Something positive is happening in our cities, on our rooftops, in our urban waste spaces - and it is being led by a new generation of eco-conscious women entrepreneurs. As many people are thinking about becoming more resilient, more self-sufficient during the time of Coronavirus, there is a desire to reconnect people with their food and the environment through urban agriculture. Permaculture is a set of design principles centered on replicating natural ecosystems in our urban spaces - and it is becoming an interesting new space for women entrepreneurs to move into for their impact-driven businesses. They are finding innovative new ways of promoting sustainability and self-reliance by creating managed agri-ecosystems modeled on natural ones, right in our backyards. Josephine Katumba, founder of Biakudia Urban Farming Solutions, is a South African agripreneur building a successful business by turning waste spaces into urban farms. As a result, she is empowering local communities to become food self-sufficient, and transforming underutilized spaces in the city into magnificent urban farms. Josephine is not alone - she is part of a growing number of women entrepreneurs in Africa who are finding solutions to urban food security and building community resilience.

Since the introduction of restricted business environments with social distancing, lockdowns, remote working orders, and other retail challenges, businesses have had to take a more innovative approach to their sales strategies. It’s all about evolving the customer experience, regardless of how they are able or choose to engage with your business and brand. That’s where an Omnichannel approach to selling is key. If you haven’t heard of it before, it is a multichannel approach to sales that seeks to provide customers with a seamless shopping experience, whether they're shopping online from a desktop or mobile device, by telephone, or in a brick-and-mortar store. For entrepreneurs, this means rethinking the way your employees sell; it means looking differently at how you allocate your sales budget, to address both digital and in-person engagement needs; it means considering new ways of communicating with customers and offering new ways for them to do business with you. An Omnichannel sales approach provides opportunities to have different types of conversations with your customers, different kinds of experiences, and hopefully, also allows you to attract extra customers as you are meeting their needs. So, is it time you thought about introducing your own Omnichannel sales strategy into your business?

How many people do you know in your family, your community, your personal networks who are now considering becoming entrepreneurs? It could be out of necessity, because they have been furloughed or been retrenched because of the economic downturn caused by the Coronavirus. Or it could be as a result of having experienced the empowering feeling of working outside of the traditional workplace environment through the pandemic and resulting lockdowns. Suddenly, getting to spend more time at home with family whilst balancing work commitments, and realizing that quality of life means taking control of your economic destiny, leads to thoughts of starting a business. We all know the saying “When life hands you lemons, make lemonade”, and that’s is exactly how entrepreneurs think and respond to the challenges that life inevitably throws at us. So that is perhaps why more and more people are now thinking about bootstrapping a business from home at this time. This bootstrap mentality, which combines a heady combination of big ideas, mixed with a need for frugality, innovation and agility, is necessary for success, not just early on but also as the business grows. And for all those who think that starting a business in the middle of a pandemic might not be the wisest move, think again. As big businesses and brands take strain in this changing world, room is being made for agile and innovative startups with new ideas to find their place in the market. Lemonade anyone?

The next few months are going to be critical ones for women entrepreneurs who are looking to relaunch their businesses and brands, and gain much-needed consumer attention and sales. To get the traction needed, the best approach is to develop a detailed business relaunch strategy, in order to get the required results and, importantly, to maintain focus on what matters - getting those sales done. The strategy should focus on your business recovery priorities. Ask yourself some important questions when formulating your relaunch strategy - what stock needs to be moved urgently? What new products need to be developed to meet new market needs and what does the competition look like? Which market segments offer the biggest opportunity to close sales? Which territories or countries offer the most exciting and potentially lucrative market opportunities? By assessing each business priority, combined with identifying sales opportunities in key markets, this relaunch strategy will help you to determine a recovery timeline for each aspect of your business, and importantly, get it moving.

