We are seeing some incredible things happening in our community. Businesses stepping up to help other businesses. People working hard to make sure others are fed, their needs met. There are so many positives! We also know that it’s not easy. How you’re doing can sometimes change by the hour. We’re here to help connect our community to experts with knowledge and resources to share.
In this virtual chat, Andrew Bailey, of Washington Avenue Ventures talks about four key principles that we can all use to get through this pandemic. Andrew coaches business owners and executives and specializes in organizational and cultural development.
Transcript:
Julie: Our special Facebook live series called expert connexions. We are interviewing experts with information and insights to help us during this COVID-19 pandemic. I’m Julie Holton founder and principal strategist of mConnexions. We are seeing some incredible things happening in our community. Businesses stepping up to help other businesses. People really work hard to make sure that others are fed and their needs are taken care of. There are so many positives, but we also know that it’s not easy. We know that there are many changes and challenges, sometimes things changing by the hour. So we’re here to help. We’re connecting you with experts in our community with insights and information to share. I’m so looking forward to introducing you to our guest today. Let’s bring him in. Andrew Bailey coach’s business owners and executives and specializes in organizational and cultural development. He’s with Washington Avenue ventures. Andy thanks so much for joining us today.
Andrew: Oh you’re welcome. thanks for having me on.
Julie: Yeah so I want to take a quick moment. Everyone as you join, give us a thumbs up, let us know that you’re hearing us okay, feel free to comment on the side. We can see your comments and we can answer any questions that you may have as we go along. So, Andy, I want to start by talking about some of these conversations that you’re having with clients. I imagine that you are really busy as you’re talking with clients and so what are some of these conversations that you’re having with them?
Andrew: Yeah that’s a great question and there’s a couple key conversations we’re having because we know that there’s a lot of uncertainty right now and so while we know support is coming, we know relief is coming, we know there are a lot of organizations that are developing the plan that’s going to be opportunities to help. There’s still steps to take in the meantime. So in the midst of the uncertainty we’ve really focused on four key ideas that we think you can do right now no matter where you’re at and even in continually doing them you’re going to find success or find what you need throughout this time. So the first one I want to bring up is investing in trusted relationships and I think that it goes a long way to recognize that as business owners, as small businesses, as a community, that while there may be a product or maybe a service, what we really have is trust. That we’ve worked to develop with our community and so there are a couple spaces that I think it’s important to recognize that trust. One of them is your team. You have a team of people that you work within your business and relying on those trusted relationships is really important. Your customers, those people have already trusted you with something and finding out where that trust is at right now is really important and then there’s vendors and other business relationships. So throughout the concept of investing in these trusted relationships I think it’s seeing where we can come together right now.
Julie: Absolutely and just a quick comment here. Looks like um a little closer to your mic, a little louder. Sometimes we have some technical issues so want to make sure everyone can hear you. Okay so talking about trust and you and I were talking a lot about relationships before we went live. Are there some examples that you can give I mean of course we know relationships are important, but especially during a time like this when we’re dealing with you know a crisis or dealing with what feels like especially for businesses, you know the crisis for their businesses. Can you talk about that trust and why it’s so important and then maybe how to establish that trust?
Andrew: Yeah definitely and there’s a couple of examples that I think are pretty prominent right now and there’s different businesses are having different stresses right now. Some of them it’s this crisis is actually an opportunity towards them and so they’re having growth issues, growth stress. So they’re able to trust in different ways and some of them it’s their business is being taken from them or you know it’s being impacted in a negative way. So I think blue owl is a pretty good example of this right now. Where obviously if you’ve ever been to a reo town, blue owl was a thriving place and if you go there right now it’s you know it’s obviously it’s been dead for a while and that has a big impact. Blue owl was a start-up and it’s and it’s a small business and those two combinations are difficult um but they’ve spent that sometimes you know initially looking over things in a very practical way but then looking at what relationships they can leverage and so finding out between what vendors they have relationships with that they can collaborate a little bit and say hey we have this situation, this is what it looks like for us, is there any way you can see helping us and they’ve actually found that a lot of the vendor relationships that seem very transactional are actually very relational and very willing to work with them and I think any business that’s built trust this is a time to leverage trust. The other thing that they’ve been doing is realizing that while they’ve provided an atmosphere for the community to connect and have coffee, all of those experiences that people have it Blue Owl has built positive relationships, positive impact, and so rather than looking at you know just rushing to all these other ways that they can try and solve financial problems. They’re saying okay and what way can we partner with the community where we’re at right now because we know that our customers are actually trusted relationships and then there are investment opportunities in both ways for us to impact the community and for them to impact us.
