Your Dallas Small Business COVID-19 Survival Guide
Small businesses have always been the underdogs.
As a local business servicing not only the DFW Metroplex, but also the rest of the continental United States, Dallas Courier knows what it’s like to pour every effort into the successes that come our way.
If you’re a small business owner or an employee of a small business, you’ve been in this survival situation before. Maybe your business is blessed with longevity to have survived the brief recession of Y2K and the Great Recession in 2008, only to face the recession driven by COVID-19.
The trials that have come to small businesses due to COVID-19 are certainly unprecedented.
From fear of going to work, to local and federal mandates on what is sanitary, to forced shut downs of businesses deemed “nonessential”, these are turbulent times for small businesses like ourselves.
We’re all asking ourselves one thing: how are we going to survive this?
Unfortunately, here at Dallas Courier, we aren’t experts in surviving pandemics. We’re experts in lots of things, including:
Route deliveries
Out of town transportation
And more
When our customers call us up asking for expert advice in the areas of transportation and logistics, we give it to them. After four decades in this industry, our small business team is confident we have an expert answer to your delivery questions and concerns.
But for questions about surviving the COVID-19 pandemic as a small business, we’re going to refer to the experts. We’ve gleaned some great information from subject matter experts on small business survival during COVID. We’d love to share more about what we’ve learned here:
Accept Help
It’s tough to accept a handout, but in this case, swallowing your pride in order to protect your investment and your people is a smart move. The United States Small Business Administration offers guidance on available government funding for small businesses. Many opportunities are still available to small businesses, including those that fall under the CARES Act.
Entrepreneur also suggests creating a three month business plan, including all your necessary expenses for the next several months. Go directly to those institutions- the bank, landlord, and suppliers- and find out if there are options for spreading out the costs. This Entrepreneur article also suggests extending the same grace to other small businesses that your business works with. Look out for one another.
Reach Out to the Community
Even if your business is reducing operations, closed temporarily, or trying to go contactless, Inc. suggests reaching out to your clients and possible clients to build relationships during this down time. However, the Inc. article warns that this isn’t the time for a sales push. Instead, use this time to learn how you can change your operations to help your clients. If they aren’t willing to engage now, back off. Those who are willing to discuss might give you some ways your business can accommodate to assist your community during these times as a reliable provider of a good or service.
Adapt
The final, and most important tip in the Dallas small business survival guide is to adapt. You can read examples of many of the different adaptations small business owners have made in this TIME magazine article. In it, small business owners say that hard times like this give opportunity for creativity, ingenuity, and generosity.
From Mom and Pop restaurants offering take home meals to small business owners teaming up to create neighborhood to-go boxes of local goods, meeting your customers where they’re at now is the key to surviving in the future.
Like we said before, we aren’t experts in COVID-19 survival for small businesses. But we’ve put these tips to good use! Dallas Courier has adapted many of our regular services to meet the needs of our clients during the pandemic.
Instead of our regular large corporate deliveries, we’re shifting our focus to residential deliveries for those corporations. That includes:
routine deliveries between a central organization and remote employees
redistribution of items from one site to another
transportation of products from individuals and clients
delivery of personal documents and gifts
Supporting our clients while they work remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic is one example of how Dallas Courier is adapting to meet the needs of our Metroplex customers.
How can we serve your organization? Call us and talk it over. We’re ready to create a logistics plan unique to your Dallas small business’s needs during COVID-19.
Contact us at 972-680-8000, or fill in a quote request on the web. From one Dallas small business to another, we’ll pull through it together, North Texans.