Hello - how are you? Do you need help?

Below is an email I sent out to all of my contacts to give them some thoughts, useful information & links. You might find some of these helpful for yourself.

Hi,

Wow - interesting times at the moment. I hope you are doing ok? 

I wanted to get in contact to see that you were ok & also share a few things that you might find helpful / useful. It’s a longish email but with lots of pictures :)

Where are you on the grief scale?

When significant changes occur, we move into the 5 stages of grief, that the Kubler-Ross model identifies. The five stages are denial, anger, bargaining, depression & acceptance. These emotions happen with significant things such as death but also when other significant changes occur. 

This has also been transformed into a model that can be used in businesses when a significant change happens & how you can help yourself & the team to adapt to change & move towards success.

A graphic of this model is below.

I don’t where you are but I think I’m probably in the experiment / decision stage of the model.

There is also a great one for Founders that I have put down below too - I think it’s helpful to recognise that what we are feeling is normal and where we are in the process.

I suspect that it won’t be a linear approach & that as we go through different levels & experiences with Covid-19 we might go forwards & backwards on the scale.

If you’d like to learn more about how this applies to business &how it affects employees then take read of this article - https://www.cleverism.com/understanding-kubler-ross-change-curve/.

I have to also add that I am feeling slightly overwhelmed by the amount of information out there & the number of free webinars & conferences & courses & everything else - would love to know how you are feeling about it all?

The first week was without a doubt the hardest for me. I went in & out of the first 4 stages above & started to feel that my life was really bad.

What I had been missing more than anything was talking to people, face to face. I’ve set up a few ways to do that now & already I am seeing the results from that. 

It’s much better than watching endless webinars & reading for me.

So, it brings me to my reason for contacting you.

Do you need help?

Is there anything you need help with?

Do you want someone to talk to or just someone to bounce some ideas around with?

If you do, then please go to my calendar & book in some time - I am here to help! https://www.businesstraction.co.nz/book-online.

You can also book into our Friday virtual Town Hall & drinks if this appeals? In the Town Hall we collectively help to solve issues & challenges & generally drink & catch up on the week.

What can I do if I’m in the Experiment / Decision stage but I’m getting a bit stuck?

One thing is for sure - we won’t be going back to the ’normal’ world after shutdown - it will be a new normal. So there’s lots to think about in terms of how we best spend our time in lockdown & how we prepare for the new normal. And that can be overwhelming also.

I’m finding it’s not all bad. 

I am finding the lockdown has been useful for me to take some time out (in between helping clients navigate through the situation), some time to reflect & work out what is important. It’s given me some time to work on the business & also on my personal life.

I’ve developed a scorecard for the business & also a scorecard for the personal stuff too. I’ve made time for reading (something I have been meaning to do more of for a long time) and am working my way through some great business books that are sharpening my saw. We’ve been doing more exercise & practising gratitude & I’ve started writing my book at long last. 

Now don’t get me wrong, I am FAR from perfect. I’ve been eating too much chocolate, drinking too much wine & often being hugely distracted by social media, news articles & webinars that don’t really add any value. Plus I haven’t achieved anything like what I had hoped to 3 weeks in. And sometimes you just have to go with that!

In reality, I’ve also been experiencing some financial grief. My income from coaching dropped over the 3 years I was running The Common to about a quarter of what it used to be & since Covid-19, it’s dropped to a quarter of that quarter, so financially there are definitely some challenges!

I could choose to wallow in that & blame the government or the virus or whomever I’d like to blame.

However, the reality is though that I can’t change it & it’s important to think about what you can & what you can’t change. And I can choose how I respond to the things that I can’t change.

In the productive times, I am starting to think about is what life will be like after the lockdown. I’m continuing to help people where I can in the lockdown & then I’m working on what the future looks like for me & for my business. I am talking to my coaches & mentors & I am working on my plan.

Interestingly I have also had 3 new leads since the lockdown - I never saw that coming, with all the doom & gloom messages in the media :)

I am slightly worried about how the media portrays things & that people might get anxious over reading the attention-grabbing headlines like “Go digital or die!” Or “The NZ economy is dead!”.

I think that for many of us we’re already struggling with what effect this lockdown is having on our business & the thought of making such significant changes might feel too much. So here’s my view on that…

Back to Basics

I don’t think the NZ economy is dead. I have been speaking to a lot of people and while many of us have been affected, the world will continue to turn, people will continue to live & things will recover over time. There’s also some positives that have come out of this time - we’re becoming more appreciative of what’s important, we’re reviewing things to see if there are better ways of doing things & we’re spending more time with our family, which I think is good. 

I’m sure there are many other things.

There’s also lots of talk about pivoting & disrupting, but in reality I think it’s more of a time for many of us to get back to basics. 

How can we improve the way that we do business going forward? Are clients likely to want something else or are they likely to want to do business in a different way?

For many of us, what we provide won’t change that greatly. 

If you’re an electrician you’ll still be wiring houses or buildings when the lockdown is over. 

If you’re a producer of goods, you’ll still produce the same goods. 

If you’re a service provider, you may or may not provide the same service & it may or not be in the same format but it’s likely that people will still want what you offer.

What’s true for all of us is that the economy will be affected & people may or may not become used to a new way of dealing with things. Maybe we won’t need to do everything face to face anymore. Maybe there’s no need to drive across town & meet with someone when a virtual meeting will work just as effectively.

Now is a great time to work ON the business & think about the basics - if you were starting from scratch right now what would your business look like? If you’ve never really had a plan then now is a great time to think about that. What is your Vision & Core Purpose? What is your Culture like? What People do you need?

This is why I love EOS (The Entrepreneurial Operating System). It is all about having Vision - all your team 100% on the same page, Traction - making progress towards that vision through accountability & Healthy - having a team that works well together, is open & honest & has fun!

And all through focusing on the 6 key components of the business to get results.

If you’d like to learn more about this then get hold of the Traction book & read it in your free time. We are abler to courier them out to you at home, so order one now - https://www.businesstraction.co.nz/request-a-free-traction-book

Or you can just book a session in with me :)

Are you in serious trouble & need more than just a quick chat?

Finally, one of my projects - to keep me sane & to enable us to help more people has been the Business Survival & Support Volunteer network set up - https://bssv.org/

It’s been designed to have those face to face conversations with professionals that I talked about earlier. You can find a professional, connect with them & get some one on one advice immediately by booking into their online calendar. Or if you need more help then you can request an Advisory Team to work with you.

If you would like to volunteer to help others or know of someone who needs some face to face help with a professional who is experienced then please direct them towards the site.

Ok - there’s a lot of information in there & I guess I just wanted to touch base, see how you were going & let you know that I am / we are here if you need.

Here’s a summary of the content & the links. Well done for reading this far!

SUMMARY OF ALL OF THE ABOVE

• Know where you are on the Kubler Ross Curve & what it means for you & your team - https://www.cleverism.com/understanding-kubler-ross-change-curve/
• If you need help or want to chat to someone, I’m here to help - https://www.businesstraction.co.nz/book-online
• If you need help thinking about what the future holds, then reach out -  https://www.businesstraction.co.nz/book-online
• If you’d like some reading for the lockdown then order a TRACTION book - https://www.businesstraction.co.nz/request-a-free-traction-book
• If you need some more significant help then check out the BSSV.org https://bssv.org/

Look forward to catching up soon x

Cheers,

Debra

PS: Below is the Psychology of Founders who win in downturns model - and the full article is here - if you're not overwhelmed by information at the moment then this too is a great read - https://www.nfx.com/post/psychology-winning-founders-downturns/