The Burns Lake Chamber of Commerce hosted its first virtual small business meeting on April 16. The point of the meeting was to check in with local businesses, find out how they’re doing, and find out what they’re doing to cope with COVID-19.
Lori Watson, economic development officer for the Village of Burns Lake, hosted the meeting, along with co-host, Randi Amendt, Burns Lake & District Chamber of Commerce executive director.
Watson opened the meeting to the almost 20 attendees by sharing that the village and the Chamber have been “monitoring the COVID-19 situation closely” around its impact on the community and local businesses.
“We’re here today to develop a way to support you in your businesses and to hear about different things you’ve been doing to cope with the situation as it is,” she said.
Watson and Amendt shared that the Chamber of Commerce took a survey at the end of last month, and found that over 80 per cent of small businesses were affected by the COVID-19 crisis.
They dove into a presentation almost immediately after introducing the topics at hand. The presentation was based on a guidebook she created called the Small Business Action Plan. The presentation was just a few minutes, but filled with key strategies for people who might be struggling with business right now.
As outlined on the first page of the book—which interested people can still get from Watson now—the main subjects covered in her plan are: Keeping Safe, Assessing and generating solutions, Adapting and overcoming, Staying in contact, Marketing during this time and Planning for the future
One key point brought up from those six, and which was discussed in the meeting call, is that right now businesses might have some ethical concerns around marketing. Knowing that so many people are financially in tough situations, owners of small businesses might feel less than keen on trying to get them to purchase their goods.
Tips in the action plan speak directly to how to business owners be “sensitive and respectful” while still trying to keep their own businesses afloat.
The plan ended with a page and large, bold type writing that read, “Remember, you are not alone”—an important message for many right now.
After the plan was presented, questions were floated around the group like, “What resources do you think you will need in the next month?” and “What specific adjustments have you made?”
Of course, one of the key strategies talked about was moving to online services as much as possible, though not everyone could do that, as they said in the meeting. Others mentioned that they were cleaning and sanitizing more than ever before, and yet other business owners said they were able to capitalize on some of the newly emerging demands because of COVID-19.
Watson and Amendt praised the group for adapting as best they could to an ever-changing situation.
And while it was shared between the group that Federal and Provincial government had recently launched funding assistance for small businesses, some barriers to that were mentioned, too, by interested business owners on the meeting call. One such barrier was that access to internet was mandatory for most of the help being offered right now.
Watson said she hopes to have more meetings going forward, with a goal of them being weekly. She is planning one for this week, but has yet to confirm the exact day and time.
