Pessimism is killing your business...

So last week the news broke that there's yet another variant of COVID the Omicron variant. And this was scary to a lot of entrepreneurs who feel like they're just coming out of all this time of uncertainty and then whack across space, there's yet another moment of uncertainty, maybe another period of uncertainty. What is this going to mean for supply chain? What is this going to mean for the stock market? What is this going to mean for the crypto markets? What is this going to mean for my business? And the important thing that I wanna talk to you about in this video is to remember the lessons that we learned two years ago. Two years ago when we felt like the markets were exploding and the world was stable. And then we got smacked in the face with this thing called Covid. And everybody reacted and had this very stressed response to what was happening in the world. And maybe appropriately so. But it was those short term fear based decisions that got people into a lot of trouble. It was those who stayed on the sidelines, it was those who didn't invest, it was those who didn't focus on growing their businesses that missed out on a crazy expansion that happened in Internet businesses and happened in the investment world. And you can say that there was inflation and you can say that it was temporary and you can say all of these things. The fact of the matter was it if you responded and planned for your life as a result of the short term changes that were happening, you missed out on a ton of expansion, which a lot of people, myself included, wish they could go back and redo. You wish that we could go back and plan long term. So use this time right now as that second opportunity. Use that as the time to plan for very long term things. What does that mean? That means that instead of looking at how business is going to be impacted in the short term, or how your portfolio is going to be impacted in the short term, what do you want to be buying and investing in for the very long term? Let's say that there is a second wave of shutdown coming. Let's say that all of the scary things that we fear do happen and the market crashes again. Let's say that that does happen. Let's say that valuations of companies become reasonable and let's say that the crypto markets crash and that liquidity drives up. Let's say that that does happen. That's a scary thing because we're thinking about what we're losing compared to what we have right now. But what opportunities will exist in the wake of that what opportunities will emerge just like emerged from the last time. This is the time to rub your hands together and say, what do I want to create over the next five years? Because those who answer that question are those who lead in the next chapter, those who look at what is going to emerge out of this are those who are able to spot what trends to invest in or what businesses to start or how to speak to your customers. I think there's a lot of people watching who wished that they had bought Bitcoin in April 2020. I think there's a lot of people who wish they had bought Tesla in May of 2020. There's a chance that we get that opportunity again. Now, I don't think my personal opinion is that it is not going to be the big smack in the face that the original shutdown, the original pandemic caused because the data coming out about the variant is fairly mild and we have the ability to modify vaccines and treatments a lot faster than when we had no idea what was going on. But just like what happened two years ago, there will be opportunities to buy companies, to make investments, to start new businesses. You've probably heard the phrase, I think it's attributed to Warren Buffett that you buy when there's blood in the streets and when there is uncertainty, there's a ton of volatility and when there's uncertainty, the price of things go down. We've been complaining for the last year and a half that inflation is up, prices are going up, that employees are hard to find, that people are hard to motivate, and when there's uncertainty like this, the price of things tends to come down. This is actually why I tend to be against government intervention. Because as the price comes down, entrepreneurs see opportunities to buy up things at lower prices for which brings them back to a market value. But you have to be an entrepreneur who is looking five years out to be able to take advantage of those opportunities. What I'd like to share with you next is how I personally am responding to this, both the short term omicron news and overall where this, the trend of the world seems to be going. The first thing, and I mean this in all sincerity, is I, I am raising my prices. I'm raising my prices on my programs and services, I'm raising my prices on the physical stuff that I sell in my E commerce businesses. And there's a couple reasons for this. The first is because yes, there's inflation, yes the price of things is going up and I need to be able to protect those Profit margins. But the second reason is because raising prices allows me to focus on. Focus on the groups of people that I need and want to serve the most. Right now, we're in this period of the world where when everything shut down, we had to narrow our focus on who we served, on who we hung out with, on what we paid attention to, and the world started to get broken up into groups. I mean, we saw this politically, right, but it was happening in pretty much everything. We talk about things being politicized, things like the vaccine and people being on different sides of the vaccine. But that's kind of evidence for a bigger trend where people are being broken up into pockets, into groups, into less of a general identification and more of the community that you're a part of, the group that you identify with. Well, in order for me to be of the best service to my community, to my customers, I have to raise prices to be able to serve less of them better. And I would encourage you to look at your business the same way. As we go through all this uncertainty