Sigrun, Online Business Coach, responds from Switzerland

This interview took place on April 29, 2020.

I first met Sigrun in 2016 at Social Media Marketing World in San Diego at an impromptu lunch with other online business friends. She was emerging as a well-known influencer for female entrepreneurs with online businesses and quickly rose to the top of her game. Her in-person summit in Iceland was coming up in June, and I had a ticket to go. COVID-19 had other plans causing the cancelation of many events around the world including this one. I figured the next-best thing would be to interview her for this podcast to see how she and women who work with her are responding.

Guest bio:

Sigrun is on a mission to accelerate gender equality through female entrepreneurship. She is the leading business mentor for female online entrepreneurs in Europe, TEDx speaker, and host of the Sigrun Show podcast. Originally from Reykjavik, Iceland, she has spent more than half her life outside her home country; in Germany, the United Kingdom, and Switzerland. Since she was a young girl she’s always been drawn to leadership roles, so despite having zero business background nor the education she made a life-changing phone call and asked to become the CEO of a software company shortly after finishing her master’s degree in architecture – and she got the job!

Ten years, another three master’s degrees, and several CEO roles later, Sigrun found herself in Switzerland with her newfound love but sick and unemployable. Her dream was to be location independent so she could spend time in Iceland and Switzerland, travel the world, and take care of her health. So in 2014, Sigrun started her online business and within 4 years she built a 7 figure business helping women from all over the world. Her signature program is SOMBA, Sigrun’s Online MBA, and her other programs are SOMBA Momentum, a group coaching program, VIP Mastermind, a mastermind program, and the Red Circle, the first million-dollar mastermind for female entrepreneurs in Europe.

Sigrun’s motto is: Be Inspired. Think Big. Take Action.

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Podcast:

Transcript:

Sally Hendrick (00:39):

Hi, Sigrun. Is that how you say your name? Yay. So good to have you here with me. My name is Sally Hendrick and I know we've met a couple of times in person before and you're very well known in the business space online and I very much appreciate you being here with me.

Sigrun (00:57):

Well thank you for having me, Sally. I'm excited to have this talk with you today.

Sally Hendrick (01:01):

Yeah, this is a really hot topic these days. Obviously we're talking about COVID-19, but I kind of want to mix that up a little bit with what you do online as a business woman and what I do online as a business woman and, and how we can be, you know, talking about this to our audiences out there and also to people you know, who were interested in what's happening with COVID-19 just to see how the world is responding. So tell me what is it that you do? Give me a little bit of a background.

Sigrun (01:37):

I have a coaching business and I help female entrepreneurs take their business to the next level, six or seven figures, depending on what the aspiration is. I'm on a mission to accelerate gender equality through female entrepreneurship. And I think my unique way of helping my clients is that I fast track the results. You know, you could even call me a slave driver if you want to.

Sigrun (02:08):

I kind of, like, many of my clients tell me they're a little bit scared of me, but that's exactly what they need, you know, so I can kick them in the butt and get them to do what they wanted to do and they get fast results.

Sally Hendrick (02:23):

Awesome. So how fast are you usually pushing these concepts to them?

Sigrun (02:30):

So I went from, you know, I started with one on one coaching over six years ago, and then I went to groups. And then you know, I haven't now a year long online program. But what I noticed when you have this all set up, you have your created your modules, your videos, your worksheet and everything. And then I was just like, what are they doing? Why are they not doing it? Yeah. And I figured out that the completion rate of online courses is 9%.

Sigrun (03:02):

You know, I, I, you know, I figured out that some other people had been doing this for even longer time than me and they had this data and I'm like, that is crazy. People buy $2000 or $3,000 online course and then they don't do it. So I started two years ago with accountability and that's, that doesn't mean that that help on the phone with every person. I just create this, you could call it group pressure to take action. I started with something called SOMBA summer school because I thought, well in the summer it's going to get even worse. People are not going to, people are going to do less. So I said SOMBA summer school is coming, SOMBA is coming. So my program is called SOMBA, Sigrun's online MBA and I created a summer school just for my clients.

