Adaptability and How To Swiftly Pivot During Chaotic Times with Roland Frasier, Dean Jackson, and Joe Polish - I Love Marketing Episode #364

What's the exciting part is to start and think about it as an opportunity to reinvent and create a new avenue of revenue like virtual, which opens up a much bigger audience. It opens up a better way of potentially reaching even more people, doing more events without the travel. So I'm excited. I'm Dean Jackson, he's Joe Polish and this is the I Love Marketing podcast.

In these times of rapid change and uncertainty, you can be sure of one thing your ability to adapt will be tested. Learn how live event hosts and business owners are moving swiftly and decisively to support their clients, preserve their team and protect their bottom line in today's episode of I Love Marketing. In this episode, Roland Fraser, Dean Jackson and Joe Polish discussed the postponement of the Traffic and Conversion Summit, an industry leading event that expected 10,000 plus attendees at the end of March. They'll dive into the mindset behind Adaptability in Chaotic Times and share insights onto how they're already making shifts within their own businesses to prepare for what's to come. You'll learn how to think strategically and rationally about your business in times of turnaround so you can maximize your efficiency and strengthen your business from the inside out.

Hey everybody, it's Dean Jackson and Joe.

Polish and we are here with our good friend Roland Frazier who is a real smart guy that Dean. Go ahead and give a quick bio of who Roland is and lets us for our listeners. And of course we're all going to share this in our different networks so that our clients.

Well as for being a handsome and dapper dresser, Roland is an investor and I got to know Roland as part of the Living out in Rancho Santa Fe crew. That's where I first got introduced to him when the epicenter of marketing was in Rancho Santa Fe, California. But Roland is one of the principals in Digital Marketer with Ryan Deiss and Traffic and Conversion Summit and the War Room Mastermind Group and so many things that I don't even understand what Roland does. But I know you would probably refer to him as a modern day impresario. I guess would be a good one. I've always wondered what an impresario does, but the placeholder image for impresario in my mind is Roland Fraser. How's that fit Roland?

I'll take it. I think that's worse.

I'm just going to pretend that I even understand what that word means, but suffice it to say, we had a conversation earlier. I want to give the date here. It's approximately 1:38pm Pacific Time, Sunday, March 15th and the reason I want to date it is because obviously we're on a minute by minute basis. The world is changing pretty drastically depending on where you're at in the world and who you're talking to. And from my vantage point, I was up till 3:30am last night talking to some friends that are really scared shitless. And some are doing well mentally and others are struggling financially. Some are shutting down their businesses. I know people that have already lost millions of dollars, that have big companies, and then I have incredible empathy for all of the people that are living paycheck to paycheck, that can't go to work, that have children, and there's a lot of human struggle out there. We were talking earlier, me and Roland and then of course, Dean, me, you and Jay Abraham did an I Love marketing podcast that lots of people listened to and found incredibly helpful. And so I was talking to Roland earlier about what sort of leadership can we bring to our members, to our clients, to people that follow us and put some good direction out into the world to help people with how they think about their thinking, as our friend Dan Sullivan says. Dan has this great quote where it's the problem is not the problem. The problem is how you think about the problem. And I think there's different ways to think about this. And you both are incredibly sharp. Roland especially. I mean, I'll stay with my realm of like doing lowering status on Dean as we kind of go throughout this. I can't wait to hear what he has to say. Yeah, yeah, just add a little bit of humor to all of this. But yeah, guys. So, I mean, Dean, you had mentioned a term when we decided literally less than an hour ago that we would record this for everybody. Adaptability. And so right now, how does one adapt to the current climate? And I'd like to hear both of your perspectives on. Now that this has been going for a few weeks and things have really changed over the last couple of days.

Let'S paint a picture, just a hypothetical situation. Let's say you're a guy that has a company that runs, I don't know, say, one of the biggest industry transforming events in the industry, in the world. And it's about to happen, let's say the first week of April and there are people coming from all over the world, thousands of people supposed to show up for, you know, this industry transforming event. And then the president says, guess what? We're going to shut down the borders and nobody from Europe is allowed to come in here. What would a guy in a situation like that have to. What would go through a guy's mind if that was a situation, Roland?

There's no way to know.

There's no way to know.

So, obviously, you're talking about. We have an event called the Traffic.

Converse Summit, where it had about 10,000 people that.

