Scott Duffy: How To Protect Your Cash, Stabilize Your Business, & Find New Opportunities, Ep.10

Good morning, everybody, and welcome. My name is Scott Duffy and this is what now, an entrepreneur's guide, a solopreneur's guide, a business guide to managing through coronavirus, recession and these uncertain times. And I want to welcome all of you who are joining us from all over the world. I'm going to give us a few minutes for people for this stream to propagate across Facebook and Twitter. We are live casting across Instagram and LinkedIn and Periscope right now. So we're going to give just a few minutes for people to join. And while you do, what I'd like to ask of you is to write down your name, say hello to all of us, write down your name, type it in here, let me know, let us know what it is that you do, what industry that you're in, so that I can tailor the conversation towards you, any questions that you have so I can use those to shape this show around you, any concerns that you have, anything that you need help with. I'm going to do everything I can today. I do it every day from 10 to 11 here across all social media to provide you with the latest news, the latest information and the best information and resources, the best tips for you as entrepreneurs, solopreneurs, business owners, even those people that are working for big companies who may be in a position now, who may be in a position soon, where they have to start their own thing, whether it's their main hustle or it's their side hustle, this is the place that you want to be, because I'm going to share with you the best tips, the best training, the best tools to help you to get the things that you need to help you to take your ideas to market, to help you to grow and to scale those in this economy, and to help you to position those businesses. So when we come out of this and we're on the other side of this crisis, you're in the best position, the best possible position to take advantage of the new market. And so we're just kicking off here this morning and this show is now streaming across Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, Periscope. You can find us all over YouTube. Please, again, as you join the conversation, make sure to write down your name, the industry that you're in, so I can tailor the content for you. Any questions that you have, any concerns that you have coming into this day, if there are, if there's something that's hot, any hot items that you're dealing with this morning, if you could include those in the comments. That would be super helpful to me so that I can do all I can to help you guys to navigate through this, through this crisis. I also wanted to share that next week this show is going to be moving not only through live streams, but we're moving to radio. So beginning next week, I don't know the date yet because we've had a lot of changes here over the past 24 hours in terms of what we can do and where we can do it in the state of California. But this show has been picked up and we will broadcast more radio style format across the country every morning. And so I'm looking forward to sharing more information about that with you on Monday and giving you again just continuing to give you the best tips and information that I can. Also beginning next week I'll be bringing in guests, people from my network, people who are on the front lines, the very front lines on the medical side of this issue. Some of the top business people in the country, entrepreneurs and innovators, people that you've seen in my network, people that you've seen me interview for the past several years. Whether it's a Daymond John or a Gary V or a Sarah Blakely, people who have maybe some of the most successful businesses, some of the most successful companies in here in America, we're going to bring them in to share tips with you on how to manage through this crisis. What I want to do this morning is to start again, by the way, is you are starting to enter the stream. Make sure to tell me who you are, write down your name, say hello, be sure to tell me what industry that you're in, the biggest challenges that you're having so that we can address those challenges during the show and share. What I ask you to do is please share this show, please share this information with, with others people in your stream, your family, your friends, other business owners, entrepreneurs, solopreneurs, people who can benefit from this information. Couple of quick updates this morning. The first is in terms of the number of new cases. So this is nothing new. The number of new cases that are being reported is going up in New York. The number of confirmed cases of coronavirus doubled overnight. And what I think is important about the numbers, I'm not even going to get into the numbers because at this point it doesn't even matter. We know what we have and we know the direction that this is going. But what I do want to share is I still am talking to entrepreneurs that are asking how long is this going to be going on? How long should I expect My business to be interrupted. How long before things get back to normal? And what I want to share with you is this based on the latest data that we have, the latest data, and again, this comes from the government and top experts working with the government to head off this crisis. The first week of April is a big week for us because that is the week that most of the hospitals in the US will hit capacity, particularly those in New York and California and in the state of Washington. But what's important for us as entrepreneurs to know is May 8 to May 16. That is the time period where they expect that we're going to get to the peak number of infection, so the peak number of new confirmed cases, coronavirus cases here in the United States. So if you're thinking that this is going to be over in the next week or two weeks, that is certainly not the case. We're looking at something that is going to be with us for the next several months. And if I'm you, if I'm an entrepreneur and I'm trying to forecast out my sales, I am trying to forecast my growth, I'm taking a look at how I may need to make cuts or adjust for what's happening today in the world around me. What I would be doing is I would be putting together a 6 month plan and a 1 year plan, a 6 month plan and a 1year plan. And I would expect for the next 6 months that the world is going to feel, at least in terms of sales, a lot like it does today. This is an unprecedented time for us. And as an entrepreneur, what I'm sharing with you is it is time to take unprecedented action in terms of preparing for what's ahead. There's a lot of market volatility. I'm getting a lot of questions about the stock market. One day we wake up and it's up a thousand points, the next it's down a thousand points. I would just expect for that to be the new norm While we go through this crisis. There's so much uncertainty, it's so hard to predict what's going to happen. And the market's telling us that also there's a non human factor to what you see in the market today. There are programs, there are bots, there are automated tools that thrive off of this chaos and are doing automated training which are helping to create these big swings in the marketplace. That's something that you and me can't control. So one of the things that we're going to talk about today is how to stay focused on the things that we can control in order to protect ourselves, which means protecting our cash in order to create more of a stable foundation around our business and to help set ourselves up, position ourselves to thrive as the market begins to rebound. This has been the two biggest weeks in terms of unemployment applications ever in the United States. Last week, I believe the number was around two, two and a half million. This week, it looks like it's going to be around a million and a half new applications. And the reason I bring that up is for those of you who are watching that are working for a business now that had been laid off, or you fear that you're going to be laid off, and you're asking yourselves, should I go and apply for unemployment? It is insurance.

It is in place, you know, by the government to help you. And so the answer is absolutely. And the reason I think it's important to bring this up is I have received several texts and several messages through social media, through all the channels from people that have been laid off in the past week, or they believe that next week is the week that it's going to happen, and they're really trying to decide whether or not they should do it. And the reason that they're trying to decide is some of these people are embarrassed. Some of these people want to believe that things will change quickly and they'll be right back in in the job market or they'll be rehired. But what I want to suggest is this. If you're eligible for unemployment, disability, any of these government programs, now is excellent time to take advantage of those things.

Again. Next week, this show will not only be broadcast as a live stream across all social platforms, next week we're also moving to radio. We will be broadcasting live across the country. I'll give you more information on that next week, But I'm pleased to say that we've been picked up. And this will be a show that we're able to bring to millions of people all over the United States each and every day. So the question is, what do I do now? The number one question people are asking as they look around is they're asking, what do I want? What do I do now?

And before I answer that question, I just want to say congratulations for getting through the last two weeks. The last two weeks have been like nothing that we have ever seen in this country. The last two weeks have almost felt like war. And we've never been invaded. We've only been invaded for the past couple hundred years from a foreign army. So what we're experiencing is Something that we're experiencing collectively for the first time and nothing feels normal. You go down to the market or the grocery store and a lot of the aisles are empty. People are trying to understand kind of how they should talk to each other and how they should distance from each other. But I really do believe that next week things are going to calm down a bit. Not the markets, not the number of new cases, those are things that you can't control. But what's going to calm down are three things. One is we're going to start to get more comfortable with this idea of working at home. I think people will be a lot more subtle and we'll talk about that in a little bit. But they'll be much more comfortable working from home. That's number one. Number two, what you're going to start to see is the shelves in the grocery stores and the markets be full. Because over the past week and a half, what everyone's doing has been hoarding basic necessities or basic items they're not even necessities like toilet paper and Lysol. And the supply chain hasn't been able to catch up to the demand. Well, now that we've hoarded so much of that stuff, I mean, who needs more than six months of toilet paper in their closet? Who needs more than five cans of Lysol? What's going to happen is those, those stores shelves are going to be restocked and they're not going to run empty, they're not going to appear empty like they are today. And I think that's going to give a lot of people a lot of comfort. And I think that the other thing that will settle in next week is this idea that this isn't a short term thing, it's a long term thing. And sometimes just knowing knowledge alone is curative. Sometimes just knowing and feeling like there's some direction or there's some understanding of what's going to happen will make people feel much more comfortable. And so I do expect a change kind of in the psyche next week. But we have, we have some difficult times ahead. And so what I want to do is I want to share with you some ideas for how to protect yourself during these times, how to really set yourself up for success in this market. And the first is this. We've talked about this each and every day. Your number one job as an entrepreneur, as a solopreneur, as a business owner, as somebody who is an employee to become, it doesn't matter, has nothing to do with business. The number one job that you have today is to protect yourself. And where does that start? It starts by protecting the cash that you have on hand. So again, there's three things that I want you to do today and there's a lot of new information. If you've heard this from me before, I encourage you to stick around and listen because there is a. I have a ton of new information to share with you today based on what's happened in the last 24 hours. So again, when it comes to protecting your cash, the first thing I want you to do is to print out all of your bank statements. If you've heard me say this and you haven't done this yet, it is the most important thing you should be doing right now. We have to protect our cash. Cash is like oxygen for entrepreneurs. We have to protect our cash. So print out the last two months worth of bank statements. I want you to take a look at all of those things that are automatically hitting your account. And I want you to delete, cancel, erase, eliminate anything that you don't absolutely need in your to be hitting any new product or any product, any service that you pay for on a monthly basis. If you don't need it now, then get rid of it. That's incredibly important. That's number one. Number two, I would go back to everyone that you pay, any big lender, whether it is a auto loan that you have, it is a credit card debt that you have, your utilities, it's your rent. And what I would do is I would go and negotiate new terms with these people. And what I found is this. What I have found is everyone is willing to negotiate right now. Everyone understands what's going on. So most of the car companies. And again, this is coming from a lot of people that are taking this advice and they're giving me feedback. I have not talked to one person that's called a car company that hasn't had their payments deferred one to three months or evened out over the next year. And so car companies are working with you, credit card companies are working with you.

