#320: The Resilient Mindset—What It Takes to Thrive in the Face of AI and Economic Uncertainty

Welcome to the High Income Business Writing Podcast, helping you propel your writing business to a whole new level. And now, here's your host, Ed Gandia. Hey there. Welcome to another episode of the High Income Business Writing Podcast, the number one podcast for business writers and copywriters who want to earn more and less time doing work they love for better clients. With well over 1 million downloads from listeners just like you across 101 countries, we are definitely living in some interesting times. As of the past three years haven't been exciting enough. There's a lot of uncertainty out there. We have a possible recession. We AI tools that are coming out left and right, leaving writers wondering what that means for their business, for their careers, for their craft. And of course, a whole new set of just daily fears, daily threats, daily risks. That makes us wonder, geez, I mean, where is this all going? Clients are feeling the same kinds of fears. There's increased risk aversion out there. Clients are hunkering down, Many of them are. And the social channels and the news media are only amplifying the situation. And if we're not careful, we can fall into the trap of thinking that everything is hopeless and that it's all going down the toilet. What's the point, right? This is nothing new. Nothing new. This is not the first time that we have faced uncertain times. Just three years ago, I mean, this is probably the most uncertain moment of my career. And before that, the great financial crisis in 2008. I've lived and worked through several recessions. They've all had a certain level of fear and uncertainty that if you're not careful, if it goes unchecked, you can really get into a lot of trouble because your inner critic will run wild with whatever ideas you give it. And the inner critic feeds on fear. Now, this episode is not going to be extremely tactical. Okay? So if your expectations here is you're looking for a new set of hacks and tricks to get prospects and clients to finally pull the trigger on a project or magic tricks for doing more of the same. That's not what this is about. There's plenty of that out there. I have. I have recorded many, many episodes in the past with that kind of information. And, you know, we're going to address some ideas, some tactics for sure, in this session, but I really want to address kind of the mindset and the level of thinking and the strategies you need to start adopting and thinking through over the next 12 to 18 months, because I think that's way more important than specific tactics or techniques. Here's what I do know. The next 12 to 18 months are going to force you to think creatively, think critically, be more resourceful, keep fear from overwhelming you, keep fear from making you do stupid things, make stupid decisions and take action even when you don't feel like it, even when you feel unfocused. We have to keep moving forward. We all have to remember that challenging times, at least at this level of magnitude, won't last forever. Business always has its challenges. Being self employed is always risky, that never changes. But the situation we're facing now, these specific set of challenges, they're going to evolve and you need to evolve with them. At the end of the day, we can't control what happens out there. We can only control ourselves and more specifically, how we respond to every challenge and every situation in front of us. I think the big question really right now is how do you want your business to be different in 12 to 18 months? And what can you start doing right now to not only survive what's ahead of you, but come out of this thing stronger? So you may be in a couple of different places right now if you're currently struggling. The key right now is to respond in and not react if you're doing fairly well or very well. I talked to a lot of people who are doing better than ever right now. So not everyone is struggling. The key if you're doing well is to maximize a situation and not neglect your business because it's very, very easy to stay really busy and not work on the things that are going to ensure that your business remains strong and is better positioned than ever before. So I want you to imagine, and if you're somewhere where you can actually draw this out on a sheet of paper, I want you to draw a four quadrant matrix. The first column is struggling. I want you to name it that. So that would be the category of you would be struggling right now in your business. The second column, the one on the right, is going to be thriving. Okay, so we're either in column A right now, you're either struggling, or you're in column B right now, which would be thriving. Now let's talk about the rows. The top rows is about what you're doing right now, what actions you're taking. The top row is working on the business and on yourself. That's the top row. The bottom row is working in the business, working inside, being busy, reacting, doing the day to day. And we're going to start at the bottom left. So the bottom left means that you're struggling right now, and you're working in the business more than anything, or almost entirely. If you're in that quadrant, you are essentially reacting to what's going on right now. You're not working on the business, you're not working on yourself, and you are struggling. Definitely not a place you want to be in. All right, let's look at the one to the right of that. So this is the bottom right quadrant now. And