That we were expecting this year. And this event was supposed to happen beginning March 31st. So obviously throughout the entire year before that, you're getting ready for that. You have, you know, you book the space three years in advance because you can't get there. There aren't. There just aren't that many spaces that big. There's a lot of competition for them. So you have to plan very far out. Then you have, you know, several hundred sponsors that you sell. You have thousands of tickets that you sell. You coordinate hundreds of speakers, and you get dozens of celebrities. And there's tremendous amount of effort of cash outlay of people. We have over 200 people that work the event. So you're organizing a temporary workforce as well, and there's a ton of parties and everything else. So all of that is something that goes into your decision what to do when something like the coronavirus starts to take hold. And so for us, we felt that with our partners, our majority owner is a company called Clarion, which is a Blackstone company. And then Ryan and I and a couple of our partners own interests in it as well. And so we're having conversations as all this stuff starts and saying, what is the best way for us to service all of our customers and what is the best way for us to lead in a time of crisis? It starts with what's fake news, what's real, and attempting to discern through the noise what is the signal and what is the noise. Then, as things evolve, it's preparing a contingency plan so that we have no intention of postponing. But if events happen in a way that cause us to decide that that's the best decision for all of our customers, then we'll do it. So it was really interesting. I was receiving, and I know Ryan and the other guys were, too, about 50% of the messages that I was receiving from people up until the president announced that there was an embargo on travel from Europe, was about 50% of the people were saying, you are irresponsible if you don't announce canceling this event. You're exposing people to this deadly virus, and you've got to shut this thing down. And then the other 50% were, please don't give in to media hysteria. And all of this, the common, you know, the common flu kills more people at a. Right, yeah, right. So you have. You have all that going on. So for us, we felt because there are so many people and so many businesses, so many people that had spent money on travel, that they would not get back on hotel deposits and on their tickets. Obviously, the people who are exhibitors spend tens of thousands of dollars on booths on the actual stuff. Not to us, just on the booths themselves. Several of them count on these big events like ours to be a significant part of their marketing budget for the year, you know, of their revenue for the year. And so we're looking at our responsibility to those people and saying it's important to really be sure before you take an action like that. And so we held fast until the President announced that he was not going to allow people to travel from Europe, because we have a significant percentage of our people who come to the show from Europe, so all of those people would be unable to attend. And then that reduces the customer experience. And at that point, then also with the California governor asking for events like ours to, you know, to postpone, and then that triggering lots of people saying, you know, hey, we just don't feel comfortable coming. And then sponsors say, we don't feel comfortable coming either. You get to the point where you say, okay, the responsible thing to do, both from a health and safety perspective and from a be fair to all of the business people perspective, is to actually postpone the event. So we waited until that. That was the kind of tipping point for us. And then immediately after that, Disney announced they were going to close LA public schools closed, the NBA, canceled their season. So we felt like we made the right decision. And what you're thinking about then is how do you take care of all those people? And so then a massive effort to reschedule this huge event and all of these resources and all of these people starts. And that's something. We've secured a location and dates for the postponed event, which I can't announce just yet because we're not. We won't have that signed off officially until Monday, but we've received tremendous help from the convention center in rescheduling with no penalties, from our AV companies and hotels that have rescheduled with no penalties. Our rollover of sponsors and attendees, our celebrities that we had already paid to appear at the event, were amenable to amending the dates to reschedule with no rebooking fees. It's been a wonderful observation of people coming together in a time of crisis. To take action, to do the things that you need to do to protect people and also to be participative and kind in moving forward. Even though we know that all of the people that suffer from the delay, not just us, but the convention center, the city of San Diego, that's a tremendous amount of, of revenue for the city that comes in. You know, our parent company, Clarion and all of the people, it's a big deal for them to have this thing delayed. And we really appreciate how everybody has come together. We have not experienced in our event at least the people stripping the stores and panicking and hoarding and thinking only about the Right.

Right. And, you know, this part of the thing is to realize, to really step back, like we were talking about being adaptable and to really kind of step back and realize that what is the margin of this?

Right.

Like, what is going to be the timeline of it? How long is it actually going to be in play? I'm curious when you, when you're looking to reschedule something like that, that's still evolving. If we look at the acute onset nature of this, that it's not something that's going to be resolved in the next couple of weeks probably, but there's probably a good chance that it's going to be resolved in 90 days maybe. I don't agree.

Yeah, I agree.

And that's why I think really taking this kind of approach to rational thinking in what seems like completely irrational world right now, everybody's thinking this is like the new normal, but the reality is there'd be a blip in the year. When you look at the big picture of it. Right.

With.

Yeah. And for us, it was one of the reschedule dates that was offered because keep in mind, there's not a lot of space for these events and they're booked out years in advance. So when you start looking at moving it, you're competing with all of the people who are moving, plus of the people who already had scheduled. So we had an opportunity to rebook for July 5th, 6th and 7th and we were just too concerned. I don't. Yeah, yeah. I don't think you can move it twice. I mean, I think if it gets moved again, it gets canceled. Right. And that's a, that's another, you know, big deal. So we had to make that decision too, because we want to have it as soon as we possibly can. But we also know that we've got to be through the challenge, which I agree with you. I think that 90 day period is probably accurate. It's just that we don't know exactly.

Yeah, yeah. Let me say something to what you guys are saying also, too, because I want to. I mean, I almost err on the side of being super cautious on stuff because as things are changing, we don't really know, like, you know, I mean, none of us are doctors. We're entrepreneurs, we're business owners. I think entrepreneurial solutions are what's going help the economy, what's going to help any sort of crisis. And when I say entrepreneurial solutions is to give some context to that. The original definition of an entrepreneur, which I've said many times, I mean, Dan Sullivan was the first one that taught me where even the word entrepreneur came from. It was from a French guy named John Baptist, say in 1804 was the first recorded use of the term entrepreneur. And it was an individual that takes resources from a lower yield to a higher yield to a lower level of productivity to a higher level of productivity. And. And so from that standpoint, doing anything that could make something more valuable, the way people think, the way people function, the way they operate, products and services, et cetera, is entrepreneurship. And so from that definition, finding solutions is critical. And we don't know. I talk to, as you guys know, I have a lot of doctors in Genius Network, a lot of people in health care. I get to hear some pretty amazing individuals that are pretty tapped in. And I'm literally on the phone with different doctors and medical professionals and every sort of modality, from naturopaths to surgeons to people that are in Africa, I mean, Germany, different parts of the world, hearing every opinion from, no, this is media hype to this is biological warfare. I mean, all across the board. And there's this quote from an article that a friend sent over to me today, and it's from a guy named Michael Leovitt. I don't know if I'm pronouncing that right, but I don't even know who this person is. But the quote is, everything we do before a pandemic will seem alarmist. Everything we do after will seem inadequate. And it's an interesting. You know, I thought about that a lot going, yeah, you know, I mean, depending on what, where you're at. I mean, we have a friend who, I'm not going to mention their name, but very big. One of the top seminar leaders in the world. This person's whole entire business is predicated on very large events. Now his opinion is this is, you know, the media is going to destroy the economy. And I'm hearing different opinions on the reason why that is. But he believes this is ridiculous. And I can't believe this is happening. But at the same time, this individual has a vested interest in not having events shut down. I mean, we're all in the business where we are all going to get hit. We have to make decisions for our team that needs to stay employed to the best that we can. And there's other companies that are literally operating paycheck to paycheck and they don't want to let go of their employees, but what choice are they going to have if the money stops? And so I'd like to kind of dig into that with you guys a little bit.