Sigrun (03:55):

This is not for outsiders. You have to be in the program. And I'm like, it's coming. And they knew they didn't know what it was. And one day I go on Facebook, I had said, you are going to create your first or next online course in this this summer. Okay, and you're going to follow me. Exactly. I'm going to go do Facebook lives from time to time. I'm not going to tell you exactly what to do, how to do it, when to do it. And then you have to fill out progress reports with me. Who's in, you know, so they had to sign up and there was this group pressure of signing up. Yeah. I mean, and I'm like, no, I'm going on holiday or, and I'm like, I don't care if you're going on holiday or not. You know, you're an entrepreneur. You joined this program because you want to have success.

Sigrun (04:40):

And then like, okay, okay my man, I said, you know, you can, you can run your online course from anywhere in the world. You can be on the camping side. I don't care.

Sally Hendrick (04:47):

So I got the course on a train from Prague to Kraków, Poland. I wrote a course on that plant, on that train that day. And then I wrote another one on the way back.

Sigrun (05:01):

Yeah. So basically I created this 10 week process. The first time I run it was a hundred, I don't know, 120 people signed up out of 500 in the program the year after. People were like, are you doing it again? How are you doing it again? That they were like months in advance. So excited. I'm like, the modules are in the program. You have access to it? No, we went up, we want to do it with you because you know, I create this, you know, I really inspire them to do it.

Sigrun (05:32):

And then they all kind of force each other to participate. So I doubled the participation rate again about 500 people in the program. My program is year long, it's not lifetime access. And we had over 264 people in the second round and I was discussing this with my mastermind group, how amazing this was and that the completion rate is 90%. I go from 9% to 90%, because I know exactly like if they fill out all the progress reports, I say that's completed because they didn't just watch videos because that's how some online courses counted. You know, if people watch all the videos, yeah that's 9% completion rate. But in my program or with this process, they've actually done the work. Otherwise they cannot fill out the report that I have them fill out. So I'm discussing this with my mastermind and they said, this has to be a part of the program.

Sigrun (06:28):

Every time a new client joins you program, they have, you have to do this. And I'm like, Oh, that's going to be so much work for me. But I found a way, I hired a coach and I asked my students who wants to help me run this process for new students. I have one coach now who was kind of like taking over coaching calls for me in this process. And then I have 10 mentors from the program. So people have actually done the process themselves so they can just speak from their own experience. So now every time I launch a SOMBA, we have this 10 week kickstart in the beginning. Yeah. And everyone creates an online course and I added the at the end creates an upsell and people have been making thousands of dollars. Like, you know, often these are beginners, but also people who have been years in business, they don't have a good online course or they can add a new one.

Sigrun (07:23):

So we've had people, you know, six figure, multiple six figures also participating. I got so excited with you know, yes, we have, I haven't COVID-19 and it's not, you know, good, what's happening. It's very serious and it's sad. But at the same time as an entrepreneur, you see an opportunity and I'm like, Oh, I can now maybe help them market and sell the course that they may be, have created with me for, or if someone is offline and had lost all their business, they can quickly get their business online. So I just created another 10 week marathon and we are now in the fourth week and many people have already paid for the course like a week.

Sally Hendrick (08:07):

Made their sales to pay for the course we invested in. Is this the recession proof one that you've been promoting or is this,

Sigrun (08:17):

so I have a live boot camp that is two days where you create a recession proof offer.

Sigrun (08:25):

And that's what I'm promoting officially. So once people join that, I make them an offer to actually join a 10 week program where we teach them what I teach them out to sell the offer. Yeah. But that's right. Long story short what I do,

Sally Hendrick (08:40):

but that makes, that makes total sense. And the nice thing about it is that the audience that I have typically is the similar audience, the online entrepreneur or someone who's trained to get into that space. That's who's listening to me in addition to the people that I know personally and also within the state and so forth because of the guests that I've had on this podcast. So just to give you a little background on that, I've had the chancellor of the university of Tennessee at Martin on the podcast. He's obviously here in Tennessee and he's talking about what's happening with the college students, the college online teaching and so on and so forth.

