Scott Duffy about An Entrepreneur's Guide to Coronavirus, Recession & Uncertain time

Broadcast our next live stream. What Now? An Entrepreneur's guide to managing through coronavirus, Recession and uncertain Times. And while we let this stream start to propagate across Facebook and the Internet, YouTube, Periscope and Instagram, what I'd like to do is just take a few minutes and let people hop on.

And while you're doing that, while you're joining this group call today. What I'd like to ask you to do is please introduce yourself. If you could drop in, we'll see who you are, your name, if you could do this one for me, if you could write down what industry you're in and one or two of the biggest challenges that you're having today in your business. Because what I want to do is be as responsive as I can to all of you during today's call and or today's live cast. And I want to thank all of you who sent me messages, texts, emails. I got over 3,000 emails overnight from entrepreneurs who, small business owners who had so many questions. And when you see these questions and this volume of questions come through, what you start to do is notice patterns. And what I'd like to do today is really address, and I like to do this each and every day, the most common questions that you're asking to help provide the best guidance that I can through this period.

And if there's anything that I know, it's this. What we're in for is something that is going to be around. You know, we're dealing with a crisis that's going to be here for a while. And because this crisis is going to be around for a while and it affects all of us, there's only one way that we're going to get through it together. And that is together. One way we're going to get there, and that's together. And so what I'd ask you to do during today's live broadcast is this, to chime in and share with the rest of the group what you're experiencing. Things that are working for you, things that aren't working for you, pressure that you may have.

Personally in your business, just different things so that we can open up this conversation to everyone and again, best address everyone's needs. And, you know, if there's one thing I know, it's this. It's being an entrepreneur can be an awfully lonely job. Sometimes it feels like you're all alone going through this. Sometimes it feels like you're all alone and you can't tell your investors what is going on. You can't tell Your employees what's going on. You can't tell your family what's going on. So who do you talk to? The issues that you're experiencing as an entrepreneur, as a business owner, as a solopreneur, who do you talk to? And what I'm here today to tell you is this. You talk to this community. You share the way that you're feeling with me and the rest of this community so that we can jump in and we can help because we are all going through this and we're all going through it together. I want to take a second, just thank people who are jumping on early. Brian, I want to say good morning. It is great to see you again. Andrea, it's great to see you, Brian. If you guys could please start to share this through your streams. Please start to share this with your communities. Please start to share this with your groups. Again. We are live casting right now across Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and Periscope. And we'll be placing this up afterwards. We'll putting this video up on LinkedIn as well. So please share with all of your groups through all of these different social streams. This livecast. The goal is to be a daily resource for entrepreneurs and small business owners, for solopreneurs to understand how to manage effectively through this crisis. And it's really not just one thing that's hitting us today. It's a combination of things. It's coronavirus. It is the likelihood that we are either in or heading into recession. And it is this idea that we're going to have to spend our time and our focus adapting, adapting how we live, how we work in the products and services that we provide to the marketplace. Tyler, good morning. Thank you so much for joining us today. And again, I would ask you to please share with your community, with your stream before we get started.

And the place that I do want to kick off this morning is by talking to folks that have startups that are solopreneurs, that are in businesses that maybe were starting to get traction but hadn't started to generate a lot of cash flow. Because I think I'm getting more questions from people that fit those groups, those three groups, than anyone else. And what they're asking me, these entrepreneurs, is they're asking me, what do I do? What do I do now? What are the first actions I should take? And the first actions that you should take are simple three things. And if you have a pen and paper, if you, you type in your phone or you've got your computer open, you want to type in your Email these notes. There's three things that we need to be doing as entrepreneurs and small business owners. And by the way, that's almost all of us. And in the United States, 99% of businesses are small businesses. And of those, 88% of businesses have less than 20 employees. And of those 80% of the businesses in the United States, 80% of all businesses in the United States are solopreneurs. They're non employer businesses. They're people that maybe just like you and me that are really, you know, you guys are, you may feel like you're on your own, you don't have a big team, you don't have a big staff, you may have a lot of contractors that are working with you, but you're solopreneurs. So if you are a person that fits into that bucket as a solopreneur, this is the right place for you. Leverage this as a community, as a place that you can ask questions to help guide you and to help you navigate through this particular period. Dina, thank you so much for joining. And Jim, always awesome to see you. And Jim, I want to thank you for, I know you've been commenting and sharing, you've been really active in this community. And two, it's great to see you as well. Buenos dias. Again, please start to share this with your streams and your communities. And what I'd like to do now is just start to, let's get going, let's jump in.

