You set the course

I don’t know what the future holds, but I know who holds the future. Oprah Winfrey

Five years ago my husband lost his job. I was a stay at home mom of 10 years. We had money set aside to invest, but instead of investing like we thought, we held onto that money because our future was uncertain. Despite having money set aside, I was a ball of stress and uncertainty. I cried myself to sleep at least 3 times a week. I had a pit in my stomach at the grocery store wondering how long the money we had saved would last. I feared the most for my kids. I remember fearing for the uncertainty of the future we could provide for them from this position of my husband being unemployed, and me being out of the workforce for so long.

We ended up using that money to buy a business by the skin of our teeth. There were so many things that had to line up to make this happen, and it was a miracle that it did.

We’re now 5 years into our business and we’ve had some crazy financial ups and downs. We’ve had to borrow 30,000 from family in order to keep the business going. We’ve had to use a line of credit that we had set aside for emergencies. We’ve gone for months multiple times without taking a paycheck. But we’ve also been able to pay off a $200,000 loan to our seller, and we’ve been able to buy a second location and pay off that loan early, making it so that we don’t have to have a loan payment on one of our businesses.

As the Coronavirus hit, interestingly, we have the same amount of money saved as we did 5 years ago. We’ve had to do a temporary lay-off of almost all of our team. We’ve had to ask our landlords if we can defer our rent payments. We have to ask the government if we can defer our mortgage payment and ask for money so we can pay our team when we have enough work to bring them back.

But this time around, I’m not crying myself to sleep, and I don’t have a knot in my stomach. I am sorrowful for everyone who is in pain right now, but I am not under the same mental duress I was the last time I was in the middle of my own financial crisis, and I’ve been thinking about what the differences are between then and now.

One of the biggest differences between then and now is I have been through this before, and have come out the other side. Resilience comes from experience, and experience comes from trying new things.

Let me just say that business has been hard for me, and has toughened me. I’ve built a resilience through all these ups and downs, and all this uncertainty. I’m comfortable with uncertainty, and confident in the skills I’ve built. I know that whatever we have built, we can build again.

I’ve made changes in my life and taken steps to toughen up. Through all of this, I have built confidence, in me and in my ability to make it through hard times. I know that good and bad times come and go.

In my adult life, I have lived through 911, the housing crash of 2008, and now the Coronavirus epidemic. All of these have had huge effects on the economy, and they’ve all happened within the last 20 years. Events in our world are happening faster. We’ve got to learn to be nimble, be quick, light on our feet, move with our changing circumstances. We’ve got to build our skills and resilience.

What do we have during the shut-in? Time.

What are we going to do with our time? Use it. Don’t waste this time just waiting for this to be over. Build something, create something, reconnect with someone. Use the amazing online resources available.

Below is a list of things I have learned and changes I have made that have propelled me forward in my journey:

I already worked out regularly and tried to eat well before we got into business, but In the last 5 years, I have started to:

Read a ton of business books and listen to empowering podcasts:

Impact Theory with Tom Bilyeu

Women of Impact with Lisa Bilyeu

The Tim Ferriss show

The Marie Forleo Show

Chase Jarvis Live

Take vitamin C and D daily

Taken up meditation

Learned how to live with an abundance instead of a scarcity mindset – This is huge!!

Reentered the workforce and learned more about technology and how to be professional, how to give back as a business leader, how to really care about my customers, and strive to help them the best I can.

I’ve learned how to build systems at work

Learned how to train people

Learned how to manage a team

Learned to ask myself, “What do my customers want?”

Learned to ask myself, “What does my team want?”

Went through so many hard things, like people not liking me, key people quitting, not being able to fill a position. Upset customers, vendors not meeting promised timelines.

Other Resources:

Books:

Health:

Kelly Brogan, A Mind of Your Own

Dan Barber, The Third Plate

Finance:

Robert Kiyosaki, Rich Dad, Poor Dad

Andrew Hallam, Millionaire Teacher: The Nine Rules of Health You Should Have Learned in School

William D. Danko, Thomas J. Stanley Ph.D. The Millionaire Next Door, The Surprising Secrets of America’s Rich

Ray Dalio, Principles

Business:

Tim Ferriss, The Four Hour Workweek

Ed Catmull, Creativity Inc.

Chip Conley, Peak

Online Resources:

Health: Dr. Terry Whals, Minding your Mitochondria

Finances: Ray Dalio, How the economic machine works

Take care of yourselves. Start building skills and resourcefulness. Use what you have and build from there.

I was talking with some friends recently and one said out loud before she could catch herself, “you’re so weird”. Even my children tell me I’m weird. I don’t mind.

I feel like people might think I’m weird because I have a mother-in-law that I rent out instead of reserving the space as a guest room for when family comes to visit. I’m weird because I sketch in church while I listen to the speakers. I’m weird because I buy raw milk for my family, for which someone recently asked me, “is that even legal?”. I’m weird because I don’t watch the news or keep up on the President’s tweets. I don’t watch TV in the evenings. I don’t know popular culture.

But I know this: I have found myself and am being true to myself. I was lost in a society that values consuming over creating. We grow weary of the things we own too quickly and “need” to replace them. We’re rarely happy with the house we live in, but are always looking to upgrade into something bigger.

I have discovered what really matters to me, and it’s not a bigger house or more, newer stuff. It is learning and growing and creating and building and helping my children understand that they need to listen to their own heart about what is important to them instead of deciding what is important to them by the commercials they see on TV.

And I have found that when I am myself, I give other people permission to be themselves. A few years after I started renting out my downstairs apartment, my sister started renting out a room in her house. When I started sketching in church, which surprisingly took courage to do, I saw others start doing it too.

So be your weird self. Be you. You won’t regret it.