Listening to a recent Marketplace podcast – marking the one-year impacts of COVID-19 on America’s business economy – we couldn’t help but be drawn into the “unfortunate timing” endured by Denver, CO beauty shop owner Ashlie Ordonez. (listen to the podcast)

Having a business plan, signing a location lease, rolling out the Grand Opening marketing campaign, only to be unable to open due to March 2020’s initial COVID-19 lockdown is disastrous,

Making plans to pivot – and pivot again, and again – is what Ashile and so many others have been doing for this past year.

Do you know of similar businesses’ in trouble due to impacts from COVID?

Suggestion #1 – Send a prayer and a Gift Card of support – “To someone else” with the business as the recipient. (Better yet, simply donate – if – the business has that “product” in their eCommerce selection, or they’re displaying a direct “Donate” button.)

Suggestion #2 – Read Bruce Reyes-Chow’s “In Defense of Kindness: Why It Matters, How It Changes Our Lives, and How It Can Save the World” where Bruce makes a case that we each can choose kindness as a way to experience community and wholeness in new ways. Inviting readers into an adventure of discovery and rediscovery of the kindness of heart, mind, spirit, and action!

Suggestion #3 – Refer a business – even if it’s your own – to S3 Solutions for an impartial third-party listen, and possibly some solutions that might help.