COVID-19 has changed the world, and the businesses that adapt are the ones that’ll survive. For better or worse, most companies have discovered their pre-coronavirus complacency in their business’s roles, strategies, and tactics—and found themselves in a new global business landscape that demands unique skill sets and talents.
The coronavirus forced companies to evolve practically overnight, and many industries feared they wouldn’t be able to keep up. However, many have discovered that these new business adaptations and “temporary” substitutes are performing better than they’d ever imagined.
We’ve learned that focusing more time and resources online provides a pretty healthy ROI and that it doesn’t take expensive real estate and lengthy commutes to complete tasks that could be done from a home office. Operations are changing, and tactics are evolving—to keep up, businesses, leaders, and employees are going to have to master new must-have post-pandemic skills.
Nothing Will Ever Be the Same Again
Or at least not for a very long time. Brand-new operational trends are emerging, and most will stick for a while—some, forever. Here are a few top-of-mind changes that’ll require special skill sets to address:
Contactless: Contactless won’t be a passing trend—expect businesses to continue evolving to reduce touchpoints even after the worst of COVID-19 is behind us.
Social distancing: While 6-foot social distancing won’t be a forever requirement, every organization and industry is going to have to rethink how to make some form of social distancing a painless norm.
Crisis planning: Before COVID-19, a business’s crisis plan was often a quickly whipped-up document shoved in a file cabinet somewhere. Moving forward, expect a bit more due diligence to go into creating plans, backup plans, and backup-backup plans.
Remote work: Remote work was on the rise before coronavirus landed, but now businesses have had to adopt it quickly out of necessity. Expect businesses to retain and evolve their work-from-home policies to optimize efficiencies and reduce waste.
Legacy rules: COVID-19 has taught the world (especially Americans) that our unquestioned rules of the past aren’t as set in stone as we once thought. Eviction bans, debt forgiveness, and extensive government loans aren’t fantasies—they’re attainable in times of need. So why not in times of normalcy?
These are just some of the changes businesses have faced—and will continue to face for the foreseeable future. Companies will have to hire, train, and reskill their workforces to adapt to a brand-new business landscape that’ll continue to change week by week and month by month.
New skills are needed, and businesses don’t have years to waste acquiring them. Most of the following trending skills were important before COVID-19—but now they’re non-negotiable.
13 Must-Have Post-Pandemic Skills
1. Pivoting Quickly
Before this global pandemic, business life was already changing very rapidly. New research, technology, and data kept us constantly on our toes. Now, amidst a confusing virus-occupied world, companies have had to pivot quicker than ever before.
Businesses that failed to evolve quickly in the wake of COVID-19 have been left behind—it’s hard to play catch-up when stuck in a downward spiral. However, those that fearlessly pivoted to adapt their business operations, supply chains, and offerings are surviving—and some are thriving.
Moving forward, the ability to pivot won’t be a nice-to-have factor—it’ll be a need-to-have one. The coronavirus’s gradual departure and rapid recurrence will force policies and procedures to change once again (and possibly in new ways). Businesses that can acclimate on the fly will claim the majority of any early-bird opportunities.
2. Supply Chain Optimization
When the virus first hit (and still, somewhat, to this day), hot products flew off the shelves and stayed sold out. Everything from toilet paper to hand sanitizer to webcams practically disappeared overnight—nowhere to be found.
Businesses that sell these much-wanted products experienced a huge spike in sales—but then they weren’t able to sustain their inventory. This gap in availability left holes for competitors to swoop in, and sweep up, the desperate market.
Supply chains will continue to experience volatile shock waves and massive disruptions for years to come due to customers’ COVID-19-related chaotic purchasing habits. Automated systems and fancy algorithms only work in a predictable environment. Managers are going to need to get their hands dirty, dig into the data manually, and start making more proactive sourcing and stocking decisions to nail supply chain optimizations.
Some businesses are going local to build shorter, more reliable supply chains, but this also limits manufacturing potential. Plus, it’s harder to find competitive pricing close to home. To maximize sales and business efficiencies, companies will need supply-chain-savvy professionals that can keep the sourcing-selling cycle going despite volatile shock waves.
3. Contactless Know-How
Before COVID-19, contactless payment was a silly, often unused feature that some products touted, like Apple Pay and Android Pay. Now, however, contactless is the only way many businesses can open their doors.
With the likely re-emergence of the virus, businesses will need to already have the know-how to go contactless. Whether that’s pay, delivery, or other services, contactless is the future.
Contactless pay via apps like PayPal and Venmo still lacks traction in the US due to trust issues. Americans are just too comfortable with plastic cards and sweaty cash. Businesses will need to get creative to build confidence in contactless pay to open up their doors to more business.
4. Crisis Management
COVID-19 was a not-so-gentle wake-up call to the reality that a devastating crisis can lurk just around the corner. Businesses without a plan were left floundering—and if they didn’t possess the skills to pivot quickly, they went under.
Crisis management has always taken a backseat to other business initiatives. Companies talk about always being prepared, but they give as much attention to crisis planning as 6th graders do to their semiannual fire drill. In the future, expect businesses to finally invest more in crisis management experts and resources.
However, crisis management isn’t the sole responsibility of the individual with “crisis” in their title—every team and manager needs to be responsible and ready. When a crisis strikes, every employee should already know how to respond and act without waiting for the CEO to convene an all-hands meeting.
5. Remote Proficiency
Remote work was already on the rise, but now COVID-19 has become a catalyst in its rapid, widespread adoption. Despite remote work’s generational appeal, it’s not inherently for everyone. Some individuals, teams, and businesses work better in collaborative, in-person spaces. However, that’s becoming less possible for the remainder of 2020—and likely into the future.
Remote work has plenty of potential benefits, but they’re not all gimmes. Businesses will need to work strategically to empower their employees to complete work efficiently from home.
6. Tech Savvy
In conjunction with remote proficiency is the need for increased tech savvy:
Employees will need to learn to do their own troubleshooting when they don’t have an IT pro sitting across the room
Individuals will need to master tools like G Suite, Slack, Asana, Zoom, and others to foster teamwork, communication, and collaboration
Advanced technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), and big data will help protect businesses during future pandemics
Whether you work in a restaurant, an accounting office, or a marketing firm, you’ll need to be tech savvy to function in a post-coronavirus world.
7. Data Literacy
Data is the fuel for business performance. The right data can help prevent business disruptions, financial mistakes, and supply chain failures. More data doesn’t equal better performance—but more data literacy does.
Due to hiring challenges, companies will need to train their employees on how to manage data. In an Experian study, results showed that 84% of businesses see data literacy as a core competency that all employees need to have in the next 5 years.
8. Financial Planning
With SBA coronavirus loans drying up, it’s becoming critical for businesses to know how to acquire, budget, and use capital well. Before COVID-19, cash flow was already the 2nd biggest startup killer—quarantines, curfews, business closures, and social distancing have only made the problem worse.
Companies need financial planners, accountants, and bookkeepers who can track and plan for all their cash needs. Cash cushions need to be rebuilt (or started), lines of credit need to be obtained, and business plans need to be reevaluated.
2020 is off to a rocky start. A global pandemic, civil unrest, record-breaking unemployment—it’s a lot to process. It’s easy to get lost in the social media posts, exaggerated news, and Trump’s Twitter feed right now, so leaders and employees need to exercise emotional intelligence in response.
