How an Organization’s Founder Built Up New Parts of Her Business During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Events were an essential part of my business prior to COVID-19 hitting, so I moved everything online. I started to bring female entrepreneurs on my Facebook Live events to talk about various topics, like mental health, reaching your goals during a pandemic, parenting, stress and thriving versus surviving as an entrepreneur during tough times. After each live session, I always invite people to join me on a discovery call to discuss their business goals and their social media and marketing challenges. I now spend a significant part of my day talking with entrepreneurs and helping them create action plans and strategies to improve their marketing efforts. These live events have become a great way for me to generate leads and help other entrepreneurs grow.

I had always intended to ramp up the coaching side of the business, but I didn't intend to do it so quickly. In January I launched our social media consulting and coaching services, so I ended up increasing my marketing and advertising efforts for those. I also started to explore other technologies that would allow me to improve my customer’s experiences and interactions during online and social media events. I now incorporate my reviews of these products and tools into my live streams, coaching sessions and training. The efforts resulted in a 90% increase in the number of women who are now my coaching clients and individuals who are taking my social media bootcamp training.

I started by sharing resources on my Facebook Page about disaster funding for businesses and ways to keep employees safe, then shifted to posting resources in our Facebook Group. Group members were great about posting information they found as well; I really saw how women supported each other during these times. I also realized that female entrepreneurs were discouraged about how they were going to continue running their businesses while managing, working from home, teaching their kids and being quarantined. I started using my Page as a source of encouragement to provide strategies, tools and resources to help them market and grow their businesses. I had also never used Instagram Live before the pandemic, but have since hosted my first Instagram Live interview. I have always used a variety of social media platforms and tools, and while I have leveraged these platforms in new ways, the biggest change is how I teach others to use them.

I plan to continue to grow the marketing and social media coaching service and am revamping my current membership structure. I am also launching some additional digital products this fall. The number of in-person events will be limited going forward, for at least the next nine months, so I plan on continuing to grow our groups and social media presence.

Don’t stop creating. I have created more products like ebooks, templates, infographics and content in the last 90 days than I did all of last year. Even when you think you’re an out-of-the-box kind of person, you can get caught up in the daily grind and you can lose sight of making sure your company and the services and products it provides stay fresh and relevant. My mother always says that if you stay ready, you don’t have to get ready. I took a lot of things for granted before the pandemic. I was not as vigilant with some areas of my business that I should have been. This pandemic reminded me to keep my head on a swivel, to be aware of my blindspots, potential threats and possible opportunities.