Entrepreneurship comes with a lot of challenges, and if you want to succeed in the business world, you will have to overcome obstacles and challenges along the road. In this interview series, we spoke with a number of business owners and leaders about the unexpected challenges they encounter and how they overcome them.
INTERVIEW HOST
Hello, my name is Jerome Knyszewski, I’ll be the host of your interview today. I am the CEO of HeavyShift. My specialties are online reputation marketing and SEO. Looking forward to reading your insightful answers and publishing your featured interview.
Table of Contents
The question we asked:
What is the greatest, unexpected challenge you faced with your business, that you’d like to warn new entrepreneurs about? Please share your advice on how to overcome it.
Anton Giuroiu
In this industry, the fast-changing trends and consumer preferences set the greatest challenge to face. This may not be new or unexpected, but we can say that its phase is overwhelming. Entities, in whatever industry, must prepare to cope faster and not be blown away by how different companies create their edge to guard their status.
Sometimes, the trend is creating a continuous reaction of challenges as attribution to it. The ability of an organization’s management to handle well their strategies for each trend while finding new hints on how to hold and be ready for what is coming will be a vital key.
Aria Miller
It is important to define your ideal consumer community and target the same. Otherwise, it is nothing less than shooting in the dark, which produces no beneficial results. Initially, our business faced difficulty in finding the right kind of consumers owing to the narrow niche.
However, with time and effective marketing, you do end up having some lucrative lead generations and collaborations. What worked for us was using the right marketing tools and specifically describing the consumer community.
Dominique Flux
“One of the biggest challenges I faced was ageism. I’m a goldsmith and 3D designer, founder of Fine and Flux a custom jewelry and engagement ring designer. Starting a business in luxury has an expensive barrier to start but also one of preconceived stereotypes.
Most luxury brands especially fine jewelry are industries run primarily by middle aged men. And age is more often then not associated with quality. When clients would see how young I am I could feel a certain element of uncertainty arise. Over time it became easier and easier to navigate past this by showing them the quality of my growing portfolio.
I also established myself as an industry leader who’s taste and judgment could be trusted via my countless educational videos on YouTube. So as you can imagine it took allot of time and work! However it was definitely worth it!”
Vishesh Raisinghani
Starting a business might feel like going back every time you make a step ahead. Guts are a must. At the outset, you’ll have to put on several different hats, both metaphorically and literally. In order to succeed, you’ll need to push yourself beyond your comfort zone on a daily basis.
So, how far are you prepared to go? How committed are you to see your startup succeed? When you’re in need of money, can you persuade investors that you’re the right person to pitch? Is there anything in your life that you refuse to compromise on? Is there anything you’d rather avoid doing at all costs? It’s better to know your limits early on so you can locate teammates who aren’t afraid to step outside of their comfort zone with you.
Rohan Kadam
Hello, I am a marketing consultant and an established entrepreneur. I run a successful Niche website called Biking Know How. I scaled my business, especially during the challenging COVID pandemic, and made it profitable in a short period (From the first month itself).
I focused on doubling down my efforts on growing my niche website, which was initially just my passion project. I would say that my online business has helped me stay occupied, motivated, and financially stable. I love the outdoors, biking and camping. I always wanted to share my unique experience with people. Initially, I would maintain a diary and would write about my outdoor camping endeavors.
Thanks to social media and my website, my audience over time has increased significantly. With social media and my website, many more people can access my adventures and plan their own. This gives me immense joy and fulfillment.
Challenges: As far as the hardest part or challenges are concerned, I had to face many, but two challenges stand out the most. They are as follows.
1. Time Management: This was a very significant challenge because I was managing and growing my blog while having a full-time job. I would use my weekends and holidays to educate myself on skills, especially web development and digital marketing.
My blog allowed me to have multiple streams of income. As I saw decent cash flow coming in, I was interested to upskill myself on digital marketing and social media. I knew this would require my time and dedication. So, at every opportunity that I got to polish my skills, I made sure that I dedicated my time and attention to get better.
