Nov 2020 What Has The Craziness of the Year That Is 2020 Taught Us About Business?
What has this crazy year taught us?
When the pandemic hit our shores back in March, it sent everyone into panic mode. None of us knew what would happen to our business, our income, or how to stay safe from the virus, but we were guided by the authorities and continually kept adapting to stay safe, and stay operational.
Owners of Landscape businesses were already good at being adaptive, but the pandemic took these skills to another level.
Before the pandemic appeared, running a Landscape business required an owner to be adaptive. Things were always changing in a landscape business: from a client deciding to add significant variations to an install, to clients putting a project on hold, or an employee giving notice, or the skies opening up and making outside work much more difficult or impossible. These everyday occurrences have taught anyone running a landscape business to be adaptive and always be ready to respond with an option B.
When the Pandemic took hold, everyone would wake not knowing what the daily news would bring. As business owners, your crew’s safety was top priority, while dealing with clients concerns on a daily basis. Thankfully, the Government helped out by providing much needed subsidies. But given the crazy changing times, the Landscape Industry benefitted, and landscape services grew in demand.
So what have we learned?
- We have learned that regardless of how frantic a situation may be, there is always a way to overcome it; providing we respond quickly, stay relatively calm, support our team members, and keep working at what we do best.
- It has taught us to be adaptive, (as business owners we need to be) so it is essential to work toward the solution and keep things moving forward, because a project can be postponed or cancelled or a job can go sour with a big structural mistake.
- We have learned to change our business model and work from a home office or laptop.
- It has taught us that meeting with clients and team members can be conducted on Zoom or Facetime satisfactorily and efficiently.
- It has taught us that family time is all important and a priority.
- We learned to slow down, take stock of where we are at and plan better.
- It taught us to focus on employee engagement and improve business culture.
- And it made us realise that… We are so lucky to be living in Australia.
What does 2021 offer?
- Australia is managing the pandemic really well, life is back to a new normal at the moment. Even a Queensland holiday is now possible at Christmas!
- People will continue to spend more time at home (including working from home), making landscape projects in demand in 2021.
- With the COVID-19 vaccine being introduced at some date in 2021, the pandemic will hopefully be less of a threat and business confidence will grow.
It’s definitely been a crazy year, but I am very happy to hear that many landscape business owners have done well since April and have managed to stay healthy. I wish everyone a great finish to the end of this year and some quality downtime with loved ones.