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Small Business Struggles: Two Personal Stories

Melissa Johnson: Oh My Cupcakes

You may listen to this conversation in its entirety here:

Lori Walsh: . Even if you haven't gotten sick yet or been tested for Coronavirus, the pandemic is impacting your life, your business, your job, your social life, your mental health. Today we talk with small business owners about how things have changed, and changed quickly. And we want to hear your stories, too, in business and education and how you're working with your kids and how you're handling your marriage at home. All those things. Y

Melissa Johnson is the owner of Oh My Cupcakes, in Sioux Falls. She often joins us on Mondays for a talk about mindset. And today we'll talk to her about how work is being challenged in the time of covid-19. Hey Melissa, how are you?

Melissa Johnson: Hey, good morning. I'm doing well. How about yourself?

Lori Walsh: I'm doing well. You feeling healthy? Every day that we're healthy is a good day, right?

Melissa Johnson: Every day we're healthy is a good day, yeah. You know, I'm going to admit for a quick second that I was a little bit annoyed with my mom this morning, just a little bit, when I called her and she said, "new adventures today." And I said, "do you mean just new adventures overall?" And she said, "every day is a new adventure." And it annoyed me for a little bit, and then I went, that's right. That's the attitude I need to adopt, every day is a new adventure.

Lori Walsh: It's a tough time to be a professional encourager, Melissa, I got to tell ya.

Melissa Johnson: Yes, I know. So I guess this morning my mom had to do it for me, to remind me of the truth, right?

Lori Walsh: . But you and I have talked about this many times about, we're human beings and we are vulnerable and being able to be vulnerable with each other is something we often resist. And all of a sudden it's like we don't have a choice because here it is. And all our, what we maybe considered ugliness or tears or fear or panic or nastiness, you see flashes of it as people are stressed and trying to figure out what the heck to do next.

Melissa Johnson: You do. And when people are stressed and when there's just fear and there's unknown, which is ahead of all of us right now, I mean, let's be real, I think that a little bit more of the truth of who we are comes through, in that we don't have time for pretense, we don't have [crosstalk 00:02:28] for... Whether that's a person who's prone to be kind, whether that's a person who is prone to be impatient, whether that's a person who's prone to be encouraging and loving and caring, those things really do come through. They're just magnified right now. They're magnified.

Lori Walsh: Let's talk about business and how this is affecting small business owners. Because you own Oh My Cupcakes, and also you know a lot of business owners really across the state with your work as a professional speaker and such. How is this affecting you and your business?

Melissa Johnson: You know, I tell you what, we have been... I will first and foremost say we feel so blessed and so lucky and I'm continually amazed at what this community is about, how we do come forward and support one another. Last week we remained actually quite busy and that was to the credit of so many different businesses in town who... Lifescape called the other day and they said, hey, we're picking one local business every day to support and we picked you today. So just so you know, the orders are going to start coming through. And they were orders of all different sizes, but I'll bet we had 25 orders just from the staff at Lifescape.

And it's those things that are really carrying us. They are carrying us financially, they're carrying us emotionally and just they're fully carrying us forward with the knowledge that we're still doing what we are supposed to do. And in that our mission statement is to shine God's love, to make people smile with cupcakes. That's what we do. And so to give us the opportunity to still do that has been really... It's encouraging. Hopefully we're sharing those smiles, but boy, I need the community to know that we feel those smiles right back.

Lori Walsh: Let's talk about mission a little bit, because there are so many doctors and nurses and nurse practitioners and healthcare providers and grocery store stocking clerks, making minimum wage. So many people are out doing their jobs right now and focusing on that mission and why they're doing that job, even in times when that specific job might put them at risk. Knowing why you're doing something is really important. Whether it's why you're trying to keep your business afloat or whether it's why you're reusing your personal protective gear in the emergency room. It's time for us to sit and think about why we're doing what we're doing. That's something that you and I have talked about a lot, yeah.

Melissa Johnson: Yeah. We talk about our why continuously, and so I think that's where it comes back to, what is your culture like as a team? Are you sharing that vision, sharing that mission continually? Because right now the cupcake ninjas, they know why we're there. They know why we're doing what we're doing each and every day. And so they are, again, they're like buoyed by that, if you will. They're lifted by that.

That being said, we also at the end of the day, we just make cupcakes. I mean, I'm oversimplifying it, but we just make cupcakes. And so I did put a message out today to the staff and just said, hey, I want you to know that you are bringing joy. You are bringing smiles to people. We're still celebrating special moments with getting phone calls like, it's my mom's 70th birthday and I can't be there with her, but I'd really like to send cupcakes. Or, I'd like to send cupcakes to my mom in the memory care unit. I mean, we're celebrating special moments with people.

