Scott Duffy: About What To Do When Things Go Sideways, Bills, Collectors and Bankruptcy, Episode 24

Good morning, everybody. This is Scott Duffy and I want to welcome you to what now for all of you who are joining us today, we are live casting this show across Facebook, YouTube, Instagram. You can find us on LinkedIn, on Periscope. And I want to welcome you. And if you're new to watching this show, you're new to seeing it live. What I'd love you to do is this. We ask every day for you to drop in your name. So in the comments, if you can drop down, write down your name, the industry that you're in, and the biggest challenge that you're having today in your business. So that I can use the next hour to help customize the show and build it around you and what it is that you need.

Again, I'm Scott Duffy. It is Friday. I cannot believe it is Friday and.

It'S a big Friday. It's Good Friday. We've got Easter this week. We have Passover this week. So a lot of people are celebrating. And again, if you're just joining us, I want to say hello and welcome and please drop your name into the stream. Drop your name into the stream, the industry that you're in and the biggest challenge that you're facing today in your business. So I can, we can use that to help customize this show today. And I'd also ask if you could please share this stream, if you could share this with your friends, your family, your co workers, anyone that you think could benefit from the information that we're going to share today. We're going to give this just a few minutes to propagate across the Internet again. We're coming to you live every single day, 10am Pacific Time across Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn and Periscope. And this show can also be heard daily on Dash Radio or you can download the podcast what now with Scott Duffy. There is a lot of good news coming out this morning and so I can't wait to share this with you. There is some really good news that is coming out this morning and just being reported.

New ways for you to be able to get access to stimulus cash, not just on the business side, but on the personal side. There was an announcement about an hour ago and I've drilled into it and I'm happy to share everything I've learned with you to help you to be able to access the stimulus cash and get it into your bank account even faster. So again, we're gonna give this just a few more seconds here before we kick off. And kick off with radio. And again, I just want to thank all of you for joining. And one last time, if you're just joining us, if you could put your name, your industry and the thing that you're the most concerned about or biggest challenge that you're having in the stream, I'll use that to customize this show. Excuse me. So here we go. Good morning, this is Scott Duffy and welcome to to what now with Scott Duffy. I want to welcome you from wherever you're listening. You can tune each day at 10:00am Pacific Time to watch the live broadcast on YouTube and Facebook, listen nationwide on Dash Radio throughout the day or download the podcast. Now, this show, it is for entrepreneurs, small businesses and those thinking about starting their own company. It's for people affected by this economy. Maybe they lost their business, they lost their job, maybe they've been furloughed or they're a contractor who's seen all their consulting contracts go away. And what seemed like a heartbeat, it's for people asking, what do I do now and how do I come out of this period even stronger. So again, I want to welcome you to the show. And if you're just joining us live over social media, if you could drop your name, the industry that you're in and the biggest questions you have or challenges you're facing into the stream, I'll be sure to answer as many of your questions as I can today. Our focus for today's show is what to do when things go sideways. And we're going to talk about things like bills, we're going to talk about contractor collections, we're going to talk about bankruptcy, and we're going to talk about how to manage through this crisis with your teams as well. What I've noticed over the past 24 hours, and it's really interesting to kind of check the temperature and get the pulse of how people are thinking, what they're doing, what they're experiencing. It's interesting to get the pulse based on the emails, the text messages, the DMs that I get between the time a show ends and begins the next morning. And I can tell you that over the past 24 hours, what I've seen is concern. I've seen concern from people with regard to what they're going to do with their business or personally to catch up and to catch up on the bills, to catch up on the piling debt and things like that. And so I want to talk to you about that today because there's some really specific strategies that you can do to really help set yourself up and protect yourself and Again, as a business leader, I want to share, like I do every day, that I used to think earlier in my career that the most important job that I had in business, the most important job, had something to do with maybe having the right idea, maybe being there at the right time, being a great leader, writing a great plan, executing flawlessly. But what I've learned is the most important trait of any business owner has nothing to do with business. The most important thing that you need to do is learn to protect yourself. So if things go sideways, they take longer than plan. They don't work out as planned. Something comes out of nowhere and it knocks you off course. You can bounce right back. And that's what we're going to talk about today on this show, exactly how you do that in the news this morning. A lot of new, lot of, lot of stuff going on in New York. Check this out. New York now has more coronavirus cases than any other country in the world. So if New York was a country, it would have more cases than any other country in the world. Of the 466,000 cases of coronavirus, nationwide, New York has 162,000 of those cases. Now, here's some good news. Some models are showing the peak death rate in our country from this infection will hit on Sunday. So in three days, this is good news. But this is because the new cases in New York have leveled off what we're seeing. You know, the reality is in other parts of the country, like in Louisiana, in the south, in Illinois, what's happening is those states are just starting to hit the top end of their curve. And so this isn't going away anytime soon. But still, this is really good news about the death rate in the United States coming down and the total number of new infections coming down as well.