Julie: Isn’t that incredible? I think so many seeing businesses rally together, to help their employees, to help their other relationships, has been huge and you know like you and I were talking about earlier when we come through the other side of this it’s also looking at where do those relationships stand? I know this morning I was talking with one of our clients you know very early this morning she’s in Chicago and she’s a dermatologist and we were talking about how she has transformed her office. Offering very different services, offering to you know to help you know check-in with her patients and things that you know several weeks ago we wouldn’t have even been talking about. So when you talk about those trusted relationships like you said it can be with Blue Owl and their vendors it can also be like my you know Dy dermatology in Chicago where they’re talking internally or more kind of internally but with their patients and those trusted relationships. I think this idea that it’s certainly not business as usual and reaching out to help in whatever capacity we can right now is really key.
Andrew: Yeah and I think you’d be surprised how many people are out there willing to help me. I have another friend who is a personal trainer and just invested in a brand new space and obviously all this happening has a pretty big impact on people coming to the space. Personal trainers often have very personal relationships with a lot of clients but in this case you just developed a relationship with a corporate account and reached out to them and very honestly said hey I’m not going to be able to provide you the service that you would originally signed up for, how would you like to proceed? I’m not going to hold you to the contract as we were designing it. They looked back and said no we think your services are really valuable. Our company is doing well. We think fitness is an important you know benefit that we want to include for our people. So we are going to move forward and trust and saying how you decide to do this virtually is going to work for us and so I just think there’s a lot of ways to build trust during this time and there’s a lot of ways to leverage trust and as long as we’re really focusing on working together I think we’re going to get a lot better outputs than if we try and separate ourselves and try and solve all our problems on our own. What a great example. Okay so obviously trusted relationships and everything you’re describing we talk about a lot, beyond authenticity. I mean these are actual relationships like you said taking it from transactional to actually trusted relationship. What’s the next thing that you’ve been talking about with your clients? Yeah, so the next thing is actually preparing to make decisions from facts and not fear. Right now we all have different ways of internalizing everything that’s going on and it can feel very chaotic. It’s not just our businesses that are being impacted but it’s our personal lives, its perhaps family members, and that’s a lot and so when we’re reaching out to have meaningful conversations with our different relationships it’s important to ask for meaningful support and be prepared to understand what kind of help you can give. So one of the things I say I have a math background and I say let data drive your decisions. So it’s easy to think everything’s going, my doors are closed, well what does that really mean? My clients are leaving well how many clients are really leaving and what does that really look like? I like to say make yourself easy to help. Make it easy for people to understand your situation. Make it easy for you to communicate what the effects of what happens and what could happen and then have the right information available for a resource to know how they can help. So you know one of the biggest things is that most businesses and have some relationship with a bank and so one of the best things you can do right now is make sure all of your Ducks are in a row with the simple things like tax documents, personal financial statements, what your projections are for the business, but the other thing is if your business has been running relatively smoothly for the last couple years when’s the last time you really look down it at your projections? What does it look like if you lose 10% of your clients, 20, 30%? Knowing those things and knowing exactly how much help you need is going to allow other people to help you more effectively.
