30 Day Business Pivot

We are live. Chris.

Hi, Bunny.

You're doing the intro?

I'm doing the intro. Well, thanks for having me on our show, Bunny. Basically difference makers. And one of the questions that I get a lot from the folks that I work with and other colleagues is, okay, the world turned upside down. And this is for revenue generators. So people that are going out to have to get clients or they're in sales in some capacity, but they're pretty much responsible for their own revenue. How what do I do? So I was in a service industry or I might sell a product and now I am used to face to face interaction or delivering something in person. How do I make money? What am I supposed to do here? Or this one stream of business is coming in and it's all dried up. I don't know what to do. Well, the good news is that's everywhere. There are some sectors of business that are doing exceptionally well right now, and there are other sections of business that dried completely up. The one trend that everyone is forced to deal with is everything's online now. So we're all at a stay at home order and here we are doing everything online. So what I would like to talk about today, and I'd like for you to shoot out a bunch of questions is how do you do a 30 day pivot? Like, how do you, what do you do with your business? Doing one thing now that we're in this new fluid situation, how are you still making revenue? Where are the opportunities that are uncovered right now? And how do you make a living without exploiting the situation? And that's difficult. How do you do this ethically? How about you fire out some questions and then I'll go from there.

So I think the last part is what resonates the most with me and the thing that I've struggled with the most is how to do it ethically. You know, sales is not something. You and I have had this conversation so many times because you have a foundational belief and you're correct in some aspects, that at some level everybody is representing a company and has an opportunity to produce either a sale or an upsell or a positive customer interaction. And I agree with you in that aspect. But as far as like, ethically right now, you know, I have this huge therapeutic background and I am immersed in the business world. And so I want to go out there and say, look, I can help create a safe space for your businesses to and your company, your team and for some higher education organizations, for your students and for your faculty to just come and ask Some questions, but like the thought of putting together a deck or a campaign targeted around that just feels like I need to go take a shower. So it's not that I have. It's not that I have a whole lot of how to questions like in a. Because that's. The other thing is that I'm really sick and tired of all the webinars that are like how to Pivot yout Business to Virtual. So I can tell you what I did if that's helpful. I contacted my clients, my current clients and I made sure that they were safe and asked them if they needed anything and if there were any resources that I could provide. And most of them said toilet paper, which was, you know, not something I could provide. Actually my 11 month old great Dane puppy ate an entire like package of toilet paper, shredded it. So that that's bringing up some bad memories. But the other aspect that I did was I put out this like little poll, not a survey, but just a poll because I knew people were experiencing email fatigue and said I want to put together some videos and I want them to be helpful. But I don't really have all of the answers for you right now. I just have my knowledge and I just have my voice. And that's honestly, Kris, where the difference makers discussions came from was we're having conversations around things that are relevant to our clients. And so am I selling anything right now today? I still have my knowledge, I still have relationship with me that clients are engaging with, but I personally haven't like pivoted and made a Covid or a financial crisis product. And as far as the online goes, you know that my Internet is run by hamsters on a wheel under my house. So that's been really, really difficult. And so for everybody that's wanted to do a virtual conference, I have done my best to show up. We're recording this through, you know, a virtual software. But I've also explained and I think the two things I'm going to say is that I've set expectations and set some boundaries on the aspect that you're going to have kids in the background. I don't have any other option. My Internet's not the best. And so we can try a video call and if it doesn't work it's going to be a telephone call. That I'm not a lawyer, I'm not an accountant, I'm not a SBA loan expert. And so I can just share with you from the perspective of what I have chosen to do and the knowledge that I have been given. And then stay in my lane as the subject matter expert on business therapy and just try to be as human as possible so that we can create some more empathy. Because I think if you can kind of get in a better relationship with that parasympathetic nervous system, you can realize that not necessarily that it's not that bad, but that you have value to offer to the world right now if you can calm yourself and think about your little slice of the world and your unique skills and abilities and what you can offer right now. And I know I didn't ask a single question in that, but.

Nope.

That'S just me telling you what I did.

And that's. I'd like to thank you for sharing. I'd like to grab one nugget out of that and then drill down a little bit.

Okay.

Staying the subject matter expert. We, some of us have some expertise to learn. Ain't nobody out here that's an expert on. Okay, now that there's a pandemic, what do we do? This is new to everyone, so I'd be flat out lying to say I'm an expert on how to pivot your business during a pandemic that doesn't exist. Maybe if this comes around, never again. Maybe in 20 years, perhaps. I like the idea of being authentic and real. I think there's a misnomer of I gotta change what I sell and how I sell to pivot my business. No, it's basically how do you. What do I need to pivot to? And the one nugget that I would like to grab onto is you mentioned again the subject matter expert, that's one way to look at this, is that I'm going to become hyper focused on a market and figure out how to serve them the absolute best way I can. That might work for folks now, and it might have worked well just a couple months ago. That might not be possible for others, that their target market or the bullseye market or even their expertise isn't quite in demand anymore. So there may be other opportunities and there might be. It might make sense for folks to throw a broader net, have more offerings and try to figure out what's going on. There might be a other market that was previously dormant, that's now hot right now that you might want to focus on. But here's the thing. Nobody knows what that is because we've only been in this for a couple of weeks.

Yeah.

