How a bunch of small businesses survived the pandemic.
In a holding pattern
In early March 2020 I was flying back to London after visiting my son in Canada and thanks to a following wind the plane got to Heathrow early and was put in a holding pattern over London.
It was a bright sunny morning and we had a spectacular birds-eye tour of the famous London landmarks: Tower bridge, the London Eye, the Houses of Parliament, the Shard, the Gherkin and more, but what was more fascinating was the tiny details of rows of houses, gardens, people playing football, walking dogs, washing cars.
We did the circuit three or four times, noticing new things each time.
Eventually we were directed into the stream of traffic to take our allocated slot for landing. The people in air traffic control could see the big picture of the busiest airport in the world and knew exactly where we needed to be.
Just a few days later the UK went into lockdown.
Like so many people I took to Zoom to connect with the people I would usually have been meeting face to face. I set up daily 30 minute calls for anyone I knew to drop in and have chat with each other with no agenda.
I noticed a lot of them were in a sort of holding pattern, not sure how or where to land. In some cases they weren’t sure how they would survive in this unfamiliar landscape.
The world had changed and there was no air traffic control to guide us.
Most of the people I work with are small business owners who had no support except each other. They talked about what they were doing to keep their businesses going but mostly they just enjoyed the company of their peers and shared the things that were keeping them amused and sane(ish).
One enterprising business started renting out goats to “butt in” on Zoom calls, netting £50,000 and enabling them to keep their staff — and the goats — when their regular income dried up.
In 2020 we had 172 meetings in 40 weeks of lockdown.
In 2021 we had 96 meetings in 48 weeks.
Those conversations included very practical discussions about the best way to do things: the tech, the organising, keeping clients, not giving in to pressure to work for free, whether to keep marketing and if so, how to stay visible and available to clients without looking crass and using overworked clichés. (Remember when every email started with “In these uncertain times …”?)
Some people’s businesses were thriving and this threw up feelings of survivor guilt until we talked about how important it is to know that there is good news. We talked about pivoting businesses, and covered rescuer syndrome and how to take care of ourselves first before using all our energy to help others.
Through all this we heard how people were feeling: the inability to make simple decisions, the brain fog, the anxiety and the anger — founded and unfounded, the roller coaster of emotions that changed hour by hour. They included people who felt they could only survive by avoiding all media and people who deliberately sought out controversy so they could have a fight and use up some adrenalin.
Feeling untethered
A fundamental human need is to feel ourselves located, grounded, in place, in relation to the world around us.
To lack that can feel as though we are untethered from our moorings.
What became a common thread in discussions was that everything was taking longer than it used to, most people were tired and complained of brain fog and an inability to focus. Some of my clients withdrew from business altogether to safeguard their health and then suffered from a lack of purpose and direction.
There were quite a few comparisons made to the grief cycle of
- Denial
- Anger
- Bargaining
- Depression
- Acceptance
The big difference with what we were experiencing is that we weren’t grieving for a single event — we barely had time to adjust to one change before another happened so we ended up on a roller coaster of emotions
And it was exhausting.
Suspended in a strange reality
In 2022 there was a lot of talk about getting back to normal. I was able to visit my son in Canada once again, albeit with Covid passports, masks, quarantines and other safeguards in place.
There was a strange sense of unreality about everything.
Lots of the small businesses I work with were having their best year ever. They had plenty of things to be doing but actually doing them was a bit more difficult. Concentration was a problem, motivation was a problem, lack of energy and creativity was a big problem.
Many people had had to re-think what was important to them and were reluctant to go back to business as usual.
Procrastination was a HUGE problem
What used to be simple decisions were now taking lots of thinking through, lots of second guessing, a lot of “what ifs”.
The whole world is re-aligning
Most of us have lived through tough times of one sort or another but we’ve never experienced a world where pretty much everything changed and the only thing we could control was how we chose to react to it.
I can’t think of anyone running their business now in the same way they did before we went into lockdown the first time in March 2020.
For 20 weeks — 140 days — most of the people I work with were isolated.
For most of those days I was in touch with them on Zoom calls.
I heard what each of them was going through.
How they coped with the fear and panic of the early days.
How they coped with isolation or being cooped up with family members.
How they cared for elderly parents or home-schooling children — often both at the same time.
How they grieved for family members and friends they couldn’t visit.
How they managed to keep their businesses going while struggling with lack of concentration, exhaustion, loss of purpose and the ever present fear of uncertainty.
More than anything I saw how they cared for each other, turning up on calls when they didn’t feel like talking, just to smile and say a friendly word to each other and to listen to what others had to say.
The generosity of my community has blown me away.
Small words of encouragement, sympathy, admiration, and most importantly, recognition, have made a huge difference.
Knowing that we’re not alone in the way we feel has made a huge difference.
At one meetings someone dared to suggest we all had a weird sense of humour.
It sounds a bit strange to have laughed our way through a lot of our calls — but weird? I mean who doesn’t talk about fat hedgehogs, crazy frogs, dancing goats and sparrow parties?
The whole experience has been life changing. None of us will ever be the same again and our relationships with each other have deepened in a way that only shared experiences can have.
What comes next?
By running our own businesses we have chances that many people don’t. We have a chance to make every day count, to work on things that bring us joy, to work with clients and associates that enrich all of our lives and in our own small ways to make the world a better place.
The way I work with people has changed. I’m much more aware of people’s vulnerabilities. “What’s stopping you?” isn’t a very useful question any more. By understanding what we’ve just been through and what differences we want to make I think I’m becoming an even better mentor and advisor than I was before.
While there’s no going back, some things are timeless. If you’re wondering how to plan when you feel powerless and don’t know what’s going to happen, it’s worth remembering that the sense of control we had before the pandemic was an illusion.
We were never in control of events. We never really knew for certain what was going to happen. The only thing we have ever been able to control is how we choose to act. That magic moment between stimulus and response is our secret weapon and point of power.
Learning to dance with uncertainty is a goal worth pursuing.
I saw this in a beautiful blog post by anthropologist Fiona Tribe:
“If I can lean into you, while you lean into someone else, then that someone else can lean into another who can then lean into me because I am stronger now for leaning into you.”
It feels as thought that’s the best lesson to take away from the Covid years.
We’re all stronger for leaning in to each other.
