Doing business in the time of COVID-19 - 61

Creative Counsel Episode 61: 5 Tips for Doing Business in the Time of COVID Welcome to Creative Counsel with Brittany Ratelle. I'm your host Brittany, an attorney for creatives who believes in solid contracts and cute office supplies, and who wants to empower you to be a more confident business owner. Whether you're a creative, influencer, maker, artist, shop owner, or content creator, you are not just a blank. You are a real bona fide business owner. So let's help you own your business and get you legally legit with Brit. Hello, everybody, and welcome back. Thanks so much for joining me here. So it's been a while and, you know, it's going to be super trite, whatever I have to say as an explanation, because, you know, it's been a tough year. It's almost like it's just laughable to say that of like COVID's been a year, 2020, it's been a year, but it has. But anyway, I've had to circle the wagons and really focus on my family and client work. And so this podcast, as great as it is, as great as I enjoy being here and showing up and producing content for you guys, um, and helping you through your business journey, whatever that might look like, um, it just, it couldn't fit in. So it had— it would— it got pushed on the back burner. But I'm here, um, I have a bunch of great episodes that I've already recorded with some other guests that I really want to get out here. And I've been sitting on and stewing over our topic today for quite a while, and I want to get these tips out because I know, um, that people are still trying to wrap their heads around what does their business look like moving forward in 2020 in the era of COVID So let's get to it. Okay. Um, so let's talk about first doing business in the time of COVID My first recommendation here is actually going to be to send you somewhere else. Um, and that's because there's no way that I can cover all the things that you are going to need to know for your business, depending on where you're located, how many employees or independent contracts that you have. Are you in person? Are you remote? Um, you know, all of those circumstances that may change. So here is where I recommend having these bookmarked and checking regularly for updates. The first is gonna be the CDC. I think the CDC has actually done a decent job during this crisis of updating and having their website being pretty, you know, in terms of approachable and putting in fresh information and making it a consistent, clear communication in terms of what are the best practices and what should people be doing. What's normal in terms of social distancing and wearing personal protection equipment, the PPE that of course we all know about, and how to safely open. So that's the first one. I'm going to put all these links in the show notes so you can look for them there. The second one is OSHA. If you're not familiar with this, this is the office, basically the federal office that's in charge of employee safety and occupational safety health— forgot what the A— agency. There it is, in the workforce. So these are the people in charge of keeping people safe while they work. If you're not familiar with this or haven't made friends with this website, it's time, guys, especially if you have employees. Now, if you have independent contractors, it's slightly different in terms of your legal liability, in terms of what you're supposed to do in the workplace to keep people safe. But it wouldn't— it's not a bad idea. In fact, it would be a really great idea to make yourself, you know, to make friends with this and to make yourself readily available, you know, amenable to the terms here and see what their recommendations are in terms of having people safely back in the workforce? What does that look like in terms of cleaning? What about staggering? What about, do you have to put up acrylic things? How far apart do people need to be? What kind of things are basically going to be the normal in industry and, you know, reasonable person standard that you're gonna want to do? Which kind of brings me to kind of the overarching standard here, which is that as we talk about balancing the factors, because I think it's really important in this conversation, and frankly, it's been a really important important thing for all of us to remember this year is that none of this is ever done in isolation when we try to make decisions, especially for our business. It's not as if it's like, well, we just can all— we should just all shut things down and that's what's going to be best to fight COVID. We all agree COVID— I mean, I won't say we all agree. A lot of people, most people agree, reasonable minds agree COVID does exist. It's real. It's harmful. Now, people disagree about the weight and measure and how best to— there's, of course, all kinds of discussion on that. But what also reasonable people can agree with is that there's a balancing on the other side in terms of what about people's livelihood? What about people's ability to provide for themselves, to provide for their family, to keep their doors open, for essential services and, frankly, nonessential services to move forward in exactly who gets to decide what's essential and non-essential, which obviously is quite controversial. So on that, we always need to