Posted on March 16th, 2020
Below is a complete transcript of this video.
What’s up fellow entrepreneurs, it’s John Fagerholm again. And today I wanted to talk about the Corona virus.
Now I know that’s something that everybody’s talking about and you can’t overhear a conversation or even get into a conversation where someone isn’t talking about that.
But I want to talk about it in the context of, um, businesses and, um, employment laws and so on because I’m getting a lot of questions about it. Um, interesting because for years now, I’ve been expecting the economy to take a little bit of a nose dive and I’ve been attempting to prepare for it.
People were saying it’s either going to naturally slow down or there’s going to be some black Swan event. Um, you know, a month ago it didn’t look like this economy was going to be slowing down for any reason. Well, here it is the black Swan event that’s, um, uh, tanking the economy right now.
And I, I kind of think of this as sort of the environment. Right after nine 11, I remember nine 11, I was just a few months out of law school and, and uh, it felt a little bit like this.
It felt like people weren’t going out, people weren’t spending money. Um, the economy was slowing down and then, you know, months later it picked up with this, who knows? You know, it’s, it’s just in the last week, all of these big things happen.
The big shocking one was the, to me anyway, the, the NBA just, uh, you know, postponing it season. That was, that was shocking. Uh, from what I’ve read, they potentially will lose about $200 million on that.
So I dunno, it’s, it’s this thing could, um, you know, burn out during the summer, you know, just like regular flu does or who knows what’s going to happen with this thing.
But in any event, I’ve, I’ve had several clients contact me and say, well, what do we do? Well, first of all, just from a business perspective.
I think you should have a plan in place because, uh, you know, when you have cities like San Francisco that say you can’t gather more than a thousand people in one place, when you have cities like Seattle, um, that are requiring the big employers to, uh, excuse me, the big employers make them telecommute or whatever it is, those account.
I guess Microsoft and some of the other big ones are doing it. Um, you know, and then you’ve got whole regions of Italy that are just, you know, shut down. And a friend of mine sent me a video because she lives in Milan and it was a ghost town. It was literally nobody in the streets.
So potentially that could happen, you know, anywhere in any city. Um, you know, and we have a plan in place, um, because we do everything electronically anyway with our files because my concern was that while LA could have a shutdown or even our building could have a shutdown.
And so, um, if that were to happen, then we would still have to work. Employees would still have to, uh, I mean the time clock for litigation doesn’t stop because of a virus, so we would still have to continue our work.
Um, so I think the first thing is to have a plan in place, um, a plan in place, number one to, uh, continue with work and then also a plan in place for the, for the employees.
Besides putting a plan in place, uh, for us to work remotely, if that’s required, we also put a plan in place now for, um, hand-washing, um, sanitizing things like that.
And I think that’s a good, uh, plan to put into place just so if someone does get sick, then they don’t say, you know, you’re held liable for it, you know, because obviously you’re not responsible for a virus, but you’re responsible for not being negligent.
Right. So, um, I don’t know what it could possibly be, but nothing surprises me in California. I, I can imagine people getting sick and then somehow it’s the employer’s fault for not doing, um, uh, uh, you know, the most they can to protect the employees.
So what I did was I wrote a email with instructions about hand-washing, um, where all the hand washing stations are, um, about, um, you know, if you’re not feeling well, what you do, you know, don’t come into work.
Common sense stuff. So I think that, that, that’s probably a good plan, um, one for your business to figure out how you can keep operating the best you can and then to the safety of your employees so that if someone is ill, how do you, how do you keep the other employees safe?
So anyway, I, I, uh, uh, I think, and I’m hoping that this thing blows over, um, at least by summer.
I think maybe before then it seems to be getting worse every time I read. But I don’t know. Is that, is that a news hype or is that real? Who knows? Um, I guess only time will tell.
All right, uh, fellow entrepreneurs, until next time, be safe and also be productive.
