Enterprising Spirit: Business tries what it provides: remote work

Editor’s note: Our series Enterprising Spirit documents how businesses and workers are managing the economy’s slow return to life after its sudden shutdown in March – and adapting to new challenges ahead.

Though the team at Quick Business Resolutions carried on during the stay-home order, business just wasn’t the same without The Office Cat, or TOC for short.

Codi Quick, owner and CEO, said once TOC returned to the office two weeks ago to greet all of the employees, everything felt back to a new normal.

“He is stretched out, laying and rolling on the floor, starts prancing around the hallways and is back to this perfect friendly part of the team,” Quick said.

Quick Business Resolutions, 912 W. Garland Ave., provides remote workers for small businesses locally and across the country. Quick’s team helps businesses with social media, website creation and maintenance, administrative work, graphic design, marketing and more.

Quick’s clients run the gamut from mental health therapists to lawyers to coaches.

“The main piece is they’re all entrepreneurs or small businesses,” Quick said. “If they’re either ‘solopreneurs’ determining everything themselves, trying to live that dream, build their business, or they have a team of five or less people, then we start to partner with them and really become kind of a back office support and marketing support for them.”

Given the very nature of their work, it might seem counterintuitive that the Quick team works in-house. In learning to work remotely, Quick said they had to learn to practice what they preach. The biggest learning curve was communication.

“Some of the things that I love about virtual and being able to work anywhere also have some things that I was reminded make things a little harder,” Quick said.

TOC, who went home with Quick, played a prominent role in Zoom meetings, sitting on Quick’s lap.

From the beginning of the stay-home order to April, Quick said the company lost 150 billable hours. Some of her clients left entirely, but she said most cut down on their hours.

“I would say, unfortunately, we had about a 50/50 split of some. Instantly marketing was their cut, which is kind of the opposite of most of my advice to them right now,” Quick said. “Being out there was kind of what I wanted most of them to do.”

The remaining half of Quick’s clients cut back office support. Quick’s passion is helping small business owners realize their dreams with the expertise of her staff.

The team has been acquiring new clients lately, and many of them want help getting online.

“They’re taking that leap of faith during a really hard time to start an online business, or taking what they’ve done one-on-one, in-person and building it into an online business,” Quick said.

Quick hopes that since many business have learned during this time that remote work can be part of their model, they will find her services more attractive.

“When I first started a virtual company or virtual assistant, 10-15 years ago, no one had a clue what that meant,” Quick said. “It was always our hurdle of how do I trust and how do I know things are happening? Now that people were forced to try it, they’re like, ‘Oh, okay, this isn’t so bad.’”