What is Actually Working for Small Businesses in Quarantine
8 Entrepreneurs Share How They Are Successfully Keeping Their Small Businesses Afloat During COVID-19
It seems like 95% of articles circulating the Internet right now are focused on “all things COVID”. From breaking news, to COVID-19 business tips, to mental wellness roundups (etc.), in my opinion, COVID-related headlines are really starting to blur.
So, why am I adding yet another COVID-related article to the mix?
Well, my hope is that this article does two types of good.
First, it provides inspiration, motivation, and ideas to any and all of its readers.
Second, it helps spread the brand awareness of some pretty incredible small businesses and the things that they are doing to survive and thrive during these unprecedented times.
While many of us are still forced into physical isolation, these companies serve as living proof that we can still connect and grow virtually.
CTA of the day? Share this article so those featured can reach a new community (your community) and beyond.
Let’s kick things off, shall we?
Emily Merrell, CEO & Founder, Six Degrees Society,
sixdegreessociety.com | @Six_Degrees_Society
My business has pivoted from an IRL (in real life) networking company to hosting virtual events with speakers in fireside chats, moderated panels, and other interactive formats. All of our events are open to all industry backgrounds, and pre-event we send out the bios, pictures, job titles, companies, emails of every attendee as well who they will be matched with. Each match is 15-minutes long and includes one or two connections handpicked just for the attendee. Our belief is that networking is intimidating and awkward and we want to make the experience easier by choosing the best person in the group for you to connect with. I have also enabled the waiting room function in Zoom so I can welcome each individual to the event one by one.
[Since pivoting], we have attracted new individuals from all over the country, including International users. We’ve increased our visibility, attendance, and membership month-over-month of quarantine. I’ve lowered my overhead costs significantly, saving money on food, drinks, Ubers, venues, flights, and other logistics. I’ve also saved time on energy spent on the event.
To learn more about Six Degrees Society Events Click Here
Jesse Thomas, Co-Founder and CEO, Picky Bars
[We] recently launched a Front Lines Support Bundle, containing a week’s worth of Picky Bars for customers to send directly to healthcare workers, grocery clerks, delivery drivers, law enforcement, and more, alongside a personalized note.
So far these bundles have been delivered to front line workers in 48 states, keeping hundreds of these heroes fed while working tirelessly across the country.
The idea was inspired by one of our customers, who said his wife, a doctor in a COVID-19 unit in Seattle, used the bars and oatmeal to fuel her non-stop days. We donated 50 of them to our local hospital to kick off the program and encouraged our customers to send bundles to people in their communities as well. The hope is that collectively our business and our customers can work together to support people on the front lines. So far the reception both from our customers and those who’ve received the bundles been amazing.
Helaine Knapp, Founder & CEO, CITYROW
CITYROW has been doing a ton for [our] community while everyone is in self-isolation, including streaming free 20-minute, equipment-free classes on our IGTV and IG Lives. To amp up our program, we just launched CITYROW Live — 50-minute live-streamed classes (via a link) that include equipment-free yoga and strength-training with and without dumbbells. There is no membership required, just a small fee to help support our instructors and studios.
[In effect] CITYROW’s on-demand rowing experience which launched in 2018, CITYROW GO, has exponentially grown around 5X since quarantine started.
Charlie Harding, CEO, Let’s Roam
Our company was a traditionally outdoor adventure brand before COVID-19 and quarantine restrictions impacted our product line. Luckily, we are a very collaborative team. Once COVID-19 began impacting people’s abilities to leave their homes around the world, we all sat together in a think tank and brainstormed ideas on how to combat this difficult time. A large part was simply “How can we make our current product accessible?”
We have since seriously adapted and have introduced 4 new products in the course of a month, all having to do with virtual experiences: Virtual Game Night, Virtual Team Building, Virtual Birthday Parties, etc. We have seen almost instantaneous adoption of the new activities — the indoor scavenger hunts give families a fun and engaging activity to do in their home together, while the virtual game nights allow people to connect with friends/family in other households. We have heard from many people that these activities are filling a void for exploration and connecting with others that this pandemic has caused, and therefore see our customers coming back to complete other activities.
