The Coronavirus Shut Down My Business!

Hey, everyone, it's Mike Andes, and you're listening to the Business Bootcamp podcast. Today I'm telling you how the coronavirus shut down my business. Before we get in today's show, though, a big thank you. Today's sponsor, which is Gusto, if you haven't already, go to gusto.com Boot Camp, you can try their software completely free for 90 days. It's an app where your employees can clock in, it tracks their hours, can track their time off, and track their benefits, and ultimately pay them via direct to deposit directly into their bank account every single pay period for less than $6 a month per user. So try out for free for 90 days, and I promise you, you'll love it. Check it out today. Go to gusto.com bootcamp today's not a long episode. I just wanted to kind of give you an update, a little report. So I know I've mentioned it before a couple times on the podcast here. Ketosiscups.com is something, a side project we've been working on with one of the employees that worked at Augusta. She has her culinary degree and things, and she developed these. This food product that's keto friendly, which I eat keto Paleo. And so we really enjoyed them, made three flavors. We developed the product, we launched it. We've sold, like, we've put out, I think I want to say, like, just probably 18, 17,000 boxes of them that we've sold out direct to consumer. And so the plan was that this week we were gonna go down to California and present at the biggest food show in the world, which is Natural Products West Expo. Expo west, it's called. And because the coronavirus, which has broken out in Orange county, where the show is at, in Anaheim, the show is canceled, literally. We found this out yesterday. Today is Wednesday. We found this out Tuesday, and we were supposed to fly out this morning and tomorrow. And the show was Thursday, Friday, Saturday. So lots of money went into it. I don't think we're gonna get refunded in any way besides our flights got refunded. Thank you, United Airlines, for doing the right thing and not charging cancellation fees during the month of March for the coronavirus. That's amazing customer service, by the way. I think that's very commendable. But the show, because there's 80,000 attendees, they are kind of. I get they're probably going through a nightmare right now. But anyways, they canceled the show. Well, at the show is really when we were gonna launch wholesale, so we were gonna really start to Try to go after like big box stores and regional chains of groceries, grocery stores, to really launch the product. And we were gonna set up, you know, meet the co packers that I've been discussing with to really get a larger scale manufacturing plant ready to go. And all of that was in the works and then it got canceled. And so really we have nowhere to go because everything was leading up to that. We had planned everything to where we had these two massive orders we just did put out last week. And that was kind of the end of direct to consumer. We were kind of done. We were just gonna whatever came through the website on Amazon or whatever, but we were gonna focus on wholesale distribution. We're gonna focus on getting a co packer. We were not gonna focus on manufacturing ourselves. We're going to outsource that to the co packer and then become a sales engine and more of a R and D research and development food product company. And then this happened. So I don't know, six months, they might redo, they might do the show in six months, but literally just like kind of stopped everything in terms of this project that we've been working on for about eight, nine months in terms of developing the products, doing initial selling, testing the product, getting it ready to go, getting it nutrition facts, getting packaging all done and all that good stuff. So that's just like off the table. So what I wanted to talk about today, because it did shut down Ketosis cups, like it's going to shut down for at least the next six months in terms of like, there's nothing we can really do on it. There's no more work for the employees to do on it. It's kind of like, hey, we got to wait for the next show or, you know, go out and do more hand to hand combat phone call by phone call to these food distributors. So that's kind of hard because you'd be doing food distributors. That's one side. Then you got to get the co packer side figure out. Then you got to get the manufacturing side figured out. Then you got to go to the retailers themselves. And so what's great about that show is like it was bringing them all together. We had meetings set up, we were ready to go to get these people actually like ready, like stuff set up. And that's all gone, that's all done, it's canceled, it's not happening. And we lost a ton of money in the show and the booth rental and all that good stuff. So what do you do though, when that happens? How do you pivot I think a huge part of being an entrepreneur, small business owner, regardless of whether or not you have multiple businesses or if you have a micro failure in your business and it doesn't necessarily shut your business down, but you have some sort of disappointment, letdown, failure, whatever is, you have to be able to pivot. And when you pivot, you have to say positive that, like, hey, there's some reason why this is happening. And so when that happened with ketosis cups, like, literally within 24 hours, I had diverted a bunch of more attention onto some other things and in. In Augusta lawn care and making some big decisions there and moving a lot of the resources over to there. So I'm really looking forward to it. Like, it happened for some reason. I don't know what it is, like, the weekend. I'm looking forward, whatever this weekend holds, because I wasn't supposed to be here, supposed to be down in California, cancel everything, hotels and all that sort of thing. But I think being part of an entrepreneur is all about resiliency. Like, you're gonna have days, you're gonna have weeks, you're gonna have years, might even have decades where things don't go your way and where you do lose and you lose money and you lose time. Like, we're gonna lose six months at least in this project. We're gonna lose a bunch of money just in the fact that this thing was canceled. Insurance is all set up, everything's ready to go for, like, a much bigger launch right now that's not happening. And being resilient, like, I believe the ability to get back up is more valuable than the ability