Adapt and Adopt during COVID-19 to help your business survive

One of the things that I always recommend is don't start digging a well when the house is on fire, right? So, what that means is plan. Have a strategic planning process as part of your business.

Although we have a long way to go, it feels like small businesses are on the cusp of reopening. But are you ready? Welcome to Marc Haine Live. I'm your host Marc Haine. You know, the COVID-19 pandemic has been a devastating situation for businesses all over the world. In North America, small businesses with under 20 employees are the hardest hit. Restaurants Canada suggests that according to the numbers, half of all the nation's independent restaurants will not survive past June, without some sort of rent relief program in place. As the nice weather moves in, it is really clear that COVID-19 will have a lasting impact on the tourism industry. But there are signs that the country is reopening. And I have to ask you, if restrictions were lifted in your industry, would you be ready? It's time regardless of your situation to take steps to adapt and adopt. And to help me today describe what that might look like is business consultant Ronnie Pawar. Ronnie works with businesses that want to create effective leaders and improve their operational achievement or operational— to achieve operational excellence through sustainable growth. He is the author of the Amazon best-selling book, Size Does Matter: Grow Your Business Thinking Big. He has extensive expertise in leadership of diverse workforces. operational management, and productivity improvement in various organizations including governments, the military, and of course, in the private sector. Ronnie believes that all businesses will take on a winning attitude and roadmap to success if they have the potential. And they will have the potential to reach their goals and their aspirations. Welcome Ronnie! Thank you so much for joining me today.

Hey Marc! Thank you. Thank you for having me here. It's my pleasure. I really appreciate you having me on your show today. I'm very excited about it. I'm really excited to talk to about this ongoing situation and how you and I can help them.

Yeah, it's absolutely amazing. The challenge of course is that people are sitting at home and people are either working in a modified operation or they're completely closed. So, why don't we start off first of all, let's talk about your philosophy of adapt and adopt. What does that mean for businesses today and what should they be doing?

Yeah. So adapt and adopt is something that I've practiced throughout my life. I think I picked it up somewhere when I was in the military. How do you adapt to different situations and how do you adopt to new environment, especially diversity? And I've lived around the globe and traveled a lot. I'm originally from India, grew up there, and then I lived in New Zealand for many years, and then I've lived in Toronto and I'm in Vancouver now. And I've worked in many different industries. So I'm kind of a jack of all trades, so to speak. But what it's given me is this ability to adapt and adopt. And that's the mindset that I've always carried with me. And I recommend to businesses that in situations like this, when there's crisis and businesses— this is an exceptional crisis.

Sure.

But even day-to-day running of your business, you come across situations which are stressful, that things will break down and things will never go according to the plan. That's what they say. You have a Plan A, Plan B, Plan C, and then everything goes out of the window. That's where you have to adapt and adopt.

And so, do you think that we are at that point where the Plan C is expired and everything is just going out the window now with the COVID-19?

You know, it's interesting that right now, it's a level playing field for all businesses. Whether it's Amazon, whether it is Tesla, whether it is a small mom-and-pop shop. All the business plans that anybody had, nobody had planned for this. including the government of the United States, who have, like, past 2 presidents have talked about a pandemic like this might happen one day, but they were not prepared for it. So nobody's planned for this. Everybody's on the same playing level, level playing field. So it is about what do you do now? Who's gonna take the initiative? Who's going to innovate? Who's going to adapt and adopt and come out as a winner? First of all, how do you survive this?

Mm-hmm.

And then when you— when, you know, the world wakes up and things open up again, How do you come out as a winner? How do you come out and rebound and bounce back as a business and take it in stride? Right.

And I guess that's a beautiful segue because as I mentioned, with businesses that are closed down or they have modified business volumes, they're suffering right now. And I know probably the very worst thing that people could do is sit on their thumbs and basically whine about it. What can operate— what do you think as a business consultant? What do you think operators could do now to take advantage of this situation? Let's say before they open. What can they be doing now?