2. Getting Right Education: Well, to educate and polish my skills in digital marketing, I enrolled in many digital marketing and web development courses. I used courses like Authority Lab and Nite Site Project to teach myself affiliate marketing. I started voraciously reading blogs and success stories of affiliate marketers as I found them very inspiring. This helped me get creative and experiment with the growth strategy of my blog.
Brian Lee
Implementing new health and safety protocols including vaccination policies. In order for the business to stay afloat and get moving, we have to really pay attention to the new health and vaccination protocols. We have to make it one of our top priorities while still adapting to the new normal, work from home set up.
And that’s somehow a very unexpected and biggest challenge for us. We have to make a lot of adjustments physically and also financially because no one has ever expected a pandemic like this to happen. And because each one of us has our views regarding the vaccines and we are not forcing our employees to get vaccinated. It’s really a decision we all have to make and everybody has their own beliefs.
The company just sees to it that proper safety protocols are being implemented as needed, assuming whether people are vaccinated or not. Regular sanitization and disinfection is implemented. Aside from that, the company gives additional benefits for those who get themselves vaccinated.
Why? It’s a sign of appreciation because although we do not require they still willingly get themselves vaccinated. We do not mandate but we do encourage our employees to always keep their guards up for the safety of everyone. Proper health measures should always be practiced because the pandemic isn’t over yet. And no one really know when it will end.
Deborrah Ashley
Managing my impostor syndrome, which I’ve experienced for much of my life until lately, has been the biggest unexpected challenge I’ve had thus far in the operation of my business. I used to be that person who didn’t believe I knew enough to go on stage with incredible experts and their impressive bios, so I constantly passed up opportunities.
Then I started talking to them, and they confessed that they, too, are afraid of being exposed as a fake on stage. I’d like to tell new entrepreneurs that impostor syndrome is very real and that you are not alone if you feel this way. That being said, the best way to overcome it is to talk to other people about it because you’ll be astonished that even the most successful people share the same fear.
They’ll be able to provide you with advice from their first-hand experience and from there you’ll learn how they managed to talk to their inner gremlins. Lastly, it would also help to internalize that you just have to share a new perspective in order to go after opportunities. You don’t have to be incredibly qualified – you just have to be really innovative.
Alex Williams
We want to know what you think is the hardest part about starting and running your own business. Whether it’s financing, managing employees, or something else entirely The hardest part of running your own business that entrepreneurs often don’t talk about would be high debt.
Entrepreneurs resort to debt financing when they want to expand their business or enter a niche market. They proudly take on debt and sugar coat it as bootstrapping. Individuals take on high debt either through their credit card or business’s line of credit. Small business owners often take more debt than they could handle, which leads to short-term and long-term consequences.
If a company has issues with its cash flow and is unable to pay off the debt in time, a high-interest rate would be levied upon the organization. This measure would then drastically impact the business’s credit score rating, making it difficult to secure a loan for future endeavors.
Ben Wagner
What is the greatest, unexpected challenge you faced with your business, that you’d like to warn new entrepreneurs about? Please share your advice on how to overcome it. The greatest challenge my business has had to deal with is uncertainty. Granted, it’s a given that entrepreneurs have to trudge through uncertain periods.
But still, sometimes, you face uncertainties that you could never have predicted. Take the pandemic, for example. My business was still in its infancy when Covid-19 turned the entire landscape of the market on its head. I was ill-prepared to deal with this issue, so I had to make hasty decisions that ultimately cost me a lot of money, employees and customers.
My advice to aspiring businesspeople is to always prepare for the worst-case scenarios. Never lift your business off the ground without having a disaster plan in place. If I had adequately planned for the worst outcomes myself, I wouldn’t have incurred such heavy losses due to the pandemic.
