--- title: "How to Adapt During an Emergency: A Special Website 101 Podcast" date: 2020-04-28T05:00:00-04:00 author: Sean Smith canonical_url: "https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-03/episode-3/adapting-during-an-emergency/" section: Podcast --- <!\[CDATA\[YII-BLOCK-BODY-BEGIN\]\]>[Skip to main content](#main-content)Season 03 Episode 3 – Apr 28, 2020 26:06 [Show Notes](#show-notes) ## How to Adapt During an Emergency: A Special Website 101 Podcast  0:00 0:00 1.0x 0.75x1.0x1.25x1.5x2x [](//dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/website101podcast.com/uploads/mp3/season-03/02A-Adapting-During-an-Emergency.mp3) A special out of sequence episode of the Website 101 Podcast where we talk about being nimble and adapting during an emergency ### Show Notes Recording on Sunday April 26, 2020 during the height of the Covid-19 self isolation. We discuss how business is going and the impact that the Covid-19 epidemic and social isolation is having on us and our businesses. We then discuss some ideas and strategies to use for the future. ### Timestamps \[00:00\] Intro \[01:03\] Mike's personal impact of COVID-19 \[04:30\] Recording the episode and Mike's wife's unemployment news \[05:28\] Discussion on how to pivot during an emergency \[06:43\] Building and maintaining relationships with clients and customers \[25:27\] Outro ### Show Links - [Ecommerce with Shopify](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-02/episode-10/ecommerce-with-shopify/) - [Building Trust in Trying Times](https://www.thebusinessofauthority.com/episodes/charles-green-building-trust-in-trying-times) Powered Transcript Accuracy of transcript is dependant on AI technology. **\[00:00\]** **Sean:** Hi, and welcome to a special out-of-sequence website 101 podcast. Today, I'm with Mike Mele, as always. Mike, how's things going? Hey, how you doing? Great. So today, we've decided that we're going to do a special episode that we're going to record on Sunday and release on Tuesday between our regular episodes. And this episode, if you looked at the title, is called adapting during an emergency. So we're kind of obviously talking about what everybody else is dealing with, COVID-19, state home orders, you can't run your small business. So we've been doing some thinking and we've got some ideas about how the web can help you and things like that. And so just before we recorded Mike told me he had something to share but he didn't want to tell me the details of it until we started recording and apparently it's topical so he got some news business **\[01:03\]** **Mike:** related and Mike you're okay yeah right so it's just kind of I guess I don't know coincidental ironic whatever we were recording a different episode just yesterday you and I and on that call yeah during that recording you would ask me the typical stuff and how you getting by and blah blah with work. So moments after, okay, first let me set up a little bit, I am self-employed more or less. My wife and I own a company that we both work for. It's just the two of us. But basically, I do the web stuff. She does, she edits TV shows. That's her job. So she has various other clients, you know, but we run the work through the same business. Anyway, she, like many people, has been laid off recently because the show that she was going to edit can't shoot. They can't send a crew into wherever they're going to go because of all the social distancing stuff. I imagine the entire **\[02:05\]** **Sean:** entertainment industry is just yeah. Bottom down pretty much and in fact hers is compounded because **\[02:12\]** **Mike:** the show she was going to be working on was set in the States. So now that the border is closed they There's lots of reasons I can't shoot, so anyway, she got laid off and they basically told her, okay, as soon as we can get up and running in the summer or after the summer, whatever, and start shooting again, we'll give you a call and you can come back to work. So, and I have her permission to tell this story, but fast forward to yesterday, I just finished the recording with Sean here. And my wife flocks into my office, which is here in my house, with a bottle of bourbon and two shot glasses and pours two glasses. She has drink this before **\[02:55\]** **Sean:** I tell you what I have to tell you. Oh my God. So we down this, these two whiskeys and she says, **\[03:04\]** **Mike:** I just got noticed from my employer with whom I was supposed to go back after everything went back to normal. And they said, you know what? We've decided we're shelving this entire project for two years. The project she was supposed to go back to. They're not doing it. So basically she doesn't have a job to go back to. Now that's not so bad. Like she, you know, she gets clients just like we do. Like there might be someone else, some other show that wants her whatever. However, she