So that leads to what I think has been the most confusing part of the messaging by the government in the news over the past 24 hours. And the messaging is around this growing debate of when we're going to open up the country and what is it going to take to open up the country again and maybe even parts of the country and the economy? What's it going to take for us to start to ease restrictions so we can get back to normal or a new normal? And it's really hard to find an answer. What I can tell you is this. I can tell you that the reason that there's so much pressure on the government to start easing restrictions and getting people back to work is that it's taking much longer than planned to get money into businesses hands. It's taking longer than planned to get this PPP loan and this PPP grant into small businesses hands. It's taking longer than planned to get the Eidl loans distributed. It's taking longer than planned to get that stimulus money, those checks that we were supposed to get into people's pockets. And so there's more pressure to get people back to work.

One quarter, this is kind of crazy. In the past three weeks, over a quarter of our economy has been completely shut down. That has never happened. History here in the United States never happened so sharply, so swiftly, even during the Great Depression. So here's the timetables that were that we're hearing in the past 24 hours. The President is saying April 30th. So April 30th is the day that President Trump is going to give us an update to help us determine, you know, when he's thinking about opening up this economy again. SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY Muchin he's saying that he's hoping that we open up in May. The head of the Federal Reserve is saying that he's hoping that we open right after June. So you're talking June, July. And Dr. Fauci, who's in charge of the coronavirus task force on the medical side, he's saying sometime in the summer, probably July and August. So the question is, with all of these people that we're supposed to trust saying completely different things, who do we listen to and what do we do? Well, there's really only one person that you can count on right now, and that person is you. That person is you. That. And what I mean is we need to be super focused right now together on what it is that we focus on, how we protect our downside risk, how we protect our cash, how we adjust, how we pivot and adjust our businesses in order to effectively create a stronger foundation of underneath us, stabilize our personal finances, stabilize our businesses and then position ourselves to move, to move forward stronger out of this crisis.

And you know, it wasn't until last night that I really started to think about this idea of us staying at home and really what a privilege it is because Pat Carney. Pat Carney, thank you so much. And thanks for joining us, Pat. Pat sent me a great article this morning, and what he shared is if you take a look at the people that are living paycheck to paycheck in this country, which by the way, is most of America, if you look at the people that have the lowest incomes, the bottom 20%, that really are the ones that we count on for a lot of service jobs out there in the United States. What you find is these are the people that when are told, they're told to stay at home, they can't work. There's no other way for them to make money. And so they have to make a really tough choice. Do I figure out how to do something and potentially get infected and potentially bring this back to my family.

So I can make the money to feed my family, or do I stay away from work? And so this idea that's going around that everyone's okay, we're on Zoom Calls, we're on social media, we're doing live streams. And this idea that that's the way that this nation is operating right now is a bunch of bullshit. That's the way that a part of the country is operating. But most of the country does not have this privilege that many of us have. Give an example. I'm in Los Angeles today and in the LA Unified School District. It's really interesting. In the LA Unified School District, I was reading that.