More and more consumers are making conscious purchasing decisions with their hard-earned money. They are looking to do business with a company and a brand whose ethos is similar to their own. They want to see greater sustainability in the products they are choosing to buy. These conscious consumers, and they are growing in number globally, are concerned about the environment and the impact their purchases are making. This shift in consumer behaviour is resulting in 3 eco-business trends emerging this year. Trend 1 is in sustainable fashion - millennials and GenZ consumers are leading the growing interest in buying sustainable, not disposable fashion, and supporting niche brands. Trend 2 is the use of recycled plastic to create innovative new raw material - entrepreneurs such as The Joinery in Cape Town are creating cutting edge new eco fabric and sustainable luxury products from recycled plastic bottles. Trend 3 is in sustainable packaging - consumers are looking for products that are not packed in single use plastic, but instead are shipped, packed and displayed in environmentally friendly ways. These trends are being driven by conscious consumers who want to tread more lightly on the earth, and want the businesses and brands they support to do the same.

As entrepreneurs are now focused on how to practically relaunch into a very uncertain marketplace, taking a ‘safe mode’ approach will make sense for many. It is right to think about ‘cash flow’ now, not just ‘profit’, although everyone wants to make money. But after the months of lockdown, a small loss beats a big loss, a small profit is better than no profit, and cash flow is everything. You need to generate ready cash to pay your bills as they fall due – as this will keep you solvent. Getting sales through the door is obviously the priority, but in a tough marketplace, this will be hard in the short term. In safe mode, you need to think smartly about how you could sweat your assets to generate much-needed cash flow. Do you have excess stock that could be sold on elsewhere – even at a small loss? Can you sell your products and services directly to customers instead of going through your normal supply chains? Can you cut your physical retail or service presence to save costs and instead focus on digital sales? Can you trim budgets that are no longer relevant or effective, for example, traditional media advertising - could you switch to social media to promote your business instead? Safe mode also means going back to focus on your core business.

We all know that our businesses are only as good as our people - they are our brand ambassadors, they are the machine that drives our productivity, they are the energy that keeps our products and services moving to our customers. And we value our employees for all of those contributions. But our employees are also potentially our idea bank, and we could have an untapped resource of ingenuity and inventiveness that could help both them and our businesses survive and thrive. As business owners, we sometimes think that we are responsible for generating all the good ideas, but the fact is that our employees know and experience our businesses differently - they bring another perspective. As a result, they may have new ideas on how to improve productivity, or to enhance the customer experience, or even ideas for new products and services. They may be closer to our customers on a daily basis and better understand their needs. Encourage your employees to feel embraced by the business, to innovate, to generate new ideas. Incentivize them, reward them for their idea contributions. They will probably surprise you, and the business will be all the better for their input.

There is a saying that goes, you only know who your real friends are during tough times, and the same could be applied to our business lives. A lot customers will come and go when the economy is going through upheaval, but those customers who stand by you, who are loyal, deserve to be recognised and rewarded. After all, they are the life-blood of your business, and it is useful to remember just how much time, effort and money it takes to earn a new customer - it’s in your best interests to keep them. This is the time to show your gratitude for their loyalty to your business, your brand, and your products and services. If your business doesn’t currently have a loyalty programme, then this is a good time to create one. Consider offering unique discount promotions on future purchases. Send a personal message as the founder to your loyal customers, thanking them for their ongoing support and share your vision for the business with them. Personalize the customer experience with your brand, get to know them, make them feel special. Show your appreciation for their support by sending a birthday message and special free gift or discount offer. Reward their loyalty, your business needs them.

Every entrepreneur is now focused on how quickly they can relaunch, reopen, reconnect with their customers, and start doing business again. This has been the most stressful of times, and now it’s about trying to bounce back and recoup the losses as quickly as possible. But there is one important factor we need to remember. As much as we have all been taking strain as entrepreneurs, it’s the same for our customers. We may open our doors again, relaunch our products and services with renewed energy, and be full of excitement about doing business again, but our customers may be slow to return. They too will have been experiencing personal hardships because of the pandemic and its economic impact. Their lives will also have been negatively impacted and they will be in recovery mode too. So it is increasingly important to connect with those customers in an empathetic way, to communicate rather than hard sell, no matter how much you need that sale and the money right now. Remember, we are all in this together, and a kinder approach to the way we do business may serve us well at this critical time.