if you're working or in that quadrant right now, you are thriving right now in your business, but you're only working in the business. I talked to a lot of people who fall into this category. In fact, these are the two most common quadrants. And if you're thriving but too busy working in the business, you're essentially just completely reacting. You are not. You're. You're not doing the things that are going to ensure that you have a thriving business for the long run. Okay? So that might on the surface look like a really great situation. And in the short term it is, but in the long run, it's not going to get you to where you want to go. Now let's jump over to the top row, top left quadrant. So here you are struggling right now, and you are working on the business and on yourself. That's a much better place to be. So you're struggling, okay? That's the short term, that's the immediate. But at least you are taking the time to invest in yourself and on the business. You are marketing, you are taking a look at how you're positioning yourself. You are maybe refining your copy so that it speaks to the current environment. Maybe you are investing time in the right social media channels. You're doing all the things, you're maybe working on your craft. So there's a whole number of things you could be doing to work on yourself and on the business, and that is much better than the bottom left quadrant. You're not reacting, you are responding. The final quadrant. So this is the top right quadrant. You are thriving, and you're working on the business and on yourself. So you are. Even though you're extremely busy with work, you are taking the time to also invest on yourself and on the business. And in that case, you are maximizing. Okay? And that is a great place to be as well. So let's go through them again. Bottom right. If you're thriving or. Or actually bottom left. If you are struggling but you're only working in the business, you are reacting bottom right. If you are thriving and also only working in the business, you are neglecting your business. Top left. If you are struggling and however you are at least working on the business and on yourself, you are responding to the situation like you should. And the top right, you are thriving, and you're working on the business and on yourself, you are maximizing. Okay? So just. I think it would help to draw this out and just kind of be honest with yourself and ask, okay, where am I right now? And be honest. There's no shame in just facing the truth. Very, very important to face the truth. Once you know the truth, you can start taking action. All right, so here's what I'd like to do for the rest of this episode. I'd like to focus on what I'm calling the three legs of the stool. Okay? Right now, in uncertain times, you need to focus on responding to the situation. That's number one. Leg number two is protect. Okay? So protect what you do have. And then leg number three is to prepare, and that's looking forward. Prepare for better times ahead. So you want to respond to the situation, not react. Then you then want to protect your business, Protect yourself, protect your mind, your heart and your soul, all your assets. And then finally, number three is to prepare for better times ahead. So let's unpack each of these a little bit. So let's start with responding. Okay. Okay. The first leg of the stool. Responding is about two things. Number one, looking under every rock for potential opportunities, and two, finding clients and prospects who are taking this opportunity right now to double down on marketing in order to leapfrog the competition. I call it the Warren Buffett model. So legendary investor Warren Buffett has always said, look, and then I'm paraphrasing, this might be his actual quote, but when there's blood in the streets, that is the time to buy. And he's been very famous for just having a huge cash position. In fact, right now, Berkshire Hathaway, his company, the company he runs with Charlie Munger, I believe the last I read, 18% of their. All their assets are being held in cash right now. They're waiting for opportunities. Okay? A lot of people read it as a defensive position. They think that they're worried. I've read different things about this, but when you really look at what Buffett has done in the past, when he's holding a lot of cash, he's waiting for opportunities. He's waiting for everyone to be fearful. When there's fear and there's blood in the streets, that's when he's going to go in and double down. He's going to snatch up all kinds of investments at rock bottom prices. So again, you want to look for opportunities under every rock. And you want to look specifically also for clients and prospects who aren't really fearful right now. They're being very strategic, they're being very smart, they're playing their cards right and they're taking advantage of what's going on right now to really get ahead of their competitors. So you want to reach out to clients, current, dormant, past clients. This is not a time to be shy. This is not a time to feel embarrassed that you're out there looking for work. Just go out there, let people know, hey, I'm looking for one or two opportunities right now. I'm curious if there's anything you might need help with in this area or that other area. Go back to clients you've worked with in the past, even if they weren't perfect. Hey, this is not the time to be too choosy. Again, we're trying to respond in a very strategic way. Looking for past clients, opportunities, going to maybe we haven't gone before