There are 600,000 kids, 600,000 kids that get their only meal of the day through the school's lunch and breakfast programs. 600,000 kids. There are 20,000 kids in the LAUSD that get their only shelter of the day, their only shelter when they're at school, because they're homeless. So when it comes to learning, and it comes to learning at home, my kids are learning at home. Their school district is working with Google Apps, they're working with Zoom, and they're conducting classes every day. My kids are logging into Zoom. They're doing it at home. It really hadn't connected with me about what a privilege that really was, you know, in the LAUSD, I was so proud of what they did. The LAUSD made a decision to spend $100 million to make sure that every student, and it didn't matter what your socioeconomic background was, every student was going to get access to either a laptop or some kind of, like an iPad, some kind of a pad device. And for anyone that couldn't actually log in to remote learning and get lessons, Verizon, I want to say their name five times. Verizon, Verizon, Verizon, Verizon, Verizon, Verizon. Because they did such a great thing, they are giving away WI Fi and free Internet access to anyone that doesn't have it, so that everyone's on the same playing field when it comes to learning. So again, I talk about gratitude. And if you are on this live stream, I want you to be really grateful for the fact that we have this opportunity to be with each other. That you have access to a computer or some kind of device that you can use to log in, that you have access to the Internet, that you have access to Zoom or other tools. Because in this country it really is a luxury that we're all so lucky. That we're so lucky to have. Now, there is some awesome news that came out this morning and I got to share it with you. We talk frequently about ways, specific strategies that you can use to get government stimulus money into your pocket. And one of the biggest points of frustration, the biggest points of frustration that I have found with people who watch this program and just throughout my network has to do with these $1200 and up stimulus checks that people are supposed to be getting. Now. This isn't for your business. This is a check for you personally. If you make under $99,000 a year or you were laid off this year so you're not making anything, you're eligible to receive these checks. They start at $1,200 and then there's an additional $500 that you can get per child. Here's the problem. The problem is that in order to get these funds for the last two, three weeks.

The rule has been you have to have filed taxes for 2019 or 2018, and you have to have your banking information with the irs because they're not going to send you a paper check. Instead, what they're going to do is they're going to send this money to you electronically. Well, that's great for the 60 million people in this country that have that information with the IRS, but almost two times that number of people, 100 to 110 million people, either don't file taxes, haven't had to file taxes because they didn't need to based on what they earned, or they're late. So they may have filed an extension. So there's been absolutely no way for you to get access to this money. Many people have told me they've tried to hurry up and to get their taxes done. And all across the country, the groups that serve folks, there's several different organizations that will prepare your taxes for free if you have below a certain income level. They're all effectively shut down. So that hasn't helped. And then there's companies like H and R Block that are commonly used where it's very hard to get ahold of their people right now. Cause they're also overriding. Here's the good news. The Good news is this morning the IRS released a new program. And if you are a member of our group, go to our group what now? With Scott Duffy. If you go into that group, you join that group. It's a public group. Every day I'm dropping in links for really super helpful resources. I dropped in a link to the new irs, IRS website. If you click on that link, there's a big blue button. And if you click on that button, that is how anyone in America can now go. And you can enter your contact information, your Social Security number, and you can also enter your bank information so the government can get you money. So if you are waiting for this personal stimulus, then you don't have to wait anymore. Go to the link, the link inside of our group. Click on there. Look for the big blue button, that blue, big blue, blue button. You click on it and there's your fields to put in your information so the government can get you money and get you money faster.

I want to say happy Easter to all of you that are celebrating Easter. I know today's Good Friday, Good Pesach to all of my Jewish friends out there that are celebrating Passover this week. I hope you all have a really good, happy and safe weekend and hopefully can get away from all of this for, for just a bit. And one last kind of interesting fact. I'm. I'm a guy that just loves. I love space. I can't wait to go, go to space one day. I love this space flight. I am the geek that will sit on YouTube and I will watch space shuttle things like them taking off. There's all these great things where you're actually in the cockpit and you can see from the pilot's view. I watch all this stuff over and over. Like if I need to chill out, I turn it up really loud and I watch this stuff over and over again. So I study the astronauts and things like that. Anyway, Tomorrow is the 50th anniversary of when Apollo 13 took off, the 50th anniversary. So if any of you saw that movie with Tom Hanks, it was an incredible space flight where they had all kinds of mechanical problems. People got sick on the flight, but they made it back from the moon. And tomorrow's the 50th anniversary.

So.