If you speak to your landlord and your landlord doesn't want to defer rent. And I know there's a lot of people in real estate that are going to watch this. They may not like to hear this, but if you're paying rent, whether it is on a commercial lease for your business or it's for your home, you. You're paying rent for the place that you live and you cannot afford to pay that bill right now. Again, I'm telling you My recommendation is to hold on to your cash and if they won't work with you, just stop paying it. The law right now of the land is that nobody can be evicted. You cannot be evicted from your home anywhere in the United States for not paying your rent to during this crisis. So again, big things, cars, credit cards, utility bills, rent. The number one piece of advice I have is protect your cash. Stop paying for anything that is absolutely not essential. And if you can work out payments with all of your billers. Also, I got several requests over the past couple of days for people to talk to them about credit lines. If you have a credit line, now is a great time to draw down. It is a great time to draw down. But I want to teach you a lesson from what happened with the banks and credit lines in 2008 when the market crashed. This is from personal experience and what I learned from others. In 2008 when the market crashed.

And we had big credit lines.

Some of us drew from them and some didn't because we believed that the banks would keep them open. But one day what happened was the banks shut them all down. And so without warning, you lost access to all of that cash. Now here's the problem. On top of that, what many of these banks were doing is they were saying, you need to pay that entire credit line today. So they'd shut it down and they'd require you to pay everything off in that day. And if you didn't pay that credit line back, they would say, well, look, you have a personal guarantee against this. We're just going to go into your bank accounts with this bank and we're going to pull it out for you. So what I recommend is if you have credit lines, this is the time to draw down your credit line lines and take that cash and move it into a new account at a different bank. And you can say, I mean, I hope I don't get in trouble for saying this, but I mean, this is what people, people that have.

Massive wealth, these are the kinds of things that they're doing today. So again, why not model people out there that are, that are doing these types of things? People that have shown consistently that they know how to not just survive, but thrive through these kinds of markets. And again, one of the they're doing right now, they're drawing from their credit lines, they're opening accounts at other banks and they're moving that money over. So if the bank has your credit line that extended that credit line says, we're shutting it down today, you've gotten the maximum cash you can out of it. So if that lender says you have to pay us back today or we're going to go into your account with us with that bank, there's, you can say, great, no problem. There's nothing. There's nothing there. So again, it's, you know, it's a, it's not the kind of piece of advice I would give in a normal economy, but in this economy and someone who has direct experience going through this with credit lines and talking. I was on a call this morning for one hour with 10 of the people that I respect the most in business. And when talking about business strategies and what they were doing to preserve their cash. And this is one of the things that I think every single one of them was doing. And so again, that's why I wanted to share this information with you. There's a lot of new stuff out there today, so I'm going to take a look at my notes to make sure that I hit everything for those of you that have companies and what you found is sales have come to a halt. So sales have come to a halt. Customers are starting to cancel their monthly auto pays. Customers are starting to cancel their contracts. The cash is not coming in. At least it's not coming in at the same pace that you're used to it coming in. And you're running out of Runway. Your cash burn, your daily, your weekly, your monthly cash burn is far exceeding how much you're taking in. And there's a risk of your business running out of cash. What do you do? Well, it can be really difficult to raise capital during this type of market at this time, unless you have a product that meets the specific needs that people have in today's new emerging economy. So what do you do if you can't? Can you get a loan? Getting a loan today, particularly from a bank or other lending institution, could be really difficult. Probably I'm going to say it's not going to happen. So where do you go?

The place that you would go is to friends and family. And here's what I have to bring up about that option. If you go to friends and family to get money to help carry your business right now, you really have to do a gut check because if down the road your business is forced to declare bankruptcy or you are forced to declare bankruptcy, that loan that you got from friends or family that doesn't go away, that stays with you forever. And so if you're considering going to friends and family to go get money right now, I think you need to ask yourself these questions, and you have to be honest with yourself. Number one, do I have a good, strong, stable business that can survive in this economy? That's number one. So what that immediately discounts is startups that immediately dis most startups, startups that aren't addressing a very specific need that's coming out of this economy. What that does is it immediately eliminates companies that have not started to generate positive cash flow. What that means is it eliminates companies that, you know, really haven't proven themselves even in a good market that they'll be able to last. So, again, if you are trying to find cash today, here's your options. Number one is to draw down credit lines. And again, my recommendation, and again, I am not like, I need all the disclaimers. I'm not a financial planner or anything that gets, like, a license in financial planning. I'm not an attorney. So what I'm going to share with you is the counsel that I'm getting from an incredible network and my own experience. What I would do, what I've done in my experience, is draw down credit lines, consider opening accounts at another bank, a bank that's not tied to your credit line, and separate the money and move it over there. So if they close the credit line and they call that money right away, you can have it safely in a different account with a different bank. That's number one. Number two, if you're looking for cash today, with regard to loans, going to be very difficult to find. Very difficult to find. It's going to be hard to find from the sba.

I had a bunch of emails yesterday come in regarding SBA loans, and I have people that are applying for disaster relief loans right now with the sba. They're asking me, is this, is this the best place for me to go for money? And my answer is that everyone is applying for SBA loans right now in the system. The number of people that can process SBA loans is, you know, it's finite. And so if you're relying on the SBA for a loan, well, that loan may come through, but I wouldn't expect that loan to come through anytime soon. And I think these loans are going to be much more difficult than the government is making it out to be in order to get for all of us. And, you know, the government right now isn't focused on us as entrepreneurs, solopreneurs, small business owners. The government is really focused on bailing out the big companies, bailing out the biggest employers and the biggest companies and the biggest Industries that drive the economy. For entrepreneurs like you and me, that means that we have to do what entrepreneurs have always had to do. We have to go and hustle. We have to go and find solutions, and we have to go and figure out how to get through this thing and to solve these issues in large part on our own. And so, again, you can draw down cash from a credit line. If you have to go somewhere else and you're looking for a loan, it's going to be very difficult to do right now. So where do you go from, like a banking institution? So where do you go? You could go to friends and family, but if you're going to do that, you need to make sure. You need to make sure, because those loans don't go away, that you have a business that is a really good business in this market. Before you go ask somebody for money, it's really, really important. The other thing that you can do in order to generate cash is to innovate.

And I am so proud. Like, I just. I love you guys. I love entrepreneurs. I absolutely love entrepreneurs. Like, we are the people on this planet that identify the biggest problems. We are the people on this planet that find out. We figure out how to solve them. We are the people that figure out how to fund and pay for solving the biggest problems. And what we're finding in this new economy is innovation everywhere. People either coming up with new ideas and developing new products and services, or they're taking their existing businesses that are getting their butts kicked and they're pivoting those businesses into new services that people are paying for. So I just want to give you an example of some of the incredible innovation that's happened over the last 48 hours. You have alcohol companies, alcohol distillers that are repurposing their alcohol distilleries and they're turning them into operations to make hand sanitizer. So you're about to see a huge flood of hand sanitizer on the market. And the reason that you're going to see this is because the people that typically make booze are getting into the hand sanitizer business. In our business, what we're starting to see is auto manufacturers are getting into the business of either making respirators or converting respirators. This is a big deal. We've heard, if you're paying attention to the news, we've heard that in the medical dealing with this problem, this crisis that we're going through today, from a medical perspective, there's two big issues that we have well, there's three. One is testing, the second is we don't have enough masks for the people for our healthcare professionals. And the third is ventilators. Well, again.

