Scott Duffy: Latest Information On Government, Loans, Grants, & Other Stimulus Programs, Episode 20

Good morning, everybody, and welcome to what Now. A guide to managing through Coronavirus and uncertain times. And I want to welcome you. This is Scott Duffy and I want to welcome from wherever you're joining, whether it is Facebook or YouTube, we're broadcasting on Instagram and LinkedIn and Periscope. So from wherever you are watching or listening, I just want to say welcome. And it is so good to see you here today. There is so much going on this morning. There's so much going on today. I have so much to share with you and I can't wait to hear what's going on with you in your business. I know there's a lot of people, by the way, before we, you know, before we even get started here, I just want to say I hear you. I know there's a lot of you that are applying today for the PPP or you're trying to figure out how to apply for the PPP and you have a lot of questions.

It feels like there's a little bit of chaos out there today when it comes to applying for these loans. And so I have got answers for you. And while we let this stream propagate all over the Internet, we're going to give it a couple minutes. If you're joining us now and you haven't joined before, I just ask you to do one thing. If you could write down your name, the industry that you're in, the name your industry and the biggest challenge that you're having today so that I can use that information to help and customize this show for you. We have a ton to talk about and again, I want to welcome all of you for joining and I see a bunch of you jumping in today. Good morning, Brian. Great to see you as always. Jeff Griffin, I got your messages and I am on it right now. I'm on it right now. I actually have KEDMO is just trying to FaceTime me and she's texting me right now. Hopefully I have your answer soon. Jim Blakemore. Always good to see you, Jim. Hope you're having a great day. Steve Mellon, part of that USD San Francisco crew I talked about yesterday. Maybe the leader of the pack. Good to see you. Patrick Carney again. If you've watched our show before and you've gotten value, please share it right now. We have so much to talk about today. I think there's probably more. I have retyped out and written my notes like five times this morning. I think we have more to go over today than any day so far this week. So again, please go ahead and share this program. We're going to wait for about one more minute before we get started and welcome to all of you. Nelson, awesome to see you. Al, I got your message and that works great that time. There's so much going on here. So, so.

Let'S do it. Let's get started. Good morning. My name is Scott Duffy. This is what now A guide to Managing through Coronavirus and Uncertain Times. I want to welcome you from wherever you're listening. You can tune in each day at 10am Pacific to watch the live broadcast on YouTube and Facebook, listen nationwide on Dash Radio throughout the day or download the podcast now. This show is for entrepreneurs, small businesses and those thinking about starting their company. It's for people affected by this economy. Maybe they lost their business, they lost their job, they were furloughed or they're consultants and they just saw all of their consulting contracts go away. And it happened like this. It's for people who are asking the question, what do I do now and how do I come out of this even stronger now? Our focus today is going to be on how to apply for stimulus if you're a smaller business or a solopreneur or an independent contractor. We've had questions about how to do it come up all week and I've been working with folks over at the SBA and the SBDC and I've actually gone into individual banks and credit unions to ask these questions to try and get the best information for you. So I'll be sharing what I know today. So today is the first day that many businesses are able to apply for the PPP. Today, April 3, small businesses and sole proprietorships can apply for and receive loans to cover their payroll and other certain expenses through SBA lenders. Now, if you are not in that category, if you're an independent contractor or you're self employed, you're an independent contractor or you're self employed, you're going to need to wait until next Friday, which is April 10th in order to apply. April 10th in order to apply. So this is being rolled out in two pieces and here's why.

This is a much more getting the ppp. By the way, for those of you who don't know, that is the Paycheck protection Program. That is the name of this 3,350 billion dollars stimulus package for small business that's been put in place to help people like you and me. And this whole thing, the way they determine how much money they're going to give you is primarily based on your payroll and so if you're a business, a bigger business, and you have full time employees, it's really easy to go back and to figure out what your payroll and your payroll costs are. But if you're an independent contractor and you're self employed and you either and you just pay yourself or you have a company, a smaller company and you pay yourself distributions, it's a little bit more tricky how to come up with a formula in terms of how to determine what you should be eligible for. And so that's going to take another week to roll out. Now, for people applying today, small businesses and sole proprietorships, what I'll share with you is this. We didn't get the final kind of the final document, the final instructions from the government, the final thing that said this is what it is and how it works, which by the way, we've gone over on the show for the past two days in detail. So if you want to learn about how the EIDL and the PPP work, listen to the last two programs, episode 18 and 19, and you'll get just about everything that you know in those two, in those two broadcasts. But again, it came out on Wednesday. So I would not expect if you are an independent contractor or you're self employed, I would not expect to really be clear on all of this stuff until.

