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You're listening to Shorts and Suits conversations about business leadership, culture and families through the eyes of two entrepreneurs in the small business community with Ben Kaulfman and J.W. rayhans. Okay, today we're talking about how Covid impacted us and what. Now this is kind of an interesting topic because lots of people have been talking about COVID Of course, it's really pertinent today's time, but really I'm hoping that we can talk today, JW about how we've been able to structure our businesses and adapt them to what's been happening to us and around us and really look at it from more of a culture perspective. Because I think both you and I have really dynamic teams. And, you know, although we haven't been extremely impacted financially and from production perspectives, we've been blessed in that way. We still had to make a lot of adjustments, and I think that's what I would love to hit on today. So let's start there and let's talk a little bit about how this has impacted your business, you know, from back in March when this all started, and how you adjusted on that.

Yeah, I mean, think about this. Can you visualize back to when this was first, you know, kind of starting out, and we weren't sure if it was a cold, a flu, if it was serious, not serious, are things going to stay open? Are they going to shut down? And you know, as a business owner, you're trying to figure out, well, how do I even navigate this? You know, it seems like there's new information every day, there's tons of uncertainty, and it's like, well, what do you do? And so I think back to that moment, and this is the cool thing about having this conversation now is we can look back on it and go, okay, what decisions did we make? Would we do anything differently? And now realizing that we will get through it. Right. Because I think going into it, that was one of the main uncertainties is what is this?

Yeah. And it's fair to say that we're not out of it. Right. I mean, heck, flu season's right around the corner. Are we going to know the difference between Covid and flu? Yeah, I don't know. Or is it going to be one blur? So I do remember, though, when we first learned about this coming about. Right. This is back in March, and it was literally the day before, we said, all right, we're going to test our business's ability to work remote. Because we were primarily an in house agency, we had the ability to technical aspects, build a Work remote. But we've never really had done that, you know, and that takes a whole different mind set and use case. And so we were going to do, okay, Friday, we're going to go and do a remote test and just kind of give us a stress test on our remote systems. Well, then that day we found out everything was closing down. So it became no longer a stress test. But, well, we're hot into this. Here we go. We're going right into this model of now.

It's a mobile now today.

So that's what kicked us off. Right. And you know, we are lucky because all of our clients were considered essential service type solutions. You know, heating, cooling, plumbing, electrical, that kind of stuff. And so we were very fortunate in that regard. But even still, the way we worked was completely different. I'm a guy that has to be in a zone when I work. Are you like this at all? Like, I have to have my work zone to be just set. So I'm a creature of habit and it takes me a while to adapt to new situations before I become really productive. Anything like that for you?

Well, absolutely. And I think, you know, it was all of that was disrupted. And you know, one of the things that we both have in common is we have a great amount of care of our people. And we understand too that this uncertainty wasn't just a business thing. This was impacting people personally. And so the immediacy of having to work remote and we're in an essential business. So we were also fortunate that we never had to shut down, but we had to understand how to work differently. And we also knew that we were in a trusted position where people were going to be looking to us to help advise them on what to do and how to proceed. And at the same time, I had to make sure that our team had the emotional strength to be able to do that and work in a completely new environment that they weren't used to.

Yeah.

And so the first thing, and I know you guys did a great job of this too, is how do you stay connected? How do you really keep that culture of connection together, even though it's very different because you're not seeing each other face to face. So when you look back to some of the early things that you guys did to stay connected, to keep your team strong, to really keep that tensile strength together? What were some of the things that you guys did to make sure that that happened?

Sure. I think it's important to note that there are tons of ways to stay connected now. Right. And what we Found is that there was a bit of an overload of opportunities for us to find connection. And we had to actually pick one or two to be our mainstream of what we used as the source of truth, because otherwise everything got diluted and everything was just all over the place. So we found our tools that we thought were the right ones and everybody kind of gravitated toward those. And that's really our. Became our source of truth. And we kind of rolled through that as far as staying connected. When you go from a culture that was very highly dependent on interpersonality connections within each other, you know, being able to get up and walk to somebody's desk and ask a question, being able to meet in a conference room or go on a walk together, I mean, we thrived like that. Right? That was part of the DNA of Rocket Media. Now that's shifted and now everybody's home. And so again, going back to my original point of like, I'm a creature of habit. Well, I'm also a creature of people. And so not having people around me has really impacted me and I've had to learn how to not how to function and operate without having them actually physically around me. So we work through that. Taking care of the people, though, with that culture shift was been. Has been interesting too. So our office manager, Kelly, she's done an enormous amount of work and lots and lots of great ideas of how we could do this in a physical aspect. So early on, after we kind of got started, we created what we call Rocket Love. It's our code name for this program. And you know, when we were here in the office, everybody that knows our business knows that we like to do a lot of fun, just unique things, whether that be a barbecue on a Friday which you guys take part of all time, or just a happy hour, or going and do an adventure. Well, we couldn't do those anymore, so we switched it to how can we do it virtual. And so right out of the gate, and I think you might have done something similar. We sent out just care packages. Yeah, right. How can we stay connected? Let them know that we still think about them and that they're not lost into their home and working in the bliss now. So care packages was the first thing we did and then we started creating a cadence. And so we put a weekly schedule together where we would actually force on the schedules a Monday connection where we do our standup and we turn it into like a priority setting thing. And you know this from your coaching days as well. But when you can identify what your Priorities are for the week beforehand. That kind of sets the stage for the week to come. Right. It forces you to publicly accountability with your team saying, here's my priorities for the week. Midway through the week, we created what's called Space Bar, which space being the building where we use that more as like a happy hour. And we would do lots of different shenanigans in those type of settings, whether it be like Pictionary online or going and get a drink and talking about your favorite drink, whatever it is, that kind of stuff. And then Friday was a recap day where we would then intentionally talk about what we were proud of that that week. And so we would talk about what we were able to accomplish, what we were proud of. So the team could hear from each other because they weren't together. Right. So we could hear from each other how that went. And then that also opened the door for kudos.