Individuals need to overcome stress, anxiety, and fear to control and express their emotions better. Those who do will stay calm and make clearer decisions—those who don’t will make blind judgments and rash decisions. Now more than ever, we need level-headed employees to keep their businesses moving in the right direction.
10. Leadership
COVID-19 will sort the true leaders from the fakes. During the good times, it’s not too difficult for leadership to keep the ship afloat, but when a storm is battering your business from all sides, that’s when you discover who’s really worth the big paycheck.
We’re facing some dark times right now, and it’s going to take exceptional leaders to motivate employees to do their best work, avoid distractions, and overcome barriers. Everyone from the C-suite to the front lines will require greater leadership capacity to deal with expanded roles and responsibilities.
11. Problem Solving
Most COVID-19-related problems are clear and unavoidable, like store closures and cash flow issues. Other problems, however, won’t be so easy to spot. The ability to search, find, and fix problems is a rare but valuable skill.
Many employees are content to do the bare minimum and only solve issues that directly impact their work. Problem-solving employees don’t settle for “good enough”—they proactively look for deficiencies and develop practical resolutions.
12. Communication
Communication has been—and always will be—a foundational workplace skill. But COVID-19 has shifted the ways that we communicate, and now even the most likable individuals will have to tailor their communications to receive and deliver messages effectively.
We all know those individuals who text without punctuation, emoji, or voice—we’re always questioning whether they’re angry, annoyed, or just too busy to bother. In a world where business communications are primarily happening over email and messaging apps, it’s critical to hone written communication skills.
Beyond text, body language has become more important than ever. If you’re chatting with your teams and colleagues virtually, you’ll need to ensure that your face, posture, and appearance align with your communications.
13. Creativity
Businesses are rewriting their playbooks for everything from sales to marketing to manufacturing. There’s no guide or proven best practices for operating a particular business in a particular industry during a lengthy global pandemic.
It’ll take creative minds—from the CEO to the interns—to develop ideas and solutions for brand-new ways of doing business. Explore crazy ideas. Experiment with innovative solutions.
Don’t be afraid to fail. The post-pandemic time period is when risk-enthusiastic businesses have the opportunity to claim massive rewards—rewards that’ll have us thinking a decade from now, “Ah, I wish I would have done that then.”
How to Reskill Your Workforce
Millions of jobs have been lost to COVID-19. Even with companies ramping up their hiring, it’ll be extremely difficult to overcome the massive unemployment claims soaring across the country.
If your business is in a position to hire for the skills mentioned above, then you’re in a good place. However, if you’re not in a position to hire, you’ll need to reskill your workforce to adapt to these necessary traits.
Identify the skills your business needs most: Look through the skills we’ve listed above and identify which ones are most crucial for your business and industry. What skills does your current workforce lack? Which ones do they currently possess?
Build skill sets: Focus on skills that will be universally beneficial, regardless of an employee’s specific role or responsibility. Role-specific skills are important, too, but everyone needs certain base qualities.
Launch tailored learning journeys: You’ll need to think ahead strategically to identify not only the skills your team needs now but the skills they’ll need 12 to 18 months down the road.
Start now, test, and iterate: Launch as soon as possible so that you can see what works—and what doesn’t. This will give you time to make changes and slowly perfect the training model. Don’t wait to get all the details right before launching—start now, test rapidly, and make changes.
Act like a small company: Research shows that reskilling programs at small businesses are more effective than large ones, despite the bigger companies’ access to more resources. Be agile, move quickly, and be willing to fail.
Protect learning budgets: Maintain your employee-training budgets, even when you’re making cuts to adjust to COVID-19 impacts. Your employees are your #1 asset—don’t delay in investing in them.
Be Prepared for a Post-Pandemic World
COVID-19 has likely caused the biggest worldwide economic shock since World War II. Few alive have had to rebuild broken economies, businesses, jobs, and livelihoods. You won’t have all the answers, but you can give yourself a fighting chance by acquiring the skills necessary to thrive in a post-pandemic world.
Don’t wait until your business is forced in a new direction or you’re placed far outside your comfort zone to start adopting these skills. Take the time now. Make a conscious effort. You won’t be able to do it all at once, but if you follow McKinsey’s 6-part process, you’ll be better able to identify and learn these necessary skills—1 at a time.
Whether you’re ready for it or not, big changes are coming. Coronavirus has shown us just how much the world can change overnight—you need to be prepared to act and not just react. With these skills in your back pocket, you’ll be ready to navigate whatever curveballs life throws at you.
When you think of a business, what comes to mind? An office, cubicles, computers, raw materials, machines, inventory, etc.?
While these elements play a role in every company, they are not the most critical asset: the single most important part of any business is its staff. Employees are the fuel that drives your company forward—without dedicated employees, your business will never thrive.
You can certainly survive with clock-punchers, but you will never create something truly great. The most successful businesses in the world are the ones that have found the secret ingredient to employee motivation: a shared purpose.
A sense of purpose is an intrinsic yearning to create something larger than ourselves: a big-picture idea and goal. When your employees have a sense of purpose, everyone—even those in the most entry-level positions—is focused on how their job moves the entire company closer to its vision.
Purpose guides employees through their daily work.
Very few jobs are glamorous all of the time. While the chef in a restaurant gets credit for the food and the bartender can create exciting new drinks, both still do hours of cleaning, prep work, and grunt work. Plus, additional team members like waitstaff, dishwashers, and bussers are all essential to the customer experience, even if they are rarely appreciated.
A shared sense of purpose can guide the entire team, from the head chef to the hostess, which drives up customer satisfaction and growth.
“Purpose can help set a north star not only for the company as a whole, but also for departments, groups, and teams,” Guusje Bendeler writes at thinkPARALLAX. “Informed by the big aspirational north star, setting smaller, more tangible, and achievable goals can help subsets within the company grasp how their work matters to the bigger picture.”
If you have ever struggled to motivate employees or tie their day-to-day work to the benefit of the company, they may have lacked a sense of purpose. Purpose is the “why” that employees answer when doing their work. Why should they care? Why should they do their best? It all ties back to purpose.
Purpose-driven case study: Kiva.
Several companies deliberately cultivate a sense of purpose—and one brand that goes above and beyond is Kiva, an international nonprofit that strives to bring financial services to those who cannot access them.
Kiva uses its platform to form partnerships with brands like Bobbi Brown, Pure Leaf, and eBay. It facilitates opportunities for companies to instill a sense of purpose within their employees. These large brands donate money in the form of Kiva credits to their customers or employees. Whoever receives the credits can support a cause they care about by funding Kiva borrowers.
For example, Hewlett-Packard and Kiva launched Matter to a Million, which set aside $7
million to provide each of Hewlett-Packard’s 275,000+ global employees with a $25 credit.
These credits helped borrowers in 82 different countries and came with a 97% repayment rate. This program improves the global economy while giving HP employees a sense of purpose within their organization. HP employees work hard knowing that the more profitable the company is, the more it will likely contribute to communities in need.
Anyone can have a sense of purpose.
You don’t need to operate a nonprofit to lead employees with a strong sense of purpose. Every company can encourage team members to take pride in their work.
One of the most famous examples of employees finding their sense of purpose came from Yale School of Management researcher Amy Wrzesniewski. She interviewed hospital janitors who found a strong sense of purpose in their work.
