Scott Duffy About Entrepreneurs & Corona Virus - Here's Where To Start

Good morning, everybody. How you guys doing? This is Scott, and we are getting ready to kick off our first community, our first live training session where we're going to talk to entrepreneurs about how to manage and how to deal with coronavirus recession in uncertain times. And I want to thank all of you for joining me today. And we're going to give it a few minutes for people to hop in.

It's been a crazy week and I have spent the last seven days doing nothing but this. Hey, Natasha, how you doing? Do nothing but this. Doing nothing but taking calls and emails and texts from entrepreneurs in a variety of different businesses that are reaching out from all over the country, actually the uk, all over the world. And the one question that everybody is asking is, what do I do now?

If you take a look back a month at our economy, it felt like things were jamming for most of us. Business was good. There weren't any real hiccups that the majority of business owners felt that were structural in the economy. We were selling product and all that kind of stuff. And then just like this, it felt like things changed in a heartbeat. And so what I decided to do was create this community. And again, the reason is I've had so many people reach out to me and they all ask the same question, what do I do now? And with that in mind, you know, I thought to myself, we're all going to get through this. But the way that we're going to get through this isn't just from me sharing what I know and the knowledge that I have about how to manage through and deal with a down market. The way we're going to get through this is together. So instead of creating a group, just a Facebook group, my goal was to create a community, a place where I could lead the conversation and we could have a real discussion every day and we could talk about what happened the following evening in the morning, changes that creates for us as entrepreneurs. But more than anything, here's what I want this to be. Here's what I don't want this to be. I don't want this to be a place where people are creating fear and panic, and there's a bunch of speculation about what may or may not not happen. What I want this community to be is a resource for providing entrepreneurs with real tactical information, information that they can use immediately to do three things. Number one, protect themselves personally, because, again, I used to think that the most important job for every entrepreneur.

Had things to do with business. So, for example, the most important job was being a great leader or being a great manager or hiring a great team or writing a great plan. But what I've learned over time is this. What I've learned is the most important job of any entrepreneur is learning how to protect themselves. So if things don't work out as planned, things take longer than planned. They go sideways. Something outside of them comes and has a big impact on their business, like what we're experiencing now in the economy. They're in a position where financially they're secure and they can bounce right back. And that's a big statement because in this country, the majority of people live paycheck to paycheck. The majority of entrepreneurs are solopreneurs living paycheck to paycheck. So we have a lot of work to do and hey there, Laura. How are you doing? What I'd love you guys to do as we wait for more people to hop on is this. If you could introduce yourselves to the group, it would be great if at a minimum, you could just share what business you're in, what industry. Because I would love to see who is here and from what kinds of industries to help tailor what it is that we're going to talk about today. It's good to see you. Tim Owens. Hey there, John. Hey, Patrick. Nice to see you. I saw Steve Fielding jump in.

And then we're just, we're going to get started in a second here. But again, I want to welcome all of you. Thank you for joining what will be a daily Facebook Live, a daily live training that will occur at 10:00am Pacific Time. And I'm considering also doing this at 4:00pm Pacific Time as well, depending on what happens in the market over the next week. And I want to thank all of those people I've got, you know, for people who, people who know me, people who are part of my groups, people who have attended my programs. They know, you know, that I have got an incredible network and my network includes people that are on the front lines today. They are on the front lines with regard to coronavirus. They are working in managing quarantine centers day to day. People in the government, people in business that are making the decisions that we then hear about or we read about in the news. And so a lot of the information that I'm going to share will come from really good sources and hopefully help you as entrepreneurs not just stand in a place of fear, but in a place of power so we can move through this, this, this period quickly. I also wanted to encourage you to do this. Please share this information. This video is going to be so important today. Because what we're going to talk about is the first steps that you should be taking as an entrepreneur again, to protect yourself financially, to create a more stable foundation around your business, and then finally to set yourself up to do well, to generate cash and begin to thrive in this new economy. And by the way, that's what this is. You know, I think that last night, last Tuesday night, the world changed. I feel like it was the tipping point in this whole coronavirus thing. You know, I was actually, I was at an event and I was speaking. And while I was speaking, from the time I started speaking to the time I came off stage, to the time I sat down to sign books.

A whole bunch of different things happened. The first thing I read about when I picked up the phone was the city of San Francisco deciding to close all live events, Shut down all live events. The second thing was the Golden State warriors announcing that they would not be allowing fans into events. The third thing that happened was Rudy Gobert from the Utah Jazz tested positive for coronavirus. And then the fourth thing, the NBA decided to shut down, or at least put on pause the season. And then finally, Tom Hanks and his wife, I believe that is Rita, Rita, Rita Wilson, both had contracted coronavirus and they were in quarantine. And so it just seemed like last Tuesday night things became a lot more real.