Wednesday, next Wednesday. That, that is my, is my guess. Now we're going to talk more about all this in just a second. But another thing I need you to know today is this, is that the government plans to start making payments under the new stimulus law in mid April. So these are the payments. These aren't the SBA payments. These are the payments when Donald Trump and our Secretary of the Treasury Mnuchin, say we're going to send people a check in order to keep this economy going, we're going to send a check to your home.

To your home, and that's for you to use for whatever you need, groceries, rent, whatever it is.

What we've learned in the last 24 hours is that an estimated 60 million payments will be made starting in mid April, likely the week of April 13th. Now, those checks are going to go first to people where the government has direct deposit information and they're primarily getting that from your tax filings in 2018 and 2019. So if you file 2018 and 2019 returns, and in those returns you had bank information, so you had your bank account number and you had your routing number.

Then you will be kind of on that first list of people that get their stimulus payment. However, if you do not have direct deposit information with the irs, this could take weeks, potentially months. And what they're reporting over the past 24 hours is that you may not see your payment until late August. Now, the reason I'm bringing this up, hopefully it's much better. But the reason I'm bringing this up is I've shared with you on this program over and over again that this is awesome. Government stimulus, this is. I just, I think it's amazing what the government is trying to do right now to help all of us as individuals and as business owners. The challenge is this is government. We're staring a big ship here, right? And we're trying to point it in like this direction. And so it's going to take time. And when I on this issue of time.

We'Re going to talk in just a few minutes about timing as it relates to the SBA lending programs that many of you are applying for starting today. I have some really good information, information that drills specific banks and lenders and things like that. So I want to start to set expectations also.

When will this turn and when will things start to get better? Morgan Stanley came out this morning and they are no longer reporting that they see this as being a kind of a quick bounce back type of recovery when coronavirus eventually gets through our system. Instead, they're now pointing to the end of 2021, when we would get back to more of a new normal. And just to give you guys some perspective, after 9, 11, it took the airlines three years to get back to normal. Now, I'm not sharing this information with you because I'm trying to create panic or fear or anything like that. The reason I'm sharing this information with you is every single day I'm sharing with you tips that I'm bringing people in. And my hope is that you're taking action now. My hope is that you are not sitting there hoping things will turn faster, hoping things will turn quicker, paralyzed kind of with indecision or in fear. And instead what you're doing is you're taking action today. You're taking action, the actions that you need to take today, specifically with the way that you are managing your cash. We'll talk about that in just a sec.

Before we get into the meat of of today's program around stimulus, I just want to break it up a little bit. Has anybody out there seen this, this show on Netflix, Tiger King with Joe Exotic? Have any of you guys seen this show, Tiger King with Joe Exotic? Because last night I felt like my head was going to explode with all this information that I was, I was sorting through and somebody turned me onto this show and I have not been able to stop. I guess it's kind of like my junk food. It's been my comic relief for the last 24 hours. So I'm curious if you guys have seen, have seen Joe Exotic and had a chance to look at, look at that show. If you need a good laugh or a little bit of entertainment, it may be something that you want to take a look at.

And finally.

I really think that this time is one of those times in history where companies that step up and do the right thing, companies that step up and they really serve as an asset, as a resource, as a thought leader, as a business that's really in business to help all of us grow.