Julie: Such a good point and especially because I would imagine that when you make that first outrage you know if you call your you know trusted advisor your CPA or your bank whoever that might be, in a panic I mean first of all like some of those details are being worked out, we know help is coming, we know they’re going to be resources available, we know they’re going to be loans, we know now they’re you know of course there’s talk about grants, so help will be there. Getting to that point you know your kind of made the point to me that if you first know what you need you’re going to be in a better position to be able to have those conversations. So before just panicking I really like this idea of making yourself easy to help.
Andrew: Yeah and I think that’s another part of that is to think of somebody that you’ve talked to about your business on a regular basis that can help you kind of distill some of your thoughts. I you know I worked with Washington avenue ventures and we work with Washington Avenue advisors which works specifically with financial things and we were talking with a business owner just the other day and said so what how much impact does losing 10% of your business half and they just they said I’m not sure and we said well let’s figure it out and it was easy for us to ask that question because our business wasn’t being impacted by that circumstance and the other thing that’s really interesting about that is everybody’s been impacted but when I focus on somebody else it’s easier for me. Which you know I’ll bring it just to the third point which is, be ready to help because there’s a surprising amount of clarity that you get in your own mind from hearing somebody else’s business situation and then you turning on just your business owner mentality, your small business mentality, and starting to solve somebody else’s problems because you’re not thinking of the weight of your own. Does that make sense?
Julie: Absolutely you’re on to me, this is why I’m doing this entire series. This self-help therapy for me, but no really you make such a great point because first of all we are all going through this and so when you’re talking with a client, who’s dealing with the situation, that clients situation may not directly be the same as yours but you’re able to see that other people are going through this, we’re going to get – I mean I think it’s being overused you know we’re in this together, but it’s so true that when you realize that you’re not the only one. You’re not the only one being impacted and you’re not the only one who needs help and I think you know back to your point about seeing the numbers and Stephanie has commented here, make decisions based on facts not fear. So I wanted to point that out, I think that’s really resonating with our audience here. When we make these, when we actually see the numbers Andy I find that what I’ve worked up in my head often times and I’m thinking oh my gosh okay you know what and before I can see the numbers I have worked up this whole big idea of what it might look like and then when I actually see the numbers there are times I’m not for everyone but there are times when I realize okay things aren’t as bad as I’ve made them out to be. This actually is going to work and then it triggers new ideas to be able to problem-solve and work around it.
Andrew: Oh yeah, we have fantastic imaginations. I even this weekend I will say that I took on a pretty heavy but I didn’t realize it was going to be so quickly we were going to be working from home and I said you know I should probably get my office ready and so I took on a big project and because of that I didn’t do one of the things that I think is most important to my week which is, do an unload of everything that I need to do so I know going into the weekend how much I have going on my plate. I didn’t do that all weekend. I was working in my office and I was thinking what am I putting off and then Monday morning when I actually wrote down the list I said oh I’m in pretty good shape. I wish I would have just done what I was supposed to do in the first place.
Julie: Yes, isn’t that amazing. We think we have this whole big to-do list and when you actually write it out, you realize okay wait a minute no I can tackle these. Now I see the list you know one by one. So and you talked about this a little bit. You talked about how you know how to help. So can you expand on that a little bit more? Maybe some examples because I think we probably so I’m assuming in our audience because you know kind of taking the temperature of the pulse from the last week, we’ve had some people who are in pretty decent shape, we have some people who are watching who are at home from work right now and figuring out how to make ends meet and we have some people who I know are watching on the replays because they’re commenting back to me who are just off and running and really busy right now because this is their time to really shine and help others. So with that in mind, what are some ways that we can actually reach out and help in order to help ourselves also get through this?