So if you're a startup and you're a solopreneur, what are the actions that you should be taking now? The first action that you need to take is you need to start to conserve your cash right away. And we've talked about this over the past few episodes. We've talked about this idea that when things change in the economy or there's a crisis, that happens. What tends to happen with entrepreneurs is we stop, we get paralyzed, we panic because we're not sure what to do next. In the meantime, that crisis or that thing that's going on outside of us continues. And because we wait, what ends up happening is we put ourselves in a worse cash position. And right now, the most important thing that you can do is an entrepreneur, a small business owner, a solopren, is to conserve as much cash as you can possibly, as you possibly can. And so the first thing I want you to do is this, is to protect yourself financially. The way you're going to do it, if you haven't done it already, is to print out your last two bank statements. Super Important. Print out your last two bank statements. Take a look at every auto pay that has come through on those last two bank statements. If there is anything that you are paying for that you don't absolutely need, your job today is to cancel it. If you don't absolutely need it, it's not a total necessity, cancel it today. That's the first thing. The second thing as it relates to protecting your cash is to go to all of the bigger bills that you pay every single month. Whether it is your credit cards, it's your utilities, it could be your car payment. Go to these companies and talk to them about the position that you're in. And by the way, all of these companies are prepared to help. I can tell you that in the last 24 hours, I've gotten an email from the company that I lease a car from. I've talked to two other people. They've heard from Mercedes, they've heard from BMW, they've heard from Chrysler Capital. These are folks that received emails from these manufacturers saying that we want to help. Give us a call and we will restructure your payment plan. They want to work with you. I got a, I got a email yesterday and a text from Verizon saying, give me a call, give us a call. We want to help you. I think I spoke to someone, or at least I got in, I got a text. I think it may have been from you, Jim, that was talking about Verizon and a conversation you had with Verizon where they took a large bill and they broke it into, I think it was $50 payments. And they said that they would work with you as long as you need it in order to spread out those payments.

As it relates to your rent, whether it's your office rent or it is your home rent. What I would say at this point is do not worry. We are expecting legislation to come down that is going to protect you. Right now, I know in the state of California, no one can be evicted. There aren't any penalties being leveled, levied for late rents at work or, or at home. I talked to the company who has my, I pay for my housing every, every month. And, and they were also, they were really amenable to help. What I will say is this, when you go back and you cancel your auto pays, you talk to your, you talk to the biggest payers, you know, your, your utilities, the cars, the, the, the, the rents, all that kind of stuff. Be prepared to spend a lot of time if you're making calls on, on hold. There are a lot of People that are doing this. But your job is to stay on hold and make sure to take care of this today. Because what we're going through today collectively isn't a sneeze, it's not a sniffle, it's not anything that's going to go away anytime soon. You have to prepare to hunker down. You have to prepare to live like what you are experiencing today is going to be the new normal for the next three to six months. And that is a long time, the next three to six months. So protect your cash. I got several texts and emails last night from people asking about credit lines, if you have a credit line for your business. For example, someone reached out to me today and they're in the heavy construction equipment business and they rely on credit lines in order to get equipment and finance equipment and also when they sell equipment to basically help them while they're waiting to get paid by their customer. And what you can expect today is your customers, if they haven't canceled already and they're still going to pay you for services, you can expect them to slow pay or to super late pay. And so what do you do about these lines of credit? All I can say is this. You know, I'm not a banker. I'm not giving legal or financial advice. What I can share is my experience.

