EntreLeadership - How to Rebuild Your Business When You’ve Lost Everything

Episode Date: October 9, 2026

Rebuilding a business after a major setback starts with how you respond under pressure. In this episode, head coach John Felkins talks with Chris Shrader about surviving devastating business challenge...s and the leadership lessons that helped him come back stronger.   Next Steps: • 🎯 Not sure what to do next in your business? Let’s figure it out together. Book a free 30-minute consult call with the EntreLeadership® Team. • 📞 Have a question for the show? Call 844-944-1070 or send us a message. • 📚 Order Dave’s most recent EntreLeadership book, Build a Business You Love. • 📧 Get EntreLeadership’s free weekly newsletter: expert advice and practical tips from the same playbook we used to build Ramsey Solutions into a $300 million company. • 🌎 Attend our world-class leadership conference, EntreLeadership Summit. • 📝 Stop guessing. Get a plan built for your business and someone who holds you to it. Find out which coaching option is right for you. • 📈 Bad hires. Strategies that never get off the ground. 60-hour workweeks. Sleepless nights. EntreLeadership Master Series is where you trade all that for the exact systems our Executive Team used to scale Ramsey Solutions to $300 million. Don’t wait until seats are sold out.   Connect With Our Sponsors: • Go to BELAY Solutions or text ENTRE to 55123 for their free resource! • See if Christian Healthcare Ministries Groups are the right fit for your organization. • Visit NetSuite today to learn more.   Listen to More From Ramsey Network: 🎙️ The Ramsey Show 💸 The Ramsey Show Highlights 🧠 The Dr. John Delony Show 🍸 Smart Money Happy Hour 💰 George Kamel   Ramsey Solutions Privacy Policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 If you want to learn Dave Ramsey's system for building a successful business, you need to be at Entree Leadership Master Series. Over five days, we'll walk you through the playbook. We've used to grow our company from a card table in Dave's living room to a $300 million a year company. It's one of my favorite weeks of the year. The energy in the room, the connections you make with other business owners, there's nothing like it.
Starting point is 00:00:22 Get your tickets by clicking the link in the description. Why shouldn't you make decisions based on fear and what does it really look like to overcome major challenges in your business? Well, there's nobody better to answer those questions than today's guest, Chris Schrader. Chris is a business owner from Middle Tennessee, and he has been through hell. I can't wait for you to hear this conversation, so let's get to it. Well, Chris Schrader, thank you so much for coming and joining us today. I am so excited for people to hear your story.
Starting point is 00:01:01 You're a guy who has had his business burned to the ground twice, You have beat cancer, and you just won't quit, man. Well, thank you for having me. I guess that's true. I don't know what else to do. Just keep going. Well, you surely do that. So why don't you tell us what your business is, how long you've been in business,
Starting point is 00:01:21 and just what y'all do? Okay. We own a dry cleaners down in Columbia, Tennessee, and we have six locations. We've been doing it since January 1 of 1997 when I took over. And we have a little uniform company where we do mats and towels and so forth and do a little bit of rental property. But that's what we've done for 30 years in January. How does the whole thing work? Okay.
Starting point is 00:01:46 What are the different pieces? So it's very heavy with labor. We have a main plant. Okay. And then we have what goes on there? That's where we produce everything. We do the dry cleaning, the laundry, the wet cleaning. What's wet cleaning?
Starting point is 00:02:00 Wet cleaning is where you take some clothes that can be put in water. and water-based cleaning. Okay. You know, a little bit different than a washing machine. Okay. But it can be wet clean because it helps get out more stains and so forth. But anything we do happens there on that facility. And that's, what, 30 miles south of here?
Starting point is 00:02:20 Yes. Right? Yes. And then you have retail locations. Yes. They're called drop stores, is what we call them, or dry stores. And it's a storefront where we take in clothes and let them out. You bring your clothes in, we take them in, we check them in there.
Starting point is 00:02:33 We go through the same process and all that. We bag them up. We take them to the plant in Columbia where they're processed, bagged, finished, and brought back into that location. So we have five of those. Okay. And then we do routes, commercial pickup delivery, home pickup delivery. We have five different vehicles. Now we have five different routes that we run all the way to downtown Nashville and picking up commercial and home delivery.