I think those are the kind of companies that we will have a new affinity for in the future. Those are the kind there is an opportunity that you have and the business has today to create an affinity with its customer like no time in history. And it's interesting because as I have been doing what I'm sharing with you guys every day, I've been calling, taking a look at my auto pays and getting rid of stuff I don't need. I've been taking, calling my, my lenders and I've been renegotiating terms. I have been calling my credit card companies as an example and seeing how they may be able to help me during this time. And what I found is there have been some folks that I've talked to that have been absolutely incredible. And by the way, you know, that's probably been 80 to 90% of the companies that I've reached out to, but there have been a couple that have just been really awful. Really awful. There's. I'm not going to name names right now, but there's one credit card issuer that I talked to and I was really surprised about their reaction to this whole thing. And there was a. There was. Anyway, there was another company. Here's what, I'll tell you what I did yesterday after I got off the phone with them just because of the way that they were treating us and kind of I canceled both of those accounts. So I actually got rid of them. Right. I'll never work with those guys again. And this is just the beginning of this period. What I'm here to tell you is if you can figure out a way to hold the energy, bring together community, be a true asset and true resource for people in your space and for your target customer, during this period, you have an opportunity, if you come from empathy and love, to create a bond with your customer like no other time in history. You also have an opportunity to do the opposite. You could potentially put yourself in a position by, you know, taking the wrong actions. You could turn your potential customers off in a way where, you know, they may, they may never come back. So again, just a couple things I wanted to share before we, before we dig in. All right, so let's get into it with regard to stimulus. Ton of questions over the past 24 hours. Here are, here are first some answers to your questions and some of the new information that I have learned today. So the first is with regard to the EIDL and the PPP programs, the EIL and the PPP programs. I've shared with you before that the eil, the Economic Injury Disaster Loan, is a loan or a grant that you can apply to. And by the way, if you haven't joined our group, join our Facebook group. Because in that group, if you just go through it, you'll find links to all of these applications. I try to make it really easy for you. So with the Eidl program, you're eligible for up to $10,000 in the form of a loan or a grant. What happens is you fill out this two page application, you can find it in our group and then this will go to lenders and they'll take a look and the money that they would give you is effectively in advance and in advance to them making a decision about whether or not you qualify for a loan or you need a grant. You only have to apply. Fill out this one application to be eligible for both the loan or the grant and they'll make the decision. Now, the $10,000 is a cap. I just want to make this clear. Not everyone gets 10,000. You're eligible for up to $10,000. And the money in that pool that EIDL program was, was there before coronavirus. It was a fund that was already set up and it was probably the quickest way the government had the quickest process or program in order to get money into people's hands quickly. So that's the eidl. Now the ppp, that's the paycheck protection program that works different. And we've talked about how the PPP works. What I want to share with you is this. If you get an EIDL loan, you cannot use those funds and you're going to apply for the ppp. You cannot use the EIDL funds for the same purpose as the ppp. So as an example, if you use the Eidl loan, just as an example.

To pay your payroll in April, you can't use the PPP loan for the same thing. Now, this is really important. And it's important because.

If you get that PPP loan, you want to have it forgiven. So this is a loan that the government may be willing to forgive. So it's like free money. Forgive it 100%. But if you use the Eidl loan that you have for the same purpose as the PPP forgiveness, that money that you get from the Eidl is deducted from what gets forgiven in the Eidl from the ppp. Does that make sense? So again, you can't use the same things, you can't use these two loans for the same purpose. And if you do, it will have an effect on how much is forgiven from your PPP loan. So that is the first thing. The second thing is.

The second thing is there are 3,000, approximately 3,000 SBA certified lenders in the United States. Okay? The government is working on programs right now to increase the number of lenders. This is incredibly important. Most of my texts were about this I got from people today in DMs. So again, the way this works is a lender, like a bank, like a credit union, is going to be the person that takes in your loan application through the PPP program. The SBA does not give you the loan. The lender reviews it and gives you and is the one that gives you the loan. The SBA backs the loan in case you default. Like that, money will come from the SBA. So this is really important. It's important because those 3,000 lenders have so much incoming demand for their time that the amount of time that it may take you to get to somebody could be a lot longer than you imagine. And I want to make this clear this morning, $875 million of loans have already been processed. Have already been processed as part of this program. Almost all of the loans that have been.

Processed up till 9 o' clock this morning were processed through community banks. So if you have a relationship with a community bank or you have a community bank near you, or there's some, this would be a great time to potentially go to your community bank, because they already on this and they are already processing loans. Nearly 875 million already this morning. Now, there are other banks that have.

Not made it easy for all of us. There are other banks that are still kind of trying to figure out how they're going to do this. They're still training their people. They still might not have the right processes in place. I'll give you some examples. So what I've heard this morning is that Wells Fargo is not taking any applications today. Wells Fargo is not taking applications and B of A is taking applications, but only for a few select customers. So here's the real deal. Here's the real deal this morning. The real deal is that banks are being choosy. Banks are using this as an opportunity for themselves, not just to help you, but for themselves to help build their, to help build their businesses. So as an example, what I was told this morning by somebody who went to Chase is they were told that nobody who is not an account holder will be able to get, get a loan or process through Chase.

I was told that there another person I talked to try to get a loan process, took it to a bank early tied to this SBA program, and they were told they needed to make a $250,000 deposit in order for the bank to kind of push them up in line in order to process that loan. So here's what I'd say. Those are examples of big banks, Chase, B of A, Wells Fargo.

