- Coronavirus disaster!
How do you protect your business
from Coronavirus and what's the pitfalls?
In this video I wanna share my top tips
for protecting your business, and your income,
and your livelihood from Coronavirus.
Let's go.
Hey gang, I'm James Saint Clair
I'm a UK business owner.
I employ over 450 people,
so I'm not a scientist,
I don't know about the medicine around the Coronavirus.
I don't know the ins and outs of it,
but what I do know is I've got a business
and I've got find a half a million pounds worth of payroll
every single month to make sure my staff get paid
and I've got to make sure cash flow comes into my business.
So it's a big concern of mine
and these are the things that I'm gonna do in this video,
which I'm gonna share with you
of the ways I'm gonna mitigate those problems
to make sure that I keep my business going.
I've had loads of business owners DM me,
private message me saying,
"James, what are you doing in your business?
"Can you help me?"
So I'm putting this video together to help your business
stay in business.
This Coronavirus thing
is getting clicks on social media,
it's selling newspapers,
the media are loving it.
The reality is I think deep down it's gonna come
and go as fast as any other media storm.
I think we need to realize the facts
that yeah, sadly one person died in the UK
so far at the time of making this video.
But two and a half thousand people a day
die from diabetes for example.
Two and a half thousand people a day
die from cancer in the UK.
You know there's these huge factor,
so I think we need to be conscious and remember
that this is serious and it's tragic that someone's died
but we need to put it in context of the numbers.
That said, if the government doesn't force me
to close down my businesses,
let me tell you what my businesses are,
they are very much businesses where the public go to.
We own day nurseries, visitor attractions
and right now we're getting plenty of footfall
and customers are still coming,
we're still doing cashflow,
but I'm looking at it from a worse case scenario.
So what I do is I've got my team together
and we're gonna write up a plan
and that's my top tip for business owners.
You know get it written up into a plan
so that you can sort of brain dump
onto paper what's gonna happen
because that will give confidence to the people around you.
And I think this is gonna be a confidence issue
because if people are scared to go out for dinner,
go to restaurants, go to cinemas, go shopping
it's gonna have a knock-on effect to our economy.
And business owners that prepare in advance
usually are the ones that get through these things
much quicker.
So number one you need to write up a plan.
What's the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities,
and threats.
Now, I did put the word opportunities in there
because if they do close schools
and we don't close our businesses
then actually Coronavirus could be a good thing
because you know, people will be not going to work
and they will get bored after awhile
and they might carry on going out
and we might see an opportunity from that.
We've actually discussed that.
But, the weaknesses and the threats
are just as important.
And what's the strengths of your business?
What can you do around your business?
Can you make your business residual income lead?
Can you start uploading products to Amazon
so that you can sell stuff online?
Can you get telephone orders over the line?
Can you do deliveries to customers with products
or services rather than them coming to you?
These are the things,
the out of the box thinking that you need to be doing.
And hey, here's the thing right,
I was talking to someone in recruitment
and you know with recruitment people meet face to face.
And I said why don't you FaceTime interviews and clients
and they said, "that's a great idea."
so that they can still keep
the wheels of the business going.
So could you use technology?
Now you might not want to do these things,
like a recruiter always wants to meet clients
face to face,
but hey are we just gonna say,
"no, were not gonna do anything."
No of course not,
we've go to find other ways, other strengths that we've got.
Technology could be a strength
to really solve a lot of problems.
Start looking at it now.
Let's look at my next tip.
So number one is write a plan,
look at your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities,
and threats to your business and get it jotted down on paper
it'll make a big difference.
Let's look at tip two.
So we need to find out
if you've got business interruption cover.
We call this BI covering your business.
So if your business closes because of a fire,
a flood your insurers will cover you
for the business interruption.
What you need to find out is if Coronavirus
or something like this is covered in your insurance policy.
What you've definitely gonna make sure
is when you re-negotiate for your insurance policy
make sure you get something like this added in.
Now I've spoken to some business owners.
Great news, they are covered.
I've spoken to some other business owners
and they're not covered.
If you're not covered, don't worry
stick around in this video
because I'm gonna share with you the top tips
that I'm gonna be putting into place
for those that are not covered and those that are covered.
Let's go.
I think it's really important that,
what we do is we keep our team members really informed
on the threats and risks to the business
so that they are on your side.
Because you know, team members will be seeing this stuff
in the news,
they'll be reading newspapers,
they'll be clicking on social media,
it's mad on social media at the moment.
They're gonna be worried about it.
So keep them informed on the measures
that the business is putting in place.
Tell them about the risks.
But say, "look, we're doing this and this and this
"to solve any potential pitfalls."
This will make them really feel more secure,
more likely to go to work,
less likely to start panicking.
Because you know, when you're a business owner
you're a leader,
and leaders should lead the teams
and manage the situation.
So we're communicating with all of our team members
on exactly the steps and measures we're gonna take
to make sure that we stay open,
that we carry on trading,
and that we're gonna survive in business.
Next and what I think is really important
is that you write to your MP.
If you're in America,
maybe it's your congressman or your senator
and you can ask them what support are the government
going to put in place.
Now here's my hope and pray
that there's many business owners as possible
will write a letter to their MP.
Now here's the thing, if you wanna put in a comment below
or private message me on Instagram or LinkedIn
and I will send you the letter
that we're sending to our ministers of parliament.