Yeah.

And I'm just amazed at how receptive people were to sharing at that point. So that kind of personal cadence has become who we are now and what we have a consistency there. You know, there's lots of different things that we've done, tried and done. You know, we started doing lunch and learns. So we've tried to find speakers that come in and talk to our team and just kind of share, which, by the way, you're on the list. Share different experiences or different things that they've gone through that our team could learn from. It doesn't have to be related to our industry, although that's helpful.

Sure.

It could just be coaching type stuff, or it could be learning things in the community or whatever it might be. So we're really keen on that now. We think that's been a fun addition to the process. Talk about yours now. Let's see what you got cooking.

Well, so something that you mentioned there, when you talked about the cadence, you may not even have realized you were doing this as a leader, but one of the most important things that a leader has to do in times of uncertainty is provide ways of stability. And that's what that cadence is that you're talking about. It gave people something to know. This is what's coming up, this is what's going to happen. There was these moments of certainty that they knew this was scheduled, this was happening, and that stability actually is a motivator. It's something that keeps them moving forward even when it seems like there's all chaos around them. And so we did some similar things to try to create stability. And even like the care packages that you talked about in that. And this is where. Just a great sharing of ideas, because you guys, I think, probably came up with that idea first. And then we thought, that's a great idea. We want to make sure that our folks, also our family members know, our team members know that we care about them. And so in addition to the care packages, we included raffle tickets. And so we. When we went to our daily huddles every morning via Zoom, with video required and letting people know, look, we don't care how you're dressed. We need to see each other. Just.

Just be dressed.

That's right. Yeah. You know, we need to see each other. And so then what we included was there was even a cadence, There was a structure to those daily huddles where, you know, we'd start off in the morning, there'd be an opening question. And it was just designed to be quick. It was just off the cuff, but it gave everyone a way to just have something to talk about. Then we'd get into just a few minutes of critical updates, things that we needed to know, things that were going on either with clients or just in the economy, in the news, whatever it might be that we needed to get those updates out to the entire team. And then we'd always finish with the raffle. And we give away fun things. We change it up from time to time. Sometimes it had something to do with the opening question. Like, if the opening question had to do with a friend that you'd really love to hang out with that you haven't been able to hang out with, then maybe the raffle was like a virtual coffee that we paid for, you know, and so that added some aspect of fun, it added some aspect of humor. But even just the fact that there was a structure to those. Again, when there's. When there's all chaos around. People, as leaders, we really want to provide forms of stability. And I think that was what the real value was in that. But then also, you know, another thing that we have to do as leaders, we have to keep a pulse on how everybody's doing.

Yeah.

And so that regular kind of contact allowed us to see were there any changes in behavior. You know, this is the luxury that we have of having what's still considered small company is, you know, everybody.

Yes.

And so you understand their regular forms of behavior. You can understand when things have changed in their life and. And we can have a good pulse on. Is something a little bit different, is something a little bit off. Do we need to proactively. Do we need to reach out to someone, just see how they're doing.

You can smell that a mile away when it happens to you. I mean, you just know it.

Yeah. And so we. That regular communication really helped with that. But again, there's an adjustment that we had to do because we're used to seeing people in person, and this was a way that we had to adjust the business model to really adapt to what was going on.

I'm really glad you brought that up, because thinking about that, and we'll talk sometime maybe about transparency and how much is too much to talk about with companies and team members, but when this all first started, that stability that you mentioned, I think also has to come with the transparency of information. So I love to make project names for anything I'm working on. So, of course, we created a project named, called Project Wildcat. And if you're a football person, you know what a Wildcat is. It's an audible play. And in the mode of COVID did.

It have to do with Kansas State?

Well, it always Kansas State University, but in the mode of COVID where it's. When it's unpredictable, we had to call audibles all the time. So we call Project Wildcat our kind of mode for how we were going to deal with this. And what that really was was a weekly communication platform where we would give updates, you know, and we would show, here's where we are, here's where we're headed, here's what we know, here's what we don't know, all the things. And just having that weekly cadence and sharing the information that we shared, I think also helped build a lot of stability for people to see. Okay. In the world of craziness going around me, at least I'm part of a company that is open to sharing what we've got in front of us and where they're headed and what they know and, you know, give me some hope of what we're trying to accomplish here. So, I don't know, do you guys do anything similar to that?