Sally Hendrick (09:25):

And then I've had someone who was a business owner who was making a sound reactive technology for fire tables. So like a table that's outside at a bar and it's got fire in it and there is Bluetooth music pumping into it and making the fire dance. That's what he does. He's actually a business partner of my husband's as well, but he's now making hand sanitizer in bulk and selling to retail big box retail stores. And he's connecting his Chinese connections, which is why he got into this two people here who are now making PPE, the personal protective equipment, the mask the face shields and all of those things. And he's gone through all the hoops to figure out the FDA regulations that the U S has. And so, but he's, but he's a, he's a fire table guy. I mean, you know, it's crazy.

Sally Hendrick (10:21):

And then another business owner who does something else and doctors and whoever. And you know, one of the doctors that I've talked to is an online entrepreneur as well. She has taken her podiatrist her podiatry practice. She's made shoes. She has started like a health type program and does a yoga thing online as well. And I've known her for a while, but the interesting thing about talking with her is that she understands things from the physician's perspective. And she has a lot of people in her network that are physicians and she lives in New York, so she's getting a lot of inside scoop, if you will. She's also the fiance of someone who is advising behind the scenes with the models, the numbers that are the predictive models. And so the fact that we've got these connections all around the world in different ways, it's just fascinating.

Sally Hendrick (11:27):

Like you're probably being able to reach people that you have never reached before because now they're in a, in, in a situation where they're like, Oh, this could be a crisis. I really need to be prepared for something like this if I need to roll out an online program.

Sigrun (11:47):

Absolutely. you know, the pro, the people that joined my new program that I just created, basically a, I call it online turnaround because I used to be a turnaround CEO 16 years ago. So I decided, Oh, this is an online turnaround. So it's for people who ha have not had an online business before or if they have an online business, but they're not at six figures yet because I have programs, you know, four, six figure, multiple six figures and million dollar business owners. But in my marketing, you will mostly see me with a, you know, people who want to take their offline business online or they want to scale to six figures.

Sigrun (12:25):

And I'm seeing, yeah, someone who has been at Qigong teacher for 20 years. I'm seeing a doctor that was fully booked and now, so you can't, you know, so he has to take it online. I'm seeing you know, nutritionists and dance teachers and you know, and it's, it's, it's so much fun to work with these people and change their lives and see them make money only a few weeks into this new business.

Sally Hendrick (12:52):

Yeah. And that's, that's pretty amazing. Now when it comes to the COVID-19 situation, the reason why I reached out to you was because I saw where you had posted on Facebook some information about what was happening in Iceland, which is originally where you're from, right?

Sigrun (13:12):

Yeah, I'm from Iceland and it's been interesting to see how Iceland has dealt with the situation. You know, I was I was in the US when the first case was discovered and I think it hit me personally deeper somehow than in any other country.

Sigrun (13:31):

And I think it was actually the same day there was the first death in the United States. So it kind of coincided. So it got pretty serious for me. And I flew to Iceland from from the United States. And it was a stark difference because in the States I started to look for hand sanitizer. And on that first day that the first death was, I found, I found several bottles in CVS. So I was like, Oh, I buy one bottle. And then I, two days later I thought that was silly of me. I should have bought more. I go back to the shop, everything is sold out. I fly out of the United States a few days later. There is no where hand sanitizer to be found is, is nothing at the airports and no shops. I go into multiple shops, nothing to be found.

Sigrun (14:27):

People are selling all kinds of other stuff instead thinking that will help. And then I land in Iceland and there's hand sanitizer everywhere at the airport. And I'm like, huh, okay. Yeah. What, what happened was in Iceland is a, of course it's an Island and you could say, Oh, that's easier. And you're fewer people. Yes. We're only 366,000, but that does not really explain it. We have a crisis control committee, you know, similar I guess to CDC in the United States and it took over. We don't have politicians deciding what to do. Right. You have the people that are in charge to scientists, doctors. Yeah. So there's a police officer in charge and then there's two doctors with him. And lucky one, one. One is a woman. We always make sure we have a woman on a board. And they started daily meetings and they would share what's happening.