or it's been a long time. Going to content studios, going to agencies, going to potential partners, going to colleagues. Hey, I'm looking right now. If you happen to know of anyone in this area or any prospects or clients who are looking for a writer with this kind of expertise or experience or track record, go to designers, go to complimentary freelancers. Let them know that you're looking. Again, look under every single rock. This is also a great time to do what I like to call and this is not my term, I forget where I heard this, but I love the term. It's called texting roulette. Okay, the idea is you, if you have people in your contact list on your phone, people you've worked with in the past, or colleagues, sources of referrals, etc. When you're sitting around or you're standing in line somewhere, rather than going to social media or doing something mindless, go to your texting app and and then just type some random letter and let's say it's R. And the first person that comes up who would fit you know these descriptions, meaning a professional contact. Let's say it's Robert Smith. So Robert, go ahead and send him a quick text. Robert, been a while. How the heck are you? Hope all is well. Check in with people. So randomly you could do standing in line 15 minutes somewhere. You could easily reach out to 5, 10 people. Okay, get into the habit of making those deposits into the relationship bank accounts. If you haven't been doing that. Go out, send out some nine word emails. I like to call SPEAR emails, which are. SPEAR is an acronym, short, personalized and expecting a reply. I work with coaching clients on this. We use this all the time. It's got a lot of different applications. But this is the time to say, hey, you had mentioned at one point you wanted to write a white paper on X. Is that something you're still considering those types of emails? You want to reactivate PASS and dormant clients and do more with clients who maybe you haven't really thought about other opportunities, other things you could do for them. This is the time to kind of step back, look to see what are the things could they be doing? What are the things are they doing that they're not using you for? And maybe they're trying to do internally, you know, maybe they don't know you do this type of work. Maybe you're writing blog posts for them and you know they do long form content. You have a lot of experience there, but you haven't never pitched them on doing or helping them with long form content. Okay, Things like that. This is not the time to be shy. You want to go out there, put yourself out there, let them know you can help, let them know what else you can do for them. They already know, like and trust you. Okay? This is not a time to be shy. Don't be afraid to make more contact attempts than you normally would. That's another key thing that I want to remind you of. Don't, you know, maybe in the past when things were going well, you, you had time to really think about that and maybe you shied away from following up. This is not the time to be shy about following up. If there was ever a time to follow up more than you feel comfortably or comfortably doing, this is the time to do it. Identify adjacent markets. Okay, so what do I mean by that? If you work with, let's say higher ed, adjacent markets are other markets related to that particular market, in our example, higher ed that are close enough to it that you could actually approach. So for instance, companies that serve the higher ed market, tech companies, professional service companies that focus on higher ed. In fact, this gives you a great advantage because if you know the higher ed market and you write for these clients, you would be a valuable resource for a company that is trying to get in the door or works with higher ed clients. Okay. Because you understand how this prospect thinks and what they look for. Okay? So this is a time to get a little bit more creative, start expanding the possibilities and go to adjacent markets. Finally, in the category of responding, find prospects who seem to be pivoting right now or reframing their own positioning to reflect the current market uncertainty. Okay, this was a huge revelation for me. Back in the great financial crisis of 2008, 2009, I kind of stumbled into this, I've talked about this before in the podcast, but my biggest client ever came in very late 2008. And the way that happened was, was through a pure serendipity. I won't bore you with the details, but this happened to be a tech company, a software company that was doubling down on their marketing during that really, really difficult period, that really difficult economy. They had a technology, they had a software, enterprise software system that enabled companies to do more with less. And they weren't quite positioning themselves that way. But once the financial crisis hit, they realized that they had an opportunity to show that, look, if you're gonna invest in one thing, this is what you should invest in right now. And it worked beautifully. So they were doubling down on their marketing, they were investing a lot. They didn't have the resources to get all this stuff created. I came in at just the right time and it was a huge lesson for me that, hey, I stumbled into this, but you can actually reverse engineer the same thing and it's not a guarantee. But look, for companies that are already in sectors or in industries where really it makes sense for a lot of companies to invest in right now, or as you look at the way they're positioning themselves and