Andrew: Yeah before I get into a specific example, I just want to say that I will never get tired of hearing we’re in this together. The reason being is I think it needs to sink in. You know I didn’t I I’m going to get a little bit on a personal side of things, I’m kind of a junkie for some of those extreme military based fitness events and so I’ve done a few 24 hours and 50 hour things and one of the things that I cannot get out of my mind is one time I was being sprayed with some water well I won’t get into the details and they said why are you only thinking about yourself? For me and for a lot of people who’ve started some form of business, we really do it and we really feel the drive. You know we feel like we can succeed. We feel like we can push through when it comes. When we look back we really realize that we didn’t get what we couldn’t have done without the people around us supporting us. When though a lot of times it was our drive that we were focused on and I will not I just can’t have it I don’t want to miss out on we’re in this together really mattering and this being an opportunity for that to sink in because sometimes it takes extreme environments for us to really realize how important the team is. So with all that I’ve seen a couple examples of this. One of them I already gave you where there’s a company that’s doing well. They’re in technology and they’re able to scale to work from home very quickly. It doesn’t impact their bottom line. They recognize that a business that they are building value with needs some help and so you know some people could say that it was the right thing to do, but in this much uncertainty would have been very easy for them to say we want to pause in this relationship until we see what happens. To see if we’re impacted. Instead they stood up and said we like what you’re doing we’re going to we’re all in. That’s an example of a company doing really well. I think there are other examples. they were nice that a business that they are they were building value with I’m hearing my cell phone all right there we go. There’s another example of a company that’s obviously this has been a struggling time for them and what they chose to do is they said well I’m going to do a lot of research on what’s available and then I’m going to be the one that reaches out to my friends and peers in this in this industry and I’m going to say I’m going to offer it. I’m going to make sure that whatever work I do somebody else doesn’t have to do as well. They can get 90% of the way there because I’ve continued to research.
Julie: That’s so important too because I think that no matter how much we’re consuming right now too about what’s going on and how to problem-solve and work our way through it there’s only so much we can consume. I know even for me I was talking to you about my conversation last Friday with attorney John Mashni at Foster’s Swift and he brought up things that I he does this all the time he has he has a knack for this, but he brought up things that I hadn’t even thought about yet and so even just having those conversations then you know triggered a whole different line of thinking for me that day and some of the follow-up conversations that I then had with my clients and my team and so it’s I’m glad to hear you say that we’re in this together is not getting old because it really is more than a mantra right now. When I was talking with the client this morning her family was all in Hong Kong. She’s the only person here in the US and so talk about giving a different perspective that when we say we’re all in this together that’s even true for her family over in Asia. Yeah wow that’s I can see how that would be theirs yeah like we said there’s just a lot of different perspectives going on right now. So you’ve talked Andy a bit about some of the things that we can be doing to help and these conversations you’ve had with clients about how to focus their mindset and things to work on um what about something that maybe we shouldn’t do or we should limit? What’s your thought there?
Andrew: This is something that honestly I work with you know in every coaching environment that I have independent of this circumstance I work on this with everybody and it limits your distractions. A lot of times one of the one of the early exercises we go through is I ask when do you do your best work? How long do you do your best work? How much opportunity in a given week do you do your best work and when we figured that out and we often realize that when people start their businesses that it came from an idea that came from some of their best work but running their business stole some of that time from them and so in every coaching relationship getting back down to making time for you to do your best work is one of the key ingredients to not just maintaining success but actually seeing your business grow or seeing you able to earn some of your time back and so this philosophy of limiting your distraction is not just for now. It’s not just for a while news is running 24/7 on something that’s impacting all of us. It’s actually a something that needs to be that I think a lot of people I continually implement this in my life, how about I’ll say that and so there’s a couple strategies that I’ve heard but I think one of the best one is decide when in your day it’s most important for you to get updates on what’s going on. The news is running 24/7 because people need to get access to news at different times and I think that’s a really valuable service. It’s not running 24/7 because we need to be watching 24/. I think based on who you are, based on how things are impacting you personally, there’s probably one or two times a day where it’s a really good idea for you to get connected, for you to get a reliable source of information. I tend to be very focused heavily on statistics based sites because that helps me distill some of the information down into something that I understand. It’s something that I like to work with but checking your Facebook every half-hour for a stat to be updated or for you to know the update or the news, I don’t think that that’s healthy. Every hour is not healthy, every two hours I would say is not healthy. Once or twice a day and then using getting back to the time where the get made you successful as a business owner in the first place, which was problem solving. There’s a whole new set of problems and it’s not just for your business it’s also for your community, it’s for your family, and it’s for other businesses. There are a lot of problems to solve right now and that means that there’s a lot of opportunities to do the thing that you’re really good at, but you need to give your brain time to do that and it can’t be broken up by a bunch of bad news or a bunch of news. Some of it’s not bad, some of this just updates.
