Processing Your Small Business Disaster Loan

“All we can do is wait and see.” This is how most people are responding to COVID-19 pandemic.

Here’s what most people are thinking:

“We will wait and see how COVID-19 affects our family and community members. We will wait to see if our hospitals will be inundated with patients, or whether stay at home orders will flatten the curve.”

“We will wait and see if we get the coronavirus or not and how bad our symptoms will be when and if we get it.”

“We will wait and see if daycare centers, swimming pools, and gyms will be able to safely open in our local communities.”

“We will wait and see how our local, state, and national economies will be affected by the coronavirus.”

But if you are a small business owner, this “wait and see” attitude may not be an option for you. You can’t wait and see how COVID-19 will affect your small business because you have a lease, employees, a business loan, and vendors to pay.

Instead of waiting to see what will happen, your mind is already whirling with ideas on how to survive this crisis. As you are waiting for your small business disaster loan, you are already coming up with plans B, C, D, and E.

You think this way because you are a small business owner, or perhaps you are a small business owner because you think this way. You are special, and here are some reasons why you will survive this crisis.

1. You are used to starting from scratch.

You’ve done it before, and you can do it again. In all likelihood, your business began as an idea. That idea expanded into a few late nights formulating plans on a cheap laptop, crunching numbers as you sat on your living room couch. You tentatively reached out to clients, got a few paying customers, and took the big step of quitting your day job.

Your business slowly grew over the years. You hired employees. You bought nicer computers, hired a freelance CPA, and grew your business.

You are smart and have skills. You have learned a lot over the years through trial and error. You have studied with mentors and by reading the best business writers of today.

You have started from nothing before, and you can do it again.

2. You are used to living with uncertainty.

There are two types of workers in the world. Some are happiest when earning a steady income in a stable job. They like to know how much they will make each month and value security more than anything.

Others would rather rely on their skills, knowledge, and personality to try to earn a more considerable income. These are the small business owners, members of the gig economy, and commissioned salespeople.

As a small business owner, you are used to feast or famine paychecks. You know how to budget during uncertain times because you’ve done that most of your life.

3. You will do what you need to do in the meantime to survive.

Some business owners while waiting for stay at home orders to be lifted are spending time on freelance teacher websites to learn how to make some extra money in the gig economy until they can go back to work.

These business owners are learning Upwork skills and the pros and cons of each of the top freelancing sites. They are getting the best freelance jobs that will enable them to earn an income, no matter how small, while waiting for the small business disaster loan to materialize.

Small business leaders are not spending their time at home baking bread and doing puzzles. They are scouring freelance job sites to find out how to use their skills and knowledge to become a niche writer, a freelance content writer, or even do some freelance sports writing.

So while the rest of the country bakes bread and “waits and sees” what is coming next, you are thinking about how to not only survive but thrive during this uncertain environment. You are completing freelancing stay at home jobs, reconfiguring your business so you can hit the ground running as soon as stay at home orders are over, and looking to the future to determine what business or industries may be taking off in this new normal.

Turn off the news reports, stay off social media, and don’t participate when your friends and neighbors are using all their time and energy to freak out and complain. Use the silence to brainstorm, think, and plan. You’ve got this.

This article was originally posted at Freelancing Buzz.