Category: Uncategorized

Getting to the Other Side: Travel

Image by Steve Adcock from Pixabay

Mrs. C. recently mentioned that she would consider taking a trip in an RV.

Many of you might not consider that blog-worthy, but traveling the country in a motor home is something we never would have considered in the past.

We love to travel.  We enjoy road trips, beach trips, cruises, European travel, hiking trips, amusement parks, you name it.  In fact, I had been considering taking a phased retirement to allow us to have more time to take some extended trips. However, RV-ing was never, ever on our list of future travel plans.

Then came the pandemic.

Travel Disrupted

Bookings on US domestic airlines are down 90% from last year.  Airlines are slashing the number of flights to try and compensate.  Airlines are trying to calm worried travelers by significantly improving cabin cleaning procedures. Rather than breezing through the cabin to pick up newspapers and drink cups passengers left behind, airlines have implemented protocol to deep clean and disinfect all passenger areas between every flight.  To help with social distancing, Delta is no longer allowing people to book middle seats.

Hotel occupancy rates hover at less than half of what they were last year at this time. Europe has been particularly hard hit, with occupancy rates dropping from 70-80% last year to less than 30% today. Like the airlines, hotels are stepping up cleaning standards.  Standard services are no longer standard. Daily housekeeping is a thing of the past, as are breakfast buffets, minibars, and valet parking.

The cruise industry, charter bus companies, airline companies, and aircraft manufacturers are lining up to get government bailouts.

Such efforts by industry stalwarts are to be expected during times of intense disruption.  Companies will do whatever they can to preserve the status quo.

The Market is Changing

Normally, I try not to insert myself when thinking about changing markets and the entrepreneurial opportunities they create.  However, Mrs. C. and I are the travel industry’s target market.  We love to travel. We planned and saved through the years to allow us to travel. And now, we are blessed with the time, resources, and lifestyle that allows us to indulge in our wanderlust.

But the disruption of the coronavirus has done what disruptions like this normally do. It has changed our thinking and our behaviors as customers.  And when these changes resulting from disruptions happen, they alter the future.

The Future of Travel

When thinking about the future of travel, we must take any predictions from industry insiders with a grain of salt.  The lens they use to look into the future is biased toward what things have been like in the past.  But, the reality is, no one is good at predicting the future when it comes to disrupted markets.

However, if I had to bet based on our attitudes and the attitudes of fellow Baby Boomer travelers like us, I do think the future of travel will be quite different.

One of the scenarios that Mario Gavira explores in his series on possible futures of travel is what he calls “The End of Mass Tourism as We Know It.”  In this possible future scenario, the changes in our behaviors and attitudes from the pandemic alter our purchasing patterns in travel.

Urban-based crowded tourism will decrease in favor of outdoor and natural environments and long-haul destinations will be perceived as high risk compared to closer-to-home locations.

Conversations Mrs. C. and I are having about our future travel plans echo this shift.

What are the Opportunities?

One clear winner will be businesses that can efficiently and effectively offer cleaning and sanitizing services. Commercial painting companies are starting to explore using their spraying equipment not just for paint, but for sanitizing agents. Sanitization will be a hot industry for some time, offering some comfort that even heavy traffic tourist sites can be made safer.

We are already seeing robotics and other technologies reduce the need for humans in the service sector.

After the 2008 real estate collapse, entrepreneurs gobbled up failed condominium projects and turned them into apartments. This time around we are already seeing such projects turned into luxury “aparthotels“.

Travel agencies that offer planning for more off-the-beaten-path destinations, with more of a focus on outdoor activities may flourish.

Businesses that cater to road trips are predicted to see a boom in business, as more of us decide to travel in their min-vans and SUVs like families did in their station wagons during my youth.

And, oh yes, RV sales and rentals are seeing a spike in business post coronavirus.

Who knows…you may be seeing Mrs. C. and I tootling down the highway in an Airstream some time soon.

SBA Coronavirus Related Loan Programs

The SBA has two loan programs for small businesses impacted by coronavirus.

Disaster Loans

Small business disaster loans are now available for those businesses impacted by coronavirus.

The SBA’s Economic Injury Disaster Loan program provides small businesses with working capital loans of up to $2 million that can provide vital economic support to small businesses to help overcome the temporary loss of revenue they are experiencing.

Apply for these loans directly from the SBA.  You can apply for a disaster loan here.

Bridge Loans

The SBA offers bridge loans to businesses that have an existing relationship with the SBA to help provide quick cash until their disaster loan application gets processed.