It almost feels like your lens, how you're looking at what your situation is going to shape the way that you perceive it and the way you want it to be. And almost feels like that if your livelihood and your revenue depends on people being able to come to live events and travel freely and do all of that stuff, that you're going to want to believe that everything's going to be okay. And it's almost like when it starts lining up against that, you almost go through the graves curve of grieving, where you sort of in denial and defiance.

And then, you know, when you get.

Down to acceptance and moving on, that you can quickly then be adaptable and think about where to go. Like that's the reality. And often thinking quickly can save a lot. Like I remember, literally, I think I told you, Joe, that probably 13 minutes after the presidential address that shut down Europe, I knew right away that that was going to us. I have five events coming up between now and July 4th, and that is like a staple of my annual schedule, you know, so of course I want to believe that everything's gonna be fine, it's all gonna blow over, but that it's not looking reality wise. And it could be a problem unless I get adaptable. And I start to think, okay, is it the. It's not so much that the live event is the thing. It's the outcome that people are getting from coming to a live event, which is they're having an intimate boardroom experience where we're 100% focused for three days on their business and they're getting clarity and outcome and a blueprint for moving forward. So can we create that in another way that doesn't depend on being in a boardroom? And I determined and thought, you know what? I'm going to create a virtual experience of this where we can come into a virtual board where you stay right where you are and you know, the zoom technology and virtual presencing stuff is really good right now. Fortunately and I thought it through and can create a great experience that would rival being in a live event. And within 13 minutes had posted up on Facebook and announced my virtual mastermind and then sent out an email to the list. And so we already now are starting with a running start, the rebuilding of a new direction for this out of being quick to realize what's happened and decisive in taking action.

When I was talking to Roland earlier today, which actually prompted this, he was saying, well, how are you handling this? I go, because I talked about the episode that we had done with Jay Abraham just a few days ago that we put up, which we've gotten incredible feedback from that's been really helpful to a lot of people. We talked about ethical opportunism where there are opportunities and there's people that are going to exploit the heck out of people, instill a lot of fear, do money grabs, promote shit that doesn't even work at all. But just trying to do whatever they can and part of my mindset as well, I want to be of greatest service as I can to people right now. And at the same time not oblivious to the fact that I have a large overhead. I've got 14 full time employees. There's a lot of stuff that we do. Everyone going to get impacted from this. Some companies will do very well. If you're in the toilet paper business right now, you've got supply and demand on your side. I never in a million years thought the analogy that I've used for over 25 years where I would say, I don't even know if you ever heard me say this. I've said it hundreds of times over the years. Even when I was teaching seminars back in 1995, I used to talk about marketing and I said, you know, if you've got supply and demand on your side, I said, you don't need to be a great marketer. I said, if you had a garage full of toilet paper and for whatever reason the world supply toilet paper ran out, you happen to have a garage full of toilet paper, you don't need a usp, you don't need a great sales letter. All you need is a cardboard sign that says, I got toilet paper. Put it in your front yard, $50 a roll and you will sell it. And I said that exact thing hundreds of times. It's funny, a kid posted on Instagram, he's like this Joe Polish analogy of toilet paper. It's actually coming true. And it's like, hey, yeah. And so now we have a situation where, you know, some people are going to do well, but the most, the people that I know, you know, and you're in the restaurant business, the third.

And fourth quarters are going to suck.

Yeah.

I mean, the third and fourth quarters for, you know, for toilet paper companies.

Yeah, yeah.

Buy toilet paper companies now and short them for the six month numbers, you know, because nobody's going to need to buy any toilet paper for the rest of the year. You're not gonna poop more, you're not pooping more.

As I understand it initially came about because they said all of our toilet paper comes from China so that all of the shipments are going to stop and will run out. And so people are freaking out about that because it's not the diarrhea virus. Right.

It's the coronavirus.

Dean, what you said is absolutely right. You took decisive, fast action 13 minutes after you heard that. And I think that's what people need to do, is that it doesn't matter what your perspective is. So the guy Joe that you mentioned who's, you know, who's got all the events and he's like, you know, well, I think this is gonna, it's like it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter because what we think is not what the market might think. Right. And just in market, just as in marketing, it's not what you think that matters, it's what the data tells you. Well, the data tells us that there's a lot of people that are panicking right now. And so that we're all going to be affected by this. And regardless of whether we think it's real or fake or somewhere in between, there's definitely immediate, decisive action that needs to be taken. And I think that smart business owners are going to say, okay, this needs to happen in three places and in this order. It needs to happen first with cash flow on the finance side, then it has to happen with how we're focused on the ops side. Then it has to happen with how are we going to approach marketing going forward. And so I think if you look at those three things and say, okay, regardless of what happens, I know that this is basically putting my business in a state like it's a turnaround and I've done tons and tons of turnarounds. So what happens when you're in a turnaround situation? Well, the first thing that you do is you got to manage your cash flow. You have to get that. Normally in a turnaround you do a 14 day daily cash flow analysis and then you have a four week weekly analysis that goes into ultimately 90 days, which is kind of cool because we all think this is probably going to be about 90 days. Now, we could be wrong. And then we just run our cash flow thing longer. But this is a tremendous opportunity, as all crises are, for us to look at. How are we running our businesses? Are we running our businesses efficiently? And we can come out of this with better businesses and we can come out of it intact if we take immediate action. So I think the first thing people need to think about doing is what can I do to slow and reduce my outflows of cash? For example, we've got taxes coming up. Now. I'm not telling anybody not to pay their taxes, but I can tell you that if you don't have much money and you're doing your cash flow analysis, you may want to. And the government has already said that they're planning on extending the filing deadlines. You've got a corporate deadline of the 15th of March, which I think is extended to Monday currently. And then you've got the federal one coming up. If you're going to make a big tax payment, you may want to think about not doing that right now. You may want to think about, I might actually need that money to get me through this tight time. You may go to your landlord and negotiate a rent reduction. You might talk to your utilities and say, how can I save money on that? We go through once a quarter and look at all of our monthly software and subscriptions and all that kind of stuff and find that we've got thousands of dollars a month that are going out that we're not really using now. So going through that, stretching out your payables and talking to your creditors and saying, hey, can I get extended terms? Or if I pay now, can I get a discount? Those, those things are going to be critical to the people who don't have access to credit. Which then leads me to talking about credit. You know, I would talk to money brokers and folks who can help you get loans. I know that there are programs that the federal government has made some disaster relief loans available to businesses for up to $2 million that are expedited through the SBA. So you've got SBA armed with that, you've got promotions for loans and disaster business funding assistance from New York, San Jose, Seattle and other cities that are taking this seriously and saying, we realize that businesses are going to be impacted. Well, that money's going to go quick. So I Think again. Immediate, decisive, speedy action to apply for that so that you've got this cushion going to be really important. And then anybody that's thinking about cash should also be thinking, how do I get paid what I'm owed faster? So if you've got accounts receivable, you know, maybe you can give people a discount. And then reaching out to all of your best customers and saying, how can I help you doing this? And when I say reaching out, I'm not, you know, if you've got the top 20% of customers that are 80% of your income, if the 8020 holds true for you or something like that, as it, as it generally does for everyone, reach out to those people in person and say, what can I do to help? How can I serve you? And you might find that there is additional business that's available. And then looking at that, that's just finance, right? That first place is going to be critical because the people who are going to survive, not thrive, thrive comes from operations and marketing. But the people who are going to survive are the people that have got cash to get them through this. And I'd like to hear your opinion on the finance stuff. And then if you guys are cool with it, I'd like for us to talk about ops and marketing as well after that.

