Starting a Business During a Pandemic

What were we thinking?

Maybe we felt like we didn’t have enough going on, I don’t know. But in the middle of this third lockdown, during working from home and raising a two year old, we thought, “now is the perfect time to start a new business.”

But you know what? It kind of is the perfect time. People seem more ready than ever to support new small ventures like ours. We’ve gotten overwhelmingly positive feedback and messages of support from friends and family, even acquaintances.

That doesn’t mean this hasn’t come without its challenges - oh no. Finding something as simple as the mental space to work on all the things needed to set up a new business - creating a website, researching prices, making social media posts, the list goes on - has been immensely challenging. Multitasking has become the new tasking. Is that a thing? It’s a thing now.

Part of how we‘re planning on achieving a family-work life balance is by actively involving our family in the work. The efficacy of such a plan remains to be seen so watch this space. In the meantime, while our daughter remains a bit disinterested in order fulfilment (but wildly interested in “mix mix mix”), we‘ve created rather firm boundaries for us and her. When we are with her, she gets us and it’s not business time. We work on the business primarily after she’s in bed.

This won’t be sustainable forever, but for now it’s working, and when it stops working hopefully she’ll be interested in the family business in some capacity or another. And if she’s not that’s ok too. We’ll figure it out. but right now, in the middle of a deadly pandemic, it seems important to prioritise quality time with family (not just time). It’s so easy to simply exist in these times because we can’t go out and do different engaging activities.

Aside from the desire to prioritise family, there’s also the fact that both of us are still working. This takes up both mental space and actual time and space in our respective days. So, like with the boundaries for family, setting those boundaries between the business and work is vital, especially during this time. When we’re not in a pandemic, setting a boundary for work is really easy because I go to work. Working from home can make it feel like I’m always at work unless those boundaries are in place.

So starting a business during a pandemic presents all of the same challenges as it would any other time, its just more of each of them. And unlike any other time, people are more ready than ever to support you.