They didn’t see removing trash and mopping floors as “just a job”—instead, they believed it an essential part of supporting patient healing. Not only did the janitorial staff work hard to create a clean and welcoming environment, but they also talked to patients while they did so (even when those patients were in a coma) and changed the art in the hospital rooms frequently. When a patient made a recovery, the janitors took pride in knowing that they contributed.
It can be easy for employees to feel like their work goes unnoticed or is less important than others’ work, which is why companies need to work hard to communicate and build a shared sense of purpose.
A sense of purpose can help companies improve employee morale and increase customer satisfaction. This shared organization-wide mission creates a motivated and empowered ecosystem that pushes growth and success forward.
If you can build a shared purpose in your company, you’ll see happier and more productive employees who genuinely enjoy their work. This mindset will not just improve the success of your business—it’ll also help you to retain quality talent and mitigate turnover.
Give your team something to care about, and the results might surprise you.
What's in a name? More than you might think. As a small business owner, you have complete freedom to choose the title you want: CEO, owner, president, boss, head honcho, accounting ninja—whatever you want. However, names carry meaning, and you want to make sure yours delivers the message you intend.
If you've gone down the rabbit hole of potential titles, you're probably feeling overwhelmed. Does "founder" really capture all that you've done (and still do) for the business? CEO—aren't you more like CEO, CFO, CPO, and every other chief something officer?
To help you find a title that captures who you are and what you do, we've put together a quick guide to entrepreneur titles. Below, we'll walk you through a few potential common titles that might fit you perfectly—then, we'll help you know how to pick one.
Potential names and how to choose one.
Before we take a look at your potential job title options, you need to know what you're looking for. You'll want a name that captures your role and feels right. If CEO feels to corporate-y for you, then forget about—there's plenty of other options.
CEO
CEO, or chief executive officer, is a common title for the man or woman in charge. The title usually has an air of magnitude to it, suggesting leadership over a large, established company. Sometimes, it's too big for a small business owner, but other times it's just right—that's for you to decide.
Founder
Founder has a startup feel to it—like you built the business from the foundation up. It's gained traction in recent years, but it only works if you actually started the company. If you purchased an existing business and did more of the buying than the founding, this title might not be right for you.
President
President carries a similar weight to CEO, and it also distinguishes itself from a C-suite. If you plan on building an executive team, you'll want to consider the titles your peers might have—or you might just end up with more than one president.
Owner
Owner has a more humble undertone to it. It doesn't convey the same authority as CEO or president, but it clearly denotes who the decision-maker is. If you're an owner of a small business or are a solo entrepreneur, this title could be the one.
Principal
The title of principal falls right in between owner and CEO on the authoritarian scale. It's more official than owner but less grandiose than CEO—making it perfect if you own a small agency or consulting business that’s trying to look and feel bigger than it actually is.
General manager
General managers are usually in charge of the entire company or the company's operations. While the general manager isn't always the owner of a business, they are usually the ones responsible for making the big decisions.
If you've looked over all these job titles and none of them feel right—don't panic. You're the boss—you can create your own unique title.
Own a bar? Become the CBO—chief beverage officer. Run a digital marketing business? Dub yourself the #MediaMaster.
The best part about being a small business owner is you get to call the shots. The world does enough of telling you what you can and can't do—when it comes to choosing your job title, you're the one in control. Have fun, be creative, and pick (or create) a title that perfectly fits you.
Small business owner or entrepreneur?
Small business owner and entrepreneur are often used interchangeably, but the titles don't necessarily mean the same thing. Running your own business doesn't make you an entrepreneur.
Entrepreneurs come up with innovative ideas that carry a high level of risk. Their ventures usually target rapid growth and high returns. Thus, entrepreneurs have the potential to leave a bigger impact on their community and the world—and they also have the potential to epically fail and disappear into the startup void.
Small business owners, on the other hand, tend to focus on proven methods. They're not inventing new products or services—they're just identifying needs in the community and providing the apparent solution. For example, if there's no gas station for miles, then it makes sense for a small business owner to capitalize on the opportunity. Or if the closest pizza joint is in the next town, then a small business owner might want to start one closer to home. Small business owners still operate under a certain level of risk (as all business owners do), but less so than entrepreneurs.
Choose your title and own it.
As Juliet proclaimed: "What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet."
Regardless of your title, pick one and own it. Yes, a name is important, but don't let the name change you, your business, or your responsibilities. For even if you were called something else, would that change who you are or what you do?
Minority-owned businesses likely play a significant role in your local economy. According to the US Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, there are over 4 million minority-owned businesses in the United States, with sales totaling $700 million.
Over the last 10 years, these businesses accounted for 50% of the 2 million businesses started in the US, and they created 4.7 million jobs. Look around—the reason your city continues to grow is likely because of the success of these minority-owned small businesses.
You can support minority-owned businesses as a consumer and as a business owner. Check out these 7 ways you can help them grow.
1. Buy from them.
The easiest way to support a minority-owned business: buy their goods and services. Whether you’re shopping at a local coffee shop or hiring a florist for your wedding, you can choose to give your business to a minority-owned establishment.
Supporting communities of color builds up diverse neighborhoods and furthers the pursuit of equitable prosperity. The money you spend here will not just help build diversity—it will also stay with local businesses, which furthers wealth within your community.
2. Skip services that take profits from companies.
This is a rule of thumb that applies to almost any small business: avoid using services like UberEats or Shipt when buying from minority-owned businesses. Instead, see if they have their own local delivery service or pick up the goods yourself instead.
National services like DoorDash can take up to 30% of the profits on an order—meaning your support might not stretch as far as you planned. Buying local also includes shipping or delivering services.
3. Promote their goods in your business.
If you work with different vendors to keep your business afloat, look for ways to hire minority-owned companies and promote their products. For example, a breakfast restaurant could serve coffee by a minority-owned roaster or pastries by a minority-owned baker. This partnership advertises their business, grows your selection, and spreads wealth across both of your businesses.
4. Write online reviews for minority-owned businesses.
Feedback in the form of online reviews is one of the best ways for you to support a locally run minority-owned business.
If you had a great experience, leave a positive comment on Google, Yelp, Facebook, or other review sites. Share photos if you have them. This act might seem small, but you can increase their visibility online and help grow their business—plus it won’t cost you anything beyond a few minutes of your time.
5. Sponsor a minority-owned business through the Chamber of Commerce.
According to the Minority Business Development Agency (part of the US Department of Commerce), there are almost 2.6 million Black-owned businesses in the United States. About 110,000 of them have employees.
This statistic means that 96% of Black-owned businesses are individual entrepreneurs or partnerships without employees. These small businesses often miss out on networking opportunities because they can’t afford the fees associated with joining professional organizations or the local Chamber of Commerce.
If you are involved in any dues-based organization, offer to sponsor a minority-owned business. This support gives these business owners seats at the table to reap the same benefits as larger, wealthier organizations in your area.
6. Offer sliding scale services.
While the value of your services as a business owner remains the same, not everyone can afford to pay for what you do. Some service providers—like accountants, marketers, and web designers—offer a “pay what you can” program for nonprofits and minority-owned companies.
This flexibility can significantly benefit minority-owned business owners. For example, many small business owners also take on tasks related to their business’s accounting and taxes. If they had better bookkeeping or were able to take advantage of more tax opportunities, then they could become more profitable. Making your accounting services available in these scenarios could take the financial pressure off the owner and allow them to focus on growing their business.
Offering your services on a sliding scale can help you support minority-owned businesses that need your services but can’t afford them right now.