started talking to a lot of her editor friends and colleagues, and apparently they were basically all told the same thing about everything they were working on. From what I understand, the reason is a lot of the TV networks have decided to run reruns for the next year instead of shoot new material. Which means any job that is available for TV now has this huge pool of people to compete with because they're all trying to find that work. Anyway, so there's a long story, but that's the gist of it and I was like, oh man, it's a bummer. Now, again, many people are in a much worse situation than us. We have savings and whatnot, but it's part of the timeliness of this particular recording that that went on, that happened just yesterday because we were already talking about recording this, right? **\[04:30\]** **Sean:** You and I, they're recording. right after we finished recording, we had a discussion, hey, we should do this topic. **\[04:36\]** **Mike:** Yeah. And then you get the bottle of bourbon dropped down **\[04:41\]** **Sean:** in front of you on a bombshell. **\[04:42\]** **Mike:** Yeah, the bourbon was great, but the rest of it, you know, yeah, it was a bit of a bummer. So that's the story. Again, it's, you know, maybe other people are going through. I know, personally, a lot of other people are going through much more difficult stuff than that. And I'm sure a lot of our listeners who are running small businesses that are, you know, have a lot of customers, Again, that's probably a much bigger deal than what we're going through, but again, my point is just that it's affecting everybody. **\[05:08\]** **Sean:** Well, absolutely, and that's huge. Your wife is basically unemployed for the foreseeable future, so your household income, you're down to one earner from two. I mean, that's tough. Yes, and we have the... A lot of people are gonna be in the same situation. You need to have a plan for that. **\[05:28\]** **Mike:** And here in Canada anyway, we have various subsidies available through the government to help people out and we're going to be taking advantage of that like everyone else is if we need to but yeah I mean it's hard to know what's going on in the future what's you know three months from now what's going to happen how much income there will be for anybody so yeah we thought we'd make this a special episode where we give you some tips about you know how you can sort of pivot during an emergency situation like this. **\[05:59\]** **Sean:** Exactly, and while I am not immediately impacted by this kind of thing, it's been at the front of my mind that I've got a lot of projects lined up, but these were lined up ahead of time, and just like it happened to your wife, they could stop unexpectedly, or I finished those projects, and then I can't get any more work because everybody else is in the same thing. So while I'm doing fine now, I also need to plan for the future because I don't know what's going to happen. Yeah. Me too. And so this is something everybody needs to be thinking about whether you're doing well or everything is tanked and you're worried about paying next month's rent. **\[06:43\]** **Mike:** Yes. **\[06:44\]** **Sean:** Absolutely. So, you know, everybody has these concerns for the future, and you need to have plans about how you're going to deal with that, and part of that is maybe reaching out to your clients and saying, hey, you know, we're still here, we're going to try and help out. What can we do to help you? I don't know how many emails I've gotten from whatever companies I've done business with or signed up for their newsletter that are like, hey, we're here for you during COVID-19. Really? Are you there for me? I questioned the authenticity of it, especially the one that I received last week. **\[07:29\]** **Mike:** Yep, that's here. **\[07:30\]** **Sean:** That's right. So years and years ago, I was using a hosting company which I shall not name. And I left that hosting company because they turned to bad and things just didn't work out. But I got an email from them basically begging for business and telling me that they are there for me. I was like, I haven't done any work with you or paid you any money in over 10 years. **\[07:59\]** **Mike:** And they held on to your email address and got that information apparently. **\[08:04\]** **Sean:** So my point here is that if you're going to engage Your clients or your potential customer base make sure that you're doing it in a way that's authentic. Yeah You know you you want to be there for for your clients and customers or you want to put out that perception that that's great and Everybody probably wants to do the same thing, but it shouldn't be Cheesy or cliche. There should be some authenticity there for you. Maybe you can offer a special deal Hey, you know what, during COVID-19, during this lockdown, we're going to