It’s OK to not feel OK

Last Friday I had a mini-meltdown. All week I felt shaken and on-edge from the time I got out of bed and I wasn’t sleeping well. The aquatic centre shut down – no swimming and aqua; getting told at Woolies I can only buy 2 tins of vegetables – yet my recipe needed 3 different vegetables! Thats OK, I’ll come back…

I knew a lot of what I was feeling was based on old fears running from my previous experience of a downturn in business and having just kept my head above water. A state I go into that screws me up and can freeze me from taking action.

It’s OK to not feel OK.

We are human-beings and fear and anxiety in these messed up times are completely normal.

I honoured the emotions, with the quiet support of my husband, Tom, and a precious few packs of tissues. I did more than the usual breath-work, a favourite meditation lesson in ‘releasing expectations’, and I let the emotions travel their course and pass through me.

By Saturday morning, I had moved to tears still trickling randomly but laughing at the same time – Tom’s a good man!! Sunglasses were needed all weekend, but tears permitted to flow are better than holding the emotions in.

Then I felt it was time to take back my power.

As a business owner, together with my husband, Tom, we currently have 3 businesses that we’ve established since selling our ‘big business’ in 2016. One with a full-schedule of bookings, 6 days a week; and the others being this, my coaching practice, and Seize Your Day, a virtual assistant service in Noosa, both of which have found their feet and are growing week-by-week.

What had set me off last week was the shock that rules were being laid out for we Australians.

Rules that are very much likely to reduce one of our business’ income to zero. We’d lose our ability to serve and retain a hard-won loyal client base, the ability to invoice daily and pay our bills on time. Not due to the PM’s decision – he’s very much leading from the front right now. But because of a rotten virus!

Keith Cunningham shared in a report “Crisis Survival Guide” on 28 March that:

“the easiest thing to do right now would be to assume the problem is COVID-19. Or the government’s response to COVID-19 or Wall Street’s reaction to the government’s response to COVID-19. The reality is that none of these are the real problem. Each of these are predicaments…or said another way, a state of the environment. A problem is something that can be solved, and none of us (individually) can solve any of these “predicaments.”

The real problem, for us as business owners, is how do we save our business? How do we stabilise our business? How do we respond to this environment of the virus and the quarantines and Wall Street seizing up, by stabilising our business in a way that gives us better than even odds that we will live to fight another day once these crises have passed?”

You can do the right thing at the wrong time and not be rewarded.

In order to survive, it is vital to do the right thing at the right time – especially in business.

As we enter this new, unchartered territory or what will soon become a part of our whole planet’s history, the most important thing any of us can do is to understand where we are now, to identify current opportunities (‘the low-hanging fruit’ as I call them), and focus on creating a compelling and strategic vision for our future – or our future excitements – once this is all past.

Together, Tom and I are focusing on the problem that can be solved! We’re standing strong and preparing to thrive through this, and even more so, after this has passed.

1. Financially we are taking action now, whilst we are still operating at near-full capacity. For Tom’s business, we’ve lost some clients because they’ve lost their jobs – that has been the extent of our reduction in sales, in the first week since Scott Morrison’s broadcast to date. But there have been no new customer enquiries come in since last week, where usually we’d have 3-4 new quotes to do every Monday.
2. The bottom line is, we will not be waiting until the possibility that non-essential businesses, that can’t work from home, will be shut down. Talking to our accountant now rather than crying at him feels like I’ve got some control. Our accountant knows where we stand and has given me a very simple list of actions to take NOW.
3. We’ve begun verbal and written communication with our banks and other services we may need a temporary reprieve from in terms of payments, if our income reduces drastically.
4. Communicating too with our clients, not just on social distancing practices we’ve put in place, but on how we will continue to serve them until we’re told otherwise. Not just posting on social media – calling up to see how they’re going, confirming our protocols and agreeing a course of action with them for coming weeks.
5. We’ve listed all our business and personal expenses. Anything that is not helping us to serve the current clients we have is being cut.
6. On the personal side, Tom and I are clear on what we really need to get by for 3-months, have menu-planned, turned over our vegetable gardens, sown seeds. It’s made me feel grateful that our life is simple at the best of times! Our family is all safe and everyone is in contact with each other.

Like everyone, innovation is front of mind.

We know it’s not the time to be finding new clients right now for our one main income earning business. We also know it’s not the time to be increasing advertising spends, when word-of-mouth was working well. It’s not like advertising is going to be the golden ticket, more likely it’ll be a bottom-less bucket!

The other two businesses – my coaching for women in business and life and the virtual assistant services are remaining open, comfortably for now, and innovating to serve people better as their business circumstances change.

Isn’t it a lesson in itself, just how far our minds, as business owners, are stretching right now, in order to find different ways to keep being of service to others?

• Why hadn’t we done those things already?
• What questions weren’t we asking before?
• How good would we have felt right now, if innovation had been part of our monthly planning cycle?
• There are so many more questions we can ask from this!

One lesson I picked up a long time ago from my own coach, that Keith Cunningham raised something similar to in his report, was to Log Your Lessons Learned.

A few ways to do this, I do it as part of my own weekly Bootcamp prior to writing my To-Do List, (happy to send you the template at no cost – please just ask); but a simple way is keep a detailed bullet point list of all the things you now know, that if you had known them before, would have made a material difference in the possible prevention or minimisation of the impact of this crisis.

The key is to convert the pain of the lesson into the gain of an education.

Doing this, plus releasing your worries daily right now, totally changes your way of thinking about what has happened. If you don’t learn the lesson this time, you are doomed to repeat it (been there, done that too!)

Yours and our jobs as leaders of our own businesses is to protect the hope of our followers, our clients. Not all progress is measured as ground gained. Sometimes progress is measured by losses avoided. We are in a ‘losses avoided’ climate.

This will pass… our world needed a wake up call!

Whatever doesn’t serve you… let it go!

Remember to get more rest, more sunshine (vitamin D for enhanced immunity), drink more water and eat, drink, watch and scroll less through poison, walk in nature, and stay in touch with friends via phone or screen.

If I can be of service to you, at no charge, for a brainstorm session or chat about your worries, fears or ideas, please do not hesitate to reach out. Now is not the time to go it alone.

I can offer you virtual tissues or at least non-judgmental and confidential support as a professionally trained coach.

Stay strong, stay healthy and stay kind,

Susan Dunlop
Professional Coach ICF NLP, GAICD, Member ICF