You know, I mean, that was about as useful and valuable as I could imagine, everything you just went through, Roland, which of course is the reason I wanted to actually do a conversation with you about this, because I know you would always say some really smart shit, because you always do. You're just a really experienced, savvy business guy. You know how to look at investments, protecting investments, expanding investments. And we're now in uncharted territories for most people that have never dealt with anything like this in a very unpredictable time. And this has thrown everybody out of their comfort zone. And, you know, let me just say it this when you ask different things. So I did an impact filter, which is a strategic coach tool for my team, on March 13th. And I gathered everyone together, all the people that work for me in the office headquarters, the building that I have in that I own in Arizona, and then people throughout the country in different parts of the world that are on my team. And I called the project team Prep for possible world Crisis. And I wrote purpose, what do I want to accomplish to encourage, direct and lead my team to stay calm and carry on? And I said, I never thought I'd use that term and make the best decisions possible for ourselves, the company and our clients. What's the importance of this I wrote if we're not smart, we will start reacting, not responding. We'll lose our ability to keep ourselves fit. And then we had a two and a half hour discuss based on what I'm going over right now with this so I'm just going to give the overview. So it's to keep ourselves fit, meaning mentally and physically. So it's to keep our clients find alternative models of services and stay profitable so that we have a business ideal outcome. We bond deeply with our clients, with each other. We lay down the tracks for a better business and everyone not only grows but surpasses where we're at. We survive and hopefully thrive. And the worst result if we don't take action, I wrote we become fearful, reactive, we waste time, money, energy, we get stressed which leads to sickness and things become utter chaos. If you do take action, we keep our jobs, we stay a profitable business, we establish marketplace dominance, we create a value creation monopoly which is a term from Dan Sullivan. It's not about someone giving you businesses because you're the only place they can get business from or services. It's because you're just valuable to them and they grant you the business left on their own, not because you force them into it. And we have each other's backs. I kept reiterating we need to have each other's backs here on the and then the success criteria, what has to be true. And I wrote we cut off anything that is not essential, useful and needed that cost or waste money which is going to what you just said Roland. We get clear on our direction and focus. While I was doing this meeting I said guys, I'm not sure yet what the focus is. Here are some ideas I had and we talked it through. And then after I was done with two and a half hours my team continued to go through all the rolling out the ideas and vision that I laid out. The next one was we determine whose role is doing what, crystallize it, we work and don't waste time in non productive no outcome meetings. I also said we launched Joe's freebook.com to generate leads, build value and bond with future members. And what I said is on this we're not going to if someone just wants the book, we'll let them download it for free and if they want it physically shipped to them, we'll charge them free shipping and handling. And we're not going to try to opt them into an upsell or anything like that. We literally just give them the book. Life gives to the giver so it'll be helpful to anyone. And then if they so choose, they want to ever buy something, something from us, or they're in the position right now where they can, great. But it's not going to be some trickery of like promising something and then they're only going to get value if they give us money. So it's like, let's truly just give them stuff. And then I'll read just three more. We ask our clients what they want and need and do our best to direct them to it. We reinvent repurposing with all the assets we have. Because I said content is valuable, but context right now is more important than content. I don't know if you guys agree with that, but we can talk about that if you want. And then we have each other's backs and we really step up up and help each other respond to life. And then I went into, I said, look, if any of you are in a mental financial scary situation with your children, with your families, you're freaking out. Like, let's talk about it so you feel as safe as we can feel safe in scary times. And I cannot tell you how much that benefited my team and how it just really helped bring us together. So that's how I responded to it with my team and said, you know, we're going to have people that you're going to see that are going to be rational and there's other people that are going to be irrational and let's just do the very best we can. So that's kind of how I'm working right now with working with my team to try to think about servicing and helping our members.

Have you done anything from an operational standpoint, planning wise, like, have you stress tested remote yet to see if everybody can work remotely in the event that you've got a quarantine situation? Have you looked at any of that kind of stuff, perhaps repurposing employees or refocusing their efforts so that you'll be able to continue to support them and they'll be able to continue to participate even if we move to a more severe level of containment? Yes.

