Planning for, Surviving and Thriving During Disasters

Well, we're back here, Shannon, aren't we?

We are. You're back in the U.S. i'm back.

In the U.S. yeah. I left the country to do. To do some musical tourism, which I like. That is such a fantastic business model. Unless you're me and you're just paying like a customer. So I went to see the band Phish played in Mexico for four nights this past weekend. And my wife and I went down and saw it. But the way it works, they've done this now four times. We've. We've been three of the four. The first three were at one at the same. At. At. They were all at one resort, the first three. And now they've moved and it looks like the next four at least will be at a new resort, which is where we were this weekend, Right near Cancun airport. Right. Like 10 minutes away, which was great. The other resort was like an hour away. So this one nicer resort. But what they do is they. They set up a stage on the beach. About 5,000 people can fit on the beach, on the stage. And what this company does, there's a company that organizes this not just for Phish, they do it for three other bands as well. Fish was the last of them this time. I think Fish was the first band they ever did this with, you know, whatever five years ago or six years ago. But. But now, now they've expanded their model as. As they should. They've scaled. Right. And they do it with bands where people will want to see the same band multiple nights in a row. So it obviously they did Fish this weekend. They started their run. I believe they started it with Dead End Company, which is the current incarnation of Grateful Dead members.

Yes.

Luke Bryan, the country singer.

Okay.

And he has. Usually. Luke Bryan's weekend, I think, has other acts with him. It's not just one act. It's.

That would make sense.

Yeah. And then Dave Matthews and Tim Reynolds. It's just the two of them. They played sort of acoustic. It's just the two guitar players. They did three or four nights. And then Fish did four nights this weekend. And the way.

Let me, let me, let me ask a question. Do they play. Do they have this. Fish, in this case, have enough of a catalog? They play different things every night or the same.

No. So Fish's catalog is. Is expansive enough. Two, almost three years ago, they did 13 nights at Madison Square Garden and didn't repeat a song through the entire 13 night run.

I know that's creativity right there. That's cool.

Yeah. But but it's, it's. So that's their business model, right, is they know that people are going to go to multiple shows because you want to, you know, hear different songs. And, and so they're, they've always been really smart about keeping their ticket prices relatively low, but based, compared, as compared to the rest of the industry, you know, like, okay, they, their tickets still aren't more than 100 bucks usually. Like it's usually less than $100 a ticket for a normal concert. I'm not talking about this past weekend where, which I will, sure. But you know, for a normal concert, it took them a very long time to move above the $50 mark. They were very hesitant for that because they knew that, you know, they, they have a smaller following but people will pay to go to multiple shows. And, and so they know that you can't put your tickets at 250 and expect people to go to, you know, five shows. That suddenly becomes a, you know, a financial burden for most people. But they know that if their tickets are, you know, 70, $80 kind of thing, like, yeah, okay, we can just, we can just roll forward and, and they, they do just fine as, at least as far as they're concerned. So this company though, CID Entertainment, started this thing on the beach with Phish, I don't know, five or six years ago or something. And they also are the company that helps bands manage their festivals and other sort of destination style things. If a band is playing three or four nights or even two or three nights in one area, they might say, oh look, we'll get you tickets and a hotel room and transportation to the venue. You know, they kind of, they do the package deal. Right.

Okay, right, right.

So the idea of doing a package deal at an all inclusive resort, it fits into this model. But what they do is the first year we went, I did the math that no one should ever do. After we bought our tickets, I booked, I didn't actually pay, I didn't like finalize the booking, but I went on the website of the resort and I booked the exact same room for the same nights. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. And it was like a third of what we were paying through the, through CID to see Fish. Now if I bought a room direct with the resort, I cannot go down to the beach and see the concerts. Right. Like in order to see the concerts, you have to book through the package. Right. And, and I mean, and that's just how it works. Now I dug in a little deeper this weekend and I found out the way the way they do it, which makes perfect sense, is that CID goes and pre buys all the rooms that they're going to want to sell, you know, alongside the concert tickets, well in advance. Like, I think they have. They bought this year's and next year's rooms like eight months ago. So.

