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Showing posts from September, 2024

When the World Shut Down: How COVID Nearly Killed My Business (And How We Survived)

March 2020 will be burned into my memory forever.  One day, I'm running a successful escort agency in NYC with steady bookings and a stable roster of workers, and literally overnight, the world shut down. No restaurants, no hotels, no travel - and definitely no personal services involving close contact.  I remember sitting in my office at 2 AM, staring at a completely empty booking calendar for the first time in six years, trying to figure out how to keep my business alive and my workers fed when our entire industry had just been declared non-essential.  If you think mainstream businesses had it tough during COVID, try running an escort agency during a global pandemic. We couldn't apply for PPP loans, couldn't access unemployment benefits, and couldn't exactly pivot to contactless delivery. But somehow, we survived, and the lessons we learned fundamentally changed how this industry operates. The immediate impact was absolutely brutal. Bookings dropped 95% within the fi...