During COVID, I chose to become a mentor of the VCCI Business Recovery Resilience Mentoring Program. I wanted to assist struggling small businesses by offering strategic insights into how they could pivot and adjust to the significant risks and impediments place on them because of COVID lockdowns. I was also curious, having provided strategic and risk consulting services to medium to large organisations for over 30 year whilst in Big 4 accounting practices, whether the successful operating models I had witnessed, could be simplified to help small business survive.
It is fair to say, when Victor, owner of Lucha Fantastica, chose JNW Strategic Consulting, and I looked up what his business did, I am not going to lie, Mexican wrestling was not what I had expected. However, talking to Victor, comprehending that his business had literally ceased to operate overnight, it was clear he urgently needed strategic advice on how to survive and maintain his livelihood.
The VCCI program offered him access to some independent skills to bounce ideas off to help him reset and resume business post lockdown. Throughout our four session strategic process, we worked with Victor to deep dive into “what services he could provide”, “to who/what demographic the services would add value to” and “how the services would be effectively delivered”.
It became obvious Victor had a unique value proposition – he offers a traditional Mexican experience for those who want to have fun. So the question was…. how could he leverage this into other markets to survive the pandemic? We worked with Victor to explore opportunities, and excitingly, he now has established Fantastica Events, an organisation that offers Mexican street food and drink, authentic Mexican entertainment and Mexican dancing.
Through my experiences with other VCCI program members, it is acknowledged that the lockdowns have taken a toll on small business owners. Over the past couple of years their livelihoods have been severely disrupted, their financial security has been rocked and most likely, their mental health has been effected. To heel and make Victoria great again, it is now important that Victorian’s get behind their local café, dine at the corner restaurants, get along to a Mexican wrestling event and support the small business community.
Victor’s positive attitude and fun personality has no doubt helped him through the tuff times. It has been personally inspiring to mentor Victor and the other VCCI program participants and I strongly believe programs like the Business Recovery Resilience Mentoring Program, should be offered on an ongoing basis to further support small businesses to get back to doing what they are passionate about.
Please enjoy this video…
