16 Jun Webinar report: Persevere, Pause or Pivot: Practical Business Strategies.

The Covid-19 pandemic has raised very specific challenges for scale-ups, entrepreneurs and businesses around the world. It requires them to adapt, pivot and play new roles in order to thrive in a post-Covid-19 world.

BASE Conference’s second webinar of 2020, held on June 2nd, was organized in collaboration with AABC and focused on practical business strategies from prominent scale up experts. 

Now is the time to look at your company and see if your strategy created still applies or if you should change your course.  For this edition, BASE Confernece invited Allison Maslan and Alan Wick to share practical business strategies that we can implement to help us pivot our businesses.

Allison Maslan is the CEO of Pinnacle Global Network, the world leader in scaling businesses and the Wall Street Journal bestselling author of “Scale or Fail”. Together with her team of CEO mentors, Allison pays it forward by helping business owners scale their companies, fast-track their success and create a more meaningful life.

During the webinar, Allison shared the following valuable insights that can help business owners and entrepreneurs adapt to the current situation and get the right thought process to reach more clients:

• Be willing to be creative and pivot, think out of the box and find new ways to create products and services that can meet the current and changing market demands so that you can reach as many people as possible.
• Find new opportunities during recession and embrace the change, don’t fear it.
• There is not always time for analysis, the time to double down take action and be visible is NOW!
• Do more of what is working and what is complimentary. Drop what is not, let it go! 

Her top 3 scale-up strategies to move forward with your business: 

1. In order to keep yourself motivated as business owners, don’t work so hard and don’t exhaust yourself. Learn to detect how and when to delegate and get help. Be willing to replicate your genius and turn your business into a team-managed company. This will help you move forward with your business!
2. Analyze your habits and actions, be willing to get uncomfortable and move out of your comfort zone, make sure to double down and be visible.
3. Work with someone who has already scaled up, get a mentor or a coach to learn and grow from. Lean on others and help each other to move on and be successful.

Our second speaker, Alan Wick has founded, scaled up and sold five companies that have generated over £200m worth of sales and are still trading at over £20m sales per year. Allan is on a mission to empower entrepreneurs, share learnings and help businesses grow. Over the last 17 years, he has supported businesses in a wide variety of sectors.

Allan shared a few very interesting stories of his first fails and his business bugs that have helped him turn things around and can help business owners and entrepreneurs adapt to the current situation and get the right thought process to reach more clients and pivot:

• Act first and keep the planning for later, there is no silly idea! Find new ways to service your current clients
• Keep on offering your product or service, but be ready to come up with new ideas that will help you broaden or change the domain or sector of your company in a creative way
• Pivot your business to focus on different adaptive uses of your services or products to meet the needs of the changing markets
• Figure out where the demand is and go after it

Allan shared his vision of how business owners can face recession, specifically regarding Brexit and how this could affect businesses:

• Go to the extreme and embrace risk. Focus, expand and don’t be afraid to find new markets or offer new products. 
• Ask for help, research the possibilities and take advantage of governmental aid.
• Be agile and pivot. Learn to determine when it’s the time to cut early and cut hard and live in the now. During recession, the only way is up, act and move on!

Based on his experience, the 3 top scale -up strategies to move forward with your business are:

1. If you are struggling and have a problem finding how to keep motivated in your business, you need to ask yourself if this is the right thing for you to do. Doing what you love will keep you motivated!
2. Be ready to come up with new offerings and ideas for your existing brand(s). Usually the simplest way is also the risk-less.
3. Look at the big picture and into the distance, imagine BIG and move accordingly. Co-helping between business owners is the key.

Neifor B. Acosta, the chairman of AABC, also shared his tips about what we can do to embrace difficult times and keep on moving: 

• Focus on things we can control, that will give us energy to move forward in this uncertain time 
• Remember to lean on your networks to share ideas and succeed

If you missed our second webinar you can watch it here:

Make sure to sign up for our last Webinar of this series taking place on June 30th, 2020. This Webinar will focus on How businesses can thrive during the current situation from marketing, legal and company culture perspectives. You can sign up here.

Have you gotten your tickets for BASE Conference 2020? Make sure to save your spot:

https://baseconference.amsterdam/tickets/

Written by: Anel Alcala