My mother's husband recently passed away. Even though he was terminal, he provided few instructions on how to proceed with his burial and finances after he passed away. Here at work, we've had trouble with a truck and a car. In both scenarios, Life Happened. But how we prepared for each scenario determined our level of peace in the midst of the storm. How do you prepare for unexpected occurrences in your life and business? In this episode, Jeff gives tips on how to expect the unexpected and how to prepare for it.
Paver Protectors, Inc.
12801 Commerce Lakes Drive, Ste 13
Fort Myers, FL. 33913-8640
(239) 288-0705
Welcome to the Adventures in Paver Sealing podcast with your host, Jeff Evers of Paver Protectors. Hello, thank you for tuning in to the Adventures of Paver Sealing podcast. I'm your host, Jeff Evers and today I wanted to talk about, uh, life...just life in general and how sometimes life can throw you a curve ball and how do we prepare for that, either in life or in business? A question for you and the audience is, "are you prepared? If life is to throw you a curve ball, how do you react and what kind of steps do you have in place to deal with these types of things?"
Just recently I'll share a personal story. My mom's husband passed away unexpectedly. He was terminal. He had kidney disease. They thought he had a couple of years left and unexpectedly, he passed away. So my mom was not prepared for life to happen in this way. And her life kind of got turned upside down. As a person who's extremely organized, I tried to have a talk with my mom and let her know before this day comes because they knew it would come eventually is "how are your bills? Do you know how to pay your bills? Do you know the passwords into your accounts?"
My mom's husband had a vehicle that he had just purchased. She didn't even know the car payment, how much the car payment was, or how it was paid for. She didn't know the bank accounts, how many there were, what banks she banked with? She had an idea, but it was very vague. He did not have a will set up or burial plans or anything to that effect. So when he passed away, she was kind of blindsided with all these things and it took her about a month. It's been about a month, month and a half now, and she's now finally getting organized to know how she pays her bills, where the money is and, that sort of thing.
So how could careful planning have made a difference in my mom's life? I think it would've made a huge difference, and that's why I urge all of you to plan for the unexpected. Plan in advance. That's why we have life insurance, health insurance, because you just never know what's going to happen. But other than insurance, day-to-day activities. If you're married, have a spouse, do you know how decisions are made? Do you know how the bills are paid? Do you know the ongoings of your home and how that takes place? Some people make decisions. Some people do the bills and you got to know each person's role because God forbid something happened, we're not promised tomorrow. You want to be prepared for that. So what do you do to plan for life's unexpected moments?
Now, this rings true in business as well. As I say "life happens" and not just in personal life, but it also happens in business. We have some unexpected things pop up with us and how do we plan for the unexpected? We have systems in place over at Paper Protectors to minimize the negative effects of unplanned situations. We recently had one of our box trucks blow a transmission. And within the same 48 hour period after that, we had one of our sales cars, had a bad clutch. So both vehicles were out of commission for two weeks. What we do to prepare for that is we have backup vehicles. It's not always easy to do financially. But we have a backup truck where once the transmission went in the one, the next truck was on the road the following day. So our customers were not inconvenienced in any way or even aware that this had happened. Same thing in the field. We may have pressure washer hoses blow. We've got spare pieces of equipment, spare hoses. We've got all those things on each of our trucks and God forbid something break down we're up and running quickly. We also have a mobile mechanic that we use for our trucks, as well as our equipment, two different mechanics. And we have a digital platform to dispatch jobs and coordinate jobs with each other.
So with your business or your personal life, do you have a course of action? What's the chain of command? What does that look like? If something breaks down, what's the very first thing you do? Put these processes in place so that God forbid something happened, it doesn't turn your world upside down. When something does happen, what is your plan of action and how does that kick in and how swiftly?
So these are the things just to think about in planning for your life, whether you run a business or it's just your own personal life in general. You got to think about other people as well. God forbid something goes wrong and you were to leave tomorrow. Your spouse or your kids, how do they handle everything? Is it laid out for them or is it going to be a total surprise?
So in closing, I just want you to be prepared in life and business. These are some of the things that we do with our business to be prepared and expect the unexpected. Be ready to deal with these things by having a plan. I think it will make your life a lot easier and make it easier for your loved ones. So this concludes today's podcast. I want to thank you for tuning in. I'm Jeff Evers. Have a great day.
Thank you for listening to the Adventures in Paver Sealing podcast. To learn more about Paver Protectors, please visit paverprotectors.com or call (239) 288-0705.