And the following day, everything changed. And for us as entrepreneurs, I can tell you that I was hoping that this coronavirus thing a week ago was going to be a short term thing. I was hoping that it was going to be something that kind of came and went. It was like a sneeze, or it was like a hiccup. But I am here today to tell you, if you haven't grasped this already, this is not a hiccup. And what we're dealing with now is going to be something that we deal with for the next several months. And so what I want to do is share with you some ideas, some tips on how to respond as an entrepreneur today, to set yourself up to succeed. So I'm just going to jump right in. A few years ago, I had an opportunity to meet one of my heroes, Jack Welch. Jack Welch, he was the CEO of General Electric, maybe the most iconic manager of the last hundred, two hundred years in America. And when Jack Welch had an opportunity to talk to entrepreneurs, he was asked one question. What is the one piece of advice you would give to entrepreneurs today? His answer was simple. His answer was to panic faster. And so the first step towards really taking control in this crisis is, this is to panic faster. And that does not mean come from a place of fear. What that means is not sit on your hands and to take the actions that you need to take today in order to first protect yourself financially. Because in times of uncertainty, as entrepreneurs, here's what we typically do. What we do is we get locked down. We get locked down because we are stuck in this state of having all of this information come at us and not necessarily knowing what it is that we should do. We lock down because we're afraid of what to do. We lock down because we're afraid of all of the changes going to be created by this new market. And as a result, we fail to act. So again, the biggest mistake that entrepreneurs make during this time when a market corrects, is they sit on their hands and they fail to take action. And so as you do that, what I want to encourage you to do is this. I want to encourage you and this is going to be really challenging, I understand, to focus on solutions. And it's incredibly important to focus on solutions because every time you turn on the television, every time you open social media, every time you go to a news site, it looks like the world is coming apart. Maybe for the short term, it may feel like that's the case, but the reality is there is opportunity everywhere. And there are things that you can do, specific things that you can do today in your business, in your personal life, to protect yourself and to set yourself up to succeed. Here's the first thing I want you to do. The first thing is protect yourself financially. And what's the first thing I think you should do to do that? The first thing is I want you to take out your bank statements and go into every single, go look down every single line item and for every single line item, start cutting everything you possibly can today that hits your account. And why is that so important to do it today? When we take a look at the timing of coronavirus and what comes next, here's what we know. What we know is last week was effectively the first week that, that we took this as a nation serious. It was kind of like the starting point of the coronavirus epidemic for us. The people that were infected last week and that we heard about had likely had coronavirus in their system for 10 days to 14 days, so for two weeks. So figure now that things are really hitting. You're talking about two week incubation periods, two weeks, 10 to 14 days where you have the virus and then the virus can be communicated to other people for nearly 40 days. So if you just add that up, the amount of time that in a best case scenario we would be in with people having coronavirus and transmitting, it is about two to three months. If you take a look at the CDC and the World Health Organization and other groups out there that are making predictions on this virus, what I saw last night from Goldman Sachs, what I know is this, we are looking at, at three to six months where the market is going to feel like it does today. Three to six months where the market feels like it does today. And if that's the case, if the market is going to feel like this for the next three to six months, why would you not take decisive action now to protect yourself? And again, the first place that you protect yourself is you cut your expenses in order to protect your cash position. Go in there. All the auto pays. People have been asking me, do I cancel my credit cards? I can tell you firsthand that I reached out to credit card folks. I've had friends of mine, business owners, reach out to credit card issuers, call those credit card issuers and ask them to put a pause or a freeze on taking money out of their accounts. I've talked to other folks in the last week who have called their banks, they've called their banks about their mortgages, they've called their banks about their refinancings, and they have asked those banks, those institutions for help. So I would again, protect my cash flow. How many times as an entrepreneur or business owner, you wake up in the morning and you see emails that come in, or you look at your bank statement and the number that you had today, when you looked at it was so much different than the number yesterday. And the reason was a whole bunch of auto pays came through that you just, you weren't expecting. So now's the time to cut all of that off. Go back to the people who, who you're paying credit to, you're paying mortgages to and things like that and start to renegotiate. And I can tell you this right now. I've talked to several people that have done this over the last week successfully. And so these groups are willing to work with you if you are proactive. The next thing you got to do as an entrepreneur today is control the narrative within your company. And within your company kind of encompasses a whole series or a group of people. It encompasses your employees, your full time employees, it encompasses your contractors, it encompasses your family, that's a part of your team as well, and your supportive friends. Because here's the thing, if you don't control the narrative in your company, you're going to lose people. Here, let me give you an example. Here's an example. Last week, last Tuesday night, I mentioned earlier, I was at an event and I did a speech. And then after the speech, I went and I did a book signing. And during the course of the book signing, I signed about 200 books. And I mentioned earlier that when I came out of the speech and looked at my phone, I saw that that series of events had just taken place. It was everything from, you know, the NBA canceling to Tom Hanks and his wife being quarantined in Australia with coronavirus.

