Covid Recovery Gets Shot in the Arm

Last week, you told us how your businesses were doing in the ongoing COVID crisis, and the results were uplifting. There’s a new sense of hope that the pandemic might end in time for summer, making meaningful small business recovery in 2021 a real possibility. 

Here are a few green shoots, according to a recent poll of over 10,000 small business owners on Alignable, and what you can do to help your business, and small business as a whole, get ready for recovery.  

More Businesses Experience Less Financial Impact

The best news to come from the poll? The number of you who are experiencing significant financial impact from the crisis is finally falling—it dropped by a whopping 34%! 

While we’re far from out of the woods, for the first time in over a year, less than 40% of business owners are feeling crushed by COVID.

So what’s contributing to this big drop?

More Vaccinations Means Faster Recovery

In short, the speed and power of widespread vaccination. 

Recently, the government picked up the pace of its mass vaccination program. In last month’s Road to Recovery report, we called out them out for not acting fast enough to get vaccines to everyone by the beginning of May.  

While we have no idea if they heard us, we do know many in Washington have been reading our monthly Road to Recovery reports, and now they are fast tracking availability!

Thank you for entrusting us with the impacts COVID has had on your business over the past year—your voice is making a difference. 

But We Still Have a Way to Go

While we’re seeing positive signs as a result of vaccination, there’s still work to do. Just today I was on a call with a business owner in Waterloo, Canada who shared the situation in the north. 

Without vaccine production capability, Canadian citizens and businesses are in a much different position. While roughly 30% of the US population has received at least one dose, only 9% of Canadians have. 

We clearly have a long way to go before we can claim Mission Accomplished on this nightmare.  

1 Easy Way to Kickstart Your Business and Community Recovery

As we get ready to help local businesses restart and recover, your network matters more now than ever. Consider expanding it so you can help others in the small business community get where they need to go. 

You can build a bigger network right here on Alignable to include all of these business owners so you can help them generate referrals. With over 6.5 million businesses on Alignable, you should be able to find and connect with many you already know.  

Use our connection finder app to search your email contacts and find all of the members you know. Get started here. 

Keep us posted and we’ll keep raising your voices

To date, we’ve collected over 600,000 total poll responses tracking everything from the impact on your cash flow to what tech you’re using to make it through. And we intend to stay with you and stay vocal on this topic until we see clear signs that recovery is here to stay. 

Keep an eye out for this month’s full report early next week where we’ll share even more good news. In the meantime, if you’re interested in seeing the incredible insights you and your peers have shared, check out our research center here on Alignable.

Do you think your business is on the upswing? What kind of positive signs do you see in your community that recovery is happening? Share in the comments.