The Tribune

By YOURI KEMP

Tribune Business Reporter

ykemp@tribunemedia.net

Entrepreneurs were yesterday urged to radically adjust their business models if they are to survive the COVID-19 pandemic's fall-out and emerge into prosperity on the other side.

Michael Cunningham, the Bahamas Entrepreneurial Venture Fund's chairman, told the Long Island Business Outlook webinar: “I want to highlight six factors that should be considered. One is to change your business model. What you were doing in the past may no longer be relevant today.

"What does changing your business model mean? It may mean diversifying your operation. You may have been a service-oriented operation. It may mean being a retail plus a service-oriented operation. It may also mean that you are servicing and providing services or products during various hours of the day. That may no longer be practical, so you may need to change the way you deliver your service and the way that you deliver your product as well."

Mr Cunningham added that some companies may also need to change their location, as their present site may not be attracting the type of traffic it enjoyed pre-COVID-19. "Understand your market," he said. "If you don’t understand your market you certainly will die.

"We have been encouraging a number of our clients on our portfolio to consider these factors because we’re trying to get them through a period they have never experienced before, and we have never experienced before, but we have a little history in being around during 2008 and now we have this."

Mr Cunningham continued: “We have discovered that a number of entrepreneurs certainly have knowledge in providing the type of service they send to the market, and the price that they are selling to the market as well, but they don’t understand the numbers.

"That is very important. They shy away from engaging an accountant to even help to explain the numbers. In a pandemic you need to understand what the numbers mean.”

He added: “Fourth, don’t only think global but take your operation globally to the international market. The Bahamas Entrepreneurial Venture Fund has been around for some time. We have been very quiet, but there are a number of companies that have received funding from this institution and are now global. They are now international companies and that’s our focus.

"The last thing is that you need a disaster recovery plan. What do you have in your operation that’s a plan for when something like this happens, so that you can be able to recover very quickly and become profitable to sustain your operation until things change.”