The coronavirus pandemic has affected all of us; not a single person on this planet has not felt its effects and had a rough transition or rude awakening as they tried to continue on with their life as normal. In my little corner of the world, the talk about the economy and the effect COVID-19 has on small businesses like mine can be crushing. Lots of small businesses have had to close up shop for good as they weren’t able to sustain an audience or customer needs or employees throughout this rough time. I’m so grateful I’ve just been able to continue on, and I’m using this opportunity to reflect on what I’ve learned and how I can be more prepared for unexpected things in the future that may yet come.

The biggest thing I’ve learned this spring is how important it is to be able to pivot your business. Where you might have seen a lot of success or income in one area of your business, current circumstances may completely prohibit you from receiving those blessings anymore. I’ve spent a long time preparing my business to offer quality educational opportunities for fellow photographers and I’ve been so excited. After so much planning, I announced a workshop that I was going to host in April, but unfortunately, circumstances prevented me from carrying it out.

I worried that my plans to teach and mentor other photographers would have to be scrapped, but I realized that my true value as an entrepreneur comes from realizing that I just need to offer it in a different way. I can offer online courses or workshops, and while they’ll take a little more planning, it means I’ll be opened up to a much larger audience anyway than simply the local audience from before.

Another lesson I’ve learned is the importance of diversifying my income. If all my income was made from sporadically booked weddings, and if I wasn’t prepared with savings like I was this year, I would have been completely out of luck when all the brides stopped booking. I wouldn’t have been able to contribute to my family’s income and met our own needs. Thankfully, the decrease in bookings didn’t affect me as much because I offer a variety of services and because my husband and I have diversified our income.

Other ways you can diversify your income to counteract a decrease in clients is to offer online education as I mentioned before, to offer mentor or consulting sessions over Zoom, or to include more services in your offerings that aren’t dependent on so many outside factors, like taking on product photography that you can do in your home or something similar.

Lastly, I’ve learned the value of optimism in a leader. I don’t lead a team (my business is just my husband and me!) but I’m very aware of my audience and those in my network and industry who look to other photographers as an example, and I hope to be an example to them in return. I don’t see a point in being all doom and gloom and repeatedly bringing up something that we all are feeling the effects of and recovering from both mentally and emotionally, and that’s not because I’m choosing to pretend it doesn’t exist or simply have faith that “things will work out”. I’m merely confident in the people in my corner, in my fellow photographers, and in other small business owners that we have carried these responsibilities for our own businesses for a reason and we’re capable of persevering.

I’ve been really excited to see the new developments in business and entrepreneurship as other hustlers have learned to adapt and pivot. So many restaurants stepped up their game (SO QUICKLY!) to bring delivery and online order and I can only believe they’ll be better off for it in the future, even as things get back to normal. In what ways have you seen the world change for better as a result of this pandemic?