At the time of writing, there is still no official support being offered for the self-employed by the Government but I’m sure it will be coming in some form or other. In the meantime, I’m finding myself being driven into self reflection but maybe that isn’t such a bad thing.
I am extremely proud of the business that I have built up over the past few years. If you had said to me 4 years ago that I would relish the opportunity every week to stand up in front of a room full of strangers and talk all things marketing and social media I would have laughed at you. But now I love chatting to budding entrepreneurs, people so excited, driven and motivated by the prospect of setting up their own enterprise. It is one of the main reasons I feel saddened for the business community today. So many people I know were just getting started. Websites had been built, social media channels set up, first purchases, clients and customers secured. And now what?
The majority of my business has been built on face to face interaction. My work with People Plus and Legs PR amongst others has relied on that personal touch. Naturally I am exploring delivering 1 to 1s and workshops on line. For me, the workshops were never really about me pontificating in front of an eager audience. It was more about the networking, the learning from each other, the offering of ideas to one another keen to offer moral if not business support to those in the room.
I have met some inspirational people, some who I now very proudly class as friends and/or business associates. Prior to this we were mutually driven by a desire to succeed. Now we are driven by the desire to just exist.
My main hope throughout all of this is obviously that as few people as possible lose their lives. My second is that as many businesses as possible can survive. But I also hope that whilst there may be an interim shift to yet even more on line interaction, when the dust settles, the need and desire for human interaction returns.