7. Support internal workforce diversity.
You may not realize it, but prioritizing diversity in your workplace can help you support minority-owned businesses in your area. Your diverse employees support others in the community and can promote other minority-owned businesses not on your radar. A diverse workplace can also benefit your business: you gain fresh perspectives and new ideas when your team members come from different backgrounds.
That being said, you should never expect your employees of color to serve as ambassadors to their communities or put the burden entirely on them to explain race-based issues to you. That would be an unfair request—and a responsibility that your white team members would never have to face.
8. The Buy Black movement.
The #BuyBlack movement spotlights Black- and minority-owned businesses. “I became aware that many Black-owned businesses have purposely not shown their faces in fear of losing customers, this is me included,” Maggie Foster, CEO of ClaudeHome, a boutique design firm in NYC, told TeenVogue. “I’m working on having anyone that has also felt this way to come together and have our photos taken so we can show the world our beautiful faces. As a Black person that has experienced racism and injustice throughout my life, I am so thankful to have the platform I do to spread awareness and educate others.”
“Buying Black” has become as much of a values-driven choice as buying green, shopping small, or buying American. My Black Receipt, an initiative started by Kezia Williams, hopes to turn buying Black from a trending hashtag into a longer-term movement by tracking purchases for Black-owned businesses. "When you invest and purchase from a Black-owned business, what you're really doing is strengthening the Black community," Williams told CNN. Consumers can upload their purchases into the database, which Williams and her team will use to track the impact of consumer spending on Black-owned businesses, as well as partner with organizations like Yelp to help people find minority-owned businesses more easily.
If you do make a purchase, write a review. Online reviews matter nearly as much as word-of-mouth for online purchases, so writing a review on a platform of your choice can help make your purchase go that much further.
9. The 15% Pledge.
Supporting minority-owned businesses isn’t limited to consumer purchases. Evaluate your entire supply chain, from the influencers you follow to where you source your office supplies.
That’s exactly why Aurora James, founder and creative director at accessories company Brother Vellies, created the 15% pledge. She called out Target, Sephora, Net-a-Porter, Walmart, Whole Foods, and Shopbop, among others, to diversify their suppliers. “This pledge is not prescriptive, because we understand that each business, each milestone, each change, is unique,” says the 15% Pledge website, urging businesses to “Define and publish a plan for growing the share of Black businesses you empower to at least 15%, alongside a concrete strategy by which you plan to stay accountable to and transparent around your commitment.”
The nonprofit spun out of a viral Instagram post in response to performative and empty social media campaigns made by retailers with no plans to change but eager not to be left behind by popular sentiment.
Sephora became the first major US retailer to take the pledge. Currently, out of 290 brands it offers, only 9 are Black-owned. “We are inspired to make the 15% Pledge because we believe it is the right thing to do," Artemis Patrick, Sephora's executive vice president and chief merchandising officer, told CNN. This move is part of a longer-term plan to change their supply chain and help more minority-owned businesses grow.
Rent the Runway also signed the pledge, telling the New York Times, “We’re collectively reckoning with the fact that for far too long, fashion has co-opted the style, inspiration, and ideas of Black culture without ensuring that the people behind the work are properly compensated.”
Often, word-of-mouth largely determines which brands show up on shelves. Merchandising teams often start with what they’re personally familiar with, and brands pick up steam from there. The important thing is not only giving shelf space but marketing and partnership space, too.
10. Invest in minority businesses.
The average entrepreneur is a 35-year-old white male with a degree from an elite university and the youngest of a wealthy family. Centuries of discrimination mean it’s less likely minorities have the kind of inherited generational wealth many white entrepreneurs tap into when they look to start a business. Research also shows that minorities are less likely to be approved for loans or receive investments due to lower collateral, location bias, and credit history.
In a survey released by Morgan Stanley in 2018, 80% of investors agreed that women- and minority-owned businesses received enough funding to run their businesses when only 18% said they “very frequently” review minority-owned businesses.
Talk about a blind spot.
This blind spot is caused by several factors, with investors citing higher risks for businesses owned by minorities, lack of familiarity, and lack of access to traditional investors in the first place. “Multicultural and women-owned businesses could account for $6.8 trillion in gross receipts if they matched their percentage of the labor force and business revenues were equal to traditional firms,” states the report. “This would represent nearly 3x the current output, with a missed opportunity of $4.4 trillion.”
Everyone can do their part.
You don’t need to have a large business in your town or city to support minority-owned companies. By simply being cognizant of where you spend your money and who you support, you can elevate hard workers and impressive brands in your neighborhood.
Starting a successful home-based business is the entrepreneurial dream. Home-based businesses let you earn a living from the comfort of your home and eliminate the need for costly office space and lengthy commutes (fun fact: commuters spend, on average, 408 days of their life driving to and from work).
Today’s increasingly connected world makes it possible (and relatively easy) to make money without ever stepping outside. The accelerated growth of remote work is a testament to the fact that high-quality performance and strong business results can be achieved without expensive real estate.
Working from home and being your own boss is no longer a pipedream—it’s a realistic future. If you’re on the fence about whether a home-based business is your cup of tea, here are a few pros and cons to consider:
Harder to separate your business and personal life
Possible local government regulation of home-based businesses
Isolation difficult if you’re more of an extrovert
If you’ve decided the pros outweigh the cons and you’re ready to start your home-based business venture—congratulations! Now, it’s time to figure out what kind of business you’re going to start.
Fortunately, you have endless options. To help get your creative juices flowing, we’ve created a list of practical (and profitable) home-based business ideas. This list may contain your dream occupation, and if that’s the case, our job is done. If not, use these ideas to inspire your own one-of-a-kind business.
8 fantastic home-based freelancing careers.
You can start a freelance business as a full-time career or even a side hustle. The limit to its potential is ultimately how much time you can invest in it. Most freelancing jobs you can do anywhere with a computer and a reliable internet connection, so it’s more of an at-home-and-anywhere-else kind of business.
However, the one downside to a freelance business is that you’re not quite the boss. Yes, you have ownership of your hours and pricing, but you’re ultimately fulfilling independent contract work for other businesses—who, by default, become your temporary bosses.
Finding freelance work has never been easier. Here are a few of your options:
Network with friends and family to see who needs help
Connect with individuals and businesses on LinkedIn
Blog posts, guides, email campaigns, social posts, ads, website copy, presentations—words, words, words, and somebody’s got to write them all. A freelance writing business has unlimited potential, but you’ll need a deep-deep passion for writing to avoid burnout.
2. Virtual assistant
Entrepreneurs (like yourself) often reach a point when they need a little extra help—and that first hire is often a virtual assistant. Virtual assistants handle all the nitty-gritty details for businesses from a remote location, such as:
Manage calendars, appointments, and emails
Create and distribute reports
Enter and update data
Execute simple digital marketing tactics
Help with customer support issues
Answer and route phone calls
3. Social media manager.
If you love creating irresistible social media content that generates likes, shares, and comments, then a career as a social media manager may be right for you. As a social media manager, you’ll manage the social profiles for businesses to share messages, gain followers, and interact with the community.
4. Programming
Full-time programmers are hard to find and expensive to hire, making one-off contracts more enticing to small businesses. Programming demand far exceeds the current supply, and it likely always will. If you know how to code, you’ll have no problem finding freelance gigs as a programmer.