Let'S talk about, let's talk about cash. Let's talk about what happens when things go sideways. What happens when things don't work out in your business as planned. Whether you are a. A big business, you're a small business, whether you're a micropreneur. You're a solopreneur, you're a mom, a preneur, you're a datapreneur. It doesn't matter. Let's say things go sideways. Either your launch doesn't work, there's a change in the market that affects your revenue. Something like this in the economy comes out of nowhere and it takes you off course. What do you do? So I want to go back to a few fundamentals. The first is this. The first thing we've talked about is we have got to protect our finances and our downside risk. How do we do it? Number one, go back to the last two bank statements from your bank. Print those out. I want you to go through this. I want you to look at every single line item, everything that you were charged for, look at every auto pay. And if there is not something on there, there's something on there you do not absolutely need. I want you to get rid of it, to cancel it. That's number one. A lot of us don't realize how many things were signed up for that are hitting us, hitting our accounts month, pulling money out, and we've kind of forgotten about it. They haven't. So this is your opportunity to really get that part of your finances straight. Number two, make sure that you're reaching out to people who you may owe the most money to or you may have maybe your biggest billers. So as an example, if you have a mortgage, make sure that you're reaching out to your lender. Again, I've talked to so many lenders, I've talked to so many people out there. And what they're doing is, is they are working with people like you and me. So they're willing to defer payment in many cases, they're willing to push back payment in many cases, they're willing to help if you owe rent. Instead of being on your heels, get on your toes, reach out to the person who you are supposed to pay rent to. And if you can't pay, be really straight and really upfront about the situation that you're in. Because in the same way you may have trouble paying because you're not being paid the income you relied on, that person may simply be relying on you for their income as well. So what I really recommend is get together and figure out how you can work together through this period. Many landlords are deferring rents. Many landlords are helping. Some people I know have completely renegotiated their rents. And so again, that's something I want you to do. And finally, credit Cards and utilities, make sure, if you haven't already, to reach out to those credit card issuers and utilities and because they are working with everybody right now. In the last three weeks, 17 million people in this country have filed for unemployment. And in the next two weeks, we expect that number to double. Now, alongside that, what we're preparing for in this country is more bankruptcies than we have ever experienced in this country in history. In fact, the rate of bankruptcies, this is business bankruptcies and personal bankruptcies are expected to be three times higher than any time in history. And those bankruptcies will probably start to be processed over the next two to three months. So I want to talk to you about bankruptcy. I want to talk to you about bankruptcy in 2008. So I talked about this on the show before. In 2008, I was flying high, things were great. Market crashed, lost all my money, lost everything. Went from really living my dreams to being $400,000 in debt. $400,000 in debt. Gosh. We had our first kid, we got pregnant with the second.

And it was a really tough time. I tried to get work and I wasn't able to get work because the kind of jobs that I would apply for, those jobs just didn't exist. Those weren't. People weren't hiring for those kind of jobs. I tried to get companies financed and people just weren't investing in the kind of companies I was trying to get financed. And I didn't know what to do. And I had several people advise me that I should declare bankruptcy. And it was the last thing I could ever imagine me doing. Like it was, there was something about it. There was no way I was going to go down that route. And I didn't want to go down that route because I was really embarrassed. I felt really ashamed. I felt like there would be this stigma attached to me for the rest of my life.

And so I didn't do it. I didn't do it. And I had all these really successful, super successful people around me that were saying it's something I should do. Because in America, one of the things that is awesome about this country is the foundation of our economy is entrepreneurs like you and me. It's entrepreneurs like you and me. It's small business, it's medium sized businesses that serve as the country's foundation. And so there are laws in place to help support entrepreneurs. And if we stub our toe, if things don't work out to help us get back into that process of innovating and hiring and helping to lift the economy, Again. And bankruptcy is one of those mechanisms. And it's there in place to help people. It's there to help you. It's there to help you get back to what you were doing again so you can go and build companies and hire more people. So I didn't do it. And I kept getting deeper and deeper and deeper in the hole. And, you know, I just remember it was so frustrating because my phone wouldn't stop ringing. It was bill collector after bill collector after bill collector, debt collector after debt collector. It would not stop. And I would get on the phone, I try and negotiate with them. They were really tough. They, you know, nobody would listen, nobody would negotiate. And it just really started to wear me down. And so I decided that bankruptcy was something that I should do. And many of my friends have declared bankruptcy. Now, bankruptcy, by the way, there's a whole bunch of different ways that you can do it. So one way that you can file for bankruptcy is just a reorganization. So what the court does is it helps you to basically stop collections and kind of protect your assets for the meantime from any bill collectors. It enables you to reorganize and renegotiate your debt in your payment terms. And then just kind of when that bankruptcy is done and everything's renegotiated, you just continue to move forward. There's other kinds of bankruptcies that enable, or what happens is debt that you had pre bankruptcy is wiped out 100% or partially. So there's different types of bankruptcies and they mean different things and they affect your credit and your credit score in different ways. And by the way, another reason that I did not want to apply for, I didn't want to go through the bankruptcy route was because I was afraid that it would ruin my credit and I would not be able to have access to any type of credit for years. I wouldn't be able to get into a car, this, that I have no credit. Okay? So what I did is I didn't. I didn't. And I just. I hit a point where I could not handle it any longer. I'm about five years into this process. I'm looking around at my friends and people who had declared bankruptcy and had picked themselves up. They may have renegotiated with their lenders. They may have had some debt forgiven. What I found is they were able to bounce back much faster. They were able to go out there and build new companies, hire people, and really get themselves on their feet, kind of like that, at least comparatively, compared to me. So I decided one day I'm going to do it. And I called a friend of mine. I called my friend Greg Reed, and many of you know Greg Reed, and I filled out all these forms. I think he was on the phone, and I was filling them out. And I got to tell you, I was crying like a baby. I was so embarrassed. I was having such a hard time about it. And I ended up driving to my attorney's office to go sign the paperwork. And I sat down in the chair at this desk. I sat down at the desk and we had all these papers in front of us. And he said to me, scott, I got some bad news. I said, what's that? He said, I cannot help you to do this. And I'm like, you got to be kidding me. I said, this is like such an emotional thing for me, like this. How could you do this to me? He said, when we were going back through your records, here's what we found. We found that you signed a book deal and you signed it over a year ago. And he said, that's fine. And we see that they made a mistake. They put it in your name, not your company's name. And we see that within a day, you asked them to correct it. But that mutually signed thing didn't come back with this in your company's name until 11 months. Within 12 months. And because it's within 12 months of you filing bankruptcy, we think that Wells Fargo today is going to come back and they're going to say that you are hiding an asset and do everything they can to put you in jail. And I'm like, what? And they said, yes. And because of that, we will not help you. We're not going to put you in that position. We will not help you to do this. And so I couldn't.