Yeah. So, one of the things that I always recommend is don't start digging a well when the house is on fire, right? So, what that means is plan. You know, have a strategic planning process as part of your business, as part of your regular business. And I do understand and that's why I wrote my book. My book was inspired by this, that when I was working with the Ministry of Economic Development and Growth in Ontario, I found that a lot of businesses don't do that. They don't have any plan. They're running their business day to day. It's firefighting. It's just coming in every day, doing your best. Entrepreneurs, small businesses, they're good at what they do, but all the other things that they don't plan for, those are the things that get them in trouble in the longer term, right? So the best thing to do is plan. Always plan for your business. Do a business planning, strategy planning session every year, and then every month and every quarter, you know, do a check on that. How are you doing, right? However, if you haven't done that, I think this is— it's not too late. Do it right now. And it's not a— when I talk about strategy planning session, people think about these bunch of consultants sitting in a room, boardroom, and, you know, With Excel sheets and this and that whole other thing. It's like a daunting thought. But all it takes is talk to your family, talk to your friends, talk to your business partners, talk to your employees. It's a brainstorming session. How are we going to get over this? And I'll give you a great example. You mentioned restaurants earlier on. You come from a hospitality industry, so you'll really appreciate it. I think I saw it on CNN, one of their programs a couple of days ago. They showed this restaurant in California.

Yeah.

We know most of the restaurants are badly hit right now. They're talking about this restaurant that said, okay, what are our strengths? They did a quick SWOT analysis, which is strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. What are our strengths? What are the opportunities here? What can we do with what we have? They have employees. They have space. They have all their groceries. They quickly turned their restaurant into a mini grocery store.

Wow.

The first table as you enter is this toilet tissue paper table, which everybody needs. Restaurants have toilet tissue. They have that and they have all these vegetables. Instead of telling their suppliers to slow down, they asked their suppliers, hey, keep supplying and keep supplying more. They added all this other inventory to their restaurant and made it into a mini grocery store. It's about reinventing. They just quickly adapted to the situation. Right?

Yeah.

And they adopted a new model, right? So, it's reinventing, repurpose your business. So, it's thinking outside the box, challenging your status quo. And this only happens when you talk to your employees and your partners. Another example was of this bakery. So, I know my favorite bakery around the corner here is shut down right now. I love their coffee and I love their breads. But this bakery in California, they said, okay, what do we have? Again, SWOT analysis. What are our strengths? What are our resources? What do we have? What can we do with it? They have a lot of flour. Right now, flour is one thing everybody's baking at home. People are sitting at home and baking and cooking and stuff. Flour is missing. I mean, my girlfriend and I, we went to get some flour to bake and there was no flour on the grocery shelves. What they did is they started selling— they're selling their bakery products, so their sales are going okay, but they started selling flour. And they said now they're selling same amount of flour as their baking goods. So they've suddenly doubled their revenue, right?

Wow.

So it is about— and I'm not saying this is the same solution that everybody can do, but it shows you how businesses need to think outside the box and challenge their current model and come up with new models. We've seen so many examples. I mean, beer Distilleries, or they're making hand sanitizers.

And water.

And water. Hockey equipment manufacturing companies are making protective gear for our healthcare workers. Who else? Canada Goose, they're making scrubs for hospitals and stuff. So, you know, everybody's reinventing their model.

Yeah.

So, I think the world is going to be a different place when we come out of it.

Yeah, well, I guess today is not the time to turn around and look at an option and say, that's not what we do. We've never done that before. Or, we've tried that and it didn't work. Today is not the time to look at all the status quo excuses we make in our business when we are in perfect operation, right?

Totally.