Entrepreneurs showing in, you know, what's the word? Ingenuity. Entrepreneurs figuring out how to re, how to pivot their businesses. On the, on the testing side, big business was brought in to help create a new way, a new platform for testing. And for those of you who haven't seen it, you may have heard about the online website that in some parts of the country you're able to go to and fill out what symptoms you have and get, get pre screened to see if you need a test, then be directed to testing. If you look in our channel through the stream, I actually have a link to what's being provided in the Bay Area so you can see what that looks like. But again, this whole solution came from Google. It came from entrepreneurs that were being flexible and adaptable in this market.

With regard to masks. What they found is there are suppliers like 3M and Honeywell. 3M makes 35 million masks. I believe it's a month. They could solve the problem in a month, if not much sooner. And so what they did, as it turns out of those 35 million masks, only 5 million of them had a certain certification to be able to sell them to hospitals so they could be insured. And what happened was some entrepreneurs went, they helped to create change, they helped to create some adapting of the product and the government has now backed their behind. It's okay to sell those masks to hospitals. So that problem, the mask issue is being solved quickly. Companies like Honeywell have opened up capacity and they're manufacturing more masks down in Mexico right now to help solve that problem in terms of ingenuity in respirators. So now you have, now you have companies like Tesla, Tesla and Elon Musk have jumped in to manufacturing respirators and adapting respirators for our use. In terms of smaller companies, you know, I have seen a number of different trainers that do physical training stuff are now offering programs online. They're doing them through YouTube, on private channels, through subscription, they're doing them through Zoom and other things where every day at a certain time it's like going to the gym and getting a class and they're generating revenue. The place where I go. And again, I'm just trying to share as many ideas as I can with you because all of you have been so incredibly generous, so incredibly generous to share with me what it is that you are working on. And what is working and what is not working and how you are adapting. I have seen the yoga studio that Sita, my girlfriend Sita, and I go to in Hollywood. What they have done, what Joe has done is instead of monthly members coming into class, he's been able to preserve and to hold on to a lot of his monthly members because now he's offering the classes through video. He goes into his studio and he's the only one there, but in video, and everyone does it. And these things are set up so you can see other people who are also participating in these classes. So again, that's I'm seeing in the yoga side. Valvoline, by the way, this is really important.

We're not supposed to touch stuff when we're around big crowds of people. If we're at the grocery store, we're not supposed to touch things because the number one way this virus transmits itself is through droplets, or one of the top ways is through droplets landing on the surface. We touch the surface, it gets on our hands, we touch our face and. And it goes into us through our mouth and through our nose. But if you go to the grocery store, you go to the market, what happens? Well, you typically have to pay with a card, so you have to touch that thing and then you have to enter your security code. And so you're probably touching the one thing that more people are touching in the country than anything else, giving yourself the greatest chance of being infected. So what more companies are doing now is they're moving to Apple Pay and they're moving to Google Pay. So now instead of touching one of those things, you can open your Apple Pay or your Google Pay, you can point it at something, not have to touch anything to be infected or to get infected, and you get, you can make a payment. So by the way, if you're not using an Apple Pay or a Google Pay or one of those types of apps that makes it really easy to pay for things, I highly suggest, I highly suggest that you download those apps and start to start to use them. If you're in a situation, if you're in a situation where, where. Sorry, I'm taking a look at some comments. If you're in a situation where.

You are out and about and you're around people and you're afraid of people coughing and things like it's a funky time, right? You're in the supermarket, you're in the grocery store.

Distance is obviously really important. But I just want to share one piece of information that a couple of my friends in the medical industry are on the front lines, working with the quarantine centers have shared with me. And that is the reason that we're keeping 6ft of distance between one person or another is if we sneeze or if we cough, the threat of those droplets that we just talked about transmit it coming out of us and out of somebody else and landing on us and getting into our body. Well, droplets typically have a length. You can only go about three feet. So we've actually doubled the distance in terms of what we're recommending or the government is recommending. So how far people stay away from each other? Just six feet. So I just thought that was kind of an interesting piece of information to share. And finally, as we kind of wrap up this first half hour.

I want to ask you guys how we can bring levity to everything that's going on today. Because.

It can feel so intense. You know, it can feel so intense. And whether we're trying to deal with it ourselves or we're trying to deal with this situation as a leader, and we want to get out in front of our teams, and we want to create that sense of levity. Our teams, how do we do it? And so, you know, I'm not really sure. Maybe you guys have ideas on some of the best things that we can do in order to create levity. What I'm going to do is I am going to create just a fun joke of the day. So if you want to put in the stream, in the comments. And again, we have comments coming on my board, comments coming in from a YouTube page, profile, from a group. We've got it coming from Facebook, from Instagram, from Periscope. And I want to welcome everyone that's here that's joining us. We got thousands of people from all over the world. I want to thank all of you guys for joining.

If you want to put in your kind of stupid joke of the day and it's the winner for that day, I am happy to get on the phone, get on a zoom call and spend a half an hour with you talking about how we can collectively help to manage through what's going on. You know, we can talk about your personal situation, what you're going through personally. We can talk about your business and how we may need to pivot in your business to get you through this crisis and onto the other side.

For those of you who are.

At home and you're confused by what you're supposed to do, we've had all kinds of different orders that have been announced over the Last week we've had recommendations from the federal government, we've had stronger recommendations from state governments and even stronger recommendations from local counties. And they use words like lockdown, like shelter in place, like safe at home. And they all do different things. So I received a whole bunch of questions that came, came to me over the last 24 hours, particularly last night after the government, the governor of California, issued a stay at home order. The questions people were sending in were things like, what the hell does this mean? What does this mean? And what should I do? What am I supposed to tell people? How is this different? And I'm actually a part of a forum in my community. I live, by the way, I live in Los Angeles and Newport Beach. I go back and forth between the two. I do a lot of media work in la. So when I'm there, I'm up there and my kids and my family, they're here in Newport Beach. So I go back and forth and in Newport, I'm a part of a group of a community. And it's a very engaged group of people that are messaging throughout the day. And last night there was a huge argument in this group about what stay at home meant. There were people that were complaining that there were kids. There was a kid, a single kid out in the front plane. And there were other people that were saying, that's not supposed to happen, that's against the law. You're being irresponsible, you're not helping to protect the neighborhood. So let me just try and clear some things up for you. First of all, there's martial law. And we're not even, that's like, we're not even in close to that. Martial law is when military law overtakes civil law in the country. And martial law, that ain't happening right now. So put that aside. There's a lockdown. In a lockdown, the way it's typically defined is somewhere between a stay at home order and martial law. And a lockdown is when they typically, it's tied with a quarantine where you're asked to stay within a certain area and they don't want people to come into that particular area, by the way, that's what a quarantine is, is can come and go from a specific area. Stay at home, which is what happened last night in California. That was the, that was the. With the governor of California, that's what the governor of New York have done over the last 24 hours, means that people are supposed to stay at home. Now, to be more clear, in California And California I think is a great example of what this means. What stay at home means is, and I'm going to read this just so we're absolutely clear, everyone in California is required to stay at home except to get food, care for a friend or a relative, get necessary health care or go to an essential job if you can go out or if you do go out, keep at least six feet of distance from other people. So California says this is open and it's considered essential and that's why they're asking for people to stay at home. So what are some of the things that they're saying that are cool to do? There are Sebastians pharmacies, go get food, groceries go to farmers markets, food banks, convenience stores, takeout and delivery at restaurants. You can go to banks, our banks are open, you can go to laundromats and laundry services. All of these things are considered essential here in the state of California. And I believe that this policy is pretty doggone close to New York. And by the way, isn't that confusing that we don't have a big kind of like one national thing that we're all supposed to do? But what's considered non essential right now, non essential is dining, restaurants, bars and clubs, entertainment venues, gyms and fitness studios, public events and gatherings and convention centers and the whole list of companies that are essential to stay open. And again, I apologize if this is stuff that you know, but I have gotten so many questions about this. I just think it's really important to share the real real, the real information and dispel any rumors about this. So the essential business and sectors out there where people still will be going to work are the chemical sector, commercial facilities, sector communications, critical manufacturing, dams, defense, industrial base, sector emergency services, the energy sector, financial services, food and agriculture, government facilities, healthcare and public health, information technology that seemed deemed as critical. Nuclear reactors, materials and waste, transportation systems, and water and water waste systems. Can kids go out and play? Can you go out and play? Yes. According to the state of California, in this order, it is safe to go outside, go take a walk, go run, go exercise, go clear your head, but just don't gather in groups. And that is what this stay at home order means. Another question I'm getting is why are there so many different kinds of orders out there? Stay at home, shelter in place, whatever the federal government wants us to do. The reason is, according to Trump and just some basic data, the reason is.

When you take a look at coronavirus, it is now in all 50 states, but it is clustered in three states in California, in New York and in Washington. There are 3,000 counties in the United States. And of those 3,000 counties, coronavirus is clustered in 10. And so for that reason, I believe, and based on what I saw in this morning's briefing, they are not doing a stay at home order for the entire country because most of this country is not infected in a way that is anywhere close to California or New York or the state of Washington.