their value, you can see that they're clearly presenting themselves as a no brainer for the times we find ourselves in right now. Okay, so that's the first leg of the stool. Just some ideas and how you can respond to what you're facing right now. Instead of reacting. Reacting doesn't get us anywhere. The next leg of the stool is to protect. So protect your finances, protect your focus, protect your, your mind, your heart, your soul. Okay? These are your most important assets. And if you don't take care to protect these, you, you could really be in a lot of trouble. So in terms of finances, look, it goes without saying, but I'm constantly surprised at how many freelancers haven't invoiced anything in the past few weeks or sometimes even a couple of months. Do an audit collection. All money owed if it's already been invoiced and you've been owed money and you haven't, or you're owed money right now and you haven't really been tracking that now is the time to start making some calls. Get your money. Okay? So collect all outstanding invoices due. If you haven't invoiced somebody in a while, now is the time to get caught up there. Now is also the time to figure out what you can do to ensure this doesn't keep happening. Why is it that you've gone two months without invoicing client A? Okay, might sound like a no brainer, but you know, if you've been busy, if you've just been kind of freaking about what's, about what's going on out there, you might be in that situation and it's okay, don't beat yourself up, but let's get that, let's get all that stuff straight. Lower costs at home in your business, but you want to maintain investments, okay? So I'm talking about lowering costs with things that maybe you're not using tools you're not using services you're not really getting value out of. Okay? But make sure not to cut out investments that are serving the business. One example, I actually invest in my business every year. I have a budget for that. Um, just three months ago, three, four months ago, I invested in coaching. A lot of money in coaching. And I'm constantly looking for opportunities to invest in my mind, my heart, my soul. I'm constantly investing in new ideas, information, books, courses, things that make sense. I'm strategic about it, okay? But I make sure that I'm always investing in myself. That is my biggest asset is my mind, it's my heart, it's my soul. Those things are very important in very difficult economic times. Every time that I've faced it, I've decided to continue investing in my team. So I have a small team who helps me run the business. And especially during COVID when that hit, I made the decision early on that I was going to keep everybody in my team. We weren't going to do anything crazy. It was scary, certainly, but it was the right thing to do. And I'm glad I did that because it didn't last forever and I needed my team to make sure that we came out stronger than we did going in. You want to continue to focus on improving your productivity and your focus and your attention on the things that really matter when you are working. Okay? So be careful not to get distracted by the news, the anxiety. Be careful about your inputs, okay? Who are you talking with? What conversations are you having? Is anyone sucking you down a rabbit hole of negativity? Be careful, don't let somebody hijack your mind and Your mood. Be careful who you hang out with. Follow up on every quote, every client, every prospect, every lead. And I would urge you to follow up more than you think you might need to follow up on. I find that follow up is one of those things that just nor during normal times, very few people do a good job of. And you know, during great times, you may not need to follow up as much. You know, you're already overbooked, for example, but now is not the time to be that way. Follow up. Follow up more than you think you need to. If you normally follow up a couple times on a quote, follow up six times. If you normally follow up with a client, you know, only about once or twice a year, or an old client, dormant client, Follow up every month. Follow up on everybody. Let people know. Look, I have availability. My friend Jennifer Gregory, who you probably know from the content marketing writer, she is really a stickler about following up with everybody and letting people know that it doesn't work for everybody. But she says, look, even if it's a last minute thing, I, I may be able to take it on. Now that's her model. She can jump on things sometimes at a moment's notice. If you have a lot of capacity and availability right now, you may be able to do that in the short run. So let people know. There's nothing shameful about letting others know that you have capacity right now. Even if it's kind of a rush project, sometimes it's better to jump on a rush project. Even if you have to work late into the night, you, you have to work a weekend. As a temporary solution, this could work. Not maybe in the long run, but right now you need to leave all your options open. Start adding, if you don't already. Add agencies to the mix. Add content studios to the mix. Tell them that again, sometimes you're available at a moment's notice. Let them know that you have capacity. Agencies, content studios, they have a steady stream of work, much of it involving writing, especially with content studios. So let them know you're available. I like to present myself. Even if you're okay right now, love to be your backup if somebody doesn't come through. If somebody is not available, somebody goes on maternity