And you're absolutely right. I am a big fan that when we do these kinds of conversations that we are really including everybody and every stakeholder within our business. Talking to the suppliers, talking to the employees, talking even to the customers to find out what their needs are at the point, right? So, I think you make a really good argument for a strategic plan that is not, oh my goodness, I have to go out and spend $100,000 for a consultant to give me a strategic plan for the next 10 years. That's not what it's about. But being that small owner-operators are really masters in their universe, They're not necessarily specialists in being able to do SWOT analysis, or strategic planning, or HR planning, or people planning, and that sort of thing. So, what kind of questions do you think owner-operators need to be asking at this point in order to move forward for the rest of their seclusion or their shutdown? And then, what do they need to ask in order to reopen their businesses?

Yeah, excuse me. So, I think the first and foremost thing is And this is, you know, still part of crisis mode, crisis planning, and coming out of it. I think people come first. So, they need to make sure that, first of all, their own health and safety, they need to worry about that. Mental health right now, everybody's talking about it. Mental health is important. Have a positive outlook. You have to believe to come out of this alive and survive in a surviving mode. You need to make sure that you have a positive mindset and you believe that you are going to survive this as a business and this is not going to shut down. Believing that you are going to come out of this is going to be— so that reminds me of this quote by Henry Ford. It says, I love to quote this one. I think I might have talked to you about this earlier as well, which says, so Henry Ford said, if you think you can, if you think you can't, Either way, you're right. So, believing that you are going to come out of this and your business is going to be there and continue to survive is the first thing.

Mm-hmm.

Second thing is— so, that's your mental health. Second thing is your employees and their families, making sure that you are talking to your employees and you take care of their health and safety if they're still working, if you're part of the essential business and you're still there, making sure. And I think all businesses are doing that, right? There are strict guidelines right now, and most majority of the business are following those guidelines.

Yeah.

The other thing is about the families. Don't leave— don't forget about the families of the employees. So, that's part of the empathy and leadership, right? You got to make sure that it's not just the employee but their families as well. You know, how they're doing in this situation. I was reading yesterday that one of the employers in US, he made— it's a real estate business. He made $1.6 million on the stock exchange. There's been a lot of volatility, and he gave all that $1.6 million to his 400 employees, right? So it's to take care of their families so that they feel safe working for you. Otherwise, you reopen and your employees are gone, how are you going to run the business, right? At the same time, be in communication with your suppliers, with your partners, with your landlords. That's a big issue right now for small businesses, right? Rent. The second month is coming to a close. The second month rent is coming up. I mean, as a small business, usually businesses have about 2 months of, you know, additional cash on hand. So, second month, a lot of businesses are going to struggle, right? And I believe the government program that they're, you know, the government announced, federal government announced the program for rental help for small businesses. I think there's a big challenge with that. A lot of landlords are not on board with that. So, but in communication and making sure that, you know, this is where you bank on your negotiation skills as a business owner and the relationships that you've built with with your partners and suppliers and landlords. That's what you need to leverage on, right?

Right.

The other thing is common sense. Make this data-driven decision. Check the facts, see what's going on. People are right now, there's so much misinformation or disinformation going on there, and people are reacting to that. I think you got to check your facts and then make Use common sense and make fact-based decisions, right? That is very important. And then plan when— so if we have to reopen on Monday, so I think you were mentioning that in our last conversation that in Alberta they just announced that as of Monday, they announced on Friday that as of Monday all the dental offices are going to be open and they're not prepared. A lot of them are not prepared.

Well, and that was the thing is, you know, when the time comes that It's going to be time to open. I know and specifically, the reason why you and I had that conversation was because I was outlining the fact that even though the government says, okay, you can open on Monday, there are some dental offices that aren't ready to open on Monday. They have still so much upkeep to do to their properties to create the safety for their patients and for their employees that they're not ready yet. And the biggest thing about that is if People in your industry are opening and you're not ready. When it comes time to servicing your customer base, they're going to go to the people who are ready to be served by the people who are ready to serve them. And potentially, people could lose out on a great deal of market.