remember that we are trying to balance. Okay, we have competing interests here. We have two things that we care about. So always the rub is how do we adequately both all get what we want when we have two things that are sometimes a yin and a yang. They pull on each other in terms of what we want. We want to be safe. We also need to make money. We need to have food and lights and electricity, and we need to pay our bills. And we want to— and other people need goods and services. So how is that all supposed to work? OK, so sorry for that tangent, but I think it's important for us to remember that. And so we find ourselves going down too single-sided in terms of our lens to pull us back and think about, look, I need to be thinking about the scale. What's on the scale? Are things being reasonable? Are we trying to weigh things out properly with the proper mindset? Um, the other resource I'm going to mention in kind of our alphabet soup is to check your state government, um, Secretary of Commerce or Business Division. So all states have these websites set up. I can't list all of these in the show notes, but basically Google your state Secretary of State or put Commerce Division, Business Division, and it should come up. You're looking for the.gov address, that's going to be the real one for your state, and they should have some information. A lot of states have actually tried really hard to update these in terms of what's going on in your state, what is the latest in terms of governor's orders, which are changing because these are basically local executive orders on the state level, and they can change in terms of what's the color zone that you're at, do you need to have lockdown, how many people. Utah, for example, just changed where they went back down to groups need to be under 10 people in size, and that's a local change in response to what's happening on the ground there. So it's a good place to go in addition to getting your news, but if you're trying to make the best decisions that you can and be and not be reacting all the time, then make sure you're checking to where, you know, from the horse's mouth, and that's going to be right here. Okay. The other thing I will mention is that many states have passed some sort of kind of civil liability and immunity acts for businesses. Utah has passed one of these. It was SB 3007. It was passed in May that basically says a person's immune from civil liability for damages or injuries resulting from exposure of an individual to COVID on their premises, so on their business premises, or an activity managed by the person. So if you're the one hosting an activity, it doesn't have to be on your premises, but like you're the one running the show, you're in charge, your business is doing this, hosting this, you are immune from liability. However, this does not apply to willful misconduct, reckless infliction of harm, or intentional infliction of harm, and it doesn't modify other acts that talk about people getting hurt. Basically, workers' compensation is left intact, Occupational Disease Act, other OSHA, you know, Safe and Healthy Act, or government immunity. So what does that all mean? That all sounds very lawyery. Of course it is. I'm sure it's written by lawyers who a lot of times go into government and become state senators. It means that if you are doing stuff that's not willful or reckless or intentional, you're not trying to harm people, and you're doing normal human things, reasonable things under the circumstances, then, and at least in Utah, you're going to be immune from civil liability if people get exposed to COVID because of you doing your thing. Now, of course, the question is, well, what's willful and reckless under the circumstances? That is probably going to change based on the information that you have at that time. That's why you need to be checking your governor's website. That's why you need to be checking the CDC and OSHA to see, okay, how are things doing? What are our numbers like? How many cases do we have? What is the spread? Are we having a hotspot? Are we having super spreader events? Is our ICU being overrun? Is this reasonable under the circumstances for you to be acting the way that you're acting here, or is it reckless? Is it intentional? You should have known better. You had everyone there licking door handles. Obviously, you'd never do that in your business, but you hear what I'm saying here. That's where you're going to be looking in terms of what is that standard, because it's likely to be a little bit of a moving target as circumstances change. Um, that's kind of a big overview. Obviously, if you have specific questions about your business and opening, especially if you are an in-person or event-based business in any way, um, I highly recommend that you talk to a local business attorney who can kind of advise you and let you know how are things doing and, um, and/or can help you, um, get a waiver. So, um, now I, I did put, put one together, or actually I updated my event waiver. And so if you've already purchased my event waiver from my Creative Contract Shop, then you've already gotten the update because I emailed it to you. But the event waiver basically has new— has kind of the CDC standard language that you've probably seen in some other places added to it, and