MBA1596 How Will COVID-19 Affect Your Business Long Term?

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Visit Dell.com deals. Hey oh. Welcome to the Hundred Dollar MBA show where business building happens every single day with our daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of the hundred dollar MBA, a complete business training and community online. We are six months into the COVID 19 pandemic. Many lives and businesses have been affected greatly already but its effects are still to come. Consumers habits have changed and how and where they spend their money has changed. There's also the economic damage that this pandemic has had. And in today's lesson we're going to discuss some of the areas businesses is going to change, how you can adapt and make sure you're ready for it so that the effects are positive and not just negative in your business. This pandemic itself is something that we've never seen before, but it's not something new that we've experienced as a species of human beings, as a culture. Events like this have affected economies. Events greater than this have happened in some of the people that we know's lifetime. What can we learn from history? What can we make sure to be ready for and to thrive well past this pandemic? Let's get into it. Let's get down to business. It's becoming clear that COVID 19 is not going anywhere anytime soon. And the longer it's around, the more our habits will become permanent. With social distancing, with people more and more spending time online, doing their shopping online, whether it's grocery shopping or clothing shopping, whether it's traveling locally or even how they earn their money. Look at your own life and how it has changed already. Just the habits you have gone through and changed since this pandemic. This is going to become a part of our normal lifestyle the longer this goes on. They say habits form after 40 days and we're well past that point. Experts say that this will be the status quo well into 2021 and maybe until 2022, when things will start to resume where we can get back on a plane and travel and social distancing would be eased. And even those dates have been said to be hopeful. So here's what we know. People are spending more time online. So if your business is not optimized to be online, then you need to do this today. Okay? Most people that have a physical business should have an online presence. There should be a way for you to make money, for you to charge for your products and services online, whether it's delivering meals or goods or products or services. Number two, those who are online right now, you have a leg up. You already have yourself there. Those who work on this and strive and do well will really catapult to another level when this is all over. If you look at history, if you look at the companies that survived World War II, companies that still are around, that were started before World War II and still are here, it's because they are so much stronger because they've gone through that difficulty. Their competition died down. Many competitors actually get bought out by those who survive because they can get it pennies on the dollar. So your job is to stay strong during this pandemic, to make sure you stay profitable. You continue to grow, even if it's amount of growth, whether it's 3%, 4%, 5% month over month, that's still growth. And you're still preparing yourself for extreme growth. When this is all done and dusted, when things start to get back to normal, economies start to revive, you will be in a state of advantage. Now, I'm the first one to say that we have not felt the global economic effect that COVID 19 has had on the world yet. There's going to be some serious economic change because people are losing their jobs, people are not able to pay their basic bills. Not everybody, of course, but this is becoming a snowball effect the more and more we're in this situation. And many governments around the world have been trying to help and supplement, you know, pay and people's livelihoods, but that can't go on forever. So people's disposable income is becoming less and less. And this is where freemium is going to shine. If you want to prepare to be a monster and grow after this pandemic, you got to start investing in freemium, which means you need to have some sort of free level, free sample, free thing of your product or service. Why? Because you're going to attract people that may not be able to afford your products and services right now, or your software, for example, but they will adopt to your way of doing business, your product, your service. And you'll have them because they're using you for free, maybe in a limited capacity, but when the economy turns around, when they have more disposable income, when they're ready to reinvest in themselves, in their business, you're top of mind. You've got them. They're not shopping around. They're ready to upgrade. This works for services. If you're a coach, you should have a free plan. Say, I have a free coaching plan, and it includes one group webinar a month. You can join, I can coach you in a group session. You can submit questions in advance, and I can answer them. This applies to any other service. If you're a lawyer, if you're a plumber and you want to give some tutorials on how to do some quick DIYs, people are going to build trust in you. And then when they actually need a big job that they don't want to do themselves and they can afford it, they're going to go with you. So this is the time to invest in freemium. This is a land rush of getting leads and building trust with them. Because once you build that trust and they're ready to upgrade and they have the cash and they have the reoccurring income to do so, you are going to go up on top. This is not something foreign. What do you think Zoom has been doing? Okay, Zoom has been offering their software for free. That has limitations, but they know. But now people need it. But later on, they're going to upgrade when they have the cash because they've gotten used to the product and they really don't want to use anything else. You're going to want to preempt your current customers that are paying you any kind of reoccurring fees, whether It's a software or a product. Whether it's a service, they're paying you a monthly fee. This is a time for you to preempt cancellation. People might want to save some money and you want to make sure that you're not one of those people that they cut off. So one of the ways to do that is to email everybody's on our monthly plan and say, hey, we're going to give you a 20% discount to if you lock in an annual plan. And that discount can be whatever you feel comfortable with. But I'm just giving you an example. And that way they will not have to worry about paying you for the next year. That's it. You've. They paid that expense and you've locked them in. A lot can change in a year. And when they're coming to cut off costs next month, you're not one of those things because they already paid in advance. Preempt and make sure you grab those customers while you can right now so that you're secure for the next year.

