Hey, fellow entrepreneurs, welcome to the Buckets and Boone Gates Studio with Kim White, Jill Olish, and many other brilliant entrepreneurs. Determined to solve world problems for entrepreneurs, this community is changing how we look at the big things we do on our business adventure and sharing from their own lives ways to protect our time, money, and bandwidth. This show is designed for you, the entrepreneur, to hear behind the scenes stories of real business people across the globe and learn what is possible for you. Keep listening to join today's juicy conversation with Kim and Jill. Welcome to the Buckets and Boomgate studio. I am Jill Olish and I am joined by the fierce Kim White. Kim, thank you for doing the podcast today with me. Thank you, Jill. I'm always happy to do it. Thank you. Well, today we are talking about something most people avoid. What happens to your business when life falls apart? Yeah. So if you have ever tried to keep everything going during a crisis, you know why this matters. Kim, I think this is going to be a little bit of a heavy episode, but also one we're easily able to share some vulnerable examples in. Do you have a crisis or major life event that you can share and start us off with? I do. And I, I also want to say that there are so many levels of crisis, so many levels of things that can happen. Don't underestimate the hard of something that doesn't seem to compare with someone else's bigger looking crisis. I will say the worst crisis, you know, for me is losing my teenage son. Twenty five years ago in the middle of trying to build something that was devastating. And that was not something that I had planned for. Obviously, no one plans for that, I think. But I want to also take it down to when when I landed in ICU with. COVID and the whole team couldn't find me. They went into detective mode because they panicked. I think that's another example of I thought I had set something up because that was only a few years ago. I thought I had set it up where things were going well. but I didn't realize there were some missing things until after that happened. So there are, I just, I just want to start that out with the disclaimer of don't underestimate, even if it feels like it's not the death of a child or you're not in the hospital, it's still something going on that is taking your bandwidth or taking your attention. Sometimes it's a money crisis. Sometimes it's a, You know, maybe your kids are having trouble in school. It doesn't matter what it is. I want to put that little disclaimer up front. There is a there is a mode we have to go into that survival mode in those situations. And it's okay. Like, so I just want to, I want to start there instead of, you know, in the middle of an example. I just want to give a quick, I guess, quick things that can happen. So it can be about illness. It can be about family crisis. It can be about grief. It can be a major life event. It can be a minor life event that sometimes trips us up. Yeah. You know, what does the business look like at the time that you are going to go through that? You really can't plan for enough. You can do some things and this is not about hopeless. This is about giving you grace in those situations. Don't say, well, if I would have only done this, that's what I don't want to happen in this episode. I want no regrets with this. So places you tried to keep up, You know, you tried to be normal and pretend everything was okay. But you know what? That can cost us more in the end than just being honest and saying, look, this is what's going on in my life and I am doing my best. Mm-hmm. Definitely. You bring up a great point with us having different levels of things that might seem like a crisis to me, but not to you and vice versa. And I myself have had the loss of a loved one. I've gone through life changes and the start of my business. And like, even I think something minor is like you had said, like something going on at school with my kid, you know, I had a hard time. beginning of kindergarten year with my son. And I was given so much grace by the team. Drop-offs were absolutely horrendous for us. And it was so minor in my mind, but was so major of a thing for everybody in my family that, you know, we had to really take a step back from a few things for it. So it's not just... It's not just something that happens. It's really shifting in our lives that happen. Well, I think it's a good example. You know, you sharing about having a hard time with kindergarten drop off to someone who is maybe far past that. I'm an empty nester, so I'm way past that. I remember, though, I remember some of the days that we had trouble or some of the things that happened. And it's this is a no judgment podcast. I'm going to say that out loud. This is no judgment, because if that is what you're having trouble with, that is what you're having trouble with. And I guess that's why I want to start the episode out with that is it doesn't matter if it's, you know, you're struggling to get your son in kindergarten door. Or you're actually facing the crisis of what do you do now? You've lost a child. Those are very drastic ends of the spectrum. But guess what? They're still on there. There's still that survival mode that kicks in. There's still that what in the world can I do? I can only think about this thing that's so major in front of me. Now what? Now what? Like you're still trying to survive. You're still