offer 20% off this if you do X. **\[08:46\]** **Mike:** Yeah, that's a great idea. **\[08:48\]** **Sean:** But going back and putting out, you know, these, what's the word I'm looking for? Tacky tacky not condescending, but I don't know tacky. That's a tacky cheesy We're there for you. Yeah, look. This is not the friend's theme song **\[09:10\]** **Mike:** And it's especially like that example you just gave is a case in point here is that you know It's especially tacky when you haven't been in Communication with those clients for a very long time and now all of a sudden you're reaching out You know, because it feels like you're just kind of taking advantage somehow, so and this is something for future Emergencies that's to sort of prepare for future emergencies like this Be sure to to stay in contact with your your clients your customers, whatever Especially if you have a newsletter like don't let it happen very rarely and then sort of jump out of the woodwork When they're whenever there's an emergency make sure you maintain that contact so it doesn't feel at a place **\[09:54\]** **Sean:** Yeah, and if you don't have a newsletter maybe now is a good time to start it if you're if you haven't got one They're relatively easy to start you could sign up for a service like Mailchimp or constant contact or whatever And they have templates available you start yet you have your newsletter ready you add the con the Enrollment form to your website and if you're a do it yourself further There'll be a lot of WordPress plugins that'll help you with that now. You're not gonna have any subscribers right now But it's going to be a way that as people come to your business in the future, you're going to have that list. Yeah. If you've already got an email list, it might be time to start planning out more emails and trying to get a regular schedule. I ran my email list, which has a very small subscriber base. I did about almost two years. I would send out one or two a month. And then I stopped doing it because it was getting really hard to me to keep it up yet As a company of one, it's hard to do that. Yeah, if you have more employees You can devote more time to that or get some ideas from them But a newsletter is good as long as you are doing it Regularly and authentically. Yeah, and I can't stress **\[11:12\]** **Mike:** Authenticity enough. Yes, and and also on that note going back to your personal story with this, with the hosting company, maintain your email address lists as well. Like, if, you know, make sure you don't just set it up as like, oh, well, whatever, whoever signs up is just permanently on there forever. You know, maybe once in a while, check and make sure that someone is actually reading. If, you know, if you have an email subscriber on there, and you, because they can, all of the email services can see whether or someone has opened your emails and whatnot. So just checking if there's a particular person who never ever opens them, it's probably a good idea to just remove them from the list. **\[11:54\]** **Sean:** Yeah, you might want to prune your list if somebody hasn't read an email from you in, say, six months or a year, depending on the frequency. And I know there's a podcast that I listen to and the guy said, yep, you know, I prune my email list once a year. If you haven't opened it in the last year or six months, I forget what he said. I remove you. I want to know who's actively interested. And I'm also on this guy's email list. I don't open all of them, but once in a while I will open one on purpose because I don't want to get unsubscribe. **\[12:28\]** **Mike:** Well, the truth is a lot of, you know, one of my gripes in the web field, this is a bit of a tangent, but is pop up things where you're like reading an article all of a sudden this big thing pops up right in front of the article that says, hey, why don't you subscribe our newsletter. That just drives me spare. I can't stand that stuff. And when I speak to people who do those kind of tactics, web developers, often what they say is, well it works. People sign up that way. And my response is always, okay, but the question is, what do you consider a successful conversion? It probably shouldn't just be getting someone to sign up. It should be getting someone who becomes an active subscriber and actually reads your material. And from what I understand based on the data, the people who do sign up through those pop-up ads tend to be much less active in the newsletters than people who seek out your newsletter form. Hi, hope you're enjoying this episode. We're always looking for topic suggestions from listeners, so if there's anything you'd like us to discuss in the future, please let us know. **\[13:35\]** **Sean:** We're also looking for guests. If you know somebody who would make a great guest, if you think you you would be a good guest. Please let us