Julie: Absolutely so and as you know Andy I worked in news for a long time and I can tell you the news cycle runs 24/7 so that it’s there when people need it. It’s not running so that every single person in the country is watching 24 hours a day and even when I worked in news I was very strict on limiting what I watched, when I watched, how I got my information, and I think that is a really great point. Figure out what works for you, those of you who are watching, you know of course you probably want to get up and check in on it I know I’ve read blogs prior to all of this happening that say make sure Facebook Isn’t the first thing you open before you get out of bed you know when you’re lying in bed waking up, like do not open Facebook do not open email actually get up and start your day because that’s when you’re prioritizing what you are going to do that day. Don’t let Facebook or your email and dictate that. I think of course given the situation we want to check in on Facebook, we want to see how our friends and family are doing, we want to see what’s happening in the world that’s very important, but I love this advice you’ve given on you know make those appointments. Have it been you know once in the morning, once in the evening, whatever you decide works for you. Keep this 1 o’clock time timeslot on you on your schedule for our interviews, but definitely the other thing too Andy is what do you think about you know I wonder if people need to change some of their previous habits now because maybe before it worked for you to check Facebook at lunch time or to jump on Twitter you know before your commute home or whatever those routines were but maybe those routines need to change given how the conversation has changed. What do you think about that?
Andrew: Oh my gosh I didn’t think I was a structure routine guy but I am absolutely a structure routine guy. I had to learn to find the right structure and that’s a big part of what I love to do with people. I like to say that the right structure has a limitless capacity and it’s completely customized to you. So for me I absolutely think this being shook up is a great opportunity for people to realign and I often work people through for spaces, that I call Purpose Driven structure. So these spaces are all time periods of transition in your day that are usually pretty well defined through people’s days and using those to figure out what’s the most valuable thing to put there. So for example, I always ask people if they should have a plan for what you do in the morning before you talk to anybody or consume anything. That’s the morning routine. Invest in discovering what a healthy morning routine is for you. Whether that’s meditation, reading, journaling, reflecting, listening, stretching, Yoga, put something there before you talk to anybody else and make that your time. That’s my, that’s my go-to. I’ll bet on that being valuable for most people but the other three times of the day that I think are healthy transitions that you can craft a structure that’s really meaningful, are the work day start routine. When you get to work it’s not letting your tasks drive you, it’s letting you intentionally craft your day because the way you think as a person is the most valuable thing you have to bring to your job and to your business and so giving your mind some time to do that. I like to think of a workday and routine as a way of unloading so that you can go back to being whatever to a hobby, to your family, to whatever it is that allows you to rejuvenate before bed and then an evening routine which kind of puts everything away for the day. So those four times spaces I think that they can be crafted infinite ways for each person but and if I were to just throw out one because that’s a lot that I just said right there. The morning routine is my favorite. It’s the one that I find most grounding but all of those to me have had different purposes and different space in my life.
Julie: Okay so I have to. Hopefully I don’t screw this up but I have to repeat something you just said because it really stood out to me and you were talking about like part of your workday routine. When you are at work, what you bring is the most valuable asset to your business. What you I just I have to repeat that to everyone because that really puts it into perspective because I know there are people out of work right now, I know there are people who are trying to home-school kids, they’re trying to figure out an entirely brand-new routine because everything you just said maybe they had it down perfectly before this whole work from home thing. So people are in so many different challenging situations right now but what you just said doesn’t matter what that routine is. I think that is key. You are your own most valuable asset.