So they're taking on the risk.

They're taking on the risk. But, but they, I mean, you know, they know what they're going to sell. Right. As long as, as long as everybody's, you know, as long as the band's still alive and all that stuff like that, that would be the biggest risk because they know that the following's there. They've done this before. They know that people are going to come. But if I'm able to buy one room at a third the price that they're selling it to me, imagine the price that they're getting when they're buying 1500 rooms.

Yeah. Yeah. Wow. That's pretty good. That's pretty cool.

They do have to go and like build a stage and put all the infrastructure in place for that and of course, pay the bands and I'm sure that.

Right.

Small fee. Right. But there's. There's still a lot of money on the table, which is great. I mean.

And you have to stay at. You have to buy the tickets to them to go to this event.

Correct.

You can't, you can't just buy a ticket. You have to stay at the resort.

Correct. You have to stay at the resort. You have to buy the tickets through them. That's right. Yeah. Yep.

That's cool. We should try to get them on the show and talk about it.

Yeah, I would love to because it's a great model and they're a relatively small company that's, you know, this just kind of built things up and, and they really. Are. They like. I mean, I haven't talked with them about this, as you said. I would love to, but on, on my side, they are masters at customer service, which of course is the key to anything like this. I mean, if you're going to do an all inclusive, you know, thing that's going to cost. I mean, it cost us like six grand for the weekend or whatever it was. If you're going to charge somebody that you got to deliver, you know, and it's got to be.

You get your air fare through them too. It's like a complete package. Or you just get there any way you can.

You get there, you get to the airport any way you can. And then from there they shuttle you to the venue. Everything's included, all your, you know, your room, the concert ticket, the food, the drinks, everything. It's an all inclusive weekend. And then, and it was five nights for us. And then, and then they ship you back to the airport and then you're on your own to, you know, get, get a flight home, which hopefully you've, you've already booked, you know, by that point.

Yeah, yeah. Yes.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Cool. That's.

But it was interesting traveling because, you know, with this coronavirus thing, I started to wonder like, will they cancel this? Because a week and a half before, there was a big trade show that was supposed to be in Barcelona this week.

Yeah, World Congress. Congress. Mobile World Congress. Yeah.

109,000 people went to that show last year. And two weeks ago today, they canceled this year's show. Imagine, flights, hotels, you could cancel. But all those hotels are screwed. Right? Their business is screwed. The airlines were somewhat protected, probably because people bought non refundable tickets. But still, man, that's pretty interesting.

Yeah, it's fascinating. And I was thinking about it that same thing this, this week, and I thought what a great topic for us to discuss on the show today is what to do when disaster strikes like this. How do you respond? What do you do? If you were in the business of providing something to that show that was canceled and how do you deal with the, you know what if you were.

Going to release your product at this.

Show, like, certainly there must have been people that had that plan. What do you do? And, and so, yeah, let's take the next 20, 30 minutes and go down that road and talk about it.

Well, let's do it. He's Shannon Jean. I'm Dave Hamilton and this is episode 264 of the Small Business. Welcome to the Small Business show, everybody. You know why we're here? Because we just told you it's time to talk about what to do when disaster strikes. Yeah.

You know, we did a show about disasters back in 2015. Yeah, if you go to BusinessShow Co and search for disaster, it'll come right up. And those were more kind of man made. Man made disasters. I fondly recall discussing breaking up the first and only fist fight that happened in our, in our, in our lab on a couple technicians. It was, yeah, it was pretty crazy. But today I thought, let's talk about natural disasters and resources and recovery. You know, what do you do? How do you respond? How do you manage your team, your business, your suppliers, your customers when something happens, you know, like, like the coronavirus that we were just talking about, I'm not really sure what's going to happen with this other than, you know, we've seen the, the stock market, you know, take a big dive under concerns of, I think, primarily economics. Because even though we're not, I think no one is sure how big this is going to be. Certainly even at the size it is now, it's having an economic impact.