it talks about and lists and it says, hey, COVID-19 is this disease. We know it's transmitted by these ways. There is a chance that you can get it. These are the things that were steps that we're taking, which you should list your steps there. But FYI, you know, we need to give and let you know that it's always a risk. You know, you just need to You need to make sure people are in the clear. So biggest thing here is don't make promises you can't keep. Don't say things like, oh, there's no way, or you're perfectly safe, because you can't guarantee that. It's really unlikely that you can guarantee that. You can do best efforts. You can tell people, this is what I'm doing. I'm sanitizing like this. Our workers are wearing personal protection gear like this. This is how we're trying to have a contactless environment or deliveries of goods or services. You know, hold to those things. What are you doing? State the facts. Don't get swept up into speculation or to making claims that are bigger than what you can actually back up. Okay, like any other thing, you know, the truth should prevail. Um, and let's make sure that we're being honest and transparent as much as possible and having that as part of our communication. Okay, so if you have not— if you're in any kind of event or holds events and you don't have a waiver of you know, what people should be signing when they're signing up or purchasing tickets or walking through the door. Um, you know, you can have posted waivers, but having people check and consent to them is always going to be stronger. Make sure you take a look at that. That's what's going to be linked in the show notes below. But, um, my event waivers have language like this, kind of your general liability release. They also have a media release, which means that you can take photos and videos at the event and use those for your business and use them commercially. Um, It's pretty rare an event these days that doesn't make it on the Gram, right? And so let's make sure that we've got the rights to do that and that you have asked and have the right permission so that you can use those beautiful images the way that you want to, to feed the content beast. Okay. All right. So that's my big number 1 was check the alphabet soup. Okay. Number 2 is to take reasonable measures. We kind of already kind of bled this into because the way, how are you going to know what's reasonable? You're going to check the alphabet soup. What's the new normal or standard for your industry, for your area? Okay. This is going to be local. It's going to be specific. It's going to be different from a restaurant with dining in and dining out service versus a hair salon. Okay. Versus a person who does balloon deliveries or who delivers flowers or someone who's a photographer. So it's, it's very difficult and it would be impossible for me to try to give, you know, sweeping advice or information that could apply to everyone. So that's why you really need to check on what's going on where you live and where you're giving people goods and services, where you're serving your customers. Some things that you're likely to have to take in consideration, if you haven't already, are sanitation. How are things being cleaned? With what regularity? And is the way that they're being cleaned going to be sufficient? Do you have one of the fancy steamers? Do you have chemicals or oils or whatever it is, whatever part, length of the spectrum you are, natural ingredients, but are they doing the job? And you make sure, and for some places that are going to be high traffic, that probably means you need to have some sort of commercial cleaning services and make sure that you're doing your diligence to take care of it in a way that is— that makes sense for the level of people and interactions that you have there, for how many touchpoints there are. Check on PPE. You should be having that available at the workplace and/or requiring that. If you're supposed to be requiring people to have face masks in your store, then make sure you have a sign that says that. Okay. So, you know, comply with, with the rules and make sure that you're, um, again, doing your best efforts and making sure you're not being willful or reckless, um, in your conduct. Okay. Okay. So that's our number 2, is you're going to take reasonable measures. Okay. You're going to look at it from the eyes of someone else. If someone else was looking and checking, had a little checkboard and was walking around your business and your operations, would they say you were acting reasonably, or would they say that you're kind of being careless and you're not considering the safety of your customers or your clients or your team members. We want to make sure that we're on the opposite end of that and we're showing up for our people in a really important time and what's a hard time for a lot of folks. Let's go to number 3. We're going to make and review plans. All the plans, guys. I hope you get your planning hat on because it's happening. We need to make sure we have a plan of reopening your doors if you haven't already. What does that look like? What are the things that need to happen? Go back to our things that we just mentioned, 1 and 2. We need to have a plan if there's a positive COVID test. Okay. If there's a positive COVID