Andrew: Yeah I was just I was talking to a friend of mine today actually and I felt like I needed to solve a problem and I realized that was a pride based behavior. It was me needing to be valuable for my abilities and I just while it’s great when I have the solution, I don’t think that that’s as valuable as what I would call an identity based position. Which is me saying when I have a solution I’m obviously going to offer it. I’m a person and I care, but the truth is I’m walking I’m with you on this and I think that’s true in personal relationships and in professional relationships and now I mean I understand we all have responsibilities to keep the business moving and those are really important but truthfully who you are is the most the person that you hire, who you are, is the most valuable thing you bring to a business. Yes, I’m glad you brought that up.
Julie: I love that. Okay I’m going to go through a couple of quick comments and if people have questions please feel free to jump in. Andy is yours right now you have his attention if you have questions for him pipe in. So Stephanie says yes to routines. Terri says write it on a piece of paper and tape at eye-level to make a list it helps when you can see it. I think especially now Terri that routines have been thrown off, so if there’s something you need to remember or if there’s some encouragement you need to give yourself that’s a great idea and Stephanie has another comment, Wow fabulous point 24/7 news is so people can get the information when it works for them not to have it on 24/7. Especially Stephanie when you’ve got kids around, little ones. They listen and they don’t understand necessarily what’s happening so if we don’t fully understand it kids definitely do not understand what’s happening right now and one more comment from Terri saying we need to unite. So yes thank you Terri and Stephanie for those comments. One last question for you Andy before we start to wrap up here and really this is just more of a general question because I know as you and I have been talking you have a lot of philosophies I think just in from your general coaching practice you work with business owners and executives really coaching them to the next level or coaching them as they scale through challenges and opportunities and so but I think right now especially with everything we’re going through, I think mindset is so important. So can you share with us just a little bit about your general philosophy and how to navigate through a challenge like this?
Andrew: Yeah that’s great and it’s true that the end result, the most profitable result of a lot of these relationships at first glance seems like a more stable organization or being able to get over the hump but the lasting effect of success for me personally and further the relationships that I work with is always a deeper connection to who people are as an individual. I do not believe that most people get over the hump just by gaining an ability or gaining something you know spending more time on something. Every conversation, every coaching relationship that I have, I always spend the initial several two months taking time to invest in figuring out who you are and reconnecting to the why that made you give you this drive in the first place. I tell people all the time, vision will get you to take one step but identity or a why that gets you to walk through the storm, walk through the crap, walk through the difficulties, and when I connected so often to New Year’s resolutions, I mean ninety percent of people in America have the same have eighty new year’s resolution related to fitness I want to be fitter and I always say wanting to be fitter is not going to get you very far, but if you connect to an identity statement which for me I always say I want to push my kids, I want to play with my grandkids, and I want to pick up my great-grandkids. That gets me to walk through hard decisions year to year and so I know it’s a little separate from example but it’s the same concept. If you’re going to want to get to the next level, you’re going to have to walk through some difficult things whether that’s personally organizationally or business development wise. The visions are going to get you the courage to take one step but identity statements understanding who you are and being able to connect what you do to who you are is going to allow you to know to be courageous each step as you go.
Julie: I think that’s incredible. I love that and I want to share this comment from Ruben who says, although this is unprecedented, don’t discount the innovative resilience of humans. In general, a lot of new and exciting tech and other resources will come out of all of this and Andy we were talking about that earlier today just about the opportunities and of course again I don’t want to make light as I as I know Ruben doesn’t we’re not making light of the challenges and the hardships that many people are facing right now. Though there is an opportunity for so many new things to come out of this.
Andrew: Yeah I know we probably as humans we didn’t invent fire until there was a cold day and I think you said it when we were just talking about how to kind of emotionally process through this you said and I wrote it down because it really meant a lot to me. Just to be able to articulate it in a sensitive way, I don’t ever want a bad thing to happen but if it does happen I want to be there to help. It’s you know it’s important to me to use this time if something bad is going to happen, I want humanity to win from it.
