Acclimatising to the lack of stability in Business

I live in a modern subdivision in Northwood in Christchurch that has its own community. One of our neighbours decided to have a go at setting up a Facebook community page for the neighbourhood and I thought as an introduction I would write a hello message from my partner and myself. It turned into a bit of a novel so I thought it would also segue nicely into a blog.

Hello everyone how are you doing? Today we have some of our freedom back which is nice, so there’s a lot of local businesses out there that would appreciate our support.

I’m not sure what everyone does in our local community? My partner and I used to work in a shared office space in Ferrymead called Genius Co-working. It was pretty awesome working with other business people, a lot of good networking happened, however when the first COVID lockdown was enforced, we dragged our offices back home and this is where we’re still at.

My business networking company ELITE : SIX that focused on getting like-minded people together, face-to-face at local bars and cafes, took a big hit. We now only have one meeting that meets locally here in Belfast, Styx and Stone Restaurant & Bar, instead of eight different meetings all over Christchurch. My partner HELEN : OAKES who is a photographer, that specialises in sports photography had most of her events, well all of her events cancelled.

We run a few online shops selling products and if it wasn’t for those shops, we probably would be up the river without a paddle. We’ve managed to survive even though we have had to reinvent ourselves dramatically over the last 18 months.

So I’ve created a whole arm of online workshops and I have managed to sell my first course just last week, so it is still a work in progress!

Helen has diversified, she specialises in taking branding photography and product photography and I’m lucky because I’ve got tons of photos helping me build my personal brand.

So I’ll be honest, it’s been quite exhausting these days I feel like I’m trapped at home working twice as hard and struggling to make ends meet. We are managing and I think we’re going to be okay! The purpose of this Facebook group is to build a community, ironically one of my strengths is helping people survive and thrive in business. What about you guys? How are you doing?

What ways have you had to acclimatise to the current climate? If you look at the word acclimatise it’s normally used by people who climb mountains, who are lacking oxygen and they need to take breaks regularly until the body gets used to the adjustment. These lockdowns are like breaks and sometimes used to help us acclimatise.

I’m not sure about you, but I feel like I’m climbing a mountain and I’m not really sure if I want to climb this mountain, but it is amazing what you can accomplish when you don’t have any alternatives.

How can we help each other? What obstacles are you trying to overcome at the moment? Let’s see if we can work together as a community and help each other.