During the pandemic, we were thinking a lot about our colleagues and how they were conducting their business through this difficult time. Attending large zoom meetings, connecting one-on-one, reading LinkedIn, posts, comments, industry journals, helped us, and we know so many others, get a clearer understanding of what was happening in various business communities. It was interesting to see how our corporate headshot business compared. Since we are almost 100% a B2B headshot photography company our next moves very much hinge on what is happening out int he business community.

Our meetings were mostly focused on local business associations, conference planners, etc. Getting a read on where everyone was with their businesses helped us understand what we could expect coming down the pipeline to our corporate headshot business.

From the corporate event people, we started to understand when conferences were coming back. This is a big sector for us as many of our clients are associations who want to get website headshots and LinkedIn headshots for their members. Internal event planners at large corporations bring us in to cover corporate portraits for different departments or staff groups. They might bring us in to do business headshots for a department of 10, or a salesforce of 800.

Talking to businesses in our area gave us a read on hiring. Of course, businesses that are hiring need new headshots for their new employees! But it was also, simply put, kind of interesting to see how small businesses were doing, to understand their unique challenges and to get surprised when we hear how certain businesses not just thrived, but blew through growth expectations.

One of the things we love about doing business photography is that we are always interfacing with people in various professional positions among varied business sectors. The last few months was a very interesting time to hear from this myriad group of people.

Of course as we were staying connected and listening to stories, we started getting interested in the idea of sharing Covid business stories. Lucky to have a wonderful circle of professionals that we respect and learn from, we were able to get a few to sit in front of our camera.

Without further ado, here are some portraits and small business stories that we have captured so far:

Sandra Cohen, Cohen and Buckmann

Employment and Employee Benefits Law Firm

How long have you been in business? Exactly five years in April 2021 - we are trying to celebrate our fifth anniversary all year long!

How did your business thrive or struggle during the pandemic? As an employment and employee benefits law firm, our business evolved in a steady way with the economic cycles: during the pandemic, we were busy advising clients on layoffs, furloughs and navigating all kinds of new laws affecting things like sick leaves and benefit law changes. Now that business is opening up, we are helping clients with new hiring and new incentive contracts, as well as employee benefits in transactions/M&A deals.

Did you have to make changes in your business to accommodate personal or family circumstances? I was fortunate to already be working from a home office by choice, well before the pandemic. But it was new territory to have my husband working home every day, and we had to set up make-shift office space for him as well as set up our two teenage sons in different parts of the house so they could do Zoom school. I feel very lucky that our kids are old enough to manage a lot of that by themselves, and we all managed to get along pretty well too! I have so much respect for working parents of little children, trying to juggle homeschool, keeping their jobs and managing the overall stress we all felt about daily life in these times.

Has your business community reached out to support each other in any way? The legal community found new ways to network over video. While I was originally skeptical that I could develop meaningful relationships without meeting in person, I now have new business colleagues that I can now call friends, that I have only met over Zoom.

John Rafferty, Watchguard 24/7

Security guards for residential and commercial locations + related services.

How long have you been in business? 12 years.

How did your business thrive or struggle during the pandemic? Just like every business, there were hurtles that we had to deal with during the pandemic, but we were able to meet our clients' expectations, find new opportunities, and strengthen our relationships even more with our clients where they realized the value of having a true partner providing their security, concierge and fire safety director services. 

What are unexpected consequences of the pandemic on your business? Unfortunately, people are still being offered unemployment and other incentives where some people are not looking to come back to work, and it is minimizing the available work force. 

Did you have to make changes in your business to accommodate personal or family circumstances? We are still currently making accommodations for our team and these changes are still currently in place. 

What will you change about your business moving forward? Moving forward, I understand that working remote is still effective when needed. 

Do you think the government did a good job supporting small business owners? I think during an unprecedented time the government did a decent job, however, I would like to see some changes currently to help business owners and to get everyone back to work. 

Has your business community reach out to support you in any way? I'm very involved in the business community and have many business partners I collaborate with. We work with each other all the time to refer each other business.

Azra Kazim Kermali, Plaques by Azra

Signs and Lucite Products

How long have you been in business? Founded by my parents 46 years ago, I have been actively involved for 25 years.

How did your business thrive or struggle during the pandemic? We struggled a lot as events were cancelled. [Sales for] My entire graduation season was impossible as people were in lockdown and there was too much uncertainty.

What are unexpected consequences of the pandemic on your business? As soon as we were in the third week of lockdown, I knew that all businesses would take a hit.  I was blown away at how my networks were focused on survival.  I even sat on a panel advising the community to tap into resources as I saw them being available.  Unfortunately, I didn't get much at all in the beginning, and I could see my savings starting to dry up.  I had some past due bills, but vendors were willing to defer payments and AMEX also gave us a no finance fee period which really helped me out a lot.  Other credit cards followed as well, but the wait time to reach them was absolutely insane.  As soon as I got my first loan, I made sure I paid my vendors and balances due.

What will you change about your business moving forward? Despite it all, I am so proud to share that we have decided to expand to offer our clients Employee Engagement services. During the pandemic, I struggled with uncertainty as to when our business would bounce back. All our clients were facing budget issues, and understandably cut out events and awards in the new virtual world. I came up with an idea [to accommodate for this] and so far, it is moving well.

Do you think the government did a good job supporting small business owners? Yes, I think they did their best. It was tough getting the answers and eligibility at the beginning, but I am grateful.

Has your business community reach out to support you in any way? Yes, all my networks were amazing with information on funding, resources and support around pivoting. Grant opportunities were also available. There are so many, I don't know where to begin but here are a few: Goldman Sachs, Tory Burch Foundation, NYCSBS, Small Business Administration, NMSDC, IFundWomen, HerSuiteSpot and of course, my community.

Thank you to our subjects and we look forward to featuring more professional headshots and corporate portraits featuring businesses owners as they move through these next few months.