The Paycheck Protection Program enabled many businesses to defer making workforce reductions or other drastic spending cuts for a few weeks. This gave leaders time to respond to the impact of the pandemic on their business, whether that meant shifting employees to work from home, expanding online sales or pivoting their service offering. Those early recipients of PPP funds are now nearing the end of the eight-week payroll support and are beginning to reevaluate their path forward when those funds are depleted. As executives now look to make decisions to drive their long-term success, we see four areas where leaders should focus as they formulate their plans. These areas are:
Wouldn’t you love to have a crystal ball, especially now with so much uncertainty in business and in life? While we know that’s not realistic, we asked Lister Delgado, of NC IDEA Fund Partners to share his thoughts on the future for venture-backed companies, emerging industries and the entrepreneurial community in our recent webinar, co-hosted with the Bagchi Group. Here are a few of our top takeaways from Lister’s conversation with Cindy Anderson, CEO of Thinc Strategy and Neil Bagchi, Managing Attorney, Bagchi Law.
Today, unless you are one of those fortunate businesses that’s in higher demand (think videoconferencing technology, PPE manufacturers, home office furniture) odds are you’re having to adapt your business to continue to survive and grow.
An established building products company was chugging along with consistent revenue, but wasn’t growing at pace commensurate with a strong market economy. With new leadership on board, the owners sought to accelerate growth.
In March, congress passed the Coronavirus Air, Relief, and Economic Security Act (“CARES Act”), and since then companies throughout the country have jumped on applying for the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loan. Following weeks of many unknowns around the logistics of the PPP loan and several rule changes made by the Small Business Administration (SBA), we can finally say we have some certainty regarding how Borrowers can apply to have their PPP loan forgiven.
President & CEO, Cindy Anderson speaks as a special guest on The Impact Leadership Podcast with Jeff Nischwitz and Craig Matthews. Listen in as Cindy shares the secret sauce for building trust and a great culture. Cindy also shares her ideas on ways that culture growth leads to business growth.
Welcome to Thinc Strategy’s Early Reactions: A&E Firms and COVID-19 study. This study provides a snapshot of the early response, activities and business conditions reported by A&E Firms in the eight weeks after federal, state and local governments imposed initial restrictions on travel, gatherings and business activities.
A growing environmental and geotechnical engineering firm struggled to improve margins, which were approximately 1/3 of industry benchmarks. As the firm grew topline revenue, leadership was working harder than ever, but not seeing bottom line results. They had scrutinized overhead expenses and felt they were reasonably efficient. When they started to work with Thinc Strategy, they were skeptical about whether we could help them improve their efficiency. They just didn’t think there was anywhere else to cut.
If you’ve ever said, “we should be working with clients all over the world,” the new virtual work environment is your big chance. Today, with the right value proposition, willingness to partner and work ethic, you can unleash the geographic boundaries on your market potential.
Virtual meetings can be very efficient allowing everyone in the meeting to focus on each other and any shared documents. They will continue to be an integral part of how business gets done after stay-at-home restrictions are lifted. At Thinc Strategy, we believe the best approach is to treat them as you would other in-person professional interactions with a few modifications for the remote environment: