You Winning Life Ep. 46-Ty Kiisel- Small Business Challenges During Covid

Everybody, welcome back. Today is going to be a really interesting conversation because I have Ty Kiesel. He has been writing about small businesses and business finance topics that impact the bottom line of everything we're doing for over 20 years. He has over 35 years in the trenches as a Main Street business evangelist, evangelist, evangelist. Man, I can't even pronounce that today. Main Street business evangelist, author and marketing veteran. Ty helps business owners better understand their options for addressing some of the biggest business challenges that we're facing. He's also the director of content for NAV. We've already had his colleague Jerry Detweiler a few times on our show. And you've been one of the people who've been completely on top of the CARES Act. And explaining that and sharing information about that since day one. So, Ty, thank you so much for hanging out.

You're welcome.

So before we get started with like all this active day-to-day stuff, I'm curious, like, how did you end up in the financial world? I'm really, really curious about that.

You know, I actually started with advertising. I was doing a lot of direct marketing, direct mail and stuff for banks and credit unions and other finance companies. And so was kind of introduced to the world through advertising about 20 years ago.

Oh, wow. And so how did you know, like, this is exactly what I want to be doing? Like, this is part of my purpose, this is part of my passion. Where did that come into everything?

Well, I spent, um, I spent a lot of time— I've spent some time at the helm of a small business or two myself. And, um, you know, finance is really interesting because the world today is decidedly different than when I had a small business. You know, 20, 25 years ago. And it's— there are a lot more options available right now. However, you have to be a savvier borrower. You know, it's not like go into the bank and apply for a loan and get whatever, whatever they offer you. And it was all very generic, you know, it was a 5-year or a 10-year term loan or a, or a line of credit or something. And every bank offered the same kinds of things. And now there are, you know, options available that certainly weren't available when I was around, and they tend to be more specialized. The way I look at financing is, you know, loan purpose kind of drives everything. What are you borrowing for? And that's going to kind of inform what type of financing do you use, how much money do you borrow, those kinds of things. And a savvy borrower can look at the options available to them and make a decision about, oh, this makes more— maybe a 6-month term loan or a 1-year term loan makes more sense than a 10-year term loan. You know, for example, if you're borrowing money to purchase quick turnaround inventory that you're going to have in and out of your business in 6 months or a year, does it make sense to borrow this year's inventory for 5 years? Probably not, because you're going to have another opportunity next year to do the same thing. And if you're, if you're still paying for the inventory that you, you got this year, it can— it makes a problem. It's problematic.

Right. And I'm finding that like a lot of times business owners, as not only as a licensed therapist, but I'm also a certified entrepreneur and business coach, that people don't know the numbers well enough. They may say like, well, our product sells for this. Well, that's great. Of every time you sell that product, right, you have the cost of the product, but then you have the profit on the product. How much is coming out of overhead? Right. And they're just kind of like throwing these numbers up against the wall and hoping at the end of the day they have more profit than they do expenses. Right. So these, you know, I don't know, different people call them like some people call them KPIs, key predictor indexes. Right. Some people actually know in the bottom right, whatever phrases we want to use. But I'm finding more and more and more that when I sit down and I write down these numbers with my clients, they are actually massively undercharging in their industry for the services or goods that they're offering, to the point where they have no clue because they're like, well, the community says I should be charging this, but you can't stay in business if you, if you do it that way. So at what point, like, how does someone, before they even come to a loan, because if they took a loan on that, then they're really, really hurting themselves. Themselves, is my guess, right? Because then they're still now paying back money that they won't even make. Where would be the first place to start? Like when you're looking and when you're consulting somebody and they're a small business, they're in the, I don't know, $100,000 to $200,000 range. What would you say is like the first things to be looking at to make sure that like taking a loan out is in their best interest?