So imagine this. I'm sitting at a table and there's a line of 150 to 200 people, and each one of them is grabbing a book. And as they're looking at these phones, their leader isn't in that line and he's not there to talk to them. And so even though they had just gotten through an entire day, actually two days of talking about the company and talking about how they were going to grow and they were going to scale together, talking a bit about coronavirus, what happened because the leader wasn't there, is that people started to create their own narrative. And it started with the first person who I signed a book for. They asked me a question. They said, hey, Scott, they said, you know, what do you think about what's happening next? I'm looking here and it looks like there's bad things ahead. And then the second person, third. By the time we got to the 200th person in line, the dialogue for the company and what this all meant had completely changed. And so I went to the leader and I said, it's time for us to control the narrative. And basically what he did is cancel programming for the second day. A good part of it to focus on how the group was going to deal with the economy. And again, controlling the narrative is so doggone important. And the way to control the narrative isn't to try to hide things from your team, and it's not to try and sugarcoat things from your team. The way to control a narrative is to start by being transparent. And the smaller your business is, the more everybody knows about what's going on. And so if you have a company and it's over 25, 35, 40, 50 people, you know, by the time you give them, you deliver news to your team, they already know it. I mean, I'll give you an example. As entrepreneurs, what happens is we are so busy juggling so many different balls. We are so busy managing so many different things that what happens is while we're focusing things on things over here, our employees, our contractors, our vendors over here, they're a lot closer in many cases to what's really happening in the marketplace. And as a result, they not only know when things aren't working, they're not only fearful before we are, but they also may know what does work or what people are asking for or what new needs are emerging in the marketplace. So in addition to controlling, because look, here's the thing, right now you are probably thinking, in fact, everybody that works for you, I know is thinking this. They're thinking is, I wake up this morning and I look at the news, what does this mean to me and what should I do? What does this mean to me and what should I do? And again, they're controlling. They're writing their own narrative. So as a leader, it's very important for you to step up and to control that dialogue. And again, start from transparency. Here's what's going on, here's how it's affecting our business. And then I think the next thing that is really important for everyone to do is is engage with your team. Ask your team what they see out there and what solutions they think you guys can bring to the marketplace. Because here's the thing, the needs that somebody had yesterday, the needs a company had yesterday may have changed, which leads to the next point, which is this. There has never been a more important time for you to get in front of your customers. Never a more, more important time for you to get in front of your customers. And it's funny because as owners, what tends to happen as our companies grow? We tend to hire people to be the day to day kind of interactors, interactive people with our biggest customers. We lose that connection. But one of the core jobs of any entrepreneur CEO is to have those relationships, to own the relationships with the biggest accounts. And right now, again, is the best time to get in front of people. And it's the best time to get in front of people.

Not just to see what you can sell them. It's the best time to get in front of people, to ask them, okay, based on what's going on in this market, what's going on over there, how is this impacting your business? What are you seeing over the next six months, over the next year, what are you going to need? What kind of products, what kind of services does your business need? What do we have that we can adjust to? Better meet your needs.

Start Asking them questions to find out how you as a business can pivot, how you can adapt to better meet your current customers needs. And I have to tell you, like I said, there's opportunity everywhere. I have a very good friend who has a company that is one of the, actually they are the largest supplier of drivers to Amazon and Walmart in the United States. So those people who are coming to your house and they're dropping off a package and things like that, the odds are that person came through my buddy's business.

And here's the thing, he called me last week and he said, hey Scott, he said, you know, he calls me Duffy Duff. One of my vendors or one of these clients reached out to me and they said, they said they needed to have a really important emergency, a timely call. And he said, I don't know what that means. He said, I don't know if they're going to get rid of me. I don't know if they're going to want more of me. I just don't know. And what he found out on the call was that when this particular vendor, that one that I mentioned, another big box when coronavirus was found amongst any one of their employees, their plan was to shut the entire thing down and go directly to nothing but at home delivery. In fact, it was an opportunity for this particular client to launch their online home delivery platform. And what they asked him for was a thousand new drivers. There is opportunity. In fact, today.

I was listening to a broadcast and what they were sharing is that one of the challenges that we're finding today, what companies are finding today with the push for people not to come into the office and to work at home is now we have all of these new people working at home that weren't before and they're not set up to do it. They may not have, they may not have laptops that were issued by the company or they might not have access at home to some of the company's information on their servers. They don't have printers, they don't have scanners, their Internet slower, their Internet. So there were all of these issues that were coming up and all I could think to myself is who is the entrepreneur entrepreneur that is going to create a business right now that helps these big companies set their employees up in their homes. They can be efficient workers. I spoke to somebody last night, I spoke to somebody last night who is a, she's a mamapreneur. She's got a killer business. And what she, she has to go into the office every day and she was telling me that two things, One, her kids school system, just like my kids school system shut down on Friday. So beginning today, there is no school. None. Kids are allowed to come to school for at least the next four weeks. So that mamapreneur, she has to come home. And while she, she has to come home and she has to obviously manage the kids and manage the household and the kids starting later this week, the learning from their school is going to all be digital coming through Chromebooks and she's going to have to sit and make sure they're doing their work. And so the question that she had is, you know, what inventive kid who's going to come out there and help us, help us as a community to manage, you know, our kids or small groups of kids during this period of time. It's like a babysitting or a, you know, kind of like a pseudo daycare center. My point is this. None of these businesses are yours. None of these businesses may not make sense for your company. My point is there are opportunities everywhere. And the key to finding the best opportunities is to get in front of your customers. The way to do it now is through Zoom. I highly recommend getting on a video call as opposed to just a text, an email, or a phone call. Get on a video call so you can really dig in with somebody and find out what their needs are. Today.

