My Back To Business Strategy

By Sadie Sharp, Director, Sharp Transformations and The Platform Project, and author of Breakthrough.

Summarise how Covid-19 has affected you? 

I am a self-employed management consultant, trainer and speaker, and I also run The Platform Project youth development social enterprise, which launched only three years ago. 

While the project has been growing my only source of income has been through my consultancy, so when we went into lockdown and all events were cancelled for the rest of the year, my income was completely wiped out, and none of the youth project activities could continue as it was all delivered in groups. So both businesses were effectively shut down overnight.

What has been your plan to continue?  

Like the rest of the world, I have been peddling really fast to pivot my training and consulting work online, but as is always the case, this takes time, so I was really grateful that I could access the Bounce Back Loan to bridge my costs during the 3-4 month transition period. 

I’ve used the time to set up a fully functioning broadcasting suite in my home office, and in the youth project, so that we can produce high quality digital content and deliver online training and consulting sessions as an alternative, and complementary addition. 

Then, during the lockdown, as I haven’t been as flat out busy as normal, I have been using the time to work ON my business, rather than just IN it as is usually the case, so I have been working on things like PR, marketing and business development.

How has business changed for you over the last few months? 

I think the one thing that this situation has shown me (painfully!) is how vulnerable my business model has been, but also how easy it is to get locked in to serving the opportunities that are right in front of you rather than forcing yourself to make space to look forward and proactively develop the opportunities that you might want for the future. 

It almost feels like the COVID situation knocked me out of autopilot and now I have a chance to course-correct. 

So although neither business has really had much work to do during this period, as even the training and consulting clients are only now just starting to come out of the shadows, I definitely feel that both businesses are in a much better position to thrive now as the world re-starts with me being able to offer a digital alternative. 

This also gives me more confidence that the businesses can survive more robustly if we ever have to go through another round of all this!

As lockdown eases what measures have you put in place to get back to business? 

Both the consultancy and the youth project are set up to deliver virtually now, and where we have premises for the youth project, we have re-formatted the layout into zones so that the work / seating areas are set up in a way that naturally controls how many people are using each area and how far apart they are. 

We are just in the process of updating our policies, risk assessments and guidance / training materials so that we can hopefully re-open to small groups during July.  

What has been the most challenging aspect of all of this? 

Other than trying to make my money last through the consultancy, I think the hardest part has been trying to support our young people through the project, as a lot of them really struggled, and although we upped our game in terms of supporting them virtually, some really needed more intense support. 

I think I also realised in hindsight how the situation affected me personally, as for the first three weeks my brain was really foggy, and I had next to no motivation to do anything, which is really out of character for me! 

But as I adjusted to the situation I started to enjoy the slightly slower pace of working, making me realise that I had probably been pushing too hard for a while now.

What has been the most positive aspect? 

It was a painful way to get to that realisation, but this situation has made me realise that I want to change my business model so that I don’t need to be spending so much time travelling away for work, which is why I have spent so much time and effort getting set up with the virtual broadcasting facilities.

I’ve realised that now is the time to work smarter, not harder! And with the youth project we have also stumbled across a few practices that I think we will keep when things return to normal, like our weekly online quizzes. So there have been some real learnings and lightbulb moments – it just took me a little while to see them!

How important is this phrase to you – ‘buy local, supply local’? 

Luckily I don’t have much of a supply chain for my consultancy or the youth project, so we haven’t been disrupted much, but I have definitely seen first hand how much people struggle when not supported by their local communities, so I will be looking for more opportunities to use local contractor where we do need to bring people in. 

What are your top tips at this time?  

1. It’s painful, but try and spend some time thinking about what you might like to do with your future business model – we’re usually too busy to work ON our businesses, so make the most of the disruption!

2. It’s not possible for all businesses, but if people are starting to get use to working from home / virtually, consider what you can do to make it the normal way of working and possibly benefit from lower premises costs.

3. I’m no expert, but I’m planning for the worst case scenario of us having to go into lockdown again so we’re not caught so short next time if it does happen, so maybe do some scenario planning for your business too. 

Your parting thought? 

I never thought I’d say it, but I’m doing everything I can so that when things “go back to normal”, my working practices don’t! 

I’m hoping to provide more services from home, and taking the project online as more of a blended future proof business model. This has been a productive jolt for my business model, albeit a rather painful one!

For more information visit www.SadieSharp.co.uk