SimplyBiz® helping you get connected after lockdown
There is much gloom and doom out there, but we want to focus on the can-do’s, not the can’t-do’s.
∙ Suddenly in need of a spare laptop or collaborative software?
∙ Share what your business is doing to survive Covid-19 and “distance hustling”.
∙ Share your ideas and positive experiences and stand a chance to WIN!
Covid-19 is a game-changer and going forward, digitisation and connectivity will become a necessity, not a luxury. That’s why we are giving you a chance to work remotely and stay in touch with your customers with these incredible prizes:
Enter now to be in a weekly draw for one of 20 X R5 000 Incredible Connection Vouchers.
∙ First Draw - 27 March 2020 (Closed)
∙ Second Draw - 6 April 2020
HOW TO ENTER
✅ Share your tips and positive experiences in the comments below
✅ Register on SimplyBiz® https://www.simplybiz.co.za/register
✅ (If you’re already registered, you’re an entrepreneur destined to overcome!)
T's & C's Apply
127 comments
Well what we have been doing at Eleglam Lifestyle is sharing with our client ways they can protect themselves in order for them not to catch the virus.
Secondly, we have just launched our website (https://www.eleglamlifestyle.co.za) to make things easy for our clients and we are trying to do everything digitally, we are using zoom as a platform to host meetings as well as Skype.
To share work with other employees,we have just set up microsoft teams.
Lastly, we are organising a series of competitions & special for the upcoming payday.
Hope everyone stays home & safe 🔌
Congratulations to our first set of winners, our team will be in contact with you soon.
Hajira Ebrahim - Zakariya Dada - Adrian Davids - Lance Efron - Stacy Jane Smith - Glen Sehlabela - Siyamtanda White Hlobo
I'm always busy with production leaving less time for real marketing. Advertising and promoting my business. I am using this time to grow. To market my business. To prepare adverts. Come up with specials. Time to work on my ideas of taking my business to the next level.. As in marketing strategies. Advertising. Logo and online design for my pages. And all social media advertising platforms.. Growing my database. Going thru emails and listing potential customers. This is the time for growth. SimplyBiz_SA
Like a long distance learning student, I find working at home a tough call for discipline. The noise in the neighborhood, (I live in Diepsloot) with the children being not at school, the food (my sitting room is an open plan with the kitchen, so I tend to snack a lot than usual) the couch and too comfortable to stretch for blood circulation (which is the option for now). I could go on but at the end of the day, there is a business to run, clients to update and virtual meetings to commit to. I think the most challenging aspect of small business during this time is affording data. Its all good and well when one works in a co-working space (most townships SMEs are) with access to uninterrupted data. With the #lockdown21, the game changes. But all is not gloom and doom, one is afforded the time revisit shelved ideas and repackage, update that business plan, improve that social media presence, give that website the fresh look we been talking about and of course, catch with peers in the business space when one feels the isolation is too much to deal! We can deal!
We are a design, Print and advertising company. For the last decade we have maintained the importance of social media advertising as a means of businesses and organizations to stay relevant in the ever changing digitized world. In the last few months the world’s situation with regard to economy and social impacts have had businesses share their common thoughts on various issues and due to the social media influence, many problems have been solved, ideas used and people have been helped. The power of social media through digital advertising is the new voice for the world. We urge our customers to develop a solid brand and create a memorable digital footprint with effective communication. It’s our business to create this content for our client. During the Covid-19 lockdown, the need to communicate has increased considerably and we make it easier for brands and organizations to be effective in how they approach their digital audience. We will not stop in advancing the advertising era, both in print and digital platforms. J&B Printers 👌 Durban, South Africa
COVID19 and South Africa's lock down has been an eye opener for me. My daily bread businesses are closed and I have just one source of income that is carrying my household through the turbulence. Regardless of the setbacks I am faced with a difficult decision which could make or break my families livelihood right now. After a few days of thought, introspection and pen to paper I still feel torn. Nonetheless I will persevere irrespective of the out come. During or after the #lockdown I will be paying it foward by offering my services free or at minimal fee depending on the service requirements. This will also help me to build my portfolio for the future, which is an ideal win-win situation. I just need to finalize some intense decisions this week and then it's all systems grow!
