one every month or so. Recommend NOT using 3rd party newsletters, like Constant Contact or MailChimp – instead we recommend integrating newsletters into your website as it costs less, only shows your brand, uses your website content, and is easier to use so sending and maintaining subscription lists can be completely automated. We use either MailPoet or AcyMailing Enterprise along with sending service SendGrid Pro for our clients.
Take advantage of our free consultation
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Unleash the power of Live Chat! Help visitors to your website see the real value of your products and services – in real time from real people! Adding Live Chat Sales & Support functionality to your website will give your visitors instant responses from you and your staff – and if you want – from your new team of dedicated chat agents who are especially helpful after hours and when you and your staff are unavailable.
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Comments (2)
Thank you for this very helpful info and for your advice on the phone and for pausing my payments and still keeping my website and services active!
Thanks
Sabi
You are very welcome – happy to help. Stay Safe!
Robert