I want to take a minute and I just want to look through some of the comments and answer some of your questions. Steve, I see that you just jumped in and you're saying here. In terms of communications, there's a couple things that come to mind. Conveying monthly and quarterly goals may shift to weekly goals. A predictable cadence of communications is a useful tool. That is such an incredible point.

When people, when your employees or your contractors are home and they're filled with uncertainty. Right now, one of the most effective ways to manage that person and to keep them focused is over communicate. Communicate more than you ever have with all of your team. Continue to reinforce your narrative, continue to hold them accountable for their goals.

And as Steve is saying, create a predictable cadence of this communication. That's a great idea, Steve. So for example, make sure to set regular Zoom calls or regular phone calls or Google calls or hangouts or whatever it is throughout the day in order to keep your team engaged. I'm curious, is there anybody else in the group.

Through their business, through their company, through their own experience in the last week, has had to do new things, has had to manage people remotely for the first time that has had to shift up their product or service for the first time, that is at home, as opposed to work with the kids, trying to juggle all of that at the same time that maybe has an experience that they're able to comment on and share that we can use with the group.

Because I know for me, this has all been a big shift. It's been a really, really big shift. We talked about getting in front of your customers. I'll tell you, if you are an entrepreneur and you have employees, you have contractors that are working for you.

One of the things that you're going to really have to take a look at is cuts. And people don't like to talk about this. It can be very uncomfortable. But we're in an entrepreneur's forum right now, and the reality is, for you as a business owner, the number one job of staying in business today is staying in business tomorrow. And when crisis hits, that's something that you have to keep in mind. The number one job for every entrepreneur today is to be in business tomorrow. And what that means is at times we have to make really hard decisions. So we talked about, first off, we talked about at the beginning of this call, protecting yourself as an entrepreneur financially. Your number one job today, your number one job as an entrepreneur really has nothing to do with your business. The first thing that you have to do is you have to protect yourself financially. And if money comes to a halt, if what I saw today, I can tell you here in Los Angeles, I'm in LA today. Last night, just before midnight, I was up on the phone with somebody in the UK and I saw come across the news that in LA they have closed all restaurants and all bars with the exception of pickup and delivery. They've closed all entertainment stuff, they've closed the movie theaters, they have closed all of the gyms.

And that's just today, that's just Monday. What we're expecting is by the end of the week, we'll have so much more that closes. And if money isn't moving, if people aren't transacting, if your customer is not buying from you. Because here's what I'm hearing. Okay, this is what I'm hearing. Over the weekend, I got almost 7,000 emails, primarily from entrepreneurs, founders from all over the world. And again, the most common question people had is, what do I do now? What's a piece of advice you can give me? Can I get on the phone with you? Which is why I decided ultimately to create this forum to just bring everybody together and share what I knew all you know, with all of you at the same time. And here's what I heard. I heard big strategic partnerships that people had been working on for months were stalled or off the table. I heard that customers were canceling big ticket items. I heard that recurring payments that were hitting those credit cards were starting to decline. Basically what I heard were thousands of people telling me that the money had stopped moving. And if that's the case, that's going to be the case for your business. The number one thing that you need to do right now, like stop watching this, is to go and to look at your bank statement and see what is automatically hitting your account every single month and to cancel as much of that as you possibly can. It is to call your credit card companies and talk to them about holding your payments and putting payments off for one to three months. I know several people that have done this in the last week, and the credit card companies were willing to work with them. It means if you have a mortgage, it means if you have a mortgage, calling the bank and seeing what kind of relief that you can get in terms of timing so that you can hold on to and you can preserve as much cash as possible. Because people, if this goes on for the next 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 months, we want to make sure that you're in the best possible position that you can be from a cash position. And waiting till tomorrow is not the right move. And again, like I mentioned earlier, the biggest mistake that people make, especially entrepreneurs make in uncertainty, is they sit on their hands. The biggest mistake that they make during uncertainty is they fail to act. They fail to act because of a number of different reasons. One is they don't know what to do. The second is they're afraid of taking a look and really acknowledging what's going on. Another is they are afraid that their business has changed so much that or the market has changed so much that they don't really have anything to offer the market. Which, again, I'm here today to tell you that today the first lesson we wanted to talk about, the first community group forum today, was all about protecting yourself as an entrepreneur. You can't give anything that you don't have. You can't pay people if you don't have money. And so again, the thing, the second thing is after you've protected yourself and you've gone through all of your personal financial stuff, is to take a look at your business. Do the same thing with your business. Make sure you're not paying for anything that you don't need and contact folks that are charging, particularly automatically, to make sure to see if you can work out some kind of arrangement to push back payments. Which leads to another point again, and that's layoffs. Layoffs are an incredibly uncomfortable conversation for most people. I can tell you that for me personally, laying off people is like, the hardest thing that I've ever done. And I remember.

