A lot of things are being shifted right now everything is feeling a change. No one is immune to change. Friends have lost jobs, people's health and livelihood are at risk, some people are panicking, and some have slow, thoughtful responses. There is no judgment of whatever camp you are in. However, we all share the same thing now. None of us know what is next and no one has answers, including me. I just have some observations and ideas about I can help those I know how to.

People’s characters are starting to show. If someone has a scarcity mindset, it's exaggerated now. If someone has an abundance mindset, the same can be said. What I feel is important now is helping others. I get that keeping your business afloat and family fed is important, I just don’t like being at the mindset of quick cash and numbers right now. There are so many new things to be solved with everyone moving online. You can still provide value, help others and open up something new for your business.

By giving generously to others, you will receive that back and then some. If anything, just show up for whoever you serve best.

However, I still wanted to give those I love to help some ideas to adjust quickly. If you are struggling to adjust, here are some things to consider or help out.

You may have some of these problems and I will break them up into two categories.

Critical

• I can't serve my clients/customers
• I can't find new clients/customers
• I lost my job

Other problems

• I need to cook
• I need to work out from home
• I am going crazy at home (mental health)
• I am bored
• I need activities for my kids

I won't be able to answer all of these in here, but I will have some input on the top 2.

Externally

In this section, we will go over some things that will affect business and your community the most. First of all, if you have clients or customers, make sure to update them on how you will be moving forward and how you will make it easy for them to interact with you. I have already heard complaints from customers who were left in the dark from local companies.

Website

The first thing that will probably need to be looked at is your website. It may be something simple as an interface refresh or you might need a whole overhaul. People are going to be online more than ever and looking for ways to keep up, order, or fill their time. I would like to think that you would be providing some value in these hard times and shift towards giving to others to provide some sort of aid. A lot of time will be spent at home. There two ways you can approach this. One is by aiding them at home and improving their forced time indoors. Another is by allowing for some normality while everything is being flipped upside down. You can sell stuff, take orders, and schedule people all on your site.

It might be smart to run like a one day sprint to solve your website problem correctly.

There is going to be a big shift to being online. Even apart, everyone is still more connected than ever.

Marketing

Okay, so I don’t mean pushing sales down people's throats right now. I am talking about making a shift with the scarcity mindset to one of abundance. I wrote about this a bit earlier on my site and I introduced "direct to response marketing". It is essentially responding directly to a problem with your solution. Your solution doesn’t have to be a product, it can be a video, a tutorial, or something else entirely. Tesla, the electric car manufacturer, just transformed its manufacturing to make masks!

This type of marketing is ethical and economical. You are communicating directly with those who you are trying to. Not shooting some ad into the web hoping someone will want to buy something.

People want community more than ever right now.

Internally

Here are some things that will affect you and your team.

Communication

This probably isn’t anything new for a lot of companies, but I know for here in South Texas, it is. People tend to take the traditional route of communication which is texts and phone calls. This isn’t normally wrong, but when you are now trying to manage projects, a team and clients, you will quickly lose your mind with that.

Having good communication and keeping everything organized will be important while most of us have to shift to working remotely. Here are some things to look into for communication.

For video:

• Google Hangouts Meet (What we are using)
• Zoom
• Skype
• Calendly

Zoom and skype will probably have the most features. Zoom has a free plan and hangouts meet is free if you already use GSuite.

Project Management

Now, that y’all can communicate, you need to manage the work that goes on. Some of these even have some conversation functionality built-in.

There are all kinds of tools but here are some that I have experience with and enjoy. However, they are all very different.

• Basecamp
• Monday
• MIro
• Google Drive
• Dropbox

Basecamp might be the best bet for simpler work. Maybe a smaller church can use this or when you want to keep things more simple. I feel the communication is better on here than Monday as well.

Monday can be as simple or as complicated as you need it to be. It is actually crazy what you can do with Monday.

MIro is more of an addition to be used with the two if you do more product planning, strategy, and sprints. It has some great collaboration in there.

Drive and Dropbox are similar but different. These are some easy ways to keep everyone’s files in sync. Both have desktop apps to make sure everyone has the most up to date files as well. You won’t have fun trying to do this over email.

Hopefully, this helps you get started but there still is another problem of how to actually serve these people. If you don't know how to set any of this stuff up, I would love to help you. If not me, there are some great technical people out there.

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