I think that there are 5 key metrics that every business owner needs to understand. They need to understand their income. They need to understand their expenses. Um, they— and those are pretty easy, you know, how much are you spending and how much money is coming in. I tracked those things daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, annually, because I was always trying to compare to what I had done before. And so those two first— those first two numbers are pretty Easy to understand. The other, the other numbers that I think are a little more complicated, um, your accounts receivable aging. Um, in, in the last business I had, um, I offered 30-day terms to my customers, and if they took 45 days to pay me, my margins were so thin, which was a mistake on my part, but my margins were so thin that after 45 days I started losing money. And if it took over 65 days, whatever profit I had was now gone and it was costing me to do business. So, you know, managing your, your accounts receivable is just incredibly important. And, you know, when I first— when I started my first business, one of my really good friends was a CPA and we tried to have these conversations and he was giving me all this advice. And I was thinking, I know what I'm doing. I know how to, I know how to do what I do. And I, and I looked at it as accounting mumbo jumbo that I could ignore, you know, that it didn't make any sense. And I found, I had to find out the hard way that, you know, the advice he was giving me was really super important. There is so much more to running a business than doing what it is you do. And I used to, at the time, I was doing all my own bookkeeping and I was doing it at night at the end of the day, which basically meant I was tired and basically meant that I never got around to it as frequently as I should. And I learned that the best time to do that was first thing in the morning when my mind was fresh. So I would do all of the books first thing in the morning and then, and then get after whatever it is we were doing. But accounts receivable aging is one of the most important things you need to monitor. And the other is accounts payable, right? Because I had, you know, I had terms with different vendors. And if my— if I had a vendor or a supplier that offered me a discount if I paid early, I, I know of dozens and dozens of small business owners that take a big chunk out of their payroll by taking advantage of that discount. So they're— it's not costing them anything almost. And so the 4 metrics so far are income, expenses, accounts receivable, accounts payable, and then the last one is cash flow. More businesses, I think, die because— healthy businesses die because they don't manage their cash flow properly. And, you know, you kind of mentioned in, and in terms of borrowing, I think this is a really super important metric, because the way I measure it, and this is one of the metrics that my accountant shared with me, my friend, the accountant, he calls it, he called it the cash flow metric. And basically, you want to have twice as many assets or income as you do expenses. And he said, that's, that's hard for a lot of small business owners. It was super hard for me. But anything below 1-to-1 is the slow trudge to extinction because it's costing you more to do business than it is to— than you're making. And so when I look at borrowing, you need to fold in the cost of that borrowing into your cash flow metric. And it's going to tell you if you're— you know, because there are a lot of businesses, particularly after the 2008 financial crisis, they borrowed themselves out of business because in their mind, all I need is money, all I need is money, more money is better than no money. And unfortunately, money has cost. And so if you borrow more than what you should, it gets you into a lot of trouble. I grew up in a small business. My father had the attitude that you borrow for two reasons. One was to increase the ROI on a project. And the other was to increase the value of your business. And so I tend to think that those are safe reasons to borrow, because you're leveraging borrowed money as a means to make more money. Crisis borrowing, you know, like to make payroll or, you know, things like that. Sometimes you have to do that, but it is very dangerous and it's easy to let that get out of control. So I don't know if that answered your question or not. Totally.

Here's the thing, most small business owners, right? And you know this 'cause you've been in this way longer than I have is, I came outta graduate school, there was not one workshop, class, book suggestion on running a business. And that was in 2005, right, from a master's in therapy. The average medical professional has no clue how to run a business. Some of them go in and they buy a private practice from someone, maybe whatever it may be. But then you have people who are working on the other side of the coin. You have people who are working, let's say you're a schoolteacher and you're thinking like, I'm done. I don't want to have to deal with this, whatever it is. I'm making my $45,000, $50,000 a year with my benefits. I'm going to start tutoring and open up a tutoring business. But they— again, like you said, like, unless— no one— the work that you're going to be doing for that amount of money is going to be more time per the hour spent, right? So if you're going and you're showing up to a job, you're getting paid for going and doing things, but you're also not taking out the garbage unless that's your job, right? But you do your job, you go home, you don't have to worry about any of the bureaucracy. But once you start getting into the business owner paradigm, you start taking on all these other hats, and therefore your actual productivity time or the amount of money that you're making doing direct service or working on that product actually diminishes because now you're doing all these other, other roles. But people don't think about it that way. So your actual amount of money that you're making actually goes down significantly.