Sigrun (15:32):

And then they decided to you know, if you came, for instance, from the skiing areas in Italy, from, you know, North Italy you would have to go into current team. And what they did, because Iceland does not have a direct connection to Italy, like flights normally, but there were a few flights over the ski seasons. So when there were direct flight coming in, it could not park at the air terminal. And this was beginning of March, early March where I feel, you know, because I was in the US at the same time, I didn't see the same kind of sense of urgency for what was happening. So yeah, the, the plane had to be kind of parked to the side and then, you know, people in gear would kind of, you know, it was completely different. Like, you're, you're like a not a welcome person anymore coming from Italy.

Sigrun (16:27):

And then it had to all be tested. And they, as a precaution, they went into kind of, yeah, quarantine and then you know, they would be tested if they had anything, if that showed any symptoms. That was the testing in the beginning. Like you have to show simple get testing. They quickly realized they had to change that and open up that more. But the health system didn't have capacity for it. So a private company stepped up and said, we'll do it for free if we can publish their results. Yeah.

Sally Hendrick (17:03):

Is this the one that published that talked about the 50% of people were asymptomatic in idea.

Sigrun (17:11):

It's called [inaudible]. The company, actually, it's owned by American company. So it's not even Icelandic. It's an American company that is doing research in Iceland. You know, the founder is still CEO, so he's sold it off a long time ago, but he decided he's going to test anyone.

Sigrun (17:27):

So people who thought they might have something, they came first to the testing, but then he said, well, to make this really proper research material, we need to test people that don't want to be tested or not or don't think they're sick. And having talked to anyone, they think it's sick. So they actually kind of send out, you know, letters or emails, whatever and reached out to people and got enough people. So they really have a feeling of how many are infected and the latest data shows 0.8% of the country is affected.

Sally Hendrick (18:05):

Now what about, you know, yeah.

Sigrun (18:09):

Overall this is like the test what they have done so far now we haven't started the you know, the antibody tests, yet. This was really on the height. Now Iceland has gone down to zero now zero cases. Nice. Yeah, absolutely. Flatten the curve and there was no shutdown.

Sigrun (18:29):

So how was it done? As I said, the example of the plane before, what's an example? But what was happening when they were focusing on North Italy? Actually people were coming in sick from Austria, UK, and United States. And they'd already infected. Yeah. And they didn't know that as soon as they discovered it, I think on March 5th, they discovered one or two cases from East Austria and the, whatever the doctor is called, the one that Epic epidemia. Yeah, yeah. Then they had head doctor of that. He contacted this little skiing in Austria and told them I already have two cases from people who came and were skiing there, so you have something serious going on and you need to check it. They ignored his advice and kept the ski area open for another 10 days. And a Spiegel Spiegel is a well respected magazine in Germany, Germany who does a lot of research research.

Sigrun (19:47):

They do a lot of research. They think there will be a lot of lawsuits against this village because they knowingly continued, even though probably the whole village was infected and there's thousands of cases in Scandinavia that can be directly traced to this village and all over Europe and all over Europe.

Sally Hendrick (20:11):

Yeah. Because I remember seeing the reports about the ski resort in Austria, right. Austria's but I didn't realize that there was that background story about saying, Oh, by the way, this is coming from where you are. So you needed to do something and then they ignored it. Yeah, that's definitely ignored it.

Sigrun (20:35):

And 10 days is a long time. 10 days is a long time when you have a pandemic. So they started in Iceland to have more dangerous zones. They had North Italy as a zone and then they start to say Austria and, but it, it, it at some point it was just the whole world really. It didn't matter where you were coming from. But the key was in the beginning it was very diligent in testing, tracing and parenting. And the funny thing is Icelanders don't like to follow rules. I think it's very funny.