Customers are demanding more now from the businesses and brands they choose to buy from. For many, it is no longer simply a case of making a purchase without engaging with those who have produced it. Customers want to know about the people and the story behind the brand - and not only that, they want that story and those people to be authentic. Customers are far more savvy in today’s marketplace, they can see through a marketing or PR campaign. They will make a decision to buy based on whether the business and brand resonates with them. Customers increasingly want to make an emotional purchase decision, one that fits with their own personal values, and they are seeking out companies who can deliver to those values. One of the most powerful ways that a brand can make such a strong and authentic customer connection is when the founder speaks directly from the heart directly to that customer. Telling the brand story personally resonates at such a powerful level, and ultimately, the founder of the business is the best person to communicate it. Such an approach will result in both improved sales and greater brand connectivity.

We all know the well-known proverb, “Necessity is the mother of invention”, but perhaps in these strange times, that should change to ‘reinvention’. Take a moment to reflect on just how many of the biggest and most successful companies globally have built continual business reinvention into their DNA. Companies such as Amazon and Netflix always appear to be one step ahead of the competition, continually reinventing their product offerings and their brand positioning with their customers. Remember, Amazon started life as an online bookstore, and Netflix started out as a business shipping DVDs. Both companies recognize that to remain relevant and competitive, they have to constantly keep ahead of the market and customer demands that change with incredible speed. It is the same for any of our businesses, large or small. In these challenging times, when no-one really knows what the future business landscape will look like post-Covid, we all have to be constantly open to change, and to adapting our businesses to meet new needs. As suggested, necessity really is the mother of reinvention in today’s new world.

One business reality of the current pandemic is that women entrepreneurs who had spent months, and possibly even years, securing game-changing funding for their businesses, found everything changed overnight. As markets plummeted and share prices fell, investors started to get nervous and withdraw their support for certain businesses, or limit their investment to fit the new business reality. At Lionesses of Africa, we have listened to our women entrepreneurs share their personal experiences of having to pivot their business strategies rapidly to adapt to limited or non-existing funds. They have had to make sacrifices, revise forecasts and business growth plans, and instead look at lower valuations of their businesses in order to get any new investment. Many women have spoken about having to leave their egos at the door of those investor meetings, and make tough choices and compromises in order to move the business forward. These challenging times are a real test of mental and emotional toughness, and your ego will need to find its place as you deal with the new business realities facing us all.

As business starts to reopen, and marketplaces become accessible again, there is going to be a huge amount of competition, with everyone trying to get their brands noticed again. So how you do stand out from the crowd, how do you get your share of voice, how do you get consumers to see and hear you? One way is to leverage what makes your business and your brand unique - your story. Every entrepreneur has a story to tell, how they started the business, what the inspiration was for creating a product or service offering, how they overcame adversity and achieved success. That story is what makes you unique, what separates you from the crowd. Use every opportunity now to make sure your current customers know your updated story, what is happening in your business, what new things you have planned, and how important they are to the future path your story will take. For those new customers you want to attract, start telling your story loud and clear, through your website, your social media channels, through platforms such as Lionesses of Africa - remember, we share the inspirational stories of women entrepreneurs from across the continent every day. Remember, your story is your unique selling point - share your story today!

The New York Times published a really interesting article this month which centered around interviews with over 500 leading epidemiologists on when they would expect to perform normal activities again post Covid-19. It was a fascinating read, and tells us a lot about how social and business etiquette may change for the long-term. Many epidemiologists said unless there’s an effective vaccine or treatment first, it will be more than a year before many say they will be willing to go to concerts, sporting events or religious services. And some may never greet people with hugs or handshakes again. That last point is interesting because these are established forms of business etiquette - the handshake is not just a greeting, it can be a way of sealing a deal, of agreeing a partnership, an informal contract. Although as a temporary response, in-person business meetings prior to major lockdowns consisted of greetings by nudging covered elbows or clicking shoes together. But reality is setting in that until a vaccine or treatment is found, we may have seen the last of the handshake in business - and it may never return. It could be time to rethink business etiquette for the future.

There is an interesting shift taking place in the global marketplace, one where consumers are making conscious purchasing decisions based on how they view the ethical positions of brands. No longer is it simply enough to have brand appeal based on aesthetics - instead, consumers want to know the companies and brands they are buying from are ethical, honest, environmentally friendly, trustworthy, and people oriented. Instead of customers buying with their eyes and their wallets, they are now buying with their hearts and minds. They want to know that their hard-earned money is going to a business that is aligned to their values, their purpose, their concerns in life. Trend forecasters are predicting that in these current challenging times, when everyone is re-evaluating their lives in some way or another, that the search for purposeful brands will be increasingly on consumer minds. Those businesses that recognize this shift and pivot accordingly will be the ones that are likely to maintain pace with the changing world and what it demands from a consumer perspective.

