Exactly a year ago today John and I sat in our office in Ulverston watching the panic unfold before our eyes.

People and businesses realising (although not to the full extent at this point) the effect the pandemic was about to have on their lives and lively hoods.

We are used to the fight or flight analogy, but we were seeing something else too – freeze!  The realisation that they were not in control and that their businesses could soon be closed – and for how long? This saw so many not knowing which way to turn.

We are based in the town centre and work with many traders across Furness. We could see some of them starting to promote a delivery service and within a couple of hours we had our Virtual High Street live on Facebook.

That first week saw our post reach skyrocket to over 84,000 views as 1000’s of local people clicked through from our list to the local businesses we were promoting.

We headed to the pub for lunch that day, we needed a little space to get our heads around what was happening and talk through some options for our own business and how we could support our clients and others too.

When we arrived home, we received a text message from school telling us it was closing and not reopening until the government instructed them to do so. That evening, Boris announced the pubs were to close a couple of days later.  

A few days later we were officially in lockdown. And the rest as they say, is history.

I’m really proud of all we have done throughout the last 12 months. Especially during the first lockdown when we pulled together as many free resources as we could that would help local businesses and we lost count of the Zooms and phone calls we did.

The pandemic has changed the way we work and as we start to plan for ‘getting back to business’ we have to think about what we really want now. Our focus has shifted a little.  Our new way of working will look a little different.

Now is the perfect time to make changes, to think about what you want, ditch the stuff you don’t want to do, change completely if you have to make it work for you and your family.

Not sure where to begin?

Ask yourself this question – ‘if I were to start this business again tomorrow, what would I do differently?’