Here are four lessons to be learned:
If I told you that Fairleigh Dickinson University would beat Purdue, you would’ve looked at me like I have two heads. And quite frankly you would not have been so far off in your assessment. This truly is one of the great parts of March Madness and the NCAA basketball tournament, anyone can pull the upset.
How It Applies: I meet with companies all the time who feel that they can’t compete with larger entities. However, I point out that the web is the great equalizer and smaller companies can compete with larger rivals. We do this by optimizing their site for search engines, and focus on their core locations. For instance, unit may not be able to compete with a nationwide company, but within your city or town you can rank very highly if not number one. By having a professional looking website, people don’t have to know that you are a small one man shop or mom and pop business.
I was just watching a video by Jay Bilas, considered one of the experts on college basketball. He had picked Arizona to win it all. Arizona got beat by major underdog Princeton. Watch Video ».
How It Applies: Business consultants and others who are supposedly experts would look down on a small business and try to tell them they don’t have the capitalization to succeed. However if this was true, you would’ve had companies like Amazon starting in their basement. So many of the successful companies in the US started as very small businesses. So keep doing what you do well, and don’t listen to anyone who tries to negatively portray your businesses chances for success.
Suggested Reading: Businesses That Started In Basements »
March Madness is one of the most exciting times in these young players lives. Most of the smaller schools aren’t going to produce a lot of NBA level talent. So this is the biggest sporting event of their lives. This is why you have 16 seeds winning, the players have such desire and will to win that it overcomes the much higher seated rivals.
How It Applies: as we mentioned in the point above, a lot of businesses started in people’s garages, and turn out to be some of the biggest companies the world has ever known. So while you’re working on your own small business, keep that desire, that will to succeed and you open up a world of possibilities. Roosites knows this firsthand, as we started at the very beginning of the Internet age. If you told us that we’d be in business over 25 years and manage hundreds of websites, I would’ve laughed at you back in the 90s. But we always had that will to achieve and push forward and it has paid off remarkably.
When you watch NCAA basketball they always build up some of these coaches who have been around for decades. But what we are seeing is that many of these coaches ideas are not translating into modern day success. NCAA basketball has changed so much over the last few years with the transfer portal, the NIL money and other changes. Now you are seeing some of these younger coaches with fresh ideas beating up on some of the dinosaurs.
How It Applies: as a small business, you always have to be open to new, fresh ideas. Just because something used to work, doesn’t mean it’s going to work now or in the future. So keep an eye on current trends, and changes within your business. Take my business, RooSites as an example, years ago we didn’t have such a thing as responsive design, and we would build separate mobile websites. Fortunately in my business we have embraced responsive design so that our websites look good on all devices. But, there were a lot of late adapters who lost a lot of business having sites that look terrible on mobile devices. While we have development practices we follow, whenever I build a site I always look to see if there is a better way to achieve what my client needs for their business to do well.
“I am not pleading with you to make changes, I am telling you you have got to make them – not because I say so, but because old Father Time will take care of you if you don’t change. Consequently, you need a procurement department for new ideas.” ~Charles Kettering
As Purdue, Kansas, Arizona and other major programs found out this year, there are a lot of surprises in March Madness! Schools like Princeton come in as major underdogs yet go on to victory versus so-called Blue Bloods like Arizona who many picked to win the whole thing. They do this by working harder and having amazing fundamental skills. They make fewer mistakes and overcome lesser skills and size. Ivy league schools have been doing this since the days of the legendary Pete Carril at Princeton. As such they tend to pull the major upsets and I can tell you no one wants to play them in March! As we show above, small businesses can also thrive by learning lessons from the NCAA Tournament and taking advantage of what they have learned.
There will no longer be companies without an online presence. Up until now most companies are on the web, but some still (somehow) have not developed websites. What Covid – 19 has taught us is that you have to be able to do business online. At very least you need a site to communicate to people when you are closed or have special hours and circumstances. Now, that doesn’t mean everybody is selling 1 million products or have a full-fledged e-commerce site, but every small business needs a website. Chances are the companies who don’t have a website will not be long for this world. They are dinosaurs and will become extinct.
Even traditional brick and mortar stores that don’t sell online, will need the ability to do so. That may not be your entire product line, but it’s a good idea if you have some standard products that can always be bought online. That way your business is never totally shut down no matter the tragic circumstances.
If you are a professional service, such as a law firm or CPA, you now need the ability to be paid online. One of my clients is a law firm that has been around since the 1800s. They recently had us build an improved payment solution for their website. The new functionality has lead to quicker payments as well as a savings of of over $12,000 a year. People during the pandemic have been scared to even go to the post office in many cases. So, having the ability to get paid online is crucial. If your website is not set up to accept payments, then that would be a good place for you to start and be ready if this horrible circumstance ever comes around again.
Too many websites are still stagnant, static sites and when the pandemic hit they had no way to quickly update their websites. The days of building a site and never making changes are gone (as they should be!!). Every site should be built using a Content Management System or CMS that is user friendly.
The percentage of people viewing sites on cellphones and pads has reached an all time high. During traumatic times, people have little patience for websites that don’t display on their device of choice. So if you are a late adopter with a site that doesn’t look good everywhere, now is the time, make it happen!
Look, if I had told you that we would have a pandemic that would shut down the world, forcing millions out of work, you would’ve said I am crazy. But like a scary movie, our world became a nightmare with Covid-19. Similar to 911, some things changed forever. After 911, everything from travel, to the way we purchase stocks and our normal behavior shifted forever. The same thing has happened with the pandemic. Now, as no one could’ve predicted this, very few were ready for the new world order. Some companies actually thrived during this horrible time. Some have survived and sadly many will go out of business forever.
But, looking on the positive side (if there is one) we now will be planning ahead for the next pandemic. Our small businesses will be far more ready, as we have to find a way to keep business says surviving even during the worst times when we cannot conduct business face-to-face. Most of us will never go back to our normal jobs, going into an office 9 to 5, as many will remain working from home. But the work will still need to be done, just in a different fashion. We have to be ready.
My recommendation for small businesses is this: take a look at your small business website, figure out what you can do in the event of another global catastrophe. Determine what is the bare minimum you need to keep your business afloat and make it happen. And of course, if you need any help at all, please contact us, we are happy to assist.