However, I let everybody know that my dedication is to them as a staff and as people first. And so I said, with all that being said about joy and our why and all those special moments, if you do not feel that coming to work is in the best interest of you and your family, then please let me know and let's work with that. I just want to make sure that people are feeling loved, feeling cared for, feeling taken care of. And so that's really what we're trying to do. And I think that's a very difficult decision that many business owners are weighing right now.

I've said often, I'm trying to figure out what's best for everyone, but what's best, there are so many different factors to weigh, that I'm not sure what is best right now. Is it best to close our doors completely, to shut everything down, and then to risk staff having financial hardship? Is it best to keep our doors open and do the... We're disinfecting, we're sanitizing, we're socially distancing. I mean, we're doing all the things that we know we need to do so that we can still provide joy for people. I mean, Lori, it is so hard to weigh those factors and it keeps me up at night. And I know I have many business owner friends who are laying awake at night trying to think of what's best as well.

Lori Walsh: John T. Meyer said on the show, and I keep repeating it because I just think it's such a wise thing to say is that, every decision we make has an expiration date. And at that time you said of 24 hours, but sometimes the decision that you made in the morning is a different decision later on, because that decision had an expiration date because of how quickly things are changing.

Melissa Johnson: Yeah, I was just going to say that John T. Meyer is, he is a wise man, and I'm actually going to write that one down, because I need to remember that as well. That just because you make a decision right now, that doesn't mean that it's a permanent decision, and you have the right and the obligation to adapt as things change. So that's good stuff.

Lori Walsh: For businesses like yours who are feeling that love from the community and sending product out the door, what are the ways that you sort of lessen the risk? Do people wipe down boxes when they get them? How do you take some of those measures to make sure that what we're doing is the safest possible thing we can do with the information we have?

Melissa Johnson: Yeah, absolutely. No, that's a great question. We just, as of this morning, not that we had any dine in traffic anyway over last week, but we made it official this morning. We made it official and just moved all the chairs up and said no dine in traffic. And so we've added curbside pickup. If people don't feel comfortable coming in, we'd love to just run the box out to them. And then our deliveries that we're doing, we're doing no contact deliveries, where we'll set the cupcakes on your step. We'll let you know that they're there, but it's kind of like a really fun game of ding dong ditch, right? Did you ever play that when you were a kid?

I made lots and lots of deliveries on Saturday and I set the box down and I rang the doorbell and step back about 10 feet or so. And boy one of them, I tell you what, a guy came to the door and he said, "all right, this is awesome." And he was so joyful and that, again, that brought me so much joy.

But to go back to your question, we are, we're wiping boxes down. On Saturday I was wearing gloves in between or at each delivery, would change them in between each delivery. That way when I was touching doorbells or door handles at businesses, things like that, I could shed those gloves and go with a different pair the next time, et cetera. We have sanitizer in the car that we are, we're wiping down the boxes. And with that we've switched, we're trying to best utilize our resources right now, and we've switched to our plastic packaging, primarily using those. We have these lovely white paper boxes that gift really well, but the plastic packaging is obviously easier to wipe down. And so we've switched to that primarily. But we're just continually washing hands, gloves, distancing. We sanitize the customer screen between every customer so that we can make sure that there's no cross contact even between the guests that we have in the stores.

Lori Walsh: Melissa Johnson, owner of Oh My Cupcakes, and a professional encourager, which is a much in demand job, even if it's a tough gig right now. Melissa, thank you so much for your time. We really appreciate it.

Melissa Johnson: Oh, I appreciate you, Lori. Thank you so much and be well.

Kimberly Tilsen-Brave Heart-Etiquette Catering Company

You may listen to this conversation in its entirety here:

Lori Walsh: Let's meet another South Dakota business owner. Kimberly Tilsen-Brave Heart is executive chef and co-owner of Etiquette Catering Company in downtown Rapid City. Kimberly, welcome. Thanks for being here today.

Kimberly Tilsen-Brave Heart: Thank you.

Lori Walsh: A really difficult time to be in the business of helping people gather and celebrate those milestones in their life through catering; tell us a little bit about how the news of this pandemic and the response to it is really upending your business.

