For Spina Bifida Month, we are pleased to feature Sincere Services as our client of the month.
People start businesses for a wide variety of reasons. Some seek independence, some a creative outlet, others a strong financial return. Some just love the idea of running a business. For Sean and Kait Saffold, it was to take care of their son Boaz.
In 2018, Sean, his wife Kait, and their daughter Posey were living in Myanmar with no imminent plans to return to the United States. But when Boaz was born with spina bifida, a condition where the spine and spinal cord don't form properly, he required more advanced medical care than he could get in Myanmar. They needed to be near a good pediatric care facility, like Children’s Hospital in Seattle. They decided to move home to Sequim.
Spina bifida can cause a wide range of health issues. For Boaz, excess brain fluid builds up and is drained through a shunt. Nerve damage has limited his sensory awareness in his legs; he was slow to crawl and will be slow to walk. In addition, he has bladder control issues that require that he be catheterized four times a day. Other health issues may emerge as he matures.
When Sean and Kait had to abruptly leave Myanmar, they didn’t have jobs to come back to, and they weren’t exactly sure what careers they could pursue while providing Boaz with the care he needs. What they did know was that they needed to control their own hours so that, if needed, they could drop everything and focus on Boaz.
While looking for suitable work, people started asking Sean to do odd jobs. He would use their mowers and equipment to mow their lawns. He soon realized that he could make pretty good money and have the flexibility he required. So he decided to make it official: he started a window cleaning and lawn mowing business called Sincere Services.
Sean didn’t have much start-up capital, so he had to be thrifty. He traded in his little blue Nissan four-door for a pickup, started buying up used mowers and tools at yard sales, and made some business cards. And he signed up for a class on how to start a business, CIE’s Bootstrap Business Course.
Sean started beating the pavement to drum up work, picking up a window washing job here, a lawn there. Business slowly began to grow. To supplement his income, he also drove school buses for the Sequim School District. When COVID hit last spring, his bus driving income vanished, and Sincere Services was on its own. “Luckily I was already gearing up to work the business all summer” says Sean, “I just jumped in full time a little sooner than planned”.
Ready for Anything
Sean and Kait are both learning a lot: about business, about raising a child with a disability, and about life.
One lesson that Boaz has helped them learn is the need to be ready for anything. “You need to be ready for any unforeseen circumstances the best you can, and be flexible,” Sean says. “That applies to business as well as life. Life plops something in your life that you don’t expect and says, ‘Here, you’re going to deal with this now.’ You just deal with it.”
“Maybe coronavirus is gonna flare up and you’re going to have to do things on Zoom,” Sean says, laughing. “Being a learner, and an adapter, helps us in every area of life, including business, because we need to look at our goal, look at our resources, and figure out how to grow these resources and maximize them to reach our goal.”
Building Community
One lesson Sean is learning with his business is to “play to your strengths and figure out how to delegate your weaknesses.” Is bookkeeping driving you crazy? Then find a provider to help so you can focus on delivering your value proposition.
That also applies to Sean’s family. “My wife does a whole lot of work with our son, catheterizing him 4 times a day, and she’s willing to take on that as part of the team,” Sean says. “I go out and work the business to bring in the money, I do that part of our team. When we’re together we’re parenting together, and it’s really teamwork, it’s a community.”
Another community that has been very important to the Saffolds is their church. When they were looking for a church after arriving back in Sequim, Boaz had breathing issues that made him really loud, but also not safe to be left in the nursery. They tried several churches and never felt quite comfortable, but when they visited Olympic View Church, no one seemed to mind that there was this loud kid in the back row. “They thanked us for bringing him,” Sean says.
Now their church community has become a big support. “They really love Boaz,” Sean says, “love seeing him in his wheelchair, and they’re really encouraging: ‘Hey do you guys need anything, how can we be there for you?’”
Some of them have become clients for Sincere Services, crossing over from relationships outside of business to relationships through the business.
“A business is also a community, and the stronger that community is the stronger your business is.”
Often while Sean is weeding or washing windows, the homeowners will strike up conversations while he is working. “I will sometimes tell them about my family and Boaz,” Sean says. Often they are amazed by his story, he says. “It builds a relationship, it builds a friendship with the client that’s no longer work-based anymore.
“Yes, they are hiring me to do a job, I’m going to do the job as best I can, but now we’re seeing each other as individuals and starting to build a relationship and a friendship.”
Sharing the Learning
Sean loves the opportunity to share what he is learning and dispel some stigma around spina bifida and people with disabilities: “Yeah, my son has spina bifida, but he’s doing really well.”
“He’s learning a lot,” Sean says, “and we’re learning a lot. And we’re actually enjoying it — it’s neat to have a son who is really special and interesting, and to cheer him on as we see his accomplishments, and to see it more as an honor that we get to be on this learning journey with him, help provide for him and care for him, and witness the hurdles that he’s going through.
“We would never have that opportunity if it was someone else’s kid. To have a front row seat is really fascinating.”
One important lesson they have learned is that quality of life is relative. “It’s really about being cared for, and being loved, and being a part of a family and part of a community that makes for a good quality of life,” Sean says. “Whether you’re in pain or not, whether you have limited mobility or not, whatever your challenges are — everybody’s different, everybody’s got challenges — we treat each other as equals.”
“Boaz has a great quality of life,” Sean explains, “because we love him, we care about him, we’re his family, we include him, he’s a part of us. That's what makes his quality of life, not whether he can walk or not.”
Changing the Conversation Around Disabilities
Sean and Kait have learned that just because you have a different set of needs than the majority of other people doesn’t disqualify you from being equal. They would love for more people to be comfortable around people with disabilities and treat them as equals, not limit them and say, “Oh, I see you’re in a wheelchair, therefore I’m going to assume that you can’t do anything that I can do.”
“That’s a terrible prejudice,” Sean says. People are generally kind in their prejudice towards disabled people, he acknowledges, but he would love for people to keep the kindness and lose the prejudice that someone’s limitations are holding them back in life, keeping them from relationships and community, from being productive, doing things they enjoy, having the same interests, able to hold a conversation, or be a part of a circle of friends.
“Most things are totally doable,” Sean says. “You just might do it a little bit differently.” And that is a lesson that Sean takes back to his business.
“Just because something might be difficult, just because something is unknown, just because people might say, ‘Oh you really want to do that?’ doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t.” It’s just another challenge to overcome.
Visit Sincere Services’ website to support Sean and Kait’s business.