5. Graphic design
Graphic designers create everything from T-shirt designs to UX (user experience) enhancements to advertising illustrations. All you’ll need to snag clients is a few Adobe tools, a decent computer, creative design skills, and a portfolio.
6. Photography
Build a home-based studio to do product shoots, portraits, graduation pictures, engagements, weddings, and more. Once you build your collection, you can start selling prints of your photos on your website or through a marketplace like Society6.
7. Personal Trainer
You can do personal training, yoga instructing, wellness coaching, and nutrition consulting all from the comfort of your home. These businesses will provide you with meaningful work as you help change lives every day.
8. Tutor
People will always need help learning challenging topics, meaning you’ll never be short of clientele. Master a trade or skill, become a pro at teaching it, and voilà—you have a tutoring business. Join popular online tutoring platforms like Chegg and Skooli to get started.
6 subscription box businesses.
Subscription boxes are growing in popularity—and they make for a fantastic business model. Instead of fighting for each sale, you earn each customer on a recurring basis, meaning your marketing and advertising ROI shoots through the roof.
Once, subscription plans were limited to magazines, gym memberships, and SaaS (software-as-a-service) services. Now, subscription boxes have expanded this model to include everything from shaving kits to makeup to meals. Regardless of what kind of business you want to start, there’s a good chance you can turn your passion into a subscription box.
1. Crafting
If crafts are your thing, create a subscription service that delivers art supplies, mystery DIY kits, notebooks, or other creative goodies. For inspiration, look at SketchBox, New Hobby Box, and Darby Smart.
2. Wardrobe stylist
Most people aren’t style savvy, but they’re willing to pay extra for someone to help them shop. Stitch Fix is a great example. You could make your subscription boxes broad (general clothes from head to toe) or niche (glasses, watches, shoes, hats, etc.).
3. Makeup
The beauty and skincare subscription box world is saturated, but that doesn’t mean there’s not room enough for you. To differentiate yourself, you’ll need to dial in a specific aspect of makeup or skincare and become the go-to option for it.
4. Supplements
Athletes, weekend warriors, and even your recreational health enthusiasts all need their supplements, and they need them regularly. Protein powders, vitamins, electrolytes—you name it, they probably take it. And not just once—they need it month after month after month, which makes supplements the perfect subscription box products.
5. Games
Playing games is easy, but finding high-quality games is hard. Those who play board games or video games on a daily basis crave the latest and greatest releases, which is where your subscription box comes in. If you consider yourself a gamer, this niche could be right up your alley.
6. Books
Baby books, romance novels, fiction, and true crime—people need books, and most would rather spend time reading rather than sorting through thousands of endless options. Cater your box to a specific niche to win their trust—and their recurring payments.
4 home cooking business ideas.
Who doesn’t like food? If you enjoy making delectable sweet and savory eats from scratch, then the world is your oyster. To sell food, you’ll need to comply with your state’s licensing and regulations. Once that’s covered, you’re ready to start sharing your love of food and drinks with the masses—right from the comfort of your home.
1. Home Bakery
If baking is your forte, then turn on your oven and start working some magic. You could bake and sell muffins, bread, doughnuts, pastries, cookies, cakes, or other tasty treats. And if you want to find an even more specific niche, create specialized gluten-free or healthy bakes.
You can sell your baked goods direct-to-consumer through a website, at your house, or via your local farmers market. If you want to focus on baking and not selling, consider partnering with a local café or shop to sell the goodies on a recurring plan.
2. Cooking Instructor
Cooking is a skill, and it’s one most Americans don’t have. Fortunately for you, if you have the cooking gene, you can teach others as a career. Choose which models you prefer: online or in-person, one-on-one or group classes, private or public. You could even create a digital home-learning course or start a YouTube channel and grow a healthy following to generate ad revenue (see what we did there?).
3. Specialty Goods
Do you enjoy making specialty items that are harder to come by? You could start a business making and selling jams, preserves, coffee roasts, chocolates, confections, or even honey. These kinds of treats sell well online and at fairs and farmers markets.
4. Catering
If you like making food for the masses (and have the appliances to do so), then catering could be a lucrative business idea. You’ll likely need more than just your own two hands to cater for big events like weddings, funerals, graduations, and other gatherings, but you can hire one-off help or get family members involved.
4 home-based business ideas for animal lovers.
An home-based business can be a dream come true for animal lovers. Not only can you focus your life around animals, but you also get to spend more time with your own furry (or not-so-furry) friends. With human fertility rates falling in the US and more of the rising generation choosing to adopt pets into their family, home-based businesses focused on animals will only see growing demand.
1. Pet Bed-and-Breakfast
Everyone loves their pets, but sometimes they need a travel break—which means they’ll need a fun, safe, and reliable place to leave their special friends. A pet bed-and-breakfast lets you score as many clients a night as your home or facility can handle, helping you scale your business quicker than most hands-on pet services permit. Try to partner with local veterinarians, pet stores, and groomers to create mutual referral relationships.
2. Animal Grooming
Grooming a pet is a lot harder than it sounds, and that’s why some people are willing to just defer the task to an expert. Turn a room in your house into an animal salon and start selling doggy transformations.
3. Pet Training
If you’re a talented dog whisperer, pet training may be your gift. You could do group trainings or one-on-ones to transform unruly young pups into well-mannered and obedient canines. At first, you may just provide the basics, like teaching dogs how to sit, listen, stop barking, or shake. As your skills develop, you could also learn the traits necessary to curb aggressive and dangerous behaviors.
4. Dog Walking
Pet owners are busy, and sometimes they need help making sure their furry friends get the healthy walks they need. As a dog walker, you can take dogs out for a stroll every day of the week. Offer customers a subscription plan so you can reduce the time you spend marketing your business and spend more time walking dogs. You can walk single dogs or a small “pack” from a similar residential area to get more bang for your buck.
8 backyard business ideas.
Your home-based business can extend to the backyard, too. If you like spending time outside, consider running a business from your yard rather than your office. Here are a few backyard business ideas to get you started.
1. Backyard nursery
If you’ve been blessed with a green thumb, put your talent to use and start growing potted plants in your garden (or maybe even build a greenhouse). Some people lack the gift—or the backyard space—so they’re much more likely to buy a plant that already has a head start on life.
2. Farming
Create the farm (big or small) that you’ve always wanted. You could strictly grow fruits and vegetables, or you could even get a chicken coop or cows, sourcing eggs or milk to local markets or selling them direct-to-consumer. The only limit is your real estate—and your willingness to get your hands a little dirty.
3. Florist
Beyond food, some people just want to buy pretty flowers. Consider what flowers will thrive in your environment and how profitable they are to grow and sell. Flowers might just be a seasonal component of your larger business to supplement income during special holidays like Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day.
4. Event rentals
There are a couple of options you can pursue in the world of events. If you have a pretty piece of real estate in a prime location, you may consider leasing it out for parties, weddings, and other events. If you don’t, you could still purchase tables, chairs, music equipment, and other party essentials to store and rent to events going on elsewhere.
5 Goat rentals
Yes, you read that right—goat rentals. You could start a business renting out goats to local property owners who need their lawns mowed. It’s business for you, free food for the goats, and a solution for property owners—everybody wins. Plus, with the recent rise in goat yoga (GOGA), you could also train your lovely grass-eating pets to walk, run, hop, and kiss their way around yoga mats during sessions.
