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New Year's is here, and with it brings the possibility of change.

As one behavioral scientist put it, first starts are really powerful.

So as you head into 2023, LifeKit is a great resource to help you plan your life and tackle changes, both big and small.

Listen to the LifeKit podcast from NPR.

Hey, hey everyone and welcome to how I built this resilience edition.

On these episodes, we're talking with entrepreneurs and other business leaders about how they're coping during this crazy time.

And today, we're going to hear from Luke Holden and Ben Conneff, the co-founders of Luke's Lobster.

We first met Luke and Ben last year in Boston when we told their story in front of a live audience.

Their episode came out last November and you can check it out if you're interested.

Anyway, since then, Luke's Lobster has gone through the many stages of a restaurant during COVID, which meant furlowing and temporarily closing more than 30 restaurants in the US, Taiwan, and Japan.

Luke and Ben not only oversee a restaurant chain, but they also work closely with their fishermen to buy, process, and ship lobster and other seafood around the US.

I spoke with Luke and Ben from their office, which is right by the water in Portland, Maine.

So you might hear some boat engines and glass clinking in the background, but it kind of feels like you're catching lobsters with them.

So when it became clear that the pandemic was really going to create some severe economic disruptions, you guys had to take some severe actions, right?

You had to shut down your processing plant, you had to let go about 300 employees, walk us through the process of what you did as you realize this was going to be really severe.

It was absolutely horrible. It was really March 7th that week that this kind of slammed home for us.

I think we were good to act quickly, but this business, I mean, not just because my namesake is in my family as part of it, there is no difference.

Or delineation between my personal business life. So when you're faced with ultimately making that critical decisions to save a business, it affects your family and friends in major ways.

And that week was, there's nothing like that I've ever experienced calling up some of your friends and family members and furlough, terminating, reducing salary.

We got super small that week. We got aligned around some strategic initiatives pretty quickly. Safety in people was always our number one priority.

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