leave, somebody takes a full time job. I would love to be your backup. And guess what? Even if they say great, don't just leave it on them. Follow up with them again. Follow up, follow up, follow up. I mentioned this earlier, but it bears repeating. Protect your biggest asset, which is you, your mind, your heart, your soul, your spirit. Okay? This is a time to watch your diet, okay? Make sure you keep an exercise routine. Make sure you're getting plenty of sleep. Make sure. If you don't already have a meditation practice, start your meditation practice. Even if it's three minutes a day, if you already have one. This is not the time to stop. This is the time to double down on that. And it's all super important because you. All you've got in your mindset is key. Being a successful business owner is a mindset game more than anything else. It's really not about your chops. It's your relationships, of course, are super important. So is your ability to do good work for clients. All those things are super important. At the end of the day, it's really about your mindset, okay? And your mindset is directly affected by how you treat your body, your mind, and your spirit, okay? So protect you. All right? So that was the second leg of the stool. The third and final leg is to prepare. And again with prepare, we're preparing for better times. We want to come out of this period so stronger than we were going in. So how can you better position yourself for the inevitable upswing so you're in a better spot in 12 to 18 months than you were going into it? Now, let me be clear. This is not about changing target markets, okay? This is not about overhauling your business. Now, there are some cases where that makes sense, and maybe you fall in some of those categories, but we're not talking about tearing the whole thing down and just starting with a totally different market. Don't go chasing something just because it sounds like it's a hot thing right now. Unless, of course, there are exceptions. Maybe you already have contacts, insider knowledge, or some level of experience in a different target market. And if that's the case, it could make sense. But don't just suddenly say, okay, I'm going to start writing for AI companies. And you have really no contacts there and no experience. So just because something is hot doesn't mean that this is where you should go. This is really more about pivoting as needed and carefully and strategically and reframing and clarifying your message and how you add value in this environment. Okay, One example is when Covid hit, I think it was like a month in, like April 2020. I realized that my messaging was really geared toward kind of regular times. And, you know, some people were maybe struggling a little bit, but many people were had momentum, but they had momentum, and they were just focused on working in the business. So my messaging was all about, okay, let's take a step back. Let's work on your business and make it stronger, better. Give you a business that enables you to earn more and less time. And this is all well and good, but, you know, it doesn't work as well, that kind of messaging, when everyone is freaking out, when everyone is losing sleep every single night. So I change my messaging to reflect kind of the conversation that everyone was having with themselves. And I just wanted to meet them where they were. I wanted to continue that conversation. And it's interesting because I changed it in and I was looking at this the other day. I had a Word document on my website copy and I had all the changes tracked. And I tracked the changes because I knew that this wasn't going to last forever. So my intention was, okay, I'm going to keep all the track changes, I'm going to save this document with those changes tracked. And then what I want to do is whenever this is kind of over or we're kind of more on the other side of this is I want to revert back to my original messaging because fundamentally I still believed in that. You know, I still believed in my original messaging and that's exactly what I did. I think it was only three or four months and I went and reverted back to the, to the original messaging. So it's, it's. That's just one idea of things you could do in terms of clarifying your message and how you add value in this environment. The other thing I would encourage you to do is start shifting, if you haven't already, from a freelancer's mindset to a consultant's mindset. Now what do I mean by that? What I mean is I want you to really think of yourself as less of an order taker and really more about a, of a trusted advisor. Okay. Okay. Someone who does head work and not just hands work. Okay. Head work, meaning providing ideas, advice, perspectives to clients and less of. Okay, well, what do you need me to do? Okay, that's. That's order taking. There's a time and a place for each one. I don't want to. This is not a knock on, on. On hands work on writing, but I find that way too many writers adopt a order taking mindset and they get stuck there. And I don't want you to do that. Okay. If there was ever a time to really start thinking more like a consultant, like a trusted advisor, it would be now. Okay? The message is clear. With AI coming, this is a massive structural shift and, and the. In our business, in our Industry, this is not going away. This is not a fad. I think most people understand that what it's forcing everyone to do is to move up the value ladder. If you do not move up the value ladder, you will get run over. Okay, you need to move up the value ladder