A boutique hotel owner shares how a "find a way to win" mindset saved their business. When payroll ran short, they split an invoice with a client to get half upfront. During COVID with $11.37 in the bank, they worked free for clients anyway, betting relationships would return the favor.
Chapters
Now you're running this boutique hotel business. What are some ways that you apply that unique mindset of let me just go find a way to win to this business that you're running?
I can remember one day we were doing a branding with this company and we didn't have enough money to make payroll. It was a Friday, they're coming in for this branding session. So I said, hey, you know, it's customary for you to pay half of your invoice now and the other half when it's complete. And he's like, oh, okay, yeah, no problem. Brought in a check and then I covered payroll. I totally just made that up on the fly because I needed to have the money in the bank to cover the people's payroll that day. And then there was a moment in COVID when all of our clients had to let us go. And so we said, we'll keep working for you for free because we believe that like the business is going to come back and you can't afford to not have our support and service. But that was very challenging because we still had our team involved, but there was no income coming in. And so we got down to $11.37 in our checking account and we needed to have like something to save the day. And we had a client who we'd done a rebrand for at a fishing lodge in Canada, and he was in the process of creating a Hawaiian skincare line.