test among your, one of your team members, what are you going to do? You need to have a plan. This should not surprise you that this could happen. Okay. Uh, are they self-quarantining? Um, is there provisions for having them work at home? Are you going to be testing other people? You're going to be sanitizing the workplace. Um, you know, what does it look like to make those changes? Okay. Um, we need to have a plan to make your remote work work. So whether you're having all of your team members or some of your team members, or you're doing shifts in terms of going back into the office and not, some things that you may want to consider are security. We all remember the crazy Zoom hack-ins that happened in the beginning as everyone quickly had to move to remote scheduling and virtual meetings. Some of that stuff has been fixed third-party security-wise, but it's a good reminder that this shouldn't be a huge vulnerability to us. So you need to be looking at two-factor authentication. If you don't have that, you don't have that yet on your major applications and social media channels, you need to turn it on immediately. Okay, there's— it's not that hard. And, you know, don't just— don't be surprised if you get hacked, if something happens when you haven't done the minimum, you know, the level that these providers and platforms have given you the tools to try to make your logging in more safe. Go ahead and take them up on that. Okay, just know that's part of doing business is sorting all that all out. I highly recommend setting up a VPN, a virtual private network, if you have people working from home. If you can manage that, especially if you have things that are more sensitive, if you have a lot of intellectual property that you need to lock down, that's going to be a really smart thing, especially if you have people working in other places or traveling or #vanlife or going to cafes or whatever the heck they're doing. Let's be— you want to revisit your social media policy. Okay. Are you clear about what people can and can't post about in the workplace? Do people know if they're doing it behind the scenes? Is there stuff that they can talk about and stuff that they shouldn't? You know, make sure if you're doing sweeping, you know, camera shots around the office that you're not seeing people's whiteboards or seeing product that people shouldn't, that you're not seeing passwords or, you know, other controlled information that shouldn't be released. So just revisit that and make sure everyone's on the same page about if and when they speak for the company or if they're talking and posting while they're at work and having content What, what does that look like and what's appropriate and what's not appropriate? Um, know that you're going to have to hold your hand and do more over-explaining than you think is probably reasonable to your younger team members. Okay. To your millennial team members. I'm not knocking millennials, but they, they sometimes do not get it. What it means to be professional in a workplace environment and what they can and can't share about, or can and can't say about work, about their boss, about all kinds of stuff. Um, keep in mind, you can't restrict people's ability to like complain about work. Okay. If you do that for your employees, you can be setting yourself yourself up for a wicked employment lawsuit. So don't do that. People can talk about legitimate grievances, as always, but, um, you know, they, you know, can't talk about maybe an upcoming launch, or they need to respect privacy of things that you guys are talking about in team meetings or whatnot, or understand what's a trade secret, what's confidential, what's not, you know, customer email lists and product businesses and information and vendor relationships and other things that are coming down the pipeline. So Over-explain there, even to the point where you think this is a little silly for me to have to say this, but this is confidential. This is, you know, inner business business. Okay? Just a tip from me to you after seeing lots of people getting burned here. If you haven't set up a third-party password, you know, app, if you don't have LastPass or something else like that, get on it. Buy it tomorrow and solve a whole bunch of your problems. Okay? You know, you gotta grow up your business there because it's ready for that. Make sure you have secure file storage. Not everything that's online is secure and is encrypted. So make sure that whatever system you're using is— let's not just do the bare minimum here with stuff that's important for our business. So, and then check on morale for working remotely, you know, have an at-home easy, you know, crazy hair contest, or, you know, do some show and tell and make sure you're checking in on people and making sure you're making space for people to check in with you and to do it in a way that you have both informal and kind of formal contacts for this, knowing that Because if you're not in the same office space together, obviously you're going to lose some of that water cooler, that being in the know, that some of that communication and stuff that happens just naturally as a result of people being in the same space and doing their days together. If you don't have that, make sure that we are making provisions