You know, I would, um, I would send everybody home at the end of the day. You know, I had, I had 3 employees, so I was a very small business. And, um, I would stay and, uh, you know, do all the things that business owners have to do. Clean the toilets and do the bookkeeping and the paperwork and all of that kind of stuff. And I would get a call from my wife about midnight, 1 o'clock in the morning, asking me if she needed to bring the sleeping bag over, which was my cue that I had been at work long enough and I needed to go home. The average small business owner He's working more hours than he would as an employee. He's, you know, he's, you know, there's, he or she is doing a lot of extra things that they don't anticipate when they start a business. But it's so stinking rewarding building something from nothing that we still do it, right? I read years ago, I read Michael Gerber's book, The E-Myth.

I was just gonna get into that. So perfect. Yeah.

And most of us, most of us start a small business because we have an expertise to make something or to provide some kind of service or whatever. But our expertise isn't necessarily running a business. And I found that most of my time was spent not doing the thing I started the business to do, but actually running the business. I think I've heard it said that you either work in a business or you work on a business. And, you know, I think a lot of small business owners probably should spend a little more time working on their business because, you know, the death rate for small businesses is, you know, something percent within the first 2 years. And half of the businesses that start today, 5 years from now won't be around. And, you know, I think that That's a horrible statistic when you consider that 2 out of every 3 net new jobs in our country are created in these small businesses. And half of our friends and family all work in them. I mean, this is— in reality, this is the juice that runs the economy, is small business. I ride a motorcycle and tour all over the West and I noticed that when I'm pulling into a little town, if there is a vibrant and healthy Main Street, you know, with all the merchants and the barber shops and the mechanics and everything, then this— the little town is a healthy, thriving town. If the Main Street is dried up, the town is dying. I mean, small business is the key to our economy.

100%. But I also realize, like, going back to that EMF paradigm, as someone who works with a lot of businesses, and especially a lot of family businesses, It's backwards, right? The simplicity doesn't come along with this, and it does tear apart— on one side you might be making an income, but the other side you're tearing apart the fabric of your emotional well-being and sometimes your family's well-being. So there's the catch-22 there. And I have a friend of mine, Matt Manero, who built his business from scratch to $150 million a year, and he's in the fleet of big rig financing out of Dallas, Texas. And, you know, there's so many— him and has this statement that like, don't build a business that's just replacing a job for you, right? If you're not building something to hire people to replace you, to put yourself out of business, you— in other words, that you no longer have to work in the job that you were trained to do, then we're not probably building it right. Right. And I see this especially in the world that I've been hanging out with. Entrepreneurs where, like, the business owners that I have met that have become the most successful are not doing that which they started off in their industry anymore. They've hired people to replace them, 2, 3, 4, 5 of them. Right. Because better to get 20% of 5 people than 100% of all yours and still not do anything. And then if you want to see whoever you want to see do right, if you're a service-based industry or if you yourself are the product, then you can only write that whole thing is time, right? Whatever you work for. You're only getting paid on. You're not getting paid when you're sleeping. You're not getting that recurring, right, passive revenue coming in. So I'm finding that when I'm working with business owners and they are talking about taking money out, that this also has to go hand in hand, which is like, OK, well, what are you doing for additional income pathways to come in? And like, well, I can't afford to pay someone else to do that. I talked to one of my clients before. They have all of these old archived VHS, mini DVD of their performance, of their, you know, their production. And I'm like, is it even HD? They're like, no, some of this stuff is 20 years old. I'm like, I don't know. Like, I mean, I don't know if it's worthwhile for you to put $500 into that to put that out as brand representation of your company versus taking that same amount of money, hiring a videographer for the day and recreating it. But they don't have the money. So is it right? Where do I want to do it myself? I want to do it myself versus taking a loan, a small loan, $1,000, $2,000, $3,000, and then hiring someone who's a professional. So what's your take on that? Right. Because we do have— right, going back to that Michael Gerber E-Myth, if you're not an expert in that area, hire someone else to do it. But the number one complaint is I still have to put food on my table.