I mean, even on that day, we had a couple people that their normal past lives have been coming into the office that are now working at home. And we're trying to navigate that right now and we're figuring that out. So I'd love to hear your thoughts on how you're implementing that because you're dealing with a far larger team of people than even I am, I think in the United States, there's 28 million just talk in the US and I know people are going to hear this all over the world, but in the US there's 28 million businesses. 21 million of those are one person operations. So you're talking a lot of very small businesses and then everything in between. And so I'd love to hear how you guys are doing that because I'm just trying to figure it out. I mean the truth be told how really beneficial conversations like this are to the people that are listening to it. We're all doing this because we're trying to use our collective brains to help each other with direction, confidence, clarity, capabilities, which are words I got from Dan Sullivan. We're trying to offer that not only to everyone out there, but also to ourselves. I mean talking to you guys is helping me think, I want to respond. I always use the word respond to life, don't react to life. Since I spent half my time now with people that struggle with addictions and I have genius recovery and different addict platforms, in times like this you're going to see all kinds of vices go up. Drinking will increase, people watching porn, online gambling, gaming escapism. Because when humans are stressed, they're in pain. And addiction is a form of self soothing that creates negative consequences. So when you're in a reactive state, you can make bad, dangerous decisions. And in scary, dangerous times, if you don't have sounding boards, if you don't have community, things can really get, get out of hand. And we're also talking about people dying here. This is not just like oh we can't go to work. I mean there are literally people that are worst case scenario, there could be many, many deaths. And also I'm not trying to be a fatalist here. In my thinking I'm expecting the worst but hoping for the best. That's just how I'm doing my best to navigate this. So yeah, I'd love to hear your guys thoughts on any of that.

I think Roland, this idea of getting granular about the cash right now is the smart move. And to understand what's going to be the curve of this, what's the potential impact of this. Like, you know I mentioned we've got five events that are off the board now till between now and July 4th. And so that's a lot of revenue to replace or to divert or to reinvent. But to then also look at how long the margin of this. Right. Like if I go into September, I think we're back to the usual things. I don't think this is going to affect if I go to Australia in November or, you know what I mean, to really get a sense of the scope of the crisis and to look at the worst case scenario, if we didn't make another dime for this period, how much cash is it going to take us to get through this or what money are we making? Regardless already, that's not going to be affected by this. And looking at that delta, that delta as the thing that we need to sort of, that's the opportunity, that's the immediate thing. And then what's the exciting part is to start and think about it as an opportunity to reinvent and create a new avenue of revenue like these virtual boardroom types of events, which opens up a much bigger audience. It opens up a better way of potentially reaching even more people, doing more events without travel. So I'm excited about the thing I shared with Jay and Joe when we did our podcast, and I'll say it again here, that, you know, growing up playing tennis, one of the things that really carried over into my adult world here is that this concept that every shot makes somebody happy. Right. When you're playing tennis, there's always, you know, somebody's unhappy about what that shot that just happened, and somebody is happy with the outcome of that shot. And the best thing, the best position to be in is to be the umpire, where you're observing the outcome and seeing whether it's out or whether it's in, but not being emotionally attached to that and that way, being able to make some rational decisions, you know.

Absolutely. Yeah. And I think you, you know, you, you were very, very smart operationally to say, well, if I can't do events or if I might not be able to do events, how can I do an event without doing an event? Yeah, I can do it virtually and we're looking at that too. So we're planning, for example, during the, the time that Trafficking Aversion Summit was supposed to happen, March 31, April 1, first second will be airing a best of the last couple of years. So we've got three or four events that we've put together, so we'll be able to get people value there. And then, you know, for our other events, because we do about 75 events a year ourselves and our group of companies, we've canceled everything from, and I say canceled, postponed everything from, you know, the other day all the way through the end of May and then June. We're just kind of, kind of pending. But yeah, and all of that will be replaced with virtual and we also have a scenario that perhaps the Internet, the infrastructure, will not be able to handle everybody at home. So if we go to quarantine, then there has been a prediction that there will be power outages and there will be Internet service outages. And in that event, how do you continue? Do you have telephone numbers for your people? Can you do teleconferences? Do you have bridge lines? Because they may become unavailable because people will already have them. So you know what's going on with that?

We've been calling that. We've been making this distinction between what we call Cloudlandia, the digital world and you know, that we're all living in primarily now and the mainland, which is the physical world here. And I was just saying to Dan Sullivan is how fortunate we are that this hiccup or this, this roadblock or whatever's happening here is affecting the mainland and not Cloudlandia. Because we would be completely, how do you say, up Schitt's Creek. If the level of disruption that's happening on the mainland was happening in Cloudlandia right now, if we were shut off, imagine if entire countries or the whole Internet was shut down and you can't communicate with everybody. That's kind of a black swan event worth really thinking about at some point, because we're fortunate that it happened on the mainland, but next time or at some point it could happen in Cloudlandia and then what would we do? Right.

Which is why I think it's important to have a diversified mix. And you're strong indirect mail. I'm strong indirect mail. You know, there's still radio, there's still print. There will still be a need. Even if people are stuck in their homes and they can't get online. Yeah. The other forms of communication that will be available, and those will be things that at least three of us are.

Old enough to remember when. Man. Right thing.

Exactly.

Too young to remember that.

I mean, you guys are saying some very interesting things and there are. And looking at all those contingency sort of things. What could happen? I want to mention a couple of thoughts that I have and get your. Your guys perspect perspective on it. One is there's a lot of people that are asking, how do I handle when people are asking for their money back? And I said, well, that depends. It's a very delicate situation. I tend to have the belief when you're trying to support local businesses as an example, and you're like, buy local, help small business owners, that sort of stuff, versus big box retailers. And you've seen things like that as we live in this world of conglomerates where right now, if someone for one can. I think it's everyone is taking a financial hit in some degree. Not every single person, but most people are. And if they have provided services or will provide services, if there are so many of the people that I'm. I have events that I've paid for that haven't been delivered. And I'm not asking people to give me my money back because I know that they need that money in order to survive. And I know that they will. They will deliver on them, hopefully with the best of intentions. One way to make sure they're able to deliver on it is give them an opportunity to do that. Now, I'm in a position where I'm not starving, so I'm able to do that. But I also have my whole team that I want to continue to employ. So we need revenue and we want to bring some in. Part of it is on our conversation that we had with Jay Dean. In the meeting I had with my team, I said, look, to whatever degree, we can just be valuable and service our members. Let's do that.

