Dr. Brad Poppie

As life starts shifting into “post-quarantine” mode, all of us in the small business world are going to have to start making some decisions. You may already be facing a lot of these decisions. Some of these decisions include hiring, lay-offs, marketing, budgeting, growth, maybe even scaling back or not.

While a lot of these decisions are quite difficult and things seem to be constantly changing, has your business mindset shifted in to keep up?

My mindset challenge for you today is to think about the strategic partnerships that you have, and new ones that you could make.

What do I mean by strategic partnerships? One example could be between real estate agents and their lenders, inspectors etc. Agents have clients that need these services so they build relationships to have high quality referral options for their clients. Sometimes in exchange, these service providers may either give those clients a discount, or recommend contacts of their own in need of a real estate agent.

So how does this translate to your business? Think about your clients and their lifestyles. Where do they go and what do they need? How can you support other businesses that your clients may frequent? Can you set up some sort of trade or referral arrangement between their business and yours? a lot of times these partnerships can come at a very low cost to either business, and some can even be completely free.

With everyone going through similar pains from this time in shut-down mode, I would be willing to bet that a lot of businesses are in a position to get creative and support each other more than ever. If we can all work together to stay afloat, we’ll all come out of this stronger.