Clients, Colleagues, Partners, and Friends,
During this time of extraordinary uncertainty, precaution, and preparation, I wanted to communicate that we are closely following developments with the global COVID-19 pandemic, and are taking steps to both protect the health and safety of our teammates, as well as, mitigate disruptions and provide continuity and support in delivering our services. We remain committed to providing outstanding service.
As of today, none of our operations have been interrupted, and our team remains focused on maintaining business continuity. As a remote-first company, we shall continue to be responsive, minimize disruptions, and accommodate our clients’ and colleagues’ needs.
We also acknowledge that this situation may be forcing you to change the ways you do business, and we continue to offer our knowledge, skill, and experience to help you mitigate disruptions, interruptions, and negative impacts on your business. Should you have questions about how to adjust to this environment, please don't hesitate to contact us.
I also wanted to share some thoughts from our recent weekly tips email. While I am neither an expert on infectious disease, nor economics, I am a small business owner and would be remiss if I didn't at least share some of my experiences relating to running a small business in both the current environment, as well as, founding a small business during the volatility of 2008.
First, with respect to today's COVID-19 environment, we are fortunate to be a remote-first company. For better, and worse, "social-distancing" is just another day at the office for us. We are big fans of Smith.ai, Zoom, Slack, and Teamwork. I'm not sharing these tools to suggest that switching to them is a "remote-first cure-all." But this is probably a great time to explore how they might help you continue to deliver services to your clients.
Second, while I would encourage you re-examine your marketing mix, I would also caution you against indiscriminate slashing of marketing budgets. In fact, this situation is likely to present significant opportunities. At a minimum, it might be a great time to "zoom out" and make updates to your website and web presence more generally. I encourage you to research marketing and advertising during a downturn. Here are some thoughtful tips from sba.gov. I also found some useful information in this HBR article. As always, should you have specific questions relating to marketing and advertising your law practice, we are here to support you.
Finally, I wish you all well during this volatile time. As best as you can, premeditatio malorum, hope for the best, but prepare for the worst. When we founded AttorneySync in 2008, the headlines were full of doom and gloom. Looking back, with the perspective of over a decade, the fears of those times, while present, didn't have as much of an impact on our decision-making as I might have suspected (perhaps they should have). My point is that while we thought about the impact of what was going on in the world at the time, we tried not to allow those fears lead. Sure, we could have gone back to our jobs. We could have pushed the pause button on all of our growth investments. And yes, we could have failed, as many small businesses did, and do, regardless of market conditions. But we didn't. Instead, we focused on the things we could control. And while we prepare, as best we can, for these uncertain times, we look forward to emerging stronger, together.
Stay healthy!
Gyi Tsakalakis
President
