It is never a good time for change; and it is always a good time for change. The challenge every business owner has faced is: balancing the opportunities that come with making an evolution; with the risks that come from moving away from the tried, test, old and reliable strategies that got them through their journey so far.

The two mistakes business owners do

The two biggest mistakes a business owner could make were: not changing with the times and changing too soon or too drastically. Both these errors carry similar penalties and so for years every independent business owner had to determine what was right for them, make judgement calls, weigh the options, and ultimately live with the consequences of their decisions (or indecisions) whether those outcomes were positive or negative.

The Power of change

But this is “a time like no other”. Due to Covid-19 and the shutdowns that came with it around the world; businesses have already had change enforced upon them. At best businesses have had to change some elements of their service and at worst they have had to close. In our business of education, the second has regrettably been the more common.

This of course has created an imbalance that has never existed previously, not even when businesses first started up. For the first time in the lifecycle of many education businesses there is only opportunity and all the threats have already been manifested or surpassed. In short, in this moment in time, there is only upside. Where previously introducing new things or directions could have been a risk, now it is an additional chance to attract back old customers and win new ones in a marketplace that has experienced a hard reset.

That means that everyone is in the same place and the changes, that previously concerned you, could now be the catalyst that drives your next phase of success. Of course, this is not true of all change. The fundamentals of good business have not changed after all. The changes you make in your business must make sense in your market; not the market you used to be in by the way; but the one you now find yourself competing in.

Changes in the early childhood sector

The primary years and pre-school education markets have changed enormously in the last two years, but it is a change that not everyone will recognise and even fewer will take advantage of.

No serious construction manager would ever try to build a sky scrapper without first digging deep foundations but, to an extent, that is what every educator of young children will be asked to do over the next few years. Now, to be clear, its is not the academic foundation that is lacking (although this will require some significant attention also) it is the social one. During, what is perhaps, the most significant time for developing social awareness, appreciation, and communication skills; our children have instead be isolated. They have not invented and played games, nor have they fallen out with one another and found resolutions, they have not learned new words from each other or been given the opportunity to practise them, they have not made new friends, and they have not been afforded the opportunity to elaborate on the relationships that already exist.

This is not a deficit that will show up in a test or examination of what they have learned, but it is a diminishment of everything they have the potential to be in future; unless, of course, there was a way for them to reclaim some of that lost knowledge and experience. What children returning to school after two years will need, almost more than anything else, is to learn how to interact with each other again. This is where ISSA comes into its own.

ISSA makes a difference

What makes ISSA different from everyone else who will inevitably come into this marketplace is that our solutions are already tried, tested, re-tried and yes re-tested many times over. Unlike almost every other business who will be getting into this market in response to the arrival of an enormous new opportunity, ISSA has been in this market for years. None of this is new to us, its just that the market opportunity got a hell of a lot bigger, and because we already knew this market, we saw it first and planned for this moment before our competitors even realised it was happening.

That is not to say there aren’t other companies, even bigger companies, who will service this need in the future; but what we can say for sure is that this is a moment of perfect alignment. The time is approaching where, as business owners, you will have a chance to take risks with almost no downside, and it is coinciding with the emergence of a new market need that you could become one of the first to fulfil.

This is our solar eclipse moment. An alignment so perfect is rare perhaps once in a lifetime, but the opportunities that come with it cannot be overstated. The skies may have darkened for a while but its about to get bright again: the risk is low, the rewards are high, it is a time for innovators, and a time for pioneers; it is “a time like no other”.