As a collaborative of Executives, clients and SMME's, we are doing a 21 Day Lockdown Challenge - Real People, Real Leaders. Daily at 4pm, we have someone sharing free coaching, wellness, fitness, advice, connect and so much more. The focus is to uplift people during this time that it's tough for all of us, but especially those who run small businesses. We post daily and would love more people to join us daily as well as contribute. Follow the LadyBugz pages on FB, LinkedIn and other social media platforms, as well as myself in who is up next. Adding value to people in this time has really helped me, and those who join us daily!
COVID19 has made me to take a step back and see how to protect myself and my family first, the secondly how to embrace the 4IR by working from home. This is a good opportunity to plan how to best do business in future. The world is preparing us to work from home, Its either you prepare yourself or you lose out. You snooze you lose. It is time to utilise all the available social media and technology to do business. Social distancing has been there for quite a long, we have been communicating with the world through technology, eg Skype, whatsapp, facebook, etc. I think now is the time to fully embrace it, let us all prepare for the future, starting now during the lockdown, and beyond. When it comes to green world, the less petrol we burn the better for our health and the world will be a better place to live in.The more we embrace social distancing, the better the world will become.
My business is Ostibel Africa, we are a start-up and very small business. We sell organic beauty and wellness products. We supply a few retail shops and with all non-essential services not available to the public, our cash flow is impacted. What I am learning from this crisis is to always factor in a 3 months buffer or emergency fund no matter how small my business is. E-commerce is the future and it would be great to open an online shop for customers to buy directly on the website without leaving their homes.
We are currently sharing tips via watsup as most of our customers are interactive on that platform. Yes, our cash flow is affected but we are hopeful that we will bounce back with better strategies and communication tools.
Mabaso Management and Consulting is playing it's part in this #LockdownSouthAfrica. As an accreditation consultant, I am currently working from home and only communicate with my clients online. I am currently developing learning material for Health Promotion Officer, which is quality assured by QCTO. Under communicable diseases sections, I am including #CoronaVirus #Covid19 as a case study. Students that will attend the courses provided by my clients will learn about this pandemic and its effects for the years to come. Even after completing the programme, they will store the learning materials in their libraries for the next generations to access the information. I am currently researching as much information as possible, verifying against different medical journals and papers.
If you are able to help someone in this challenging season , then help...do good , be good and be cautious with your common sense...God bless us all!!
What we have been doing at Bila ICT Solutions during this national lock down in our country, the first important we had to look is to share all the healthy measures in all our social media platform because we care about our clients and we want to see them living a healthy life. In continuing serving our clients while they work from home, we have sharing with them how Technology is critical to helping people stay connected in a time where we are asked to keep social isolation and we have providing few of our services remotely to our clients to survive this Covid-19 which we can take it as a Distance Hustling. The experience that we got from this Covid-19 situation, is to dig deep and look into how AI can help businesses, from small to large companies. It is useful for companies to look at AI through the lens of business capabilities rather than technologies. AI can support three important business needs: Automating business process, gaining insight through data analysis and engaging with customers and employees. Artificial Intelligence is already widely used in business applications, including automation, data analysis and natural language processing. Businesses can use it for Transferring and cross-referencing data, Consumer behavior forecasting and product recommendations, Personalized advertising and marketing messaging and Customer service via telephone or chatbot. BILA ICT SOLUTIONS (Pretoria and Limpopo), South Africa. INSPIRED BY INNOVATION
Since the Lockdown has started, my business has been focusing on working on new strategies of marketing and advertising. Developing new systems to attract our customers and finding ways to give our customers assurance that our business will continue providing uncompromised quality in every services we provide. My business is also trying to talk to potential customers, trying to get new customers. I'm also using this time to learn more and grow myself.
