How do you usually respond to bad experiences. Do you explode in anger? Do you shrink into yourself emotionally? Do you detach yourself from the experience as much as possible? Do you ignore it?
Pain prompts us to face who we are and where we are. What we do with that experience defines who we become. One of my bad experiences was my car accident in November 2010. I was on my way home from playing golf in a small town just outside Port Elizabeth. It was a great day out with friends, full of laughs and banter. The weather turned for the worse driving back, making the roads very slippery and water logged. It happened in a bend on the national road, where I hit a puddle of water and lost control over my bakkie. The vehicle slid into the road barriers and rolled a few times where the airbags deployed and hit me unconscious for some time. My friend escaped the accident with a few bruises. I unfortunately was trapped and had to be cut out with the jaws of life. After a week in hospital I was bed bound and not able to work for 2 months.
My accident forced me to examine who I was, to face myself in many ways that I never had to before. As a man of faith: To ask ‘what does God want from me?’, who am I, what is my purpose, what are my dreams? I truly believe that, during this COVID-19 lockdown, it’s a great opportunity to again reflect on the progress made and assess if I am still living inside that purpose and dream.
The principles below are a combination of my personal thoughts and tips extracted from the Small Business COVID-19 survival guide compiled by Marnus Broodryk out of input received from over 27,000 other South African entrepreneurs.
Principle Two: Attitude
Sometimes it’s about more than what we do, it’s about what we think and fill our mind with.
- Embrace new ways of doing things, now is a great time to implement software that is cloud based that can help you to work remotely with ease;
- Some cloud solutions
- Xero for accounting software;
- Hubdoc collaboration and documentation storage solution that help get information from clients and integrate with ease into Xero;
- Trello for literally ANY admin tasks and super easy team task-sharing;
- Zoom, Skype or WhatsApp for monthly free video conferencing solutions to meet clients virtually and other staff members;
- In chaos there are always opportunities;
- Things are changing and you need to adapt;
- Connect with your inner circle, people you can trust and confide in – people need one another more than ever;
- Don’t get too caught up in the chaos. Review your plan, make changes where necessary and stick with it;
- Do not downplay reality. Rather confront it and deal with it;
- Always follow the advice given to us by our NICD (National Institute for Communicable Diseases) and the WHO (World Health Organisation);
- Help an NPO (Non-Profit Organisation), they sometimes need it more than you do.
Final thought
Take care of yourself, your family, your team, your clients and your community. Seek the opportunities that will undoubtedly arise and monitor your finances closely.
Together, we’ll do this!