And that sucked at that time because I'd gone through all that emotional stuff. And here's the thing, what I learned through this process, by the way, I could have done it again, but I started to turn around faster and get all that stuff taken care of. But if I waited a little longer. Here's the message, though. The message that I have for you is, what I have learned is that if I was in the same position again, what I would have done is I would have gone and I would have talked to an attorney and seen what my options were. And instead of having that emotion of embarrassment or shame or disappointment in myself about what had happened, I would have used the bankruptcy rules that were set up to help people like me in that position and maybe some of you, and what I've learned is it's much easier to build your credit and to build it back faster sometimes when you go through this process than you would imagine.

I found that my friends that went through this process, they were getting credit cards, lines of credit, all kinds of other stuff really quickly because they wiped out all that debt versus me. You know, for me, it took years to be able to get myself back in that. In that place. So this. What I'm sharing with you now is I'm not telling you to do something. I'm not telling you that you should go out and you should file for bankruptcy if you think you're in a position where you may need to. What I'm sharing with you is some of the choices that we're being forced to make today are things that we may have never imagined we would have to think about. And some of the things that we're being faced with today may be creating some emotion in us. Like we may be thinking, you know, having thoughts about embarrassment or shame or some of these other things that I'm just telling you are not necessary and they're not productive. And what's really amazing about living in this country is there are things there to protect you as an entrepreneur, as a business owner, to help you to rebound and to help you to get on your feet faster. And so I'd like you just to know that they're out there. I'd like you to know, by the way, the reason I share all that stuff, you know, something like, so why would you share that? Why wouldn't you keep that inside? I just want you to know, if you're going through hard stuff, I want you to know that you're not alone. I want you to know that there are millions of people out there that probably feel the exact same way that you do. There are millions of people out there today that are sitting down and they are wondering, how am I going to feed my family and make payroll in the same week? They're wondering, how am I going to deal with rent and my landlord and continue to operate my business and do it with my kids at home and do it staying at home. I'm stir crazy. There are a lot of people, we're going through these emotions. I just want you to know that you are not alone. And for that reason, I just want to open up and share my experience. Because I feel like in life what happens is we have these common experiences, but when they're tough, nobody wants to talk about them. Nobody wants to talk about them. So I want to use everything that I've got and all the pain that I had to share with you so that maybe you'll know that, you know, there's somebody out there that's going through the same thing. And I want to be here as much as possible to help. So with that, I want to stop for a second. I just want to say hello, hello to some people that have jumped in. First of all, I want to say hello to Sarah. Good morning, Sarah. It is great to see you again. Craig Collins, good to see you as well. Helen, thank you so much for joining. Of course. Sita, so good to see you and so excited to see what's going on in your business right now.