Innovation. I'm so proud of our entrepreneurs. I'm so proud of people out there that are taking a look at their businesses and they're asking why? Why do I do what I do for my customer? And are the products and services that I offer today the same types of products and services that are needed today and tomorrow? Like, are the things that I'm are the solutions I'm providing to the market, the types of solutions that my customers need, like, really need today? And again, just some quick examples of innovation. Innovation that we're seeing in companies all over the country. Use these as inspiration. Use them as inspiration to help think about your business and what you should be doing in this new how you can shift what you offer the market in a way that not only serves more people, but generates the kind of cash and the kind of cash flow that you want during this period. You have alcohol distillers that instead of making booze, are now making hand sanitizer, solving a huge problem that we have in the United States. You have car manufacturers, car manufacturers like Tesla that are getting into the ventilator business. They are going to help us to make more ventilators and to basically tweak and adjust existing systems to work as ventilators for the people that need them. You have people in the hotel business, in the hospitality business, where, I mean, that business has effectively shut down in most of the country. Well, what are these hotel companies doing? They're taking their janitorial services and they are taking them and they are now using those janitorial services to go into big companies, go into warehouses and do deanings to help make sure there's no virus, no coronavirus in those facilities? It's a great reuse of a people resource, trainers who are taking things digital. And by the way, here's an opportunity. Every trainer that I know, everyone that is in the business training, they're in the physical training, they're in the meditation, they're in the whatever training. Every trainer that I know is looking at their business and they're going, oh my gosh, events the way we've thought about events in person, events that's gone, that's gone for the next several months. What do I do? I go online. So there is this mass wave of people, mass wave of people that are trying to develop digital products. The problem is they have no experience. If you have experience creating digital products, if you have experience creating digital events, if you have experience doing any of these things, this is an incredible opportunity for you to stand up, for you to rise up and go solve that problem. You could literally dial for dollars. You could reach out to everyone that lists themselves as a trainer, as a coach, as whatever and go offer those services. And there is real money there, real money there. Today we have some kids in our neighborhood that are going to the elderly, people that don't want to go shop. They're getting emailed or texted grocery lists and they're getting a few dollars from a lot of people to go and do the shopping for them. They're providing a great service. And these high school kids are making some really good money. And my favorite, one of our local stores, one of our local shops here, they provide painting classes for kids, amazing painting classes. And what they've done is taken that service online because people can't come in. And with all of these parents, think about this. With all of these parents at home today with kids who are trying to work, what can you offer, what can you bring to those people to help provide a subscription service or a one time fee to join a class that you conduct on a daily basis to help keep those kids occupied and learning or moving? People are going to start to get really stir crazy next week. How can you help to solve that problem? You see, and I really want to be clear about this, the money has not stopped flowing. And I really want you to hear this. The money has not stopped flowing in America. The money has started flowing into different places. The money has not stopped flowing in America. The money is flowing into different places. And so it's your responsibility as an entrepreneur, as a solopreneur, as somebody who is recently unemployed, who needs to redefine themselves and find a new way to generate cash. Responsibility to ask your customer, to ask your prospect, to ask the market two questions. What do you need?

And what has to happen? How do you know that you're getting what you want? When I work for Tony Robbins, it's been 30 years. How crazy is that? When I was first hired by Robbins research, I was 20 years old. I think Tony was 30. Like that was. That's a long time ago. But one of the things that I did when I worked with him is I promoted Tony's sales training program. For people that weren't following him back then, Tony's number one program wasn't around personal development. The number one program that we sold in front of live audiences was the power to influence. It was a sales training program. I think at one time Tony had the largest sales training company in America. I used to teach that. Those are the things that I used to teach. And the first lesson that I learned from him was the two most important questions that we can ask as entrepreneurs are what's most important to you and what has to happen? How do you know? Because what we tend to do as salespeople is we sell what we think is most important and we deliver what we think is most important in the way that we'd like to receive it. But that may not be what the rest of the market wants. Let me give you an example. If I were to ask somebody what's most important to you about an exercise program, what they they may say is that it's easy to use. Well, easy to use means a million different things to a million different people. And so this is the second question that you have to bring in. The second question is, what has to happen? How do you know it's easy to use? And what's going to happen is these people are going to start to give you their rules. This is their decision making criteria. So the answer may be something like, well, if it's easy to use, it's available on a mobile device. If it's easy to use, I can get it on my iPhone because I don't use Android. If it's easy to use, I pay as I go versus paying a subscription. If it's easy to use. And again, they give you their rules. And so your job as the entrepreneur is to keep digging. So write all these things down. So if I were to give you something that was on a mobile device, that was on iPhones, where I charged a one time fee to join, where it was available every day after the kids had eaten. So it was available like 9 o', clock, 10 o' clock in the morning, it was something that was easy to log into so my kids could log into it and I could be doing my work like, and what you do is you write all these things down and then you pair it back to them. You say, so if I were to do this, this, this, this and this, would it be easy to use? And they would say yes or no. And then when they get to the point where they Say, and you're going to be asking, is there anything else? Then when they get to the point where there's nothing else, these are all the things that are easy to use. This is their decision making criteria. These are their rules. When they get to the bottom, they say, is there anything else? They say, no or I don't know. If they say, I don't know. Here's a little trick. Say, I know you don't know, but if you did, what would it be? And you usually get a couple more, Then what you do is you build your product or service, your initial offering in this market based on that. So now you not only know what the need is, but you know what that person's purchasing or decision making criteria is. And it's such an important lesson.

By the way, if you are getting any value out of this program, any value out of today's show, what I want to ask you to do is please share it. Please comment, Please share with other people in your network, other entrepreneurs, family members, small business owners, people who are recently unemployed or they're afraid that they're going to be unemployed sometime soon. Because what I want to do is provide tools and counsel and strategy needed. I want to share everything that you guys are learning with this marketplace. Because I'll tell you what, these are unprecedented times. And I know that there's only one way that we get through times like these, and it's together. And so again, I want to be here for you. I want you to be here for your community. So if this is something that you're getting value of, I'd ask you to please go ahead and share. Whether you're over here and you're on YouTube or you're on Facebook or you're on Instagram. If you are watching through Periscope, I ask you to please do the same. If you're on LinkedIn, please do the same. Okay, I want to jump into some of the comments. These are comments I'm getting on Facebook right now.

And answer your questions. So let's start with Mike. I have three distilleries within a mile of my house. Going, going to head out and help them reduce their stock so they can focus on hand sanitizer. Win, win. Okay, so that is. That is a good joke of the day. So that is good. Okay, this is what we're talking about. I'd say when you're talking to your teams right now, every day they wake up and they're asking themselves, what does all this mean? And what should I do? How long am I going to have this job? How long am I going to continue to be paid? There's never been a more important time to throw a little bit of lightness, a little bit of levity into the way that you're working with your team. Craig Collins Reading Training so Craig has got the most exception. He's got a program, it is incredible. It teaches kids and adults. He's teaching people how to read. And.

This program that he has works incredibly well for people that are normal readers and folks that are dyslexic. And what he's trying to do is he's trying to figure out how he can leverage this situation, this market, to bring his reading solution to more people that have problems reading. We're all at home. This would be a great tool to work with every single day. And so what I want to ask of this community is if you know of educational institutions, groups, if you know of other places that could use a great reading program for people that really need a leg up. Craig has got a phenomenal course. He's traveled all over the world. I've watched him for years. He's. I'm a huge fan.

And the other thing I want to mention about what Craig is working on is he's considering whether he should launch this solution in a product in this market as a one time fee, as a monthly fee, or as a high fixed based item. And I'd be really curious to get your feedback on this because.

I wonder myself, I wonder myself, how do we charge people for things today? And a lot of people that I'm talking to directly.

They'Ve had this energy about them, this feeling that.

If they're asking people for money, if they're making a sales call during this period, it's uncomfortable, it's awkward, and it's probably something that they shouldn't be doing. So I'm seeing this paralysis in a lot of different areas with people that don't want to ask, they don't want to ask for the order because they think that they're doing something wrong. I'm here to tell you if you have a product or service that meets a specific need, it addresses a specific need in today's marketplace and you are helping people through by addressing this need. There is nothing wrong with that. There's a, you are actually hurting them by not asking for the order. You're doing them a disservice by not asking for the order. So do not be afraid to ask for the order. What I will say is it's a great time and probably There probably hasn't been a more important time to be testing and testing your pricing and how your deal is structured. So when you're talking to this person, you may want to offer that course for $999. When you're talking to that person, you may want to offer it for $99 a month. When you're talking to that person, it might be a one time $9 fee. What I highly recommend is this. What I highly recommend is work each and every day to figure out on that day what the right product market pricing fit is in today's market. Because again, things are constantly changing. And use the data that you're getting from the conversations that you're having in order to put yourself in your product in the best possible position to sell and to sell, to sell a whole heck of a heck of a lot. Dana who has figured out an idea for real estate.