It's very important to stay positive during this time and don't stop believing in your business. This is also a good time to work on your own business and restructure your systems so that when this is over you can come back with a bang. MAPHONYA LOGISTICS AND PROJECTS(PTY) LTD
As a car rentals and airport shuttle company, we have been hit really hard as our services are tangible and we meet and assist clients physically so. However since the COVID-19 pandemic , we have had serious booking cancellations, understandably so, as we need to have our clients protect themselves and their families. We have been in close communication with our clients, regarding ways to safeguard themselves and their families.We even have various communications doing rounds across our social networks platforms for everyone to see and take precautionary measures. We are currently working from home, trying our level best to secure the future bookings , once the dust settles and hoping for the best in this instance.We are also going to embark on a travel and tour campaign to have our clients let their hair down and try relax after this outbreak has been completely controlled, to which most of our clients are happy about and are willing to start secure seats for this trip and make payments.We are running positive marketing campaigns, to make sure that we are able to secure future bookings from our international and local clients, at great rates since everyone will have felt the financial pinch , which seems to be working as they are more confident and believe they'll be travelling again soon, and we are the service provider of choice. We are very optimistic, as most of our clients are, and keeping the moral for our employees on a high, as we work from home, to keep the faith and stay in the playing field and never on the grand stands, as we are not done, we are still in the game for the long haul. #WeAreNeoStar #WeShallConquer #StayPositive . www.neostar.co.za
Good day family, as a small business owner what I learned this trying time as a country is that, a small virus as covid-19 can spread the whole world is so overwhelming, we as a cleaning company is our responsibility to make sure that even after this #lockdown we continue to keep our environment hygienic, homes, working environments and everywhere we go. Staying at home with my family helped me to have enough time to look out for new ideas for my business, to better it at all cost. Covid-19 is a serious deases that we all have to fight against by staying hygienic at all the times.
My business is THE BROADBAND COMPANY (https://thebroadbandco.co.za) we are an Internet and VoIP service provider. Right now we are assisting small businesses with affordable work from home solutions. This pandemic is changing the way we are doing business and forcing us to review our business models. It need not be the end, no matter how frustrating.
If anything this pandemic should bring us closer to our loved ones , yes entrepreneurs we've been hustling too hard, let's take this time to attend to those we usually sacrifice. Perhaps we needed to reset and start afresh. Keep working on those strategies and execution plans, we will win if we don't give up.
Fhatuella Strategic Solutions offers leadership development via coaching, training and upskilling. We are currently offering online coaching opportunities to help you make the most of the lock-down through revisiting your goals, preparing for personal and professional growth as you will require this once the current crisis is over. We are also sharing podcasts on how to effectively work from home and improve your productivity!
Unfortunately my small business BCM fashion and beauty will be completely closed because of lockdown
So during this hard time am advertising and promoting fashion and beauty. From now Am selling via whatsapp and Facebook
I have a lot of customers via whatsapp and Facebook
I stay connected with my customers through the Corona virus outbreak 👾😷😷😷
We are focusing on catching up and following up on quotes, ensuring all our debtors are collected, paying our suppliers to ensure that once it is back to business we can have access to stock, doing some maintenance on some of our equipment that we use often and we don't get time to do during our peak season. We will be checking in with clients with pending quotes during the coming weeks to understand if they have any questions and turning as many leads as possible into work. We are answering emails and whatsapps daily and pre-schedule work that will need to go ahead once the lock down is over. We are also applying for SMME funding from the relief efforts available and keeping our staff informed on how we are doing on this front. We applied for payment holidays from our vehicle hire purchases to give us that extra breath to keep going. As a last effort we will do some general house keeping on our processes, systems and data to see where we can cut down on waste and errors.
Our business is Dynamic Print Worx, and we supply branded corporate gifts and clothing. We have recently upgraded our website to allow clients to view our products in high-resolution format. They can also check on stock availability in the various colours and sizes required. So basically we put control of the buying process into our customer hands. This they can do from their laptop, desktop or mobile - no need to go into a store. They then request a formal quote from us and if they are happy with pricing, we proceed to invoice. Customer then sends us his artwork in electronic format, we do a branding layout for customer approval, and once approved we can brand and deliver. All this takes place without customer having to move from his home. Of course during lockdown we cannot brand, but branding will commence directly once lockdown is lifted. Clients can however place orders immediately. We have also had to change our marketing strategy by advertising on social media and sending electronic mailers using Mailchimp. Since we are unable to brand and deliver products due to the lockdown - I have signed up for an online training course with Udemy on LinkedIn Marketing Lead Generation for B2B Sales. This will occupy my mind for the lockdown period whilst at the same time training me in social media marketing.