Everyone is facing the same challenge right now, how to bounce back post-Covid, and if possible, return even stronger to make up for lost time and revenues. If lessons are to be learned from dealing with the impact of this crisis, it’s that our businesses definitely need to be more agile and open to change. It’s essential to think strategically at this time. Firstly, focus on recovering those lost revenues - look at how you can change your tactics to engage your priority customers in order to close those much-needed sales. Secondly, restructure the way you operate if you need to - possibly move to digital instead of physical business or retail. Thirdly, rethink the way your people work - perhaps having your team members work from home is better than everyone being in one workplace. Fourthly, accelerate your move to digitize your business in whatever aspects you can. If there is anything this pandemic and its impact on business has taught us, it’s that digital solutions are the only way to stay in business during a crisis. So, this is the time to see how you can reimagine your business model, in order to stay relevant and viable going forward.

Ask any big company or organisation about what change management means to them, and they will say it is key element in their strategic plan, planning for change and being prepared for it. Up until this point in time, it has not been a business planning imperative for many women entrepreneurs, particularly those with small to medium sized businesses. However, in this uncertain economic climate, having people around you who are able to respond well to change, who are adaptable, and real team players, is essential. The new workplace requires that every team member knows how to adapt to changing circumstances quickly and effectively, being able to pivot where necessary to meet the demands of the market. Women entrepreneurs need to know they have resilient, change-ready employees who are capable of responding to change as it happens. The ability to be able to accept and react to change positively and proactively, and importantly be part of the solution, is now being seen as an essential skill.

Now that many of us are emerging from the lockdowns in our countries, there are different ways of looking at the experience. Some are able to reflect relatively positively on the enforced period of time spent working from home. They have found themselves able to get more done remotely, without all the usual workplace distractions, and to just stay focused on the job at hand. For others, the experience has been a worrying and distressing one, not able to keep the business going because of severe restrictions, and dealing with cashflow and employee care challenges, to name but a few. What is common for everyone is a feeling of post-lockdown anxiety creeping in - no-one really knows what is going to happen next. There is just so much uncertainty about trying to return to normal life when you know the world and the business environment is anything but normal right now. Anxiety experts suggest that the way to deal with this situation is to focus on the things you can control, instead of the things you can’t, and try not to think too far ahead, That way, life won’t feel quite so overwhelming.

It is perhaps human nature to try and find any positive to emerge from the tragedy of the COVID-19 pandemic - we have seen this in our embracing of our healthcare workers who have been battling this crisis since day one, saving precious lives. It has made us place an even greater value on the healthcare profession and their invaluable place in our society. However, another less visible positive has emerged from this devastating crisis. Our planet is beginning to bounce back from the devastating consequences of carbon emissions, due to the forced shutdown of industry during this time. As a result, it has allowed the human race to stop, think, and wake up to the fact that negative environmental impacts make future pandemics more likely to occur. The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has warned that global warming, if not stopped, will possibly accelerate the creation of more new viruses in the future. As the world has been forced to pause, reflect, and recover, perhaps it is the time to also ensure the planet’s health is restored. A green recovery, where we look to run industry and business differently with less impact on the planet, will ensure it can take care of us and our future generations.

In business, it can be so hard to ask for help when we most need it. As entrepreneurs, we tend to feel that we have to find the solutions to challenges and difficult situations ourselves. As a result, we often stretch ourselves and our resources to the limit, not wanting to ask for assistance for fear of being seen as a failure. But when things get tough, it is exactly the time to ask for help, to put that ego away, and get the specialist advice and support that will make the difference. Start by identifying exactly what type of assistance you need, and then doing your research to find the right person to help. Next, be honest about the situation you are in, and where you need support. Ask questions, lots of them, and remember there is no such thing as a stupid question when you are building a business and need help. Be open to learning, to making changes, and to taking on board suggestions - after all, if you are going to ask for help and advice, make sure you are open to taking it. Your business will thank you for it!