Yeah, I, I learned a lot from that book. However, Seth Godin wrote a couple of books that I liked even better. Because I think they reflect what we need to do in today's world. Purple Cow, if you're familiar with that book, you got to read that book and Linchpin. If you haven't read that book, you need to read that book. And basically, what it is, Seth's— and hopefully I'm not butchering what he had to say. But, but basically, everybody can lift. A lot of people can lift. Some people can maybe even build. But there are very few people that can create and can be creative and do something that is the purple cow instead of the black and white Guernsey cow out in the field. And I think that some— and, and as a small business owner, You want to hire people smarter than yourself because you want their expertise. You— and you want more than just their butt in a seat for 8 hours a day. You want people who can actually come and create and contribute. It's going to cost a little more, and you're going to have to do things that are going to give them a reason to stay, um, to stay and work for you. Rather than go someplace else, but it is 100% worth it because it helps, you know, like for example at NAV. NAV is a great company, not because NAV is a great company, but because the people that work at NAV are super smart and really motivated, and you know, we're trying to keep small businesses from dying. You know, that's our mission. And you've met Jerry a couple of times. One of the smartest people in the credit and lending space I know. She is brilliant. And, you know, those are the people that I get to work with every day, and that's why NAV is a great company. So if I'm a small business owner and I wanna build my business, I want to find people that are smarter than me at the things that I am not smart at. Like, for instance, today, if I were to do it all over again, I would hire a bookkeeper to do the, the, the day-to-day mundane things. Now that doesn't mean as a small business owner I don't need to understand what the books are telling me. Um, my, my buddy I was telling you about, he says that every business needs a profit expert, and the profit expert should be the business owner. But part of the being a profit expert is understanding what the financial records are telling you. And that doesn't mean you have to be day-to-day in the financial records to know it, but you do need to be able to read and understand what the records are telling you. I had a, a lender once tell me that if I can understand more about how a business is doing by looking at their financial records than the business owner, I will not lend anything to that guy. Because we need to understand that as business owners, and I think One of the things we learned with the PPP application process was that there are a tremendous number of business owners that don't really understand what the finances of their business are. And, and that, that is scary.

Does that go back to the philosophy that you have most people who have created businesses that are based on a hobby and a passion, but that shouldn't be in business? For themselves?

You know, I don't know that I'm willing to say they shouldn't be in business.

Yeah.

But I would say that if there's something you love and you want to turn it into a business, that's great. It's important that you understand that. But in addition, you need to learn the ins and outs of how to financially run your business. And if you don't want to do that personally, you need a trusted somebody to help you do it. You know, like the getting into the books, you're going to learn things about your business that might not— you might not otherwise see on the surface. You may see profit opportunities. You know, there are things you could do with how you buy the products you sell or the services you sell that will make you more profitable. And, you know, it might— you may need to borrow money to make it happen. But there are things like, like, for example, I mentioned earlier, I grew up in a small business with my father. There would be maybe once or twice a year, a supplier would call and say, I have X amount of inventory that you sell on a regular basis. If you buy it from me now, I can give you a 50%, 60% discount on it. But you just have to buy in a larger quantity than you normally do. He would buy it because it would increase his profit margins by 50 or 60%, or he could offer that discount to his customers and do more volume, or some combination of the two. So, you know, he, he recognized that because he understood how that, um, that number impacted his bottom line and I think a lot of small business owners need to understand, need to, they need to do the, it's, I call it watching beige paint dry. You know, they need to get into the boring stuff because it's going to help their business in the long run. And if I had to be an accountant every day, I would probably stab my eyes out with an ice pick. But, but I need, I need to understand what those numbers are telling me as a small business owner. And, you know, unfortunately, I had to learn a lot of these lessons the hard way. You know, there's a lot of, there's a lot of failure in this conversation that we're not talking about. But it's, it's important to learn for sure.