COViD-19 was a challenge to our everyday running of business and we had to quickly come up with new ways of working away from the office. So far all is going well. We have manage to get VPN installed all all our employee machines so that they can be able to access their emails and server from home. So far it has proven to be a success. On top of that we have introduces Slack as another method of communication and it is proofing to be a success as well. For appropriate presos or meetings, we are using Zoom which makes client and everyone involved feel humanly connected to us and see each-others faces every once in a while.
Amazing ideas and work from other entrepreneurs great work, we at Yam Business Solutions we believe in constant communication with our clients which is building strong business relations and communication(via WhatsApp, Syke, Zoom & emails)as the pademic has affected all businesses in one way or the other, keeping weekly communications and updates with our clients has given us a sense of where our clients are emotionally, financially and mentally, as thier are important to us. Also how their businesses are being affected and we are strategizing with them. Young entrepreneurs are usually alone with thier small to medium enterprise's, we have assured them that we are with them by giving them solutions and updates on government interventions to assist struggling businesses during this time. We also have put inplace discount measures to our clients who are start-up businesses, we are also mentoring and couching on a monthly basis for start-up companies. We have brought on board a market anaylist and brand specialist and author Mr T Dike who will be consulting with our clients and helping them solidify and maintain thier brands during this time and beyond. We wish to help our clients establish themselves to a point that will not leave them behind once the fourth Industrial Revolution fully takes form and we are training and helping them dream towards the 4IR which we believe will be every SMME's platform to transform and transcend to full maximum profit.#TeamStayAtHome#TogetherWeCan#GodBewithUsAll
We will comeout victorious if we work together, this is our motto as we get through this pademic as a nation and holding hands in business and life. We are
Yes we see less sales and yes our cash flow is affected, but this is an incredible time to reflect on your business statistics to develop new ideas of how to grow your business. This is the time for REFLECTION, PREPARATION and DREAMING. Covid-19 is a terrible plague, but it gives all of us TIME, the most precious commodity known to man!
I run a home based catering business.. Called CRISP..
I produce and supply a few stores and individuals with frozen savouries. Also catering for events.offices etc Etc. My business has closed during this period for the safety of my employees and myself. Looking at the advantages.. I have so much of time on my hands to actually work on MARKETING And PUTTING NEW IDEAS INTO PLACE.. NETWORKING ONLINE AND GRWOING MY DATA BASE.
I'm utilizing this time to come up with my business presentation for the women's awards 2020. I am also using this time to grow my brand.. Advertising. New designs. Marketing strategies. Working on building my social media networks and putting all my ideas onto paper. Which I don't usually have time to do. WHILE I still communicate with all my clients sending out specials for later. This is the perfect opportunity for me To tend to these important aspects which is vital in growing my brand.
Our company is the Nihka Technology Group and we develop innovative, digital solutions for our clients. Being a digital, tech company ourselves, you would think it would be have been easy to transition to a "work from home". Yes, we have all the necessary platforms to connect. However, our company tagline is "Bringing EQ into AI" So people and the interaction with people are vitally important to us. In order to stay connected we are having daily check-in Microssoft Teams video meetings where we share our activities for the day but where we also share our experiences being at home and working with kids around. We are sharing tips and tricks and I am now implementing an online game which we can play
Innovation comes in the quiet time, we are implementing a weekly innovation day where you can sit in solitude and develop new solutions, ideas, etc for the company.
The other thing I have done (which I cannot share as its not on a public site) is a daily video to my team motivating them and giving them lessons I've learnt over the past 12 years of the company. We calling the Nihka 21day principles series.
Be safe everyone and know that we are socially and physically apart but as entrepreneurs we are connected through heart and our common purpose of building a beautiful country through job creation
Botle Sanitary Towels is spreading positive and safety guidelines to our existing and potential customers online. The positive experience most of our customers is that they look in to us as business owners that they trusted and trust with product delivery to offer them real news , which by using social networks platforms we a able to make an impact to many people connected to our customers and their network communities.