And we're sending one of these in every location,
we're in 11 locations that our businesses operate out of
and you can literally cut and copy and paste that.
Because MP's and local government need to be hearing
from business owners that they need support.
And there is measurements that business owners can do.
Now, in 2008 governments reduced VAT
because of the financial crash.
I think that's a great measure
that government should be doing.
They reduced it back down to 15%,
you know that would generate a lot more cash flow.
Are they going to give a business rates holiday for example.
Are they going to reduce national insurance?
Are they going to give tax holidays?
These are things that business owners
need to be sending so many letters to MP
so that they got it coming in from all directions
so that they can go to their ministers and senior ministers
and indeed the prime minister and the president
to make sure they're using some of their war chest,
which governments have got
to put into mitigating this risk.
Because we wanna trade and we wanna survive
and if the income taps turn off
we need to be doing everything that we can
to make sure our voices is heard as a business community.
This is something that you can do.
So if you want that letter,
send me a private message,
put it in the comments below
and we'll send that to you via email.
Okay next tip, this is my fifth tip
and it's similar to what I've just told you
to do with MPs,
but actually you know MPs and governments
slow to turn the wheels of traction and action.
So what I suggest you next do,
now if you are forced to close
or you, 50% of your customers are not trading with you
because they don't wanna go out,
I mean this is some of the stuff
that we're sort of planning and thinking can happening.
I was at a restaurant for dinner last night
and they said that they had half the amount of people
at the restaurant compared to the week before
and they rang some of their customers
and the reason they didn't go
was because they didn't wanna be in a public space
about Coronavirus.
So the effects of this is actually happening now,
we need to be planning and taking action on this.
So I suggest that you call your local government
where you pay your local business rates to.
I suggest you call HMRC on VAT and say to them,
"look, we've got problems that we can see
"coming up in the next three months.
"We're all right now but what's gonna happen
"in the next three months?
"Can we have a holiday repayment on business rates?
"Can we take three months off
"or can we take one month off
"and you spread the rest of the payments over 10 months?
"Or just give us a two months grace period,
"so that we can carry on trade in the business."
You know, I think we should do the same to HMRC,
for VAT, for corporation tax
if you do any of that stuff.
Ask them, ring them in advance and say to them
that, "I can see these problems coming up
"what can you do to help us?"
This is really important.
Next, call your financiers as well,
this is my big big big piece of advice.
If you've got loan repayments you should
for example, say you've got five years left on your mortgage
on a business premises or a business loan.
Ring them up and say,
"look, I've got to pay you 50 more payments
"over the next five years.
"Can you stop taking any payments from us
"for the next three months and bolt it on
"at the end of the five years?"
Because that cash flow improvement can go in
and pay your staff and pay your electric, anything.
I mean electrics, utilities, ring them, ask them.
Because what it's all about guys,
the big trick that we're doing here
is to create cash flow in a place where you can't get
customers to come and trade for your business.
That is what we're trying to do here.
Who can we call?
Who can we delay repayments to?
You know, the crown, the government,
big utilities companies, anything like that
where you can just get yourself three months cash flow
back in the business.
Even if you've got plenty of cash,
I still think that you should be doing this stuff,
because we don't know how serious it's gonna be.
Now what the thing is you don't wanna do this stuff
until it really starts taking action
because you can only ask once I believe.
So if you start seeing that economic downturn,
like serious not just 10%.
But if it goes to like 50%,
you've gotta start preparing all this stuff.
Now we can get all the letters and emails written
in case that needs to happen,
we're doing that now but not sending it
because right now we're trading fine.
But if it does happen then that's what we're gonna do.
My last massive piece of advice is this,
you know, you don't wanna be an operator of your business,
you wanna be a marketeer of your business
and I think that the general public
are going to be thinking, "well, we won't be going there
"they obviously not gonna be open."
Now that is a serious problem,
so it's really important that you've got an email database,
that you're doing Facebook stories, shares, and likes
and all of this stuff you need to be putting it out there
that your business is continuing to trade
as much as you can.
Market your trading with these key metrics.
With an offer, so people think,
"oh yeah, actually we will go and do that."
Because those people just need that push over the edge
to go and do it.
"Oh yeah, actually that restaurant is open."
Or, "that play center is open.
Or, "the cinema is open."
Or, "that shop is open."
Market that you're open, put an offer with it,
so that it gets people to go, "come on,
"let's go and do that."
With crucial this, with a CTA
that's a call to action.
So that offer has got to have a call to action
like, "do this now because you'll get xyz."
Or, "do this now before the price goes up",
or, "do this now before we sell out",
"do this now because it's a once in a lifetime opportunity".
That's a call to action.
"Do this now before we close down."
Which we don't want you to do.
So we're gonna do an offer, we're gonna market
that we're continuing to trade,
and we're gonna do it with a call to action.
They are really smart things to do
because you should always be marketing your business
even if you're busy,
but you should market your business immensely
in a situation like this
because you need to remind people
that you're still in business.
Cause even if you're a takeaway restaurant
as well, market to people.
"We're still sending out pizzas."
Offer call to action, and make that happen.
Now look guys if you're new here
and you've only just discovered me,
I actually spent so much time on YouTube
helping people grow their businesses.
Click here and you can see a whole host of videos
on where I help people grow their businesses.
That's why we exist on YouTube.
Let me know what you're doing in your business
to keep your business going in the comments below.
Thanks very much for watching.
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To continued success.
See you real soon,
buh-bye.