What was the silver lining for you during this Covid era?

We have been extremely busy this year.  With a 245% increase over last year we have been inundated with people moving into the area from other states due to the restrictions and other issues.  Even though Covid 19 is a very serious virus, I believe that it has helped the real estate market in East Tennessee boom here.

2020 has allowed many business owners and independent contractors like myself a route to better focus and intentionality in our businesses. Less time on the road. Perhaps forced focus on updating technologies. I've experienced a great increase in clientele, and due to changing brokerages at the first of the year, I was already neck-deep in learning new systems. 
Yes, I believe there are changes that I will retain once restrictions are lifted. I also believe that every savvy business owner is going to take away something of value which will help their business going forward. 
For some of us, 2020 brought The Great Pause.  For others, their work and lives have been devastated. We all have to remain mindful of those smaller businesses which have been hurt by the CoVID-19 Shutdowns, and challenge ourselves to buy Local whenever possible. 

I got hired

Yes it was an unexpected year.  There was no way to prepare for it. Even if your business did ok or well, I can not see a silver lining.  Our business came to a halt for a few months.  Alignable brought people to us that were in a position to purchase health benefits and many more that will be coming when they get stable.  So I guess Alignable has been our silver lining to help people and communicate with people to help in the future.

My silver lining was realizing that my company was solid during shaky times!  I'd been told that we're recession proof, but this Covid year actually proved it to me and I'm thankful for the lessons learned about being resilient and essential.  The last year for me was not as tough as I expected as far as business goes.  It was tough in other ways more personal, but my business was the one stable thing I could count on.  

As a bed and breakfast and lodging venue, we were already well suited for guest distancing and privacy due to our 5 separate standalone bedroom cottages. We started taking breakfast trays to the cottages and eliminated the in dining room communal breakfast experience. We put small tables in the cottages for eating breakfast where we didn't have tables or if chairs were not suitable for breakfast lap trays with legs. Guests did not seem to mind "breakfast in bed" delivered to them and some even preferred the additional privacy and did not want to punch a clock to get presentable for the dining room. We modified our recipes to offer a full hot breakfast menu that was much easier to eat (no cutting) and provided all disposable cutlery to make the clean up easier. Guests put their tray outside their door (just like at a hotel) and we picked up the trays all by 10 am. This seems to have cut back on the overall length of time to prepare, serve and clean up the breakfast service by about 1 hour, sometimes more. We also offered a lower reduced lodging only rate for those that wanted to sleep in....mostly parents of toddlers waiting at home!  Cleaning is taking a little longer due to COVID specific sanitation and disinfecting steps, we no longer allow pets (no time for dealing with dog hair and those accidents that "my dog doesn't do that " - yeah right! We implemented a "Bag Your Soiled Towels & Slow the Spread" request and most guests complied to the request to help minimize the spread for contamination to our housekeepers. In fact, given what guests do to our towels in any normal year, this isn't a bad idea to continue. Weddings were much smaller this year and over 25% of preplanned weddings cancelled due to COVID limitations on wedding party attendance. In the beginning, one night of lodging cost us 2 nights of "holding, disinfecting, cleaning and holding so we eliminated the 1 night stay option to reduce our lost revenue. Overall our EOY 2020 was down 20%, but much better than the initial 40% revenue lost in March - May with the forced shutdown, we were able to recover as the threat became less and the real risk became more known and manageable.    

We market via print and digital direct to targeted families in affluent communities.  It's a very strong, if not the strongest demographic for a wide range of services and products - that can afford to buy when they choose.  There is no silver lining to Covid.  It did very measurably increase our audience and the effectiveness of our marketing partners' messages to those families.  It has accelerated our business.

I make and sell a board game called Wahoo or Aggravation. I've had more orders this year than I've ever had and I assume that's because people have been staying home. Having said this I'm ready to return to some form of normalcy. 

I wasn't able to show properties for a while and now it is a very time consuming process. I'm grateful I'm able to work even though the protocol is different. I miss doing open houses and connecting in person. I am exercising more, drawing for fun and I am writing a book about life in the trenches as a Realtor. I got married on 11/30, so this year has silver linings.

That I am able to work from anywhere I need as long as I have my cell phone and internet.