Sigrun (21:11):

We like to break rules. You know, if you tell someone in Germany that they have to follow the rules and they have to stay at home and do this. And you know, I live in Switzerland right now. I come from Iceland, but I live in Switzerland. If you tell a Swiss person they have to do something, they'll do it. But in Iceland they will, not the differences, but the differences. If there's an avalanche, a volcanic eruption or earth quake or in this case a pandemic, then they actually listen and they will do what is best to help other people. So there's this, there's this solidarity. It's not individualism, it's the opposite. It's like we stick together. So if I stay at home, I have to do it. So that started to be, you know, shared with people like you stay at home when you go to the shop, you know, you hand sanitizer, use gloves, like, you know, make as few people as possible and all that stuff.

Sigrun (22:06):

So everyone was just staying at home so they never had to close shops. You know, even nonessential shops have stayed open the whole time. And this is not the Swedish you know, solution which has a cost, a lot of debts. We've had 10 deaths in Iceland. But it was really key. The testing, tracing and parenting and then the voluntary self isolation of the public and then still keeping everything like yes, the economy is horribly hit because we tourism was so big. But still if you put tourism aside, a lot of other companies have been able to continue a business as before. And they also middle of March, they already had a tracing app. Well they were so quick, you know, in Switzerland they're still discussing if the credits should create one. And I'm like, seriously, like six weeks behind, you know, what are you thinking guys?

Sally Hendrick (23:13):

Switzerland was pretty hot there in the beginning when all the cases were getting reported because when I was looking at all the numbers in the early days for the US, Switzerland was in the top five. Switzerland is not good.

Sigrun (23:26):

Yeah. So the, the, the issue is Switzerland is they're neutral generally. You know, they try to be neutral worldwide and I think they were just trying to be too nice to the Italian so the borders were not closed. And there's a lot of Italians that work in Switzerland, Italian and area in Switzerland where everyone speaks Italian, so they get 40% more salary by working there. So they were keeping the borders open. Now you want to keep them open for like, you know, food and other things that we need from these countries. But yeah, people were just going back and forth. And so that was a big, big mistake that Switzerland made.

Sigrun (24:06):

And I was just looking at the numbers today because they are starting to opening everything up and I'm like in Iceland, they're not even opening up until next week. You know, even though Iceland didn't close anything, they still had like, you know, guidelines, guidelines, you know. Yeah. And restaurants ultimately, actually, I think they shut down restaurants in the end and hairdressers. So they're starting to open that up again. But all other shops stayed open. Yeah. And the tracing

Sally Hendrick (24:35):

step in as the government, did the government step in there and help financially for people who were affected by this?

Sigrun (24:45):

Yeah. And there has been three like three step process where they're helping for instance, companies can reduce you know, you can reduce the work down to 25%, or you can even say this person is not working right now. Company will have to pay 25% salary, but the government will pay the rest.

Sigrun (25:08):

So that's kind of a figuring out like, because it's just paused. But if you know like with the airlines and tourism because that's really a hard hit. Then you they're stepping into help you lay off. In the beginning they said no to it. You know, people you know, a lot of hotels and restaurants said we cannot even afford, there's a three month salary you have to pay when you let, let someone go. It's not like two weeks in the U S it's three months, three months. It's a lot. When you're running a company, you may not be,

Sally Hendrick (25:45):

if you have to lay off a lot of people, that's a lot of money.

Sigrun (25:48):

Yeah. So the con, so the government is stepping in now I'm paying for that, but I think Switzerland has done a lot better than Iceland. So that's what you see the differences in Iceland, we did really well on the health sites. You know we flattened the curve. We're down to several cases in Switzerland. They could have done better with the borders and all of that, but it wouldn't [inaudible] money. Well then they know what to do because there's a lot of money in Switzerland. They announced already middle of March you can get a interest free loan 10% of your last year's revenue, and then they announced the date where you can apply for it. 24 hours later, everyone had their money.

Sally Hendrick (26:44):

Oh, amazing. It's not happening here. So I'm sure you've heard horror stories about the US but we don't need to do that. No, let's not.