trying to have a business. You're still trying to do those things, but it comes, you know, it comes at a cost of us trying to be two things at one time or twelve things at one time or so that I'm thankful for you, Jillo, to share because you walk through some of these things on my side. I've walked through some things on your side and we know you if there's no grace given it feels so much worse than someone who is there to support you in that and sometimes you don't have that support yeah for sure and no matter the crisis that we're going through it still brings us back to those questions that you had said before can like what does our business look like at that time And how are we trying to keep up normal? What is that going to cost us? And sometimes normal is not what we need to be doing. Totally great. Normal, normal is a setting on the dryer and I don't want to be a dryer all the time. People laugh and then they walk away and they go, finally, I get it. Yeah. Normal is, you know, what is normal? Normal doesn't mean we are, you know, extremely high level, full throttle, twenty four seven. It can't be bad, right? We have moments. We have moments of ups and downs. We're humans. And I think all of that is very important to just frame this episode with is wherever you're at, it's okay. Normal can be whatever it is for you at the moment. Normal is not something that you should compare to someone else. I don't have a five-year-old. to have to take to kindergarten right now. But guess what? I have all these other things that I have to deal with. So it's just give yourself, first off, give yourself, sweet listener, grace in whatever situation, whatever it is. We just want to help you in this episode. Start making a plan so that you can have an easier time doing things whatever it is you need to do. And we do have some, I'll call them tips, tricks, hacks, whatever you want to call them after going through so many life events. Yeah. Yeah. We set up our businesses in good times, not in the middle of a life crisis. Sometimes. Because we don't always take into consideration that crazy things can happen in our lives. And I know for me, I didn't take into consideration a lot of the things that did happen in my life. But thankfully, I had really good guidance. Kim, you put a lot of systems in my life. my way for me to learn and to put into place, as well as being on a team helped me out a lot through some of those moments in my life. And you actually have talked about this before. And these things you might, you've considered minimum viable business, you know, just what is the minimum that we can do in our business? Can you go into what that means? Yeah. I can. And I think it's really important to remember a lot of entrepreneurs get started in crisis. They, they turn their side hustle into a real business because they, you know, they're let go in a job or they're in new mama hood and they're not wanting to go back to a nine to five. Like there are so many reasons and I can tell you, you know, many entrepreneur stories about, um, why someone started in the middle of a crisis. So I do think this is very important. A minimum viable business is basically the absolute minimum to serve your clients, to keep your money flowing enough. And I think that's a very important word, enough to protect your reputation while you are in crisis. So here's the bottom line. If, If I am in a crisis mode, it's not the time to be out prospecting. If I have enough money to come in, then I'm okay. If I'm having to scramble because I don't have enough clients or I don't have whatever it is, That's a different story. But if you have existing clients, you're already in business. The minimum is how do you serve those clients and still take care of whatever the crisis is? So sometimes that means letting go of things that we think are a priority as an ongoing basis. But you got to look at it from crisis eyes, basically. Is it really as important now? to, you know, post on all the socials daily? Is it really is important to send out twelve emails a week? Like, what is the minimum you can do and not not keep your word? This is an important part and not let anyone down because you also have to take care of you. So let's talk real quick about figuring out how you can do your business that way. What truly has to keep going? So, you know, essential communication. If you've got clients, you have to have those calls or that access or keep your commitments. Like those are very important. Or let me give you this or. Or you have to speak to them and say, I'm in complete crisis mode. Can we reschedule for a week or two weeks out? I don't want to let you down, but I want to be honest about this is going on in my life. I think that honesty goes a long way when you have a client. Clients won't wait forever. I'll tell you that. They have to run their whatever. But if you've got clients who you have had a good relationship, you've done a good job for them, they're going to be much more flexible if you're honest. And sometimes as an entrepreneur or business owner, we think that's a weakness and it's not. It's a superpower. So be honest. I also think that the payments, if you don't have automatic payments set up for things or You know, you've got to pay for the tools you use. You've got to pay the team if you've got a team. You've got to pay for things to keep running. That's also a minimum thing. What do you absolutely have