After COVID-19 forced us to close our doors March 20, 2020 I had a hard time wrapping my head around what in God’s name was happening. A pandemic? Not something I ever thought I would experience in my lifetime.
It seemed to have come from out of nowhere and at almost lightning speed decisions were being made both by local governments and federal alike. Schools were closing, restaurants, gyms, dental offices…pretty much any and all businesses aside from those deemed “essential” services would be mandated to shut their doors.
Ack. I have to say I spend a week in full panic pity party mode. I had just finally built my business to a point where I could breathe after just over 3 years of my January 2017 opening date.
It was decision time. I took a deep breath.
I decided at that point I need to either continue to crumble and feel sorry for myself or make the decision to pivot. I thought ok, I have always thought it would be awesome for my members to be able to access our class formats when they travelled, couldn’t make it to the studio as life got in the way, or perhaps were enjoying cottage life during the summer. Now was the time. I immediately contacted my web designer and she began the process of getting to work building out the platform for Blue Sky on Demand.
In the meantime however, I needed a quick answer to keep membership engaged and fit during our closure as it would be some time before the virtual experience would be launched. In the days prior to our closing I encouraged all of our unlimited members to join our Blue Sky Inner Circle Facebook Group. It was here that my amazing Trainers helped by going “live” and engaging with our clients and assisted in recording videos that would get posted in the private group and eventually (after over 2 months of making videos….) get uploaded into our online platform Blue Sky on Demand. We had challenges, posted jokes, had happy hours and engaged in fun banter amongst one another.
During the first couple of weeks of closure, I spent most of my time loaning out our studio equipment to clients and making home deliveries of protein balls, bone broth, and farm fresh eggs. If I wasn’t making deliveries, I was at the studio filming classes or personal training online.
Alternatively, we ran outdoor Bootcamps Tuesday and Thursday evenings from May through September in St. Vital so that people could enjoy exercising in the fresh air while social distancing. This helped offset the costs of having to reopen at half capacity June 1st and the huge increase in cleaning costs with paper towels, wipes and hospital grade cleaners.
Truly, this entire experience for me has been both incredibly unsettling and incredibly wonderful at the same time. To know that you and your staff have built a community of such amazing, positive, kind, loyal and dedicated clients that truly want to see our little studio come out of this okay has been nothing short of awesome. I feel so incredibly blessed to have had the majority of my members stay on and support us throughout by maintaining their membership fees. Some even donated their passes back and purchased more! Others bought personal training packages to use after we reopened, and many purchased new apparel. Without my clients having done this I would not have survived.
Small business is so important in communities and in our economy. They are watching a dream to come to fruition and a place for relationships to be fostered and grow! Small business is like an iceberg….you don’t see all the work that went on below the water before you see the tip above which is akin to finally being able to come up for air!
COVID-19 has definitely had it’s challenges to date and will continue to do so. The silver lining is we wouldn’t have had the time to spend building up the virtual side to my business unless I was given the two months of studio closure to do so. That in itself was a gift to my small business!