Starting point is 00:02:57 And then we also do commercial wash and fold, so forth. We do some hospital work. We do doctors offices. We do physical therapy places. We do all gene amnasium towels and stuff like that. Okay. Well, I'd love to just kind of walk through that journey and understand what it took to get to where you are today. So let's just start at the beginning.
Starting point is 00:03:19 Okay. I'd always wanted to be in business for myself. And I was back in school trying to finish up an accounting degree. And my wife was a teacher, and one of her students' parents, she'd become real close to. They had owned the dry cleaners. Okay. And I was not working. I was just going to school, and he had asked me to work part-time for him in the afternoons.
Starting point is 00:03:37 We did that, and then he offered to kind of go full-time if he bought another cleaners. And so I accepted on the basis that I could have ownership. Right off the back. Right off the back, because I wouldn't do it because if I had to stop school, I couldn't go back again. I knew I'd had to look for my future. Well, that didn't work out. And some things happened. I was there for about three or four years and had an opportunity from a day.
Starting point is 00:04:02 gentleman that had moved from New Jersey to Columbia to take over a cleaners. He had had a little bit of an investment in, but he wasn't going to lose any money to anybody. So he and his wife moved down from New Jersey, took it over, and then he and I just kind of hit it off. And in the middle of all of that, I had already quit my other job. And we worked out a situation where we could take it over, and he helped us get in the business. And the rest is history. How big was it when you took it over? It was doing about, we had four stores, and it was only doing maybe three or four hundred thousand then. And then within the first 24 months, we hit a million. And so we were just cruising along, rocking and going, you know, crazy.
Starting point is 00:04:44 What did you do to take it to a million so quickly? We advertised a whole lot and put our face on everything, our family, and it was a family business. And it just, it was just one of those moments that everything just fell in the line. And we started growing quick. I started doing home pickup delivery, which really took off. And so people just responded. And that's all I can say. I think you're underselling yourself.
Starting point is 00:05:05 No, I mean, it was hard work for sure. Yeah. But I've lived in that community all my life. My families that lived there for two or three generations. So we were known, well known. So that helped us a whole lot. And that part of the state was growing and still is growing. Oh, yeah.
Starting point is 00:05:19 A lot. Yep. Very much so. So how many folks did you have on the team at that point? At that point? We probably had 13, 14, maybe. If you think back to those days, what would you say was your biggest challenge? at that point.
Starting point is 00:05:32 We had to find a production facility. We were in a very small, about 12, 1,300 square feet, and dealing close to $100,000 a month was just like, so we were on top of each other, we couldn't move, it was just, you know, hitting each other bump, and so that was our biggest challenge was trying to figure out where could we go or what could we do. We found another building on the other side of town that was perfect. It was an old auto body shop, and it was just a great metal building with higher ceilings. And they were wanting to get out of it.
Starting point is 00:06:00 get out of it. They knew who you were. And so they gave us a great deal to take it over. So we were able to purchase that one. So that was around 2000. Okay. And so in one month, we shut down a plant, moved to plant, and moved into another drop store, and had to redo both of them. And I moved in my house. We moved our houses in the same time. So in one month, we moved a house. You had a lot going on. And was the team growing? Yeah. It took off real quick. We were able to add more employees once we got in the bigger plant, bigger area to work out of. And then I bought a small uniform company around 2001 or two. Okay. And started bringing that in to try to grow the business and get, you know, larger and pay bills and get to where we need to be. And that took off pretty
Starting point is 00:06:48 well. It's always just kind of done its thing. And in 2001, we got into restoration work. We started doing textile restorations, clothing. Okay. Homes that had smoke damaged, And that's where we really rocketed. I mean, we just took off. And we had to bring in about 10 or 11 more people to run that division. How many hours a week were you averaging personally? At that time, probably 60, not too bad. I was able to bring in a sales rep to sell for the restoration company.
Starting point is 00:07:21 Dry Clean just did its thing. It was easy. But brought in a sales rep to start selling. And then about that time, my wife got sick with Lyme. Lyme disease, really bad. And we had four little kids at home. So I brought in a friend of mine to run that division so I could have time to deal with that. And he took care of all those things.