for checking in, asking what's working great right now, what's not working great, and making sure that that's not an awkward thing. Because if you set up a company culture, where people can't talk about what's not working, if they can't— if you are like, oh, all I hear is problems and people just always complain to me, and people start thinking, uh-oh, I don't want to be the next person who gets there mad or complaining, um, then guess what? You don't know what's happening in your business. And people don't tell you when there's a little problem in the ice machine, and then there's a flood and the ice machine broke, and now you're in big trouble. Okay, so you got to make sure that you're setting up a culture where people can tell the truth and you don't shoot the messenger. I highly recommend if you're talking about influencing company culture to a more fair-minded and bigger picture is reading Infinite Game by Simon Sinek. It's all about basically toxic company cultures and places where people played finite games and they lost big time. That's just another book recommendation for you. Number 4 is you need to communicate. I know it's a little bit of a joke now that honestly it feels like you go to the freezer and you open up to get a frozen pizza. And Dijonner's like, I know you've been curious about our COVID policy. And it does feel like your inbox has probably been inundated with everyone and their mom that you've ever purchased anything from your entire life sending you an update on their COVID policy. I get it. It's a little laughable. Um, but, but you know, there's a but, and there's always a big but when it's coming from me. Um, we do need to make sure we're communicating with our people and by people, I mean, your people, your team members, and also your clients and your customers. Okay. This communication should fall into the 3 C's. It should be consistent, it should be clear, and it should be concise. Concise is a fancy word for being short. I know what you're saying, "Isn't that a little rich coming from you, Brittany, who gets paid by the hour and likes to talk?" Yeah, I know it is, but I also was a communication major, and I know that the way that we communicate is a complicated web of the message we have in our head that gets sent out, and then it's perceived by someone else, and then what does that message get decoded and mean to them. Frequently, there's a lot of people who miss some of the steps in that process or don't go through it all the way. They're thinking they're saying something and they're saying it enough, and they're really not. We have to remember some facts here. People are not reading all your emails. They're not looking at all your Instagram posts. They are not seeing all your flyers. They're not getting all your updates. We need to make sure we are communicating across channels, across platforms. We need to make sure that we are with our employees, our team members, our independent contractors, We're talking about all the stuff that we've talked about here today. What's changing? What actions are you doing to keep them safe? What are new practices and guidelines for health and safety? You know, what's the consistent thing that we're doing? These are our protocols here. You know, make sure that you're making it clear to people that if they're sick, they need to stay home. What does that need to look like? How are they, you know, how are they going to be successful in their job under changed circumstances? Okay. The next thing we need to talk about is, you know, how will we transition some policies? You know, if you need to talk about remote work, time off, flexible schedules to make sure that people can happen during the pandemic. This is also, you know, needs to be flexible as people's child care and their schooling plans changes. I know that, you know, we have a whole gamut across the country of people who are, you know, doing homeschooling and virtual schooling. Some people have hybrid kids in school some of the time and then home some of the time, or, you know, in person but wearing masks and subject to if we have a flare-up of COVID then the kids are all going to get sent home. So Know that we need to have a lot of flexibility with ourselves and flexibility with others and grace for others, but let's at least talk about and not be super surprised when some of these things, so many things happen. If the kids are sent home and we don't, if schools are closed down again, what is that going to look like for your employees? Is there a way that you can still have business moving forward? Do you have a plan for remote work, for having meetings, for delivering supplies, for working on stuff so that business can continue to move forward? You can have some, continuity there. And make sure we have resources available to employees if they have questions or concerns. Make sure they know about these other websites as well. They know to check CDC website or OSHA or their, you know, your local state and government resources for that. Okay, and how about let's talk about communicating to our customers. So I will also reference episode 57, When Things Go Wrong, for about rescheduling and cancellations, especially if you are in a service-based business and are trying to deal with that of What are your obligations