Julie: Absolutely and yeah we were talking with that I used to say that in the news all the time. You know we weren’t sitting around waiting or wishing that something bad would happen, but you know for instance I was in Minneapolis when the bridge collapsed. No one ever wants a bridge to collapse. It was horrible you know and we were covering a story so to speak that we were living through but when something terrible happens we wanted to be there to help. You know we stayed on the air for 27 hours straight because we needed to provide that assistance to our community. So absolutely. Angie is asking a great question here. She says I’m sure there are people and businesses that I could help, but I found that asking doesn’t often get far. Are there better ways to offer help?
Andrew: Yeah that’s a great question. I think that a lot of times in the early stages we’re not really sure what kind of help is necessary and so that that first question is a good intro but as you start to exceed how businesses need help and how your skill sets a line, I think that coming up with a specific question that follows up or as you hear things a heart of opportunities offering a specific piece of help. I would say that when we first started talking to businesses that was the question is there anything that I could do and often it was I’m not really sure and then we just said why don’t you tell us what’s going on and that was the follow-up that got us into some more specifics and that’s where some of these points came from. I have found one of the most helpful things is helping a company ask specific questions about the impact to get them to think through specifics because right now big things are happening that are hard to distill down to individual consequences within their business and so even you being a resource and then finding one of those steps, finding one of those consequences, where you might have expertise or you might have influence or you might have the ability to share insight, I think that progression would be really helpful.
Julie: Great advice and in Andy on a personal level I think that you know at the end of the day all of these business owners, even the largest business is in the company, at the end of the day there are people behind those businesses and so for your friends who are involved you know having whether they’re sharing difficulties or not about their businesses everyone’s worried so I think sometimes that text message the phone call liking and sharing their content on social media we were just talking about that yesterday on our page because those are all very simple ways to reach out but it shows that that personal support. Send a personal email. Maybe your business can’t necessarily help right now. Maybe your business is shut down. Maybe you know all these things. Maybe there isn’t anything directly you can do but send that message letting them know. Ask how their family’s doing. This goes back to Andy’s point from the very beginning on building those trusted relationships. It may not be that there’s anything directly you can do right now but they know you’re there when they need you. So that’s a really great question. Another comment from Stephanie, having a vision or purpose gets you through life’s tough times, preach. So yeah absolutely. Absolutely Stephanie. Well Andy this was so great. This was really helpful. Thank you for sharing your insights with us. Is there anything else before we wrap up here, any comments for business owners or those who are really looking for some guidance right now?
Andrew: I think that taking the we’re in this together from a phrase into a reality. It will feel very empty if you don’t feel like you’re together and I think one of the first ways that you can make that into a real statement is if somebody’s not offering help to you maybe this is an opportunity for you to offer help. That statement gains more and more influence and more and more power personally as it’s actually aligned to what you’re experiencing and I can see it feeling empty if it’s not something that you’re experiencing but I just want to encourage people to go out and have courage to go offer help even when it feels like you don’t have much.
Julie: Andy thank you so much for taking your time today. I know you’ve been really busy and I know you’re home with your family too so we’re all quarantined in our homes now so thank you again for taking the time we really appreciate this.
Andrew: Oh yeah no problem. Thank you for having me.
Julie: So at mConnexions we are going to continue to bring you trusted advisors like Andy. Great conversation today. Really appreciate that. Tomorrow at one o’clock we’re going to switch gears a little bit and we’re going to talk about parenting and all of the challenges and opportunities that are coming from parenting especially because right now in Michigan that also may include homeschooling. Whether you’re working from home or just trying to keep the humans alive as some of my friends like to post. We’re going to be talking with a coach and homeschooling mom herself, Amy ogle will be with us to talk about that tomorrow it’s coming up at one o’clock. So every interview we’ve done is available right here on Facebook. We’ve also put together a special collection of those interviews along with more resources that our experts are sharing with us. You will find that and mConnexions.com. We’ll share the link under this video. If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out with us directly and we will see you tomorrow. Thank you, stay well.