because the flood that's coming, you need to be in higher ground. So what you really bring to the table outside of your craft is your ability to provide ideas, to think creatively, to solve challenges that the prospects and clients have in, again, creative ways. This is all right, brain thinking. Essentially, AI is going to be great at left brain thinking. You need to bring in the right brain thinking. Okay, so again, more head work. You're already doing those things with many of your clients. You're just not charging for them, you're not making a big deal out of them. And clients are just assuming that you're going to provide topic ideas, that you're going to help them with their messaging, that you're going to help them with all these other things that are not part of the writing. And even though, I mean, you may take a lot of pride in the fact that you include that with many of your projects, you need to, you need to kind of carve that out into separate engagements. Okay. The other thing I would say is that you may want to move up the chain of command a little bit, move upstream. So let's say you typically work with a manager level or director level person with new prospects. You may want to start going a little bit upstream to maybe VP level, maybe even C level, depending on the organization with. And you want to do that with a different value message. You want to frame your value and what you do is the fiscally smart thing to do to continue marketing, but doing it with, with less. Okay, maybe you present yourself as someone who helps clients get much more value out of the content marketing dollars they're already spending. And you don't have to use those exact words, but I'm just kind of giving you the sentiment and the people who respond really well to that are going to be higher up the organization and not so much at the manager level. So again, this is not for everybody and not in every situation, not in every market. But you may want to consider moving upstream at the executive level. That's the kind of thinking and that's the kind of message that, that people respond to. So something else to consider there now, if you have financial Runway. So in other words, right now business is down, but you've done very well for a while and you know you can afford to maybe kind of take a step back and in invest much more deeply in your business. You may want to spend that time and some of those resources on building your authority. I think right now we're at a point where, hey, if you can build your authority in terms of creating new content, okay, making a bigger investment in some of your better social media channels like LinkedIn, this may also be a good time to write a book. Now, I know that might sound a little scary, but if you've been writing content for your blog or if you've been posting on LinkedIn for a while, if you have ideas you've already created, you may be able to just cobble a lot of that together into a short book. Don't think of a book as having to be a full length, 75,000 word book. You could take something you put together that's 20,000 words or less and call it a book. Essentially, something with some core ideas, something that's relevant to your audience, that demonstrates your thought leadership, how you think, how you work and so forth. So lots of possibilities there. But those are the types of projects that many times we just don't have time for. You know, we're so busy working on client work and, you know, we don't, we don't take the time. So now if you have extra time, and again, you have the financial Runway to invest in a project like that, this could be the time to do it. Same with things like podcasts. If there are podcasts that your audience listens to, this may be the time to invest in pitching the hosts of those podcasts on you coming in as a guest to talk about two or three different specific things. Okay, so this might be the time to focus on that. This might also be the time to look for conferences or events where you can speak or be a panelist, or just get out there and build new breadcrumb trails to your site. Everything I just gave you, or example of breadcrumb trails, essentially going to where your prospects are hanging out, figuring that out first, and then building breadcrumb trails to your website. Let them know who you are, where you are, share a little bit of yourself. And again, things that we typically don't invest on because we're so busy working in the business. You may want to come up with some new offers that speak to the risk aversion we're seeing. That's another idea to consider again, in order to prepare, because this not only helps you now, but it also starts positioning you a little differently. As I mentioned earlier. From an order taker to a trusted advisor. So, you know, adapt to the market fears that you're seeing and hearing right now. This could be a time to start offering road mapping engagements, content repurposing plans, helping clients better systemize, or content marketing. Or maybe you create a workshop that's well suited for this environment and the fear levels that you're seeing. And for those clients and prospects who are cautious, you know, maybe you ask yourself, okay, how could I help them with lower priced offerings that are still high margin for me? Meaning, you know, content calendars, content repurposing, which I mentioned a minute ago. Things, things that, hey, this is not, you know, a $5,000 engagement. Maybe it's $1,000 or $1,500, but it gets me in the door. It's something that I find enjoyable. It adds