And especially with today's climate, with everything going on with this pandemic and businesses maybe not being open or slowly starting to reopen depending on what industry they're in. What, what are some of the things that we kind of have to look out for? Because I have this mindset now that like I live in a, I live in Hollywood, Florida. Right. We have a ton of small businesses in the area. We have Hard Rock Hotel, which is right around the corner, which who knows what's going on there with all these new high-end shops. They literally just spent like hundreds of millions of dollars reopening it. And then like 3 months later, right, COVID hit. So we have big things happening. We have small businesses suffering. We have restaurants that are locally owned. We have chains, whatever it is. But I'm wondering, like when you have like the same type of restaurant, let's just use that industry as an example, you have 8 pizza shops within a 5-mile, 3-mile radius. Is it fair to say that like some of those, they're just not gonna make it, right?

Yeah, unfortunately, unfortunately there will be a lot of small businesses that aren't able to survive this. This is going to be a difficult 8 or 10 or 12 months. For a number of reasons. Number one, you know, capital is not going to be as readily available as it was. And small businesses, big businesses, every business relies to some degree or another on capital, and borrowed capital is the way a lot of businesses survive. And unfortunately, you know, 6 months ago, if you were to come to me and say, hey, Ty, I'm a brand new business, and I can't, I need to access borrowed capital, how am I going to do it? Because, you know, I've got no track record, I've got no income, I've got, you know, there's nothing for a lender to evaluate me by. I would say one of the things you need to do is get a business credit card. There's lots of zero-interest business credit cards. They're relatively, compared to a small business loan, they're easier to qualify for. And I would point you in that direction as one of the things that you could do. Those are dry, those have dried up. Those opportunities don't exist right now. In fact, there are credit card offers available and you can get credit cards, but you've gotta have a credit profile beyond reproach. They're not just lending to, the average small business owner. In 2008, the same thing happened. And lines of credit, if you have a line of credit with your bank, you're probably seeing your credit line shrink, because the bank is probably shrinking your credit line. And if you want a line of credit, you probably won't be able to get it. I'm— I would predict that it's going to be 2021 before a small business owner is going to be able to go into a lender and get a line of credit again. You know, there are financing options available, but the fact of the matter is the first people to come back after a crisis like this, they come back because they can charge a premium for what they're offering. Like, you know, merchant cash advances are going to be back. You know, you can get a merchant cash advance today if you have enough credit card volume, But, you know, factoring, things like that are the things that are going to come back. It's not going to be a line of credit. If you have a good credit profile, if your personal credit score is pretty good, and your business history is good, you can probably get a term loan. But, you know, there's a lot of lenders who are kind of backing out of the space, at least in the short term. Because we don't know what's going to happen. Because, because of all those— of the dozen pizza restaurants within 5 miles of where you live, probably half of them won't make it. And so lenders are trying to mitigate risk by how they evaluate your, your credit. One of the— for example, one of the things we learned in the, the, the last 2 months with the PPP is that your credit profile matters. You know, your personal credit score matters, and your business credit profile matters. And borrowers were getting— even though the, the thought was the SBA was going to relax the standard for creditworthiness because of the disaster. People are still getting turned away because their credit profile isn't very good. And so you've got, you've got to focus on that. And the easiest thing to do there is start by monitoring. You know, all of the credit bureaus offer monitoring, you may have to pay for it. Companies like us, we, we have free versions of, of our products, so you don't have to pay for it. But as human beings, we impact the things that we pay the most attention to. So if you are paying attention to your personal credit score, for example, you're gonna be more likely to do those things that would positively impact your score because you wanna see it moving every month. And, you know, I've, for probably the last 10 years, I've had a relationship personally with Experian. And I don't get paid by Experian to say this. But I get a, I get a monthly credit update, I can view my credit score anytime I want. And anytime there's a new inquiry or something that looks fishy, I get a notice. And so I, I have become over the years a credit nerd. I spend a lot of time looking at what's happening. Thinking about how can I make it better, how can I improve it. And unfortunately, whether it's your personal credit or your business credit, slow and steady wins this race. There is no shortcut. It's concerted effort over time, using good credit practices over time that will help build your, your credit score. And, um, you know, fortunately for businesses, it's a little bit easier because when they look at your business profile, they're looking at the comparison of the good and the bad, and if there's— if the good outweighs the bad, that's good for you. And, um, and I think right now in the next 6 months, the important thing for us to do in the small business space would be to focus on building our credit because, you know, we can probably get through a few months, but there's going to be additional stimulus. I have no basis to, to make that statement other than there's got to be more stimulus or we're going to lose everybody. And so you should start spending time now focusing on those things that are going to make you look more appealing. I mean, basically, lenders look for 3 things. Can you repay a loan? You know, do you have the financial wherewithal? Do you have the income and the cash flow to do it? Will you repay a loan? And that's the, you know, that's your credit history. That's in— they're trying to make a judgment about what you're going to do in the future based upon what you, what you've done in the past. And the third question is, what, what happens if something goes wrong and things don't work out like you think they will. And so, you know, that's why traditional lenders look at your collateral. That's why, that's why they, they look at, do you have a business plan? How does this impact your plan, etc.? So, you know, those are some things that I think we need to be prepared for as we go into the future. Monitor your credit, that's the first thing. Pay attention to what, what it's doing.