Connor Brown
Recruiting the right people was an unexpected challenge I faced. I thought that hiring new employees would be a smooth sailing process. After all, I had to only go through some resumes and select the most qualified candidate, right? Wrong. Little did I know that a good resume should not be the deciding factor.
An individual’s interpersonal skills such as communication, leadership qualities, adaptability, and the desire to learn more were far more crucial. It was initially very difficult for me to judge these qualities. But, I soon got the hand of it.
By asking questions that probe information on how a candidate will deal with things such as employees, difficult projects, and other company problems, I am able to see whether he/she is qualified for the job or not.
Eduarda dePaula
One of the biggest challenges I’ve faced when starting out was not making profits during the early phase of my business. This is one challenge that I’d like to warn new entrepreneurs about.
Even if you have a killer product idea, a target market that wants your product and a pipeline to produce, there’s no guarantee you’ll make any money. I, too, faced this obstacle. Any money that we made was reinvested into the business to keep it afloat, strengthen its foundation and grow it.
The first few years are the most difficult to cross for a new business, and those that only care about reaping profits and not sustaining long-term growth will not survive.
Elisa Bender
The biggest challenge I faced when I started my own business was teambuilding. This is especially hard if you’ve never run or managed a team before. But even if you have management experience, for me picking the right team for a startup was very stressful and difficult.
It’s not enough to find candidates who fill certain roles, you also need to consider their cost to the business, their culture fit and how they’ll work as part of your overall team. Such considerations are exceptionally hard when you’re under the pressure of filling those positions as soon as possible.
Even if you do find the right employees for your company, which is just a minor task. The real challenge is forging those hired employees into a team.
Patrick Crane
Lack of sufficient digital marketing skills and experience proved to be a major unexpected challenge for me during the early stages of my entrepreneurship journey. I was unable to craft and implement effective marketing strategies at the beginning, and I found the whole marketing business function to be very time-consuming and frustrating.
To overcome this challenge, I pushed myself to learn everything there is about digital marketing, and to implement strategies that were the best fit for my business. I subscribed to several leading digital marketing publications, as well as enrolled in and completed several reputable online marketing courses. I am still learning, but my digital marketing skills have improved phenomenally, and so have my marketing strategies, and their effectiveness.
Prav Solanki
That there are only 24 hours in a day. I thought owning a business would give me more control of my time. But it is quite the opposite. I always have more things to tick off than hours in a day, and it is easy to get overwhelmed with all the challenges and stay focused on the goal.
There were times when I felt like I didn’t accomplish enough. You’ll feel the immense pressure of learning and achieving things. So, it doesn’t hurt to pause and delegate. I was mistaken to think that I could do everything myself. Hire people smarter than you and people to help you. You have to learn that the further you go, the less time you’ll have. Focus on strategic goals and not on daily operational tasks.
Ernests Embutnieks
I faced many obstacles to becoming a Senior SEO analyst. To start with, I was a fresher in the field who had no prior experience. Advancement from position to position is always difficult. In my organization advancement has its own importance. There were two main obstacles in my way of becoming a Senior SEO analyst.
The first was the lack of formal training I received. Due to this, I lacked the expertise most of my colleagues had. I had to work harder to keep up with them. The second obstacle was the lack of relevant experience. Despite my experience with SEO, most of my colleagues had more experience with SEO techniques.
I also lacked SEO experience outside of a large corporation. In spite of these obstacles, I was able to leap past them. I reached my goals by promoting myself. I offered to help my colleagues in need of extra help. I became an advocate for SEO within the company. I used my time and knowledge to become a leader in the field. My company gave me the opportunity to expand my expertise in SEO. I did this by attending conferences and learning from other professionals.
Richard Clews
My #1 challenge: hiring the wrong people When I started running an e-commerce business with my wife, I was elated. I was working with my favorite person, and our business was more or less immediately successful. We started generating a profit quickly and raised $300,000+ in exchange for 5% equity in year 1 (link).
