Lets face it – that’s pretty much how we all felt roughly two months ago.
Adapting to the new normal in lockdown has been, well, interesting. And, like every other small business owner, I’ve had to hit the ground running.
Literally the week before the country closed the doors, battened down the hatches and prepared to battle against CV-19, I’d just finalised and booked six months worth of half day workshops. I know.
Nightmaaarrreeee!
I run these workshops alongside the business coaching I offer with KAPOW! as they complement the kind of stuff that my coaching clients ask for help and advice with. These ‘quick fix’ workshops give them the instant KAPOW! effect – no nonsense advice and guidance that can be put into action right away and gets results fast.
So I had a bit of head scratching to do. And just after I’d started scratching, another rug was whipped out from under my feet when my networking organisation also closed its doors and, after five years of being a Regional Leader, and making that a significant part of my business, I no longer had a job to do there either.
Bugger.
Damn.
Crap.
So now what? Thankfully my coaching has always been done online, so that element of my own business didn’t need to change, which was great – as very quickly I needed to adapt the remainder of it to suit a cash strapped but suddenly time rich market of small business owners all thrashing about wondering WHAT THE HELL JUST HAPPENED.
Add to that the fact that my networking organisation had to regroup, rearm and get itself out there in the online world, fast, and all of a sudden things got a bit overwhelming. Actually quite a lot overwhelming.
My very, very busy diary suddenly looked very, very empty.
All the time I had been used to spending thrashing up and down the length & breadth of The ‘Shire – gone.
All the time I had been spending at face to face networking meetings in The ‘Shire – gone.
My Area Leader Team of 7 lovely people – gone.
My workshops, so carefully planned and organised – gone.
I had a LOT of free time that I really didn’t know what to do with. For the first few days post lockdown I felt totally rudderless. No focus, no direction, no motivation. I was just faffing about being busy doing nothing.
My superhero pants were most definitely NOT on over my trousers. They were, in fact, hidden in a drawer somewhere and I seemed to have forgotten where I put them.
A couple of days later, I had a bit of a word with myself. Now was the time to look at what I needed to do to adapt. Adapt to survive the initial couple of weeks, and plan how KAPOW! was going to thrive going forward.
The first thing I did was go back to something I wrote over 20 years ago when I first started out along the bumpy, winding road of self-employment – my 90 Minute Daily Success Plan. Was it still relevant? Did it still provide the structured focus I knew I needed to get back on it? Well with a few tweaks and a bit of an update, yes, yes, it was.
90 minutes a day of focussed sales and relationship building activity I could use to get my head out of my arse and get those pants back out of the drawer.
I started to use it and immediately felt different about things – motivated, focussed, driven. Not just staring blankly at my PC screen wondering when things were going to happen.
I was fed up of hearing about ‘when we return to normal’ as an excuse not to do anything. So I did SOMETHING.
I looked at what was working for me and that I was putting into practice. I started talking about it. I listened to feedback from folks who'd been thinking about coaching before lockdown and put a FREE taster session programme in place so they could 'try before they buy'. And then I put together the Supercharge Your Business series of webinars that give 60 minutes of focussed, practical advice about building your list, building a sales plan, finding your super client, goal setting & planning, business vision planning – all the stuff I knew I had needed when I got started and that I felt people would be looking for as they were trying to work out WHAT THE HELL WAS GOING ON and how they would get through it.
Sitting around waiting for things to happen simply isn’t my style. I’d forgotten that in all the upheaval of a tsunami of change that happened at lightning speed.
Not only had I forgotten where my superhero pants were, but I’d also forgotten how important it is to be a Weeble.
You see, the key lesson in all of this is that those business owners who adapt their offerings right now, who know what support they need from their accountants, their business coach, their social media expert, their virtual PA's, their bookkeepers – they are the ones who are planning for the future and engaging their inner Weeble.
Why is that important?
Because Weebles may wobble – but they don’t fall down.
Want your own copy of my 90 Minute Daily Success Checklist? Click here!