Embracing Uncertainty

By mid-March (2020), many of my cus­tomers were hav­ing record leads and sales com­ing out of the gloomy win­ter months. Things were look­ing up. I had just got­ten through months of plan­ning and set­ting the strate­gies for my cus­tomers and was look­ing for­ward to a smooth spring sea­son with lots of leads! 

A week pri­or, I had just returned from New York City vis­it­ing A.G. Williams Paint­ing, then spend­ing a lit­tle time in Cen­tral Park. Peo­ple asked me if I was con­cerned about the COVID-19 virus, espe­cial­ly after the risky NYC vis­it. In all hon­esty, I wasn’t con­cerned at all. 

The thought of a cri­sis hadn’t entered my mind. 

The Cri­sis

On March 18^th, I was attend­ing an all-day busi­ness coach­ing meet­ing. In the after­noon, my phone and email began to light up with con­cerned mes­sages from cus­tomers. ​“We need to talk!” ​“We need to pause ser­vices.” ​“We need to can­cel all marketing…” 

My stress lev­el went from 0 to 60 in sec­onds. After review­ing the mes­sages, the fear of uncer­tain­ty flood­ed my mind. I won­dered if I would have a busi­ness at the end of the month if the mes­sages from clients con­tin­ued to pour in as they did in just a few hours. 

What made mat­ters even worse is that I had just wrapped up ser­vices with my busi­ness coach, obvi­ous­ly hav­ing no way of know­ing how much I would need coach­ing mov­ing for­ward. I was in the process of inter­view­ing a per­son­al coach when the can­cel­la­tions started. 

That evening, things didn’t get any better. 

I remem­ber com­ing home to my fam­i­ly late that night and try­ing real­ly hard to act like I was just fine, and like every­thing would be just fine. That after­noon and evening may have been the most chal­leng­ing moments of my life up to that point. The kids came run­ning over to me and asked how I was doing. I crum­bled to the kitchen floor and start­ed to cry. My kids and my wife sur­round­ed me with hugs and kisses. 

The fol­low­ing two weeks were pret­ty rough. I had to put staff on unem­ploy­ment and spend many hours and days nego­ti­at­ing with clients and sal­vaging accounts. There was a moment where I almost just quit. I could have eas­i­ly walked away from the busi­ness and said, ​“I can­not do this… It’s over!” 

This is where I began to real­ly cry out to God and pray. I began to read through Psalms and find com­fort in the Lord. Proverbs 16:9 says, ​“The heart of man plans his way, but the Lord estab­lish­es his steps.” 

I knew what I had to do, and I knew God had led me to run A David Cre­ation. I start­ed it in 2009, dur­ing one of the worst economies in decades. I made it through that tri­al, so I began to try and embrace the uncer­tain­ty. I began to fight off the sto­ries I was telling myself dur­ing those first few weeks of shut­down: self-doubt, fear of the unknown, I can’t do this, I don’t know how to help my cus­tomers and save my busi­ness at the same time… 

These were just sto­ries. They were not true. 

The Change

I began to take risks and learn to be curi­ous about the uncer­tain days ahead of me. I also made peace with the very real pos­si­bil­i­ty that my busi­ness wouldn’t survive. 

I decid­ed that I didn’t need to live in fear, but did need to fight to save not only my busi­ness but also help my cus­tomers push through their own uncer­tain­ties. One cool thing I remem­ber about April is how close I got with my clients. All our calls were sim­i­lar. We talked about per­son­al things — not just busi­ness. We also end­ed the calls by say­ing things like, ​“We’ve got this!” ​‘We are in this togeth­er!” ​“We’ll make it through!” 

I took a leap of faith and hired a new busi­ness coach as well as signed up for a 5‑month lead­er­ship course called ​“Lead­ing Change.” It all fell into my lap the week before the shut­down. I had no idea how valu­able this course would be in my life. It is all about embrac­ing change, fac­ing the unknown, and learn­ing how to stay curi­ous and lead! 

The Pos­si­bil­i­ties

Embrac­ing uncer­tain­ty can prove to be a won­der­ful thing for your home improve­ment busi­ness. Step out of your com­fort zone and shut off the flow of neg­a­tive sto­ries, like: 

• “I can­not grow” 
• “I nev­er get enough leads” 
• “All my staff does is complain” 
• “I can’t find good people”

If you take risks, stop the fear, and are will­ing to be curi­ous about what you can cre­ate, you’ll be amazed at the end­less pos­si­bil­i­ties for your busi­ness that lies ahead. You have what it takes to move your busi­ness forward. 

I am so impressed with my cus­tomers who weath­ered the storm this past spring. They didn’t give up, but looked COVID-19 head-on and said, ​“No. You will not take down my business.” 

As I write this post in July of 2020, almost every sin­gle client of mine is back to hav­ing record lead and sales counts again. The num­ber one prob­lem they are hav­ing at the moment is find­ing more employ­ees. Guess what? We are hit­ting that chal­lenge head-on as well. We will make it through this cri­sis. We will embrace change and make things better. 

I am com­mit­ted to mak­ing my own busi­ness stronger and bet­ter. I am work­ing through my sys­tems and mak­ing changes and will be pro­vid­ing new ser­vices in the com­ing months such as mar­ket­ing plans and 1‑day plan­ning ses­sions. I’m back to hir­ing new staff mem­bers (2021: which I have done and con­tin­ue to do) and press­ing on to help con­trac­tors con­tin­ue to excel and grow their businesses. 

One final thing — one of the best deci­sions I made dur­ing COVID was start­ing a week­ly prayer meet­ing for con­trac­tors. We will not stop. Each Fri­day at lunchtime, cus­tomers get togeth­er and pray for our nation, our busi­ness­es, and the home improve­ment indus­try. If I did noth­ing else right dur­ing this shut­down, the prayer meet­ing was the best deci­sion yet. (Sept 2021: It is still going)