Business loans and opportunities for COVID Recovery
Businesses around Australia are faced with challenges they have never experienced before due to COVID-19. They were forced to adapt and respond in very agile and quick ways. Some businesses pivoted almost entirely to online offerings, most gyms moved their workouts to Zoom, and Microsoft Teams became commonplace for colleagues to meet. As businesses are moving out of the restrictions and into a new phase, now is a great time for businesses to seize new opportunities.
Most businesses learned how to operate in a much leaner capacity. These lessons and insights are invaluable as you plan for 2022 with a resilient and strategic approach. Businesses that plan well now, take advantage of the support available including COVID recovery loans, will set themselves up for success and more stability as the market continues to normalise. Did you know Lumi offers Kickstarter COVID recovery loans to help businesses get back to business?
What is a Lumi Kickstarter COVID recovery loan?
Our Kickstarter COVID recovery loans are designed to help businesses get back on track following the lockdown period ending. This loan can help small business owners fund ongoing business needs so they don’t need to dip into savings. Our Kickstarter COVID recovery loans operate a little differently from our traditional term loans. We calculate your affordability based on turnover before lockdown to see if your pre-lockdown finances meet the criteria, excluding the months of July 2021 – September 2021. This means that you will be able to access necessary funding even if you haven’t seen any cash flow during the COVID lockdowns.
We designed this COVID recovery loan with you, the small business owner in mind. We want to provide all the support we can as you get back into a normal operating rhythm. Another benefit is that once you have made four consecutive repayments, you will have the ability to apply to refinance to a standard term loan. When you get to this stage we would then reassess your financial situation based on your most recent revenue. And you also have the potential to possibly borrow more.
How can you future-proof your business?
We may not be able to see into the future, if we could we would all be billionaires! However, your business can take some measures to take advantage of the opportunities that COVID-19 presents. Meaning you can be well ahead of any major disruptions that could occur.
Prepare and plan
Proper planning and preparation for any business disruption that could occur in the future will allow you to have a cohesive response if there are any major crisis situations. You could look at assigning a specific team to come up with a business crisis response plan. You could also invest in technologies allowing for more automated processes, streamlining bookings, or payroll systems.
New insights
The restrictions in place meant many businesses could only operate on a much smaller capacity. There will be a lot of learnings that occurred during this time, including your business’s strengths and weaknesses. Now with this new insight, you can really plan and develop tactics to strengthen the weak points of your business. What can be helpful is to write down everything that you noticed about your business as it operated on a smaller scale.
Create a new business plan
The business plans and modeling you developed at the beginning of 2021 may not be as relevant anymore. Time to redesign and model your business plan based on the current situation and the economy picking back up. There are still many support measures available to small business owners from local and national governments.
Getting back to business
Firstly getting back into the operating rhythm may take some time as your workers and your customers adapt to life post lockdowns. A lot of businesses had to sell off their stock quickly at low prices to avoid it going bad. Traditional eat-in restaurants quickly set up takeaway menus. Some of these restaurants even sold bulk amounts of flour, pasta, and more to customers as they still had shipments coming in from suppliers. Now businesses need to invest in replacing their stock, repairing old and malfunctioning equipment, and rehiring staff. COVID recovery loans could really help with funding so you can meet customers’ needs and experience your pre-lockdown cash flow.
Get support if you need it
Governments provided support in many different ways throughout the lockdown period, giving cash payments, offering discounted education, and encouraging banks to pause mortgage repayments. Some businesses were lucky enough to have rent payments paused throughout the lockdown period. If you were one of these businesses, you may be experiencing concern about paying rent now without your normal cash flow coming through. This is where COVID recovery loans, like Lumi Kickstarter, can really come in handy. You can also find out more about what Government support is still available to you here.
Education is key
Another thing you might not have considered is any necessary training you might need to upskill or reskill in, such as pilots who have mostly been grounded throughout the pandemic. Take advantage of a COVID recovery loan or personal loan to help you get the skills in order to be able to work as per normal again. Are you in an industry where you or your workers may need to retrain?
Investing in education, whether that is reskilling and upskilling yourself or your team will also help to future-proof your business.
Marketing is no joke
Customer engagement is key to business success. Right now businesses should be sending out lots of emails, texts, and social posts to their customer base letting them know they are back and ready to serve. A restaurant might advertise how to book a table on their website, this way they can know how many staff to have on and how much stock they need to have on hand. Customers need to know that you are open and how they can book your services.