So I talked to somebody yesterday who lost last night very late, who called me and had he lost financing yesterday at the close of business on 15 properties through one lender. And that may seem sound very vague and you might ask, trust me, it was 15 properties that, that everything got, got pulled out. If you're in real estate, I think you have to ask yourself a few questions. The first is this. The first is if you're spending money right now, you're putting out cash to improve real estate in order to increase how much you can get for rents or to increase valuation in the event that you can sell that real estate. I would probably really reconsider dumping money into anything right now. I really would, I would hold onto my cash as much as I could. I would also use this as an opportunity to, to go out and add to your cash stockpile. If you have properties out there. There are lots of people that are on the hunt, they are on the hunt for deals. So if you can sell a property and take that cash on the table maybe for less than you wanted to sell, maybe for a lot less than you wanted to sell. But what you're able to do is put that cash into your account. That's something that I would seriously consider. I know a lot of people, I know a lot of friends that have cash. It's been sitting on the sidelines and they've been waiting for this opportunity to go invest in people that have real estate, that are searching out good deals, that have good deals. So again, I think if you have perform assets that are underperforming that you're sinking a lot of money into, I would probably pause Sinking money into those things. And if you have assets where you're able to pull cash out, I would strongly consider taking my cash off the table. Same is true in the stock market. If you have assets that, where you've made, you have stocks where you've made money, now, they may be down and you're thinking about holding on and writing this thing out, now may be a good time to either take all that cash off the table or some of that cash, a portion of that cash off the table.

In order to stockpile your cash reserves. Because again, cash is like oxygen for entrepreneurs, for solopreneurs, for business owners, it is like oxygen. The more we have of it in these kinds of markets, the better off, the safer that you're going to feel. And again, it's not about planning for cash for the next two weeks or the next four weeks or the next eight weeks. This is about planning. This is about putting an emergency planning plan in place. To plan for the next six months, to plan for the next 12 months. Because we, we will not, I truly believe we will not see normally normal. See, if you look at the most basic data and the most consistent data out there for the next six months. And so it is really important to protect your cash reserves today. Credit lines in real estate, if you have credit lines, this could be an exceptional time to consider drawing down and completely drawing down those credit lines and taking that cash. Now remember, if you have credit lines, the bank, the banks can call those credit lines and it will. They can do two things. They can close them at any time. I remember in 2008, I woke up and one day I was like, I'm going to go and take some cash out of my credit line. That same morning, before I logged in to the website, that same morning, they canceled my credit line. And then that same day, they called that credit. They wanted all of the cash. They wanted like 100, I think it was $180,000 they wanted me to pay that day. And then they said, well, wait. I called them, they said, wait, you've personally guaranteed this through this credit line. We're just going to go into your other accounts with our bank and we're going to pull it. And so.

What? I know a lot of people do, and I'm not saying that this is what you should do. I'm just saying what a lot of people do during these kinds of times in real estate is they'll draw from their credit lines and they'll take the cash and they'll put it in an account at A different bank. So if that credit line is closed immediately or it's called immediately, that bank that issued the credit line isn't able to go in and immediately pull all that cash out of your account and leave you with nothing or pull whatever was there. So again, I'm not saying that that's what you should do. I'm just saying that that's what people talk about in a lot of what I what I hear. Andrew, you are saying I have been reaching out to every company I can thinking of to help them turn their training programs into online learning. Amazing. I'm also holding live online training to help people with best practices for online webinars and meetings. I think it's two products. I think there's the online training and then there's the online webinars. I think that is totally the right thing to be doing today. I think It's a great LinkedIn marketing strategy that you can put behind that. Very simple. I know people that can help you with that if you need. But that's a great way to solve these problems today that we're talking or to create a product that addresses needs the trainers are having today in this business. Great job, Andrew. Mike, this has inspired me to do check ins with my team in the mornings.

Can't tell you how important it's been. Absolutely adds levity and gets them to open up and ask questions. I definitely feel like I'm affecting the narrative now. They need to see me and they need to see that I'm up, motivated, positive, shower, dressed and joking. Mike, this is so true. Amazing job. Absolutely amazing job. And one of the things by the way, I have so many through the different channels. I've got a couple hundred questions right now so I'm going to stay on for a little bit longer if it's okay with you guys. And again, just want to remind everybody this is what now. This is an entrepreneur, a solopreneur, a small business.

A recently unemployed, a thinking I may be unemployed person's guide to managing through this coronavirus.

Pandemic recession and uncertain times. And if you're just joining us now and you find value from this program, I ask you to please share this, share this with your audience. Share this with your network. Just a reminder that this program has been picked up this Facebook Live and will become a national radio show next week broadcast all across the country and repeating throughout the day. And so I want to thank all of you for, for making that happen. I'll have more information on that on Monday.

But what I want to do is I want to go into these questions. And, Mike, you're talking here about how you're getting up and you're talking to your people, and you're inspiring people.

So one of the most common questions I'm getting from people today is, what do I tell my people? How much do I tell my people? Should I tell my people what's really going on in this business? And the answer is, yes, it is to tell them everything. This may feel very uncomfortable. I understand. As entrepreneurs, as business owners, we have a lot of pride, and we have a lot of pride in our businesses. We have a lot of pride in maintaining an image and a stature that, like, this is our thing, and we got our stuff together, and we're going to work through this. But the reality is, if there's cracks, everybody knows. They already know. And if you're. The smaller the business, the faster the news travels. And in a small business, we're so busy as entrepreneurs juggling so many things, putting out so many fires each and every day, that what happens is we tend to lose touch with our customers, with our vendors, with our suppliers, with our big partners. We tend to lose some touch with those people because we've hired others to do it. So by the time we deliver bad news, they've already heard about it for the last four weeks. So I think it's incredibly important, number one, to be clear and transparent. This is what we understand. Hey, this is a very fluid situation, but I want to be straight with you guys. This is what we understand is going on in the market. This is what we understand is happening within our industry. This is what we understand we see is happening in our business. And what I would do is I would then say, and we're looking for ways to pivot. We're looking for ways to take what we already do and adapt and adjust and offer new solutions to solve new problems for our existing customers, our prospects in our market.

And get. Get the participation of your team. Get everyone you need. Everyone. This is all hands on deck today. Get everyone to help you to come up with solutions. You've hired a great team. These are smart people. They're close to the market. They're fearful for their jobs. They're fearful for their consulting contracts. They'll do everything they can to be innovative. But here's the thing. Everyone works from home now. So you have got to become a Jedi of managing people from home, people in a 100% virtual workforce. 100% virtual workforce. You have got to become Yoda, a Jedi Master at Being able to manage people from their homes. And you have got to become the kind of person that is exceptional at managing yourself as a leader and taking care of yourself as a leader from your home. This is so important. It is so important to do so. What I recommend is this. First, let's start with you. In life, we can't give what we don't have. I can't give what I don't have. If I'm not taking care of my stuff personally, if I'm not managing my mindset, if I'm not managing my own goal, all that stuff myself, then I can't be effective managing other people and ask them to do the same. And so the first thing we got to do is got to take care of you. What does that mean? What that means is you have got to create a routine. For the next few weeks, you are going to be working from home. It may be a completely different experience for you, it may be the same experience for you, but now you've got the added pressure of what is happening outside of you. So what do we do? Number one, we have to develop a routine. You've got to get yourself up at the same time. You have got to move in the morning and you've got to shower and you have got to dress and you have got to get up and you got to get your ass prepared to work. This is the number one most important thing is routine. What I am seeing is groups being formed all over the place, all over the media, in different industries, in social media, where people are working together. My girlfriend Sita, so many of you know her, Sita Thompson, she has developed a society, a sisterhood society, where now what's happening? And by the way, if you want to join this, hit up Sita at Sita Couture. Go to Facebook or Instagram, Twitter, go to Sita Couture and send her a message and she'll tell you how to do it. I hope that's okay. I said that. But what she's done is she's developed this sisterhood society. And there are women that are getting up and they're getting on a free Google chat and you can see everybody every single morning. They're getting up, they're showing up, and they're helping to encourage each other. And each day they're doing things like they have got throughout the day, they've got their exercising. As a group, they're sharing things that are motivational. As a group, they're sharing what's working, what isn't working. As a group. But I'm finding that type of thing happening everywhere. So if you're going to have trouble getting up and showing up every day as a leader, what you need to find is an accountability buddy. Find somebody or find a group that is doing this that you're going to become a part of, because you can't expect your people to get up and show up if you're not getting up and showing up. This is so important. It is so fundamental, and I strongly, so strongly urge you to do this. So that's number one. Number two, get the hell out of your pajamas. So what we have to do is we have to get out of our pajamas. We have to make sure that we're showing up. Which leads to number three, if you're working from. Well, because you're working from home. Number three is you have to set up a workspace. So too often right now, what people are doing, especially people that aren't used to working from home, is they're working from the couch, they're working from their bed, they're just kind of roaming around their house. It is really important for you to set up a workspace, whatever that means. Your workspace may be your kitchen counter. Your workspace may be a specific place that you set aside on the floor. Your workspace may be your kitchen table. It doesn't matter what it is, but you've got to create a workspace. Number four, you got to take care of yourself. You really have to take care of yourself right now. I'll tell you a secret. So my daughter, my oldest daughter, she's 11, and people get a little stir crazy. Kids have been in the house.