That.

Let's create as many results for them. I want to ask you guys, how do you think about that? Because there are some people that you have provided services for, you have the best of intentions. They may like, I need my money back. I want my money back. That sort of stuff. And it's like, we're doing everything on our end for things that we have to postpone. I mean, even this. I mean, even recording this right now is something we're doing and putting out to help our clients and help people. So I wanted to get your thoughts on how do you navigate those sort of situations. Situations. Because I'm getting a lot of those questions from members. And when I'm saying to people like, look, if you are doing business with someone and they've treated you well, give them an opportunity. If everyone just starts, oh, it's all about me. I need it back. Everyone. If you ask a restaurant to give you their money back, you ask anyone to give their money back, well, they're in that same situation to whatever degree. How can we be collaborative as much as humanly possible, with as much empathy, with as much concern as we can for everyone, that we're all trying to get through this. So I'd love to get your perspectives on that.

You know, I think that what's important to realize is that the reason that people gave you money or the reason that people give you money is their belief that that money is going to turn into a greater result, that there's a greater value to what you're going to provide for them than the money itself has. Right. And so keeping your focus on that and being able to make sure that if the physical delivery of an event or if it's constricted in any way that the delivery of the actual result is still possible. And that's what led me to the thinking about the virtual thing. Like what people want is to be in a room in a small environment which one on one attention and discussion about their particular opportunities. Right. That that's the way that they can get my attention on their situation and that they value that my view on their situation is going to have a bigger outcome than the money that they pay to be there. Now that's me. But if you look at, in anybody's situation, whatever somebody's giving you money for is us. One part of the equation that they're using in their business to make more money. And I'm saying in business to business because most of us are in a business to business kind of situation. But it would also be true in a business to consumer situation if people are just holding back on something that they need because they're fearful and they're just hoarding money or and I don't want to use the word hoarding in a negative sense that they're feeling like gathering their money to hold on to as a sense of security. A lot of times just education and conversation about the reassurance that the money is better, the use by getting a piece of the equation that's going to help them grow their business or get more customers or get the result that they want, you know, and because just because people's ability to pay for something or their perceived ability to pay for something is temporarily put into a question mark or a, they're putting it on hold there. That doesn't mean that they don't need the outcome that you're able to provide, especially if it's advice, especially if, if somebody comes to a breakthrough blueprint or they come to a live event or I'm able to help them with an email campaign that could help them send something in this particular situation to their clients that are going to unlock some windfall for them, that's a very good use of that investment. And likewise, sometimes our capability, our ability to deliver that outcome for someone, often if we can defer the income that we get to give them some time to get the result that they're going to get from it and then pass that a big opportunity as well.

Before you respond, Roland, I would just say that. But if you're psychologically in a place where you can absorb and take things in, this is a real opportunity to write, to think about your business. Our friend Keith Cunningham's whole process of thinking time is really important here. And if there are people that are in a good financial situation or in a situation where they can take the time and the money and the energy and devote it to learning skills that they've wanted to, now is a great time. Because especially you're going to do something anyway. The decisions that you make, what you read, how you keep yourself in an up state psychologically and physically is so crucial. And if there are people that can go and buy trainings and they can invest in that and they can put the time in, right now, you could really give yourself an incredible business advantage. And if people are running around just freaking out and scared, they're just not going to feed their brain. It's almost like I want to make a request for people that are out there struggling, saying, okay, you're going to have to triage, you're going to have to stay connected to. I mean, I have a tool called my Genius Network. It's a tool where you list who are the eight most important people in your life. You put their name at the top of the circle, and underneath it, you put the skill that that person has, and then these are people that are the most valuable. And I put a message out to the Genius Network members saying, this is the time to do a new Genius Network tool. Who in your life is the most important to you? How do they personally and professionally? One of the ways to help yourself is you identify who are these people? What is the skill and the capability that they have? How can you help them? And then how can they help you? Start with not how can they help you? And then how can you help them, but it's really, how can you be of most value to them? And if we just operate that way with each other, then naturally people help you because you're helping them. And that's what real collaboration is. Not an agenda, fake networking, bullshit relationship, but like genuinely being valuable. And it's almost like I want to put a call out there to a lot of people that are in the speaking business, the knowledge business, the expert business, the information marketing business, the people that are teachers, the people that are trainers, the people that are coaches. If you can't physically go and meet with people, but your real assets and your skills are what you train and what you teach to use Roland's thing of being the dancing bear. The dancing bear can't go out now. The dancing bear might be at home, but there's a lot of knowledge in a lot of people's heads. And if people that are out there can buy this, buy it. Support, not just support local business, but support business owners and the people that aren't in the financial position to do that. Do as best as you can to work with everyone that's running a company because these people have employees and they're the backbone of the economy. And the worst thing that could come out of this is not just people dying, just the entire crippling of small businesses, which is really the engine that makes the world work. That's again, who I wanting to best hopefully be a hero to is those small business owners because they're the ones that are really the backbone of everything from my perspective. I really want you, Roland, to touch on, not just touch on, but let's talk about more related to ops and marketing because we definitely want to talk about that.

I think it's important other than what.

We talked about in the ops side, having your folks be ready to be remote, changing your focus to what is like if you are losing things like Dean and we are losing our live events for a period of time, then what are the substitute things that you can deliver? The same value that people have invested with you to receive both in the past and going forward so that you can continue to support your business and your people and your customers. And then I think it gets down to on the marketing side, what are you focusing on? Who is your customer? So if you've got the very first thing I think you have to say is what am I selling? If I'm selling an essential, then I'm going to be fine. If I'm selling an indulgence, I'm going to be fine. If I'm selling to an affluent market that can afford that, I'm not going to be fine. If I'm selling indulgences to people who are panicky and then am I selling deferables like cars and assets that people like to get new ones but it's not essential for them to have because those are the businesses that are going to get probably hurt the most. So your behavior in both an operations and marketing side is going to be dependent on what you're selling. And then you're going to say, well, who am I selling to? So if you say I'm selling essentials I'm selling indulgences or I'm selling deferrals. Now, you've got. You can put yourself in that category and you can say, okay, if I have a product mix of some combination of those things, then I'm going to go heavier into my essentials and indulgences and not really focus that much on my deferables right now. If my market is panickers, Right. The people who, you know, and. Or maybe I should say reactors, that would probably be a less pejorative term for them.