I remember back in 2008, when the market was crashing, I just wished I really did. I just wish that somebody, like, told me what to do. I wish that somebody gave me some kind of manual. I wish that somebody taught me how to make an act on big decisions faster. But the fact is, nobody was. And so I just kept kind of hoping that that's what would happen. And what I learned is that two things. One, hope is not a good strategy. And while you're hoping, you're waiting. And the other thing is I kept waiting for the cavalry to come. I kept thinking that somebody was going to come and save me. And by the way, I'm here to tell you, the cavalry ain't coming. And so if you take a look at your business and you decide, you know, for most companies, their payroll is the number one or number two expense that they have on their books. And if you take an honest look at the market and you say, okay, for the next six months, if it feels like this, okay, what do I have to do in my business in order to be around in six months, seven months, eight months, and really be in a position to be able to come up and thrive again? And if that means making layoffs.

My advice is this, is to cut fast and to cut. Once again, I mentioned, you know, when I was with. When I was with Virgin in 2008 and the market crashed.

What happened was I had to lay off a lot of people. I probably had to lay off, I would imagine, 40, ish, 50 people. And for me, that was an incredibly tough thing to do. And I remember I wasn't sure how to do it. I hoped that the market was going to turn around. So my strategy became to lay off as few people as possible and kind of stage out the layoff process. But what I learned is that by staging layoffs, what happens is everyone who remains is so fearful because they see what's going on in the market and they suspect in a small company, they hear conversations, they suspect that maybe they're next. And so in a staged layoff strategy, what happens is your employees and your FTEs and your contractors, they stop. They stop working. And instead, what they do is they brush up on their resume, they brush up on their LinkedIn profile, they start texting and contacting and calling all of the people around them in their circle to find out what's going on, like over there, and they stop working for you. And so doing stage layoffs doesn't help anyone. The best thing that you can do to help yourself as an entrepreneur and to help the person that may be impacted by a layoff is to do it quickly. And so, again, what my recommendation is to cut once and to cut really deep. Preserve your cash, protect yourself as a business owner so that when things do turn around, it's much more easy to bounce back. And then you can go back and you can rehire those people back into your business. I can tell you, the people who stick around, who you keep on your payroll, those are people that will work twice as hard for you. They'll be incredibly grateful and they'll be incredibly loyal to you as well. So what I want to do now is I want to actually go back into some of the comments and.

Answer some questions. John, I see a question here. You'd like to hear more about how to go to your landlords about how to approach deferring rent. So I was talking to. I talked to somebody here in California, talked to somebody in Washington today, and my understanding is that we're going to get more information on that topic in the next couple of days. So what I'm not suggesting, I want to speculate, I'm just telling you something that I'm hearing is in the state of California, at least, they're working on something so that no one can get kicked out of their home for not paying rent. And what I'm hearing on the national level is they're working on something as well to address rent and to address mortgages. It's obviously a very complicated issue and there's a lot to it. But I would say is with regard to rent and your next rent coming up, I would say sit tight for a few days and let's see what guidance we get from the government. It puts people in a difficult position to tell them not to go to work or that they have to shut their businesses down temporarily, but they still have to pay these big expenses. So again, I do expect there to be some kind of announcement right around, you know, coming up. Also, rent is something that we have, if you're paying on the first, a little bit of time, you know, to wait for before we would have to pay that expense as it relates to your credit cards or your Auto pays, you can act on that right away. Just cut them off, you know, if they're auto pays and you don't need that stuff anymore. And if, you know you have credit cards and things like that, I would contact your credit card issuer and I would talk to them about what kind of relief they can give you. I know several people that have done this and the credit card companies have pushed back next payment 1, 2, 3 months at a time. And so again, I think the key is just to be super proactive and super action taking today. I think that that is the most important thing that you could do. Hey, Rod, awesome to see you. Does this not feel like 2008 or what? I've got Rod here and Rod and I work together in LA at Smart Charter, which is my company that was acquired by Virgin and became Virgin Charter. And it was a really interesting experience because we launched as a Virgin branded company. So we took my business, we rebranded it as a Virgin company in March of 2008. And.

When most people think about the economic crash in 2008, what they remember is they remember September of 2008 because that's when the general market crashed. That's when that happened. But in our industry, the travel industry, the crash became started in March of 2008. And the reason is the month that we launched, we had this historic increase in the price of oil. Oil went from something like 70 to something like $140 a barrel. So we were in the private jet business. And our average trip from LA to, to New York, Van Nuys to Teterboro went from like 38,000 to 70, $80,000. And it happened in just a few weeks. The entire market shifted on this. And it was several months later that the general market economy crashed. We felt it way before. The reason I want to bring this up is some of that feels like today. But here's what's different about what's happening today versus what happened in 2008. By the, for comparison's sake, during the Great Depression, the market crashed 90% over the course of time. 90% of the value was taken out of the stock market in 2008. Actually, beginning in September, around 2008 to March of 2009, the market crashed about 50%. So 90%. 50%. And my understanding is that we in the last week are at about a 30% reduction this morning in the, in the stock market. So it's a big hit. And we're just at the beginning, which is why we created this group. It's why we're Planning today, we're planning today we're talking about how to protect ourselves personally, how to put ourselves in the best possible financial position and how to be able to really continue to move forward in this, in this market. So. So, Rod, I was actually at a Starbucks. I went through a drive through. That's all that's open here where I am in la. And it's really interesting because they have taken all of the furniture out of all the Starbucks here and it looked like the things were off the wall you couldn't go. And it was totally surreal.