Small banks and community banks are probably a really great bet versus bigger banks for most people out there. And one of the reasons is they have fewer moving parts and you can usually get to a decision maker a lot faster. And so that's something I would seriously consider that you think through is the small banks and the community and the community banks. Also, if you have a choice of where you're going to go, you're thinking about, which bank do I go to again? The ppp, the Paycheck Protection Program is all about payroll and keeping people on payroll. The best shot you've got at getting one of these loans approved quickly and funded quickly is go to the bank that you run payroll through. Go to the bank that you run payroll through. They are incredibly incentivized to help you to get that money and to continue to run payroll, deposit money and run payroll through their, through their bank. So again, super important for all of you. Also, I got questions this morning. I got a few questions with regard to insurance companies. So many business owners and small business owners reached out to me over the past two or three days and they asked, what does all this mean for my insurance? I haven't been able to pay my business insurance.

Am I going to get relief? I can't get a hold of the people, things like that. What I want you to know is That I actually spoke to my folks and folks over at Hanover this morning and what they were doing is they were putting all cancellations on hold. So again, a hold on canceling insurance. And with, in my case, I think it was through the company I work with, it was through the 16th or 17th April. So what I would do is if you're late paying your business insurance, I would recommend that you give your insurer or your agent a call and find out what the insurer is doing and how they may be willing to work with you.

So I'm going to stop here for just a minute. I want to take a look. We have a bunch of questions. Again, we are live on Facebook and YouTube and Instagram and LinkedIn and Periscope and all these different places. And if you're new to this broadcast, when you hop in, if you can write down your name, your industry and the biggest challenge you're having, I want to do everything I can today to help, to help answer your questions. So, Nelson, you're saying, let's take a look here.

You're saying, reading the application through last night, the last certification is that the principals have no delinquent obligations to the U.S. government, example, back taxes. If I'm reading this right, some of the people who need help most might get left out.

That's my understanding as well. That's my understanding as well. And what I've heard is that there may be a difference between how that issue is treated with the EIDL versus the ppp.

Hold on one second.

I'm just typing.

I have a group of bankers on a, on a chain right now, on a text chain. So give me just a minute and let me see if I can get an answer for you right away. But that is what I understood also that at least with the PPP program, if you were delinquent in taxes and that that could hold up or make you ineligible for receiving this program. But we're taking a look right now. Al Manfrey, thank you so much. Okay, for people who are asking if I have a resource that can help you to process these loans.

Al Manfrey, who's on this thread? Al does like my trust and my wills and all that kind of stuff. My powers of return alone gave me a resource who we called, who was fantastic and I know other people using this resource. Now this gentleman, if you go to new tech 1 n e w t E K O N E N E W T E k o n e.com that is a resource that Alpha has provided me. I know People that have called, they've spoke to an agent there and they're using those agents to help. So that may be a resource. And what I have, I'm going to actually put it up on the screen right now. Here is the resource that Alice provided to help you to process, maybe get some help to process these loans. Craig Collins, you're saying that Wells Fargo is not taking applications B of A for some special people, only small banks, the best possibility for the loans. That's right. That's what we just talked about.

And.

And Bob Strobel, you found out that 1099s are included in the PPP. Correct. And so my understanding, and we're actually texting right this, my banker friends and folks with the government here were.

We are, we are focused right now on trying to find out the answer to the 1099 application process. And again, if you are, I just want to make this clear because there's two dates for businesses to apply for stimulus through this plan. The first date is today. So April 3rd, you have the opportunity if you are a small business or a solopreneur, if you're a contractor, you're an independent contractor, you're self employed, then your date to file for, for the PPP stimulus program is next Friday. And so if you're having trouble figuring out as an independent contractor or self employed, what this all means for you, it's because we don't have all the information. So the information for the small businesses and sole proprietors came out, I believe it was Wednesday of this week. And that's why we dedicated two days, two and a half days to the show on that next Wednesday is when I expect the information to come out for, for the rest of you. So let's see.

I'm just taking a look through your questions right now.

Thank you guys so much. Let me look over here on YouTube.

Okay. Amazing. So if you do have any questions again, please feel free to put them in here and, and make sure.

