How to Help Durham Small Businesses for Little to No Money

How to Help Durham Small Businesses According to Durham Small Business Owners 

We’re all impacted in multiple ways by COVID-19. We, small business owners, are dealing with ever-changing challenges. I reached out to other Durham business owners to find out how we can help during Corona.

Several business owners asked if I could help share the challenges we’re facing to help people understand why supporting local means more than ever. This article is broken into two sections: small business challenges and how you can help us survive and thrive for little to no money at all.

Current Challenges for Small Business Owners

When you read, “75% of US restaurants aren’t expected to survive the economic impacts of coronavirus,” it’s hard to visualize that. Let’s bring that home.

Think of 10 Durham restaurants and coffee houses with the food you love, friends who work there, local farmers they source their ingredients from, and owners who are your neighbors. 

Now, imagine 8 of them close forever, those friends lose their jobs, the farmers face financial hardship while their produce rots in the field, and your neighbor loses their home.

It was just a few months ago Durham was boasting about having 45 restaurants in downtown. Chances are 11 will survive this. That’s awful.

That’s reality.

Then there’s the part where the owner did everything they could to keep their American dream afloat and they still had to look their employees in the face and fire them.

That part.

Another jolting reality is the minority-owned and women-owned businesses are the hardest hit by this and least likely to survive this. This goes all the way back to a broken system that damns our credit options, stunts our growth, and exponentially increases the challenges we face under “normal circumstances.” This is the very real challenge that froze us out of the first round of SBA PPP loan funding. 

If the business is BOTH minority-owned and woman-owned, it has the most challenges and least access to resources. My company is categorized as “immediate-risk” for closure [*] because I was born a Persian-American female, not because of my work.

But this is Durham.

Last month, I presented my 7 Star Pivot Plan for Saving The Bulls of Durham. I asked for the help I needed, and because I’ve spent years showing up for the community, the community has shown up for me. I have hustled from dawn to dusk. I’m exhausted in every way a human can be, but my business is still open.

Now that you have an idea of what it’s like to be a small business owner, the following recommendations on how to help are going to hit differently. All of these are derived from small business owners here in Durham. As promised, the names of business owners surveyed are being kept private.

How to Help Small Businesses

Think 10x

Every dollar is 10 times harder to come by right now, and every bill hits 10 harder. Keep this in mind as you read the rest of this.

Buy Our Stuff

It seems obvious, but is it when you’re out of household supplies or have a new quarantine project? 

Listen, I’m living the Amazon Prime life too, but it’s most definitely last resort. I look local first and only going Prime when local isn’t an option or it’s cost-prohibitive for me.

Many local businesses are offering local delivery at little or no additional cost. That’s way less work than suiting up to forage Target.

How you can help: Look local first and big-box last. 

Leave a Review. It’s Magic.

I recently learned positive reviews can increase sales by up to 85%. Leaving a positive product or services review is POWERFUL MAGIC.

Real-life example: Last week, Bull Love Mugs sales were slow. As Hometown Apparel and I are collaborating on mugs, I worried twice over because we’re both impacted. Plus, that meant our weekly donation to the Durham Crisis Response Center was smaller. 

I remembered it was ONE bad week of sales and moved towards problem-solving. I asked for what I needed (and still need). Friday morning, I started asking my audiences to leave positive reviews on my products they had purchased. They did, and we had 150% more mugs sell over the weekend than we did the week prior. It works!

How you can help: Leave a review for your favorite business on their website, social media, Yelp, and Google.

You can practice by leaving a positive review on TheBullsOfDurham.com. :::wink-wink::

Follow Directions

Amid the COVID-chaos, small business owners are constantly having to adapt and streamline. We’re doing so on minimal sleep and maximum stress. Purchase the way a business asks you to make a purchase. Understand we still love you, but we still need you to order the same way everyone else does.

Real-life examples:

I eat at NuvoTaco so much I’m on “nickname, know-your-order-by-heart” status. Last month, I was in the midst of a busy day and didn’t check their social media before calling to place an order. Abby answered the phone, “Hey, She. We’re doing orders all online now. Can you place your veggie taco order online? Oh, wait. It’s totally a nacho day.” To which I said, “Of course I’ll order my nachos online.”

How you can help: Follow the rules. Order through our websites unless we say otherwise. Leave a kind note in the order section.

Sharing is Caring Unless It’s Disease

Social media shares are powerful. Period.

