Back the business owners to get us through this

3 weeks ago when we realised the COVID-19 crisis was hitting Australia, we closed the doors to our brewery taprooms. A week later all of our bar and restaurant customers were forced to close. In the space of 7 days we had lost 50% of our business and our customers had lost 100% of theirs. It was sheer devastation that we never would have predicted for our industry, and it came on at an exhaustive pace.

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel a fair amount of pessimism and fear when this was all happening, as I’m sure was the case for every business owner and all of their staff. Our friends were losing their businesses, other friends were losing their jobs, anyone who wasn’t, was living in fear of that outcome.

Without making light of some absolute devastation for people across our industry, and the obvious health outcomes that this crisis presents, I wanted to spend some time on the case for feeling some optimism (which I have been feeling for the last week or so).

In the last 2 weeks I’ve seen businesses completely change their business model, introduce brand new products that they’ve never released before and work 16–24 hours a day to save their businesses. I’ve seen entrepreneurs lose 100% of their business and keep hustling, keep innovating and keep fighting to keep things moving and try desperately to keep people employed. The rate of innovation has been staggering and inspiring.

I’ve seen scrappy entrepreneurs completely stop making what they were making before, and working day and night to release products they’ve never sold before. Products that are well designed, well executed and would be perfectly in place in calmer times after months of preparation. And they’ve done it in 3 and 4 days.

I’ve seen entirely new ways of doing business adopted and rolled out like they’ve been planned for years. And the crazy thing is the government and other independent supporters have stepped up their support and they’ve backed entrepreneurs to do these things.

It’s been a renaissance of entrepreneurialism from the exact people who you would expect to step up in a situation like this, and supported and backed by the exact people who you would want to support it.

This is what entrepreneurship should always be like.

Entrepreneurs routinely risk everything to open a business, employ people and deliver customers something they wanted in a unique way. With the right support and government regulation, magic can happen. And it’s happening.

This is great for founders. When things are going well the entrepreneurial tendencies of founders lay dormant as work becomes work. What we are seeing here is a great re-awakening of entrepreneurship and a showing of what we as business owners are here for. It’s entrepreneurship at full throttle, and that is cause for optimism.

Not just for the entrepreneurs.

I don’t know that many super rich entrepreneurs. I know business owners who do the only thing they know how, and in the process employ a lot of great people, serve great customers who all combine to create great industries.

When business owners step up, their teams step up and that is happening in spades. Employees who have had their job change overnight to a job they’ve never thought they would ever do, are stepping up and getting it done. Social butterflies are working from home using Zoom and Slack, weird work hours, weird working conditions in households where people are losing their jobs, and they’re doing great work. These are big changes for a lot of people and all I see are people doing their best to adapt extremely quickly, under extremely challenging circumstances.

All of that flows onto customers. I’ve seen enormous support for local businesses in an effort to keep their favourite brands in business. New business models are being adopted instantly, social media support and sharing has skyrocketed, people are busting their arse to keep the brands they love alive.

This is cause for great optimism.

I have a few final thoughts:

If you are an entrepreneur whose business is not going to make it out of this, that is devastating. You will be back. On the other side of this is an economy begging for people as crazy as you, to risk everything to follow your dream. That never changes, and you are the best person to be taking this up again when you are ready.

If you are an entrepreneur battling through this situation, this is an opportunity. And there’s nothing that entrepreneurs love more than an opportunity. This is an opportunity to show what you are, when faced with an extreme challenge. It’s an opportunity to work and think your arse off to keep your staff employed and keep your customers happy. It’s an opportunity to be generous, scrappy, resilient, ambitious but grateful that you still have the chance to be any of those things.

Great companies are forged in crisis situations like this. Some of the great companies that we know were launched at the time of major economic downturns: Disney (Great Depression), Google (2 years before the .com bust), Facebook (smack bang between the .com bust and the Global Financial Crisis), Apple was started during a stagnating economy in the 70’s and Apple as we know it boomed after the .com crash in 2000.

There are many more examples and it’s no surprise to me that when you put entrepreneurs under pressure, opportunities emerge and they respond.

If you are a staff member working for a small business owner, back them in to get you through this. Do everything you can to support them and the business and be part of the dream team that gets through a seemingly impossible crisis.

If you no longer have a job, trust in the fact that you have an army of savage entrepreneurs, ruthless staff and viscous customers who will do anything to kick this off again, and get you back on the team.

On the other side of this is an economy that will be begging to get back into action and we entrepreneurs are the people that are going to make this happen.

I couldn’t think of better people for the job.

Cheers to the entrepreneurs who are going to stop at nothing to get their business through this. Cheers to the staff who are going to back their founders and be the people who make the change. Cheers to the customers who will back their favourite businesses in difficult times and see this through to a much brighter future.