And there's really two types of people, by the way, that you should be listening to today. There's actually one type of person, the kind of person that's giving you counsel. Counsel comes from people who have actually lived through something. They have been in your shoes, and so what? The information they're sharing comes from direct experience versus people who haven't and are giving you their advice, their opinion, it's nothing more than really a best guess. My counsel to you around lines of credit is that in 2008, when the market crashed, I had two or three hundred thousand dollars in lines of credit and they were open, meaning they were. I was paying on time. I had all of this cash that was available to me, and I waited and I waited and I waited to use it. I didn't feel right using it. I didn't think that I needed it. But what happened was one day out of nowhere, the bank that held this line of credit, Wells Fargo, canceled everything without notice. They not only canceled everything, but they asked for payment of the entire thing all at one time. Now, I was able to call them and to work that out into simple payments. But here's the point. If you have a line of credit and cash that's available today, you may want to strongly consider taking that cash out and holding that cash out on the sidelines, because again, we're not talking about something that we're experiencing here today that's going to last for a day or a week. We're talking about something that's going to last for the next three to six months. And when I say three to six months, I'm talking about in terms of this lockdown that we all feel today and what feels like a complete shutdown of business. You also have to figure that once we get to the other side, once coronavirus has cycled out of our system and we're healthy as a nation again, physically, well, we will have likely experienced one to two straight quarters of negative growth, which means that we're in a recession. And so that's the next thing we'll have to deal with again. So, please, if you are a entrepreneur, a small business owner, a startup, a solopreneur, the number one thing I need you to do is to protect your cash and get access today to as much cash as you possibly can. The second thing that I want you to do is, is to focus on one thing. So as business owners, what we tend to do is we have a number of different products and services that we offer. This is a great time to kill off things. Anything that's not paying you, anything that you're feeding, it's not feeding you, and to hold on or to amplify how you're selling, things that do feed you, things that work. And if you're a startup or a solopreneur, what often happens is you tend to throw as many different things as you can against the wall and you wait for something to stick. And you think that by doing more things, you have a better opportunity to succeed. But the reality is this. The reality is we need to focus. Cut our focus down to one or two things, one or two things that work. And let me put it to you this way. I think that even in a good market, the biggest mistake that entrepreneurs make is they focus on too many things at once. And I call this hammers and nail syndrome. And you may have heard this before, but what I mean is this. If I gave you one hammer and one nail, and your job's simple, all you have to do is bring that hammer back and drive that nail into a piece of wood. Like really nail that one thing, that one business, that one product. Now, the odds are you may miss the first, the second, the third time, but eventually, I'm going to bet on you, I'm going to bet that you're going to nail it. So let's say I give you two hammers and two nails. Well, think about it. Your job is tough. You got to actually grab two hammers at the same. First of all, who's going to hold the nails? If you find somebody crazy enough to do it, you have to take both hammers back at the same time, and you have to strike at the same time. And the odds are you're going to miss the first, the second, the third time, you may never get it right. Now, let's say give you 10 hammers and 10 nails. You get the point. So, again, the biggest mistake that entrepreneurs make, even in a good market, is they focus on too many things at once. And what I always say is, don't focus on everything. Focus on one thing, really nail it, and then move on to the next. Well, there's never been a more important time to focus on one thing and one thing that's working and to concentrate all of your energy and your focus and your effort and your financial and your money into one area. So, again, number one, we gotta protect ourselves financially, all right, by cutting off all the auto pays, by going back and renegotiating with people that we pay big bills to and then talking to our lenders and things like that. And also if we have cash available, getting access to that cash. Second thing is to focus on one thing, not everything. Conserve our energy around making one or two things work. And then finally, if you are an entrepreneur, a small business owner, you are a solopreneur, there's never been a better time to get in front of your customers. Never been a better time. Now, physically, you may not be able to do that, but you can do this. You can use video. We have so much technology available to us, so much free technology, Google hangouts, Skype, you can use Zoom, you can use a Facebook Live, whatever it is. And the challenge I have for you today is this. Be the first in your market to talk to your customer, come from a place of love, in a place of empathy, and find out where they're hurting the most, what they've learned over the last week they need or they're going to need the most. And how you can help, how you can alter your product or service, what you're currently selling them in a way that helps them to move forward, that really solves a need, or what kinds of new products and services you may need to develop in order to do that. And I got to tell you, I am Seeing innovation everywhere, I really appreciate and I thank you guys so much for sending me so many, gosh, you know, so many texts and emails and messages of examples of people that are taking their current business and they're reshaping it for this market. And I'll just, I'll give you some examples.

Last night one of my kids teachers down in Orange county decided to take her lesson plan and the work that her students were doing in class now that the school has been shut down for the next month. And what she's doing is she is doing a Skype every single day. She's charging a small fee in order to do this. And she's now created her own little SaaS business. And she's done it because she wanted to respond to parents needs. Parents who are solopreneurs and they're entrepreneurs at home that need to work, that need to generate cash, but also now are in this position where they need to be watching their kids as well. So she, she's done that. I thought that was a great, a great idea. I mentioned yesterday, we have a kid, my daughter, one of her favorite things to do is she does a, she has painting class and the teacher of her painting class is now offering a $3, $5 or $25 monthly subscription service. And that monthly subscription service is to get painting lessons at home. So again, she's innovated. And what I'm learning is that she's got more customers now than she did two weeks ago as a result of doing this. I've talked to people in the training business and you know, that is, that's my core business. And one of the things that, you know, I found is a lot of pain in this industry. You know, people who are venues, people who are.