I wonder if that opens up an opportunity for a coffee delivery service. I don't know, but. So that was a, that was a great point there, Rod. Natasha, let's see. We've had to close classes for an additional two weeks post spring break. We'll be okay if that's as far as it goes. If this lockdown continues into April, we have a situation. We do. Natasha, are you a schoolteacher? Is that, is that what you do?

Let's see.

So yes, I just want to. So for people that are school teachers.

All I know is kind of what I've heard and kind of my direct experience. By the way, when you're taking a look, you're getting help for your business today. There are really two types of ways, two types of people that you can listen to. The first is people that will give you advice and people who give you advice. They're people that may love you, they may care for you, they may have nothing but the best intentions for you. The problem is they don't have any direct experience either achieving the goal that it is that you want to achieve, or direct experience getting out of the situation that you want to get out of. And so as you're talking to people today, what you want to do is spend your time with people that can give you counsel. Counsel comes from people that have sat in, that have literally walked in your shoes experiencing what it is that you're experiencing, experiencing. So they can tell you through personal experience how to act. So always seek counsel versus opinion or advice. It is so important today. So what I'm going to share with you guys is counsel. It is what I have learned going through different market cycles, Whether it is 2001 when the dot com bust happened, or just 2008 being on the front lines of that stock market crash. You know, well, the other thing that's different about this crash or what we're experiencing today is what we're experiencing today is the result of a health scare. It's a global pandemic. It is an event driven market correction versus 911 as an example. 911 was an event driven market correction. 2008 was a financial was a systemic market correction. So you know, what we're experiencing today and 911 are much more similar to what happened in 2008 and why the market reacted the way that it did, which again could create some hope that when things we do get out of this and things turn around, that they may turn around faster like they did after 9 11. But we don't know. And because we don't know, we have to do everything that we can to protect ourselves. Now going back to teachers, so I know that in my kids school district which is in Orange County, California, they go to school in Newport Beach. What's happened is all the schools in the Newport Mesa school district have shut down and they've shut down until the middle of April at a minimum.

My understanding is that starting Friday the kids will continue to go to class, but everything will be virtual and they'll be doing this through a school issued Google Chromebooks or their own computers. Now I know not every district and not every school has that. My understanding is that the teachers are still required to come into the school and they'll be teaching from the school with no students there. And, and so there's all kinds of things that we're working through here in the system. The question I have is what kind of opportunity does that create?

Does that create an opportunity for you or for other teachers to start doing virtual tutoring? Could you create a program to maybe assist parents that are at home with their kids, that are trying to work, that need to occupy their kids time so they can work and they can bring cash home to the family? Is there a virtual tutoring kind of business that you can create? And by the way, you can do this for free. You can use free tools like Skype and Google Hangouts in order to connect with the kids and teach?

I don't know. But I do understand the concern about what happens if this goes into April. Here's what we do know. Everything I've seen, I've heard from people that have had conversations with the CIA, the CDC.

And other groups. This virus appears to thrive in cold weather. So it's actually happening.

Above, predominantly above a certain latitude on the globe. It does not like warm weather. So it will likely, the summer will likely help it to cycle out. But here's the thing.

If we go into a period, say of just three months, just six months, where things are really tough, it's going to take time for activity to begin to take place again. It's going to take time for us to effectively reboot our system. And as a result, it's never been more important than today to protect yourself as an entrepreneur financially, which again, starts by protecting your personal finances. And I know I keep saying the same thing. I know I keep drilling at home because it's that important. It's the place to start to go into your bank statements. If there's anything that you are paying for that you do not absolutely need, kill it today. If there are auto payments that come through on a monthly basis and you don't need those things now, kill them today. If there are things like credit cards and payments that hit your account, credit cards, cars, things like that. My, my recommendation, my counsel, based on what I've seen work over the past week with many people, is call your credit card issuers, call the car companies, call the banks that have those loans and see what kind of relief you can get on timing in terms of pain. That's a really important thing. It could be a great tool. It is available to people out there and share your experience.

So again, make sure to hold on to as much cash as you possibly can right now. Eric Swanson. Good to see you, Eric. I'm curious, what are you seeing out there? Because I know, actually I would love to have this conversation with you. So my primary business is the event business. I have an event that takes place three times a year. You know, a good chunk of my income comes through that event. Certainly, you know, it'd be really difficult to sell an event that people can't attend right now because it's illegal. So my next event is being pushed back. So this event, you know, it's interesting, the airlines are getting hit really hard right now. And because the airline business is so big. The airline business is so big, we hear about it every day in the news. And the government is putting all kinds of protection in place to help that industry. The thing is, if you were in the event industry, you're getting hit just as hard, if not harder. And the reason. And the reason is we can't do live events. But what we can do today is we can do virtual. And by the way, this affects everyone. It affects the people that hold it. It affects the venues, the people that are holding events.