100% of Durham small business owners surveyed reported that social media sharing is a huge help and they really need more people to do it.

Business owner and mama of two said, “Social sharing is big for me, I get a lot of business by simply getting the word out about my services/what I do.”

Your friends and family are more likely to take your recommendation than any ad a business owner can buy. What’s more, when you share social media posts, it tells the algorithm that there’s something about that content that is share-worthy. The algorithm then rewards the content with more organic viewership.

A social media share is said to be worth $102. Thinking 10x-style and that’s $1020!

How you can help: Make your latest quarantine project or challenge to be “that digital auntie” and share local business’s posts on social media.

Run Your Mouth

Think of telling your friends and family as the final step of any local purchase process. Word of mouth always has been and always will be the best form of advertising. If you love a local company, tell people.

Here are some real-life, Durham examples:

I’ve recently become addicted to Elodie Farm’s blueberry mousse. GET THE BIG JAR. I ran my mouth so much on social media that two things have happened:

1. My silly Instagram stories have helped boost blueberry mousse sales. I got the next to last jar last week. As owner Sandra said, “Well, your mouth helps our business tremendously.”
2. I found out that I’m part of a secret big jar club. Ha!

My friend asked on Facebook what moisturizers to use to deal with dry hands from this constant handwashing. I commented that I haven’t really had this problem because I use Fillaree soap, and they don’t add the chemical big-soap companies do to make their soap foam. That decorative chemical dries your hands out. She and several of her friends were excited to hear about this information. More refillers for Fillaree!

How you can help: Next time you enjoy a local product, even one you’ve had in your home forever, tell somebody and/or everybody. And definitely get the big jar of blueberry mousse. 

Give Us Gold, Social Media Gold

Comments of 3 or more words on social media posts are absolute gold! The more comments on a post, the more rewarded it is in the algorithm. Keep your comment positive, constructive, and focused on the product/service at hand. Be the digitally-savvy auntie, not “that aunt.”

Real-life, recent example: I’ve been posting the stunning, new product photos Curious Notions Photography did for my company. Best quarantine investment I’ve made. 

My friend Marcus, owner of Natty Neckware, left this unsolicited comment on a photo of a Bull Love Mug, “Coffee and tea hits different in this mug… Bull City baby!!”

Within 10 minutes, the post’s organic reach (how many people see it without paying for them to see it) increased 4-fold. Within the next two hours, we had an increase in Bull Love Mug sales. Words matter. Left as constructive comments on Instagram, they pay too.

How you can help: Pick 3 or 4 companies you can consistently leave comments on their social media posts. Or make a game of how many kind comments you can leave in 10 minutes or less.

Don’t Ask for a Discount or Free Shipping

This is a REALLY tender one, but we’ll get through it together. One business owner surveyed captured this precisely, “Don’t ask me for free shipping. I’m not f*****g Bezos. I’m a guy trying to feed his family and really tired of firing my employees.”

Well, now. There you have it.

I get it. We’re all trying to find the best deal to stretch our finite dollars to infinity and beyond. I’m a consumer too.

Here’s the reality: you’ve probably never actually gotten “free” shipping. We envelop it in the product cost or in our marketing budget. COVID killed our profit margins and marketing budgets.

Business owners don’t have to, and many simply can’t afford to honor the discounts and coupons in place before it all hitting the fan. Go back to thinking 10x. Flashing your discount card to get 10% off a $20 purchase feels like taking a $200 hit right now.

If we can afford to, we’ll offer it. It’s that simple. 

Remember We’re Human Too

We’re trying to save our businesses on top of navigating a national pandemic. We’re tired and scared like everyone else. We can contract COVID-19 just like anyone else.

Practice social distancing, wear face masks, and sanitize your hands when entering stores as they reopen. Those are the rules they must comply with to reopen. It’s not personal. 

Unless we say otherwise, give us 7 to 10 days to fulfill your order. As mentioned above, we’re not Amazon Prime. If a restaurant is out of an ingredient or offering, remember they’re doing more with less. Order something else off the menu.

Don’t underestimate the power of saying, “Thank you.” Or “I see you.” Kindness matters. The kind emails, DMs, and extraordinarily thoughtful order notes I’ve received have been what fuels me to keep going. I see you. Thank you for seeing me.

Share in the comments below what Durham businesses you’ve been supporting and then share this blog with your friends and family. Now you know how powerful comments and sharing are!