Nettie Owens - What Businesses Need To Know Right Now: Lessons Learned From Interviewing Businesses During a Pandemic

What Businesses Need To Know Right Now:

Lessons Learned From Interviewing Businesses During a Pandemic

Copyright 2021 by Nettie Owens

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission from the publisher, except as provided by the United States of America copyright law or brief quotations embodied in articles and reviews.

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Cover design by Michelle Fairbanks, Fresh Design

Interior formatting by Amanda Reid, A.J. Reid Creative

Prepared for Publication by Write | Publish | Sell

Edited by Robin Blackburn

ISBN: 978-1-948604-56-7 (paperback)

978-1-948604-80-2 (ebook)

Printed in the United States of America

To My FamilyYou are my world.

Praise for What Businesses Need to Know Right Now

What Businesses Need to Know Right Now is packed with great info from a variety of experts. It is an easy read, and I love that each section ends with the three top take-aways.

Suzanne Moore

Nettie Owens has compiled a treasure trove of wisdom from a diverse group of interviewees. Asking the right questions to experts in several fields, she has uncovered and cataloged valuable insights that will help the reader adjust to the world of COVID-19. Readable and relatable, this book will be useful long after the Pandemic is consigned to distant memory.

Bruce M. Casner

CEO, Morgan Casner Associates, Washington, DC

What Businesses Need to Know Right Now brings together a treasure trove of industry experts that deliver value on each and every single page. No matter where you are in business, the message is clearopportunity is all around you, no matter what economic indicators may point to.

Cat Stancik

The Founder of Action Incubator, Bestselling author of 7 Principles for a More Productive and Fulfilling Life and creator of the Lead Boss System

Nettie Owens has woven together insights from business leaders that can help us navigate, maneuver, and even grow our businesses during this unique time. Dive into this book to find key takeaways and strategies to move your business forward today.

Cindy Sullivan

CPO, OwnercbSullivan Consulting & Organizing and President, Institute for Challenging Disorganization

As a small business owner, I was fascinated by the amount of information in these interviews which I look forward to modifying and then applying. This book will be a valuable resource for me, and others, for many years to come.

Diane Quintana

Master Trainer, CPO-CD, CPO DNQ Solutions, LLC and Best-Selling Author

This book is right on time and simultaneously timeless. These interviews in various business segments get you back to basics. In these short to the point master classes with leaders in their field cut the fluff and tells you What Businesses Need To Know.

EJ Cutliff

Owner of Esoteric Sports Alliance & Host of the Black in Sports Podcast

Nettie has this wonderfully effortless way of pulling loads of value out of the guests she interviews. Its as if her conversational style was meant for the printed page. I look forward to even more from her in the future!

Andrew Kap

Author of The Last Law of Attraction Book Youll Ever Need To Read

Table of Contents

The interviews compiled in this book were captured between April and September 2020. Each has been minimally edited for readability. You may assume that the words in the interview are those of the person being interviewed, and the text in italics as well as the questions are from the author.

Introduction

No one ever really believed it could happen, but the world stopped spinning.

Several months ago, the planet came to a slow, grueling halt, like the metallic grinding of a machine coming to rest.

And we all waited, pensively wondering what would happen next. Would we or our loved ones become ill? Would we die? Could we operate our businesses? What would happen to our children? What about school, childcare, grocery shopping? What should we do? Stay home? Go out? A million questions were spinning through our collective emotional atmosphere.

It was March 2020; the world was at a standstill from the global pandemic that had taken over every aspect of life. Businesses shut down overnight. Workforces were laid off or moved to work from home. Schools closed. Houses of worship shut their doors. Everything we had come to know as normal came into question.

And then, about six weeks later, plans were underway for us to return from isolation and begin interacting again. But the pandemic was not over, not even close, and there were more questions than answers in the daily news.

In a conversation I had with a fellow business consultant colleague, the query came up, What is it that businesses and business owners need to know right now?

I wanted to know what businesses need to know about reopening their doors, accommodating employees who were working at home alongside their partners, bringing their workforce back, or letting them continue to work from home. What did businesses need to know about technology, leadership, branding, lead generation, and more? I wasnt looking for answers that required deep research and advanced study but what did we need to know right at this exact moment.

Selfishly, I sought first to get the answers I was seeking for myself. I started interviewing subject experts who had something to say beyond the Business 101 level, and who could speak to the challenges we were facing in that exact moment. What followed were daily, live broadcast, 10-minute conversations with leading voices in the entrepreneurial and business world. The interviews gained popularity, and I heard that people were watching the recordings one after another as I posted them. You can check out all the interviews here as the list continues to grow: WhatBusinessesNeedToKnow.com .

As I had one conversation after another, the fog began to lift, hope began to return, and the real answers I gathered helped business owners find their footing again. I discovered that even though the information being shared was relevant and specific to what we were experiencing during the pandemic, it also contained solid truths about good business practices that are timeless. At the encouragement of Jennifer McGinley, with JLM Strategic Communications, I pulled this information together into the volume you now hold.

This book organizes these valuable conversations by topic, including strategy; sales; leadership; finance; communication; connection and collaboration; people; diversity, inclusion, equity and belongingness; productivity; and technology. In each interview, I emphasize the bottom line of what you need to know right now, plus three key points or action items you can use. While you can read this book from cover to cover, you will also find value just by opening to a page and digesting one conversation at a time.

The interviews all happened in a bubble, a closed and confused world trying to survive the greatest global calamity in over a century. They also reflect the genuine experiences of those being interviewed. There are times when you will want to shout in frustration along with the expert, and other times when you will want to highlight passages and take notes about what to put in place next.

I hope you enjoy learning from these experts as much as I enjoy the opportunity to bring these conversations to you. I would love to hear from you! Join the conversation at WhatBusinessesNeedtoKnow.com and let me know what your favorite interviews were, along with what knowledge you will apply going forward.