6 Lessons every entrepreneur should learn from COVID-19

COVID-19 has been spreading lots of fear to the human community for the last couple of years. Due to COVID-19, apart from the death of many lives, many people have already lost many things and it is still ongoing. From this hard time of life, some lessons every entrepreneur should learn from COVID-19 for the betterment of the future.

Here, I have discussed the following things;

• How is the impact of COVID-19 on business?
• What are the lessons an entrepreneur should learn from COVID-19?

How is the impact of COVID-19 on business?

COVID-19 has been affecting people in every sector, especially in businesses. Businesses from all industries have been affected by COVID-19. Many well-established businesses had to shut their businesses off due to the unbearable losses occurred by this pandemic.

Besides well-established businesses, many business start-ups also failed to survive during this pandemic. As a result, many entrepreneurs have lost their dreams and investments.

This state of businesses has been putting a direct impact on the overall economy, which made people suffer from personal to professional, in every sector. It is looking hard to recover from all of these damages any time soon.

Although COVID-19 has been affecting business and the economy, it also brought some lessons for those who are thinking about getting a new start, especially the entrepreneurs.

Read: COVID-19 for entrepreneurs: New normal or lost hope

What are the lessons entrepreneurs should learn from COVID-19?

Entrepreneurs are the important element of an economy. To make start-ups successful, an entrepreneur should learn from everything around them to enrich their knowledge base. Like any other things, there are also many lessons brought by the pandemic COVID-19, which can help entrepreneurs in case of any unusual situation.

The lessons entrepreneurs should learn from COVID-19 are:

1. Think global, go digital
2. Invest in technology
3. Organize training for workforce
4. Create virtual workspace
5. Keep environment clean and healthy
6. Maintain emergency fund

These 6 lessons have been described below.

1. Think global, go digital

COVID-19 pandemic has forced every business owner to think about the importance of global presence for a business. In this current world, with the easy access of the internet, there is no other better way available for an entrepreneur than to make a global presence.

An entrepreneur needs to think and operate a start-up globally if possible. Global presence of a start-up brings diversification in it, which can help a start-up to grow fast. A global business start-up doesn’t need to depend on a specific area or market. Global appearance creates a global value with bigger market size compared to regional business start-up. It creates more chances and opportunities for a business owner to survive in unusual situations than a specific regional business.

To make a global presence, digitalization is a must to do. An entrepreneur can’t take a start-up on the global stage without proper digitalization. In recent times due to COVID-19, when every business has been facing a hard time to survive, the businesses with online facilities are getting many extra advantages to deal with the situation.

Nowadays, the people are depending a lot on the internet for almost everything, from education to medical support. So, every entrepreneur should learn from it. Besides these, digitalization can also reduce the operating cost, which is very important for a start-up to grow.

2. Invest in technology

In today’s world, technology is playing a vital role toward business and economy. Without proper use of technologies, it is not possible to take a business on the global stage.

In this ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, every sector has been suffering to perform general activities; at the same time, many organizations with the adequate use of technologies, performing their tasks smoothly.

So, to survive in this competitive business world, there is no better option than the use of technologies in business. Every entrepreneur or business owner should think and invest to increase the use of the latest technologies in their businesses.

With the proper use of technology, a business organization can run more effectively. Modern and useful technologies can help the authority, management team, and workforce of a business to keep their organization alive in unusual circumstances.

3. Organize training for workforce

An effective workforce is very important for a business to grow. Any success or failure of a business depends on its workforce. During this COVID-19, many start-ups or businesses have failed to survive only for the lack of efficiency of their respective workforce.

So, it is very important for an entrepreneur to organize training sessions often to keep the workforce up to date by introducing different types of elements and situations related to the business. This will help the workforce both by mentally and physically to be more effective and confident to perform well in different situations.

4. Create virtual workspace

Due to COVID-19 impact, virtual workspace became as important as physical workspace. Many corporate organizations have introduced the “Work from Home” method for their employees to keep their work running. This method of work has been helping many business organizations and their employees to make their work done, even in the worst situation.

If we keep the ongoing pandemic on one side, it can still be helpful for both organizations and employees anytime to deal with any unavoidable and unusual situation. So, every entrepreneur should create a virtual workspace for their business to utilize the workforce virtually.

Entrepreneurs can use their virtual workspaces by random rotation of employees to make them effective and used to it. It can also be very helpful for employees. It will provide them the opportunity to do their tasks virtually in case of any emergency in their personal life.

5. Keep environment clean and healthy

Clean and healthy environment is a must-have thing for a workspace. Before COVID-19, maximum business organizations were so careless in this issue. But COVID-19 forced people to keep their place clean and healthy.

Every entrepreneur should focus on the environment of the workspace. Apart from various diseases, a clean and healthy environment at workspace can keep the workforce away from many invisible disorders, like: mental illness, lack of attention, swings of mood, etc.

So, it is important for an entrepreneur to make sure that the workspace is clean and healthy to keep the workforce mentally healthy, fresh, lively, and effective toward the business.

6. Maintain emergency fund

Emergency fund is an important part for any kind of business. But it was ignored by most of the entrepreneurs before the ongoing COVID-19 period. COVID-19 has forced entrepreneurs or business owners to realize the importance of emergency funds.

Many start-ups and established businesses had to shut their operations off in this COVID-19 period due to the lack of emergency funds. So, every entrepreneur should learn that any start-up or business may face difficulties at any time for any reason.

If an entrepreneur keeps an emergency fund in a well-managed way, then it will help the business to overcome difficult times.

The things mentioned above are the issues that entrepreneurs and business owners have been facing to operate businesses during the COVID-19. Although these things have always been important for any business.

But most entrepreneurs or business owners didn’t give that much importance to these issues. COVID-19 has made them feel and think about these. So, every entrepreneur should learn from COVID-19 period before starting any new start-up.