Well, here's, you know, here's what you caused me to think about, and here it's a question I'm going to throw to you, and then. And then I'll be happy to provide some input as well. Is, you know, in terms of your clients, you know, what did you guys need to do to let them know, hey, we're still here. We're still here for you. We understand what you're going through. We're not going anywhere. But what did you guys do to make sure that your Clients knew that you were still going to be able to care for them, you sure going to be able to help them.

Yeah. So because our clients were central. Right. They didn't really stop working. I think that some of them maybe have had moments of hesitation because they were in uncertain moments as well. But for the most part, by and large, our clients were heavy into the work because people still needed their services done on their homes that they were now all in. Right. So our communications never really had to go around like how we. I guess I take that back. We did talk about how we were working. Yeah. Hey, we're all remote. We're doing great. We are able to support you 100%. But that was kind of a quick thing because they got right into we need results. Right.

Yeah.

And so we jumped into that. So I guess ours was a little bit less, but you probably had something different, huh?

Yeah. And so here again, in the beginning, it was to try to help our team understand where do we need to focus our attention. And so fortunately, being in business, the years that we have, we've been through moments of uncertainty before. And so with our team, I shared, I said we need to focus on two things. Like every. Everything we do needs to be focused around these two things. And that is we need to be visible and available. And so whether it was calling clients, whether it was putting more out on social media, whether it was trying to provide education, it was all about make sure that we're visible and available. And that has really helped us know where the opportunities have been, even amongst all the challenge. And so that's where I'd kind of ask you whether it's an audible, a change. What changes? What opportunities did you find during all this Covid stuff that's been going on that you guys have already adapted?

So we found that we were able to help the community a bit more, too, beyond the barriers and walls of our core client base. We work with a lot of digital marketing, so we have a lot of access to things that Google would provide and such. And so we were able to share some of those opportunities with the local community about how they could potentially receive some kickbacks and rebates and things like that, which I thought was really cool. We don't get a chance to do that enough, which was unique for us because we don't tend to get to do a lot in the local community. So that was one way. But then, of course, just being open about our situation and sharing some of the things that we've been through, I think also help our Clients understand their perspectives. Because with the similar audience and you have the same case, your clients are all similar needs for your business. Right. And being able to share best practices of what others are doing became more of a community share forum that I think really helped our clients understand and be able to help them communicate to their clients. Right. So I think that's one way we were able to kind of tackle that.

Yeah. You know, and this reminds me just how important mindset is. And I know that we're going to be wrapping this conversation up, and I think that maybe is something that we go into in another, in a future podcast, too, is the mindset of a business owner. But, you know, when so much around us, around Covid and other things that came up, other issues that came up during this time frame, it could have been really easy to just like, not see any opportunity in any of it and really just fall into all the challenge that was happening. But with the right mindset, you. You can actually see where there are opportunities presented themselves. I mean, we launched an entire new service throughout Covid because of an opportunity that we saw. We've been fortunate enough, we've taken the opportunity to hire great people, talented people, because of opportunities that we saw, but that would have never happened without the right mindset.

Yeah. Attitude is everything. Certainly is.

Yeah.

So before we wrap it up real quick, what do you see coming? We don't really understand the future of where, you know, what's going to happen with COVID and, you know, is there going to be any kind of future for us in regards to that, or they're going to be able to solve that with some kind of antidote of sort. But what do you see from your lens as far as how you might proceed going forward? Any ideas on that?

Yeah. So I'll share with you what I hope.

Okay.

What I hope happens from this is we all got shook up. We all had an opportunity to reflect. And what I hope happens is that there's been such a strong reminder of what's truly important in life that we reprioritize the way we move forward. And so that's what I hope happens. That's what I see happening. And I think it's because it's happened on a global scale that I think we're going to see some major shifts in the workplace. I think we're going to see some major shifts in what the focus of definition of success is. And I think we're going to see a demand from people to want more flexibility, to have more choice in what their day looks like. And so that's what I hope comes from this is we really are hold on to that reminder of what's really important.

I love how families become the forefront for so many once again. You know, we've had a chance to spend a lot of time with families, and so we've reinvigorated that model. I think that's just one of the one of the great outcomes I think will come from this change. So good stuff, jw. Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this one today.

That's right. It's always good to kind of just dig in a little bit and get into the details from time to time.

Awesome. We'll catch you next time.

All right, Sounds good.

Thank you for listening to Shorts and Suits. Your hosts are Ben Kaulman of Rocket Media, a digital marketing agency, and J.W. rayhans of Ray Hans Financial, a financial investment advisory firm. For more information, go to shortsandsuits.com if you find this podcast helpful, please help us by telling a friend and rating us on itunes. Subscribe to our tribe and learn more@shortsandsuits.com.