Express Bridge Loan Pilot Program allows small businesses who currently have a business relationship with an SBA Express Lender to access up to $25,000 with less paperwork. These loans can provide vital economic support to small businesses to help overcome the temporary loss of revenue they are experiencing and can be a term loans or used to bridge the gap while applying for a direct SBA Economic Injury Disaster loan. If a small business has an urgent need for cash while waiting for decision and disbursement on Economic Injury Disaster Loan, they may qualify for an SBA Express Disaster Bridge Loan.

Resolve

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Image by symphonyoflove from Pixabay

What I am hearing in the texts, emails, and calls I am getting from entrepreneurs is resolve.  They are determined to get through all of this, by doing whatever it takes.  These entrepreneurs have the resolve to learn from what we are going through. They are committed to becoming even stronger on the other side of this chaos.

Countless Stories of Resolve

One of my alums, who is a tech consultant, texted me yesterday. He told me that, in one single day, they lost all of their anchor clients.  His next comment?  He said that it is an important lesson in managing risk that he wants to share with others going forward. Resolve.

I have several alumni entrepreneurs (and several friends) who own businesses tied to the music industry.  One of them emailed me to let me know that all of her planned activities tied to live concerts were indefinitely suspended. She went on to tell me that she is pivoting her business model.  She is building her platform to help keep artists and fans connected during this time of cancelled concerts. Resolve.

Another alum told me they were temporarily closing down their operations, which are in multiple cities across the country.  His next sentence was an offer to help Mrs. C. and I if we need anything. Resolve.

Countless restaurateurs who I know are scrambling to sell gift cards, build up their take out business, or deliver prepared meals as a new service for their customers until they can open again. Customers are doing what they can to support these small business owners. Resolve.

An alum whose business is tied to live speaking events (all cancelled for next several weeks) encourages all of us to take what comes next “one day and one step at a time.”  Resolve.

We’ve Seen This Before

In looking through past posts at this blog, it surprised me to see how many have been about recessions.  I guess that happens when you’ve been blogging for 16 years.  In the early days of this blog, back in the early 2000s, I found several posts that lauded the entrepreneurs’ critical role in the expansion that had followed the 2001 recession. This recession came on the heels of the dot.com bubble bursting and 9/11.

Entrepreneurs led the recovery after the 2008 real estate collapse.  A post that stood out was one based on a talk I heard from venture capitalist Tim Draper, who founded the firm now known as Threshold.   I wrote in that 2009 post:

The genesis of the tech boom of the past decades began during the recession of the early 1980s.  Microsoft was born during the recession of 1974.  Semi-conductors first came to market in the recession of 1957.  Even during the Great Depression we saw the founding of Hewlett Packard, Texas Instruments and United Technologies.  He assured us that “innovation is relentless.”

Draper predicted we would see “pilotless electric cars,  e-education for the masses, all computing from the clouds, genetic disease prediction.” These and many other innovations Draper foresaw have all come to be over the past decade.

We know that it is the creative destruction and innovation from entrepreneurs that creates real economic growth.  Schumpeter helped us rethink the role of entrepreneurs in our economy almost eighty years ago. He helped bring entrepreneurs out of the shadows of economic theory.

My Own Journey

In reflecting about all that we are going through, I have been remembering the challenges in my own journey.  I prepared a couple of slides to share with my students.  They will get this presentation this weekend online, since that is how we will be meeting for the rest of the semester (which would have been almost impossible a decade ago).

The first slide highlights the five major economic downturns that I have experienced in my work life prior to the one we are about to experience.  The downturns are shaded in grey, and the events surrounding each are in red.

And yet, life goes on.

This slide shows how Mrs. C. and I continued to move ahead with our lives during all of these ups and downs.

After the back-to-back recessions in the 1970s we went to college.  We saw a better life ahead of us if we pursued a college education. During and after the severe double dip recession in the late 1970s and early 1980s, we got married, I went to grad school, we started having a family, and we bought our first house (with a double-digit interest rate mortgage).  The 1991 downturn came at the same time we were raising money to expand our healthcare business.  After the 2001 market crash and 9/11 we sent our kids to college.  The events in our lives around the 2008 recession involved the next generation in our family — marriage, grandchildren, homeownership, and business startups.

The resolve we are seeing among entrepreneurs will pay off for our economic future.  It will take time and hard work, but these entrepreneurs are the ones who will lead us into our next economic expansion….and we will have one!

Making it to the Other Side

(Photo source: Image by Ralf Unstet from Pixabay)

When our world was turned upside down by the coronavirus, my mind quickly began racing through my mental rolodex, wondering how everyone is doing.  Certainly my immediate concerns were for family and friends, especially those with health concerns.  Soon my web of worries shifted to all of the entrepreneurs I know — students, alumni, and friends.  I began a steady campaign of reaching out.  First to friends and family.  Next to my alumni entrepreneurs.

