LinkedIn Editor in Chief Daniel Roth hosted a live one on one with Mark Cuban recently. They talked about Mark’s thoughts about COVID-19. They also discussed the effects on small businesses. These companies feel the impact of the crisis right now. And that impact continues going forward. Cuban answered a variety of questions from business owners and others.
Mark Cuban Coronavirus Advice for Business Owners
Small Business Trends attended the #ThisIsWorking LIVE webinar. Check out what we learned about what the billionaire entrepreneur thinks small businesses should be doing. Mark Cuban’s coronavirus advice includes some suggestions on how they can ride out the virus storm. And he shared some of the ideas he’s working on.
Offer Bundled Services
One question came from the owner of a day spa who was looking to keep his business afloat. Cuban suggested packaging up the services into a bundle.
“You can offer a years’ worth of services so you have something to live off,” he said. He suggested coming up with a gift certificate program that comes with a discount and a prepayment.
It’s not only good for the business owner. They can keep some employees on hand with this system. Workers can make calls and try and sell the packages. He stressed this kind of program works in a variety of small businesses.
“Service companies need to be innovative, he said. “You can’t just sit back. You need to be aggressive and proactive.”
Think About the Opportunities
Cuban pointed out the pandemic would create new businesses.
“Five years from now were going to look back and point to 10 to 20 companies that were created during the pandemic of 2020,” he said. “We get to do America 2.0. We get to go through a unique reset.”
He listed some of these. For example, the first was a patent he hopes will prevent people from being identified as virus carriers in the future.
“We don’t want to start labeling people from a human rights perspective,” he said. “I applied for the patent to create identifiers. I want to put it into the public domain to prevent people from doing it.”
Stop Bad Actors
The idea is to stop bad actors from being able to abuse the technology.
He’s also working with the City of Dallas and The American Airlines Center to create a program that updates when things like park benches were last cleaned. The idea is a barcode or some kind of labeling system.
It has big implications.
“Imagine you’re in an arena on the escalator,” Cuban says. This new system could tell you the last time it had been cleaned.
Post COVID 19 Interns
The billionaire entrepreneur said interns become a good way to fill post virus employment gaps. Although he says he goes back and forth on the issue, there are some positives.
“When we get to the other side of this and business starts to pick up, it will be hard to find people and bring them back.”
Cuban said there will be holes in the workforce. But interns remain a fix. This becomes a good way for students with no experience to get some. Cuban said one way to go would be to change the rules and allow interns to work for free again.
“Companies could get help and students get experience ” he said.
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