And yesterday she decided that she wanted to bake. And the way she does it, she tries to do, like, all natural ingredients, organic ingredients, all kinds of stuff like that. It's a real creative process for her. And it takes a long time. The way that she does, I thought, great activity. So here's the thing. I live in two places in la. I've got this office and the space and all this kind of stuff. And when I'm here in Newport, my office is out in kind of the open in my main room, because if I look out the window over here, I get to look at the water here in Newport Beach. But the thing is, my desk is right next to the kitchen. And so Lily was making these cookies, and I could smell these cookies baking and, like, being made. And watched her with the batter and stuff like that, I'm like, damn, that looks good. And then when she finished what she did is she put them in a bowl and she. She left them on the counter. And so every time I kind of looked over here like that, I'd see these cookies that were like the size of my head. And I dug in, and I got to tell you, they were so good. And I kept going back and back. So here's the thing. Sometimes we slip. But what's really important right now is you need energy. And you need to show the world that you are here, like, and you come to play. You have got to show the world that you're somebody that they should be taking seriously. You need to show. You need to show your workers, your team, your market that you're studying, that you're confident that you look good, that you feel good, and that you're a person that leads and you're the kind of person they should follow. You're the kind of person they should buy from. You're the kind of person they should listen to. That's what you need to do today more than ever. It's never been so important. So the fourth thing on this list is to take care of yourself. And then the fifth thing is add levity. Do whatever you can to add some levity to this situation I mentioned for all of you. And I see all these comments over here in these jokes for all of you that join late just to add some levity, I've started a contest. Every day, it's 30 minutes. I want to get to you. So it's for the joke of the day. So if you put some kind of fun joke, make it clean, all that kind of stuff, you add a fun joke to this particular thingamajigger right here. If you add to the stream, the fun joke of the day is gonna win. And what you win is 30 minutes, one on one with me. I will help work with you and coach you through what we're. What's going on today personally for you and also your business. So please add a little bit of levity here. Add a little bit of levity. Throw a joke in here that. That would be amazing. Okay, so now that we know how to take care of you, let's talk about how you lead your people every single day, because this is so important. First of all, people are looking for. They are starving for. They have this unquenchable thirst right now for leadership. They are looking for leadership. They are looking for calm. They are looking for stable. They are looking for people that help them to feel safe. And if you're running a business, it is really important for you to help control that narrative inside of your company that you are the kind of leader that they can get behind, that you are the kind of leader, that you're the kind of trainer, you're the kind of teacher, you're the type of coach that they can get behind. So what I recommend with your teams is this first start every day at the same time with a daily huddle. And I recommend that you be sensitive to the fact that people have their kids at home and they've got more, there's more families at home. So instead of starting at 7 o' clock in the morning, 8 o' clock in the morning, super early, what I recommend is to start your daily huddle around 10 o' clock in the morning, 9, 10 in the morning. Give people time to work their morning stuff out, get the kids fed, get the go and do something for themselves on a routine. I think that that is really super important. So excuse me. So number one, we start with that morning call. That morning call should include what's going on, like let people know what's going on, what you're seeing in your industry, how it's affecting you guys. And then I would focus on solutions. Spend 80% of your time in that call focused on solutions and how you guys can pivot. And then what I would do is spend a bunch of time on levity. Maybe you could do a joke of the day inside of your group, do something fun to lighten the mood after you've had this. Oh, and by the way, on that call, be really clear on that day. Here's what we're going to accomplish today. And here's what I need from everybody. Treat it like what I would normally call a five minute huddle, a daily huddle. Get really clear, hold people accountable. And then what I recommend is four calls a day, that's the first. But let's say you can only do three. Or you can do two. Make sure that you check in with every single person a second time every day and you get them on the phone, on video, make it mandatory, hold people to high standards, that they get up, that they dress up, that they show up for work. I think, I really believe that these last two weeks have probably been. This week has probably been one of the hardest.

One of the scariest, and one of the most difficult times that any of us have ever had to live through.

The world has been filled with uncertainty. And first of all, I just want to congratulate you all for getting through it.

And I want to say that I think that even though this Thing that we're going through is going to be around for a while. Again, I'm telling people to prepare for the next six months. And if you look at the most basic agreed upon data, the height of this infection this round is going to be May 8th to 16th here in the United States. So we aren't even close to what it is that we're going to see and we won't be until the middle of May. And then if we start to have the infection rate drop off, we're still talking a long time in order for those numbers to get fully reduced to zero. So we're going to be in this for a while. And while we're going through this, one of the things that I know is the best way to get through it is together. It's to be there for people. It's to show up for people as a business owner, it's to ask people what they need and how they need it. What's most important today, what has to happen? How do you know that you'd be getting those things so that you can be in a position to provide people with the tools, the products, the resources that they need and to sell them? Because like I mentioned before, the money is not stopping everywhere. What's happening is the money is being redeployed. It's going to different places. And so what we have to do is we have to find out where those pain points are and adjust ourselves, adjust our businesses quickly. And that's definitely a key. Also. I think that, and again, I'm sorry that we're going over time here. We just had, we've had so many questions. I'm going to go back to Facebook for a second. I'm going to take a look at some of the questions and answer them. And, and then I have something I want to share about. If you're out of cash or you are on a path to being out of cash, what to do. So stick around for that. And by the way, it's going to be a really important piece. So if you have any friends, family members, business colleagues, whatever, and you find this information valuable, this is a great time to share it and post it onto your streams so that we can have a bigger impact on more people and help them out. So again, going back, I'm going to go back into these comments and I'm sorry if I haven't gotten to your comments. Let's see real quick here.

Brian, what do you call a pig that does karate? A pork chop. I like it. I like it. I guess if you want to vote for Brian? Go ahead and like his joke. What do you call a pig that does karate? A pork chop chop. I like it. Hey, look, whatever we can do to help each other, to have some levity, to help do something during the day that makes all of this and getting through this easier, I think that that's incredibly valuable. So I really recommend. Thank you. Thank you for sharing that. I've had lots of people come in and talk to me about the real estate business. Ton of questions about the real estate business. I shared some information earlier. I would invite you to go back to re. Listen to what I talked about with regard to real estate. Just to summarize, with regard to folks that are in the real estate space, I think if you take a look at your projects, if there are projects that you have that you're throwing a lot of cash into right now, you are improving those properties in the hope of selling them at a premium. You are improving those properties in order to make them rentable or to increase your rent. I would strongly consider putting the improvements where you can on hold so that you can hold onto that cash if you have an opportunity. Because again, there are people all over the world right now, people all over this country that are looking for great opportunities in real estate, no joke. Talked to somebody yesterday who said, oh my gosh, I'm going to be a billionaire. And this person sold his last company for about $200 million. And he's had cash on the sidelines for.

The last year. And his focus is primarily how he's built his wealth is in real estate. And he said, I've been waiting for this moment. I'm looking for things, good opportunities to buy right now. So there is cash out there. And again, I just do want to, I do want to make that and I do want to make that clear. It's a matter of going and finding it. I'm looking over here at the comments that are coming in.

And so again, hold on to the cash. A lot of people in real estate are asking me about credit lines. If you have credit. First of all, it's going to be very difficult to go get new loans in real estate, probably near impossible from banking institutions and traditional lenders. If you have credit lines, this could be a good time to consider pulling your money out of those credit lines lines. In 2008, what happened? What happened was people that had credit lines, they'd wake up one morning, the banks canceled them. On those same days, the banks would call them and they would say, hey, we want all that money that you owe us and you say I don't know that I have it and they would just pull it out of your other accounts. Many people I know that are taking money out of credit lines are taking that cash and they're moving it into new accounts at different banks so it can't be clawed back automatically. So again, that's something else I see happening in the real estate space now, if I were. And again, this is information I'm getting from other people, folks that have lots of units, what they're doing is instead of waiting for people not to pay them because again, you can't be evicted right now, at least in most of the country, can't be evicted right now if you're not paying rent. And that is not only for your rent for your home, but that's also for your for your business. And I was watching Today Trump and it looks like they're working to put a whole more payments as well. So stay tuned for that. But if you collect rents, I highly recommend that you reach out to the people who rent from you. And this could be a good time to be proactive and a good time in order to get to work at some kind of deal with them before they stop paying or if they're going to stop paying. So at least you have some cash in and the cash that they're putting out goes to you versus somebody else. So again, something that would strongly recommend in this space.

