InTents June/July 2020 - 36

business | tips and techniques

How to be resilient
COVID-19 is unprecedented, but the event industry has faced
-and overcome-other crises with resilience and persistence.

eptember 11. Hurricane Katrina.
The Great Recession. The
Deepwater Horizon oil spill. COVID-19.
As a hospitality industry veteran
based in New Orleans, Jeff O'Hara
has become an "accidental expert"
in leading businesses through times
of catastrophe. The president of
destination management company
PRA New Orleans, O'Hara is author
of Have Fun, Fight Back, and Keep the
Party Going: Lessons from a New Orleans
Entrepreneur's Journey to the Inc. 5000
(Greenleaf, December 2018).
In early April, O'Hara teamed up with
leadership expert Thom Singer, keynote
speaker at IFAI Expo 2019, for a "virtual
talk show" webinar for IFAI members
on resilience and persistence.
"Resilience is important for all of us
who are in business, no matter what
our role is, no matter how big our
company," Singer says. "We're going to
need that entrepreneurial muscle to
come out, because once we get past the
virus, we're then going to have to ϐight
our way out of this economic situation."
How do you develop resilience? Here
are six tips O'Hara and Singer discussed
with webinar participants.
1. Learn to compartmentalize.
One of the biggest frustrations for
business owners during a crisis like
COVID-19 is that the events that are
threatening their business are out
of their control and have no relation
to how well the business is run.

S
IFAI webinars
For information on upcoming
IFAI webinars, go to
www.ifai.com/events.
IFAI members can access
past webinar content in the
Video Library at www.ifai.com/
video-category/webinars.

36 intents

0620IT_p36_CV4.indd 36

"Rather than trying to solve all of
the world's problems today, try to
compartmentalize so that you can make
progress toward the thing that you can
impact today," O'Hara says. "That makes
you feel like you are doing something as
opposed to worrying about all the other
things you can't solve."
2. Be prepared to experience stages
of crisis realization. Entrepreneurs
are inherently optimistic, O'Hara says,
but that optimism means that they
might not react as quickly as others to a
crisis that developed like COVID-19 did.
Instead, they tend to believe everything
will work out. (On the plus side, they
are less likely to panic and make bad
decisions, he says.)
3. Be conϐident that you will ϐind a
solution. Uncertainty is to be expected,
especially as a crisis quickly unfolds.
"You don't have all the answers, but
you have to have conϐidence in yourself
that you will ϐind the answers," O'Hara
says. "The ϐirst way for me to sort
of drive through the uncertainty is
knowing that even though I don't
have the answers in front of me, I'm
conϐident that I'll ϐind one that will
get us through this. It's not just for
yourself, it's for all your stakeholders
as well. Your supply chain-they've
got to feel comfortable that you are
still going to be there buying their
products and paying for their products
three months, six months down
the road."

june-july 2020

5/19/20 3:45 PM
http://www.ifai.com/events http://www.ifai.com/
InTents June/July 2020

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