The story below is from our January/February 2023 issue. For more stories like it, Subscribe Today. Thank you!
Local businesses got creative in the face of pandemic challenges.
Everything changed in 2020.
But even as the COVID numbers rose, businesses needed to remain afloat while keeping their employees and customers safe.
That includes the smart, savvy and downright creative adjustments that businesses made to thrive in a COVID and eventual post-COVID world.
For some businesses, this meant switching to a remote environment. For others, it meant making healthy changes or adding a new segment to their services. But, for all, it led to COVID positives.
Carey Hampton was working as a server in the Pine Room at the Hotel Roanoke when COVID got bad. Hospitality was the second hardest-hit industry monetarily, and Hampton was a victim of that.
From left to right: Lindsey Williams, Carey Hampton and Cierra Kysor of Carey's Fresh Start Cleaning Service
In March 2020, she was moved from full-time to part-time. The paycheck protection plan helped her until that ran out. So she picked up shifts in room service, security, pool attendance and, in what turned out to be a fateful opportunity, housekeeping.
She filled in everywhere she could and even became second-shift supervisor in security for a while. But eventually, the changes in the industry led Hampton to the place of so many other hospitality workers, without a job.
She applied to over 70 jobs and even received one offer. But when it came time to begin her training, she never got a call. When she tried to get in touch with the people who hired her, she was unable. They ghosted her.
Looking closer at her hiring paperwork, Hampton noticed that the company she spoke with was a go-between for the actual employer. She surmised that somewhere along the line, there was either a breakdown in communication or an over-hiring.
Finally, at the end of her rope, Hampton responded to a post on Nextdoor, a social media app designed to connect neighbors and where rules require a friendlier demeanor than competitors like Twitter or Facebook.
Courtesy of CHIP
Someone needed some help with cleaning and chores. Hampton knew she was qualified and so responded.
That post ended up being the impetus for a radical change in direction. Soon through word of mouth and Nextdoor recommendations, Hampton developed a thriving cleaning business.
Now Hampton has two full-time employees in addition to herself and serves several dozen households. She continues to grow and has incorporated her business as Carey’s Fresh Start Cleaning Service.
It’s a great example of opportunity coming from adversity and changing the course of a life for the positive.
Meanwhile, the medical field was running into its own problems, especially in smaller family practices.
All the PPE was going to LewisGale and Carilion. When Dr. Lianna Lawson of Lawson Family Medicine tried to get her hands on PPE, she was last on the list because she hadn’t ever “ordered them before.” Of course, she’d never needed them before since she wasn’t around a century ago for America’s last pandemic.
Necessity being the mother of invention, Lawson has since found additional sources for her equipment and has formed relationships with other organizations that have allowed her to plug the holes.
“I had to be very proactive to not only protect myself and my staff but the patients,” she says. “But it helped me learn much more self-reliance than I had beforehand.”
That focus on safety and protection was another positive. Beyond the new avenues for receiving PPE and other supplies, the pandemic brought respiratory illness into focus.
Spending so much time around sickness, “it’s easy for people in healthcare to get a little too relaxed about airborne illness,” and COVID really “reinforced the importance of protecting health and staff.”
As a result, Lawson Family Medicine has added a medical-grade air purifier guaranteed to filter out COVID as well as the flu into the waiting room and each exam room. They’ve also instituted new policies due to COVID that have generalized out, improving health in general.
Another effect was the explosion of telemedicine. Lawson had added telemedicine two and half years ago, but for many patients, it was slow to catch on. Now it’s become a boon not only for her practice but her patients.
Anthony Giorgetti
Supplies in CHIP's donation center.
The utility of telehealth helps keep sick people out of a waiting room, infecting other patients, as now people with respiratory sickness will do most of their appointments on the computer with a parking lot follow-up for a nasal swab. But it’s also helped college students who’ve been seeing Dr. Lawson since childhood to continue that doctor-patient relationship.
Finally, the benefit of telehealth to anyone with a stomach bug can’t be overstated.
Lawson half-jokes, “You can’t drive and puke,” and “COVID opened that door wide!”
Similarly, tele-visits and more flexible schedules, in general, have become part of the regular practice of CHIP of the Roanoke Valley.
While Chief Operating Officer Autumn Lavering stressed that they had always used the health of the family unit as a holistic measurement of their work, COVID created additional needs that needed addressing.
Anthony Giorgetti
Autumn Lavering shares the shelves of diapers and other family essentials in CHIP’s donation center.
Before COVID became the primary driver of the news cycle and single-handedly lowered the average life expectancy of Americans, CHIP heard concerns that it could get bad quickly. They sprung into action before it did by converting fully to telehealth meetings within two weeks of the initial whisperings.
But because of the needs of the underserved communities that CHIP caters to, many families simply didn’t have the broadband or high-speed internet needed to make telehealth appointments possible.
“We had to get very creative with offering that service,” Lavering says.
Sometimes that meant front porch visits (masked and distanced). Later it included “walk and talks” on a client lunch break to help with mental health needs or phone appointments when computers weren’t available. CHIP had to “wrap services around families completely.”
Of course, some of the needs they served couldn’t be met over the phone. As hard as it was for the general population when we had diaper and toilet paper shortages, it was nearly impossible for the underserved.
CHIP rallied to assemble and deliver care packages with diapers, toilet paper, hand sanitizer and other necessities to needy families.
They even adjusted their annual Breakfast with Santa event to be a drive-through experience during the worst parts of the pandemic. That was a particularly touching moment. While they expected enthusiastic kids, “the look of excitement and hope on parents’ faces was incredible. People need that glimmer of hope; that spark.”
Courtesy of CHIP
Inside CHIP's donation center.
While many businesses struggled, others suddenly had a new stream of revenue. You likely heard about distilleries that were paid to pivot to hand sanitizer. Similarly, imagine what the beginning of the pandemic was like for an air quality company.
At the beginning of the pandemic, Andy Brady of Green Home Solution explains that with proven knowledge sparse, all anyone could do was “make assumptions (based on) the microbes and diseases we had knowledge of,” and when it came to destroying these diseases to make an environment safe again.
And when it came to destroying disease in environments, “we were the only game in town.”
Because GHS was already established at using a Halosil machine to treat diseases like MRSA after outbreaks in nursing homes, GHS started getting contacted by doctors’ offices, hospitals, and anywhere with a COVID outbreak to disinfect surfaces and treat the air.
As we learned more about COVID, companies could adopt less of a “scorched earth policy” for disinfection and air treatment.
Courtesy Green Home Solutions
A Green Home Solutions employee disinfects an exam room.
GHS didn’t want to rip anybody off so as we all learned more about COVID, they let people know that their Halosil service was overkill. COVID acted like other viruses — it could not survive long on surfaces and could be destroyed with household cleaning products.
But GHS forged partnerships with other cleaning companies they could send out in their stead, and the result was still positive for their services.
Folks who had been walking around in masks realized they had allergies because suddenly they were breathing better. As a result, people have started to think more about the unseen and its effect on all of us.
As a result, people are more open to hearing about how VOCs, toxins, gases, bacteria, yeasts, fungus, dust, mold and, yes, viruses can impact their health, and that has been good for the air quality business.
COVID has been an international tragedy that affected many local businesses. But as we move forward together, hopefully we can learn from Green Home Solutions, Carey’s Fresh Start Cleaning Service, CHIP and Lawson Family Medicine, as well as other small businesses who have turned challenges into positives. Some found partnerships and community. Others found self-reliance. All pivoted and used the adversity as a springboard for opportunity.
The story above is from our January/February 2023 issue. For more stories like it, Subscribe Today. Thank you!