Starting point is 00:07:39 And it still kept just growing, growing, growing. We got in, that was another one. We got at the right time. And we ran that until 2012. That was about the time I realized I didn't know where I fit in my company anymore. It all worked, and we were growing. But I didn't understand how to take that and mold that into. what it could really become.
Starting point is 00:08:01 Okay. On the financial side, on the investment side, so forth. And so, yeah, I just felt lost. I'd show up to work every day and go, okay, everybody good, everybody good. You know, you just kind of go do your thing. As a believer, I prayed to God. I don't know where I belong in this company or in this world anymore. I want you to help me figure out where I belong.
Starting point is 00:08:28 Do what you have to do. Well, he did it. And so we lost a salesman. We lost a million dollars in sales. He got your attention. Got my attention. And it just kept going. I was trying to figure out what we could do to recover from this and decided to sell the restoration company.
Starting point is 00:08:44 I just need to get that part off of me. It was just too much and go back to what we started with and let's see how we can deal with that. In December of 2012, we had a fire. The building burned. We lost everything. I mean, 100% just gone. It's just light a check. Personal property building, write a check,
Starting point is 00:09:04 and go figure out what you're going to do. I couldn't get over. It just kept getting worse and worse. We were running close to Nashville and Jals County, different places trying to get the clothes for our customers taking care of. And when I would drive to Nashville, I would have to pull over and take a nap. I was so tired.
Starting point is 00:09:22 I just couldn't function. So finally, I went to my doctor in early February, late February. and said, look, something's wrong. Y'all been giving me to antidepressants. It's not that. Something's wrong. I just don't feel right. And so they did some blood work.
Starting point is 00:09:37 Found out I had like zero iron, completely zero gone. She said, I've never had it as low in 25 years of practice. So you're anemic. I was very anemic. And so we did some testing and colonoscopy and found out I had colon cancer two months after the fire hit. Two months after the fire. Yeah. So this long line, it just.
Starting point is 00:09:58 just keeps happening, you know, you start off with losing people in sales and all that. And it was eye-opener. And so my wife, who was teaching school, had to come in the summer and ran the business and trying to recover from a fire and taking care of losses for customers. We had like 130-something claims on clothes and so forth. And she wrote a personal note to every single one of them apologizing for losing their clothes, you know, the fire. And, you know, it kept coming to my mind that through Entree leadership,
Starting point is 00:10:28 So Dave always says, don't make emotional decisions. Don't make decisions out of fear. And so that kept ringing in my head, and I finally just had to say, hey, enough's enough. What happens is going to happen? I'm going to work hard like I've always done to get this back where it needs to be. And so that got us through 2013. That's when we crossed paths, I think. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:10:53 You said you started to reach out. What was kind of the thing? I understand you had this moment where I got to let go. But then what caused you to start looking for solutions or looking to learn or looking to grow in your seat in the company? Because I assume you correct me, that's what caused you to reach out and engage with Entree leadership. Is that right? I'd already done one Entree leadership. So I was trying to start figuring this out before all this happened.
Starting point is 00:11:25 Okay. But I got back, I'd kind of just kind of let it die down, got back into it about 14. And so I did some coaching with you back then and went to two more Entrey leaderships, one in Orlando, one here. And felt pretty good about things, brought in someone else, sold off the restoration company at the very first of 2013, about the time I found out I had cancer. So we were making things smaller so we could control it. better. Yeah. What were some of the things that you took away from that, you think? From a book that you had had me read, I think managing by the numbers. Okay. Is what it was. Okay. Understanding P&Ls, understanding balance sheets, understanding how cash flow works became really important.
Starting point is 00:12:11 Entree leadership was great. I still listened to podcasts and all that. But I kind of just got to indulge them of, I'm here, do I want to fight this? What does it look like? Could I sell it? Could I move on with something else? And did that for three or four years. Okay. I mean, it just kind of, you know, I just kind of didn't care almost. Yeah. I had somewhere to go every day. And so it lasted up until about COVID. Okay. And then COVID hit.