Holding events, people who are speakers, people who rely on income from getting in front of people who are innovating. As a result of what's happening, I can tell you that one of the three largest speakers in the United States in the business training space, I just found out their sales, his sales have been better over the last three days than any time in the last 10 years. His digital sales. There is an incredible opportunity out there right now for people to create digital products. People to, to identify problems in the marketplace in a variety of different areas. It's not just training, it's providing an art class, it's providing an exercise class. My, my other daughter, she loves dance. Her dance teacher has started a subscription service for the kids in the neighborhood to get a dance less single day. And so the question I have is if you're a solopreneur, you're a startup, you're an entrepreneur, what new needs have emerged in your market if you really listen and how can you address those needs quickly? And you don't have to spend a lot of money. You don't have to go subscribe to a service to manage all this stuff for you. You don't have to. You could do something as simple as create a closed Facebook group or a private YouTube channel and you can give people a link or special access if they pay you through a service like PayPal, like, we can make this really easy for you to start to generate cash. You know, I've had, I'm going to switch, switch, switch subjects for a second. I've had a lot of people ask me today, this is interesting, particularly in California, about shelter in place. So I'm going to completely go in a different direction for a minute. Shelter in place. What is that and what does it mean? We've heard talk about that on a nationwide level. We have heard different counties in the state of California where I live.

Go to shelter in place mandates for the people who live in those counties. And I think to a lot of people it feels scary. Those words are scary. They don't know what they mean. And I just don't want you to be afraid when you hear shelter in place. And by the way, shelter in place is different than martial law. So Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, last night started to talk about martial law. And what that means is military law takes place over civil law. That's what martial law is. We're not anywhere close to that. But what we are close to across the country is a nationwide shelter in place order. What that means is that a person is required to stay at home with the exception of doing things that are absolutely essential to meet their needs. Now, what does essential to meet your needs mean? This doesn't mean that you're stuck at home and that you can't do anything. This doesn't mean that you can't go to a market. This doesn't mean anything like that. Let me share with you what essential activities are. That could include engaging in or performing tasks that are essential to the health and the safety or to the of yourself or to the health and the safety of family members or other household members. This includes people. It includes pets and examples could include picking up medicine, going to the grocery store, visiting a doctor, picking up a child, things like that. Essential activities also include obtaining the necessary supplies or to deliver supplies to other people. You know, and this could include groceries, by the way. We have kids in our neighborhood that have created grocery delivery systems that they are marketing right now to people that are over 65. Really interesting, you know, and you gotta love entrepreneurs. I mean, I look at the biggest problems in the world that we face like this, what we're going through today with this pandemic. And entrepreneurs, people like you and me, we're the people that will identify the problems. We'll listen to customers will identify the problems out there. We'll figure out how to solve those problems. We'll figure out how to pay for those problems. So here are high school kids that are out there and they're doing a pickup and delivery service for people over 65 in our neighborhood. What else is an essential, essential activity? Another essential activity would be, again, caring for family members, caring for pets, or caring for friends that need assistance. And also another final essential activity could be performing work at essential businesses or performing minimum business operations that require you to leave your house.

So when you hear shelter in place, I don't want you to worry and think that you're going to have to completely shut down all business activity and you're going to have to completely lock down your business, because that is not what it means. So I just, again, I wanted to share that with all of you because that was a question that I kept. I kept hearing about. Tyler, I see your question, by the way, about the new SBA disaster assistance loan program. And, and I started to read up this. Yes. On this yesterday. I don't know a whole lot about it yet, but I will find out over the next 24 hours more about this program, and I'll make sure to share it with you.

I'm also in this daily live broadcast doing my best to share other links to best practices and best resources that I find out on the Internet. This could include resources from news organizations from the sba, from the World Health Organization, a lot of information with regard to how to deal with working at home now or working with kids at home now. If you find really good articles. And again, the key is if you find information that would not inspire fear in the group or panic in the group, but is more tactical in nature. It's information that's been vetted that is actionable, that we can take action on right away. That's the kind of information that I please invite you and I ask you to share inside of our group.

I received a lot of questions over the last 24 hours, also about bailouts, and this is super important.

Small businesses like yours and mine make up almost 50%. It's actually just over 40, 49% of jobs in the United States. And people who are employed by people like us, they're eligible for all kinds of benefits. This is part of the challenge of being an entrepreneur. At times.

We aren't eligible typically for unemployment and other things that people get sometimes certain kinds of disabilities. But there is a new bill that is being voted on this morning by the Senate that does include relief for small businesses, small business owners, for entrepreneurs, for solopreneurs, really for every, every citizen in the United States. So what I will do, as soon as I get clear information and direction on that bill, when it's, when it's passed, I'll provide the information and the details in this stream. And I really ask you to please share this stream, share this with other people so that they can have access to the same resources.

