Start-Up Entrepreneur in Lockdown - Make or Break
As the lock down continues in some countries, and the UK furlough scheme has been extended for a further four months, it’s not surprising that entrepreneurs are continually concerned about the future of their business.
This will make or break the 5.9 million SME businesses and 2 million freelancers in the UK, most who are teetering on the edge of collapse if they haven’t already. The UK government is assisting businesses with loans and some with grants. Bottom line is who will pay all this back into the UK economy?
Datalyse is under the banner as one of the 673,000 start up’s in the UK and it isn’t getting any easier. Today we have some clients still with us, we count ourselves lucky. However, due to the massive shortfall we’re facing we are trying our best to access financial assistance, which isn’t coming easy for several reasons, but I won’t bore you with that.
My name is Marc Castro and I am the co-founder of Datalyse - I look back to about six weeks ago. I was sat in my living room, on lockdown and concerned what will happen to the four members of staff who work with me and the numerous suppliers who count on my business to keep them turning too.
My head was jaded and foggy amidst this chaos. I thought about now, the impact of any decisions I made and then my mind skipped from today and what will happen tomorrow to a few months in the future. The knock on effect was like a domino game, except this isn’t a game I want to play - none of us want to participate in. I’ve had to reduce my team for the foreseeable future. I’m still waiting on clients to pay the money that is owed.
Starting up a small enterprise, no matter what the niche is, can be difficult as many entrepreneurs will understand. Every waking hour is consumed in making a success of the business, growth of teams and constantly learning to better ourselves.
Going back to then, my body was urging me to get up and think, but my head was spinning in a loop of uncertainty and pressure that was different this time to the everyday growth phase of a business. Trying to find what I could do differently after investing so much money and time in the business was debilitating and constant with no reprieve from my own self. It’s usually fight or flight, but in my case it was easier to fix other people’s problems.
I tried to help amongst these trying times by offering our services for free, after all under all this confusion I feel the same pain points. I advertised my services on social media platforms, giving away my services for free and still not much interest, just a few who took up the deal.
All the time I had been thinking there is an opportunity in this chaos, and finally it was then I could refocus. I worked tirelessly with my co-founder to move our CRM system around. Together we found the solution, which was to continue to help SME’s but this time really focusing on their businesses transformation. We are now the most cost effective digital transformation platform provider along with the other ad-ons we offer.
Today we will fight again to win the start up battle and are trying our very best to help others. Saving time and money for those small to medium size businesses who cannot afford much right now is a challenge I am willing to take on. I am determined to make sure that I am helping with moving the economy around, whatever it looks like in the future. So here is to round two as a start up entrepreneur.
#ENDS#