tremendous value to them and, and it could lead into other things. So pick something. Pick a few things you do really well that maybe you're not currently charging for from an advisory standpoint where you're providing ideas, advice, insight and package that somehow promote it. Create a productized service around it. Productized meaning that it's a fixed scope and has a fixed fee. Now one last word about Financial Runway, because I've mentioned that term a few times. If you're finding yourself productized, meaning that it's a fixed scope and has a fixed fee. Now one last word about Financial Runway because I've mentioned that term a few times. If you're finding yourself right now kind of worried about that, this should be an important reminder that everyone needs to commit to build at least three months worth of living expenses. Not necessarily income, but living expenses. That should be a key goal for you. I like that as an entry level goal that you can then work up to maybe six months worth of your family's living expenses. Notice I keep saying living expenses because income. Look, if you're in a very sticky situation, you can adapt to that. You can kind of really cut back, circle the wagons and kind of get through that. You also need to account for a spouse or a partner's income. Okay, so this is about household, not just what your business brings in. This is household expenses. How can you get to saving if you're not already there? Saving three months worth of living expenses, that's a good shorter term goal that you can then work up to six months worth and then you just keep going from there. But you know, the benefit of that is just clear. I know we all know it, but we don't do it. That kind of those kinds of reserves. That kind of a financial buffer buys you so much. You know, talk about reduced anxiety levels when. When the economy takes a dip, you can actually now start investing like what we've just been talking about, because you have the financial Runway to do so. So give yourself that kind of luxury. I, you know, I made a lot of mistakes. I didn't do that for a long, long time. And over the past five, six years, I've been. I've gotten a lot better at that. In 2019 happened to be my best year ever in my business, and I was working on building a bit of that Runway. And I'm glad I did, because when 2020 hit, even though the anxiety level was there, I was in a much, much, much better place than I was even three, four years before that. So I'm going to leave you with a couple of exercises that I urge you to do sometime over the next few days. And I think this is going to help you kind of see the situation a little bit differently. Especially the anxiety is high. Again, we want to respond. We do not want to react. So here's the first exercise. I want you to think back to three moments in your business or personal life when you faced a major obstacle. And I want you to ask yourself, for each of these situations, what strengths, ideas, or resources did you muster up to push through each of those obstacles? So list the obstacle, list the challenge. Talk about what you know, what happened and what kind of anxiety and fear it induced, and then list, and it could be a bulleted list. What strengths, ideas, resources did you muster to just push through that and come out the other end? Okay, and then what did you learn about that experience? That would be another question to ask yourself there. Okay, so I know it seems maybe like it wouldn't help. Trust me, I did this recently. It really does help, especially when you don't think it's going to help. So I urge you to do that. The second is a journaling exercise, and let me present it this way. Okay. I love this concept of the future self. So my future self is someone who's much better, stronger, and smarter than my present self. And the cool thing about the future self is that that pattern keeps repeating. So right now, I'm better, stronger, and smarter than I was 10 years ago. So my past self was not as good as my current self. And if you look back at your life, I'm sure you can find the same things. I mean, it's not a straight line, but certainly if you look back long enough, you have definitely in any 10 year period, probably gotten better, stronger, smarter. So if that pattern keeps repeating, what makes you think that in 10 years you're not going to be better, stronger, smarter? So if 10 years ago you were not as good as you are today, why wouldn't that pattern continue? Okay, so with that in mind, I want you to ask yourself, what would your future self tell? Your present self, what advice would he or she give you about what's going on right now and what you need to do? And I want you to write this in a journal as a letter from your future self to your present self. Your future self again, better, smarter, stronger is now communicating to someone who needs help right now. So what would he or she say in the form of a letter? I urge you to write a page or two in a journal. I mean, if you go beyond that, that's great. Don't just write some bullets, don't write half a page. Take the time to listen to your future self and just imagine. This is a really powerful, cathartic exercise. I think if you take it seriously, you might be surprised by what might come out of it. I'm going to leave you with a quick story. So I recently led a retreat for some of my clients in Scottsdale, Arizona. And I got there a day early, which is great because it gave me the day to just kind of rest, relax, decompress and be a tourist. So much to see in the Phoenix