Bob Dunnell, you are the man. Great to see you. We've got to have you on this show. Bobby Jo, Aaron, good morning to you. It was great to see you last night, by the way, last night, my mastermind group, we had a, we had one of those Zoom calls, like a group happy hour. And it was really therapeutic. It was really cool. So, you know, I think one of the things that I've learned about the zoom calls that I run is sometimes they get too serious when we do these virtual happy hours things. So I'm trying to inject, I want to inject some more fun into all of this. If you're doing any of these Zoom virtual happy hours and you have ideas on how to make them.

Super fun, maybe add some levity, add some lightness, I would love it if you would share those ideas because I could use the help, and I know so many other people could use the help.

Patrick, again, always good to see and thank you for your notes this morning. Daya, so nice to see you. Great to catch up with you yesterday. And yes, we are all also grateful. And Katie Drew, you say we have nearly identical 2009 stories. The best words. Actually, I am going to put this up. Katie.

We have nearly identical 2009 stories. The best words of wisdom when I was at my lowest was, once you've been successful, you will be again. Entrepreneurs bounce back better than anyone. It is so true. If you take a look at the number of people that are entrepreneurs in the United States that made a million dollars and kept their millionaire status, over 50% of them have gone bankrupt at one time or another. By the way, most people think there is a misconception out there that people who make money and keep their money, they make it when they're young. In Silicon Valley, there's this expression that the great ones break out young. Well, it doesn't mean they hold on to their money.

The average entrepreneur.

That started a company, became a millionaire and kept their million dollars 10 years ago, started that company at 41 years old. Today, the average entrepreneur in the US that starts a company, becomes a millionaire, keeps their million dollars, starts that company at 44 years old. And I'll bet when this whole coronavirus thing settles down, that number moves up to like 50 years old, right? And so, you know, if you feel like.

You have to restart or you have to kind of kick things back into gear, you feel like you've lost a lot of time, you feel like you're different because you may be a little bit older, 40 plus, and you're not in the financial position that you thought you would be, or maybe it's too late in your life, you can never reach that financial abundance status that you wanted. I'm here to tell you that, damn it happens a lot later than most people think. You know, another thing that's a big misconception around all this is that, is that people tend to think like, we gotta be scrappy today. We gotta be super scrappy. We have to be scrappy about the way we kind of, we. We start our companies. We gotta be scrappy about the way we manage our existing companies, the way we scale our companies. We gotta be scrappy, maybe scrappier than ever. And scrappy's good. You know, most people, when they start a business that come to me. One of the reasons they come to me is they want to raise money. They want to raise money from me, or they want me to share with them how to raise capital. And they have this. There's a misperception that everybody out there that's starting a business, except for you, has raised money that exists in some places. And I get it. I mean, I remember when I was in the tech business, I would go online and I would have, like, the trades that I'd read in the morning, and I read a lot of venture capital stuff because I want to know where the money is going. And what I would see is I would see stories about everybody getting money. It seemed like everybody was getting money except for me. And I'm like, how is this possible? Here's the real real. The real real is less than one third of companies in the US Will ever get any type of funding, including raising capital for equity or a loan. Only 1:30 companies in the US will get any kind of funding, including raising capital and a loan.

And of those companies, that 1/3, almost all the vast majority have been in business. For over three years. They've been in business for over three years. So the reality is that most entrepreneurs and most businesses start with nothing and they're scrappy. And I think the biggest mistake that people make, whether it's getting started or accelerating their growth, is they wait. They wait because they think they need to have everything in place. They gotta have the perfect plan and the perfect team and the perfect strategy and the perfect this, and they gotta have all the money. But here's one thing I've learned. What I've learned is the most successful people in business never, ever, ever start or have everything they need. Instead, what they've learned how to do is identify the resources that they need in the next step, and they acquire what they need each and every step of the way. Now, the way they usually start is by bootstrapping. And what we're seeing now is the emergence of a whole new bootstrap economy. So if you need to bootstrap, if you're in a position where you need to go. And by the way, bootstrapping is not just something that people who are starting up do. People with big companies, they're bootstrapping also. They're trading out. They're not selling equity, they're doing things. They're partnering with people, they're partnering with companies in order to get the services they need. So here's the keys to bootstrapping I think effectively during this period. Number one, you have to identify what it is that you need. Identify what you need, not just capital. So identify that you. The things that you need, like I need marketing resources, or I need this kind of resource, or I need sales help, or I need help building a website. Identify the resources that you need next. Number two, identify your trading partners. So you might want to go into LinkedIn. You might want to write down a list of all the people in your network, right, that, that you think are really awesome at what they do. Write down a list of your trading partners and match them with the things that you need next. You have to figure out what is your currency? What is the thing that you have to offer that will be most valuable to a trading partner? And that may mean you know, it. It may mean that you offer one thing to everybody or each person. Each partner may need some other type of help from you. The next, you have to figure out what is the deal. This is really important. You have to figure out what's the deal, because most people that bootstrap don't just bootstrap in one area of their business. They bootstrap in lots of areas of their business. And so you have to figure out what the deal is. And this is important because if you're bootstrapping in a couple of different areas.

