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Yesterday, Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon issued a statement to his employees on Instagram which has been widely lauded open letter to his hundreds of thousands of employees about changes Amazon would be making to its logistics, transportation, supply chain, purchasing, third party and seller processes order to prioritize stocking and delivering essential household items during the Coronavirus Covid 19 outbreak in 2020.

Surely, small businesses can learn a lot from Jeff Bezos who started Amazon with a small loan of about $300,000 from his parents only to build the most lucrative company in the world a few short years later and catapult himself to the top of the Forbes List of Billionaires.

No, we don't all have to be the next Jeff Bezos. However, we can learn many lessons from him, including the lesson of adaptation. A small business has to adapt to changing tides and times. The change may be temporary or it may be permanent, but in the middle of crisis, it is the small businesses that can hunker down and keep going and adapt and reinvent themselves and prioritize and discern that are going to succeed and survive.

It is also necessary, in addition to taking care of yourself and your business, to think about people. Those working for you, those who are involved in your life, and even those who you may not know but who could need your assistance in a time of crisis.

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Hiring

Hiring can obviously be an anxiety-inducing situaition for some small business because there is a lot of risk of getting it wrong and even if the employee is being hired for a short term, a bad hire can be both costly and stressful. The thing to keep in mind is you have to be sure you have followed all neceesary rules with respect of employment law regulions to avoid any kind of litigation or dispute. You also have to be careful to be transparent about the job tasks and what it entails so that everyone - especially the new hire - is on the same page.

During the Great Pandemic of 2020, many workers in the United States and around the world lost their jobs. Small businesses were forced to close in some cases and those that were able to remain afloat, often did so by the skin of their teeth. But the news was not bad for all companies. Certainly big companies like Amazon could not keep up with demand and had to hire thousands of part time temporary help to help with their warehouses and delivery and things like that. Other big companies such as Walmart also hired a lot of temporary help as did supermarkets that could scarcely keep up with the demands.

Manufacturers of home goods and food chians, as well as pharmaceutical companies, bakeries, e-commerce companies  and tech giants also fared pretty well.

As for many small businesses such as those in the fast food businesses and delivery business they also needed to hire temporary workers as demand for the products and services soared with millions of people homebound due to the virus.

So as a small business owner, you have to be prepared to exploit and explore your opportunities but at the same time you have to have strategies in place to manage risk and avoid bad hires.

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