to keep from falling. I wrote that down when I was thinking about the show today. The ability to get back up is more valuable than the ability to keep from falling. Everyone is worried about how to not fall, and they're worried about how do they protect themselves, how do they keep themselves from over leveraging? How do they keep themselves from extending themselves too far? How do they keep themselves from asking too much from someone else? How do they keep themselves from working too hard? They always are asking about, how do I keep from falling? How do I keep everything together when they need to be more concentrated on the fact that you're gonna fall, you're gonna mess up, you're gonna make mistakes. It's all about how do you bounce back, how do you jump back up, how fast do you rebound when you hit the ground? That's what an entrepreneur's life is all about. That is what determines the greats from the good. Like when I was reading. I'm reading, go into this book right now, audiobook on Audible, because I can't read, but books very well. I'm reading a book called Sam Walton Made in America. Obviously, Sam Walton was the founder of Walmart. I knew the story of Walmart just a little bit. But this is a great book. If you listen to audio books, you got to listen to this. This will inspire you to think bigger. This will inspire you to push the envelope. But what I just said about resiliency and the ability to pivot and the ability to get back up being more important than the ability to not fall into is the definition of what Sam Walton had, his genetic makeup to build Walmart into what it is today. Absolutely. Like, if you listen to this book, the incredible amount of risk and hard work and times that he messed up and failed and, like, went into real estate to develop shopping centers and then that, like, miserably failed. And, like, he had to go way into debt. And then literally they had to take the company public just to pay off their debts. Like, it was an incredible story. And it really ties back to this fact that, like, when there's a disappointment, when there's a failure, when something like a coronavirus, something I cannot control.

Comes in and wipes out, stops, pauses, delays the business, how do you pivot? How do you stay positive? How do you look for the next positive thing that's gonna come about because of that micro failure? Like, what's gonna happen this weekend? I already know that the attention that I've put that was going to be on ketosis cups that I've allocated towards Augusta Lawn Care has already come up with a great idea that we're working on implementing. Like, these are things that are gonna help the franchisees, it's gonna help our local office, it's gonna help the employees, it's gonna help the future growth of the company. Like, I'm really looking forward to the stuff we've come up with in the past 24 hours due to the fact that I'm not flying on an airplane down to California. And that wouldn't have happened. It just would not have happened. It would have probably been delayed till next year because. Because the idea was already in the works, but it was kind of like, hey, we'll get to that next year on the back burner. Well, now with this other delay, the six month delay that's gonna happen with this other project, it's like, hey, let's move it forward. Let's get it done. Like, listening to this Walmart Story from Sam Walton. Like, you will think bigger, you will think like they were opening 50 Walmarts in a year when they were just getting started, compared to the average variety store as they called them back then, that was opening like 4 or 5. Like it was incredible amount of risk and like trust they had in his store managers and the ability for him to find locations and make connections and push people and question things and just be super, super, scrappy, be super, super frugal, Always having the customer, the end customer in mind, thinking about driving price down, all of the time being very laser focused on what made Walmart different and that was low prices. Everything else had to go, like everything else had to go, whether it be corporate travel. So for example, one thing that when they would go on purchasing trips, like the people from corporate would go on purchasing trips where they go buy stuff from other manufacturers and things around the country, 1% their traveling expenses could not exceed 1% of what they bought on that trip. So they had to make it worth it. They literally would sleep multiple people in the same hotel. They would get really scrappy in terms of food and accommodations and travel because they had to keep their expenses under 1% of what but they went out and they purchased from all of their suppliers. Like things like that, just super scrappy. But it all ended up being the fact that they wanted to keep prices low, to keep the customer because they were laser focused on what they were going to be. Not going to be the best quality, they were not going to be the best customer experience, they were not going to be the easiest to find in their stores. They were not going to be a boutique shop. They're like, we're going to make them big, we're going to make them cheap and we're going to make them super convenient. All they cared about was price driving the price down and then that's what they stayed true to. And that's why they have a customer base that's so loyal to them, is because that's what they stand for. But the story of how that was built is what inspired me to think about, okay, when something like the coronavirus happens, and I know it's affecting a lot of people, and I don't mean to mock it, but when something like that comes in that you cannot affect, whether it be a coronavirus or an employee leaving or an economic tide in your local market just wipes things out or a natural disaster happens or a sickness or an illness in your family or relationship split like that happens and it starts to affect the company these things happen. How you react and how you get back up is what determines whether or not you're a great entrepreneur and a great operator. And so these are some of the things I'm thinking about. The coronavirus has shut down this company, and I'm looking forward to the positive things that are gonna come from the pivot and the ideas that spring forth this weekend. But I wanted to share that with you all. Thank you so much for watching. This has been Mike Andes on the Business Bootcamp podcast. Until next time, be great, because nothing else pays.