Episode #22: 5 Things You Can Do Now in Your Business (When You are Social Distancing)

Speaker 1 (00:00): Welcome to The Fast-Track Entrepreneur Podcast with your host Terra Bohlmann. You are about to get filled with business strategies, advice, and motivation to get you prepared to fast track your five year plan in less than one year. So buckle up and let's create your first class business with clarity and confidence.

Terra (00:28): Hello, welcome back to The Fast-Track Entrepreneur Podcast with your host, moi, Terra. Terra Bohlmann. I wanted to do a quick episode in the wake of what's going on in the world with the coronavirus and fear that's coming up for women entrepreneurs or maybe a fear is not coming up. It's kind of this whole restless feeling of what should I be doing? What should I be doing in my business? It's a question I've gotten asked quite a bit and I've done some Facebook lives and presentations for other groups and whatnot and I thought, I need to disseminate this information on the podcast as well. So I've found there's uncertainty, right? We all know there's uncertainty. I'm not here to help perpetuate any fear or anything. And for me, I made the decision to see the good that can come out of all of this. So I'm not turning a blind eye to things, but I'm choosing not to stay stuck or scared.

Terra (01:31): Instead, I'm listening to my own intuition and I invite you to do the same on whether or not now's the right time to be pushing out your offers or what you want to be doing in your business. For some women entrepreneurs, their business as usual, and that's fine. We're not here to judge that. For me personally, I'm taking it as an internal time to reflect, to get some things done in the office and some systems that need to be updated and serving my current private clients, checking in with them. I'm not using it as a time to launch. I'm using it as a time to serve. Right? So you know everyone's going to handle it differently. We're not here to judge. We're just here to say, do what feels good to you. And for me it feels like a good time to do service, which is my comfort zone anyway.

Terra (02:19): So I may need some help from you and I've already asked some of my close friends, Hey, when you see me get down the service road too much and then it's time to get back to business, pull me out. Right? Cause I could stay here forever. I'm working in my zone as I would say. So I want to share with you five quick things that you can do if you're feeling like I don't know what to do. So for me I'm taking some days honestly, like I feel super motivated and I'm cranking out things and getting things done and this and that. And you know, at night cleaning up my closets and I'm feeling really motivated. And then on some days I'm feeling like I just want to like watch the latest Netflix that everyone's talking about on social media or just hanging out with my kids or take walks or whatever.

Terra (03:08): So, you know, just like everyone else, I'm trying to manage my own kind of emotions that are going on with everything. And I'm just trying to listen internally and do what feels good. Right? So the first thing that I want to share with you, that to me is always the highest priority in something like this. But it's to serve your customers, right? This is a great time to make sure you're reaching out to them privately, you know, not just sending, here's how we're dealing with the CO, you know, covid virus, blah, blah, blah, blah. Instead reaching out with a simple, Hey, I'm thinking of you, how are you doing right? Business aside, everything. Okay, right? One of my friends, she put out a beautiful post that was instead of saying, my name's Heather, and she said, instead of saying we'll get through this or you know, I sometimes think this too shall pass.

Terra (04:00): She's saying, I've to say, tell people I've got you, right. And then actually do something to help them to actually show that I've got you. Right. So, and I, I want you to think in terms of what can you do for your current customers to say, I've got you. So thank you Heather for that. That really resonated with me. So serve your customers first, right? The second thing is for you to take time to get clarity on your business and even your life if that speaks to you. But now's a time where we have some time and yeah, there's always going to be a million things to do. I like a lot of other women entrepreneurs have kids that are schooling from home now and you know the husband's also now working from home and you know, the dog, the cat, the whatever. There's always going to be things that need to be done.

Terra (04:50): But this is a time that you can take some clarity for you or to say take some time to get some clarity on your business model. So I created a workbook that you can download on my website, terrabohlmann.com it's like the second thing on my website, it's called destination success. So it's a beautifully designed workbook that walks you through how to create your five year plan, right? And step one is something that I believe and I talk about all the time, is I want to fast-track women five year plan, right? So, but the first step that needs to happen is we need to understand what our five-year planets, there's no greater time to do that than now. So you can download the workbook. I've tried to make it as simple as possible. You could type right in it, all that kind of stuff.

Terra (05:34): So now's the time to get the clarity that you'll want, that's going to get you further in your business and ultimately in your own life. So that's number two. And also remember before I share with three that it's not about changing the longterm vision. We, you know, if you feel really called in your purpose and what you need to be doing, keep your eye on that price. Right now what we have to do is change the short term plan, short term strategies on how we're going to get there. We're never changing the longterm, you know, that's the light at the end of the tunnel. But we have to adjust now how we go about doing that. So I see it as a huge opportunity to get really creative and be able to serve things, serve people. I am so proud of my son who I'm going to have on the podcast too, is he's 17 years old and he, he is getting ready to apply for colleges and he's doing all the testing and you know, he was like, there's something I could do because we were on spring break, my kids were on spring break and then they had an extra week off, which gave schools time to figure out, okay, how are we going to transition to do the online classes and whatnot.