You could run out of time if the deal that you have, what you're offering to give the other person is too much. So it's super important, super important that you limit the number of people that you're bootstrapping or trading with and that the deal is something that you're going to be able to do and you're going to be able to perform and follow through on, on your side. Also, kind of for bonus points, you always have to over perform. You have to over perform like crazy. And here's why. When people don't get paid, they fail to pay attention. When they don't get paid, they fail to pay attention. The only way that you can keep their attention is by over delivering and keep and creating a win that is so big for them that getting your stuff done, like making you happy is the number one thing on their list, which is so, so important. So again.

So again, right now it's all about being scrappy. Right now it's all about knowing that we are in this together. Right now it's all about knowing that we share common experience. Right now it's all about knowing that those feelings that you have where you may feel that you're alone, those feelings are things that we all as a community, as a country are sharing. You, you are not alone. Right now it's important to know that there's never been a more important time not to wait and to get started. But you don't have to have everything in place before you do that. Get on your toes and not your heels. Determine what you're going to need just for the next step, acquire those things and then move on and then focus on the next step and if you need to bootstrap. And we just shared some ideas on ways to do that.

So let me go back to your questions here.

So Aaron Hagman. Aaron, you know, Aaron has got a remarkable business. Aaron is the, he has a company called DDI Delivery Drivers Inc. And they are the number one provider of drivers to like Amazon and Walmart and grubhub and all these people that are delivering to your home. And we're going to actually have Aaron on the show because he has learned so much going through this crisis. Not only about, about this driving space, but also about how to manage 1099 workers during this, this global pandemic. And so Aaron and I Spoke about this last night, and he's going to be coming on with us next week, and I'm really looking forward to that.

Andrea Roberts. So you have got some, some ideas for.

For how we can make our Zoom meetings and our virtual happy hours a little bit more lighthearted. And some of the ideas here that you have are to throw in games, to throw in improv, and try communicating something without talking. It's fun. Use body language, a posture to represent how you feel right now. Make silly faces, play charades, choose a word that when someone says it, everyone has to clap. That's a cool idea. That's actually a really cool idea. I did want to share that this is a great area for innovation. We talk every day and I share with you about ideas on how companies are adapting, how they're pivoting in this market and coming up with new products and services that people are willing to pay for to meet new needs. Well, there's a company that's based in the Midwest, and they're in the training industry. And their whole thing is they provide outdoor adventures and experiences. And they're all built around team building. So their clients are people like Microsoft and AT&T and things like that. And all their revenue came from doing these in person, like, cool, crazy events, kind of like the ones I do with my mastermind. Well, when the economy shut down, they had to shut down as well because, well, because they needed everything was live. But what they decided to do is pivot and pivot in a couple ways. One of the ways they're pivoting is they've created virtual ropes courses and virtual games and virtual activities that they can provide for companies to help create team building in this kind of environment. So they're, they're doing these Zoom calls and they're creating, like, virtual pamper polls and things like that for team building. A question I have is, is there a business around hosting virtual happy hours? Like, is there a business around doing this? Is there a product that you could sell with a guide to selling, a guide to doing a really effective virtually happy hour from how to create the invitation and who just send that out through to where to put the link and how to market the link to what to do and how to manage that meeting so that it meets your objective. It's either, you know, serious, we're getting a lot of work done. It's lighthearted, it's communication, you know, or how could you take that idea and that inspiration and apply it to whatever your business is today? What could you do differently in your business today, and how could you pivot to meet some of these new and emerging market demands?

And let's take a look back here at our, at our comments.