Yes, so that's why where I feel the airline industry did a really, really good job where they were in communication with their customers when this whole thing hit the fan. So I feel that businesses need to be in communication with their employees, partners, etc., but most importantly with their customers. Their customers need to know, hey, this is when we are likely to reopen, or this is where we are, this is how we can help you, or just give them information. Just stay in constant touch with your customers so that they know you exist.

Right.

And you are there. And when you reopen, the customers are going to be back. Restaurants are a great example right now, right? I mean, some of the restaurants are doing cloud kitchen. where they have their customer database, they've been in touch with those customers, and they're saying, hey, curbside pickup, we are open, come on, and this is a special, you order and we'll give you free wine with it.

Yeah.

So that kind of stuff. So how do you get creative around it? And how do you plan for reopening? So if the businesses open at short notice, you're ready to go. That's not when you start planning, right? So, so those are the things that, that are important from that. Flexibility and agility is important in this timeframe, right? Flexibility. So as a business, like you mentioned earlier, to your point, you know, do whatever it takes, you know. So don't do, hey, we are— we only do dry cleaning, we don't do anything else. If you have— you are a dry cleaner, you're in the cleaning business, you've got chemicals, you've got other know-how, you've got employees, etc. Why wouldn't you go and steam clean, you know, go there and help steam clean grocery stores right now? Right. Or, you know, anything else like hospitals or essential working places, et cetera. Like, you can remodel yourself. So, that flexibility is important and agility is important because you've got to do things very quickly right now. You can't wait for 6 months, 1 year to move. Otherwise, you lose the first mover advantage as a business, right? From a strategy point of view, first mover advantage is important. I mean, innovation is only good for a very small amount of time until everybody else catches up and then you've got to—

And they do it.

Do it all over again. So yeah, that's the thing.

Great! Hey, if you're just joining us right now, I am speaking with Ronnie Pawar, who is a business consultant in British Columbia. He specializes in dealing with small businesses who need to start thinking differently and thinking outside the box in order to be successful. So Ronnie, we talked about this idea. We talked a lot about kind of this idea of finances. Right now, if anything is going to help any businesses right now, it's some level of financial relief. We've heard that there are government programs going on right now. Again, if a small business owner was to come to you and say, Ronnie, help me. What is the first thing you would tell them that they really need to get on with?

Yeah, good question. Very good question. So right now, I would say, first of all, have you talked to your landlord, right? If your rent is coming, if you have a physical space and And you have a landlord, have you talked to your landlord, right? Go and talk to them. See how flexible they are. How much are they willing to work with you? And negotiate, renegotiate the terms if you have to, right?

Mm-hmm.

This is the time when it's crisis time, you have to renegotiate the terms. This isn't— these are not normal times. Talk to your bank. There are government programs, there are government loans, there's wage subsidy. The government is also offering a rent program. It's not taken off yet. I think there's some hiccups there, but go and talk to your bank. That is very important. Call them, book an appointment as soon as possible. If you haven't done it, do it right now. Talk to them. Talk to your accountant. If you don't have an accountant, then I would say get an accountant. Talk to some of your peers and get an accountant, but talk to your accountant. Your accountants are pretty clued in as to what the programs are and what is the criteria to qualify for these programs because these programs come with certain criteria. So, I would say those are the things. And again, it comes down— I come back to that, you know, when the house is on fire, don't start digging a well, right? So, I always advise businesses to have a line of credit. As a small business, you have to have a line of credit that you can bank upon in times like this, right?

Right.

The beauty— I mean, business loan is, yes, you need capital injection to grow your business, but line of credit is important because in times like this, you can draw upon that line of credit and you use it as you— you pay as you use it.

Mm-hmm.

That's the beauty of the line of credit. I find a lot of small businesses don't think on those lines. They don't have a line of credit, or at least a substantial line of credit that can help them carry through. You've got to do that when the times are good.

Right.

And the business is successful. Right now, if you shut down, etc., like everybody's going to be, you know, especially the lenders, they're going to be very risk-averse at this time. And they're not going to give you a line of credit if you don't already have one.