Stocking up this is another question that I've been getting over the past 24 hours. So I want to talk to you about a couple of announcements. And one of those announcements was made by Amazon just last night.

So Amazon announced that it was going to be shutting down its warehouses to new shipments from suppliers. And a lot of entrepreneurs that sell product on Amazon reached out to me because they weren't sure what this would mean to them. And I just, I want to be really clear about this. First of all, this does not mean that Amazon has stopped shipping products to us. This does not mean that they will continue shipping products to us. What they're doing is they're taking products that would have been shipped by suppliers of non essential items. So people are going into Amazon, they have great data about what people are looking for in terms of medical supplies, cleaning supplies, disinfectants, things like that. And there's not enough room in their warehouses to be able to stock for all the sales. And so what they're doing is they're reaching out to vendors of those particular products. They're opening up.

Inventory space, inventory room and they're, they're using the next two weeks to stock, sell and reset basically stock, ship and resell all of these products. So if you are a, a company, a small business that supplies products to Amazon that are non essential, you may see disruption here. You will see disruption over the next couple of weeks. But that is not expected to happen for the long term. Again, this is an emergency is actually something I think that really serves all of us. They're opening up more inventory space for essential items. So, so that is what that Means.

I'm also getting questions from.

From people that work in the restaurant industry.

So as part of our mastermind group, as part of our community.

We have a gentleman, Aaron, who is the biggest supplier of delivery drivers, the biggest supplier of delivery drivers for the biggest at home delivery companies in America. So for Amazon, for Walmart, for grubhub and for a lot of these bigger home delivery services and clients. What I can tell you, first of all, is that Aaron is hiring. And so what I will do is if you are looking to generate additional income, if you know somebody that needs to generate additional income. Right now, Aaron is looking for drivers. He's looking for staff to help him ramp up during this period. But what I will tell you is that it has surprisingly been harder than you would expect to find these additional delivery drivers during this time. And so one of the innovative ideas that he has had is he has reached out to restaurants, smaller restaurants that will not be able to stay open. They can't stay open because the number of deliveries that are being requested them just doesn't warrant keeping the place open and keeping the staff there. And so what he's doing is he's gone to these restaurants and he is looking for.

The cook staff that is no longer going to be coming in, waiters and waitresses, hosts and other people that work at these restaurants to temporarily take on driving positions to deliver food, maybe even for other restaurants and other companies. So again, just another innovative way of attacking the market and providing nothing but solutions. And I think that for all of us, we really need to stay focused today on solutions. We have to keep our head there. Because as I'm watching over here on my screen, I have CNBC up. And as I'm looking over here and here at different news sites so I can give you up to date information.

All I see is negativity. And if you just stay locked into what you see all day, every day through the media, it is really easy to go into this downward spiral and wind up in a place that is not going to help you to be as resourceful as you're going to need to be during this period. So what I would really suggest for all of you is to stay focused on solutions. And one way to do that and one way to occupy your time is to stay in touch with as many possible customers as you can. And I recommend, when you're talking to customers today, what I truly recommend is getting on video chat just like this, as opposed to getting on the phone and getting on text. And I really recommend taking care of yourself. And when you're on these chats, come from a position of strength. I've spoken to so many people in the last week. When I look at them eye to eye, I look at the physical and the emotional state that they're in, and it's tough. And I think that what we can do is we can really help to serve people by coming from a different energy and help to bring other people up. And as we're bringing other people up and we put them in a different mindset, we can work collaboratively with them to be solution oriented. And that's what we need to do today, is we need to be solution oriented. The most important skill that any entrepreneur, small business owner.

Solopreneur, will have today is adaptability. That is the number one skill that we need to have, is adaptability. But in order to be adaptable, we have to be and come from the right mindset in the right place.

And it's interesting because.

How do you get in that right mindset? How do you, what do you do in a time where a lot of people don't feel good? How do you feel good? Well, it's incredible when you take a look at the data and see how much of America lives three meals a day off of fast food. And we all know, and this isn't like a political thing, we all know the effect that fast food has on our bodies and the way we feel determines how we behave, and the way we behave determines the results that we get. So what I would encourage you to do is look at this time, part of this time as a time where you can really focus on. You look at this time as almost like a paid vacation. The government is going to be sending each and every one of us money. Look at this in some way as a paid vacation, and spend the time really making sure you manage what you put in your body. Make sure you really manage your movement. Get out there and exercise. I was so proud. I talked, I got calls today. Just before I got on this call, my buddy Jed Savage called me. He was out on a run. I talked to other people today that were on a run. They were meditating. They were doing what they could to help put themselves in the most productive place that they possibly could. So what I'd like to do now is I'd love to open up to questions. If you guys have any questions that you would like me to answer or any topics that you would like me to hit on, I would love to do that for you now.