to people if you have to be canceling? That episode has a lot of resources and a link to my, my kind of my legal kit that's handling and handy for scheduling conflicts. And when you have to change things, know that at this point it's going to be hard if you are, if you are signing new contracts, for you to have, you know, be covered by force majeure language to full extent and have that as if you didn't know that this would be an option. Everyone now knows that COVID-19 exists, that it can disrupt, that it can disrupt travel plans and wedding plans and event plans. And so it's going to be more and more difficult for you to say, hey, this is so unexpected, because it's not. I mean, it's not, it's not unexpected. We all know this is a risk. And so, you know, if you're taking deposits, if you're taking people's money, if you're making plans, You know, just know that you need to have and make it really plain what your policy is if you have to cancel. Okay, if things change and you can't hold the event, um, know that you need to have some, some really clear language there as an explanation is if you're going to try to keep money and not refund people. Okay, um, and, and just make sure everyone's on the same page there. Again, it just goes back to being honest and being consistent, and it's always so, so, so much easier to have really clear plans on paper, and then you get to show up and be the nice boss because that's your role, and you get to have that as a small business owner, you know, you can wave the magic wand. You can be, you know, bibbidi-bobbidi-boo and be Fairy Godmother and be like, hey, I'm actually, um, you know, I, I usually would collect that fee, but I'm going to waive that this time, or I'm gonna— I'm able to offer this, or I can give you a credit to another session, or whatever it is that you do in your business. Um, but know that that's so much easier when you've got the hard stuff, when you've got the hard line on paper. And I can't tell you how many clients who've come back to after purchasing my contracts or working with me, and they're like, thank you so much, you saved my butt. I had someone— this happened, I got an amazing testimony from a woman who said that she bought my, my terms of use and kind of had refund policy on there for a high-ticket offer. Someone asked for a refund the next week, and she simply sent them the document, reminded them that they agreed to it, and it was crickets. The disgruntled customer disappeared and actually came back around and became a paying customer again. So, um, she was so grateful and it saved her hundreds and hundreds of dollars, guys. So, you know, make sure that you've done, you know, do your own little internal legal audit here and make sure that you have clear policies about this. If it's, um, you know, a service-based business, look to your contract. Your contract's going to control. If you are a product-based business, either digital or physical, look to your website. Do you have a privacy policy? Do you have your terms of use? Do you have terms of sale or, um, you know, the other operating conditions that govern what this is going to look like and what happens when things go wrong. Okay. Um, the other thing that we want to be thoughtful about here is, you know, make sure you're being relevant, whatever your offerings are. Um, you know, I'm sure by this time you've probably had to pivot or are thinking you need to pivot, um, as this pandemic goes on and maybe life never quite goes back to a normal or a new normal just looks like something different. So, um, you know, be thoughtful and make sure that you can be, you know, that you're not tone deaf to what people's actual needs are. You're being relevant to the problems I have and the problems that they And if one of those pivots has led you to be online, to have an e-commerce presence, or if that's what you're trying to build to try to catch up, just know that with that there comes some really great, awesome things, especially offering digital products or content or, you know, things that on demand that can be offered that way, courses and whatnot, coaching programs, masterminds, other ways that you can fulfill people's need and solve their problem. That's maybe more of a digital good, but also make sure you're looking into how you can protect those things. You know, reference some of my other episodes that I've talked about here about copyright and trademark. Also make sure that your website is legally legit. So if you haven't taken the steps to do that, if you're now transacting business through your website, that means it needs to be up to snuff because you are assuredly— you are collecting people's information. So don't me with this, I'm just gonna let you know that you are. So you have to have a privacy policy in your footer, have to. And you really, really, really should have a website terms, okay? Those are your clubhouse rules that govern your website. Protect yourself there, protect protect your sales, protect your refunds, your shipping policy, protect your intellectual property. Let's get all of that locked down. And you can find— if you do not have yet that website legal bundle and you don't have these things taken care of, then you can find a link to the one that I sell in my shop, creativecontracts.com, to