Right, right. Oh, for sure. Well, I mean, the, the, the, the impact of China. I think that was the big deal with World Congress because the day before they announced that the whole show had been canceled. I think it was Sony and Amazon had both pulled out saying, right, yeah, look, you know, we've got lots of people coming from China to this show that either can't come or it's not wise to bring them. And so we're just, we're not going to be there. And I think there was probably signs that there were more companies like that that were, that were, have to make the same decision. And my guess is the, the organizers of Mobile World Congress looked at it and said, look, you know, if we go from 109,000 attendees in 2019 to 40,000 attendees in 2020, that's bad optics, way better.

That's a bad look.

Yeah, it's a bad look. Yeah, you just got to, you got to punt it. But, you know, and so much of the mobile phone business, which is really what World Congress is focused on, comes from Asia. I mean, it, like, even though it happens in Barcelona, like Asia is, is the center of, of all that stuff. So it made sense that, you know, that they had to sort of pull the plug again, if only from a PR standpoint, just to not have a show that was so weakly attended. Easier to have zero and, and say, we'll see you next year. But it screws all those companies that were going to make those announcements.

Oh yeah. Hundreds and hundreds and thousands of people. And I think that one of the things that disasters, you know, or emergency situations do really well is they surface the weaknesses in, in your business. Right. And I think you hit on it right there, where if, you know, you're sourcing or having your products assembled or, you know, created in, in, you know, China right now, you're going to be constrained on, you know, depending upon what's going on.

Oh yeah.

And I would imagine that there's a lot of companies right now scrambling. I know that if, you know, I was still running our repair business and my general manager that was in Shenzhen and we were sourcing all over, I think it would be a bit challenging right now. And I think that's. I want to talk about today's. How do you prepare for things that may come up and what can you do to help mitigate, you know, some of those, some of those risks?

Yeah, the things you can't control. That's right.

Right.

Yeah. But you, but you've got to be able to control your. Even in those things. So, yeah, I like that we're heading down this path. The first thing I want to talk about, though, is our sponsor for this episode, which is textexpander@textexpander.com podcast. You know, one thing that you can do to help mitigate against disasters is to make sure that your productivity and efficiency in your business are at peak levels. Because you don't want to be bogged down by other things when this surprise shows up of a disaster. Right. And so textexpander can really help with this because what textexpander allows you to do with your business is you take all of the things that you're emailing out or sending to customers via text message or whatever those are, and you craft them once and then you put them into textexpander and the next time you need to send that same response, it's already there. You don't have to proofread it, you don't have to think about it. You just send it. You can even have textexpander prompt you for fill ins. Like if you want to put the person's name or their product name or some other thing that you want to be able to customize these, it can prompt you for these so you don't have to remember. Oh, right after I fill this, I've got to go back and edit this part. No, no, no. Textexpander takes care of that for you. And it's awesome. Check it out and you can sync with your entire team so everybody gets the same thing. And even if a disaster does strike, right, you can sit down once, write whatever note you need to write that goes to your customers explaining, you know, in your example, maybe some delays on some things. Write it once, craft it, have the whole team, you know, whoever needs to look at it, and now put it into textexpander and boom, your whole team has it. You're good to go. Make sure to visit textexpander.com podcast because as a listener of this show, you get 20% off your first year. So check it out. Textexpander.com podcast and our thanks to Text Expander and Smile for sponsoring this episode. Yeah.

Yeah. So I, I'm doing some research here for the show today, looking up on the, the Small business administration website, sba.gov they had. One of the things that really hit me when I was doing some research here is According to the SBA, over 25% of small businesses don't open again after a major disaster happens. You know, and in a lot of cases they use, are using like flooding and earthquake different thing like that.

Sure.

