Small Business Challenges 2024
The New Relationship Between Small Business Growth & Professional Talent in the 2020's
Several years on, the dust seems to have finally settled on the Covid 19 pandemic for many businesses and the professionals that work within them. But if we look more closely, the latest rounds of layoffs across different sectors of the United States economy still seem to have some legs, and many people who may have considered themselves "safe" are now experiencing the job losses that they managed to avoid during the height of the crisis.
How Covid Reshuffled the Professional World
The end result is that for many of us, what we were used to doing prior to the pandemic is not necessarily what we're doing now, or will be doing in the future. Many of us have had to find new ways to leverage our career skills, business skills, and talents in this post-covid age; or will need to find ways to do that in the near future.
The tech sector is currently undergoing a terrible amount of layoffs.
In my particular case, as a marketing professional, I have historically worked exclusively for law firms. The vast majority of my early career was spent figuring out how to best position personal injury law firms within their territorial markets, and later, in multiple national markets.
But after the career roulette wheel that was the Covid Pandemic, my job is to do everything possible to help as many families as possible with digitizing old media items. Forever Studios has been a very unique challenge, and an interesting lesson in two very intriguing things:
"If you can move the needle for a company in a meaningful way, does that mean that you have the right skills to accomplish that with a company in a totally different field?"
And
"How have the challenges and objectives of a national marketing rollout changed since the Covid Pandemic?"
The Differing Outcomes of the Early 2020's
There is little debate over the fact that the early 2020s have been an era of "winners and losers". With the complicated fiscal instruments used by the government and Federal Reserve to keep the economy moving through the height of the pandemic, and keep people employed, certain types of professionals and certain types of businesses were able to continue with life as usual, while others fell through the cracks in those programs.
Also, different industries were affected in different ways by the changes in consumer priorities during the pandemic, and following it. Let's take our very own Forever Studios for example.
Our very own David Jacobs, one of the key people that got FS through Covid.
I personally have to hand it to Owner/President Zachary Goldberg on how he managed to navigate this particular business through the pandemic, and find ways to make it even stronger in the aftermath. At the onset of the pandemic, the company was handed an extreme contrast in situations that, if not navigated perfectly, would almost certainly lead to some manner of critical failure.
On the one hand, you have a situation which creates a HUGE boom in demand for the exact type of services the company offers. Everyone is stuck at home, there is only so much to do and so much content to interact with, and your company offers not only a fun way of dealing with a project most families need to do, but also gives them something to enjoy during the lock down.
On the other hand, your workers are not "essential". Your production facility cant be run the way it always has been. Everything you do, and the way it has to be done, changes overnight.
Every small/medium sized business owner was fighting this exact fate.
If you don't navigate this situation exactly right, you're not only missing out on a huge opportunity, you likely don't have a business to come back to in the aftermath.
Instead, by managing through the crisis appropriately, the company leadership positioned itself in a way that created additional opportunities for growth to a larger national audience; by adopting expanded eCommerce capabilities and order fulfillment strategies, and also looking for talent that may have been displaced during the pandemic.
Surviving the Early 2020s as a Small Business Professional
And that brings us right back around to being one of those people professionally displaced by the pandemic. In November of 2019, I made the decision to pursue a career change out of marketing, and out of law; to work towards a doctorate in psychology. Obviously, this could not have been a worse time to do something like that.
I had budgeted a very specific amount of money to bridge the gap between work, and obtaining student loans. It was not meant to last 1 to 1.5 years, and the student loans and school selection never happened. By the time the dust had settled, I was ineligible for any sort of government support during the pandemic, had zero job prospects, and was day-trading options and derivatives to keep food on the table.
This was what I was staring at for hours a day, with no human interaction.
And worse yet, professionally, I had nowhere to go, and no plan. I would have to decide what skills I wanted to use to re-enter the workforce, and who I would pitch them to, hoping that the potential employer would be able to see how those skills and experience might apply to their needs. And this was all in a very competitive post-covid job market for professionals.
Because even though job numbers in that period seemed to indicate that people were being hired left and right, the truth was that the jobs being added were largely low-level labor or service jobs, and professionals were having a very significant amount of trouble finding new roles. I was hardly the only person in a position where contraction in professional jobs was keeping them from finding new opportunities.
Finding New Ways to Leverage Personal and Market Opportunities
This is where the "light-bulb above the head moment" happened. Small businesses which found ways to survive and thrive during covid, and in the immediate aftermath, would undoubtedly have needs that they didn't have before.
