It can be hard to run a business at the best of times, and it’s probably not too much to say that 2020 has been one of the hardest years many have ever faced. Even successful businesses can struggle when faced with unprecedented challenges, and successful entrepreneurs should aim to learn long-term lessons from this unusual year.
We’ve put together a short list of tips from three of 2020’s Most Adaptive Small Businesses according to QuickBooks UK. Read on to learn how they survived and thrived in the most challenging year of the century.
How to Make Your Small Business Successful: 3 Top Tips
1) Andrew Bloch & Associates: Face Change Head-On
Andrew Bloch, one of three founding members of Frank PR. Frank PR is a consumer public relations firm with offices in London, Sydney and New York.
Photographed at the Frank offices in Camden Town, London.
2020 might not have been the best year for new business ventures, but Andrew Bloch, founder of PR agency Frank, was able to adapt and thrive with his new consultancy company Andrew Bloch & Associates.
“The most important thing in helping small businesses achieve success is to be able to adjust to big changes.” – @AndrewBloch
“2020 has sped up some strategic moves that businesses were already thinking of making,” he notes, “such as shifting to digital-first, working from home and focusing more on performance marketing.”
In this context, it was absolutely crucial to adopt a business plan that takes advantage of these changes for the longer term. “My aspiration for the future”, he says, “is to move forward in a new way taking on board new learnings, adapting and coming out stronger”.
“No one likes change, sure, but it would be a shame to return to a place of old habits when the pandemic settles.”
2) Splinter Faction: See a Need, Fill a Need
When Krystian Jones founded online events production company Splinter Faction, he was just 16 years old. He resurrected it in 2015 and grew slowly and steadily, working with six clients in 2018 and ten in 2019.
But the chaos and confusion of the first few months of 2020 threatened to disrupt all that long-term work. Luckily, Jones was able to pivot from corporate events to social ones.
“When lockdown hit”, he recalls, “I volunteered some time to a Facebook group called I’m stuck at home but still want to have fun”. As he ran events, the group started to receive attention from major outlets like BBC News.
“Soon, we got to be a pioneer for these online social solutions. Within two weeks we had a really engaging format, and we hosted events such as online dance parties and raves.” – @KrystianJones, Founder of @SplinterFaction
Some other companies tried to take matters into their own hands and run their online events themselves, “but they couldn’t make it happen”, Jones says, noting that running online events smoothly requires a lot of skill. “It’s not as easy as it looks.”
Though his initial involvement with social events through social media wasn’t part of his business plan, Jones was able to turn it into the core of his business, simply by recognising the skyrocketing demand.
3) The Steak Shop: Make Big Changes When Needed
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Restaurants were hit especially hard this year, with repeated lockdowns and ever-changing government advice disrupting cash flow and making it nearly impossible to plan for the long term.
To those who rely almost entirely on in-person sales, the coronavirus pandemic presented a unique challenge: how to make your small business successful with no footfall?
For Ian Davies, owner of Ealing restaurant Steak on the Green, the solution lay in a radical rethink of his business model.
During the strict first lockdown, he remembers, “I stumbled across the concept of shifting focus to an online business”. He adapted his existing website, using his knowledge of online business to ensure decent traffic, and leveraged existing assets to get off the ground.
“We were able to use the facilities in the restaurant to butcher and prepare the steaks”, he explains, and his restaurant suppliers were happy to provide high-quality meats to prepare and send out to customers directly.
Now, The Steak Shop is well established as a separate business, and Davies is optimistic that it’ll continue to thrive even as Steak on the Green reopens.
Hopefully this list inspires you to adapt your business plan to be ready for sudden changes. While there’s no foolproof guide on how to make your small business successful, following tips from successful businesses who managed to survive and thrive during this tough year will certainly hope you stay flexible and prepared.