And I see.

I see a lot of people resharing this over here. If you are on this call and you find value, please share this, reshare this with your communities.

I apologize if we get a little bit buggy on this call. I'm using a new streaming software today that I hope works. I'd love to get your feedback on this new tool.

One of the other things I'd like to talk to you guys about today is the power of controlling the message. So over the past 24 hours, this is something that I really see happening with bigger companies. I see a lot of bigger companies reaching out to me and basically through email, some through robocalls. And what they're doing is they're sharing.

What they see in this market. They're very transparent about how it's affecting them. They're transparent about how they expect it will impact me. They are transparent about what they recommend as it relates to my relationship with them. I should do or I should prepare for. And then they provide a bunch of information about how to reach out if they have questions. I would really recommend that this be something that you do with your customers, something that you do to.

Again, control the dialogue and come from a position of. Of leadership in your business. This is so important today, more important now than any time, probably ever. And it's not just about coming from that position of leadership with our, with our, our customers. It's about coming from a position of leadership with our employees. And this is so important. And here's what I mean right now, because you can't be in front of the people that work for you. And by in front, I mean sitting next to them every single day in the office. Because there's an entire universe of people today that are working from home, and they're doing it for the very first time because that most of us as managers are now put in a position where we're being forced, it's a trial by fire to operate an entire company remotely. There's never been a more important time for staying in front of your team and managing the message and managing the dialogue. Because all day, every day, I guarantee, if you are paying somebody, that person is looking at the news all day long and they're asking themselves two questions. What does all this mean? And what should I do? And how is it going to impact my ability to get paid? And so what I would do in order to keep your team and your people the most engaged, the most engaged possible, is this.

I would institute a really clear and consistent routine throughout the day, every single day. And what that means is Monday through Friday, Saturday and Sunday. However it works in your business, I would make sure that first you, you have got a routine every single day, right? That keeps you up and it keeps you moving, right, and gets you into the day. It is really easy to want to stay in bed these days. It is really easy to want to hide from what's going on. I can tell you for me personally, what I do every single day while this is going on is the same thing I, I was doing before this is going on. I get up at the same time, I, I exercise in the same way, I meditate in the same way, and then I take a drive. If I'm in la, I live in Newport in la. If I'm in la, what I do like I did this morning is I prepare for my national radio show, which wasn't scheduled to start until April, but we knew this six months ago. And so every single day since then, I go through this routine. I get in the car, I drive up to Hollywood Boulevard, I take a right, I go by the studio, and the entire day I vision what that program is going to look like. And I vision the value that I'll be able to communicate to other people. I turn around at Hollywood and Vine, I make a U turn, probably an illegal U turn, and I head back and I do the same thing. I go through that same process. I did the exact same thing today. It's incredibly important that you hold yourself to high standards today and that you do the same thing today. That worked, okay, that was working for you before this crisis. You do it today with your employees. It's important to get them on a killer routine, a super empowering routine. And here's what that means. What that means is I would schedule, I'm saying, four calls a day, employees and independent contractors. And even if you're not paying these people, even if they're not doing consistent work, I guarantee you, if you invite everybody, they may want to hop on just for the connection. I would have those calls at a certain specific time every day. In the morning, I would treat the call like a daily huddle. I would spend just a few minutes going on the vision for where you're going to go through this period. I would talk about what you're seeing in the market. I would ask your, your people what it is that, that they see and the solutions that they think you guys, your company could bring to the market. I would get really clear on what's expected and what they have to deliver throughout the day. And then three more times during the Day, I would get on a short 5 minute video call with them and I would be holding them accountable and make sure that you're controlling the narrative and that you keep them engaged. Otherwise it's going to be really easy to lose people's attention. And these are people that you're paying so important, and it's so important to start this today, because what you do today will have momentum. I believe that there is an exponential factor. There is an exponential, what do you call it? There's a, there's like an exponential thing that happens in the universe as it relates to results. And here's what I mean. If I were, let's say to work out, that's the example. I had a goal that in 30 days I was going to lose 10 pounds.