That being said, I feel like we lost multiple opportunities because we didn’t hire the right people as early as we could’ve. Our marketing agency in particular let us down, not doing what we expected them to – and not improving after months of constructive criticism. But there were also multiple employees, including an intern I had to let go, who we shouldn’t have hired. I didn’t feel this problem as much working in brick-and-mortar.
I suppose I felt I could train people more there, because I knew my way around a retail store and had worked every role I was asking other people to perform. The solution to not hiring the right people is to look for the best people and hire them. It costs more, but it leads to *far* better results and has paid off for us in a big way. Or, as a mentor put it to me once – “if you want to get paid well, pay people well”. 100% true
Thomas Borcherding
The greatest challenge that you will face as a new entrepreneur is that of intrusive thoughts. Constantly your mind will bombard you with thoughts that you would otherwise not have should you have remained an employee at someone else’s business. For instance, the thought of opportunity cost could be a major theme.
After a twelve hour day you may start thinking about how much you would have been paid on someone else’s tab, meanwhile you will not receive a paycheck in direct correlation to the work done on your own business. Another example could be a recurring thought of failure, perhaps linked to a failure to deliver a quality product. Overcoming intrusive thoughts is a quality skill to have regardless of whether you’re an entrepreneur or not.
This is why self-help books are so popular among the successful. One must realize that it is natural to have these thoughts. The mind, for survival purposes, likes to remind you of things that can go wrong. This is why when you’re driving your car you may envision someone running through a stoplight, for example. You must remind yourself that these thoughts are not your fault, but they are your responsibility.
Do not let your mind attach itself to these thoughts. Simply acknowledge them and let them gently pass. There is no need to generate a large stress response to them. It helps to also close the loop, or in other words finalize the thought. Have something reassuring to tell yourself if the thought presents itself.
Harrison Baron
The greatest challenge of being a new entrepreneur isn’t a single task. It’s all of the tasks at once. Chances are good if you’re a new entrepreneur; you’re good at many things. This includes what you do, how you do it, and everything in between.
You can calculate the cost, time, how much effort it will take. These are all important for growing your business. Over time you’re going to have to grow your business. You will need a website, social media, email list to help grow your marketing efforts. You will also need to get an accountant involved to make sure your books are correct and your business is growing the way you want.
Your business will also need insurance, so you need to buy that and understand what you’re getting. You may need to seek legal advice and hire a lawyer as well to make sure you cover your butt. All of these alone are easy to do yourself or hire someone for. They are all important, and all add massive value to you and your business.
The hard part and unexpected challenge of being an entrepreneur is doing all of these tasks all of the time. This is the one thing no one talks about. It’s the daily operation of running your business and doing all the things you are good at but adding in everything else as well. This is where things get tricky.
No one prepares or gives you a heads up that when you start a business and grow, you have to do all of these things, especially as a solopreneur. There isn’t one part that is harder than the other. It’s the fact that you have to do them all the time, and many of them you can’t outsource. You need to conduct the interviews, hire the right people and make sure all aspects of your business are working in harmony.
There is no way to prepare but making your life easier is important, and bringing on the right team will accelerate your growth and alleviate stress.
David Pressler
Civil Rights and Bill of Rights violations by the State of Florida and discovering that corporations not even single owned service disabled veteran owned small business can file a civil rights complaint!
In 2009 DRD Enterprises inc of Davie purchased a certified Florida aquafarm to develop into an off grid solar powered farm.
Within 45 days of purchase and while constructing tornado proof storage sheds DeSoto County issues a cease work order on this certified farm and orders the aquafarm caretaker off the farm, violating two Florida farm laws, Right to Farm Act and the Aquaculture Policy Act. Florida Agriculture Law states only the Florida Department of Agriculture has authority over farms and farm structures! Recognizing the error committed DeSoto County the following year rescinded the eviction demand, once the violation had been committed!