Ryan Vet, Co-founder, The Oak House
OakHouseDurham.com | @RyanCVet
Owning a small coffee shop and wine bar has been exceptionally challenging during this time. One day it was business as usual and the very next day we were down to nothing.
With limited team members and even more limited cash, we had to pivot as quickly as possible. Our team rallied together to quickly create a website via Shopify. Our once in-store-only inventory quickly became available online to anyone locally who wanted to purchase it.
Furthermore, in an effort to liquidate inventory and convert it to cash, we created a “Wine Lottery.” In this system, we took the majority of the bottles of wine that we had in stock and set a flat rate for all of them. Some were as low as $18 and some ran up to $180 per bottle with the average being about $39.50. We sold tickets for $25 and let people win! This was met with huge success and we almost immediately sold out causing us to add additional categories.
Jada Sinclair, Business + Instagram Marketing Strategist, Glow Vibes Social
glowvibessocial.com| @glowvibessocial
I normally offer higher ticket one-on-one services and in-person events. In order to survive and thrive during this time, I shifted my community online and allowed space for my audience to connect with my team on a more personal level while bringing in more of my mindset practices to help my clients really feel balanced on all levels. I wanted them to know how important it was to focus on their business in order to come out of this situation more empowered. I created different price tiers that allowed people from different financial situations to be able to work with me to jumpstart their business. I knew that it was crucial to change my messaging and how I positioned my offers in order to really connect with my audience and provide them with the right support in light of what COVID-19 had created.
In order to give back, I created a $49 Instagram growth and accountability group that gives entrepreneurs an affordable solution to branding and monetizing their Instagram so they can create consistent income. I made sure it was filled with value that allowed people to have that extra support and to introduce them into the next step of working with me. We’re kicking off a campaign giving away 2 VIP Memberships to 2 women in need of building a strong social media presence and monetizing their offers.
I’ve made $31k since the end of March and still growing, so it’s exciting to see so much expansion during this time.
Chad Brodsky, Founder & CEO, City Brew Tours
citybrewtours.com | @citybrewtours
With the prevalence of the Coronavirus, my small business, City Brew Tours, was forced to suspend all tours. As a local brewery tour operator no longer able to entertain, educate, and captivate people on the road, we developed a way to bring our award-winning craft beer experience right into people’s homes. Our new Beer Events at Home are craft beer group activities led by our expert beer guides over video conference, where participants choose from The Live Homebrew Experience or the Beer and Cheese Pairing Virtual Happy Hour! For private groups, we’ll even deliver custom beer pairing boxes.
Many of the people in our company are advanced homebrewers and certified cicerones. We are experts in beer and creating compelling and engaging experiences surrounding beer. We can still create these experiences over video conferencing. Corporate groups are loving these activities and have become very popular with team building events and birthday parties.
This new revenue stream is keeping the business afloat as we lost 100% of tour revenue. This new business has replaced 25% of our loss monthly revenue.
Meghan Gardner, CEO, Guardian Adventures
Our company does live, in-person educational adventures for all ages. We had to go online with our adventures and because we started preparing weeks ahead we were able to do so the day after we closed our doors to our facility…We had to also move all of our staff training programs into an online learning platform (Thinkific.com) so that our incoming summer staff could learn how to run these online adventures. In doing so, we realized that we could license our programming to other summer camps so that they could run our programs for their own campers. Our first release of a free 2-hour Zombie Escape Room module has over 100 camps already enrolled.
This has been absolutely vital to our company in helping to offset the loss of enrollment for offline camp (many parents are waiting to see if camp can go offline before making a purchase). It’s also been a dual win for us because the work we are completing for our own staff is now generating revenue well beyond our own company’s camps. If this goes well, we may actually have a new revenue division that could out-perform our own summer camps and consulting services.
How’s my company (THEPRBAR) doing? April and May have been my two best revenue months since to date. How have I done it? By hitting the pavement hard and practicing what I preach (aka using organic marketing and PR, strategically.)