And so on the first day I work out, I get the power of that exercise to the first power. I work out two days in a row, I get that thing to the second power, three days to the third power. There's a multiplier effect in terms of momentum. But what happens is most people at the end of the week, on Sunday, that seventh day, they throw everything out, all the work that they've done, and they eat like crazy, they fatten up like a cow, they do all that kind of stuff, and then they hop back to it on Monday and they get that thing to the first power. Here's what happens. 30 days later, I stand on the scale next to somebody else, okay, I've done the work 30 days in a row, I've done the work 30 days in a row. So I get the power of the momentum of that thing to the 30th power, that thing exponentially. On the other hand, the person who fell off the wagon every Sunday, who had to start over and over and over again, I lose ten pounds, they lose nothing. And they wonder why. The same is true in your business. The same is true in your business. And as it relates to creating a stable foundation for your company as either a solopreneur and a small business, whatever it is, to create a solid foundation, what you need to do is instill habits and patterns with yourself and in your team that you practice every single day. And those things will develop momentum. And that momentum will make you so much stronger than your competition. And that's what's going to help you to get through this crisis. And again, this crisis is not going away anytime soon. This crisis is really going to be the new normal for the next three to six months. And when all of this infection clears out of our system and we're seven months as an example down the road. We'll be in a recession, the market will have changed, and then we're going to have to get through that. And so this is an incredible opportunity for you to be your best self. The biggest difference between where you are now and where you, where you want to be in the next year, given everything going on now, may be as simple as the standards that you set for yourself. And so again, in order for people that are just joining us, in order to be as smart as we can, to put ourselves in the best possible position that we can as entrepreneurs, as solopreneurs, as small business owners.

There'S three things I want you to do right now. I'm going to repeat them. I want you to do them quickly. Number one is to conserve your cash. How are you going to do that? You're going to turn off all your auto pays that aren't absolutely necessary. You're going to go to your biggest bills that you pay, your, your cars, your utilities, your credit cards, things like that. You're going to ask them to push back payments, renegotiate terms. And finally, you're going to put as much cash as you can into your account. If you have lines of credit and other things that you can draw from, this is probably a really, really good time. That's the first thing you're going to do. The second thing you're going to do is you're going to control the narrative and the dialogue. You're going to focus on being positive. You're going to focus on doing things, creating habits and patterns for yourself and within your company to create a narrative, to create a dialogue that keeps your people engaged and keeps your people helping you to move forward in, in your business. And the last thing is you're going to get out there and you're going to talk to customers. Find out today, like, don't wait. Find out today what new things, what this new world means, what new things, what new products and services are needed out there and start to adapt today. And if you need to generate cash quickly, if you need to be scrappy, find the most basic things that need to be done, the most basic needs that people have today, and create simple solutions. Facebook groups, right? Paying through PayPal doesn't cost you anything. Doesn't cost you anything. Super simple. And there's so many people that need things like, you know, at home, education at home, exercise at home, motivational speaking, you know, at home, like, like grocery shopping, like I mentioned earlier, providing my kids are Going to classes and digital things online, they start at $3. They go to 25 bucks. So. So be scrappy.

I had a bunch of messages from people last night that were afraid that if they were scrappy, that were afraid that if they stopped operating the business that they've been telling people that they were in, that were afraid that if they closed the business they were in and they shifted and they adjusted quickly.

They told me that they'd be embarrassed. They told me that they were afraid that people would judge them or they look at them different or they would think that they would be a failure. Things like that. And I'm here to tell you that is total bullshit. I'm here to tell you the people that adapt the quickest are the people that always do the best when a market turns. Those aren't people that are going to look at you with any kind of judgment. Those are people that are actually going to look at you with envy and they're going to wonder, how did that person think of that so quickly? How did that person act on that so quickly? And why didn't I do that? The key right now for everyone is not to be on their heels. The key is to be on your toes. The key is to do everything that you can to keep moving and keep pushing and keep driving forward and do it in a way where all you're doing is coming in every single day with the Buddhist concept of shoshan, meaning beginner's mind. Every single day, the world is changing. And so every single day you have to listen with an open mind and a completely open and fresh perspective.

At what customers are telling you, at what needs new needs are emerging, at new ways that you can solve this problem. I mean, like, like as an example, I'm just looking right here. By the way, I'm using a new, I'm testing this week, every day a different kind of live stream product. And I'm live streaming this across a bunch of different social media networks. And what I'm finding is comments keep getting stalled or delayed. It may look like things are cutting off. If they do, I apologize for that. Just let me know in the comments. So I may be kind of behind on responding to comments.

Because they're not coming through. But I'm doing my best and I promise you we're going to get better here.

So again, the goal right now is we have got to stay on our toes. And please, I just want to remind you, if you are getting value out of this call today or this, this, this broadcast, if you are getting Any value you think that this would help other people, please share this with others. Please push this out through your networks. Please get this out to other people. I'm going to give you everything I've got, the best I've got. I am going to do.