Back over here to comments. Mike Schultz, you are hosting a few optional coffee meetings via Zoom. It's an open meeting set up like a hallway in an office. Employees can jump in, say hi to each other, they can interact wherever. Sometimes I'm not there. Most of the time I am need to keep the team together. That's really great advice. It's really great feedback.

Really great advice and really great feedback. One other thing I want to mention before I go for the weekend again. I'm going to be back on Monday morning. I'll be back every day Monday through Friday from 10 to 11am Pacific Time and starting next week. We're not sure of the date yet, but last night.

This live stream was picked up as a national series. So we'll be on national radio starting next week. We will play multiple times a day. This show will, in terms of its format, more like a radio show as a result, in segments and things like that. Each segment will be dedicated to a different topic.

But we will have an opportunity to impact more people and I want to thank all of you for helping to make this Happen. Let's talk about your competition, and this is where I'd like to wrap things up. If you are running low on cash, your Runway is getting shorter. The income that you have always planned on is running out. It's going away. This is a great time to reach out to your competitors. It's an amazing time to reach out to your competitors. We learned this in the crash of 2008. And the reason it's a great time is your competitors are probably going through the same thing. As a business owner, one of the best things you could do right now is spend a lot of time paying attention to the competition, and you want to pay attention to the competition to see what they're doing that works and what doesn't work. This is a time where companies will be consolidating. This is a time where companies in your space will be sharing resources. It could be a good time to call one of your competitors, maybe your biggest competitor, and find out what you guys can do together. Maybe you merge, maybe you team up, but competition, competitors, right now could potentially be the number one asset that you have as you work through the next. Through the next few weeks, the next few months, the next few years. If you have an opportunity to sell. One of my. One of my customers, one of our Mastermind members was given an opportunity to sell his business just a few days ago. And I was called last night, and this person asked me what to do. So the number that he was offered wasn't anywhere near what he envisioned selling the company for. But he's in a position where he's about to have to make big layoffs in his company, make some tough choices. Who knows what's going to happen to his over the next few days, weeks, months, over the next year or so. And so the question that we asked was, is it worth it to sell the company right now, even if at a discount, but take that cash off of the table and build your war chest. And my belief is that in a market like this, one of the most powerful, effective things that we can do is we can pull our cash out and put it on the table. Cash is king in this kind of market. Cash is like oxygen to entrepreneurs, to small business owners, to solopreneurs, cash is oxygen. And so if you have an opportunity to sell.

What will happen in terms of deal structure in this market? What will happen is that many people who purchase assets, they purchase companies will try and set terms so that they pay you a small amount up front, and then the rest of your pay the rest of your Payout is dependent on an earn out. It will be dependent on hitting certain targets over the next three, over the next few months. The challenge with this is there's so much that we don't know and there's so much that we can't predict today. And so what I would offer, what I would recommend is if you are going to sell your business, I would get as much as you possibly can up front and I would have my earn out. Just know that the odds are you will not be able to hit that earn out. I mean, earnouts are one of the biggest tricks that big companies play on companies that they purchase is they're set up typically in large part to ensure that the company who purchases doesn't have to pay it. So be okay with taking that cash off the table and know that you probably will get. But what I would do is I would focus on, on the cash up front and getting a contract, getting a contract to perform as either a fte, a full time employee or consultant over the next one to two years and lock in income. And so that is what I would, that's what I would recommend that you do. If you're thinking about selling your company, the most popular way, the most common way, people who are looking to purchase is going to be through early earnouts using an earnout structure. Get as much cash as you can up front. Figure you won't be able to hit the targets required to get the other payments in this schedule. But lock yourself in into a one or a two year agreement or whatever that looks like.

Shouldn't say.

Let me just look back at comments really quick. My fun joke of the day from Kimberly. How do you weigh a millennial in Instagrams? I like that. How do you weigh a millennial in Instagrams? Amazing. I love that. Let's see, what else do we have here? Dave, here's your joke. Wipe your butts with dryer sheets, fresh scent and wrinkle eliminator. I like that. But I have to tell you, between that and Kimberly's joke, I'm going to go back to this one. My joke of the day. How do you weigh a millennial in Instagrams? Doggone it, there has never been a time more important than today than to laugh, to bring some levity for yourself, for your own good, for your teams, for the people around you, your friends and your families. This is your time to shine. And you may not feel like it. You may not want to get out of bed, you may not want to put, put everything on. You may not want to. You may not want to talk to people. Well, you know what? Last week, I didn't either. I remember Tuesday night felt like the whole market changed. I'd spoken that day. I've shared this story. I spoke that day. I was in an event. I still thought that this was all a lot of hype. I got out of my speech. I did a book signing. I had about 200 people in line. And for the first time in the day, we all had our cell phones on, and we were reading the news. And what we were reading in that moment, all of us collectively, we were reading that San Francisco shut down live events, that the Golden State warriors wouldn't have fans at their games, that Rudy Gobert from the Utah Jazz tested positive for coronavirus, that the NDA was shutting down, and that Tom Hanks tested positive for coronavirus. And in that moment, in that moment, what did it feel like? It felt like the whole world changed for me, and I think for the rest of the country, that was a big, defining moment. And the next day, I didn't want to get out of bed. But you're a leader. And because you're a leader, your job is to get up. It's to show up, and it's to show your leadership, which today means stability, it means calm. And part of that comes from taking care of yourself during these hard times. The most important job of every entrepreneur has nothing to do with business. The most important job is taking care of yourself. It's exercise during these times. It's moving, it's eating well. Because when times are tough, you have to be the toughest person in the room. And if you're not taking care of yourself, there's absolutely, positively no way that you can be. And so exercise is so important. Now, I remember last week, last Tuesday, when this was all going on and we were all reading our things. I was signing autographs, I was signing books. And the first person in line asked me, did you hear about this? And I was like, wow. And they told me that. And then the further back we got in the line, the more people that came up, the more they started to share a narrative or create their own narrative about two things. The two questions everyone's asking, what does all this I'm reading mean and what should I do? So they're looking down and they go, what does this mean? And what should I do?

And because the leader wasn't there in that moment, it was impossible for that leader to shape the conversation and to control the dialogue. And so instead, the people reading Were shaping their own conversation for the company and creating their own dialogue. This is why it is so important that you have with your team, or if you don't have a team, your community, your fans, your followers, your friends, your customers, whoever. This is why it's important that you get up and you connect every day. You have to control the narrative, get up and connect, make sure that people show up and stay connected throughout the day with them. If you have to cut people, if you, if you take a look at most businesses, most companies, their number one or their number two expense, operating expense, is their team. If you have to do the uncomfortable thing of cutting people, it's awful. I've had to do it before. It was awful because there's so much to consider. You're thinking about them. You're thinking about. You're thinking about their families, their friends. You might be thinking, if they get health care with you, about their health care. You're thinking about yourself and your own reputation. Having to do layoffs, it's not an easy thing to do. But if you have to do layoffs, cut once and cut deep. Cut once and cut deep. And here's why. If you make incremental cuts, and I talk to.

I probably talked to five or six people, one on one, by the way. If you need help doing any of this, if you're selling your company, repositioning your company, if you are about to make cuts and you need cut, reach out to me. This is what I'm doing all day, every day, as I'm working with entrepreneurs and, and I'm helping them to really reshape their businesses and to make the tough decisions and do the critical things they have to do today. But if you're going to cut, you got to cut once and fast. Because if you don't, if you decide that the changes you're going to make and the cuts that you're going to make are incremental, what happens is as soon as you make the first set of cuts, everybody who's left is looking out there. They see the news, they know what's going on with your company. So what they start to do is they start to think, oh my gosh, am I next? And they stop focusing on your business and they start focusing on their Resume, on their LinkedIn profile, on more chatter with their friends and their families and their colleagues and things like that. The one thing they don't focus on, I promise you, the one thing they won't focus on is you. Your business, what you need. So you have to make the hard decision. And you have to execute the hard choice of making one cut, making it super deep. It's probably going to be really painful for you and then moving on. And the people who stick around, the people who you keep, will be more loyal than ever, work harder than ever. But they will know that they're locked in and they're locked in for a certain period of time. And what you're going to find is it will enable you to take your company and put it in a better position of leadership.

Take a look. More questions?