know. You can reach out to us at website 101podcast.com slash contact. Yeah, I mean, they're probably signing up just to get past the problem. Yeah. And then they'll either unsubscribe or they'll be using a fake email anyways. Yeah. Like, how many fake emails are on your list? I think that's kind of important to check, too. Right, right. So you're talking about websites here. And during this time, if your business is closed, you're probably aware that the web is what you need to focus on. Yes. So this might be the time to start planning or implementing new features on your website. Now, yes, it might be very difficult to do if your income has been cut due to not being able to open your physical location or not being able to perform the service that you normally do. But if you can, I would strongly encourage you to start looking at your website and making it a more important part of your business. This will help you get through this time right now and also prepare you for the future. So we already hit on adding a newsletter signup to your page. Most companies or a lot of companies will have a news or a blog section, do you have one? How often do you update it? Yeah. It might, this might be a great time to start writing those articles. And for writing your blog, frequency is important and consistency is important. Yes. Now, you don't necessarily want to write a blog post a day and start releasing them because that's going to be hard to maintain. But if you set a regular schedule where you write one a week or two a month or one a month and you just build up slowly, you get, you schedule these things out and you write them up, it will help get you some Google shoes. **\[15:42\]** **Mike:** Yeah. And from what I understand, I'm not in this case, but a lot of people now seem to have a lot of time on their hands. I don't know, maybe you have a certain family situation where not having your work available to do just gives you a lot of free time. Some of us are just incredibly swamped if you have young kids or whatever. So, maybe it's not the case, But if you're one of those people who is just finding themselves overwhelmed with a lot of time that you didn't have before, yeah, take advantage of it and maybe write some blog posts in advance and sort of like put them off to the side **\[16:15\]** **Sean:** to think things like that. One thing I do for my own company blog is I'll often have ideas and I just don't have the time to write them out. I put it into a trailer board and I've got a whole trailer board of ideas. Yeah, me too. So when I do have some free time, I write it out. And you know, maybe you're not able to write it right now or you're not ready for it, but I would also encourage you to start having these kind of things. Plan out ideas that you want to do on your website or that you can do for your company. And maybe you can't do it today, but you've got this plan. And when you have a little bit of time, you can come back to it. **\[16:55\]** **Mike:** Yeah, it doesn't have to be, you know, a news or blog post. It could be any new feature you want to add, any kind of, I don't know, photo gallery or or whatever. Yeah, just think, if you ever think, you know, this is a great feature that I'd love to have in the site. Can't do it right now. We'll take note of it. Or like we say, maybe now is the time to sort of pull the trigger on that. **\[17:16\]** **Sean:** Absolutely. One other thing that I would like to suggest is that this is the perfect opportunity for you to be building authority and trust with your customers and clients. And building authority comes back to where we, I talked briefly about writing blog posts, where you're informing your clients or your potential customers about things, or teaching them about your industry and what you do, giving them free advice. And you can do that in a number of places. You can do that on a podcast, like what me and Mike are doing right now, you can do that on a blog. You can set up a YouTube channel. Yep. So all of these are ways that you can talk to your clients or customers and give them free advice. Absolutely. And by giving away your content, by giving away your knowledge, you're building authority and trust. If you give it away and that person needs more than what you've given away, or they don't trust themselves to be able to do what you've been teaching. Yeah. Who are they going to look to? They're going to look to you. **\[18:27\]** **Mike:** Yeah, maybe just think of ways you can offer a product to someone that's a virtual product somehow. I mean, obviously this is gonna be very dependent on what your business is, but if you normally do some kind of shipping of various widgets, and for some reason you can't do that now cause of the post office not running as efficiently or whatever, maybe there's some way you can sell something online and actual downloadable