I, I think that, you know, if in this age of just in time inventory and you know, keeping things, your supply chain moving, when that comes to a halt, you could really have some, some problems. And I, I was impressed. SBA had some really cool tips for prepping and they also offer some, you know, really great resources if you do run into problems, everything from, you know, loans to, you know, other assistance. And we'll put some. I'm not going to go into all of them because pretty in depth, but we will put the links in the show notes for you at BusinessShow. Cool. Put them up there. Yeah. And I, I think a lot of it comes, a lot of this comes down to being prepared. And I keep coming back to the supply chain concept and you know, thinking about, okay, if I'm sourcing all of my products through one channel, one geographical loc, you know, what weaknesses come up if all of a sudden I can't get that product and thinking about how can I diversify that your supply chain to take it, you know, one source starts to fall off, can you shift to somewhere else? And if you can't, that's a real weakness in your business. And I guarantee you, if you ever go to sell your company or you're getting analyzed for you're trying to raise funding or, you know, get a loan from your bank, they're going to look for those kinds of weaknesses and they will be glad to point them out for you.

Yeah, it's interesting. I diversify was the first thing I put on my list too. And you know, I approach it from a very different perspective because I have never been in that business, but I am in the publishing business. And we always have to think about, like, we're often writing things about the news of the day. Well, a natural disaster or any kind of change can cause no relevant news to come up.

Right.

And so we always have to be ready. And this is why we years ago diversified into things like tips and reviews, how to's.

That's great.

Right? Like, I mean, diversify so you're not.

Just relying on the news no, these.

Are things we can control, too. Like, I know that I can write. You know, we've got 25 tips in the queue that need to be written. No, we won't write them all in one day, but we know that we can. And so we can start pulling from that and be like, okay, we can do some different things. We can provide ongoing value that's irrelevant to whatever the happenings or not happenings of the day are.

Yeah, that is. What a great way to prepare for a weakness. Right? Because you can't control the news. Right. But, but you can prep and expand your model to provide other services over time. And then you're, you're not just relying on that one stream of data that.

You have to wait for and that's it. Yeah, you, you, you hit the nail on the head. Like, just zoom out and diversify your business model. You know, I think, I think you got to Note that, what, 25% of businesses fail after a major disaster. So assume that 25% of your business is going to fail. So make sure you have multiple business. You know, we always talk about your revenue stack, you know, having multiple faucets dripping constantly. One of them's going to dry up, fine, okay, great. Go after the others. You know, don't put all your eggs in one basket. And again, you don't, you know, I mean, you and I are famous for having very different types of businesses in our revenue stack. That's not the only way to do it. You can, you know, as I said, you know, even in one business, you can diversify yourself so that you're protected against these things for sure.

Yeah, that's great. And I also think on that same diversification concept, one of the things that hit me over the years is you need to have multiple ways to communicate with your people, especially if you're located in different parts of the world. If, you know, if Skype is your go to, well, you need to come up with a backup, right? A plan B. If you can't, if Skype goes down or, you know, we, like, we have done a lot of business in China and, you know, certain times, hey, Skype isn't being allowed right now. So we would have to jump over to WhatsApp and, you know, forget certain kinds of services that just weren't being offered. So you have to be ready for those. You have to prepare because you don't want to try to contact your team in one day and just be like, oh, we can't reach them. I mean, you're just, you're dead in the water. So you got to have some backup. And you have to discuss this and come up part of your disaster plan, if you will. You know, everybody needs to talk about, okay, if we're not able to reach you this way, we're going to, you know, come out this way. It's like going someplace with your kids, like at Disneyland and telling them, if you get separated, meet back here.

Yeah, right. That's it. Yeah, it sounds funny, but it's.

Yeah, but it's important to know that you've got a backup plan in place if you can't reach the people that are supporting your business. Right.

Well, and you know, another. I mean, it follows into diversification, but virtualizing, if your business is virtualized, that helps protect you against disasters, too. We've had issues where, you know, there was. There was one day, I think it was last year, maybe it was two years ago, where the entire state of California, the entire Comcast connection to the state of California was flaky. And so all of our people that, you know, worked on the west coast couldn't get any publishing done for the day. I mean, it was a big mess. And. And it was like, okay, well, the people in Colorado and the people, you know, in London, it's no problem. Like, they can publish. We've got things going now. You know, you can't diversify your. You can't virtualize your business, you know, in a heartbeat like that. That takes a little more planning. And some, for some businesses, it just doesn't work, but it can.