Make sure to say what industry you're in and the biggest challenges that you're having having right now. I want to shift gears for a second. I want to shift gears because on the first day I did this show, in the first five minutes, I shared with you a quote from one of my business heroes, maybe the best manager, business manager in the United States over the past hundred years, Jack Welch. Jack Welch was the, was the head, he was the CEO. He may have been the chairman of ge. And Jack Welch spoke to this group of entrepreneurs years ago and he was Asked if you could only give one piece of advice to entrepreneurs, what is the one piece, the number one thing that you would tell entrepreneurs to do? And his answer was simple. Panic faster. Panic faster. Now, look, I'm not here trying to tell you that I want you to panic in terms of like. I'm not trying to get you to be fearful. This is not about fear. What I want you to do is I'm going to share some tools with you right now is I want you not to wait, panic. Think of it this way. I'm thinking about panic in terms of taking action now. Not waiting, getting on your toes, not your heels, and doing the things that you need to do in order to get through the next several weeks in the best position you possibly can and position yourself to come out of this as strong as you possibly can. I want to share with you a statistic.

Just a couple of years ago, and the number that's still actually being quoted today on the news is there were 30 million entrepreneurs and small businesses, small business owners in the United States. 30 million entrepreneurs and small business owners in the United States. And that doesn't even factor in all the people with the side hustle.

What the data shows, and it doesn't matter whose data you look at. So I'm going to talk about the latest report from Bain and company, which was an amazing report on the future of work. What the data shows is that in the next 10 years, by 2030, our country, our country alone is going to go from 30 million small businesses, entrepreneurs and small businesses, to 70 million entrepreneurs and small businesses, more than double where we are today. And the reason that Bain stated for that change, and that was before coronavirus, was three things. Recession. So a coming recession, an increase of robotics and an increase in AI in the workplace. And so what the report basically underscored was this need for entrepreneurs. Once all this started to happen, once we went into the next recessionary cycle, what it underlined was this. The importance for all of us to learn new skills, to retrain ourselves, to rethink the way we think about business.

There has never been a more important time for you to put yourself into that mindset. Often I talk about this idea, this concept in Buddhism that we call shoshin, which means beginner's mind. The idea of approaching each and every thing and each and every day as if it was your first, so looking with a fresh set of eyes. And what I want to encourage you to do today, no matter how good your business may be doing or no matter how good your business was doing before coronavirus hit and we got into the cycle that we're in now is I want you to forget everything that you know, forget everything that you know about how you do business, what you've been taught up to this point. And I need you to be open to the possibility, all the possibilities that are out there about what your business is going to look like going forward. This is incredibly important today. What is your business going to look like going forward? You see, I mentioned this before. I like to say that, you know, whatever it is that you do, that one thing that for the past 10 years, the past five years, has been your superhero power, that one thing, that skill that you had, that product or service that was killed in the marketplace, that one thing that you did, your superhero power for the last five years is your baggage today. And this is what I want you, this is what I want you to hear today. This is what I want you to accept. And it is so important. It is so important because every piece of data that I see today is showing that the period, the cycle that we're in right now, this down cycle caused by coronavirus, is looking more and more, unless there's some kind of miracle vaccine or drug that comes up, is looking more like a big U shape type of thing going into a recession and a different market versus a quick V shape, we bounce right back. And so what I want you to do is don't hesitate on picking up the new skills that you need in order to move forward. Now, if you're looking, if you're asking yourself, well, what am I going to do? You know, what am I going to do next?

Instead of spending a lot of time on trying to figure that out and answer that question, what I recommend is just pick one thing, the first thing that comes and go and learn that one new skill. So today a great skill to learn as an example is how to leverage social media to build and monetize your brand. Because we're all online now. Just because you're posting or just because you're reposting or just because you decided to start doing lives a week ago does not mean that you really understand how to leverage social media and digital media marketing in order to help you build into monetize your brand.

If you go to digitalmarketer.com I love these guys. Ryan, Dice, Perry, Roland, those guys have done such an amazing job creating an amazing digital marketing program. What I recommend, if you just don't know what to do, maybe the first place to start is go to digitalmarketer, Dot Com. They have got a free course, they've got several free courses that will teach you the fundamentals about how to market. And again, here's the thing. Monetize your brand online. So again, I recommend, really dig in to a new skill.

I just talked about digital marketing. That's an example of a skill that you could just start to work on today.

But the most important thing that you're going to do, the most important thing, and we've talked about this over and over again on this show, is you are going to spend your time right now talking to customers. I talked to somebody yesterday. I picked up the phone and I called them and I just checked in. I said, I want to know how you're doing. I want to know what's going on in your business. What's the real, real. The real slim shady? I said, I want to know that. I said, what new products or services do you think that you need or you're going to need coming out of this? Is there anything that I do that can help you with that or is there anything that we could maybe create? And it was amazing because I learned so much on that call. I learned that there's a lot that I talk about that I do a lot of things that I built or was building that actually aren't maybe as relevant today as they were three weeks ago when I started. And so what I want you to do is get great at listening. If there were two skills, if you could only have two skills moving forward, and these two skills were the things that we're going to move you forward the fastest in today's economy. Here's what they be Number one, the ability to be a great listener. The ability to be a great listener. And number two is the ability to adapt. It's about the ability to adapt. Those two things are the two most important things that I would love you guys to work in and the things that are going to help you to rebuild yourself and to rebuild yourself and to come out of this market even stronger than when it was that you came in.

