Kay:
So, in 2021, we came across a local lady leader mentor who slapped us upside the head a little bit and helped us to understand that sometimes you had to make business decisions that were more about where your energy was flowing versus where the money was flowing.
Shi:
Right, and when you are wearing your business hat and having to be that business leader, there are lots of times where, in your head, you’re having to justify what’s right. Within a business they say numbers are the language of business, and it’s absolutely true. The number one goal of business is to make money. So, you have to have money and financial flow and volume and revenue and cost at top of mind all of the time, and that can be a lot of pressure.
Kay:
So, when we talk about how we handle it all, we look at that pressure load, and like we’ve said, we bring in people around us who have that better understanding of what it takes. So, when we really start hitting walls, what we oftentimes do is we get out and we start looking for mentors who can help us, who can add value into our life, who might be able to show us that way forward. To be the lantern carrier for us through a dark night and help us come out on the other side with a new perspective and getting into the place of understanding that when we make decisions for our life sometimes going in that direction of where your energy says yes, is really important.
Shi:
It is and trusting that intuition can help and if…
Kay:
Doesn’t mean it’s not painful.
Shi:
It doesn’t mean it’s not painful. You know, if you’ve been kind of listening this week and in this episode about how do you handle it all and you surround yourself with a team and you stay in your flame and permission to be a multi-passionate entrepreneur. You might start to be thinking but how? How do you do that? Give me some examples and some stories. So, that’s our hope here today and right now is to just share with you some of our stories in those moments of like, how did you not quit? Because we’ve been in those moments, lots of times. In fact, over this last summer was the great labor shortage of 2021.
Now the restaurant industry was kind of the canary in the mind. It was the first industry to really feel the effects because the rest of hospitality was taking a few weeks to catch up to all of the restrictions lifting. People had to book their travel. They didn’t have things planned yet, but they started going out to eat the day restrictions lifted and the labor shortage was felt for us early on. So, in May and June of 2021, we really started to feel it and by July we were at a crisis moment in the labor shortage. Whole big story for another day. But when we thought we couldn’t handle any more, a next-level hit us, and a member of our HQ team had to go on unexpected leave. That absence was extremely difficult and took where we already felt like we were treading water and put basically two more jobs on our plate and said, you’ve got to handle this now. We did handle it, but just barely.
Kay:
Now, one of the things that carried us through that time was a visual. I want you to just imagine. It’s like 1882.
Shi:
Yep.
Kay:
And you’re aboard a wooden ship. The waves were already big, but you just got into the middle of a fricking hurricane and the eye is nowhere in sight and you can’t even see anything. So, it’s 1882, a creaky, creaky ship. Everybody on board the ship is pretty much washed away at this point. Everyone’s gone and you look upon the mast and there at the top of the mast of the ship is the captain clinging to the mast of the ship for dear life looking up into the air with this fist raised saying, “Is that all you got, God?”
Shi:
That maniacal imagery for some reason helped carry around us. You’ve got to be that captain because if we’re going to die in this storm, I’m going to be like…
Kay:
On the ship.
Shi:
I’m going to be hanging on and welcoming the storm and facing it head-on and that’s what we did, and we did dig deep and find that other level. But sometimes finding something like the crazy captain can be one of those small threads that carry you through a difficult time.
Kay:
Right. So, when you’re asking just how maybe sometimes you can go in and dig deep for your internal crazy captain energy…
Shi:
That’s right.
Kay:
…and figure out how to show up in that way. You know, in 2020 when the initial shutdowns happened and the pandemic really took over the restaurant and we were six weeks into extreme shutdowns in our community to go, only literally lost 85% of our revenue overnight on March 16th of 2020 and it was almost 12 weeks until we were even remotely open again under extreme restrictions. We, at one point, had a news anchor come forward and Shila was being interviewed then the news anchor said to Shila, how long can you hold on like this?
Shi:
And I just said with so much emotion and intensity, as long as it takes. As long as it takes. This is our family’s business. This is financial. There are 200 employees’ families and jobs on the line and locations and leases. We are here. It was kind of the same energy…
Kay:
Yes.
Shi:
…as the captain. As long as it takes. And just knowing that there was that full commitment helped carry us. Sometimes, the thing that’s most detrimental is that desire to seek the escape hatch and just to look for the way out–that flight mode. It’s probably better–and energetically speaking–for you to fight as much as you can, especially when you’re faced with those odds and not fight those around you, but to fight to stay in the ring and to stay part of the game and that’s what you’ve got to do. So, answering as long as it takes helped us not have to question where’s the escape hatch, but we were in the ring, and we were playing the game.
Kay:
So, if you’re on any kind of success journey at all, be it a physical or an entrepreneurial success journey or a spiritual success journey. Whatever journey that you’re on, having that as-long-as-it-takes mentality and just doing away with your escape hatches can do so much. We’re not saying don’t have a plan B but what we’re saying is that when the going gets tough, it can be really easy to want to run away. But sometimes even when it’s hard, all you have to do is show up. All you have to do is plant your feet in the location that you don’t want to be and face that storm. Sometimes you’re clinging to the mast of the ship, so you don’t fly off because you’re in the middle of the storm, but you’re still clinging to the ship. So, just how. Just show up.
Shi:
This is where we like to take a lesson from Anna in “Frozen II” who tells us, “Just do the next right thing.”