So as not to prosecute DeSoto County, a Republican District in Florida, Republican Governor Scott, Department of Agriculture Putnam and counsel for the Florida Department of Agriculture declared DRD Enterprises inc of Davie guilty of violating the farming laws of Florida! When the demand for evidence of guilt was demanded NONE could be provided! Attorney General Bondi uses the tactic corporations cannot file a civil rights complaint so as to deny showing evidence of guilt!
Six Florida officials violated the Conspiracy Act of 1964 so as to protect DeSoto County from prosecution a crime yet disclosed. Stephen Hall, counsel for the Florida Department of Agriculture declares tornado proof storage sheds NOT farm buildings, in an effort to further conceal the truth!
BEWARE corporations you are but one violation of your rights away from bankruptcy unless you have the money for that high priced civil suit. Still seeking Justice in Florida.
Michael Nova
I have a unique take on this… My inspiring story has helped many people understand how to overcome adversity in business. We all deal with adversity. It’s how we overcome it that can define us. Coming back from the brink of blindness, near bankruptcy and a host of other challenges all at once taught me that the “impossible” is achievable.
My unlikely recovery is what inspired me to share my story with the world in order to inspire others. In a nutshell, I became so enveloped in a creative project that I lost sight of the day to day running of the company to the point where I was close to bankruptcy. At the same time, due to the stress I was undergoing, I became seriously ill, nearly losing my sense of sight permanently.
Only a last-second diagnosis saved my vision, and I was able to get my business back on its feet. I went from the brink of bankruptcy to get my successful printing business to where it is today, serving major corporations. So the lesson here is, although you may be wrapped up in a project that envelops all of your attention, don’t lose sight of running your business on a day-to-day basis, and taking the time to concentrate on the basics to keep it running.
The cliché “everything in moderation” applies here. No matter how passionate you might be about a project, always remember that you still need to pay the bills. Alternatively, we can discuss another great challenge that everyone had to face.
During the pandemic, our business, lost 50%, but because of the adversity I faced previously, I understood that a setback can be viewed as an opportunity. During that time, I concentrated on overhauling our website, www.novacustomlabelprinting.com to help serve clients In a more intuitive way.
This resulted in us exceeding the 50% we lost in 2020 to greater heights than we ever achieved before. My motto is “don’t look at adversity as the enemy, look at it as your ally”. I say this because challenges strengthen you to become the person that you are meant to be, so even though it may appear as the world is ending, it can actually be a good thing.
Because of what I learned from overcoming challenges in my business, I founded the website, RiseUpEight.org, a non-profit platform designed to highlight the stories of those who have overcome adversity, to prove that nothing is impossible!
Daniel Nyquist
I’d say it’s assembling the right team for the job. It’s one thing to have a clear picture in your head about how the business should evolve in the next 6 months or even a year. But the trick really is surrounding yourself with passionate people that will help you realise that goal.
I’ve seen first hand how important it is to get the right people onboard from the outset. In the early stages of our company we had employed people that just didn’t ‘gel’ with the rest of us.
That doesn’t mean that they weren’t good at their jobs, it just means that we didn’t share the same vision. Once we dealt with those early ‘teething’ issues and got the right people in the right positions we started to see the results we were looking for. Choosing the right Marketing Specialist, Web Developer and Content Writer would mean the world’s difference to any startup. Lay a strong foundation and you stand a good chance of being successful.
Jesse Solomon
Co-Founder, Mickey
“The biggest, unexpected challenge we’ve faced has been with financing our business. As a startup with little-to-no history it’s hard to get credit. Banks don’t care about your vision and projections like a venture capitalist does. They care about the historical data and eliminating their risk.
Given that our business requires working capital to facilitate deals, we thought it would be smart to use debt rather than equity capital and ultimately have had to use a combination of a bank, a non-bank lender, and a factoring partner to grow.”