area. And one thing I really wanted to do was to visit Frank Lloyd Wright's home, tell yes and west while I was there. I had read about it before and I'd been to Phoenix many times, but I'd never been to Frank Lloyd Wright's home. And in order to enjoy it, I wanted to learn more about it because I really didn't know too much about Frank Lloyd Wright. So I watch a couple of documentaries on YouTube and I was fascinated by his story and by his art. I was just captivated by all of it and really moved. And there was a story in one of the documentaries that I found particularly moving. And I think it's so apropos for the times we're facing right now. So Frank Lloyd Wright became very successful early on in his career and he had about 20 straight years of great success, lots of commissions, everyone wanted him. And he had built a home in Wisconsin called Taliesin. In the late 1920s, the house burned down with his girlfriend and her two kids in it. All three of them perished in that fire. So that was huge. That was a really bad moment. For him. And as if that weren't enough, then the stock market crash of 1929, and then the Great Depression in the early 30s, it was like the mid-30s. And he had not had a single commission in over three years. So you can imagine, I mean, you think that not having a new project in a month or two is bad. Over three years, nothing coming in. He was broke, and he decided in just desperation to create an apprenticeship program. He wasn't thrilled with the idea, but he went ahead and did it. He needed money, and he was able to easily find quite a few apprentices to take him up on it. And it was a paid apprenticeship. In fact, I know that he wasn't thrilled about it because I learned in one of the documentaries that he told his students, look, I'm not here to teach you. You can follow me around and you know you're going to learn, but I'm going to put you to work, because to learn architecture, you're not going to learn sitting at a drafting table. You have to interact with the materials. You have to do the manual labor. Labor. You have to do the work. And he put them out to work, and he didn't have a curriculum. He just started doing things, and they basically followed. But at least he had some cash flow coming in. Finally, he gets a commission. And it turns out that the reason it came about was because one of the parents of one of the apprentices was a very wealthy man by the name of Edgar Kaufman. He owned department stores in the Pittsburgh area, and he had many acres in this wooded area of southwestern Pennsylvania. He had a small cabin there, and he wanted to build this magnificent home there. So he reached out to Frank Lloyd Wright to see if, you know, he could do this. He hired him. Now, you can imagine over three years was no work. His inner critic was extremely active, and he had a massive case of imposter syndrome. He went nine months without doing any work on that project. Not because he didn't have the time. I'm just guessing he just couldn't get it done. His inner critic was fierce, and he was battling that. And you just couldn't get himself to start. Well, one day he gets a call from Kaufman saying, look, I haven't gotten anything from you. I'm not getting return calls. I'm here in the area and I'm coming over and I want to see the drawings for this home I'm paying you so much money for. Frank Lloyd Wright hung up the phone, went straight to his drafting table and started sketching out the drawings for the Kaufman home. He did it in under two hours. In fact, legend has it that when Kaufman showed up, Frank Lloyd Wright had just finished and he walked away from his drafting table as if he hadn't really been doing any work. And what he showed Kaufman was the drawings for what was to become Falling Water, which is considered by many architects to be the single best piece of architecture in American history. Ever. Not only was it absolutely beautiful, but it turned his career around. This was the project that brought him back. And it all happened because he was forced to use his creative spirit and his resourcefulness at the last minute to push past his inner critic, call on his higher self, and produce something beautiful. I'm sharing this with you because sometimes it's during our darkest moments, during our moments with the biggest fear and anxiety that we can muster, all the resources we need to actually turn our business around. So I urge you not to give up hope. This is not going to last forever. So if you're in a difficult spot, just trust that you are where you're meant to be and that you're going to come out of this stronger than you have before. If you put forth the work, if you show up every single day and just do your best, and if you are actually doing really well right now, this message is still very relevant because I don't want you to forget that. I don't just want you working in your business. I want you to also carve out time to work on your business to make sure that you come out of the situation stronger and better and are not caught off guard at some moment down the line. I hope you enjoyed today's discussion. This has been Ed Gandia. Have a wonderful rest of your day. Well, that's it for today. I hope you enjoyed the episode. And just a quick reminder to grab your free copy of my latest book, Burn More in Less Time. The Proven Mindset, Strategies and Actions to Prosper as a Freelance writer. You can get your free copy@b2b launcher.com or you will also find the detail show notes to this and all my other episodes. Enjoy and have a great day.