Starting point is 00:12:37 What effect did that have on your business? Well, it just kind of reinforced. What can I do? I'm going to have to run it. If I'm going to stay in business, I didn't know if we'd be here in another year because they were trying to shut everything down. Our business dropped 75 percent, and what could we do? but I kept my employees working as much as I could.
Starting point is 00:12:58 What dropped off 75%? Retail sales. Retail sales. People just stopped getting their clothes cleaned. Yeah. Because they, why? Scared to death, and they didn't move. And when they weren't going to work, everybody went home.
Starting point is 00:13:10 They went virtual. And so they didn't need to wear khakis or dress shirts. They just wore pajamas, pretty much. Jeans or whatever. Just a polo to be on camera, right? Do you have to lay people off? We laid off. The only ones we had to lay off were our drop stores. We closed several stores. We moved in our Columbia area, we moved all three of those into one location, but we stayed kept that one open. We closed our other stores for a while, for about a month, and we realized we can't do this long. So we opened a back up. That kind of helped a little bit. We would run specials just trying to get things out there. But also, we started doing a lot of wash and fold. We started doing a lot of home things that people were doing at home. We started building our business around comforters. You know, those are an item that gets dirty real easy, and we try to do a special on that
Starting point is 00:13:59 cost. We do $19. We're typically like 40, but we can do it for 19 and be okay with that. And that's where we started picking up those kind of things. My commercial business stayed, that was the 25%. That helps us through a whole lot. But the household wet cleaning kind of things, wash and fold, comforters, sheets. We press a lot of sheets for customers.
Starting point is 00:14:21 You start to come out of COVID, but you still feel like you're just kind of going through the motions. In the middle of COVID is when I had my Great Awakening, so to speak. Okay. I hooked up with a friend of mine that had been the restoration company or business when I was there. We had a franchise. He had one as well. And he had gotten out about the same time I did. And he had a large business up in Kansas and started working, doing some helping people market.
Starting point is 00:14:48 And so, you know, after spent a little bit of time, with him, I realized more than his dry cleaners, we're a marketing company now. I mean, it completely changed our whole view of what we're doing. Well, print had gone away for the most part, so you're not going to put something in paper like we used to back in 97. And so he helped me understand how to market, digital marketing, using our social media marketing. And so at that time, it was the same time that one of my daughters'
Starting point is 00:15:21 graduated college. Of course, COVID was happening, no jobs. So she came to work and took over all the marketing full time and start working with this. And so by doing that, we just found a whole new world of cleaning. It was amazing when people start finding you and you know how to find them. Google ratings are so important. We had never done anything like that. So we started pushing those things, understanding how to, you know, Google ratings are so important. We didn't ever, we had never done anything like that. So we started pushing those things, understanding how to, do Google AdWords and the social media posts and so forth. And when that started taking off, and for the first time of my life, I'm like, I've got to raise, I was always scared to raise prices. You know, they hit you with that. You're a small business. You can't raise prices.
Starting point is 00:16:04 Well, everybody else is. I said, I've got to at this point. And so we started raising our prices, trying to get them to where we could pay our bills. And so all that started jelling. And at the same time, my son-in-law, who wasn't my son-in-law at the time, but now my son-in-law came into business, business and we were doing two routes basically. Okay. Started managing my routes.
Starting point is 00:16:26 Started expanding rather than contracting through all this. We figured out how to do that, get harder, take it to their home, quit worrying about the stores. We started pushing that. And we now have five delivery routes with him. And then in 22, my oldest son had been the fireman for seven years and was ready to get out of that. He came back in the business and wanted to be a part of it. He learned what it was like out there in the real world, which is what I wanted it. He came back.
Starting point is 00:16:55 And so now, after all that, we were able to start putting the pieces together. It helped me understand the pieces. Dave helped me understand the marketing, some of the financial side of it, that I knew, but I just weren't applying to the business. And so what I did was we had a marketer. I then had a retail manager to handle the retail stores. I had a route manager or developer that was taking care of that. We were growing that way.
Starting point is 00:17:20 And then we had somebody inside the plant that was kind of running a plant and kind of being a general manager. And that put me in a whole different seat I'd never been in before. Yeah. My daughter McKenna has just come back in and taken over the retail stores and some of the financing stuff, which has allowed me to really devote my time to looking at the business from a 30,000-foot view. And I've also started coaching other people, mentoring other folks to get to where they need to be. So that's fun. You know, we grew from 21 to 25. We grew ourselves 150%, which got us right back up, you know, where we could manage and run.