About Mickey:
Mickey is a commoditech company that brings physical commodity trading online and allows suppliers and traders around the world to transact openly. Mickey has built a digital platform that modernizes the complete commodity transaction — from sourcing and shipping to invoicing and payments — providing a marketplace that’s fast and easy for global buyers to purchase, track, and acquire the commodities they need.
Alex Rabens
The Co-Founder, CEO, Mickey
“In Mickey’s early days, we used outsourced technical engineers to build our first platform. As dilettantes leading our first tech startup, we felt that as long as the business had a strong sales and growth trajectory, that actual product could be pieced together by an offshore team.
Unfortunately, the product couldn’t iterate as fast as the business (in its early stage) needed it to adjust and we ended up with a product that no longer fit the needs of our company. I would recommend our offshore team to any business, but an early-stage company needs an in-house team and should be careful venturing out without one.”
Sumeer Kaur
The greatest challenge when starting my business was realizing how many moving parts there are involved in manufacturing and shipping products.
Figuring out the logistics of an online store, managing employees overseas or working with vendors overseas, and figuring out shipping costs and time frames is such an interesting challenge for almost any eCommerce business today.
It requires you to be nimble and find creative solutions at a moment’s notice to ensure your product is manufactured to your standards and gets to customers on time.
Estelle Keeber
During the pandemic we noticed that more business owners than ever were turning to social media marketing but had no idea how to use it effectively, we helped to support them in their growth with regular live trainings on all of the latest Instagram updates and features so that whilst focussing more on online marketing they were spending their time on the right areas that would create the most impact and income.
Benjamin Stenson
The Covid-19 pandemic caused so much devastation in the business world, resulting in companies shutting down or filing for bankruptcy. Thankfully, we’ve survived and even come out stronger. We adapted to the pandemic situation by shifting to the digital office quite early on.
Our company culture already emphasized flexibility, so we didn’t have much problem shifting to remote work. The one thing that we did introduce was a four-day workweek. This was an essential part of our model’s success. This helped raise employee satisfaction, and we retained a major part of our workforce while the rest of the country faced The Great Resignation. We did not introduce any new product line. Our pivot was solely based on improving the company culture and flexible working model.
Edward Lee
To adapt to the pandemic, I temporarily shut down my brick-and-mortar store, and focused more on the online side of my business. The salary I would’ve paid a sales associate to work in my store, I instead invested that money into heavily promoting my business via Facebook and Instagram ads.
I also began doing Facebook and Instagram lives to build an online community with the consumers who were used to buying with us in person, and to share who we are with the new consumers coming from the online ads. While I did not introduce any new products or services, this pandemic and business shift helped me realize the importance and value of social media.
It helped me learn to use social media in a new way (by doing lives and ads) and in doing so, it helped me build a larger audience and community I would not have if I had mainly stuck with my brick-and-mortar presence. I even began posting on TikTok and gaining traction in the audience from that!
Marcos Martinez
The pandemic has greatly impacted many small businesses, especially event producers and party promoters. My brand is Men Who Brunch (themenwhobrunch.com) which promotes a black gay lifestyle. Before the pandemic, I was hosting events for the gay community in New York City.
The purpose of these events was to provide safe spaces for gay men to network. My target audience enjoyed my social events. However, I had to stop hosting events and shift more focus to blogging. I’ve spent a lot of time and resources on blogging and even hired a blog coach. I may even spend more time on blogging than even event planning when the world turns back to normalcy.
Brent Hale
The pandemic wasn’t easy on business initially. It took time to get used to the “new normal” and many changes were made to ease out the process. According to my personal experience, I observed reduced motivation levels. The teamwork wasn’t working out, and things were falling out of place. That is when I realized the need for the re-organization of the workplace.
The first step towards this was to create a dedicated space for the team to communicate and exchange ideas. We set up our team on Slack. In addition to that, we made sure to conduct regular team meetings and make the most out of the team’s collaborative efforts.
