It doesn’t need much saying when it is said the global pandemic affected everyone. Not just people themselves essentially, but the world of business as well. I recently took this further when I interviewed Sandra Wheatley, who created her own brand building business Demographik. Here is what she had to say about the impact of covid on her self owned business.

What was it like before covid? ‘Well, before Covid, we felt the need to be in the office more regularly, and we now know that for our business, it was just habit to do that, and not necessarily a production requirement.Our clients wanted to see us for face-to-face meetings, even if they were based hours away. Both us and our clients realised that technology and video meetings are actually efficient and less time consuming than face to face meetings. The issue of not being able to find a meeting room is a thing of the past! We do still like to meet up with our clients in person, but it is not needed as regularly.’
 

How did that change an attitude towards businesses? ‘I feel that Covid made all businesses aware of the possibility of flexible and at home working, and this did benefit us in that we did not have to play down our flexible working approach. Prior to Covid some clients might have thought this unprofessional, but now it has been adopted by all companies. This shift in attitude has benefitted us.’ What would you consider to be your main challenge? ‘The main challenge was the sudden slow down, and in some cases, stopping of our work flow from our clients. Our work is on a project by project basis. Us and our clients did not have time to prepare for this, and so there was no knowledge of how long this would last. We had to keep showing up in case our clients contacted us with requirements, but were often not working on paying work and so our income dropped significantly. Face to face events stopped and so did the work that this often generated for us.

  It was hard to plan accurately. It felt as if we were hanging around and waiting. We could not take the time off, but at the same time we were not producing much work and therefore not making the income we required.’ If you had 3 teachings from Covid, what would they be? ‘I would say that my three teachings are: -We now know that we can be more productive working from home, and that days in the office are mainly for connecting with each other, and seeing clients. We now work more from home than before and we try to ensure that the days that we do go into the office are for meetings and social activity too.

-We realise that having a large office with lots of paperwork is not necessary and have cleared out most of the  ‘stuff’ from our office. We now work in a more agile way., but have still kept our central office base.

  -We are aware that larger companies have more requirement to be in an office, especially to help with the onboarding and development of new starters. We are different in that we do not have junior team members and therefore do not have to consider this. ‘ I’d like to thank Santa Wheatley for not only conducting this interview with me but also helping to shine a light on a forgotten but forever changed aspect of Covid- how it changed our independent business’s. Some unfortunately weren’t as lucky, losing possible years of hard earned work into their business only for it to be taken away by Covid. While it is important to try and take actions in moving forward from Covid, it is also vital that we also take these learnings so that this won’t repeat in the future.