Scott Duffy on Overcoming Coronavirus, Recession & Uncertainty Business Guide, Episode 16

Good morning, everyone. Good morning.

It is Monday morning and I hope you guys had a great weekend, an awesome weekend.

This is Scott Duffy and I'm going to spend the next couple of minutes letting this stream propagate throughout the Internet. We're coming to you live from YouTube and Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Periscope, and we're all over social right now. And while this is propagating, I just want to say good morning and welcome and I hope that all of you had an amazing weekend. We're going to talk a lot about what happened this weekend, today, and.

What did you do while you're jumping on. By the way, if you're new to the show or to watching live, what I'd love you to do is, is write down your name, tell us who you are, what industry that you're in, and the biggest challenge that you're having right now, the biggest challenge you're having today in your business, in your personal life, whatever it is, so that we can tailor the show. I can do everything I can to tailor the show and answer your questions, to help you, to protect your cash, to stabilize your business and really navigate through these uncertain times. So again, if you are just joining us, I want to welcome you. I hope you had an amazing weekend. I'm in Los Angeles today. For those of you who know me and know me well, I go back and forth between LA and Newport beach, which is about an hour down south, and was there through the weekend. It was incredible. And we'll be in LA all week. And I want to welcome all of you. Patrick Carney, good to see you. That's right. Let's rock this week. Brian Hardy, it's always good to see you and have you join us. And for all of you guys on YouTube and on Instagram, I want to say good morning and thank you so much for joining. So we have so much to talk about today and.

It was a really interesting weekend for me. I woke up on Saturday and I was exhausted. I don't know about you, but I was exhausted. Like, I feel for the last two, three weeks I had been running so hard with my head down, doing everything I could to learn what was going on, to help dissect what was going on, to help share it with other people. And I woke up on Saturday. It was like I couldn't get out of bed. I don't know if any of you guys felt the same way.

But what it felt like was when I woke up this morning and I talked to people, I've been on the phone all morning. And as I've talked to people, it feels like there's a little bit of a sense of settling in that's taking place. So we're going into our third, fourth week of what's going on here with coronavirus, and.

I think people are starting to settle in a little bit more to the routine of staying at home and working at home and having. Having the kids at home and not spending as much time outside and with people. And, and. And so this morning, I've sensed more of a sense of calm, and I think that's a really good thing. I also think, you know, President Trump announced that he was extending the.