Kimberly Tilsen-Brave Heart: It has been really challenging. I would say that the first week of March we began getting lots and lots of cancellations, mostly from our out-of-state clients who were planning events here for executive events or retreats, a small wedding. And we were booked solid for March and April and all of our events have been canceled. We also do cooking classes and all of our cooking classes have been canceled as well. And it's been really challenging navigating these new waters. And what does it mean? Is there an end time to any of this? And are we going to continue to gather in the future? And what does that mean for all of us?

Lori Walsh: And for people, as we talk to every individual, we think about every industry, every business, that's one of the things that comes up again and again is the loss that people feel. You do more than bring people food. You help people have these really important milestones in their lives. These meetings where they gathered and learned the new thing, these weddings, excuse me, these rites of passage, you see that on a daily basis. It has to be heartbreaking.

Kimberly Tilsen-Brave Heart: It is. It's really heartbreaking. And I feel like one of the things that we specialize in at Etiquette is that we're just not the average catering company. We are a catering company that specializes in highlighting our local producers and really doing beautiful, gorgeous presentations with our food. And we really consider the details in everything that we do. And I feel a loss for even that, is just making beautiful food to share with people because I feel like that's my medicine that I share with the world. And I think of all of the people who have had to cancel weddings and business retreats. I had an event that we've been planning since August that was in March and it has been canceled. We've literally been planning it for so long and I just feel so bad for them because there's nothing that we can do.

But we all understand, also, the health and betterment for our community and people as a whole, that this is something that we have to go through in order for everyone to be well. And I think as business owners it is really challenging, that we're going through a lot of deep grieving and anxiety and anxious feelings. But I also believe that there is something that's going to come that is good from this and that's my belief, that we have to be hopeful.

Lori Walsh: Tell me a little bit about, we're hearing stories of people who are paying for things anyway. People who have jobs and are working through the crisis or have the means and had something planned, whether it was a haircut or a catering for event, where they're still writing the check and they're saying, "I'm going to pay for the service that I'm not going to get. We'll worry about that later." What kind of response are you seeing from your customers in your community that show them that they value you being in business?

Kimberly Tilsen-Brave Heart: Oh, we've had some. It honestly brought me to tears. I even had a client today who said, "I'm planning an event in October and I'm actually going to pay you for the entire amount today just to help you get through."

We've had other clients who have had to cancel and her saying, "We're paying you the total amount and we'll just figure it out when we're done because we don't want to see you close in the long term. We know that this is hard." And it's hard, especially for us that are blossoming businesses. We're very new and to go through something this intense in our early stages is really challenging. But the love and support that we've received from our customers, our community, our fellow business owners is unbelievable.

I get at least several texts a day who, people are just saying, "I'm thinking about you. Please keep sharing your beauty with the world," and giving me lots of different options to connect with them. I think it's a really beautiful thing and it makes me believe in our community and our state.

Lori Walsh: Could you say more about ... I love what you said about this is how you put beauty in the world. You put joy. This is your gift. And this weekend is ... My daughter's home from college now, thankfully, and I was just making food for her and I couldn't believe at how more lovingly I was doing that and how grateful I was to put a meal on the table. There are so many people now who are at home, many, I am no great cook, but starting to learn more and think more deeply and appreciate more fully their food and what goes into preparing it. This is something as executive chef that you live and breathe on a daily basis. Maybe that's one of the things that we take forward from this, is the art of just being together and making a meal out of maybe a lot less than what we're used to making a meal out of.

Kimberly Tilsen-Brave Heart: Yeah. I also think that this is the opportunity to be creative. And there are no wrong things to do in the kitchen. And this is the opportunity to say, "You know what? I may not have every aspect that I need for this recipe, but I'm going to just throw it in."

Kimberly Tilsen-Brave Heart: I just did the same thing. I was making lasagna for my kids and we go above and beyond, homemade noodles and all that. But we had leftover mustard greens and kale that needed to go, it was either that day or it wasn't going to happen. And so I just sautéed them with onions, threw them in with the Italian sausage and I felt good because not only was the lasagna delicious but it also, there was no waste and it included fresh vegetables for my children. And I was like, "Okay, today I'm winning as a mom." You know?

Lori Walsh: And every day that you sit down, and there's so many people who are food insecure right now and don't have those opportunities, and there's other people who are facing them for the first time, so reaching out to their local businesses as well to celebrate and honor them. Kimberly Tilsen-Brave Heart is executive chef and co-owner of Etiquette Catering Company in downtown Rapid City. Kimberly, keep us posted. I hope your business is well and others across the state. We appreciate you spending time with us today.

Kimberly Tilsen-Brave Heart: Thank you so much for taking the time. We appreciate it.

You can access all of SDPB's COVID-19 resources at www.sdpb.org/covid

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