Agreed. Agreed. 100%. And I'm wondering from your side of marketing, like, where would— especially if we can use some of the, the EIDL loan, right, the EIDL loan towards those type of expenses, right? You have the PPP and then you have the EIDL, and those are for legitimate business expenses that you would be doing to run your business. Where, where would you say primarily the focus should be from the marketing side of things? Right. Because right now, Everybody's using the word pivot, right? How do you pivot your business? We can talk about Seth Godin, right? The cow had to make yourself stand out amongst what everybody else is doing. And that's not necessarily by saying we're going to knock more prices off, you know, more discounts. What's the one thing that you would say is like, if you can do this and market yourself in this way or think about this from a marketing perspective, what would you kind of guide? These small business owners?

You know, I think that's a great question because in today's, in today's world, the, the media would have us all believe as small business owners that money solves all of our problems, and that's not the case. Creative problem solving is the most critical skill a small business owner needs. For example, that in Utah, Salt Lake City just opened up a little bit. So I grabbed— I'm a lazy guy, and I don't like ironing my own shirts. So I've for years taken my shirts to the laundry. And I went to take my shirts to the laundry and went to drop them off. And the particular branch I go to is closed. And so I came back and I was thinking about where else am I going to go. And I happened to get a letter in the mail saying, the branch you go to is closed, but we will come and pick up and deliver. And so they kind of spelled out how that works. And, you know, they— they're— because I've been a loyal customer for, you know, dozens of years, I'm more inclined— I probably am more inclined, wouldn't you think, to make the pivot to delivery than I would if I was somebody that didn't know them.

Right.

I also— there's a little Mexican restaurant that my wife and I go to every week. And we've been doing this for years. And, you know, when they closed the restaurants down, that was kind of, you know, we can't go to dinner there anymore. And what they did is they they pivoted to curbside. And so we'll call ahead. They know who we are, you know, because we've been going for so many years. They get our order ready, I drive up, they have, they have the outdoor eating area that is normally open. It's all closed in like it would be during the wintertime with a window that they give us our food and stuff. So, you know, I think that if I was a small business owner today, I would be looking for ways like that, that I could accommodate the current situation and still get stuff to my, to my customers.

Massively agree with you. And I think the tech, the advantage that we have during this pandemic is the technology, right? For, for all these years, right, especially you know, from the psychological side, whatever, like everybody's like bashing social media or, you know, technology. I don't need to use it or leverage it as much. Like, if we did not have the technology available to us as we do right now, for example, Zoom.