product, something like that that would sort of leverage whatever your business does. **\[18:56\]** **Sean:** Right. And if you do need to focus on e-commerce and you don't have it ready, I would strongly recommend taking a look at something like Shopify. Yep. They've got themes pre-built. They do a really, really good job of making it relatively easy for noobs to be able to use it. So you can set up a very simple e-commerce shop and they'll take care of hooking up to a payment gateway accepting your payments and everything that you need. **\[19:29\]** **Mike:** I think we have an episode about Shopify, don't we? **\[19:31\]** **Sean:** I think we might. And assuming we do, we'll link back to it. I should have checked that ahead of time. **\[19:38\]** **Mike:** Yeah, that's all right. **\[19:38\]** **Sean:** We'll put it in there. So there's things that you can do there. **\[19:44\]** **Mike:** Yeah, and so all of this stuff we'll be building up to, obviously, is you could look at the whatever, the parent idea here that we're trying to get across is your website is more important now than it ever has been. A lot of people are using that term now more than ever. I hear that all the time now, but it's really true. Like everyone's learning. **\[20:05\]** **Sean:** I do hear it now more than ever. **\[20:06\]** **Mike:** That's right. But like think about how often your kids might be on the internet, or you're doing the Zoom conference thing either for work or with friends or relatives. Like everyone is on the web now. So, you know, this is the time to really put thought into, you know, where does my website need improvement or is it time to get a website up and running after, like in the first place, maybe you're in that situation. So yeah, there's lots of reasons now to realize that, you know, the web is not, it's not just something you, like an afterthought for your business, it's something that's very important component of running a business, right? **\[20:46\]** **Sean:** Absolutely. One other thing that I would like to suggest is that this is the perfect opportunity for you to be building authority and trust with your customers and clients. And building authority comes back to where we, I talked briefly about writing blog posts, where you're informing your clients or your potential customers about things, or teaching them about your industry and what you do, giving them free advice. And you can do that in a number of places. You can do that on a podcast, like what me and Mike are doing right now, you can do that on a blog. You can set up a YouTube channel. Yep. So all of these are ways that you can talk to your clients or customers and give them free advice. Absolutely. And by giving away your content, by giving away your knowledge, you're building authority and trust. If you give it away and that person needs more than what you've given away, or they don't trust themselves to be able to do what you've been teaching. Yeah. Who are they going to look to? They're going to look to you. **\[21:58\]** **Mike:** Yep. **\[21:59\]** **Sean:** Absolutely. They're going to come to you, and they're going to want you to do it for them, and they're going to be willing to pay you. Maybe they can't do it right now because, hey, they're stuck at home, too. But once things open up again, they will be able to come to you. **\[22:14\]** **Mike:** And they'll also have more respect for you as a business than maybe your competitors if If you're offering some free advice or free services or whatever, here and there, because you know, they feel like you're actually giving them something without them having to pay for everything, right? **\[22:30\]** **Sean:** Yeah. And there's, I have a situation in my home right now where my upstairs shower is, the faucet is completely stripped and scraped. Okay. Now, we can't use it and we can't get it fixed because nobody can come into the house and even if they could, we don't want them to do. So we're using our downstairs shower. So fortunately, you know, we can stop a shower, but we watch some YouTube videos and okay, it looks relatively straightforward and I suppose I could order the parts from Lowe's or Home Depot, but what if I screw it up? And then I can't turn my water back on because I've screwed this up. I'm not a particularly handy kind of guy. So these things are scary for me. So I mean, I've watched these videos, but I don't trust myself to do it, not now. And honestly, at the end of this thing, we're probably gonna get somebody to come in. And I'm gonna try and find a local person who's shared content on how to do this, because I'm gonna know that they know what they're talking about. **\[23:38\]** **Mike:** Yeah, right, that's a good example. **\[23:40\]** **Sean:** Yeah. So until then we're having showers and our crappy downstairs. **\[23:44\]** **Mike:** Hey, at least you've got a second