What you did in Lockdown if you were one of the many furloughed or grant funded self-employed people might well have long reaching consequences. Hopefully when you look back on it in years to come it won’t be with regret. Hopefully what you did in lockdown – how you used all that rarest of commodities: time – has given you something to treasure. Maybe it’s actually been the catalyst for a new adventure or the pivot point for a whole new lifestyle.
As an online marketer life during lockdown for me has been little different from normal apart from the social distancing stuff and closed shops. Actually, if I’m honest even that isn’t much different. Living as we do in rural Argyll my partner and I only see friends and family in person a handful of times a year. In between we communicate via social media, video apps and phone. We do a lot of our shopping online and try and do one big weekly grocery shop.
Changing The Way You Live
We haven’t had our usual holidays in France, Italy or Spain this summer but then the weather here has been marvellous. We’ve spent a lot of time in our garden and there is honestly no place we would rather be when the sun is beating down. I would ideally have attended at least one live industry event but that has now become a virtual, Zoom happening. All going well I’ll attend that in the garden. Maybe with a glass of home brewed lager in hand (I also took up home brewing)
The big difference has been that my partner’s driving instruction business has completely stopped. This means she is at home 100% more than “normal”. Being used to having the place to myself much of the time I must admit this has been a challenge. But then the whole point of having a largely automated business is that it takes very little time to run. You can also choose the hours you do work. So we have adapted to a whole new M.O.
Luckily we have a lot of crossovers. For some time now my talented other half has been turning a hobby into a burgeoning little online business. She makes lamps. I’ve been getting involved with the fettling and wiring side of things and have built her Facebook page. We bought a domain name last week and I’ll do the website shortly. I’ll be writing blogs or shooting videos in one part of the house while she is creating her one off’s in another. We take turns to do the posting and shopping. It’s a very relaxed and quite satisfying life.
Lessons From A Previous Crisis
We met through music when I joined her band longer ago than we care to remember. Although we don’t play live anymore we do still write and record songs together. During lockdown we have been doing a lot more of it. Apple were offering a 90 day trial of their flagship music production programme Logic Pro X (cunning marketing eh!) So I was able to get quite familiar with it and even produce a few songs before I purchased it. We have even been remotely collaborating on a song with a good friend.
Had things been different and we were both facing an uncertain future work and income-wise I would have devoted my time to taking care of that. I would have done exactly what I did in a broadly similar situation nearly 10 years ago when I was laid off in the last major recession. I’d have spent this gift of time learning how to create online income streams.
In 2010 when I found myself jobless at the ripe old age of 47 during a global economic crisis I had some time to think and plan. I’d had 12 years of service with a corporate AV company and was a business development manager. That entitled me to 3 months of paid garden leave and a decent settlement. Realistically both my age and the state my industry was in made a similar job and salary very unlikely.
Time To Pivot?
My best option was some form of self employment or a business. While I had funds to sustain us for some time I didn’t fancy risking most of them on a traditional business or expensive franchise. I had been looking at Internet business ideas for some time though and felt that was the way to go. Right now I would highly recommend that path to anyone worried about their post lockdown future. At the end of the post I’ll share the precise resource that I leveraged to do so.
Imagine if what you did in lockdown was to learn how to start an online business in any niche, actually start it and be starting to see results. How cool would that be? I can honestly tell you that it’s a very realistic scenario. If you start the right way, with the right training, mentorship, tools, and resources and apply yourself, lockdown could be the best thing thats ever happened to you. And all of that is readily available. Not surprisingly the internet economy is currently seeing yet another huge boom. There has literally never been as much opportunity. Its hard to think of a better use of your time.
Looking Back Fondly At What You Did In Lockdown
I’ve written elsewhere on this blog about my first fumbles with online biz ops, franchises and short lived ideas so I won’t repeat myself here. It’s more productive if I just cut to the chase. I was introduced to and joined a very special online community over 6 years ago which provides everything you need to start and grow your online business.
Tired of the churn and burn MLM and network marketing stuff I’d dabbled in I asked a friend who was doing well online exactly what he was doing. He told he’d become a member of an online education community and was also an affiliate for them.
Instead of going into a lot of detail he sent me a link to their introductory video series. “That’s how I learned about them”, he said “Take a look and see what you think, they are free and there’s zero hard sell”. I did and if you want to look back with joy on what you did in lockdown so should you. Click on the link below to get them.