Starting point is 00:17:59 We'll get right back to our episode, but first, as your business grows, everything gets more complex. There was a time when we had too many disconnected systems and not enough visibility across the business. We wasted time chasing information instead of making decisions. That's why we got NetSuite. NetSuite brings your financials, inventory, CRM, and more together in one place. More than 44,000 businesses run on NetSuite, including Ramsey Solutions. And now they're taking the next step with NetSuite Next, making it easier to put AI to work across your entire business. NetSuite Next automates routine work like following up on overdue accounts,
Starting point is 00:18:45 and with NetSuite Next, AI is built into every business. everything you do so you can ask questions just like you're talking with a member of your team. You'll have the information you need to make decisions faster. That means less busy work and more time growing your business. And right now you can try NetSuite Next for free. If your revenue is at least seven figures, go to netsuite.aI slash Ramsey. That's netsuite.aI slash Ramsey. Now, let's get back to the episode. You know, as you talk about all those different seats on the bus where you, you know, you finally had somebody to be responsible for that, we talk about the phase of business or the stage of business, the trailblazer stage. And it is the stage where scale really happens. And, you know, one of the things that we say that has to be in place for that scale to happen is a good leadership team. And you just told that story so perfectly better than I could because that sounds like that's exactly what happened. And it was so eye-opening when you start seeing that happen and people are taking responsibility
Starting point is 00:19:54 and they're owning it and running it. And it's not a day-to-day issue for me. It's helping them grow. It helps the company grow. And good things just start flourishing from that. Well, I know we've got one more big chapter to talk about that's recent. But I think as I listen to your story, whether it be COVID, losing 75, percent of the business, a fire, beating a cancer diagnosis. Can you reflect back on certain moments
Starting point is 00:20:27 that you have had where you thought to yourself, I don't know if we're going to pull through this? A lot of different ones there. We've been so blessed that from day one, when we took over the company, we've not ever had to borrow cash flow to operate. And man, I don't want to ever jinx at, but, you know, we've been so blessed with that. And we've tried to run a tight ship so that, because if you bar it, you've got to pay it back, you know, you get in those situations. So that's been good. My philosophy in the business is always, too, because where I came from, great guy, loved him to death, just got in over his head and lots of things, and I watched them go downhill, and it killed me. However, I learned a lot of stuff, not to be. I learned a lot of stuff,
Starting point is 00:21:16 to do from that as well. And so I've always tried to have more assets than I've got liabilities for sure, that if something ever happened, we had a way out. I never wanted to leave somebody hanging. And so my wife and I always, we would talk about that, where our assets at, where our assets at. So we try to keep that.
Starting point is 00:21:35 That's kept us in tune too, as far as should we expand here, should we do that when you start getting across that? And then as far as just a, I don't talk to my wife a whole lot about the number side of things because she's a worrier. And so there have been times that we break down and we talk and go through things, especially like the fire and other things, the cancer. And there's points of time where she gets involved where she needs to be. And I want her there as much as she wants. However, I want to be a mom more than anything. So she raised our children at home. So we've been so blessed. And I can write a book on
Starting point is 00:22:16 on how we got into this, I just gave you the cover of it. Because the things that happened behind the scenes that made that work is people go, are you kidding me? So we've had a lot of challenges, but we've had more blessings with those challenges that makes me have to say, it's okay, it's fine, I'm good, I'm good. I don't deserve any of this. And that's the part that keeps me grounded a lot.
Starting point is 00:22:42 It's about people, It's about, you know, my goal is for us to become a legacy business. I started this from somebody else. I'm a first generation. And my goal is to make sure my kids are grounded enough that they can take this to another generation. And if they can do that, then I've succeeded and make sure they stay grounded as Christians. That's more important. The one thing that we talked about when my wife and I did start this business, we had a choice of she could go back to a college.