Right.

People who are reacting are going to look at the things that they believe are deferable, and they're not going to do that right now, or they're going to substitute with something else. So I think if I was selling a deferable and I wasn't selling an indulgence or an essential, then I'd say, okay, what are the substitute things that I can focus people on that are going to defer on my. And is that possible? Then I would say, I've got people who are collected, but not necessarily wealthy. Those are people. They're still going to buy essentials. They're going to cut back a little bit on the indulgent things, and they're probably going to delay also on the postponeables. And then if you get to the people who are affluent or the carpe diem people, which are two really significant avatars, I mean, if you're selling to the top 5%, they're not going to really change their behavior. Historically, in all of the downturns, from depression onto the Great Recession, the dot com bust, the 70s, the 2008 meltdown, all of that, the spending of the top 5% has remained relatively constant. So no matter what you're selling there, you're still going to have those people buying. And what's cool about millennials, Millennials is a lot of them are live for today people. So they're carpe dieming it. And so they're going to buy the indulgences, they're going to buy the durables, and they're going to buy the essentials because they don't want to change their behavior. So I think from an operational standpoint, you would change your focus on your product mix that you're offering and advertising and go heavy into your markets that, you know we're going to continue to buy that are going to be less affected. Look at substitutes for the things that you think are going to be affected, and then you're going to look at historically, throughout all of the different major recessions, what has worked the best is to double down on marketing. And the companies that have unseated the biggest incumbents have been historically in the twenties, it was Kellogg's displacing Post because Kellogg's decided to come out. Post had the market. Kellogg's in the recession, Post cut their marketing. Kellogg's went heavy in, introduced Rice Krispies, Snap, Crackle Pop, basically dominated that Post never recovered. In the 70s, Toyota came on strong and displaced Volkswagen, which was the dominant player in the market because. Because in the 70s there was an oil crisis and gas crisis and Toyota happened to be one that got good mileage, but so did Volkswagen. And Toyota doubled down on their market and laid into the or leaned into the advantages that they had and let the public know it and was able to displace Volkswagen. And then Amazon did the same thing in the 2000s. Amazon grew in 2009 and got tons of market share because they doubled down on their ad spend. And actually I think that 2009 was the first time that that ebooks outsold physical books. And there's example after example after example. If you're investing and double down on marketing while other competitors are retrenching and are cutting back, their voice, their share of voice in the market is going down, people's confidence in their brand is going down. And if you take the advantage because advertising historically becomes less expensive in a recessionary environment. And on average, in the Great Recession, the last one, advertising on average was reduced 13% across the board. So all of the inventory became more available, less expensive. The marketers that leaned into that and spent more actually ended up taking off and having. Having really good trajectories post recession, while many of their competitors were never able to recover. So, you know, from a marketing standpoint, we're all in.

This is exactly what I wanted to have us put out to people. And of course we need a pause.

But for our lives right now, so we can just pause everything and take some thinking. Because there's so many. I mean, I can't wait to listen and re listen to this because even the conversation that we've had has really been stimulating my thoughts about even the way we're thinking about things, even when I'm hearing myself articulate what the thought process was, makes me want to go deeper into it. And then hearing Roland just talk about observing the market and overlaying that matrix on things and the realizations that not everybody's going to be affected financially by this. I think it's even Deeper than the top 5%. It goes a lot deeper than that. That would be unaffected. I did a podcast with one of our genius network members and we were talking about brainstorming for his. He runs an expedition trip agency and you know, of all the travel that's a business that talk about a deferable and something that you don't have to do. And then of course, it's being shut off right now. I talked about how Warren Buffett, at one of his annual meetings, somebody asked him what's the best place to invest $1,000? And his answer was in consumer durable. And they said, well, what's that? And he said, well, I watch the newspapers and when toilet paper goes on sale for 50% off, buy $1,000 worth of toilet paper and you've just made 50% on your money. Buy the things that you're going to need later now at a discount and rather than buying them when you need them. And I think there's a great position to speak as an audience to the group of people that are in the 5 to 10, 25%, whatever it is, that they're not being negatively affected by this and they could do something if they wanted to, to give them the rationale that this makes total sense, that this is what you've been waiting for. Here's all the. The opportunity, if you can buy now, even something that you're not going to do till later. You know, I outlined for Ashton a, an opportunity to maybe be a market maker. He's got, you know, a big list of people who buy expedition trips and buy multiple year after year after year. And all these tour operators are, you know, scrambling right now that they're getting cuts. They've got to do trips for, you know, local occupancy. They're less profitable to be able to go to one of these tour operators and, you know, create an opportunity for people to buy now for a later trip. Could be a savior for some of these people from a cash flow standpoint.

You know, when I was giving you those categories, the only one that's really not doing anything is the Chicken Little crowd, right? The sky is falling. People who are, you know, are panicked and afraid and being driven by fear, which is a small portion of the population, but the bulk of the population is either saying, I'm living for today. Look at the savings rates in America, right? Most people are living for today. And the people who are wealthy and the people who are, they're not in the, you know, in the top 5 or 10%, but they also really, the only places that they're. They're still treating themselves because we all are like that. That's human nature. There is always a. I don't care. I've got to have that because I need, I deserve that for all the stuff that I'm doing. And the essentials are essential so nobody even panicky people can cut back on that. So really, you're only looking at most at the deferables, which are primarily large purchase durable goods. And as you said, now if you're in the business of that and you can afford to discount, then it makes sense to do that now. And then, using your logic of what Buffett said, you know, follow Buffett's advice. Now's the best time. You say, you know, save 20%, 30%, 50% on these things. Everybody can win here. It's just being calm and focused and intentional.