Terra (06:41): So my son grant decided to do some online classes for younger kids. So how can you know? It was really cool to think, how can a teenager actually want to help teach a class to third to fifth graders on his favorite subject, which is STEM. Like he's a STEM kid, science, technology, math and engineering and math. That's what it stands for and it's a great time and parents need things for their kids to do. So he came to me and said, Hey, he's not on Facebook or anything, and he's, he's like, do you think I could do this? I'm like, yeah, I have all the equipment. That's really cool. And he goes okay, cool. He's like so I go, how many people do you want in your class? Like six. And he's like, well, ask me like 15 so I did a post about, Hey my son, you know, we'd love to get into MIT.

Terra (07:29): He's looking at like that level of colleges and wants to do a community impact project and wants to teach third to fifth graders on STEM. He didn't want us to hold three online classes this week and they're over 50 kids registered. And so he was able to do that. And I was so nervous. You know, I remember the first time I did an online class and he did such a great job. So you know, to me he knows even at 17 what kind of impact he wants to make. So how can we use these times to get creative on how we deliver to our own customers or you know, at least use it as a time to serve others and just be of service. So I tell you that story because I never want you to think that it's not the longterm vision that's changing.

Terra (08:12): Instead, we just have to adjust right now, right to get there. The third thing is now is a time for you to have that visibility as a leader. You know, what can you do to make impact? What can you do to create some good stuff to actually create Goodwill and Goodwill goes a long way, especially with your business. And so think about some creative ways like my son did, you know, he's, he's not charging for these days or it's just community impact for him, but it'll eventually give him a story when he goes and does his interview at whatever college he wants to go to have something exciting to talk about. How, you know, by him doing this, one of the little girls that was on it is now going to do a crafting class online for her friends. And the other kid who he got to do a class with his cousin in another state.

Terra (08:57): And I thought that was really cool. So, you know, there's all kinds of things we can be doing right now to get Goodwill. And as a leader, this is a great time to step up. Instead of going a hundred percent inward and waiting for someone else, we can step up and be the leaders. And that's a really cool opportunity. So that's the third thing. The fourth thing is you can use this time to do the tasks that you've been putting off. Like for me, I have like, I have a bookkeeper and there's like 50 things that I need to, they're unsure of and what categories it goes to for my books. So great time. You know, if you've been putting off your bookkeeping, now's the time to get that cleaned up, right? If you've been putting off, you know, even cleaning your office or your desk or getting organized or cleaning up the Dropbox files or all that kind of stuff, this is a great time to do it.

Terra (09:49): Right? So you know, and then what I do know for sure is when you clear up the clutter and that the little things that need to be done, that those things that stay on our to do lists way too long. They take mental space and energy. And when those are done, it feels so good and you're ready to go even further and faster when we get back to our quote unquote normal. Right? So you know, that's the fourth thing is use this time to do the tasks that you've been putting off the things that aren't as fun or to clean up the clutter that needs to be cleaned up so that we can have more space white space. I like to call it as white space in our lives. The last thing, the fifth thing that I've been doing and I encourage you to do is to do personal reach outs, especially to, I call my extrovert friends right now.

Terra (10:38): They are, they're suffering like they're, they get their energy from being around people and they, they, we need to check in on them. So reach out to people, you know, the extroverts, but also you know, everyone else. So you can go through your phone list while you're sitting there and just reach out to people, Hey thinking about you, how you doing? How are things going? You know, reach out to the people. I've scheduled a couple of virtual coffees so you can get on a tool like zoom or Skype or FaceTime and just have a cup of coffee with a friend and just reconnect, which is a great time to do it. So instead of sitting there, what was me like, you know, I'm sad, I'm this and that. You can be the change. We can be the person that's actually reaching out to help, to initiate conversations, to have, you know, reignite friendships, to reach out to past clients and check in and see how they're doing.

Terra (11:30): All of these great opportunities are right in front of us. And I even was able to reach out and I had a coffee date with a friend that, you know, we've stayed friends but we hadn't talked in probably years and it was so cool to do it. And just kind of catch up on what's going on in our lives. So it goes a long way. Do those personal reach outs and you can take it even a step further. You know, whether you send a direct to some friends on Facebook or Instagram, LinkedIn, or go through your phone, send the emails however you want to do it. You can, if you do an audio version like Facebook and messenger and Instagram allow you to do up to a minute of an audio. And how cool for people to be able to hear your voice, you know, Hey Mary Terra here.

Terra (12:14): So thinking about you just want to see how you're doing, blah, blah, blah, blah. You know, let me know. And then like, just get those, initiate those conversations. It's a great time to do that and reach out to people because it can feel really lonely. So I wanted to share with you these five things that I'm doing. I have my clients doing, I've shared it everywhere. I want to make sure I shared it with you on the podcast. It's these little things that make a difference. And I know that we're all gonna get through this and we're going to be stronger, and we're learning from everything, especially if you've worked from home for like 20 years like me. You're like, Oh, the world's finally catching up. Like this is cool, and how fast it's going. So just stay at it. Do the things that you can do. Manage your energy, and I know you've got this.

Outro (12:57): There you have it. Another episode packed full of strategies and motivation that you can use every day to put your business on the fast track. For a podcast recap and more resources, visit TerraBohlmann.com. Don't forget, subscribe to the podcast and get what you need to help fast track your five year business plan.