6. Beekeeping
Not everyone is fond of bees, but if you can get past their painful stings, beekeeping could become a fantastic backyard business. Start your bee colony and raise bees for honey production, soapmaking, or other wonderful honey purposes.
7. Furniture upcycling
Shop around at local antique stores, thrift shops, and yard sales to find old furniture that has the potential to be revived. Polish, patch, and upgrade it—then sell the new masterpieces.
8. Car detailing
Start a car detailing business to clean and detail vehicles. You don’t need to be a pro to get started—just begin with what you know. That could be as simple as scrubbing tires, vacuuming the interior, or cleaning up the dash. As you hone your skills and receive the proper training, you can move on to more advanced detailing and protective services—and this opens doors to new services, clients, and vehicles.
Big ideas take a little bit of cash.
And that’s where we can help. Whether you need to finance a computer, photography equipment, home-office renovations, or marketing campaigns, you have options to make it happen.
Find the perfect loan to launch your home-based business with our handy-dandy application. It’s quick, easy, and free—what more could you ask for? Once you submit your application, we’ll help you find the best loan options from our network of 300+ lenders.
Make your home-business dream a reality. Start your 15-minute application now and get access to cash in as little as 24 hours after approval. Your home-based business is waiting. Don’t let a little cash keep your big ideas from launching.
Do you dream about starting your own company? Do you create business plans and product lines in your head, wishing for the day when you can quit your job and create something of your own?
Starting a small business isn’t just a dream that benefits you—it’s a step forward for your community. Small businesses benefit the local economy as a whole, even people who aren’t customers or employees.
Consider these 6 ways starting a local business helps the economy and why your dream of launching a business could have a positive ripple effect.
1. You employ local workers.
The most visible benefit of opening a small business is the employment opportunities you create. Even taking on a few employees part-time can help them pay rent, cover basic expenses, and sustain themselves with a reliable income.
The coronavirus saw many talented people lose income through furloughs, layoffs, and pay cuts. Experts expect to approach the 25% unemployment rate that we saw during the Great Depression.
By launching your business, you can help mitigate the unemployment levels and provide much-needed financial stability. Moreover, employing others will lessen the dependency on state programs (like unemployment benefits or food stamps), allowing your government to help others.
2. You create job vacancies in other companies.
Even if you don’t hire other employees and only run the business yourself, you can still create vacancies at other companies. The full-time job you leave to start your business will likely need to rehire for your position. The vendors that you buy from and the marketing agencies you partner with may need to expand their team to accommodate you and other clients like you.
Small businesses opening means more people are getting hired across the board, beyond just your company.
3. The money you earn stays in the community.
When a large chain like Starbucks, Walmart, or Uber Eats opens in a community, a portion of the profits leave the city (likely the state) and contribute to corporate earnings. While local residents certainly earn salaries by working for these companies, most of the money doesn’t stay in the area.
Consider Uber Eats, which typically takes a 30% fee on most restaurant orders. Part of that money goes toward paying the driver, but most of it goes to Uber’s shareholders.
However, if a local business hires a few drivers and sets up its own delivery policy, it can provide the same service to customers while keeping 100% of the profits locally.
The money earned by your small business goes back into the community. It is used to support local restaurants, builds up regional farmers, and gets donated to small nonprofits. Your dollar can stretch much further when it is spent locally because it’s compounded across partners, vendors, and employees.
4. You contribute to local taxes.
When your customers spend money at your business, as opposed to a large corporation, they are investing in their communities through income and sales tax. The taxes you pay will support local schools, help improve the roads, allow the city to create parks and other community areas, and fund social service programs.
By giving residents an option instead of Amazon or other e-commerce vendors, you can help your local government fund important improvements in your community.
5. You make your city a better place to live.
Local businesses are the lifeblood of communities. A dentist keeps teeth white and people smiling. A restaurant owner keeps residents happy and full. These small businesses aren’t just providing goods and services—they’re part of the ecosystem that is your town.
Small businesses are what make communities interesting. They are what attract people to live there. Your business, along with others in the area, will bring more residents to your town, attract tourists (and the money they spend on vacations), and encourage large-scale job creators to move in.
6. You help the environment.
Did you know that buying from a local business also means going green? Shipping items from foreign countries or across the US has a significant carbon footprint.
According to Mike Scott, a business and sustainability expert, “The shipping industry burns the world’s dirtiest fuel to move cargoes and passengers around the world [and] is one of the biggest contributors to climate change.”
If you can source items locally and customers can buy them from your small business, then you and your customers can both reduce your carbon footprints. You can cut down on emissions to make the environment healthier and the air cleaner.
Everyone benefits from local businesses in your area, from kids enjoying the fresh air in parks provided by tax dollars to your employees who rely on you for a paycheck. Keep these benefits in mind as you begin planning your small business. If you do decide to take the next step and launch a business, consider a small business loan to help you get up and running.
Collecting payments from clients can be surprisingly challenging. Every small business owner has experienced the frustration that comes from providing a valuable product or service and waiting days, weeks, or even months for payment.
The best invoicing software does more than reduce the work that goes into creating invoices and collecting payments. It also helps you get paid significantly faster, improving the timing of your small business’s cash flows.
Forget waiting for checks to arrive in the mail, taking them to the bank, and waiting again for the deposits to clear. With invoicing software, your clients can pay you almost instantly, and you can get your funds in days instead of weeks or months.
Invoicing Software Options
Below are some popular and new invoicing tools and software.
Manage your business finances with confidence using our simple, centralized dashboard. Create quotes and invoices and collect payments from the same application where you manage your business bank account, track your cash flow, and even apply for a business loan. The Lendio mobile app is free to all users.
Like many other invoicing software, SAGE offers a combination of invoicing and accounting tools for small businesses. The Pro Accounting software starts at $346 for the first year and includes access for a single user, invoice and bill tracking, expense management, automated bank reconciliation, inventory management, fraud management and reporting.
Freshbooks offers invoicing and bookkeeping software. You can try the software free with a 30-day trial. After that plans start at $8.50/month. On the lite plan, businesses can bill up to five clients, automate recurring invoices, send out estimates, send out unlimited invoices and accept credit card and ACH bank transfers. Plus and Premium plans include more robust accounting features.
Wave offers free accounting, invoicing and banking software. Instead of charging for the software the company charges a percentage for payment processing. It also offers optional payroll software and advisory services for an additional cost.
Benefits Of Invoicing Software
Invoicing software can be an invaluable tool for any small business. These are some of the most significant ways you can use them to your benefit.
Online Invoicing Options
In a world where convenience is increasingly in demand, online payment processing is no longer optional for many small businesses. If it’s at all possible for your business model, your clients will expect to be able to complete your invoices online.
If you can’t meet those demands, it’ll soon start to cost you business if it hasn’t already. Fortunately, invoice software is an affordable way to collect funds remotely. For example, the free plan lets you access our invoicing tool at no cost.
In addition, the convenience of the system isn’t just beneficial for your customers. It also means you’ll receive payment for your products or services more quickly, reduce the frequency of unpaid invoices, and improve your cash flow.
Streamlined invoice creation
It’s time to say goodbye to building invoices in a spreadsheet or document and emailing them to clients as a PDF. With invoicing software, you can effortlessly generate personalized and professional invoices in minutes.
Once you’ve created one with a structure that you like, you can save it as an invoice template and duplicate it for future transactions.