Now, let me go back. I'm going to go back to some questions here for just a second. Aloha, Jason from Hawaii.

Did I hear your question is did I hear any new information.

From Kedma after we spoke yesterday? Specifically.

If you don't have payroll for an owner, but owner, just the owner is distributing to themselves, what does this mean? So the best information that we were able to get is that the guidance for. The guidance for.

Independent contractors, the guidance for independent contractors. And like solopreneurs that we expect to come out next week is going to handle that question. We couldn't find anybody. We asked a lot of people. We've looked and we've read through a lot of stuff and we haven't found anything that we were entirely confident with. We kept getting referred to next week because again, for independent contractors, for solopreneurs, next Friday is the day for everybody else to file. And these issues like how we distribute money to ourselves and whether or not that counts as payroll and into our payroll, they're more complex issues. My understanding is.

That people who are doing those kinds of distributions and things like that and who are contractors may have to provide more information when they apply for their, for their loans and their grants. So that, that's the latest that we've heard that we've heard since then. Hold on one second. She's actually Kedma's texting me right now. Let me see what she has to say here. By the way, for use, those of you who haven't seen the last two shows. Kedma, oh, a good friend of mine, she's a former director of the sbdc, which is a small business development council that works hand in hand with the sba. And Kedma is probably the number one person that I know, maybe the top person at the time with the SBDC getting business money, loans and grants into small businesses hands. And she is an expert, a true expert in this area. Let's see here. She is working to get the language right now. Jason.

By the way, answering an earlier question from Nelson. It is clear, but we're trying to get right now the latest language around how a delinquency paying your taxes would impact your ability to qualify or the amount of money you would get on a loan.

The Eidl loan does exclude.

If you're delinquent on child support.

And I'm being texted all of these screenshots and notes from, from lenders here.

And so that's the latest information I have. And I will keep looking. Again, I'm on a thread right now with a number of bankers and people that are tied to all this lending going on. So I'm trying to get you information as fast as I possibly can. Let's see here. More questions, more questions.

Sarah, great to see you again today. Sarah, you applied for the EIDL this morning. It was very simple, took 10 minutes. Thank you for sharing. If you have not applied for the Eidl loan, it is incredibly simple. It's only two pages. You can find it in our group and if you want to apply for the PPP and if you have questions about how the PPP works, I have the link to the application in our thread and I have links to very detailed Q and A regarding it to help you guys out.

You know, we don't have much time, more time today. And before I go, there is. There's one story I wanted to share with you. And the story is this. It's really a personal story. Yesterday, I just totally hit a wall. I totally hit a wall. So I had been working my tail off like so many of you guys, each and every day. And, you know, I give so much to what I'm doing here with all of you, and I try and work around the clock to give you guys the best I can as fast as I can. And yesterday that one o' clock hit and I just had to get up and I had to go for a walk and.

I had to take a nap. Like, I had to knock out for a little bit. And here's what I wanted to say about that. At first I felt really guilty, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized is we got to really give ourselves a break right now. What's going on out there and what many of us are experiencing is like nothing anybody in the living generations have ever seen before. You know, unless you went through the Great Depression. You know, I don't know anybody that's gone through anything, anything like this. And so whether, you know, you are a business owner that has lost your business or you can't open your business right now and you're fearful that you may lose it, or you've lost a job, you've been furloughed, you're a consultant, and all of your contracts seem to have disappeared overnight. And what you're filled with is all of this uncertainty because there's no end that we see. There's no light at the end of the tunnel that we see right now. If you're filled with all that, that's a lot to take on. That is a lot to take on. And so if you need to bow out for a day, you got to go take care of yourself. You got to take a nap, you got to, you got to, whatever then, then don't beat yourself up. Do what your body needs right now in order to work through and to process this period. But what I will say is this. What I will say is there's a couple things that you do have to do, and I'm not going to let you off the hook for the first Is this. You got to move. You got to move. You got to take responsibility. If you're not willing to do the work, then don't expect the result on the end. On the other end, you've got to do the work and get up and move every day. It is so easy. I've been looking at some of my friends when I talk to them, and I'm seeing them gain all this weight, and I'm seeing their energy just completely dissipated. It is so easy right now to get locked in the house and locked at your desk and eat and not take care of yourself and the comfort food and all that kind of stuff. There's never been a more important time for you to get your butt up in the morning and walk around the block. I'm not talking about doing a marathon. I'm not talking about you going to a public place where there's a lot of people. What I'm saying is motion creates emotion. You change the way you move, you change the way you feel. So get out there every single day and move. That's number one. Number two, you have got to put a lot of good food in you right now. And good food can be as simple as this. So this is my crazy tea. So I have my crazy tea every morning. Actually, Sita makes me my crazy tea. And my crazy tea is water and lemon. That's all it is. And I heat it up. We heat it up, take the pulp out. I drink this. It's really good for de. Acidifying the body. And again, so I drink four of these a day. So it's about a gallon of water a day. But what that does is, number one, as it relates to coronavirus.

