“Honestly, when COVID started happening, I said if it weren’t for all of kinds of these things, we would not have been able to do business that first month,” Brander said. “People love to touch yarn and connect in person. But we just keep working really hard to try to make it as close as possible.”

Mike Bausch, who owns a handful of Andolini’s Pizzeria restaurants in the Tulsa metro, has watched COVID-19 slice in half the in-store portion of his business.

But in the interim, he has used a number of digital devices to promote his brand, including e-cards for Door Dash delivery and QR codes, which can be scanned by smartphones to produce no-touch menus.

“QR codes were perceived as antiquated technology,” Bausch said. “They came to fruition in 2013, 2014, and people were kind of writing them off.

“QR codes are everywhere now. You don’t even need an app to access them. When all of this happened, I had over 10 different businesses e-mail or call me and ask, ‘who did you get to do that for you?’”

Strategic pivots notwithstanding, Bausch said valuable lessons always can be learned by facing adversity.

“There’s nothing that happens that I can’t look at and say, ‘Good. You punched me in the face,’” he said. “Now, I know how to take that punch.” That’s the mindset that I believe that is necessary to own and operate a business successfully.”