shower. That's a lucky break right there. **\[23:48\]** **Sean:** It is indeed. So other than all of this, I would recommend keep building your relationships with your clients, your customers. If you have a web developer, work with them. If you have somebody who does marketing or social media, build that relationship, keep things open. **\[24:09\]** **Mike:** Yeah, and we've talked about before on a previous episode, the importance of having a relationship with a web developer. Even if you're a DIY type person, you'd like to get your hands dirty and do some of this work on your website yourself. There's always going to be some features where you might need an actual coder to help you out. And it's a good idea to have a go-to person for that purpose. So maybe this is the time to sort of research, start researching that, who's available to take on new work. I'm sure there are plenty of people who are looking for new clients in the web world. So yeah, maybe start thinking about reaching out to some of them and forming in that relationship. **\[24:50\]** **Sean:** Absolutely. And the last thing I wanna say is there's a really good podcast episode that came out a few weeks ago from the business of authority called Building Trust in Trying Times. I'm gonna link to that in the show now. I strongly encourage everybody who'll give that one a shot. **\[25:06\]** **Mike:** Yep, sounds good. So if you do need any help with anything like this, of course, you can always reach out to Sean or me and we'll be happy to help you out. If you need, if you've decided now is the time you wanna do something on your website that you need help with, go to website 101podcast.com slash contact and get in touch with us. We'll be happy to help you out. **\[25:27\]** **Sean:** Until then, stay home, stay safe. Hey, thank you so much for listening to this episode. My name's Sean Smith, your co-host. and you can find me at my website, caffeinecreations.ca on Twitter, caffeine creation that's spelled C-A-F-F-E-I-N-E-C-R-E-8-I-O-N. And also, I'm on LinkedIn, caffeine creations. **\[25:54\]** **Mike:** And I'm Mike Mella, and you can find me online at blikewater.ca. And I'm also on LinkedIn and Twitter. My username is Mike Mella. that's M-I-K-E-M-E-L-L-L-A. Close Transcript Have a question for Sean, Mike, and Amanda? [Send us an email](/contact). [![Listen on Google Play Music](/assets/images/google_podcasts_badge@2x.png)](https://www.google.com/podcasts?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly93ZWJzaXRlMTAxcG9kY2FzdC5jb20vZmVlZC5yc3M%3D)[![itunes badge](/assets/images/itunes-badge.png)](https://itunes.apple.com/ca/podcast/website-101-podcast/id1449510012)[![itunes badge](/assets/images/spotify-logo.png)](https://open.spotify.com/show/3rmSM1R9t6q1U8DmYWJRSO?si=NrYPMgDaRV6Dd56PjEaPow)### Season 03 - 1 [ Do You Really Need a Website](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-03/episode-1/do-you-really-need-a-website/) - 2 [ Wordpress](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-03/episode-2/wordpress/) - 3 [ How to Adapt During an Emergency: A Special Website 101 Podcast](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-03/episode-3/adapting-during-an-emergency/) - 4 [ Video Marketing: Boosting Business with Video Content](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-03/episode-4/using-video/) - 5 [ Vacations and Website Maintenance: Navigating the Challenges of Time Off](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-03/episode-5/vacations/) - 6 [ There's a plugin for that](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-03/episode-6/theres-a-plugin-for-that/) - 7 [ Backups: Why You Need Them and How to Implement Them](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-03/episode-7/backups/) - 8 [ Using Custom Email Addresses: A Professional Touch for Your Business](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-03/episode-8/email/) - 9 [ The Importance of Website Maintenance Plans and Retainers](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-03/episode-9/maintenance-plans/) - 10 [ How to Conduct a Content Audit for Your Website](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-03/episode-10/content-audits/) - 11 [ Own Your Content](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-03/episode-11/own-your-content/) ### All Seasons - [Season 01](https://website101podcast.com/season/01/) - [Season 02](https://website101podcast.com/season/02/) - [Season 03](https://website101podcast.com/season/03/) - [Season 04](https://website101podcast.com/season/04/) - [Season 05](https://website101podcast.com/season/05/) - [Season 06](https://website101podcast.com/season/06/) - [Season 07](https://website101podcast.com/season/07/) - [Season 08](https://website101podcast.com/season/08/) - [Season 09](https://website101podcast.com/season/09/) <!\[CDATA\[YII-BLOCK-BODY-END\]\]>