Yeah, it can. And also, you know, to recognize that as a strength of your business is an important part of your story when you're talking to people about, you know, or if you, you know, if you're in discussions to raise money or be acquired, that's a real strength. These kind of disasters, if you're planning for them, and. And it helps keep you healthy, if you will, and it can make you stronger. And you think about, what are our strengths, what are our weaknesses? What if this goes, you know, I knew a couple of brothers that were in the garage door business. These guys are wildly successful out here, and they own a couple buildings. And the one brother who's very conservative says, what could happen that we haven't thought about? He's like, well, man, if we have an earthquake out here, and earthquake insurance is crazy expensive in California, but they calculated out, well, you know, it's only this much. It was pennies per square foot to add earthquake insurance to their buildings, and it made their business that much stronger. Right. They didn't have to worry about it. So. So looking at those things and diversification too, is keeping on this supplier concept. You know, what about size of your suppliers? Right. Are you dealing with smaller entities that are going to be impacted in a greater way versus, you know, larger corporations that have different diverse supply chains to get you products you need? And maybe you should have both, right?

Yeah.

Because they're going to be, they're going to react differently to these kind of crisis. Like if, if you're buying from a very large organization, let's say you're sourcing parts for I phones, which is, you know, is in my wheelhouse. There's awesome deals, awesome opportunities from some of the smaller guys. But you know, these larger entities that have. Keep some of their stock here in the US and can supply you faster, well, they're going to have a depth of inventory to help you out that maybe you wouldn't find if you only were buying from the smaller ones, right?

Yeah, for sure. Oh, yeah, yeah.

And then lastly, I think, you know, political. Right. If are you only. But what's the political climate in countries that you're buying from? I think about that more and more now as we see different things happen with, you know, whether you're buying from China or you're in India or doing things. You need to think about what's going on and how you would react if things maybe get a little squirrely. Could it impact your business? Good to think about.

Yeah, it's crazy. And you know, one thing that I always kind of think about is having cash on hand, you know, because, because you can, you can get creative very quickly if you can afford to spend a little money to, to create something new. Right. Like, okay, yeah, here we are. You know, I could take our, our publishing business like, all right, great. We have Internet problems. Everybody needs to move to, you know, using cell phones and, and streaming over that. Okay, well, that's going to cost extra. Well, fine, we've got the cash. Go ahead and do it, you know, or we need to spin up another server on the other coast. This isn't going to work. You know, we've. Now we've got to have both. Okay, that's going to take some cash. Like, just go ahead and do it. Or access to cash, you know, I mean, credit cards and lines of credit, those sorts of things that the ability to spend cash, I guess, is the right. You don't necessarily need to keep cash on hand, but the ability to spend it in a pinch is huge because you can say, okay, this isn't working, but we can now sort of innovate ourselves out of this problem because we have the ability to spend some money and do a few things that maybe our competitors aren't thinking about doing because they're looking to fix the problem that isn't ours to fix. You know, all these things that you've talked about. Earthquake, I'm not, I can't prevent mother Nature. You know, I can't influence politics. My businesses aren't big enough to do that. So I got to kind of let those people do what they're going to do. And I got to be. I got to figure out my life around that. I got to route around the damage. And sometimes it just takes some cash to do that, including just getting on a plane and going somewhere like, okay, this isn't working. Let's get everybody into, you know, let's. Let's all fly to Austin, let's get to Texas. Everybody's there. That's where, you know, we're having problems in California, we're having problems here. Whatever. Get everybody out. Let's go there now. We can keep running in business. Whereas, you know, that's. Right.

