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

Chapters

• 1:03 Decision to close the business
• 1:31 Two closure approaches compared
• 2:48 Business closure implementation plan
• 6:01 Defining success in closing down
• 7:55 Final thoughts and moving forward

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:32

All right, well, happy evening. So papers are filed yeah, they're filed, wow. And now the next step of how do we figure it out? So, talking with advisors and colleagues, there's two ways that we can either tell people that the business is shutting down. There's two ways that we can either tell people that the business is shutting down. The first one is basically a blindsiding and people find out and it's like a shocker and it's over before people even realize it happened. The second one is to give people lead time, just a heads up time to do last goodbyes, last classes and all that stuff.

Speaker 1: 1:13

The pros of blindsiding is we get to do all the prep work, we get to control everything, and everything is turned off and unplugged before they hear the news. It reduces the toxic communications, decreases the likelihood that people just start spamming us or harassing us because they're mad that the gym closed down. And the con is that it doesn't really give people the closure or the peace of mind that they may want, especially if they've been there a while For the slow wind-up. There's pros and cons. The pro is that people can say their goodbyes, final hugs, they can close things up smoothly and easily and it's not a shock to everyone's system and it's not a shock to everyone's system. The con, though, is that people can now murmur, gossip, spread slander, libel, tag each other on toxic social media, and we're having an election a few days. People are already anxious and on edge and just allow things to fester and spiral out of our control. I say our, I mean my family's control. So I talked with a few advisors, got their input Across the board. It was unanimous.

Speaker 1: 2:21

Unfortunately, this is a business. This is not a personal life decision. This is a business. No one's livelihood is at stake. No one relies on the gym, for Our most highest paid instructor makes or works maybe like six classes a week, so a hundred bucks a week, so it's not gonna pay 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's reliant on us for that. We're in an area where there's tons of gyms, both group fitness as well as big box and small box, so there's not going to be like a desertion of fitness activities in the area, and there's nothing proprietary that we offer people can't get elsewhere Supplements, shirts, workout classes. People can find a replacement experience within three miles, so that's where that's at.

Speaker 1: 3:17

This may sour things with corporate because I'm blindsiding them, but it's probably cleanest too when there's the least amount of brand embarrassment on everything. So it sounds terrible because it's not how I would. I never would have seen myself doing this. But the plan right now is to what day is it? Today's Wednesday? So, um, I'm playing phone tag with the lender and landlord.

Speaker 1: 3:43

Um, the goal is Saturday is going to be the last day of classes. Nobody knows it. But then on Sunday, when we get back from our trip to Nebraska to see family, I'll go to the studio, put a sign up that says the business is closed permanently and then I'll go home. On Sunday I'll turn off the social media channels, I'll delete the business page, I'll delete the members only group, I'll change the usernames and passwords to all of our platforms, like gloves or supplements or whatever, because that stuff, I don't want staff to start making purchases if they were tempted to, and then I'll tell the landlord. And then I'll send a couple emails. One I'll send an email blast to all the members. That'll be like Sunday late afternoon.

Speaker 1: 4:34

Right before that or after that, I'll send an email to everyone who has a key to the building so managers, cleaners, saying like, hey, please return your key if you visit the property, it will be considered trespassing by the landlord. So, for your benefit, I advise to not do that. Then have an email between all of the vendors so mainly landlord, bank, corporate Telling everyone hey, we've shut down the business, done personal bankruptcy and if you have any further questions, here's my attorney and here's how to reach him. That way, people don't even reach out to me because I have no answers for how to get pennies on the dollar, anything else, anything else. I don't think so Right now.

Speaker 1: 5:23

I was thinking it sounds like a weird question to ask, but I was thinking about what are we trying to pursue? What's the goal? What are we going to deem like a success from shutting the business down? It's going to be people not barraging us with questions, emails and calls and texts when we don't have those answers. It's going to be reducing toxic gossip, deceit and lies amongst each other. Um, it's going to be giving people a time to go find their next place to work out without confusion or ambiguity or hope that the business can be saved because it can't, and not having this be a social media distraction. So that's why we're going to cut off all the channels and all of the vendor passwords beforehand so that once people get the update, if they want to cause gossip or anxiety or whatever, they can do that calling each other. They can do that. Having tea with each other. They can do that. Having brunch on Tuesdays. Whatever the members want to do on their personal time on their own platforms, it's all up to them, but they don't need to do that on my business page or in my social media channels. That's the game plan.

Speaker 1: 6:44

As you can tell, it's been a long day. Tomorrow's going to be a great day. We're going to have time with family. We're going to do some drafting over the next few days of content PR releases for members. I also don't want to end up on the local news, because that's not the intention by this at all. So hopefully another thing like that happens. But this is, it's a strategy we're going to do and I'll let you know. I'll let everyone here listening know how it went, if that was the right decision or if I have remorse down the road, if I wanted people a place to vent about my business closing and for them to complain about it. We'll see how that goes. So let's go get some sleep. We'll see how that goes. Let's go get some sleep. We're going to go prep for tomorrow and enjoy life. That's where we're at, that's where we're going. That's rock and roll.