Yeah, right.

The world would be shut down. Right. I can't imagine doing this 10 years ago where there was nothing. Bandwidth wasn't there. Technology wasn't there. Quality wasn't there. Right. Where we are, the blessings on the other side of the coin are now is the time that if you're the person who's saying, I'm not going to get behind all of this stuff, I'm not. That's why, like, like I've been doing all my podcast interviews have all become Facebook Lives because everybody is captive 24/7 in front of their computers. Now, it doesn't mean that I don't want people to not take a break. But if this is 12, it's 12:15 Eastern Standard Time and people are on their lunch break. Then I'm going to have a good idea of catching them because they're probably sitting in front of their computer anyway all day because they're not going right there. They're most likely working from home. That maybe I'm going to be able to give them some good information on their work break to help them when they go back to work in an hour or whatever it may be that can help them empower themselves a little bit more. So I'm really trying to think, especially as a therapist, like my population, right? I live— I'm in Fort Lauderdale. But now with this, my entire— as a licensed therapist in Florida, Now my whole entire population is the entire state of Florida. So my whole marketing and my— all my— like my Facebook ads is now all of Florida. And I've tightened down the age brackets and I'm making multiple things. I have one that's going out just for college students. And it's only targeting the specific Florida universities between 18 and 25.

Yeah, right.

So I've had to revamp and streamline so many things where now instead of like, OK, who's within the— 8 to 12 mile radius that wants to come to me if they already haven't heard my name by referral. But now, Mike, man, who's targeting those college kids? Who's targeting those? Right. It's now just— you don't have to drive to me to be in my office. I'm working from home. This is my home office. I can see you in Utah as a business coach. So, so the world just got a lot bigger for people to start. If you're a service-based industry that you don't necessarily have to be in person, you just expand the amount of people that you can get yourself in front of if you're daring enough to get out of your uncomfortability and to do like what we're doing right now.

Well, I think the lesson for small business owners is to think outside the box. I mean, at, at NAVA, there is not a single person in the office right now. We're all working remotely from home. And you know what? It's working. You know, we've, we've learned that You don't always need to be in the office. And it's— I think that the things we've learned over the last 10 weeks are going to positively impact businesses for the foreseeable future. Because the creative way— the creative ways we've been forced to solve problems are helping us be better. And I think if you are If you're not trying to think of creative ways to get your products out there and share your message and all those kind of things, you are not taking advantage of— I mean, this is a horrible situation that none of us want to be in, but it is also presenting opportunities for those who want to figure out how to be a better business.

And I just realized with everything through this Scenario 1, the blessing of technology and the advances of technology. But number 2, I can't remember how many weeks ago it was. I'm like, oh my gosh, like of all the clients I was actively seeing, one said they're going to want to wait until after this is over. Another one did a bunch of sessions. It's like, well, until my kids go back to school, I'm not really finding the space in my house or getting good Wi-Fi out of my car. I'm like, well, listen, just pull up next to a Starbucks. And sit in there and sit in your car in the Starbucks and connect to their Wi-Fi from your car. Right. But I've only really lost 2 clients during this whole time. And I'm like, I can now move and travel anywhere in the world because I know that whole digital nomad culture, especially in the tech industry, right, is massive and work my American hours, my East Coast American hours. And now that might be meaning that I might be working until 3 o'clock in the morning out in Europe if I travel, but I can have a full day of experiencing a location and a full day of work, maybe need an extra espresso or two through the day to get through it, but still have no dip in my income while doing that. And I think that's one of the blessings that's come out of this. I'm like, wow, I can pick up and move anywhere as long as I keep my Florida license and I'm seeing my Florida therapist. But I'm like, I talked to my professor, my old professor yesterday, and she's like, why aren't you applying to other states right now? They just lack lax some of the rules about, you know, now with reciprocity with some states. So for $125, I'm now going to get a New York license for $120, whatever it is. Now I'm exponentially opening up my population.