Those are the kinds really important. Yeah. And the key thing I think too about the. That cash flow is the time to be trying to increase your cash. You know, if access to cash is not during the crisis, right. You need to be. This is part of disaster plan is you need to be borrowing or setting up access. Even if you don't tap into those lines of credit or credit card, whatever you're going to do when you don't need it. Okay. You need to plan in advance. You know, you want to put those things in place when you don't need them, have them waiting in the wings because not only might you might need them to. To survive, but typically disasters, there's a, you know, or emergency situations, there's a flip side and that's opportunity always. And I, I would, you know, I know a lot of people and that back in the 2008, 2009, when the real estate bubble burst and everything went crashing down, there were so many opportunities, but only if you had cash. Right. And that's just one example. I mean, if you're like, use my earlier example, the iPhone repair parts. You know, if you've got access to capital and you see the writing on the wall that supp chains are being constrained and you can pick up a large order, large shipment, maybe double, triple, exponentially more than you would normally buy. That could be a Tremendous opportunity for you in the coming weeks and month, months. If those products are not available for you. Yeah, could be really great. You could generate a whole new business as well. You know, talking about expanding into other areas like your tips and, you know, not relying just on the news. Other businesses are going to be impacted by these problems. Can you offer supplies or services to them and grow your business when it's tough like this?

Yep.

So I think it's important and get.

This is another time where, I mean, we're talking about a lot of things to ensure against disaster crippling your business, but one of those things is buying insurance. You know, I don't usually buy travel insurance, but I did for this past trip. I picked it up. It was right, actually. Right about two weeks before we left. Just because of the whole coronavirus thing. I thought, you know, I can pick up travel insurance for about 200 bucks. I've got whatever, you know, six, six from the thing, seven grand, whatever. With flights on the line, you know what? That two grand, that 200 bucks, that's worth it to me. And that way, if anything, you know, if they. If they cancel this whole thing and I got to eat part of it, that'll help me pick it up. And also, if one of us gets sick while we're, you know, there. Okay, well, now we've got, you know, 50,000 worth of insurance to get us home in an emergency. And this, that and the other thing, it's like, okay, like, I feel better about doing this, but yeah, totally makes sense. The insurance. Insurance is a risk game. I mean, it. It literally is legalized gambling. Right? You are spending money that the person with whom you are spending it is gambling that they are not going to have to pay back to you. Right. Multiple times. And you're gambling. Who knows what you're gambling. For me, it was. It was peace of mind of, okay, well, yes, I could have. I mean, the money was already spent, so it wasn't like I was ever going to get it back. But if we didn't get to go on the trip, it would have been nice to have the money back and also have this protection of being able to get home if there was a bigger problem. We need to spend more money, you know, but that, that's what my part of that gamble is. But, but you have to know that with insurance that you're. You're gambling, that's. That it's a risk reward scenario. So that's exactly how it's supposed to work.

It's just right. And it's maybe part of this disaster plan that we're talking about, looking at things in advance, where you're looking at, okay, what cash reserves do I have access to, what can I tap into? And also then what insurance do I have in place to help me get through these things if something happens to my facility or I can't do business? I mean, do you have loss of income insurance that's available? All kinds of things. Definitely want to talk to your insurance agent that, you know, maybe that person's on your, your personal board of directors like we've talked about here. And it just, you know, it's all about being prepared. I often get, you know, just grinding things out and always thinking about the top line. How much revenue can I generate? Revenue can I generate? And sometimes you really have to stop and think, okay, well, whatever. Everything goes to hell. I lose my key supplier, I lose this. How do I, how am I going to react? It really helps to make your business put it in a much stronger place.

Yeah. You know, you said to have your insurance agent on your board of advisors. What a smart move. It is, really. I've never thought of my insurance agent as one of those people, but he definitely is. He knows my business and my personal life inside and out. And yes, anything he recommends for me usually comes with the opportunity for him to profit from. I mean, that's how that works, but that's fine. He also knows, you know, I know that this guy's in it for the long haul, so he's not going to recommend something to me that I'm going to, you know, very quickly say, dude, you just tried to screw me, like, we're done. You know, he's, that's right, you know, so I'm not worried about that. But I will probably two or three times a year have an hour long conversation with my insurance agent. Just, just kind of talking about business and things, and we talk about his business and my business. I mean, it's, it's a very friendly conversation, but it keeps him aware of what's going on in, you know, in, in my scenario. And there have been times where, you know, there's many times where we finish that conversation. It's like, all right, thanks, man. See you, bye. And there's no suggestion, recommendation, there's no sales pitch, there's no nothing. And every now and then it's like, hey, you know, you could do this this way. It's like, oh, I have no idea. So, yeah, that's a good person.

