367. The Closing gameplan and cadence for business pages, channels, email, and notifying everyone

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
All right, well, happy evening.
So papers are filed yeah,they're filed, wow.
And now the next step of how dowe figure it out?
So, talking with advisors andcolleagues, there's two ways

(00:21):
that we can either tell peoplethat the business is shutting
down.
There's two ways that we caneither tell people that the
business is shutting down.
The first one is basically ablindsiding and people find out
and it's like a shocker and it'sover before people even realize
it happened.
The second one is to givepeople lead time, just a heads
up time to do last goodbyes,last classes and all that stuff.

(00:42):
The pros of blindsiding is weget to do all the prep work, we
get to control everything, andeverything is turned off and
unplugged before they hear thenews.
It reduces the toxiccommunications, decreases the
likelihood that people juststart spamming us or harassing
us because they're mad that thegym closed down.
And the con is that it doesn'treally give people the closure

(01:06):
or the peace of mind that theymay want, especially if they've
been there a while For the slowwind-up.
There's pros and cons.
The pro is that people can saytheir goodbyes, final hugs, they
can close things up smoothlyand easily and it's not a shock
to everyone's system and it'snot a shock to everyone's system

(01:28):
.
The con, though, is that peoplecan now murmur, gossip, spread
slander, libel, tag each otheron toxic social media, and we're
having an election a few days.
People are already anxious andon edge and just allow things to
fester and spiral out of ourcontrol.
I say our, I mean my family'scontrol.
So I talked with a few advisors, got their input Across the

(01:48):
board.
It was unanimous.
Unfortunately, this is abusiness.
This is not a personal lifedecision.
This is a business.
No one's livelihood is at stake.
No one relies on the gym, forOur most highest paid instructor
makes or works maybe like sixclasses a week, so a hundred

(02:10):
bucks a week, so it's not gonnapay their mortgage, it's it's
beer money, um.
Then there's managers and stuff, but they do this all this
part-time, um, so no one'sreliant on us for that.
We're in an area where there'stons of gyms, both group fitness
as well as big box and smallbox, so there's not going to be
like a desertion of fitnessactivities in the area, and

(02:32):
there's nothing proprietary thatwe offer people can't get
elsewhere Supplements, shirts,workout classes.
People can find a replacementexperience within three miles,
so that's where that's at.
This may sour things withcorporate because I'm
blindsiding them, but it'sprobably cleanest too when

(02:52):
there's the least amount ofbrand embarrassment on
everything.
So it sounds terrible becauseit's not how I would.
I never would have seen myselfdoing this.
But the plan right now is towhat day is it?
Today's Wednesday?
So, um, I'm playing phone tagwith the lender and landlord.
Um, the goal is Saturday isgoing to be the last day of

(03:15):
classes.
Nobody knows it.
But then on Sunday, when we getback from our trip to Nebraska
to see family, I'll go to thestudio, put a sign up that says
the business is closedpermanently and then I'll go
home.
On Sunday I'll turn off thesocial media channels, I'll

(03:37):
delete the business page, I'lldelete the members only group,
I'll change the usernames andpasswords to all of our
platforms, like gloves orsupplements or whatever, because
that stuff, I don't want staffto start making purchases if
they were tempted to, and thenI'll tell the landlord.
And then I'll send a coupleemails.

(03:57):
One I'll send an email blast toall the members.
That'll be like Sunday lateafternoon.
Right before that or after that,I'll send an email to everyone
who has a key to the building somanagers, cleaners, saying like
, hey, please return your key ifyou visit the property, it will
be considered trespassing bythe landlord.
So, for your benefit, I adviseto not do that.

(04:20):
Then have an email between allof the vendors so mainly
landlord, bank, corporateTelling everyone hey, we've shut
down the business, donepersonal bankruptcy and if you
have any further questions,here's my attorney and here's
how to reach him.
That way, people don't evenreach out to me because I have

(04:46):
no answers for how to getpennies on the dollar, anything
else, anything else.
I don't think so Right now.
I was thinking it sounds like aweird question to ask, but I was
thinking about what are wetrying to pursue?
What's the goal?
What are we going to deem likea success from shutting the
business down?
It's going to be people notbarraging us with questions,

(05:08):
emails and calls and texts whenwe don't have those answers.
It's going to be reducing toxicgossip, deceit and lies amongst
each other.
Um, it's going to be givingpeople a time to go find their
next place to work out withoutconfusion or ambiguity or hope
that the business can be savedbecause it can't, and not having

(05:32):
this be a social mediadistraction.
So that's why we're going tocut off all the channels and all
of the vendor passwordsbeforehand so that once people
get the update, if they want tocause gossip or anxiety or
whatever, they can do thatcalling each other.
They can do that.
Having tea with each other.

(05:52):
They can do that.
Having brunch on Tuesdays.
Whatever the members want to doon their personal time on their
own platforms, it's all up tothem, but they don't need to do
that on my business page or inmy social media channels.
That's the game plan.

(06:13):
As you can tell, it's been along day.
Tomorrow's going to be a greatday.
We're going to have time withfamily.
We're going to do some draftingover the next few days of
content PR releases for members.
I also don't want to end up onthe local news, because that's
not the intention by this at all.
So hopefully another thing likethat happens.

(06:35):
But this is, it's a strategywe're going to do and I'll let
you know.
I'll let everyone herelistening know how it went, if
that was the right decision orif I have remorse down the road,
if I wanted people a place tovent about my business closing
and for them to complain aboutit.
We'll see how that goes.
So let's go get some sleep.

(06:55):
We'll see how that goes.
Let's go get some sleep.
We're going to go prep fortomorrow and enjoy life.
That's where we're at, that'swhere we're going.
That's rock and roll.