Airboat Afrika is an outdoors business - which means right now, all operations are at standstill.
We use this period on all levels - operational, forward planning, marketing, business development.
E.g. to conduct an extended maintenance program for all vessels and equipment, stock take + spares and skills forecasting.
Being involved in so many different areas of activity, this period affords us the opportunity to discuss and share experiences (online) across the board between operational teams.
This is then packaged and shared / discussed with clients, the objective being to streamline - improve - grow applications.
For example, in South Africa our main activities are tourism & water management.
Just before the lockdown, we have contributed to a clean-up of the Hennops River in Centurion as reported by the Centurion Rekord: http://www.airboatafrika.com/see-airboats/publications/centurion-rekord/
and videos: http://www.airboatafrika.com/see-airboats/in-motion/
With our partners in the Hartbeespoort Dam area, we are now using this time where everyone is available to initiate a regular Clean the Crocodile initiative.
This includes tourism and hospitality providers, resorts and estates on the dam and along the river, residents and companies in the area.
Though we may not (yet) control the catchment areas, by cleaning the Crocodile River banks, we will significantly reduce the inflow of pollution into the dam.
This benefits nature - fish and bird life, improves quality of life for residents, promotes tourism, and enhances job creation.
Our list includes support in equipment (plastic bags, boots, gloves, poles, nets), funding towards fuel expenses & day wages to create job opportunities for the locally unemployed,
also food and drinking water for participants, networking and media exposure to create sustainable continuation of the hugely beneficial Clean the Crocodile initiative.
The lockdown should be used as a time for preparation and communication with all your stakeholders: technology provides plenty options including email, LinkedIn, FB, twitter, whatsapp & zoom.
People are not stressed by deadlines, are looking for things to do, and want to keep from worrying too much about Covid19 and its consequences.
Engage your contacts! They'll be happy to hear from you.
It is an ideal phase to be creative, to develop, test ideas (when do you ever get to do that???), plan forward and put things in place.
New products and services can be conceived, marketing campaigns designed, the long overdue clutter cleared up.
As SA and the world move through this crisis, stay informed, not worried.
Understand trends, and how people react and adapt. Think about how to relate this to your business.
And then... communicate, communicate, communicate.
This is a rare opportunity to reach out and get in touch.
USE IT.
My business is Intellect Hub, we are an information technology and marketing company and we own the website https://www.vhembedirect.co.za due to Covid-19 I am working at home and embracing the 4IR. I am utilizing technologies such as team viewer e.t.c
Due to COVID-19 challenges we face as a small business, our company is now more than ever motivated to come up with ease of service to our customers, we are now in an almost complete website design that will enable our customers to design their t-shirts online and we deliver without even meeting face to face and for those customers that will need assistance on our website we will be able to have a live chatline to assist a customer while on the design.We believe this is the future for all businesses it saves on time costs both sides the customer and our company and it is safe and user friendly. This has been a tough challenge for us since we have not completed the and or implemented the website but we will soon get it done and this is now going to be our new way of providing service to our clients. (AI) Azande Industries and (IoT) is the FUTURE.
To our customers stay home, stay clean, stay healthy, stay safe and be on the internet for better services while in your comfort.
We at Romac Construction(PtyLtd) being in the construction industry and basically contract workers. We as a company however have availed ourselves and all the resources available to us to our staff and contract workers. We not financially strong but we have made available a small amount of capital for all our staff a type of emergency fund. Its our mission statement at Romac Construction that a happy employee is a happy worker. Our staff knows that the little we have we will share with them as it will not serve us as a company to not look after our staff as they the backbone of our company. My phone is on 24/7 for my staff , my vehicles are available to them in emergencies. My wife even started making masks for our staff and family. A deal has been made with various shops and butcher to assist our staff up to a agreed amount we however put in place an abuse system for this. Our personal GP is also on standby for my employees and their families and Romac will foot the bill. This time is also used to get all relevant documentations in place and source various tenders and oppurtunities.