Let me ask you about that. First off, I like what you just said, Roland. And I also want to just bring it up because I know the darkness of the human mind, having been in recovery for many years, and someone's like, there's no way I'm going to win. You don't realize that I'm completely screwed. And their brain is of fear or their, you know, what their perceived or real life situation is that feel.

They can listen to the podcast you did with me talking about my situation, because it gets no darker than that.

Yeah. Which is. Which is true.

You come out on the other side.

Yeah, no, that's. Look, I nearly died as a drug addict when I was, you know, younger. I mean, boy, I mean, I weighed 105 pounds when I was 18 years old at my worst state, from freebasing cocaine for three months straight. And so I've been in pretty dark places, which I think is not. I think I know. It's actually helped me when shit hits the fan. As a matter of fact, I tend to become more capable when there seems to be something sort of dangerous and some sort of crisis. Now, that doesn't mean that I want that to happen. It's just, I think you can tap into a level of resourcefulness. And so I think all. All humans are way more powerful and way more capable at times than they give themselves credit for. And I think when you can keep yourself focused on helping others versus just your own situation, as counterintuitive as that seems, there's always someone out there that's in a worse place, and they're either physically, mentally, emotionally spiritual place, and they're in a dark place. And when you can show up and be that guy. That's more important. I mean, it is about connection, and it's remembering.

You know, Mike Tyson said everybody has a plan till they get punched in the face. And that's true. And now we're all getting punched in the face. And we had a plan, or we thought we had a plan, or we had some idea of a plan. And now the economy and the world has said, you know, it's punched us in the face. But here's the interesting thing for anybody who is listening, who has been punched in the face. I used to do kickboxing, and I can tell you the first time that you. You get punched in the face, not pleasant, but it doesn't. You know, I guess in very rare circumstances, it could be the end. But when you're done being punched in the face, you're like, huh? Okay. Okay. And then you go on, right? Yeah. And there's a guy that you guys probably know. Do you know Garrett White?

Yeah, of course.

So Garrett runs, you know, this program for. For being a better man. And part of his program is he gets people in the boxing ring, and he says that it's important that you get punched in the face. And that's why I'm doing that, because once you've been punched in the face, you'll know that you can take that and go on. And the first time I read it in the marketing that he had, I was like, that's really smart. And also, I think it's stupid. And then I said, it's not stupid because it's true. And I thought about, for me, having gone through in the kickboxing world, it's like, I've been punched in the face a whole bunch of times, and so I'm not afraid of it. And so this is a really great opportunity for us to all push past fear. And it's a gift, because once you get through this, and you will once you get through this, it is going to give you so much strength and fortitude the next time that a bad situation comes around, which, economically, historically, we know that the economy is cyclical, so it's bound to come around. But everyone else was punched in the face in the 20s, in the 70s, in the 80s, in the 90s, in the early 2000s, in the 2009. Right. There's a lot of people who have survived this and worse before, and it's just remaining calm and being intentional and methodical, that'll do it. And I hope that all the stuff that. That we talk about and that you guys have shared, which is super smart, will really sink in and let people know that it's just not what your plan was. But it doesn't mean that you don't go forward. And if you can create an alternative plan and you can do some of the things that we've been talking about and sharing, then it's all going to be fine.

That's awesome.

Yeah, no, it's very good. Very good. So to wrap up what I guess I would say, anything you guys want to share that you haven't anything else, I would just say to all of our listeners that we are having these conversations because we want to obviously be as valuable and as helpful to everyone that is listening. We are also students here just as much as we're putting ourselves out as being advisors and guiding and directing people. And we will continue to do this because we want to support our clients, we want to support entrepreneurs, and we want people to really tap into the resourcefulness and be as resourceful and as helpful and as generous as you can possibly be right now, because the world needs it and hope heals. And the more hope that you can put out to the world and wherever you get hope from, if this has been very valuable for you, listen to it again. I've been really recommending a lot of people to do Keith Cunningham's process of thinking. If you don't know what that is, you can type in mine. Keith Cunningham wrote a book called the Road Less Stupid, which describes it. It's a great book. He's also a good friend of mine. I've got a fantastic interview with him online that describes it, but just sitting down and really thinking, Roland, I think you just shared some really incredible stuff. And then, Dean, we did that interview with Jay Abraham. If you've not listened to that one, please do. We're going to just keep doing this stuff for our Genius network members, for our podcast listeners and. Yeah. So anything else you guys want to share before we wrap up?

I think you said it very well.

Yeah, I think that was really good.

Okay, awesome. All right, everyone. Well, take good care of yourself, your families, your loved ones. Take especially good care of yourself, you know, whenever you're in a crazy, fearful state. You know, the analogy I used with these guys before we hopped on this recording was if you're walking down a dark alley or you're out in the middle of the woods by yourself and you're hearing all kinds of stuff, sounds and grizzly bears and crazy things, and you're feeling frightened, even if you have a smaller, weaker person walking next to you or a very strong, capable person or an animal or anything. You just feel better when you're not alone. I know a lot of people are isolated right now, or at least feel that way. When I was a dead broke carpet cleaner living off credit cards, when I was a recovering addict, I actually found a lot of connection through books and through listener to audios. Back in the day when the Internet didn't even exist, I would listen to cassette tapes. I mean I would listen to things that helped put me into an upstate. And so I hope in whatever way that this serves that for all of you and if a lot of the people that will be listening are clients of ours. And I just want to say on behalf of all of us, we really appreciate your business and we hope you're able to continue to support the other business owners and other clients and customers in your life. Because more than anything, that's the leadership that entrepreneurs need to bring to the table and help people when they're hurting. So that's it for now. So thanks guys, I appreciate it and we'll talk to everyone very soon because we're going to keep doing this.

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