And the pitch to make to that type of business would be: "I'm a former professional with significant skills and experience that I can bring in the door to make an immediate impact. All I'll need to do is learn how your business works. Give me a chance, and you'll see results. The risk profile here is actually not very serious at all."
The process of learning to “sell yourself” again can be rather difficult.
The Forever Studios company happened to be the perfect place to see if this would work. Zachary Goldberg would have to take a risk, and I would have to get used to working in a different environment with a different type of staff, different types of clients, and different objectives. But at the end of the day, the overall goals were the same: to grow the company as efficiently as possible, and compete well at the national level.
This was going to be an experiment that required adjustments from every party involved, but the fact of the matter was that Forever Studios had every ingredient that was necessary to achieve the short and medium term objectives that they were looking to achieve. The brand was in great condition, the company reputation was sterling, the product was fantastic, and there was a clear character and mission for the company in this new post-covid iteration. Success in the continued national expansion and eCommerce expansion was a simple matter of execution.
The Experience of Finding a New Lane Post-Covid
The main lesson to take away from the successes Forever Studios has had in the post-covid business landscape, and personally as a part of this organization and its continued track towards better outcomes, is that in many ways professional skills and experience are universal. Finding ways to achieve professional goals, either on the part of the business, or the professional working with them, is always going to be about finding big picture solutions, and creating relationships.
While industry specific skills and knowledge are a very big benefit in getting ahead of challenges, they aren't necessarily the be-all-end-all of being able to get a job done, nor necessarily a guarantor of high-level results. Without the core ingredients of what makes someone an effective professional "operator", it is always going to be a challenge to work through emerging situations and novel goals. Critical thinking and consistent execution are absolutely transferable skills.
Making a switch of industry requires guts from both parties, but can be worth it.
Looking at it from this perspective, it should serve as something of a relief to both potential parties that may find themselves in this situation. If you're a well-seasoned pro, and you're wondering if you could manage the jump into a different industry or differently sized operation, chances are you'll be able to adapt. And if you're a small to medium sized business with a growing need for a professionalized workforce, you can absolutely take a chance on someone based on professional skills they may have developed in a totally different industry than yours.
For all you know, it may actually have effects on what your business is able to do, and the types of clients you're able to effectively make deals with.
Changing Roles for Small Businesses in the Modern eCommerce World
And that brings me to the next interesting turn of events that came out of this shared risk-taking: Our Business Services department. Forever Studios was originally built as a nearly 100% consumer focused business, and continues to serve thousands of happy families all over the United States. Our products, services, branding, messaging, and online platforms are all continuing to develop at an extremely rapid rate, and we have a strong belief that we are positioned to outperform our national rivals.
But small to medium sized businesses have a tougher road to success than ever in the post-covid world where so much economic stimulus went to propping up large enterprises, and much of the government help went to specific "too big to fail" businesses.
These organizations are harder than ever to dislodge from their entrenched market positions, which requires small to medium sized players within each and every market to try to find new & novel approaches to generating revenue streams and developing new verticals.
Adding unique viewpoints to the decision making process can open new doors.
In our case, we looked at the caliber and diversity of talent that we had found ourselves with at Forever Studios, and determined that we had everything we needed to make an effective pivot into commercial services and business solutions. By adding professionals from outside the typical spectrum of people who would work for an organization in our sector, we had effectively put together a group of people with more than enough qualifications to package and provide services to businesses just like ourselves.
And this is where we can see things changing for small businesses in this era. With so many organizations and professionals having to adapt to new situations, new needs, and new challenges, there is a world where small businesses no longer really distinguish between consumer and commercial work. Everything just boils down to competencies and relationships, and business becomes about the simple act of doing a job, doing it well, and earning the trust of people with needs you can fulfill.
How a Small Business Can Still Succeed Nationally
Here's the moral of this story: any time success seems like something that can't be obtained, it's worth checking to see if maybe the goalposts have shifted someplace else, and you need to go in a different direction to get there.
Winning a heads-up battle is always a good feeling. You have a clear mountain to climb, a path in front of you, and you just muscle your way to the top. But if you're trying to look at the bigger goals of being able to consistently climb mountains for the long haul, it pays to see if maybe a different path to the peak exists, or if building the tools to make it easier is worth your time.
In the case of competing against giants, maybe you need to look outside of the people you would "obviously" hire to do certain jobs. Or maybe you need to bankroll that big push to the top with other verticals and options that may not immediately provide results in your main objective, but they support it financially.
Some say "Don't work harder, work smarter." But in the 2020's the new message is clear. If you want to win, you need to work harder AND smarter.