What I heard from my alumni entrepreneurs was particularly heartwarming and encouraging.

Entrepreneur’s Response

First, those with employees expressed how important it is to find ways to help their staff.  We are seeing story after story of business owners doing what they can to lessen the blow to their employees. Locally, we are seeing country stars do what they can to help the employees of their bars and restaurants on Lower Broadway in downtown Nashville.  Dierks Bentley and Florida Georgia Line both committed to give each of their employees $1,000 to help them make it through the time while his Nashville bar.  Between the two establishments, this is over 200 employees.  John Rich has committed to keep paying his bar workers during the shutdown.  I am hearing the same commitment from several of my alumni entrepreneurs.

Second, I heard a consistent message of doing what it takes to “make it to the other side” of this crisis.  Reports from places like South Korea, which is several weeks ahead of the US in its outbreak, talk about a slow return to business.  This is encouraging, and supports those who predict we might see the beginning of a turnaround by early to mid summer.  The entrepreneurs I talk to are shoring up cash flow and making cash budgets that can see them through to June or July, even with little or no revenues.  These are often tough and austere plans, but they are doing what they must to keep their businesses alive.

Finally, I am hearing the indomitable entrepreneurial spirit in their responses.  They are worried, and even scared, but they are also showing hope and resiliency.  They inspired me.  Facing much more dire circumstances than I am right now, their optimism and courage reminds me that it will be our entrepreneurs who lead us out of this.  It may seem like a long, dark tunnel, but there is a light at the other side where things will improve.

The Other Side

I do want to offer a note of caution, however.  When we do get to the other side, and we will, it will look very different than the side we left.  Entrepreneurs will be tested to adapt to a new reality.  A shock to our economy, to our society, and to our culture as we are now experiencing right now will fundamentally change many aspects of our lives.  Entrepreneurs will need to be ready not only to survive during this short-term period, but to adapt over the long-term, probably like never before.  The other side will present a myriad of both amazing opportunities and significant threats.

Be ready to be more entrepreneurial than you ever have been before, and you will be alright when we get to the other side of this crisis.

And so it goes…


(Image source: Image by Alexandra_Koch from Pixabay)

I am writing this from my back porch.  It looks like I will be spending a lot of time out here over the coming weeks.

The coronavirus is rampaging across our country, our state, and my community.  Mrs. C. and I are safe and healthy.  We have decided to hunker down and “self isolate.”  You might call it a preview of retirement!!

I had planned at the beginning of the year to get back into blogging over my spring break.  It was not a New Year’s resolution, per se, but more of something I have missed.  I am also starting up my digital work with Kane Harrison again.  More on that soon…

Little did I know that spring break would usher in something like this!

Many of us are having to adjust.  My adjustments are minor compared to many of the entrepreneurs I know.  For me it is adapting on the fly to online classes (thankfully I am a co-founder of a digital learning company!), advising via email, and mentoring alum entrepreneurs via text, phone, and email.  For many of the entrepreneurs I call friends it is finding a way to survive during the most uncertain times any of us have ever seen.

Some entrepreneurs I know have lost funding.  Many have had to close their business indefinitely to support “social distancing.” All are scrambling to manage cash flow and extend their runways just long enough to make it to the other side….whenever that happens.

On our afternoon walk, I was telling Mrs. C. about some of the stories I am hearing.  She said, “You need to start blogging again.”

So here we go. I hope this journalling around entrepreneurship, a pandemic, and an economic meltdown will be helpful.

Who is the Customer in Higher Education?

Just who is the customer? This is a question that comes up in all corners of higher education. Is it the student? Is it their parents? Is it employers? Is it the community and the broader society?

As entrepreneur, this question leaves me more than a bit unsettled! After all, if I don’t know who my customer is, I have no chance of success in the market. How can I deliver what the customer really wants? How do I effectively communicate to the customer what I offer? How do I strategically set prices? How can I deliver the product or service to the customer the way they want it? None of this is possible if I am not really sure who is my customer.

Continue reading Who is the Customer in Higher Education?

What Motivates Millennials?

It is not unusual for older faculty to get a little cynical.  I have heard many faculty grumble about how hard it is to motivate today’s students.  While I agree with them that it is hard, and have grumbled about this my self a time or two, I have learned that it is quite possible to motivate millennials.

I tried a little experiment a couple of years ago with my grading that has had remarkable results and has helped me better understand what drives this generation.

Continue reading What Motivates Millennials?