help you with that. Okay, let's get to our last one. Number 5 is that cash is king, baby. Okay, we gotta find a way to make sure that cash flow keeps on coming in. So, you know, I'm sure that you've already had to dig deep keep and understand what's the bare minimum, what's your skeleton run rate to keep the lights on, maybe theoretically, to pay your bills, to keep your business afloat during turbulent times while maybe you figure things out or you invest in other resources that you can have to bring in different revenue streams. So make sure that if you haven't checked out the Paycheck Protection Program or disaster assistance loans from the U.S. Small Business Administration, the SBA, There's also some employee retention tax credits that are available under the CARES Act. So either look into these or ask your accountant, or make sure that you're taking advantage of, you know, that capital that may be available for you. I know Stripe and PayPal both have some programs to try to help businesses keep afloat, you know, and keep that capital coming in so that they can keep doing what they're doing. And know that You know, it's a time to think outside the box. And certainly I've loved seeing how this downturn and this, you know, unexpected change has led people to be really creative. You know, I've seen mobile dentists and mobile, you know, hair salon services and people delivering things that they've never had delivery for and, you know, putting things on into that gig economy, part of that digital economy in a way that still allows them to make some sales and go forward. And people getting into there. Now they're making masks or they're making take-home food kits or other ways that they're serving their people and to make sure that they can still bring in some revenue. And also, again, back to that being relevant to the problem that their people actually have. So make sure that you're keeping just an open mind and an open heart. And also, good job for just keeping up the good fight here because we know that this isn't easy. For anyone, and it's certainly, it's a hard, really hard era on small businesses who are trying to do so much, who are trying to be smart, they're trying to serve their people. You know, we're not trying to be, you know, I know, you know, us out here, we're not trying to be reckless or willful, but, you know, we need to bring in money and we want to stay alive and we're trying to be smart about what that looks like. So thanks so much. So those are kind of wraps up our tips for today. I want to run back through them really quick. First was check alphabet soup, okay? And those links are going to be in the show notes. The second was take reasonable measures. Again, that reasonable standard, a special fun word that lawyers love to bandy around. But what does that look like for you? Number 3 was make and review plans, okay? And make sure you have those in writing. Make sure you've communicated those, especially be careful about, you know, security and morale. Number 4 was communicate. How can we make sure we have communicate what's going on? How is it happening? How are How are you handling things? How can people feel safe in working with you? What does that look like? And number 5, cash. Cash is king. Cash flow is a new norm. And so the businesses that will survive this, that will come out the other side, whenever that looks like, whatever that looks like, will be ones that prioritized having the money to pay their bills and to move forward. Okay, so So if you haven't yet read Profit First, um, please go back and do that, um, and prioritize that conversation. So, um, Mike Michalowicz's book, because I think it's a really great thing to remind yourself to try to keep expenses low and to prioritize what are the things that make sure that you have a business that can move forward, that can sustain itself, that's, um, that makes sense for the investment of time and money that you're making into it. Because if it's not, if it's not serving you that way, then let's go back to the drawing board and make sure that we haven't just given ourselves a really crummy job. Okay, so there's a lot of ways to make money. Okay, there's a lot of ways, and you're a smart, talented person, and so maybe this is it and maybe it's not, but we can't make good decisions without good data. So go get yourself some data. Okay. All right, that's what I've got for you guys today. Thank you so much for listening. Thanks for being patient with the ebbs and flows of content creation and real life as we know it in 2020. And if you got something out of this episode, I'd love for you to share about it, share with a friend. If you haven't left me a rating or review, I'd also really, really appreciate that. That helps other people see this and gives them that validation that this is a resource worth consuming and making part of their life and part of their day. So I always appreciate you taking the time to be here and to listen. And just remember that you are a real business owner. Owner in every sense of the word. So let's make sure you own your business, the highs and lows. And honestly, we all know that there are some big, big lows here in 2020. So thanks for being here and for showing up for you, for all of us. And we'll catch you on the flip side.