President's Letter

By DJ Patterson, CD-SV, 2020 IDA President

Hello IDA Community!

I hope this letter finds you alive and well. Can you believe we’re nearly halfway through 2020?! What a year it’s been so far, to say the least. I will touch briefly on COVID-19, but it’s time we look past it and into what the future holds for us in business.

Here in the States, we are making big strides to open up our country again. Writing this letter, my company is on our third week of operations post COVID-19. Throw a rock across the pond at our IDA Vice President in the UK, and they’re still another three weeks or so out from opening up again. It’s very interesting, hearing the differences in the countries where our members reside.

Whether you were closed down or remained open with caution over the last several weeks, your mindset should be completely changed by now. There is no better time than the present to make needed, drastic changes in your businesses. I know I have! This slow down of life has given lots of us time to reflect without the distractions of the normal fast-paced day-to-day tasks. Here are a few questions to get you thinking IF you haven’t already taken steps towards the future:

• What do you need to increase or add to your business?

• What do you need to decrease or remove from your business?

• What do you need to do to protect your business in the event the world ever shuts down again?

What do you need to increase? This could be services that you didn’t give much thought to previously. It could be adding a membership program for continuous cash flow. It could be adding a mobile unit for those that only have shops. It could be adding new disinfecting services and targeting the B2B opportunities. How about a product line or apparel line? Most importantly, the more time you spend increasing your personal development, the better leader, business owner, and member of the community you’ll become.

What do you need to decrease or remove from your business? This is something that took up too much of your time with very little reward BUT you were too busy with the day-to-day operations to ever stop and make the cuts. What’s a service that brought you very little profit but consumed much of your time? Should you look at changing your days/hours of operation to give you, the business owner, more margin for life outside of your business? What used to keep you up at night and how can you change that?

What do you need to do to protect your business in the event the world ever shuts down again? Bottom line, the more revenue streams you have, the safer you are in times of uncertainty. Relying on your own revenue streams and not the financial support of the government sounds pretty awesome, right? It’s time to save your money, not just for a rainy day but for several months of expenses to give yourself time to strategize without additional financial stress.

My hope is that when the world speeds up again, you hold tight to the insight you have gained during the pandemic. Learn to say “No” to the things that will take you off path and bring you stress. Guess what?! YOU are the business owner, YOU make the decisions, YOU have the final say. YOU don’t have to please anyone except for yourself.

Connect with me on IG and Facebook (@djpatterson). I would love to chat with anyone wanting to keep this conversation going.