I'm sure you've seen out there that one of the best things that you can do to protect yourself is drink a lot of fluid. So if the virus gets inside of your mouth or your nose, what happens is you can push it down with the fluid into your stomach. It misses your lungs, and you don't have to worry about getting something like pneumonia. Like, it significantly reduces your risk. So it's important for that. And again, it's also important just for your health. Look, when times are tough like they are now, you. You have got to be the toughest person in the room. And unless you're taking care of yourself, there's absolutely no way that you can be. So it is so important that you not only move, but you also put good stuff in your body. And by the way, now is the time, through those two simple actions that you can really stand out as a leader, that you can have the energy and you can hold the space for your tribe.

I mean, a great example of this I've been watching. I've been watching. So for those of you, she comes on here from time to time. My girlfriend Sita, she is in the spa industry. So she has an apparel business. So think about this. She has an apparel business that was killing it when the in LA got the fashion. It was the number one rising fashion brand of the year in Los Angeles to start the year. They're like the number one apparel company in all the top resorts and spas and yoga studios in the world. She's everywhere. And what's crazy is that you have all these big orders, all these big shows, all this inventory that has been prepaid to be produced, all of that stuff and sitting on all of that. And then boom. All the hotels close, all the spas close. Everything closes. Everything closes at once. All that inventory that you were. You were financing, that you're waiting to get paid on, is just sitting in a warehouse somewhere, and you're paying for the warehouse. All this happens like this. But what she did, and I think this is really, really cool and really instructive. She said, how can I use this? How can I use what I have to help other people in my space? Because a lot of people in that space, in the hotel space and the spa space, have been let go. They've been let go or they've been furloughed, and they don't know when or if they'll ever be coming back. So how can I help those people.

Manage their mindset? And how can I make sure that, you know, they are in as productive a state as possible so that they can get through this and come out the other side strong, whether they're with the place they were laid off from or not. And so what she did is she started this group with other people around the industry in the group meets. It's a zoom group. They meet once a day at the same time each and every day. And on. Every day there's a different activity, and she just, you know, she. She kind of moderates it, and she holds it all together and holds the energy. But they do. Like, one day there's an exercise, one day there's a meditation. One day there's a whatever. One day there's a guru. And so what's happening is she's. By the way, I didn't ask her if I could talk about this. So. Sita. Sorry.