Affects the attendees, it affects the insurers, it affects all of the vendors. It affects the app companies that are where we're paying monthly subscription services to put out sales pages and stuff. There is a Domino effect on who is being affected in the industry by what's going on. And so there are a couple things I want to share. One is this could be a great opportunity for you to take whatever it is that you do and become virtual. Really start to focus on building out your digital business. Your online academies, your online training tools, your online certifications. This may be a great way to start testing, doing live virtual events with multiple speakers and seeing how, seeing how those things work. But the key is if you are in this industry, your job today is to adapt. You have got to adapt. Whatever it is, if you are in this industry that you did a week ago, last Monday night, whatever you did a week ago last Monday night, whatever you just. That thing that you did, that silver bullet, your superhero power, that thing that made you you in this business, that thing that was working for you while the market was really good, that thing a week ago is your baggage today. There has never been a more important time for all of us to really adapt and to learn. And I'll tell you it's interesting because 100 years ago in 1920, the average man in the US lived to be 49 years old. Now I'm 49 years old. That freaks me out. But here's the thing. Maybe back then being good at one thing was good enough because our lifespan, we just had a low life expectancy. But today's today, that's not the case. When you take a look at last year's graduating class, graduating college class in the United states, the top 10 jobs that those graduates applied for did not exist 10 years ago. Did not exist 10 years ago. And so again, there's never been a more important time to learn and adapt. And what's really kind of interesting and what's really cool about when a market shifts like this is we're capitalists and the market reacts, the market adjusts. People learn. There are smart entrepreneurs that are out there talking to customers now that are already identifying new needs and they're repositioning their products and services to address their existing customers new needs. And that again, is what we need to be doing as entrepreneurs.

I can tell you if you're in the event business, people need training now more than they did a week ago. There are new ways that we're going to be expected to work. There are new skills that are all that all of us are going to have to have. There are new ways that like, this is an incredible time for innovation. And not just innovation, entrepreneurship, by the way, the difference is innovation is a process of Creating new things. It's all about ideation, entrepreneurship, the process of monetizing those things, monetizing innovation. So your job now is to identify needs that you can monetize. Does that make sense? And let me just go back to the comments here and I'm looking here, Eric.

And what you're saying here is Habitude Warrior. By the way, if you haven't checked out Eric Swanson, go check out Eric Swanson today. Happy Warrior, Shout out. Eric puts on events, all these huge events all over the country all year round. Obviously his business has been affected and what he's saying is they strategized in really positioning their in person events and flipped that script into what is now called the school of the unstoppable, which is now a 12 week online interview and training course with our top 12 habitude warrior rock star experts. So again, shifting for the market super quick in order to meet market needs. Let me see, what else do we have here?

Hey Andrea, let's see. Yes, this is a great time to build and foster relationships. And what I want to say is the relationship is important. Building is important. The most important part of approaching this relationship building is to come from a place of service.

A lot of time. We think as entrepreneurs, as business owners, that we know what's best for our customers. When I work for Tony Robbins, he taught me the two most important questions that you're ever going to ask are what's most important to you? What's most important to you as my customer? And then the second question, which most people don't ask is what has to happen? How do you know you're getting what you want? And here's what I mean. Say for example, I ask a customer what do they want? And they say they want a new way of managing and monitoring their health. That's digital. Well, that's cool. But the second question, because digital means a lot of different things to a lot of different people, actually I'm going to dumb it down even further. They want a health thing that's easy to use. Easy means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. So the second question to ask, and the one that is the most important is what has to happen? How do you know that it's easy to use? And people will have all different kinds of answers. It's available on desktop, it's available on mobile. I use an iPhone. It's available as an iOS. No, I use an Android. It's only available, you know, on Android phones. It's available as an app or it's available as a website. Your job as your relationship building is to learn now how are being effective. What does this mean to you? What does this whole thing mean to you? What do you need? What's most important to you? And what has to happen? How do you know you're getting what you want? And as entrepreneurs, there's never been a better time to stop taking products to market and shift everything. So now what you're doing is you're just listening to the market and you're letting the market dictate what you should bring, how you should serve. And I think if you do that, you're going to be in a great position to help create a more solid and stable foundation for your business financially.

Faster as this market changes. So that's definitely a great point there. Andrea and Patrick. Let's see. Just like speakers. My art showcases at concerts have all been canceled. I was scheduled to exhibit art at Carla Benoff's concert this past weekend. Gone. Yeah. You know, so the question I have is, Patrick, I don't know if there's a way to innovate and potentially take some of the art that you create and sell it as a digital product. Is there a way to. I know that there's so much beauty in what you offer and what people get with what you've made with a brush.