It's important. I mean, we've recently. And I have a great woman that sits on, you know, our, my personal board and we own, you know, a bit of real estate.

Right.

And out here in California, there is a tendency to. For homeowners, and we own some vacation rentals where these insurance companies are canceling homeowners on homes that are anywhere near a fire area. Right. As you can imagine, you've probably seen on TV or lots of part. Many parts of California that have burned down. Sure. So, you know, again, I got a phone call and I was trying to shop around and Claire called me up and said, hey, now's not the time to shop because these companies are looking for any reason to drop you in California. So let's sit tight and look again next year. And so again, you know, she's not going to make any money on that, but they're giving you advice. I've known her for years. When we did get bumped on one of our homes, I was able to go back and, you know, look, and she gave us a ton of options and, you know, to get a new homeowner provider. Wow, that's great. It's. It's important.

No, it's super helpful. Yeah. Yeah.

Especially when you have more. As you accumulate more assets or as your business becomes more asset heavy, that insurance becomes, you know, really important.

It is, Yeah. I, you know, I, I mean, when I was younger, I thought, oh, insurance agents, what a scam. I can figure that out.

Exactly.

It's like, yeah, yeah, I could fig. Figure it out, but I, I don't want to have to spend the time to learn everything they know. I, you know, just like with an attorney, you know, we're all relatively smart people. We could learn to be lawyers. But that takes a lot of time, you know.

It does. And, and I would argue that you can always find it cheaper, but there is usually a price to pay when you have a problem, especially when it comes to insurance.

Got it.

And you don't want to wind up having to sue your insur. To get coverage. I've been in that position and it's just awful. And so you want to have a good relationship with an agent or a broker that can be on your side, often on your side representing you towards a larger insurance company. It works out really well.

Yeah. And they've done it before, so they know who to call, how to phrase the messaging, how to get things done quickly as opposed to, all right, now, not only are you having a disaster, but now you have to learn the ins and outs of your insurance company's Claims process. No, that's the wrong time to do that. Pay somebody else. That's it. Yep.

Yeah, exactly. So one of the last things I want to talk about is. And we mentioned this on the previous disaster show that we did throughout all this, you know, when things happen or you start to see things happen, one of the key things to be successful is just don't freak out. You know, we've talked about stressful situations hundreds of times on the show here. And the critical point about making it through these things is to remain calm, be the leader that your employees need you to be, that your customers want to see that, your suppliers, they want to see your rock solid. And having a plan in place is going to make you more confident, and it's going to help you stay calm during these things. It's real important. Important.

That's great advice. Yeah, yeah. You need to pretend that you're not freaking out. I think that's.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You. You may have to pretend, of course.

But you'll be freaking out. That's okay. Just get through Judge. Yeah. And then. And then you know, freak out later when it's over. Like, let the freaking out come out, you know, But. And. And make it part of your story. Like, oh, of course I was freaking out, but I knew there was no value in. In. In, you know, perpetuating that. So instead, I dug into our cash reserves, I looked at. I did all the things that we were supposed to do. I got the team to where we needed to be, and we kept getting the work done. Like, that's. That's the story you want to tell.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Exactly. That's great. That's good stuff. So be prepared. Take time to, you know, create a disaster plan and go back and listen to this show again. Maybe play it for your management team and pick out some of the things that'll help make your business strong longer. And even if you don't have a disaster that's going to help you in.

The long run, it will. Right? Yeah. The more prepared you are, even just thinking through these scenarios and knowing, okay, you know what? I could survive that without insurance. I don't need insurance for that. Knowing that that's the confidence you need when suddenly disaster strikes, you're like, okay, you know what? I've already thought this through. This is a little different than what I thought through, but, oh, here we go. It's fine.

Make it.

Yep, it's good.

Yeah, exactly.

All right.

Good stuff. Great to talk about.

Yeah, it's good. It's good. It is good. Just. Just doing this makes me feel better about things. So there we go. Thanks for listening, folks. Thanks to smile@textexpander.com podcast for sponsoring this episode. Feedback@businessshow co. We would love to hear from you. See you next time. Keep living that charming life.