Sarah, I do agree, you know, I agree that the, the only way for all of us to get through this stronger is to go through this together. And so again, by sharing experiences, I think this is one of the most important things that we can do. Another important thing that we can do for each other is to watch out for each other. And I was sharing with you on yesterday's broadcast how there's so many people out there that are hurting, but they're afraid to say anything. I kind of keep coming back to this theme today as well. And they're hurting. And.

The question is, what can you do to pay better attention, to have your radar up? So if someone out there is hurting, they're not talking about it, you think, or you see, they may be going dark. What can you do? How can you reach out to that person? How can you get ins. How can you get through and break through to that person and have a conversation with them and let them know that they're not alone and potentially give them some tips and tricks and advice to help them to get through this, through this period? Again, I just think, I think that this is so, so important right now. And an area, really, the only area where I'm asking for all of, all of your help.

We have a really cool week planned next week. I've been sharing with you just kind of little teasers over the past, the past week, week and a half, about a big event that I have planned, that we have planned about changes coming to this program, changes coming to our radio distribution and things like that. And I want to share with you every day, but keep running into this thing that in tech we call the Mythical Man Month. So think about this. There's a. When I was a young guy, I was like 24, 25, and I was working in my first Internet company. I would go back to the developers. I was like the only sales guy and business person. I would go back to our developers, our tech team, and I'd say, I need this or I need you to build that. And they'd say, it would take this much time. And I'd say, well, let's put two people, let's put three, let's put four people on it. We'll make that development happen faster. And they'd say, not necessarily. And then one day a guy, because I kept pushing so hard, he was like 20 years old and he came up to me and he said, the department bought you this. And he gave me a book. Like, I guess they were so tired of hearing from me that they gave me a book. And the book was called the Mythical Man Month. And the Mythical Man Month was written in the late 60s. And it is a fundamental textbook for engineering departments and colleges all over the country. It's something that you typically would read in your first semester when you first start programming. Basically, there's a couple things that stand out. One is the more people that you throw at a problem doesn't necessarily increase the speed that that problem gets solved. So think about this in terms of mapping out a software development project. What you would do is you put together a month. This is how we do it. And you have a calendar, and you would say, how many people does it take to accomplish that task in a month? And then you block it out and you say, okay, if we put two people, could we do it in half a month and three people in a third of a month? And what you find is when you're writing tech and you're coding or you're writing a business plan or sometimes you're making creative, the more people you get involved, the more. The more it actually screws the whole thing up. And so the first thing in the Mythical Man Month is the more people you throw at, it may not necessarily help you to get it done faster. The second thing is the closer you get to the end of any software development project, the faster or the further you actually are away from the end. And here's why. That's when all the bugs come out, that's when you get so close, you see all the little things that need to be fixed and adjusted. And so it has felt like the Mythical Man Month for the last week for me. But we are really close. And I am so excited to share with you new updates to our program to share with you an event that will be coming up on April 30th. That is all I can say. April 30th from 8am to 12 midnight. And also an incredible new sponsor, an incredible sponsor. We had a sponsor. It's really more than a sponsor. We had someone call me, an old friend, about two and a half weeks ago and he called me at like 11 o' clock at night. It was a Wednesday night. And he said, scott, he said, what could we do? What could we do to help right now? What could we do to stand behind business? Not because we want anything, but because it's our time and it's our opportunity to give back. And I shared the idea of what kind of what I wanted to do. And this company came in with so much support and so many tools and so many resources from me and then others that we get to share with all of you. And so I can't wait to share that next week. It's going to be super cool. Mark your calendars, though, for April 30, 8am Pacific to 12 midnight. We're going to have a really great time. We're going to wrap up right now, today's show. And I just want to thank all of you who are joining us. We come live. We come to you live every single day, Monday through Friday, 10:00am Pacific to 11:11am Pacific time. You can watch the live broadcast on Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn and Periscope. You can listen nationwide on Dash Radio or you can download the podcast. For all of you that are celebrating this week, you're celebrating Easter. You're celebrating Passover or something else that I missed, I just want to say I'm sending you my love and my prayers. I hope you have an amazing time. I hope you guys can get away from things over the next couple days, over the weekend. Take care of you, drink lots of water, go take a walk, go hug the people that you love. And I look forward to seeing you again on Monday. And next week is going to be a big week. We have so much planned. You guys have a wonderful weekend. And until we talk again, keep breaking through.