NEW YORK (AP) – When Chris Hyland caught the coronavirus, his ordeal went beyond being sick and exhausted – he couldn’t help his business partners manage the virus’s impact on their company just as the outbreak was sweeping across the world.
Hyland and his wife and children became ill in early March. Customers were cutting back orders at his employee management software business, The Happiness Index. Revenue was plunging and the London-based company was forced to furlough 12 of 20 staffers.
Hyland tried to handle the crisis while also taking care of himself and his family but was so sick he had to hand off his responsibilities to his partners.
“I had to just lie in bed and accept it and turn the laptop off for a week,” Hyland says. It took a month before he was feeling like himself again.
When small business owners are diagnosed with the coronavirus, being sick is just one of their problems. Like Hyland, they can be too ill to shepherd their companies through the crises the pandemic created, a painful situation for people used to being their enterprises’ driving forces.