What we need is intel. And I also like what you mentioned. As you talk to other people, you can go to Your clients first. I think it's absolutely good just to check in as one human being to another human being. Hey, how you doing? This is messed up. How are you doing? If you sell something at that point, that's totally unethical, it's gross, don't do it. What I recommend is first start with your strategic partners and have an authentic conversation with them. So how you doing? That's the first thing. How are you dealing with all this? You, how are you dealing with all this? What's going on in your world? And that can segue into maybe business. Not to talk about sharing business, but how is this impacting your industry? What are you seeing? Because, for example, in my wife's business, there was a trend of basically, and she's a medical exercise specialist. Boomers in particular, not wanting to do what we're doing right now, go online and have a conversation. It's kind of a wildly widely known, sorry, I was up all night with a screaming child, that boomers prefer to do face to face interactions. So for the first two and a half, three weeks in this, she was getting very little traction with her boomer clients. Now all of a sudden, they realize this is pretty much the only option I have to interact with folks, and they're coming around to doing things more online. Tel is valuable to share with other people in either a related industry or even unrelated industry, because we don't know what's going on. We're all in our little bubbles, literally at home. So the more we share information about what's going on in our respective industries, the more we can kind of sort of track trends. But trends are changing literally week to week, day to day. So being on top of that is the best thing you can do. Then if the conversation segues and I like again, having an authentic conversation about how can I help you? What's the way that I can help you? Tell me what you're doing. How are you surviving? Do you need some money? Do you need some child teaching aids? I've got plenty of those. But how can I help you personally? And then if it goes to how can I help your business? You could do that too. And then if there's a way that you say, you know what would be really helpful? If you had someone that knew something about fill in the blank, like, how do you file for business land? I'm really struggling with that. I might have an attorney connection that I can connect them to, but essentially you are getting intel and authentically networking under the pretense of genuinely trying to help Someone out. If during that conversation something comes out where you guys can collaborate, like what you and I are doing, or there's a presentation you can throw together that helps, genuinely helps serve your local community in some capacity or help people out of a jam, whatever it is. Those are goodwill type collaborations and those are wonderful. And people are very responding to those very positively. If there's a way that there's a product or service that might help, don't do the traditional call to action type thing. It's more of, you know, if you want more information or if there's another way I can help you, let me know, you can find me online and we can talk about some different. That's it. There's no sell.

Yeah.

And that's the magic formula of what I've been telling people to do. Put together a list of your strategic partners, reach out to them, get some intel out there, and then if there's a product or something that you're seeing that resonates, you can offer that product or service for free. Like, look, I know you guys don't like going online for this service. So again, back to my wife's example. She does medical exercise online. Yeah, there's some screening protocols and whatnot, but a lot of people are like, oh, I don't like that. She said, well, it's. I have a HIPAA compliant portal that I do this through and tell you what, the first couple of sessions are going to be free to see if you like this and if it makes sense and if you don't like it, no harm, no foul, we'll go back to whenever we can see each other live again. But those type things, figuring this out, lowering price points because it's not the same service and there's some people that are feeling it financially, even having. And I've had this conversation, give me what, what you can. I'm not going to hold you to my price points. You know, I'll even do it for free to a certain extent if you need it. But just, you know, let's all help each other out. That to me is what, what you need to be doing right now.

And the last thing that I'm going to leave everybody with from the therapeutic standpoint is that I have had conversations with individuals that are so overwhelmed right now, business owners and team members that are just so overwhelmed. It's okay to do nothing. It's okay to take a step back and take a breath and decide to intentionally plan your next move and not feel like you have to be doing something or that you have to take some kind of action. And from the mental health perspective of this, you know, there's this first stage of traumatic change that's excited and numb. And I just want everybody to hear that it's okay to take a breath and take a moment and take a few days or however long it may need for you to then move forward in a positive direction because you're sanity and your, you as a resource, as the team member or as the business owner is something that we can't easily, well, we can't replace, period. And so it's, it's really impossible to pivot a business without your strong self foundation. So that's what I have for you.

Yeah. And I think you're. You've hit the nail on the head. This is a trauma in the literal sense. This is a literal trauma. And people go through those stages. Some go through it slowly, some people go through it quickly, some people never come out of it. And that's part of this experience. Will things change quickly? Yes. Are some people trying to pivot their business because they've got bills to pay?

Yeah.

Yeah. And you have to balance what you said. I've got to balance my own ability to take action. So flight fright or flight, flight fight, flight or freeze. And I got to take the as much action as my brain and body will allow me to take, and I have to do it anyway. I think that's a healthy reminder of, you know, everyone's going through this at different paces.

Yeah.

Some people are ready to go and come out of the foxhole swinging and some people are stuck in the pothole and that's normal.

And, and that's the point that we made these difference makers discussions for you guys just to have a space to talk or listen and be a part of that conversation, be a part of this discussion. So if you have comments, if you have more questions, please leave them in the comments below. If you want to reach out to Chris, that's his LinkedIn handle, that's below his name. And you can direct message me through Instagram. That's my Instagram handle below my name. And then you can find us through other links that are in the profile. So please know that our thoughts are with you and that we are in this with you. And from me, thank you for making a difference. Thank you for being a difference maker. And from Chris, nothing.

Keep up beat. No keep up beat. Find the best part of your day. Every day. There was something that I thought was interesting. It was Passover and I was reading up on Passover. And one of the things that they asked the youngest child in the family is I'm going to butcher this because I'm not Jewish but I do love studying religion is essentially they ask the child what is different about tonight than every other night and essentially it makes you think about what's going on different today that might be good and look for the great things and the opportunities and the good things in the day because you and I always come back to this. For those of you that have kids, your kids are looking up to you. They really are. And when you're, you can find the bright spot each day. That's why that spot will grow a little bigger each day and your kids will feel it.

Well said, Chris. All right. Until the next time that we see you and from our families to yours, thank you for being a difference maker. Bye now.

Thanks, guys. Bye.