Yeah, I think we need to, we need to be figuring out how do I, how do I expect— I mean, I love this, the whole Steve Jobs old mantra about think different. You know, and I think that it's really easy to get trapped in the way we've always done it, because that's the way we've always done it.

Right?

Let's be flexible. Let's figure out new ways to do things and, and accomplish things. And I think the small business owners that are able to do that will exit the crisis in a better position. They may not have more money yet. But they're going to be better positioned to to capitalize on the market that exists post-COVID-19?

Right. So my family is a third-generation furniture business in Hallandale, Florida. Familiar with the area? It's Wasser's Furniture. And we have both my brother, my sister, my father. We have a floor manager slash delivery manager and two designers that are there full-time. And we're still doing everything via digital. We have the person who's there, right? Our floor manager who's there is literally taking pictures from the floor or live streaming from the floor to any of our our customers via my— right. If my sister or brother are on the phone with them, they're doing everything via Zoom and like that. Right. And it's all connected back and forth. But we're still able— and then they're doing any appointments by— right. They're coming in masked and everything. But we're doing everything. They're doing everything via FaceTime or Zoom until they're really fully, comfortably open. So, so that's a big, massive pivot. And it's really wonderful that, like, you would think a brick-and-mortar furniture store, right. That's one of the toughest things. You got to touch everything. The only thing they found a way one person being in the store, social distancing by schedule. So I really want to challenge people out there that are listening to this, that like, if you're struggling with these type of things, one, from the financial side, without a doubt, you should be reaching out to the team at NAB. There's incredible people, tons of resources on your website. Obviously there's right between the small businesses and locally, but also what you guys are doing is incredible. But to reach out to someone like me who like, let me help you. My job as a therapist and as a business coach is to help you think outside of the picture frame that you're stuck. And you can see how beautiful your picture is and what other options you have when you've been doing it the same way for 20 years, 15 years, 10 years. So I think that's kind of like from my perspective, maybe where I want to leave it. But I'm also want to wonder for you is like if there's like one big thing that like you haven't shared yet, but you're like, I wish everybody got this. And if you get this, I can go to sleep. Like I can rest well today. What might that be?

You know, I think the big thing is get a handle on your business. You know, understand how it works from the inside out. And if, if, if that's not something that you are particularly interested in digging into, because it's, it's messy, and it's, you know, it's, it can be dry, hire somebody to do it. There, you know, you don't have to hire a full-time accountant, you can get a part-time accountant, but find somebody that can help you understand how your business is, is working and help you become the profit expert so that when you're making decisions about how your business is going to go forward, that you're making informed decisions based upon not only what your instincts might be in your industry, but also based upon the numbers and the financial data. Yeah. And You know, I think, I think that's the big thing. If you are, if you are a small business that applied for the PPP and you got it, for instance, just to wrap up, forgiveness is probably top of mind right now. And Jerry, who was here earlier in the week, has put together a really good description of how to get through the forgiveness application. And if you go to nav.com, look for that because I think that will help you. It's not written to be— it's not friendly to read it. You know, it's difficult. And engage with your financial advisors to help you get through it because, you know, you're going to need their expertise. If you have an accountant, that's great. If you only have a CPA that you see every— at the end of every year or quarterly to do your taxes, call that guy or that gal and have them help you go through it. Um, you may— it may cost you, but it will be worth it. But, um, you know, look, look for opportunities to improve your business. Get to understand how it works from the inside out. And don't be afraid to hire people who are smarter than you to help you. I think those are all things that You know, if nothing else, those 3 things are going to help you build a business that will not only survive COVID-19, but will exit this crisis in a better position to, to capitalize on what comes next.

Awesome. Incredible advice. I really want to thank you for spending time today. And my guess is that over the next few months as this progresses and we see next levels of whatever might be coming out with government assistance, or as the economy opens back up, Definitely would love to have you back on to hear the next insights that you can share with everybody out there. So again, thank you.

Anytime. Happy to be here.

Awesome. Appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

All right.