So, it's only the government programs that are going to help make that happen for them. Whatever, like there's a $40,000, I think, loan program on now. But you're absolutely right. You know, it's so funny because I've known lots of operators And when I suggest that they're doing really well, they have money in the bank, it's like, now's the time to get a line of credit. And they look at me and they go, why do I need a line of credit? I don't need the money.

Yeah.

Until now.

Until now. Exactly. And I've got an example of— he's a dear friend of ours. He runs 2 gyms and we talked about it last year where I highly recommended getting a line of credit. And he was on board, but it just got delayed for some reason. It wasn't a priority. And then this happened. And at this point, I think— and then he had obviously all the gyms are closed down, shut down right now, right? And there's no revenue coming in. Nobody's gonna give you a line of credit, right?

Right.

So, so those are the challenges. The other thing is friends and family, right? Don't forget your network, close network, your partners. They might be able to help in this time, right? And obviously The other piece is do your cash flow analysis to know where do you stand. So, what are your receivables and what are your payables and what is your inventory? So, do that analysis. And in this, there's a business metric called— what do we call it? Cash flow conversion cycle. So, in this case, negative is good.

Right.

So, in cash flow conversion cycle, that means how fast can you convert your cash into inventory and then sell that inventory, get it off the shelves, and convert it into cash, and that cycle continues. That's how you make money, right?

Right.

So, doing that analysis in this time and build scenarios. I always say build scenarios. Do your worst-case scenario, do your best-case scenario, and in the middle, and see what— and plan for these scenarios. So, if worst case happens, what am I going to do? What's my plan? Best case, What is my plan? You know, so do these different models based on your cash flow. It's pretty simple. Most businesses, business owners know how to do their cash flow analysis. They know what their receivables are. They know what they have to pay out and what their inventory is going to be, all that kind of stuff. And it's about figuring that out. So that is very important in this time to see what those different models look like and how are you going to react to those situations. Right.

And, you know, again, you know, part of this is to some operators, All they just heard was blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah because they don't know what a cash flow model is. And this I guess brings me to the idea that a lot of operators start their businesses on their own. They hire a bookkeeper or an accountant because they have to hire a bookkeeper or accountant. But they figure they know their business. And when something like this comes in that's this unprecedented, Yeah. they don't realize that they don't have to do this alone.

Right?

And they can hire business consultants. They can hire CPAs. They can get people in to help them with this information. And I think it's interesting because I mean, this has just been absolutely invaluable information, Roddy. So, I really appreciate your generosity in taking time with me today. But I read your book and again, your book skyrocketed to Amazon's number 1 best-selling list. And I think it's a a really good primer I think for small businesses to get in and be able to almost checklist what they need to do to succeed. Can you tell me a little bit about your book?

Yes. So, my book was— thank you for mentioning it, by the way. And thank you for reading it. Thank you for your support. So yeah, so the book was inspired by my work with small businesses and entrepreneurs. I found that they don't do the strategy work. And they— I come from different industries. I've worked in, you know, big multinationals and some things that I took for granted coming from that environment, you know, part of the training and coaching and learning. And I've got an MBA. So all those things, like, to me were second nature. When I started working with some of the SMEs, I found that, no, they don't know about this. They know really A lot about what they do. If they manufacture an iPhone cover, they know all about it, the material, the resources, how to, you know, what to do with it, how to mold it, how to, you know, do whatever with it. But do they— they don't necessarily know how to scale their business.

Yes.

Right? They don't necessarily know how to get government funding and grants. They don't necessarily know how to get financing, right? So how to do business planning and strategy and all those kind of things. That's how the book got inspired. It's like almost a mini MBA for a business written in very simple terms. I'm not like a professional writer or anything. This was my first book and it's written in a very simple form. I haven't used too much business jargon, et cetera, all that kind of stuff. One of the things that I offer is, hey, if you want to bounce ideas, if you want to brainstorm, call me.