Sigrun (26:50):

I have heard them all. Yes. Yeah.

Sally Hendrick (26:54):

Well, it, at the end of the day, there's a lot of challenges that we're going through. Obviously a lot of fears. There's fears about the health side of things and there were fears about the economic aspect of it as well. I think a lot of people who have been on the positive side when it comes to the economics part, maybe they've been hit financially to a certain extent, but they, but they're okay. You know what I mean? Like they've got some sort of base or foundation, but there's a lot of people who don't. And so I think that the opinions and all the things that are going around all the time have a lot to do with where someone is in the situation longterm though I think that the attitudes may also change if this continues, you know, for several more months we're talking about much more devastation financially.

Sally Hendrick (27:54):

Health wise, we may be bringing that down around the world. Obviously Iceland's brought that all the way down. But Iceland, if they're dependent on so much of the tourism, how long can this go? Because you've got this pristine sterile Island now, you know, and no one can come to it.

Sigrun (28:16):

Well actually the borders are open in Iceland really. They're not closed. But if anyone comes now, they have to go into a two week quarantine.

Sally Hendrick (28:26):

Well but so it's not going to be, it's not very exciting for someone who, no, you're not like going to look at the black beaches and you're not going to that fun little Oh, the thing I thought was the best there was there was a museum along the way when you go towards Vick or V or whatever you call it. And the museum had a lot of information about this man who had collected all of these materials from the time before the war.

Sally Hendrick (29:03):

You know, cause whenever the war happened, the Americans come, they fly in, they bring all this new tech, you know, new everything, new stuff, new supplies, new materials. And it's like Iceland just changed from this, you know, very old fashioned, medieval, almost place to this modern day world. And this guy had collected all of these artifacts and things that people had used that they had been burning because they, there were, they felt like, Oh, we're free to this new world and we can burn all this old stuff that we had. And there was a museum all about those things along the way. So yeah, if people are coming to Iceland, they're not going to go quarantine for two weeks if they're wanting to tour around and do this and that. And so the tourism dollars would not be there.

Sigrun (30:00):

No this is the guideline until May 15th so let's see what happens after then. I am not too worried about Iceland generally because we come from a fishermen nation. And I do think that's kind of in the blot where if there's fish in the sea, you catch it and then you can buy yourself a car or TV or go on holiday. If there's no fish in the sea, you don't. And I think this is also how, you know, there've been ups and downs in my life, what I've had less money, especially as a student. Like you just adjust, you know, you, you, you do less, you do different things. And before 2010 annual visitors to Iceland were 500,000 last year it went up to 2.5 million. So what if we just goes back to 500,000? Is that so bad? Like we had a life before it was going okay. We just maybe had tech companies be number one or fisheries being number two.

Sigrun (31:02):

Tourism wasn't one of the pillars of, of, of of you know, getting money into the country. But I think if they find a way to get the tourists back but know how attractive is it to actually travel to a country where there are serial cases you want to go there on holiday and there are certain countries I don't want to go to right now. And even in Switzerland I'm not feeling too safe, so I'm just staying at home. So I hope they find a way, but I, if they don't, I'm, I'm not too worried. I just hope that the, the main airline, Iceland air, I hope this day alive because they are flying like six flights a week now. And before they were doing like, I don't know, 25 flights a day. So this is a big change and I want to be able to go to Iceland and then see my family.

Sigrun (31:55):

And so yeah, I hope the government will step in. I think actually they will, I think with airlines, governments will step in because this is similar to the crisis 10 years ago where, you know, the financial crisis in 2008, right. They stepped in for the banks. I think they will step in with airlines. Like we don't want to be isolated, you know, Iceland is an Island. We need to have airplanes, you know, to go anywhere, even dislike, I don't know. It could be some emergency and people are still trying to travel back to their home country, whether it's us or Iceland.

Sally Hendrick (32:31):

Well, one last question that I wanted to ask you, and I've asked everybody I think so far, is that in spite of all of the fears and the devastations and the things that are happening, what are your bigger hopes in the world as a result of COVID-19?