to have versus what it's nice to have? You know, sometimes you can give yourself a raise as an entrepreneur by just stopping some of the tools that you're wasting money on. If you're not actually using those tools, and usually every October I'm on a tear, I'll just tell you the truth. Are you really using that tool? I ask all the team members, I ask myself, are we really using this tool? Is this tool the only way we can do this? And is it worth the money? Because sometimes we're paying five thousand a year for something that everybody's kind of, well, I kind of don't use it anymore. Well, I don't want to pay for that stuff, but it's not time in a crisis to be figuring that out. Figure that out before the crisis. What can pause? What is on your list that can pause? Not just tools, but content. If you're going live, if you're doing socials, whatever it is, can you stop those and just make sure your followers and your audience know that Look, I'm not leaving. I'm just going through something. I'll be back. Or cut down the frequency. If you're doing every day, do every week. If you're doing every week, do every month. Find something that works during a crisis mode. In a crisis mode is not the time to launch something. If it's a financial crisis, I'm going to put this little caveat in there. If it's a financial crisis, it could be time to do a mini launch because you need to bring in income because sometimes the crisis is money. Non-essential projects, if you have a project that can wait, and that's just the question you ask, can this wait until and put it off a month, put it off when you think the crisis will be over? Postpone the decision about it. You're just giving yourself some grace to wait. Marketing activities. If you cannot actually onboard new clients, if you don't have the capacity, we've talked about that before. If you don't have the capacity to onboard new clients, maybe it's not time to market to try to get anyone new. Because at the end of the day, don't get caught up in the marketing machine anymore. You market so that you are out there, you know, putting your name out there for prospects to find you. If you've already got clients, you're not marketing to your clients. You're marketing to strangers, basically. So don't forget those things. Examples of cutting back, maybe you do two client calls a week, maybe one email, that just as a minimum. social media goes quiet or it is scaled way back. That's what we were just talking about. There's so many ways to, if you're in crisis mode right now, we hear you. We see you. We understand how hard that is. Take the advice of give yourself grace, be honest. And what can you let go of for now? Not forever, but for now. Yeah. Our capacity shifts in these moments. And, you know, like you said, being honest, I think has been one of the more valuable pieces that I've adopted with that. And, you know, letting people know I'm not going to be sending out as many emails for a little while and we'll pick back up and things calm down. But go with me on this idea here. So we can actually build systems to be like insurance for businesses in the off chance that something happens in life. But we're setting up these systems. We're setting these systems up. actually in the good times. We don't want to really set them up in the, in the crisis, even though we might start things sometimes because of crisis. I know I would not have been able to scramble to send out weekly emails in the middle of what's going on, trying to think about, you know, everything happening in personal times. And I just didn't, I dropped it myself. So yeah, I know I couldn't do it. So when we're building these systems, what does that actually look like? Like the systems themselves, the buffers we might need to put into place for what does it look like for life and for when we're in the good times? So I think this is really important to consider even what I was talking about with, you know, having the loss of a child. Twenty five years ago, I wasn't near as prepared as I was when I actually found myself in ICU with COVID. And I thought I had done a good job of setting things up. Here's the reality. We're always going to be setting these things up. This is the way to do business long term and sustainably. So the first thing I would look at is your, how are your processes? Are you the only one that does something and nobody else can do it? That's the time to sit down and put into place step one, step two, do a video, whatever you need to do so that you can hand that off to someone else. If you don't have a team, sometimes you can have a friend do something to help you or family. But and I will give a quick little example of this. My husband is absolutely my partner in everything I do. He's one hundred percent part of this business. He's everything. But he's not part of the day to day. He couldn't tell you how to post on socials. He couldn't tell you like. So that was one of the things we discovered when I landed in ICU. And I don't know if you all know this, but you don't get to play with your phone in ICU. Like I was a little bit busy trying to stay alive, but he didn't know what to do. And the team didn't know how to, you know, get information from him because he had no idea. And that was part of the problem is I'd set things up, but not, at peril of me like i had i hadn't set it up enough and so these are layers that you can do but that i am i'll make everybody