And again, maybe this isn't right for you, but I'm looking at my computer right now and I have screensavers and desktops. It would be potentially interesting to take some of your archive and digitize it and find a way that maybe we could sell that to people in a whole new way. Again, I don't know that that's the answer, but what I do know is that that's the kind of way we have to think. We have to ask why we're doing everything that we're doing and we have to talk to our customers and ask them what we have and how we can adapt what we have to better meet their current needs. Mira. Hi, Mira. Alright, let's see what you're saying. Loving your tips. I'm an event planner. So you're saying hold onto as much cash as you can, switch digital courses, et cetera. How do you suggest we effectively and efficiently market our courses if people are holding tightly to their cash reserves? I think that's a great question. So first of all, if you're an event planner, I think an incredible opportunity right now helping people to plan their online events. Last week I talked to and I counted them, there were nine people Putting on big events that called me, they had me on board calls, they had me on calls with their major, excuse me, with their investors, with their spouses, all kinds of things to talk about their events and what they do. And one of the things I talked to all of them about was can you provide this as a digital program? Can you provide it as a digital course? And not one of the people I knew that I talked to knew how to do that. And so I'm wondering, how can you become an event planner for digital courses? I can tell you right now, if you could help me do that, I would hire you to do that. And so it's just an idea, but, but something to think about now in terms of how do you market when people are holding onto your cash? I think this is the time where whatever it is that we're selling has to be more niched out than ever. I think the riches are in the niches. We have to really clearly fight. We need to really clearly identify what our product, our service, our event, what problem it's solving for people today. And in order to get really clear, what I would suggest is creating target customer avatar for who this product is all about. And that avatar. Okay, it's gonna sound crazy. Write down 25 to 50. I challenge you to get to 50 things that you know about that person. Who are they? Male, female, age? Where do they live, what do they do? What do they care about? Kids or no kids? Are they working from home now? Are they working from the office? Are they in the restaurant industry that's been shut down? Are they in the training business? Like I would get really clear on who they are. Have a super tightly niche product that you market to those people. And in that niche, I think that what's going to work more effectively is low cost and more customers. And so that's the way that I would kind of maybe think about some of those different things.

Let's see, anything else? Eric, suggestion to sell while people are trying to hold on to their cash is to create future style events with discount rate for 2021. That is an amazing idea. So the idea that Eric has is create events today for 2021 and to sell those live events today at huge discounts, deep discounts of people now and again. I think to take that a step further, Eric, I think that if we're super niche, you know, something that's geared towards digital marketing, something that's geared toward people working at home, something that's geared toward people that are need to learn how to sell and communicate more effectively through digital video. I mean how many times do you get on a zoom call and the person is futzing around with this and that and everything's breaking and nothing is showing and this and that and.

It'S so unprofessional but they just don't know what they're doing. What would happen if you created a course which is now you're stuck at home? How do you communicate more effectively? How do you sell more effectively.

From a zoom call or a Google hangout or a Skype call or whatever the channel is? Like there is, there's a business in that. And the thing is when I was a young guy I was in, I was in the ad space so I ran sales departments for like among other things around like lots of stuff. But one of the things I saw oversaw was sales at like foxsports.com and NBC Internet and CBS sports line. So I was in the media business and my family came from the printing business. And so I have been around advertising my whole life. And when I was younger the riches were, it wasn't about niches, it was all about because of the nature of how we were able to connect about casting the widest possible net with our advertising, the widest possible net like doing mass market advertising and seeing how many fish we could capture. And the thing is back then that worked. Back then that worked because There were only 13 channels when I was growing up on television. Back then there weren't 500 channels on cable. Back then there weren't billions of Internet sites. But today.

The riches are in the niches. So the more we can narrow cast, the more we can get really super granular granular and address people's problems today, the more effective it will be. And even if the price of the product is is low on scale, the odds are that you'll be able to make up for that. So that's how I would address that.

Patrick making a coloring book. Very cool. Very cool, Very cool. Does anybody have any more questions before we hop off here? I want to thank everybody for joining. I'm going to be doing this every day at 10am I'm going to start every day starting at 10am by getting kind of into the weeds a little bit faster. We're going to get tactical faster. I'm going to share more news and more information faster with everybody so that we can get to it. And I would ask all of you please share, share, share this stream. Let's help as many possible people as we can. If there's anything that you need from me, Please shoot me a dm. Reach out. I'm working with people all day, every day right now to help them to restructure and recraft their businesses for this market. I love you all. And one last thing, be safe out there. And here's what I mean. People are really scared and they're really tense and they're nervous. And so I found that people are a lot more reactive right now. I've seen a lot more people jump. I've seen it in the car, people freaking out. I saw a friend of mine had something left on their windshield. I had another friend who was pushed on the street. Like, crazy stuff, crazy stuff. But it's real. And it's real because people are nervous. And so just be careful out there. Come from a place of kindness, you know, Give people a mulligan if they're short, if they're terse, if they're a little bit rude. We're all going through a lot right now. We're going to get through it together. I love you all and I will see you tomorrow at 10:00am Pacific Time. Until then, have a great day.