Starting point is 00:23:14 and be admissions director. There was a dry cleaners in Franklin that a guy wanted me to lease from him to take over, and then the business I'm in now. And our prayer was, wherever God wants to be in this world, choose it for us, and make it clear. Well, they gave the job to somebody else at the college, so she didn't have to worry about that. The other guy, it just kind of fell to the side, and this is where we ended up. And then the day we signed on the paperwork, we said to each other, we have no excuse, to help others now because this is our destiny.
Starting point is 00:23:47 We chose this, God put it in front of us, and what we do with this is that we're gonna be accountable for. And working for ourselves, we can't blame anybody else, and this is what we have to do. And that was in December of 1996. So how often do you think back to that conversation? Constantly. Because I feel sometimes I'm not doing enough,
Starting point is 00:24:10 and I'm like, I gotta real line, gotta realign, I realigned. Yeah, it's always in my head. And the part, too, with like, again, Entree leadership, and I'm not trying to say this because we're on this podcast, but there's so many nuggets that stick with you, you know, and the one for me was you don't do anything out of fear. Don't do anything out of fear.
Starting point is 00:24:32 Don't make a decision out of fear or emotion. And that's hard for me because I'm an emotional person. I'm a very emotional person. And so I have to repeat that to myself a whole. lot and what we got didn't happen overnight so it's not going to go away overnight. I'm trying to think it's been three weeks a month, something like that. Three weeks today. Three weeks of the day? 10 o'clock last night would be three weeks. Oh wow. Well, I had called you just before that, I think, and said, hey, Chris, you know, like we'd love to catch up, would love to maybe even have
Starting point is 00:25:06 you on the show. And then the next thing I know, you have a fire again. Yep. Tell me about that. Well, it's unbelievable, you know. They say light and don't strike twice. Well, I'm like the guy in great outdoors. It's 67 times, I guess. But, you know, it was totally, of course, unexpected for anybody. And I got a call at 10 o'clock, Thursday night, three weeks ago, and it's my son.
Starting point is 00:25:35 And he said, Dad, get the cleaners now. We have a fire. I said, what? He said, Dad, we have a fire in progress. get to the store now. And so we live about three or four miles away, and my wife says, I'll meet you there, and I got my truck, and I took off. What are you thinking as you drive you?
Starting point is 00:25:53 Here we go again. I cannot believe this. You've got to be kidding me. What? Because, you know, you have occasionally odd things that aren't anything that's not bad. But I knew the way my son was talking, it was bad. It wasn't good. And so I took off and I got about two miles, about halfway there, and I could see smoke in the air.
Starting point is 00:26:19 And I got about a mile away and I could smell smoke. And I'm like, oh, my goodness. And I just punch it even harder. And I get there. And when I get there, there's fire coming out of the roof. There's smoke around the whole building. That's a 16,000 square foot building. And there was smoke billowing all the way around it, you know, out of it.
Starting point is 00:26:35 They brought in fire trucks from three counties. I think there was 12, how many, 12 or 15 fire trucks there. I can't remember. But, and it's just, I just sunk. And so it's funny to talk about this because I have a breakfast with my dear friends every Friday morning. He asked me about that. He's a counselor.
Starting point is 00:26:54 And he said, how are you? And I said, you seem really okay with this. And I said, well, what can I be other than okay? And that night, and this is a lot of stuff I don't talk to my fan about, so if they see this, they're going to go, you know, what? But when I pulled up, immediately I said to myself, this is not about me anymore. This is the livelihood of my whole family. This is the choice we made to be in.
Starting point is 00:27:19 So you cannot panic. You cannot get upset. You've got to roll with it and take on this and make sure that everybody's okay and that we're going to be okay. And so— Was that—did that feel like added weight, or did it feel like almost like freedom to just operate and do what you needed to do? You know, it just hit me. It hit me like a ton of bricks, but it was calming.
Starting point is 00:27:46 Okay. Because I knew I could do it, and I knew I felt that way, and that's where it was. You know, and that's not to say the next morning, I get up on Friday morning, and I get out of the shower, because we can get home at about 2 o'clock. I get up about 5.30, and Michelle's like, are you okay? And I just lost it, and she just started hugging me. And I said, it's okay. I've just got to have this moment. Let me get it out with you.
