At the moment many businesses are in a state of hibernation.
This means that you might have extra time on your hands like never before.
(If you’re a furloughed director, you can only carry out statutory duties but if you are self-employed you can continue to work.)
So…
Make sure you have enough to survive:
- Claim for anything that you might be entitled to.
If you’re self-employed, that means claiming for a grant through the coronavirus self-employment Income Support Scheme. - If you are a company director that can be furloughed, then that means making a claim through the coronavirus job retention sceheme.
- If you need to, apply for a coronavirus business interruption loan scheme (CBILS). Note that this is a repayable commercial loan.
- If your income is very low, then apply for universal credit (UC)
- Apply for a mortgage holiday or speak to your landlord about delaying rent payments
Keep in touch with your customers/clients
- Stay in touch with your existing customers & clients
Work on your marketing strategy
- Think about your ideal customer, where they hang out and the kinds of products/services they would like
- Come up with some promotion ideas
- Write a newsletter
- Design new marketing collateral
- Write new copy for print or online media
Catch up on your accounts
- Gather together all your receipts, invoices and paperwork
- Catch up on your bookkeeping
- Do your year end accounts
- Get your personal tax affairs in order
- Do your 2020/21 personal tax return
Work on product development
- Come up with new ideas or designs
- Make new samples or prototypes
- Ask for feedback online
- Think about products or designs for the months and seasons ahead
Make for stock
- If it is possible, make products for stock so that you have some stock on hand for the future
Overhaul your website
- Imrove your search engine optimisation (SEO)
- Redesign your website
- Refresh your website copy
- Refresh your photographs and graphics
- Add new pages or content
- Start a blog
Be active on social media
- Set up or refresh your social media profiles
- Restart or begin being active on your chosen social media platforms
Admin
- Write up or refresh policies such as: GDPR, complaints & customer service policy
- Update your contracts
- Look into improving or upgrading any inefficient systems that you have
OR, since it is a very strange time and you wouldn’t normally be literally locked in your own home, unable to go out apart from essential shopping, give yourself and break and go read a book.
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