Sigrun (32:57):

I hope to see more solidarity. I am seeing science of it. There's a certain fear of like, Oh, here's my country. I'll, I'll fix my country. I will not help another country. But I'm hoping for more solidarity. I see parts of it. I'm also seeing like, you know, I travel a lot and suddenly I realized like, Oh, maybe I don't need to travel so much, so maybe, maybe we'll help the environment a little bit by traveling less. And when we travel, we do it mindfully. We do it carefully. It's not just because, Oh, I go for two days to conference. Like we do it more like a, Hey, this is a big thing. I'm traveling. I'm going to make the most out of it. Yeah. I think it has brought many families together. Some families not so, and maybe we'll have some divorces as a result like happened in China.

Sigrun (33:52):

But I see it as a positive thing. I, I've just an eternal optimist. I believe when all is said and done that we will have a better world. I think I agree with you on that. I definitely see a silver lining in a lot of different ways from different perspectives. And what's funny about that question is that I don't think I've gotten the same answer from anyone yet. That's good. That's good. I know it's good, isn't it? I thought I might have to do a, do some posts on that. You don't make that just like social media post of the day or the hopes for the future and put, put the quotes underneath. You know who, who it's from. That's a good idea. Yeah. All right, well if there's anything else that you'd like to share, I'd love to hear it. Anything else you want to mention?

Sigrun (34:45):

No, I, I do talking about, you know, sharing about COVID-19 this is also some people are not sharing much and I decided to really share. So I do a daily talk on my Facebook life on my Facebook page. I do a daily Facebook live talking about what I'm doing. Not like, I don't talk about how cases have gone down COVID-19, but the topic is more like turnaround. Like what, what can you do right now? What am I doing? My business, I'm very transparent in my business. I've talked about like I took a 50% pay cuts myself. I asked my employees to take a 20% pay cuts. It's not because we are hit necessarily financially. Actually we are kind of making more money than before, probably 10 or 20% more. But who, how things will look like three, six, nine months from now.

Sigrun (35:42):

And my experience from turnarounds is you have to be proactive. If you have to do things earlier than you think you need to do them because it's, it's much worse to come because when you're in the panic, when you're in this truck, this was the right time to announce the changes in the business. If I come three months later and say, Hey, now you need to take a pay cut and be like, are we doing so badly or what's wrong? Or are we going bankrupt? And I'm like, no, no, no. I announced it when the, the feeling of the time is right, not when I need it. And if we don't need it, no worries. We can pay bonuses. But in case we need it, we're being cautious.

Sally Hendrick (36:23):

Very smart, smart business lady. Definitely somebody to know. And I cannot wait to come to Iceland next June because my ticket was extended for the one from this year that it was canceled.

Sigrun (36:37):

So yeah. And finally the airlines and all the hotels have kind of reacted. It was a panic time and people like, Oh, I can't change my flight. I'm like, just wait. Just wait, it's all going to be sorted out and now it is like, yeah.

Sally Hendrick (36:53):

and I had not made my reservation yet cause I was still trying to figure out, cause I was going to the UK for a conference the week before and then coming to Iceland for your conference and I was so excited about that and I was trying to work out the details about my daughters to see if they were going to come with me and what we were going to do in between and if they were going to come to Iceland or not. We had not even worked any of any of that out yet. And then their spring break trips cause they were going, one was going to Europe and one was going to the Caribbean.

Sally Hendrick (37:26):

They both got canceled, they moved home and it just, all of a sudden it was like, Oh I think maybe this isn't going to happen. So yeah that was good that I had not done that yet. But make it even to 1,021 definitely make it better in 2021 I think I'm really excited about it and look forward to meeting you again and also meeting people that are in your community and network. It'll be fun. It will be fun. Yeah. Well, thank you so much and I will talk to you soon.

Sigrun (37:58):

Thank you for having me, Sally.

Sally Hendrick (38:00):

You're welcome.

Speaker 1 (38:09):

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