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Listen, Covid is just a fact. It's here. It's not something that we can really just wish away. We need to adapt. Entrepreneurs see a situation and they say, how can I make sure this works in my advantage? How can I make sure that I'm protecting myself? How can I make sure that. That when everybody's kind of scrambling, I'm working on a plan. I'm building an audience. I'm building something so that when things get better, I really just rock it. If you're cutting costs even in your own business, that's okay. If you're cutting some costs to save some money. But now's the time to invest in your team. Give us some training. Do a webinar or training once every two weeks with your whole team, where everybody Kind of does a round robin and shares something that they know, build some camaraderie, invest in what you have now so that it's ready to rock and roll for many of us. You can grow in this economy because you are online, okay? And if you're online, everybody is there now, everybody is now adapting to say, hey, I have to get on the Internet, I have to buy things on the Internet, I have to make decisions on the Internet, I have to make transactions and discussions and consultations on the Internet. And that's totally becoming the normal thing. Many people, because they lost their jobs, they're trying to skill up, they're trying to change their career. And this is a golden age for online courses. People are looking for ways to learn and change and grow. If you can give them a return on investment, you can show them, hey, I can get you in a better position than you are today if you take my course. It's a no brainer investment for people. They have to, they have no choice. They have to pivot, they have to learn something new. They have to try to look for a different career because maybe the career they're in right now is just not hiring. So look at the advantages of the situation. Understand that this is not going anywhere anytime soon. So let's plan as if it's staying here for a while and make sure that we survive, strive and make sure we're prepared for when this is all over to explode. Guys, thank you so much for listening to the Hundred MBA show. If you love what you hear, hit the subscribe button right now. I say this every single episode because it's so important. Make sure you hit that subscribe button so that way you, you get the next episode automatically. It's absolutely free to subscribe. And in fact, you get over 1500 business lessons automatically in our archives by hitting that subscribe button on whatever you use to listen to podcasts, whether it's Apple podcasts or Spotify or Stitcher Radio or Himalaya, hit that subscribe button right now. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. If you're in an industry that has been impacted greatly, like travel, for example, if you're in the travel industry, like so you sell luggage, let's say it's not game over for you. You can definitely pivot. You can offer different products or different services that can help your customers, the customers you already have. Here's a little something. People are not going to stop taking a break or stop taking a vacation. They may stop going places, but they're going to do a staycation or something local? What is something that you can offer that suits those needs and wants more? People are taking road trips, so accessories for those types of trips. Whether it's things for the car or day packs or picnic gear or camping. You get the point. What are people doing now that they weren't doing before? Let me fulfill those needs with products that can help them. Thank you so much for listening and I'll check you in tomorrow's episode. Freeride Friday. I'll see you then. Take care.

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