In the words of Sir Winston Churchill, “Never waste a good crisis.” I believe Covid really helped put that statement into context for me over the last year and a half. This pandemic forced me (as with everyone else) to slow down a bit and think about my life, my business and reimagine everything. I think now is the best time for me to write this blog and give you 5 ways how Covid helped revamp my business and rework my life.
There is definitely a silver lining to this entire pandemic because truthfully, I think many of us just didn’t like how things in our societies were working and unless something major like this happened, we would probably have never gotten the shakeup we needed.
Here in the Caribbean, the conversation of digitizing anything was nothing more than intellectual masturbation. Sure it felt good to those who would get up on stages talk but ultimately, it was only ever to their own satisfaction.
Now, the only way the Caribbean moves forward is through the implementation of technology but it’s not just for the Governments and large enterprise companies, we small fries can partake in using the technology to carve out our slice of the pie.
So let me get into how Covid has really helped me revamp my business.
- Forced me to rethink the life I wanted to live
- Work from home became work from anywhere
- Transformed to a 100% digital entrepreneur
- Mental health became a bigger focus
Rethinking The Life I Want
If Covid didn’t make you rethink your entire existence on this planet then I don’t know what global event would lol. The pandemic made me rethink everything and still is forcing me to adopt new beliefs and decondition myself from what I have known for my entire life.
One of the big things that occurred was my complete shift on things like homeownership and getting a car. Naturally, those are 2 big goals that we have been conditioned to believe are the mark of having success in your life.
About 1 week before the first lockdown here in Trinidad, I had decided to apply to the bank for a car loan. I was about to get myself some new wheels and jump on a 6-year car loan. After I had applied, the very next week the lockdown happened and the bank called me to say that they are freezing all loan applications.
I was a bit annoyed but I knew this meant I would be home and no in-person events/meetings would be happening, so it didn’t bother me too much. In hindsight, that saved me because a year and a half later, we are still under lockdown and a state of emergency.
Had I gotten through with that loan, I would have a brand new vehicle that would be parked up and not used because I am home 95% of the time and my rideshare bill for a month is far lower than what the car payments would have been.
The words of Grant Cardone have also been ringing through my head too, your home is your biggest liability (unless of course it’s a rental property and earning you money). Right now, your money needs to be flexible and since nobody knows how the pandemic is going to continue to change our society, locking yourself into long-term liabilities right now that takes away from your flexibility is simply insane.
This of course has made me rethink what the markers of success would be now because you grew up your whole life being told what success looked like.
Now, after a year of rethinking success and my life. My current view is this.
I define success as how happy I am to wake up each day and having TIME & LOCATION FREEDOM.
To me, judging my success by those factors keeps me jovial, allows me to be more productive and life has become more free-flowing & less stressful.
Work From Anywhere
This was a WHOLE mindfuck lol. While many people have been happy to get out of the office and work from home, I’ve been working from home since 2018.
The shift made me realize that now that everybody else learning how to work remotely and nobody could request my presence in person, It finally hit me that I can now work from anywhere.
Before the pandemic, the Caribbean was still in that archaic time period where everything needed to be done in person. I am talking from the perspective of business meetings, workshops, 1 on 1 client, etc…not doing anything related to banking or government institutions.
So now that the entire region is starting to use technology, they have begun realizing that we can begin tapping into experts from other parts of the region.
This has allowed me to get more clients outside of T&T, speak at more international events and host workshops all online.
Work from home has truly become Work From Anywhere.
It has now opened my mind up to leaving Trinidad and Tobago in 2022 and making the move to living in another Caribbean island.
Time & Location Freedom is here :).
I Became A 100% Digital Entrepreneur
One of the big challenges that we have faced because of the pandemic has been customs getting hit hard with Covid cases. This has created a major backlog to getting goods and raw materials into the country.
Droid Island for me became stressful because it hasn’t cost me a PENNY to run in years. It was an online business, I have a working relationship with my hosting provider for my website, so my hosting fees have been waived and because I dropship the products, people pay for them upfront, which means I receive my profits upfront.
Customs started to became a major problem because, before Jan 1, 2021, the customs officers began marking whatever price they wanted on my products coming in, overruling the invoices that came with the items and I would start losing money on packages.
So if 3 phones came in and customs cleared them at $200ttd, 1 phone might come in the day after and they hit me with a $1600ttd clearing bill. That would have erased all gains I may have made.
Before the pandemic, I would receive my phones from suppliers within 5 days and could offer fast turnaround times for clients but then packages started to take up to a month to clear.
Add in the fact that I had lost interest in smartphones as a business and it made me get to a point where having Droid Island just made no sense for me anymore.
I kept this long because it made money but the love I had for smartphones since being in Telecoms at the age of 19, disappeared in 2020.
Over the last year, I really grew to love having digital products and services because then I had more control over the entire value chain for creating and delivering them to my clients.
This also allowed me to become a 100% digital entrepreneur since now, I am not worried about physical products needing to come to me anywhere. Even though I only received them and passed them over to a local courier for delivery, I was still a part of the touchpoints for Droid Island.
Now, all of my offerings to the globe can be done from a laptop and internet connection.
It has pushed me to focus more on building my Digipreneur Academy.
Time & Location Freedom has struck again lol.
Mental Healthy Became A Focus
To be honest, mental health to me was always a buzzword before 2018 and since it has become a focus, especially since the pandemic.
There is just a lot of negativity in the world that’s been amplified due to social media. It’s caused me to use social media with greater intentions and audit my social feeds and contact lists DAILY.
My favourite feature on ALL social media platforms is…MUTE!
Because I spend so much time on social media for business, I audit my feeds regularly to either teach or inspire me. It’s easy to get triggered on social media now and also spend idle time just swiping mindlessly for hours.
Since 2018 when I decided to double down on my business, I had to make some decisions to give my business a chance. I had sold my car in 2018, moved in with my grandmother to save on rent, I had moved out and got a roommate from 2019-2020 and in 2021, I finally got my business to a point where I could make the jump and get my own spot again.
When choosing a place, I prioritized getting something that would allow me to feel expansive.
As fate has it, I ended up getting something in the mountains with an amazing view, greenery everywhere and it literally feels like I got a garden view at a hotel…Yes, the ocean view is better but baby steps lol.
Nonetheless, I feel super hopeful, relaxed and ready to continue to rework my conditioning from all the crap we have gone through over the years.
I am happy and I had almost forgotten what happiness felt like because it’s been YEARS where I felt like I genuinely smiled and didn’t have to wear a smile to keep the public at bay.
I am really early in this whole journey of becoming mentally healthy but I am meeting amazing people who are helping me along the way and I learning the importance of how a healthy mindset will help me become a better entrepreneur.
Now that covid has helped me revamp my business and forced me to rethink my beliefs, although I don’t think I am a successful person, I am beginning to taste every day what the success I have defined looks like.
My focus is happiness, Time & Location freedom and at its core level, I am achieving that.
It makes me super hopeful for the things I can now achieve when I am operating from this zone.
In closing, I would love to hear from you.
How has Covid helped you revamp your business or your life?
Meet me in the comments section.
If you are looking for assistance in making the shift to digital entrepreneurship, feel free to reach out to me.
Entrepreneurs can look up my services or drop me a message.