Not only will the software save you a significant amount of time and energy, but your clients will appreciate the increased quality of your documentation. Holding yourself to a higher standard of professionalism will only benefit your client relationships.
Automatic collections processes
Traditionally, the most frustrating part of invoicing is collecting from slow-to-pay clients after the due date has passed. You’ll inevitably run into those who have many other redeeming qualities but can’t seem to complete invoices on time.
That can have a significant negative impact on your business’s cash flow. If you find yourself going for weeks at a time without receiving payment for your products or services, it can cause a lot of financial strain and even push you into debt.
Fortunately, software can make the collections process the easiest part of invoicing. With it, you can schedule automatic follow-up emails that will go out to delinquent clients professionally and promptly without having to lift a finger.
Integrated Invoices And Bookkeeping
If your business sends invoices and purchases regularly, keeping your financial records in order can be surprisingly time-consuming. There’s a reason that full-time bookkeeping and accounting services exist.
When you use old-fashioned invoices, you create a lot of work for the individual in charge of revenue and expense tracking. They have to adjust the books for each transaction by hand, and there’s a lot of room for human error.
Once again, invoice software can help you automate the process, saving you or your accountant hours of work. Plus, when your invoicing feature integrates directly with your bookkeeping and accounting software, your Lendio account and records are always up to date.
How To Choose Invoicing Software
Invoicing is critical for most small businesses—it is likely the mechanism for how you get paid for the work you do. However, it can become tedious and frustrating for many of us who work with many different clients.
Why do you want invoicing software? For any small business using invoices, the overarching goal of an invoice is to get paid what you’re owed on time. Good invoicing software helps you accomplish this task—and more.
You should aim to create standardized, easy-to-understand invoices that can be made in minutes with a few keystrokes. Although it depends on your clients, ideally you don’t have to use different invoice templates for each entity you do business with. Invoicing software helps you homogenize and accelerate your invoicing operation.
1. Easy to Create Invoices
Probably the most critical function of any invoice software is the ability to create invoices, which you want to be able to do quickly, easily, and repeatedly. You want your invoice recipients to easily recognize how much they owe you, where they should send payment, and when you expect it—you want to give them no excuses for being late with a check. Most likely, you didn’t go into business to create invoices—solid invoicing software makes this part of the job a snap.
2. Branding Capabilities for Your Invoices
Along with making invoice creation breezy, look for invoicing software that easily allows you to add branding. Again, your big, bright logo sitting atop an invoice helps clear up any confusion on the part of the payee. Creating colorful invoices with your excellent branding also ensures you come across as highly professional and organized. Good invoice software can help you create documents in your brand voice for all of your clients. All you should have to do is switch out the type of work being invoiced and who you are sending the invoice to.
3. Ability to Create Recurring Invoices
Invoicing software eases the burden of being a small business owner by chasing down payments for you. You should be able to set up recurring invoices to your repeat clients so you don’t have to remind yourself to send something out every week or month. Even better, some options allow clients to set up automatic payments so you get your payments as smoothly as possible. If you work with clients on a long-term, repeated basis, invoicing software means you don’t have to constantly remember to send out invoices to them.
4. Multiple Payment Methods
Unfortunately, it can seem that clients will find any reason to delay payment. We’re often told that checks have been “lost in the mail” for weeks on end. Good invoicing software combats this issue by allowing your clients to pay you in multiple ways. Some can even allow you to receive payment by credit card or bank transfer, ensuring those funds enter your account as quickly as possible. Oftentimes, you can receive your money within 72 hours of your client paying the invoice through an automated clearing house (ACH) options.
5. Tie Invoices to Your Expenses So You Can Monitor Revenue
Invoices are only one element of your business equation. They represent your cash in-flows, and, in many cases, invoices might be the entirety of your revenue. On the other end of the equation are expenses like rent, wages, equipment, and office supplies. The best invoicing software links the two parts of your finances so you can see how your business is earning and spending money. For the long-term, this feature will give you a granular, data-driven ability to create accurate business planning documents, not to mention it helps take the sting out of tax time.
6. Identify Unpaid Invoices
If you have a long roster of clients, keeping up with your invoices is a job in itself. Determining who owes you what and when, along with who is delinquent, can be extremely frustrating and is likely not what you signed up for when you decided to go into business. Invoicing software can quickly identify which invoices are unpaid and how long they’ve been delinquent. It also easily sends invoice reminders on a recurring basis so you can let your payees know you are paying attention.
7. Change Your Pricing and Offer Deals
Depending on your business, you might find your pricing changes with the seasons, business traffic, or other factors. However, it would be nice to determine price changes for your business without doing line-by-line math in every one of your invoices. Good invoice software allows you to easily change up your pricing in case you want to offer a discount or need to increase costs due to a surge in demand. Even better, software can allow you to easily set prices by either dollar amounts or percentages.
Why A Professional-Looking Invoice Helps Your Business
Invoices are more than just a way to document transactions with your clients and collect payments from them. Just like your website, emails, and any other public or client-facing communications, they’re also a representation of your business.
As a result, investing in a small business invoicing software that can produce more professional-looking invoices may benefit you in similar ways, such as:
Professional reciprocity: Your relationships with your clients are just like those in your personal life. Consciously or not, they’ll take cues from how you treat them and treat you similarly. Setting a high standard for professionalism with your invoices will only encourage them to do the same with you.
Respect and credibility: Successfully closing a sale with a client means they think you’re the best option readily available. Anything you can do that builds further respect and credibility with them, including maintaining a professional image, will help you stay ahead of your competitors.
General goodwill: Using invoicing software to make professional invoices does more than just present an attractive payment page. It also makes completing your invoices a more convenient experience. Making things easier for your clients whenever possible is a great way for freelancers and business owners to promote recurring transactions.
These may all be intangibles, but they manifest themselves in a tangible way. Making your customizable invoices look more professional can directly increase your client’s timeliness in paying you and smooth out your cash flows.
Small businesses nationwide are struggling with the fallout from the coronavirus crisis. New research suggests that 50% of business owners have felt the effects, and nearly 40% report a decline in revenue. These negative trends were mainly chalked up to fewer customers visiting business locations, customers being more reluctant to make purchases, and customers having access to less disposable income.
Given the dire situation, the federal government is taking unprecedented action. The Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES Act) will allocate $2 trillion for relief initiatives. Included in the package will be a one-time payment to many Americans. Individuals making up to $75,000 a year will receive a $1,200 payment. Married couples making no more than $150,000 will get $2,400, as well as a $500 payment for each child in their family.
SBA disaster loans get a boost.
In addition to the personal payments from the relief package, there are multiple benefits for small businesses in the CARES Act. These include:
Paycheck Protection Program (PPP): Get up to $10 million to cover payroll support expenses such as employee salaries, paid sick leave, paid medical leave, insurance premiums, mortgage payments, rent payments, and utility payments.
Economic Injury and Disaster Loan (EIDL) and Loan Advance: These loans are specifically relevant in situations where your business didn’t suffer any physical damage but was harmed nonetheless. You can receive up to $2 million to cover expenses you would’ve been able to pay if the disaster hadn’t occurred. Because of the severity of the coronavirus pandemic, you can actually apply for an advance of up to $10,000.
SBA Debt Relief: With this program, the SBA pays the principal and interest on new SBA 7(a) loans that are funded before September 25, 2020. If you have an existing SBA 7(a) loan, the SBA would pay the principal and interest for 6 months. Note that this benefit is limited to SBA 7(a) loans and wouldn’t be applicable for PPP loans or EIDLs.