George Tsagas
Our whole business is based online, which means that our business braved the pandemic very well. Here are the elements that will keep your business afloat when things are uncertain.
A considerable presence on any two platforms at least, especially if you are starting to shift your services completely online. Adapting is going to get hard whether there’s a pandemic or not. Consumers change and want different things, competitors get better or cut corners to price lower than you, algorithms on social media channels change, SEO rules change periodically. The key to adapting despite all this is to not put all your eggs in one basket.
Have a strong following on Instagram and LinkedIn. Use your website as well as referrals or another social media channel. If one lets you down, you have another. Read your audience very well and provide accordingly. We’ve recently started a course for general math which is very different from the usual high-school math courses we provide. We saw a need for it, and we acted on it. You have to read the cues to make your business work.
Dan Ni
It is no secret that adapting to change, especially of this magnitude, is a tedious process. The pandemic took a lot but it also taught a lot. Lessons in crisis management were the ones we learned the most. As a business leader, I had to step up and put my leadership skills to test.
Keeping my team motivated was one of the major tasks. During this entire change, I revamped my website to become more user-friendly by making it more informative and more accessible. This change helped increase customer retention and customer acquisition. It wasn’t an all-bad process it was and continues to be a learning process.
Wesley Exon
My business successfully pivoted to adapt to the changing market conditions by shifting products and services online. During these tumultuous times, I decided to shift my focus to my website and social media presence, offering similar services as my clinic. I got my health website designed by a professional. I also created various social media handles to cater to my business online.
Administrative or internal tasks, for example, dealing with various vendors, coordinating with my other team members, required us to work remotely. We had a daily huddle over different online channels, for example, Zoom and Slack. Yes, I introduced additional products by including a free mask and sanitizer designed with my company branding with every product purchased online to encourage online shopping over in-person shopping.
Steven Duncan
At Ball Are Life, we initially focused on health-conscious consumers and digital information to help individuals make the best choices for themselves and their families. And while our business suffered little during the pandemic, we took the opportunity to greatly expand our offerings.
While prior to the pandemic we were focused solely on digital content and marketing, we found that with the increase in time spent at home, individuals were looking for fun, unique, and creative ways to spend their time and time with their families.
And although prior to the pandemic we were hesitant to enter e-commerce and national distribution models, we found ourselves motivated by the opportunity and understood that our digital content was in-line with consumers expectations during these unprecedented times.
As such, we created and launched a basketball specific board-game that could be played with family and friends. And although the process was grueling, we understood that in order to remain competitive and successful, particularly during the pandemic, we were going to need to take some risks and move out of our own comfort zones.
Similarly, we really had no idea how to launch a board-game. But with the help of other board-game creators, particularly ones we found on Kickstarter and Reddit, we were able to design, configure, implement, and launch the game within 8-months.
However, we never stopped creating and producing our own digital content during this time. And although the pandemic was a difficult time for many individuals and businesses, we understood that the long-term would prove fruitful and that this short-term difficulty would pass.
We are now even more successful then when the pandemic first hit and I like to think that the steadfast, nose-to-the-ground attitude we maintained has helped us grow as quickly as we have.
Charles Leduc
Just like every other business, our office went fully remote during lockdown. We had to help employees create distraction free environments at home, and help them create a hard stop time for work each day. Several of our people were replying to emails at midnight, so I stepped in to prevent them from burning out.
We also focused all of our efforts on digital marketing, much like every other company. Lockdown created an environment where every company had to be able market and conduct business online. Home service company’s bread and butter is word of mouth referrals, and that is true for us in the mold remediation business, but with everyone staying home, those referrals were non-existent.
We had to pivot our focus toward maintaining our online reputation, and inbound marketing. Thankfully, our services were deemed essential because a mold problem in the home weakens the immune system.
The only extra service we have begun to offer during the pandemic is replacing drywall that we have to demo. This makes things much more convenient for our customers after we have fixed their mold and moisture problems.