around me crazy with processes but this is part of the reason why if there's a process someone else can come in and do something for you to keep your business going When you're in that kind of mode that you really can't. So I know that big businesses have SOPs, standard operating procedures. But you know what? If you are in business, period, you need those things in place. You need to have at least a cheat sheet. of this is what keeps my business running. This is what I do every week. This is what I do every month. This is what I have to do daily. And I think it's really important to have that for yourself. Talking about social media and things, you can schedule ahead. Our sweet friend Adam Rothenberg has found Post Planner. Jill, I know you use Post Planner. He has a discount if anybody needs a scheduler. But that is something that scheduling your socials ahead of time where you're not having to create something every day and having to do it that way, that is a game changer, even in the good times. That can help by scheduling that. Training your teams. or a VA to handle simple support, there were things that came up that we just hadn't thought of before. You know, Jill kept the fort down. I'll just tell you this, Jill did a great job of keeping the fort down when I was in ICU, because it was like ten days of no contact. There was no way, I mean, I wasn't, I wasn't able to, I'll just say that, but it was It was when it when I came out the other side of it, it felt really good to know the business didn't just close down because I landed in there. Everything was at, you know, that minimum part. Everything was OK, but it was scary. It was scary to think that after working so hard on on this business, I could have lost it in that moment. so think about you know think about that if you create financial buffers and this is a little bit hard when you're starting out but can you put aside one month of basic business stuff the expenses You know, the things that have to be done, and that's going back to the earlier conversation. If you're not using the tool, that doesn't count as, you know, this. Make sure you're putting away enough for one month. And then as you get better at figuring these things out, get two months and three months. You know, most businesses operate on money in, money out. That's it. That that's what will cause you to lose your business in a crisis. So set some money aside, try to do it in monthly increments so that you know you have that many months covered. You don't have to build it all this week, but you start with one tiny buffer and start today. Mm-hmm. Seems easy enough, right? But it can get a little overwhelming. So yes, I like that. Start with just a little bit. Don't build it all today. And listeners, we don't want you to feel overwhelmed in all of this. We want you to walk away with a win by the end of this episode. So Kim, what can we do today if we're starting small and not doing the whole thing? What's a piece we can start today with? I think you can't start till you know, till you have information. So I think your sexy homework for today is what is the emergency mode version of your business? You have to define that. What is your minimum? List the non-negotiables that have to keep going in a crisis. And I think you will come across other things you may add to that list later on. But name as much as you can of your non-negotiables and then list what can pause. Because there are things that can pause without everything collapsing. Write that on your list. And I'm going to say pen and paper is awesome. Digital is awesome. Whichever one speaks to you the most or even both. If you do digital, print it out. If you do handwritten, take a picture and put it in your digital so that you have it so that in a crisis mode, you're not trying to scramble and figure this out. You actually can go to that and start dealing with those things. You know, if you're not doing SOPs, you're not doing processes, you're not doing those things, I'm going to say that's what you need to start doing. But this list that you make, a plan that you make, is going to be the very first step. And guess what? It doesn't cost any money to sit down and figure this out, even if you don't have the money now to set aside Like we talked about a few minutes ago, start with the list. So you at least know what you can and can't pause, you know, what you need to do in the minimum, you know, minimum viable business to keep going and not lose everything in the midst of a crisis. I love it. So let's recap for this episode. Just remember, it's not negative to plan for hard times. It's kind. You're being kind to yourself, to your team, to whoever's helping you out. It's just a plan. And having that plan will actually help you in the good times too. That's right. So if this episode helped, share it with one business friend who you think can benefit from having an emergency plan and maybe you could do it together because business is better together. And next time we're talking about client fit and saying no gracefully. Yeah, it'd be a good one. So thank you again so much for listening in with us. We could not make this podcast better without you. So we hope to see you next time. Love y'all. Thank you for joining Kim and Jill in the Buckets and Boomgate studio for today's conversation. Don't forget to follow the show for future juicy episodes, and they can't wait to chat with you next week.
