Chapter 18: My Life In Business - The Pandemic Impact (2020)

My life as Co-Founder of Thirty-One

20 chapters from my 20 years

Including never before shared stories

The year 2020 started off like many before with a Thirty-One trip to a leadership meeting in another state. Warmer states were always welcome, so this year it was a visit to Dallas. The fact we had moved our Operations to Flower Mound, TX was a big reason for the location of this particular event.

I arrived a little early so I could get a quick trip to Waco in to visit the Magnolia Silos. I wasn’t the only one with that idea as everywhere I turned there were familiar faces I knew because of Thirty-One all over Waco. What a wonderful feeling to know and see so many people from all over North America simply because of a little business idea that turned into something so much greater.

We included a tour of the facilities for our sales leaders to see what it was all about. It was always much fun to open our facility for large group tours and to see their faces as they walk around.

What we didn’t see coming with a pandemic that would be unlike anything our world has ever seen.

My first journal entries about the COVID-19 Pandemic tell the story of how I was feeling and I have included them below:

March 13: “The world is going crazy. There is a pandemic called the Corona virus that is causing school closures, travel bans, shopping frenzies, etc. The two upcoming Thirty-One incentive trips are canceled. So we won’t be going to Palm Springs, CA for our smaller incentive trip or on the big incentive trip cruise (2nd cruise cancelation, oh my).

We are leaving tomorrow for a week in Seagrove Beach, FL and I’m actually nervous to have our family of 5 plus 3 of Jordan’s friends stay in a little condo together for a week. The virus is very contagious and once you’ve been exposed to have to be quarantined for 2 weeks. So people are stockpiling supplies in case.”

March 16: “Day 3 of vacation and restaurants are gradually restricting to only takeout or delivery. Movie theaters are closing and grocery store shelves are empty. The Gen Z’ers who are here in Florida for Spring Break certainly don’t have any idea what social distancing means. We are enjoying the beach time and the nice weather. Hoping the beach doesn’t actually get closed.” [The beach did get closed. This photo of Seagrove Beach was taken on Saturday during Spring Break]

March 21: “We returned from our Spring Break vacation a day early. The self-quarantining and business closures are getting real.”

March 27: “The world is consumed with social distancing, quarantining and self isolation. This last 10 days have felt pretty normal except that the kids have zero activities to go to. I’m sad for what has been cancelled, such as Jacob’s trip to D.C.”

April 19: “Every day feels much like the last during this quarantine. Today we were also supposed to set sail on our Thirty-One incentive trip cruise. It was cancelled of course.”

May 3: “We’ve been home constantly since March 21 when we came back from Spring Break in FL.”

The transition to online school for our kids was an experience. Our school did an amazing job making it as seamless as possible. We were blessed to only be on remote learning for six weeks but there was still some learning lost. My oldest was a Junior and we knew her upcoming Senior year was not going to be the least bit normal. Our youngest was in first grade and she would end up losing out on a lot of socialization which was sad.

While all the pandemic craziness was going on we were seeing a direct impact to our party plan based business since people were no longer opening their homes and inviting people in. The company had to make some big shifts, one of them was a substantial amount of staff (around 50%) being placed on furlough. The fact I didn’t even know what that term meant says a lot. It means they were likely going to be asked to come back to work eventually. In the meantime they would not be receiving a paycheck.

After so many years of having our annual conference gathering with our sales field, 2020 would be the first time we were required to change course and hold a virtual conference. Over 18,000 consultants joined us to watch all the normally in person elements of our event. It sure was a lot different than what we were used to experiencing.

My honest take on 2020 was that it was an extremely hard season of the business to navigate. While I was grateful to have been working remotely since 2014, most of my co-workers had only begun to figure out the world of remote access to do their job. We had Zoom calls with small groups as well as large groups. We had lots of one-on-one calls and chats through Teams.  No one had any idea how long this situation was going to continue. It was a difficult time to be in business when that business is about social selling and the world was about social distancing.