Read the AA letter, the AIA Letter of Work Ethic. Gerald, I don't know what this is. Could you share more about that? That would be amazing. By the way, if you look inside of our group, if you become a member and you look inside of our group, what now? An Entrepreneur's Guide to Managing Through Coronavirus, Recession and Uncertain Times. There are a ton of resources that I provided for you. Anything from resources from the SBA to free tools that are being given out, to free government programs to ideas, activities that you can be doing with your kids at home, ways to manage your workforce. It is all there in the social stream. One thing that I do want to share with you because I think it's really important is there is a link that I just added and it is to a new technology initiative. I have so many printouts here. There is a new technology initiative and if you look in our group, you'll find the link where technology companies all over the globe are offering their services for free right now. So if you have teams at home, if you need to do video conferencing from home, if you need free tools like Microsoft Word or Google Docs, you need more storage. You need whatever it is. There is a link to a ton of free tools. During this time, it might be a good idea for you to transition off the tools that you use and adopt. The tools are being offered to you for free right now. I think it's a, it's a great idea. It's an excellent thing that businesses have done. I'm looking for the name of that article and I can't seem to find it right now. But take a look in the group. Another reason to join. Let me run through our comments real quick here. And thank you so much for commenting across the channels. We're now up over 600 comments for this stream. We're streaming across YouTube, Facebook, we are on Instagram, Twitter. I think it's Periscope. Let's see, here's Scott. Scott Imperium I Recently created an online 5 part 12 week Social media marketing course for small businesses to give them a jump start. It includes coaching calls. I'm wondering if you think I break it into individual pieces and drop the price, offer more coaching calls, focus on a niche. The answer is I have no frickin clue. And the reason I have no freaking clue is because the market is changing every day. And it's a great question Scott, because what I would do if I were in your position is I would offer it to different people in different ways and see what sticks, see what people actually purchase and what they continue to pay for. I think that's the most important thing you could do. I was talking to Craig about that earlier. Craig has an exceptional learning a reading program that he wants to offer for a pro as a package. Initially he was putting that out into the market. I think it was going to go out today for a one time fee of $300. I don't know, is $300 too much money for people today or at least most people are they thinking 300 is too much? But I would pay $30 a month or I would pay $99 one time. And so what I encourage Craig to do like I'm encouraging you to do is to break it up. Break your offer up into a number of different ways. It's AB ABC ABD testing at its best and see what works. And I'd love you to share what works with the group. I think that's amazing Andrew. I've been reaching out to every company I can think of to help them turn their training programs into online learning. We talked about this before. I think that that is a phenomenal idea. Michelle Weinstein, thank you so much. I appreciate you for joining us. Totally amazing Scott. I'm happy that you remember the power to influence. Beate. I love you Beate. I just want you to know that all of the guys that we used to hang out with in San Francisco.

So Steve and Brad and Tim, there's a group of about 15 people and we put together a text group and the only thing you can do is share positivity and jokes and it has been the most incredible thing because for the last week we made each other laugh and I really recommend, I want you guys to consider that. Think about that. How can you take that kind of thinking and pass that on to your communities? How can you have an even bigger impact than you ever thought possible? Because you are passing on, because you are providing some levity to the people around you. Again, I've shared this before But I think that next week is going to feel a lot different for most of us. I believe that next week what's going to happen is we're going to start to settle in to this new norm of the chaos over here in the news that a lot of people will start to turn off or they'll watch less of because they know we're in this position and we're going to be in it for a while. They're going to start to settle in to more of a routine at home, more of a routine with their kids. They're going to start to see that the shelves at the grocery stores in the markets are fully stocked. I mean, you've got eight months of toilet paper right now. How much more could you possibly need? So what's going to happen is the supply chain is going to get caught up with the demand in the marketplace. And so I think that next week we're going to start to feel better in some regards. So it is your time to shine. It's your time to shine as a leader. It's your time to shine as an entrepreneur. It is your time to stand out and.

A lot of questions over the last 24 hours about marketing. Should I shut my marketing off? I'm a firm believer that if you have budget and you can continue to market, you should do it. I would consider considerably cutting my marketing costs back, like really cutting my marketing costs back and focusing my marketing around the one thing that's showing the most stickiness right now, whether it's the one offer, it's the one product, it's the one service, whatever it is, that shows the most stickiness right now. Because now is the time that you want to get out front. Now is the time that you want to show that you are in the market, that you're strong. Now is the time you want to show your position of leadership. And there's opportunities, opportunities that will appear all over for you. Chris Naugle. The challenge is I need a wider net to cast with my financial guidance.

Guys, gals, Chris Nagle. If you're not following Chris Nagle, N A U G L E Right now you can see Chris and his link here in our chat in our stream on Facebook. So I'll share it with all the other social streams later. Chris Nagle provides exceptional advice on how to manage your money and how to preserve your cash and what to do now on the money side, he is phenomenal. So I highly recommend Chris Nagle now in terms of how we get your message out to more people. I think it's an incredible time for us to partner. I talked earlier about competition and that with regard to our competition we need to start looking at competitors at co as co option type of people. How can we during this time combine our tools, our message, our teams, our tools, our resources. How can we market or co market together to the same audiences? Are overlapping audiences with non overlapping products or services. One plus one in this market equals 100 and so the more partners affiliates that you can get on board, the easier it will be to get your message out there further faster and with far less capital, probably no capital in ways that you never imagined. AL again I want to thank you for joining us. You've been here every day. Jim G. Always amazing to see you. Michelle Patterson, Michelle Patterson, for all you ladies out there has an incredible program. Michelle, I'd love it if you put the link inside of this feed. An incredible program. It gets together every single day as a community primarily for women, for women to stay on top, hold each other accountable, to share great things, stories of success, things like that. Highly recommend that that is what you that you check out Michelle's program. Astral Amazing to see you. I recommend you share this with as many folks as you as you can. And.

To finish up today, I think it's time to finish up. I apologize for running long. We've gone almost an hour long but it is Friday and I wanted to give you as much as I could today. I want to be respectful of all of your of your time. We'll be picking up again on Monday, 10am 10 to 11am Pacific Time. We are here live. We are on Facebook, we are on Instagram, we are on Periscope, LinkedIn and YouTube of course. And we'd love you to join us. 10 to 11. Please share this information with your friends, your family, your business colleagues and let's do everything that we can to help each other get through this crisis together. I just want to tell you that we are going to get through this crisis together. I want to share with you, I want you to know if it is hard, if you're struggling, if you're confused, if you're a person that just doesn't know what you're going to do today, what you're going to do tomorrow. We are going to work as a community to help you and there are better times ahead. This market will change. It's really important to recognize our market is not impacted right now because there was a financial structural issue like there was when the market crashed in 2008. It was not that our market has been impacted by an event, and this event will end, and on the other side, we will all be stronger. We will find new products and services to offer customers that provide even more value and that will turn into more income, more cash flow than we ever imagined. We will find new ways to work, we will find new ways to shop. We will find new ways to do everything through this period. And that's what's amazing. And what I'm trying to do is hold the energy. I'm holding the energy for all of you because I know that you're going to get through this, and I know that you can have more, you can be more, you can do more than you ever imagined. And this is an opportunity. If you come from the right mindset, you put the right people around you, you put the right systems, tools, things in place, I know that if you take care of yourself, you take care of your teams during this period, you will come out stronger. On top of, I know if you really provide value, if you connect with your customers, your prospects, your targets, your market, and you provide value. Right now, you are one of the few, not the many, you're one of the few that gets up every day, that shows up every day, that doesn't talk at the market, but is asking the market, what do you need now? How does this impact. What do you need now? What are the biggest problems that you're running up against? What products and tools and services, what do you need? And how can I. How can I help? How can I supply you with those things? If you come and start to approach every single day from this day forward, with shoshin, with beginner's mind, Shoshin in Buddhism, Shoshin, beginner's mind. What that means is you approach every single day as if it's the first, as if you're learning everything for the first time, as if you're looking at your business, you're talking to your customer, you're thinking about your solution for the first time ever. And your ears, your eyes and ears were totally wide open. If you come from that perspective and that openness, what will happen is you will find, you will learn, you will open up this energy to receive what people need now and either adjust your products or service to what the market tells you, or shut them down, put them on pause, put them on hold, and come out with new products and services to address this market.

I love all of you. I want to be here to support all of you. Please support each other. Anything that's working, anything that you're seeing in the marketplace. Any success that you're having, please put it here in the comments. Join our Community Share our Community this is free to do one hour every single day. Takes me about three and a half hours in the morning to prepare for. I want to do everything I can to just give to you. And so please share this information if you find it valuable. I want you all to have an amazing weekend. I want you to know as you go into this weekend, things are going to turn and things are going to get better. And together as a community, we're going to figure out how to protect you the most as an entrepreneur, how to put some stability underneath your business and how to thrive in this market. And as we come out, I hope you all have a wonderful weekend and thank you so much. Take care.