SBA Express Bridge Loan: With values up to $25,000, these loans require less paperwork and hit your bank account much faster than a typical SBA loan. This program is intended to deliver faster relief to those who need it.
Businesses can qualify for the expanded Small Business Administration (SBA) disaster loan program as long as they don’t employ more than 500 people. As with other SBA loans, this financing is not actually funded by the agency. Rather, the COVID-19 loans are facilitated by the SBA, and the money comes from banks and various independent lenders. The key element is that the SBA guarantees a portion of the loan, which lowers lenders’ risk and makes them more willing to work with those who have less-than-stellar credit history.
SBA small business loans are intended to help small business owners overcome the negative effects of the coronavirus pandemic, so if you’ve struggled to make payroll, cover accounts payable, handle fixed debts, or pay your bills, you could qualify.
Finally, the Families First Coronavirus Response Act could also help you during this challenging time. This federal action bolsters unemployment benefits and creates rules for emergency paid sick leave impacted by the pandemic.
The regular lineup of SBA disaster loans.
Multiple other SBA emergency loans for small businesses are available. While the details vary, they are all intended to help a business after physical or economic damage is caused by a declared disaster.
An SBA disaster loan can be used to repair or replace real estate, personal property, machinery and equipment, and inventory and business assets. But don’t go thinking that you could use one to expand your operations. The rules clearly state that it’s only intended to restore things to the way they were before the disaster.
Here’s a quick look at 3 different types of SBA disaster loans not directly related to federal action in response to the coronavirus crisis:
For those living in a declared disaster area and who have been victims of a disaster, there may be relief available through these loans. It’s worth noting that even though these loans are provided through the SBA, you don’t need to actually own a business to qualify.
If your business or organization is within a declared disaster area and sustained damage during that disaster, you can apply for one of these loans. Common examples include a hurricane or flood. These loans provide up to $2 million and are intended to help you replace or restore any damaged property.
This loan is specifically earmarked for business owners who employ a military reservist called to active duty. In these situations, the SBA funding can help your business with operating expenses.
Current declared disasters.
In order to qualify for SBA assistance for more regionalized physical disasters, you will need to live in a designated disaster area.
You can search for Presidential and SBA declared disaster areas by state and territory with the SBA’s online database. Recent examples include flooding in Tennessee and Mississippi, wildfires in Hawaii, and Hurricane Idalia.
Once a Presidential disaster is declared in your area, you need to first register with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). To get started, call FEMA at 1-800-621-3362 or visit DisasterAssistance.gov.
After you’ve gotten a registration number from FEMA, you’re ready to complete your SBA online application. You’ll need to have the following information handy:
Contact information for all applicants
Social security numbers for all applicants
FEMA registration number
Deed or lease information
Insurance information
Financial information such as income, account balances, and monthly expenses
Employer Identification Number for business applicants
The SBA will review your application and then send an inspector to do an onsite review and to estimate the cost of your damage. The SBA makes these disaster loans a priority, so you can expect to hear back on their decision within a few weeks.
One thing to note is that the most commonly cited reason for delays in the process is an incomplete application. With this in mind, spend a little extra energy making sure every detail is correct before you click submit.
Also, don’t wait for any insurance settlements before you file your loan application. This common delay can cause borrowers to miss the filing deadline. If a settlement is made after you’ve applied, you can simply add the final insurance information at that time.
While every effort is made to ensure the accuracy of information when a story is published, the coronavirus pandemic and Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) have caused details to change at a rapid pace. Additional guidance from the government may change or clarify certain aspects of the forgiveness process and could result in changes to the information contained in these pages. For the most up-to-date information, please visit the COVID-19 section of our website. For more information, you can call us at (855) 853-6346. Lendio is not responsible for and provides no warranty as to the accuracy of this content. Lendio does not provide legal, accounting or tax advice. The information and services Lendio provides should not be deemed a substitute for the advice of such professionals who can better address your specific concern and situation.
Social media can be a game-changer for small businesses—if you know how to use it. This guide covers everything from choosing the right platforms to creating engaging content and growing your audience. With actionable tips and proven strategies, you’ll learn how to turn likes and follows into real business results.
Email marketing is one of the most powerful tools for small businesses—when done right. This guide covers everything from building your email list to crafting engaging campaigns that drive results. With actionable tips and step-by-step guidance, you’ll learn how to connect with your audience, boost sales, and grow your business through email.
Digital marketing doesn’t have to be overwhelming. This guide simplifies the essentials, from building an online presence to leveraging social media, email, and SEO. Packed with practical tips and step-by-step strategies, it’s designed to help small businesses succeed in the digital world without a big budget or a full marketing team.
Let’s face it. There’s a lot of bad marketing advice out there. Or great advice that’s far too in-depth for a small business owner who isn’t looking to start a full-time career in marketing. We created this guide to cut through the clutter and provide you with principles, direction and the applicable step-by-step how-tos to get the job done.
Your brand is more than just a logo—it’s the heart of your business. This guide walks you through the essentials of small business branding, from defining your identity and crafting your message to building a strong, lasting impression. With clear steps and actionable advice, you’ll create a brand that resonates with customers and sets your business apart.
Hiring for small businesses doesn’t have to be complicated. Your business can achieve success when you understand relevant legal requirements and find the right job candidates for your open positions. This comprehensive guide covers everything from finding the right employees to hire to employee training and development.
Your best customers are your biggest growth opportunity. This guide breaks down customer marketing strategies tailored for small businesses, helping you turn happy customers into loyal advocates. From building relationships to leveraging referrals, discover actionable steps to maximize lifetime value and drive sustainable growth.
From selecting the right franchise opportunity to navigating the financial aspects, this step-by-step resource equips aspiring entrepreneurs with the knowledge and strategies needed to thrive in the world of franchising.
Have a business idea but not sure where to start? Our comprehensive guide to starting a business has everything you need to know. From legal requirements to market research, we’ve got you covered.
Running and growing a business is no easy feat. Our guide to running a business has everything you need to know to keep things running smoothly. From managing employees to marketing your business, we’ve got you covered.
Take your business to the next level with our Accounting Guide. Master the language of numbers, understand financial statements, and make informed decisions based on accurate financial data. Discover the power of sound financial management.
Master the art of cash flow management with our comprehensive guide. Learn strategies to optimize your cash flow, forecast revenue and expenses, and keep your business financially stable. Take control of your finances and achieve long-term success.
Streamline your billing process with our Invoicing Guide. Learn how to create professional invoices, manage client payments, and maintain a healthy cash flow for your business. Get paid faster and efficiently track your revenue.
A great marketing strategy is the foundation of small business success. This guide takes you step-by-step through defining your goals, identifying your audience, and choosing the right channels. With practical tips and clear direction, you’ll build a tailored strategy that drives growth and delivers measurable results.
Navigate the complex world of taxes with our Tax Preparation Guide. From understanding tax obligations to maximizing deductions and filing quarterly taxes, we’ll help you stay compliant and minimize your tax burden. Unlock the secrets of tax success for your business.
Stay on top of your business finances with our Bookkeeping Guide. Learn the art of tracking income and expenses, maintaining financial records, and keeping your books in order. Unlock financial success with our expert tips.
Need help securing funding for your business? Our business loans guide simplifies the financing process, explains key terms, and walks you through your loan options.