Everything, every single thing that I can to give you the best information I have. All I want to do is serve. All I want to do is to help entrepreneurs, people like you, people like me, to go and have an impact today on this planet, to have to really change the world, to make it better, even in these hard times, through entrepreneurship. I want to give you the best that I have. And again, if there's anything else that.

If there's anything else that you guys.

That you guys need, if there's anything else that you have a question about, if there's anything else that you need assistance on, guidance on, please put it in the comments for me. Please shoot me a message or a note and I'll make sure to research, to study, to do my best that I can to help provide resources in that area. Between the time you leave that comment and our next, our next broadcast.

A lot of people, a lot of people, too many people have reached out to me.

In depressed.

Some people, I think suicidal, some people in a really tough position.

And.

All I can say is this.

Be kind and sensitive to others. Know that you are not alone in this. And if you want or you need somebody to talk to, I'm the person. Reach out to me, reach out to this community.

I think as entrepreneurs.

We'Ve been trained, we've been taught to always put on a brave face. What does that mean? What that means is we've been taught that, you know, no matter what happens when someone asks how we're doing, the answer is, great, I'm doing awesome. Business is super. Never been better, right? We've been taught to sell because, you know, we are the visionary, we are the leader. We're supposed to get people behind us and we're supposed to give confidence to our investors and to our teams and to our families and our friends and things like that.

But the challenge with that is.

As a result, we hold things in. As a result, we don't share what's really going on. As a result, we don't allow ourselves to be vulnerable. As a result, we go down this path where we think that we're the only people that are experiencing what we feel and what we may feel over the next few months is, I'm out of work or I'm out of cash or I may have to consider bankruptcy, or I may have to make some really tough decisions. I may have to move out of my place. I may have to cancel some commitments that I made. And we feel like we're all alone. But what I'm here to tell you is that you are not alone. And what you are feeling and what you are experiencing is the same thing. It is no different than anyone else out there today. So the best thing to do is to share. The best thing to do is to open up. The best thing to do is know that you aren't alone. So if you're going through a tough time and maybe you're not ready to share it with other people, share it with me. I'm here for you. And I want to do everything that I can to possibly support you. And I'm going to be providing resources to continue to provide resources in our social stream. And I'll do that every single day between calls. And I'll be here available for you. 24, 24 7.

I want to talk a little bit about volatility before we wrap up today. So the stock market is down today almost 10%. And when the market closed yesterday, the futures were up 1,000%. Basically what this means at a high level is that after the market closed yesterday, there was optimism and people were buying, or it looked like when the market opened in the morning, there'd be a lot of buying that took place. And that turned around shortly after the market opened. And so we're really negative. Here's the thing. Doesn't matter. Turn it off. It really doesn't matter. Because your job, no matter what happens on that screen, your job isn't any different. Your job right now is to protect your cash, is to focus on one thing and be really open to new market needs. And it's to get out in front of customers. What happens over there doesn't change what happens here. Okay? And the markets will have these big jumps up and down and up and down. And here's why there are different than 2008.

There are. There are so many different algorithms and programmatics and bots and things like that that touch the market and they thrive off volatility. So when the market jumps, what they do is they sell. When the market drops, what they do is buy. And it's all automated and they thrive off of this volatility. And so some of this is real and some of it is bots and things like that. But again, here's what's important. It doesn't matter. What matters is we're in this together. You're going to focus on cash, you're going to focus on narrowing down your focus. You're going to focus on solving new issues for customers and for the marketplace. And.

What would be really helpful, I think for me and for the rest of the group is if you have kids, you have kids that are now home, particularly young kids, and you're trying to figure out what to do with those kids for the next 30, 60, 90 days. I just saw it actually came across over here that it looks like in the state of California, school is going to be closed not just for a month, which was what we learned last week, through April 15th. It looks like school is going to be closed.

Throughout the year and basically the school year is going to end and something may start up in the summer.

So again, if there's anything that you're doing at home to occupy your kids time to help them to grow, to help you to get them doing something so you can focus on your business, would you please share it in the group? That would be really amazing and awesome.

And so with that, I think we're going to wrap up today. I want to thank all of you for joining today. This is something that we're going to do every single day, Monday through Friday at 10:00am Pacific Time. This broadcast is going to start to go out across a number of different social media channels. If you find value, please make sure to share this and invite your friends, invite your family, invite your business colleagues and please contribute to the group. If there's anything that you want to add to the group, anything you can share and help with us, I ask you to please do so until we talk tomorrow. You guys have a great day. Feel free to shoot me a message and reach out with any questions that you have and I look forward to talking to you again soon. Have a great day.