Okay.

I'll happily give half an hour of my time for free. And if you feel after that, you know, there's value, you're more than welcome to continue to work with me. I would love that. But yeah, call me even right now. I'm open to receiving calls from businesses who want to bounce ideas or who need help and call me. So you can go to— I believe you've got my contact details if you don't mind them flashing at some point. Yep. And go to my book website. It's called Size Does Matter: Grow Your Business Thinking Big. So the website is sizedoesmatter.biz, not .com, .biz. So go there and from there you can get in touch with me or you can go to my— oh, this is what I'm doing for myself, so I'm walking the talk. I'm working on my website, so my website is currently down. If you go to check my business website, magnumgrowth.biz, I've taken it down. I'm working on it. So taking this kind of downturn to work on my business rather than in the business when I can work in the business. So that's what I recommend to businesses. Work on your business. Build your strategy. Build your website. Build your customer database, etc. Those things that you always wanted to do but didn't get to. Do that right now. So, you can go to magnumgrowth.biz.

I'll have the link posted down below on this video so people will be able to get to you. I'll also put the link to the book as well. As I mentioned, if you're not a technical business person and you're just a small operator and need to kind of have a little checklist of some things that you should maybe address within your business, then absolutely pick up Ronnie's book. It will not be wasted time. And again, one thing that I strongly recommend is that you share the information. You take, read the book yourself but then pass it off to your employees and have them read it. Because something might resonate that somebody will turn around and say, oh, I have an idea. How about this? And it's something that maybe you haven't thought of. It's a really important component I think when we get and we involve our employees as much That's a great point.

That's a great point. I always say collaborate as much as you can. Collaborators, especially during this time as a small business, collaboration is very important.

Yes. Yeah, it's very important. Hey, Ronnie, thank you so much. I really appreciate that you took time with us today. And I know how busy you are with trying to— you're working on your business right now. You're getting ready to relaunch your website. Any idea when that's going to happen? When's the big launch date?

Yeah, hopefully within the next month we should have it up and running.

Nice. So definitely by the end of July.

Oh no.

My math is no good.

Hopefully by end of May we should have it up and running. That's a stretch. I don't want to overpromise and underdeliver.

There you go.

I think realistically we should be up and running in the next 2 weeks, but I'm Excellent.

Well done. Congratulations. Hey, thank you again for joining.

Thank you, Marc. Thank you for having me here. It's been such a pleasure talking to you, and I love your show, by the way. I've listened to all the other vlogs that you have put up there, and I love them, especially the one on mindset with Bill Lee. That was great. So in this time, the mindset is very important.

Oh, it so is, especially for the mental health bit. Thank you again for your time today.

My pleasure. Thank you. Thank you so much.

So, if you find that you are challenged, you have right now. So, we're going to post Ronnie's information down below. But at the same token, my offer stands. Since the beginning of COVID-19, I have said from the very beginning, if you want to brainstorm some ideas, if you want to turn around and say, bring your team together, And give me a call for a 30-minute brainstorm session. And I promise you, this is absolutely no sell. This is all about you brainstorming session. I am more than happy to give you that time. I'm more than happy to listen to what you have, understand where you're at. Maybe I can recommend some resources for you. I don't know. I mean, until I hear your story and I hear what you're up against, I I really truly don't know what— how I can help you. But bring your team together. Let's do a conference call. I am more than happy to set that up for you so that we can pick your brain a little bit, find out where you are, find out what your needs are. Because I know this is an incredibly, incredibly challenging time. And as Ronnie said, you cannot do this alone. Don't expect that you can pull yourself out all by yourself. Use the resources around you. And again, give me a call.

Thanks, Marc.

Give me a call. Give Ronnie a call. More than happy to have you. And again, my name is Marc Haine. You're listening to Marc Haine Live. It's my absolute pleasure to serve you. And please, please dare to be the exception.