Anyway, so what she's doing is she's holding a space in her business. So the question I have is how could you hold the space in your industry for your customers? How could you help them to manage their mindset? This has nothing to do with selling them anything. This has nothing to do with the product that you want to be delivered. Right? This has nothing with about serving the top as the top end of your sales funnel. What could you do to create community amongst the people in your space and add value? And by the way, what I've learned in my life, and I've said this before, is the second it doesn't matter if it's a great economy or it's a crummy economy, when you go away. So you go away because you were, you were laid off or your business closed or you just made a million dollars and you want to take time off when you go away, the second, the second that you stop adding value to your network, you get replaced. You hear that, the second you start adding value to your network, you get replaced. So what's really important is this, what's really important is if you can't sell anything right now, how can you stay relevant and how can you hold the space? Couple more ideas. So the one idea which I thought was really cool was creating this kind of zoom thing, having other people from her industry and community basically contribute on a different day. And I thought that was really cool. The second thing is by going into her, she went into the workshop where the sewers and all that stuff worked and they looked for extra material, so fabric that was sitting around that wasn't used and thought about what could we make for people that out of this extra fabric just to serve as value. I'm not going to ask for anything in our community. And what they're working on right now, I don't know if this is going to happen, but what they're working on is they have these like little cuts. And so they're working with a manufacturer right now to see if they can turn those little cuts into masks. And so they're not, you know, N95 medical grade masks. But what I can tell you is here in California, actually here in Los Angeles, the mayor has asked everyone to wear a mask when they go outside. And he's not asking you to wear a medical or a surgical mask. He wants those for the doctors. What he's asking you to do is put cloth over your face. So a bandana or a shirt, whatever it is. So this is another way to add value. I'm giving you this example Because I want you to ask yourself whether you're employed, you're not employed, your business is stopped or stalled, or you don't know, whatever, how can you continue to add value to the people in your industry and stay relevant? How do you do that? Now, when times are tough, you want to be the toughest person in the room and that's how you're going to be able to do it. And I can, I can tell you a couple of ways. You're. It probably aren't going to be as valuable to people as some other things. One thing that probably won't be as valuable is if you just start doing another live stream. If you just start doing another live stream, probably won't be as valuable as if you do something where there's a one on one connection. If you do something where you're talking to somebody, you're giving them something tangible, there's a tool. So it feels like it's more personal, like it feels like everybody's participating, like it feels like everybody is winning. And so it might not be doing a live stream. Right? That's number one. And number two, it's probably not for people that haven't done this before, saying that your job going forward is going to be to be a coach. Okay, Everyone I'm talking to that is out of work, that is under worked, that is underemployed, who's lost a company, what they're telling me they're going to do, their plan is they're going to be a coach. That's like 99 out of 100 people. Okay?

What I would strongly suggest is this for people who want to be coaches or trainers.

It'S a really hard job. It is a really hard job. It's super competitive. Everybody can jump into it because it's really, it's really easy to jump in. There's no competitive barrier, there's no cost barrier, anything like that. It's a really tough thing, right? And you have to go out there. You're typically a solopreneur when you do that. And you have to do your sales and your marketing in your contracting and you have to talk to people. It's really hard. What I would recommend is this. What I would recommend is talk to people and find out what do you need, what's most important to you now and what has to happen. How do you know that you're getting that thing, getting what you want? Because if you do that, what you're going to do is identify real needs that people have that you can build True products and services around products and services that, number one, can become bigger than you, just you. Because it's really tough to have a business that just relies on you. So that's number one. And number two, that way you can create a product or a service or an asset or something that you can then go and potentially sell or create some type of exit for down the road. So again, I don't think the answer is necessarily to just start live streaming and just start telling people that you're a coach. Instead, be the most relevant person in your space by adding value. Make the connections personal, make them personal and find out what products or services that they need today and adapt every single thing. Adapt what you do around around new and emerging customer needs. There are some huge winners that are going to come out of this market. Some huge winners. There'll be losers too, but huge winners. And again, the people that are the winners are going to be the ones that spend the most time asking the most questions and listening with the beginners, with the beginner's mind. Before we wrap today.

There'S one last thing that I want to share. So I mentioned earlier this week that I really needed help. I really needed help pulling together more information, pulling together more resources. I needed help getting information.

To more people. And it was really cool because I had been contacted by, and I'm going to announce this next week who it is, but I got a call about a week ago and the call was at like, gosh, it was probably 10 o' clock at night. And it was from one of the biggest technology companies in the world. And they said, we want to help right now, we just want to help business. We want to provide.

Information, data, tools, materials. Like we want to provide what small business needs to get through this period and come out stronger. And they just said, what can we do? And so as a result of that conversation, there was a domino effect that took place over the last week. And so there's some really neat things that we're going to announce.

Starting next week and that you guys will be seeing.

The moral of this story is.

Their goal was to be relevant. And to be relevant not by trying to sell a different product, but through service. They totally came from a service mindset. It was so damn cool and all the way to the top of the company. And so I'm saying to do the same thing in your business, come from a place of service, come from a place of empathy, come from a place of love. And by the way, that is the future. The future is love and business I want to thank you guys for watching and listening for more ever you are this week Tune in Monday through Friday from 10 to 11 Pacific Time and I would love to hear any thoughts you have, any questions you have, any feedback that you have either in this thread. Shoot me a dm.

You guys know how to find me and and then we'll reshape the show around what's most important to you and what you need next week. For all of you that are applying for the PPP today, would you please be sure to send this group, this community, you know, what you learned through that process. Please share it with me what you learned through this process and I will continue throughout the weekend today and throughout the weekend to be adding links to our group. You know what now A guide to Managing through Coronavirus and Uncertain Times. I look forward to seeing you guys on Monday. Have an amazing weekend. Take care.