Starting point is 00:28:11 And then we're moving on. And so we did. And, you know, I got my truck and we went to work and started doing what we got to do. It started in a wall, we believe. They're still trying to figure it all that out. But, you know, it's just one of those things. My son took it very personally. He took it personally like I did on the first one.
Starting point is 00:28:31 That was my first one. And so, you know, it bothered me about that. And he's okay now, but he took it really personally because he's in charge of that whole building. So was he worried that it was his fault? He just felt like it was his fault. It wasn't. It was nobody's fault. It was going to happen.
Starting point is 00:28:49 And so, you know, he's okay now. But it's good. It's going to be okay. We've got insurance. And, you know, I don't know where that leads us 100% now. We're looking at about a year to recover apparently. However, we are producing. We're back to full production, which,
Starting point is 00:29:06 That's that part of the building didn't burn as bad as everything else. So we got all of our employees and gotten there and just clean the scrub the building down as much as we could. We may have to replace everything in there. However, we're able to use it. The insurance company says do use it because it helps them. And so, but we're back to normal business, which makes a lot of, helps a whole lot with everybody's emotions because you're doing something. You're busy. You're functioning.
Starting point is 00:29:30 You're taking care of your clients. Our clients are really important to us. And so that's the largest part. we can work, just work. You're starting to see light at the end of the tunnel, or is it still feel like you're in the belly of the beast? We'll be there for a while. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:29:44 But, you know, so far, everything, our insurance companies, has been very helpful, and they're trying to do what they can do to help us get where we need to be, and we just, we've just got to get through it. Yeah. But total different from the first one. Sum that up for me. How is it totally different than the first one? How to deal with it?
Starting point is 00:30:02 Where do you go from here? And then we had to deal with a cancer portion where the, where the first one? in six weeks of that. And so it was just a, everything was just a jumble. And it was like it wasn't real. And so, but we made it through it. We knew we made it through it. And so now we know we're going to make it through this one. Yeah. You know, a lot of people watch this and, and there's got to be other people that are hurting or in a tough time in their business. And I think you are uniquely qualified to speak to them. What would you want to say to somebody that's, uh, you're not going to say to somebody that's going through, you know, maybe their first, you're an old pro at rough times,
Starting point is 00:30:42 even though you don't want to be. We wrote the book. What would you want people to know that we're struggling with whatever the challenge is in their business? You know, for me, you've got to have your faith. You've got to have something to hold to. If you don't have that, then there's nothing left to hold to. It's just money and it's just a business.
Starting point is 00:31:02 You've got to lean hard into that. You've got to lean hard to the people around you. And then again, it goes back to the day saying, don't make emotional decisions. That's when we get in trouble. You have to be able to look at numbers, understand the numbers, understand what you're doing,
Starting point is 00:31:15 what can I do different, what can I add to what I'm doing? And just one piece at a time. You know, I was in a coaching call yesterday with a gentleman that took over a business and he's trying to get it going, and we do a 90-day blueprint
Starting point is 00:31:27 to where we try to look at the business every quarter. What can you do this quarter? It's got 13 tabs on it. And so I said, let's throw this away. Let's go to seven. And then we rewrote the tabs. And, you know, because he was like, I need to do this. And I said, look, just start with one.
Starting point is 00:31:41 So whatever your business is, start with one. There's one thing you know that's in top of your head that you can do different. Start with that and then start picking off the ones below it as you finish that one. And just, you know, hold tight to it. And, you know, you were there before this happened. You were better. Hard times don't last forever. Good times don't last forever.
Starting point is 00:32:01 But you're in that valley and you just got a good. up to the like the book the peaks and valleys you got to get back to that peak and get to the point where you can make the valley smaller i love it thank you so much chris it's a fantastic story well i'm sure you wouldn't uh trade the experience for anything but you wouldn't have chose to do it you know for anything either would you no you don't know it till you go through it so it makes us better thank you for having me yeah thank you appreciate it yes sir if you're a business owner that's going through a tough time or just trying to figure some things out, we have an entire coaching team that can walk with you through that season. So if you want to check that out,
Starting point is 00:32:41 hit the link in the description below and schedule a 30-minute consultation call with our team. And if you like this episode, make sure that you like, share, and subscribe for more real-world leadership content.

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.