and all this volatility, who do you need to focus on in order to protect your profit margins and protect the quality of service that you are doing for those customers and those clients? And in a world in which there's lots of inflation and in which prices are going up, it makes sense that your prices would go up, too. The second thing that I am doing is I am paring down investments and projects that I don't feel like are going to last during a next period of volatility. I want to free up as much focus as possible under the things that I genuinely enjoy, regardless of what the market is doing and what the world is doing. So I've started to remove my focus from projects or investments that were just done for a financial reason. Because if the world goes through another period of uncertainty, what's going to carry me and carry you out of this is putting your attention on the things that genuinely motivate you, that genuinely excite you. Because when everybody else is trying to pick the winners, during times of volatility, people lose a lot of money. But when you put your attention and your resources into the things that you genuinely like, you have a strategic advantage there. Plus, you're going to have an easier time thinking about how you're going to be growing that over the next five years rather than the next three, five months, That's a superpower. If you're able to focus like that, it will allow you to pick the winners that you're going to ride for the next wave. And it will give you peace of mind because you're not trying to generate wins in the short term while everybody is freaking out about what's going on in the world. So I personally am taking my attention away from the things that were done just for a financial reason. And some of those things I'm taking losses on. Great. It's a tax write off and it gives me the ability to focus on the things that I want to be growing five years from now. So if you've got things in your life that you're like, I'm just doing this for the money, now is a really good time to free up that focus into things that are going to last for the next several years. And the last thing that I want to share with you is more of a mindset thing. And you've probably heard Gary Vaynerchuk say that entrepreneurs today haven't experienced being punched in the face. Or you may have seen that graph that talks about how in good times we get weak people and weak people create hard times, and hard times create strong people and strong people create good times and good times create weak people. Have you seen that graph? Well, now we're being tested and a lot of weak people are being eliminated from the marketplace and are being eliminated from being entrepreneurs. This was true in 2020, and guess what? We printed our way through it. But we also rallied around creating, creating vaccines and treatments and creating new products and new solutions. Those were the strong people responding. Weak people are still hiding. Scared weak people continue to get flushed out of the market. Weak people are complaining about inflation. Weak people are complaining about how things are no longer the way that they used to be. And in those times are where strong people get developed and we have a shortage of strong people because we've had things be so good for so long and even when they're temporarily bad, we rush to try to stave off the pain as fast as possible. I personally am looking at this period right now as a time to develop strength. Look, I've gotten punched in the face in the last two years financially, really hard. It's been the most difficult kind of period of my entrepreneurial career. I made some bad investments, made some bad business decisions, had some bad timing right before things shut down. And I've chosen to use this time of uncertainty as my period to become strong, to become mentally, physically, financially strong. Because when things flatten out, whether it's five months from now or it's five years from now, I'll be ready. And all of the super rich People that you know and admire got this way because during bad times, they were doing the hard work, they were doing the preparation, and then they caught a wave. Elon Musk was almost bankrupt for years. Every bitcoin billionaire built their treasury during the bear markets. It's during these times of uncertainty that are the opportunity to prepare yourself for the next bull run. Whether the bull run is your business or it's crypto or the stock market. And during these times, all of the weakness gets flushed out. So this is a time for you to wonder, which side am I going to be on? Am I going to be one of the weak people that gets flushed out, that every time I get punched in the face I step out of the boxing ring? Or are you the type of person that says, I'm going to get punched in the face, so I better get good at getting punched in the face because then I can lean into it and punch back. This is our new normal. We're going to have new variants, we're going to have people on edge for the next several years. We're going to be politicized and we're going to be in pockets. And it's up to us to become the strong leaders that usher in this next chapter of entrepreneurship and capitalism. There's opportunity everywhere if you're looking for it, but if you can only see the short term punch in the face, you're just going to get more of those. We are the people who create the products, the opportunities, the jobs, the capital, the solutions that lead the world forward. We need you to be strong. We need you to come out of this. We need you to plan long term. And those who don't are going to continue to get crushed. So this is an opportunity for you to decide who you want to be five years from now. Do you want to be out of the ring or do you want to be a champion boxer? I'm ryan Moran with capitalism.com thanks for watching. I'm rooting for you and we're in this together. So if I can serve you on your journey during all this uncertainty and volatility. Subscribe to the channel and I look forward to seeing you on the next video.