Being an entrepreneur and growing a business is rewarding work, and one that I wouldn’t trade lightly. I’ll be the first to admit that doing so during a pandemic has been both terrifying and exhilarating, especially when your business is all about marketing communications, so let me tell you a little bit about what I’ve learned.

Among a number of other businesses and projects, my primary business has been running a marketing agency called Schmooz Media, based in Toronto, Canada. COVID-19 struck right after we’d celebrated our brand-new, bigger, and more functional office space, which suddenly made that triumph feel a bit hollow. Making such an abrupt switch in where we worked not only presented a new set of big challenges, it also exposed previously hidden problems in how we worked.

My longest-term employee went on mat leave, so in addition to not being present physically, she was also not present remotely. This, along with the new anxieties our customers had, exposed some serious communication gaps in the company. It was painful for me to admit that things were not running as smoothly as I had once thought, and challenging to try and figure out how to fix things through Zoom calls, instead of being able to hash it all out in person. I found myself wanting to protect the team no matter what the cost to myself because I didn’t want to let anyone go without a job. This ultimately led to me holding on too tightly and not placing enough trust and accountability in others.

Not long after the stay-at-home orders were released, and I was afraid that I might have to let go of some staff members, a wage subsidy came in and so did a few large inquiries. I went from worrying about not having enough business to figuring out how to scale up my team to meet the demands of new business.

I was incredibly productive during this time, trying to fill up space with new clients and new projects. I co-authored and published a book, I started an organization backed by a charity to help frontline workers, I started crafting a podcast, made a new website, and did pro bono work.

On top of all of this, I had to figure out how to hire new people without meeting them in person, how to gauge if they would fit in at Schmooz, especially when there was no timeline for when they would be able to enjoy that brand-new office space of which I was so proud. As you can probably guess, my attempt to do so much turned out to just that - too much.