The. The social distancing guidelines that he first announced two weeks ago through the end of April. And I think that just knowing what we're up against, sometimes just knowing can be curative. And so, again, I want to thank all of you guys for joining us. And again, if you're just joining for the first time, my name is Scott Duffy, and this show is what Now? An Entrepreneur's Guide to Managing Through Coronavirus and Recession and Uncertain Times. And I want to welcome you from wherever you're listening. You can tune in each day at 10am Pacific Time to watch the live broadcast on YouTube and Facebook, or listen nationwide throughout the day on Nash on Dash Radio, or you can download the podcast. And this show is really for entrepreneurs. It's for intrapreneurs, it is for micro businesses, small businesses, solopreneurs. Anyone out there that is either running or thinking about starting a business and adjusting today. And I want to start the day by just sharing some of the things that I saw this morning that I think are important for all of us to know. Number one, President Trump extended the social distancing guidelines through April 30th. And I just saw an announcement about 10 minutes ago that South Florida has taken it a step further, and they've actually extended those guidelines until the end of May. Now, there was a $2 trillion stimulus package that was announced on Friday, was signed into law on Friday, and that provides a combination of SBA loans and government grants. All weekend, this was my focus. My focus was on where is the money and how can I help you guys get access to it? And so there's a couple things I want to share. The first is this. The first is, if you have not applied for government assistance, I need you to get on it today. I need you to get on it, because as soon as all this was announced, there was such a flood of people that went to the SBA website to apply for loans that the site has gone down multiple times. And my understanding by Friday afternoon was that the SBA was about a week behind processing those applications. So if you're looking for relief, if that's what you need, if you're looking for some type of SBA relief in the form of a loan or a grant, I really encourage you to jump on that today. And there are a whole bunch of different types of loans and grants that you may be. That you may qualify for. So there's not just national, there's local. And here's what I recommend you do. I have seen people have so much success with this in, in the last 72 hours. What I need you to do is open up your browser, go to Google and type in stimulus loans or stimulus grants or small business loans or small business grants in your county and in your city. It is incredible what counties and cities are doing today to support small businesses. So as an example, what I did this weekend is I typed in small business grants. Orange county. And I typed in small business loans. Orange County. I typed in disaster relief, Orange county in la. I typed in coronavirus grants and loans Orange County. And what came up, I couldn't believe. It was a whole page of loans that I was qualified for and grants. This is money that's given to us that we don't need to repay that's being provided by either the county, the city, or businesses or entrepreneurs supporting people like you and me. So again, it's not just about applying on the national, the federal level. It's also about doing those Google searches and applying on the county and on the city level. Also. I need you to do the same search for your niche. Super important. So business loans, business grants for fashion. So I was with Sita this weekend, business loans and business grants for fashion. She has a fashion business. Business loans, business grants, Coronavirus fashion. Fashion business, Los Angeles, Louisiana. County fashion business. There are niche opportunities and grants all over the place. And I need you to go and get those. And then finally super niche out so you can do. And again, I've seen this all weekend. I've done it myself, I've tested it myself. Coronavirus relief loans, Coronavirus relief grants and then niche it out. Mamapreneur, solopreneurs, micropreneurs. And there is money and there are more opportunities every day that are going up online. And I encourage you to jump on these because as soon as they come up, as soon as they come up, they're wiped out. People are jumping on these things quickly. And the Money is being distributed. I'm see, I was talking to Kedma over the weekend. Many of you saw Kedma o on this show last week. She was on a couple of times. And Kadma is a former director for the sbdc, the Small Business Development Council that works side by side with the sba. And her job, her job for years, and she was the best at it, was helping businesses like yours and mine to not only find funding through government programs, but also nationwide grant programs. And what she did is she broke it down. And all weekend the two of us went back and forth and talked about these programs. And what she was sharing is a lot of the new grant opportunities. So again, I just gave you a bunch of things to search. A lot of those opportunities, they come and they close within 48 hours. That's what's happening. That's how many people are applying. So they come and they close in 48 hours. So if you want to get government funding, you want to find government grants, you want to find these local and these niche opportunities. Think of it this way. From the time I see it, I've got 48 hours to apply. Now, this weekend I put a link in our group, in our Facebook group to a SBA program that Kedma identified on Saturday, a new program that came out of the stimulus that enabled me. I was able to fill out, and you can too, just click the link. In our group, I was able to fill out a two page form. That's it, a two page form. I didn't have to submit financials. I didn't have to submit a P and L. I didn't have to submit a balance sheet. I didn't have to submit any of that. All I had to do was fill out a two page form and sign it. And then, and that was for an SBA loan for $10,000. Now, through this special program that Kedma found, if you don't qualify for the loan, you can qualify for the $10,000 grant. And that application was also two pages and I didn't need all the supporting. And then with regard to support, there was a single page and it had two. This is it. It had two things in it. Your sales and then your cost of goods. And all you had to do is write them in. So it was five pages. It took me a total of 20 minutes to fill it out, sign it and submit it. And that's, that's for a $10,000 government SBA loan or a $10,000 grant through the government. Super simple. And a lot of this stuff out there right now is just as simple because the government and these organizations. Sarah Blakely, the founder of Spanx, has an amazing organization that supports women entrepreneurs. And these groups are trying to make it as easy as possible for you to apply and to get money into your account as fast as you possibly can to help you to move forward. So again, with regard to stimulus, you got to get on it. Apply national, do Google searches for local, do Google searches for niches, and do Google searches for your sector. Super important. Don't wait, get started. Also a really great time for all of us to take a look because we're doing all of this financial planning, we're re engineering our lives financially. It's a great time to take a look at your trusts and your wills and your medical powers of attorney. I want to share with you what I did on.

On Saturday I had a call with my good friend Al Manfrey. Al Manfrey is a financial planner. He's based in Orange County. He's in this group. He's a frequent commenter and stuff like that. You can find Al in this group. I called Al. Al is the person who takes care of my trusts and my wills and my medical powers of attorney. And we did a zoom call. It was a 30 minute call. He told me what to prepare. It took me 15 minutes to prepare prior to the call. By the end of the call he had all the information that he needed. He was able then to send me a follow up to confirm all the answers to the information that he needed. He got that out to me within an hour. And then tomorrow, so we started on Saturday, Tomorrow's Tuesday. So what's that? Two, three days?

He is having a notary come to the house so that I can sign my updated trust will and medical power of attorney. It was that simple. You see, sometimes we think this stuff is so doggone complicated. But as entrepreneurs, as business owners, as people that have accumulated wealth, we have money in the stock market, we may own a property. It is so important that we protect the those things in the event that something happens to us. And what a better time than now to think about that. So again I use Al. But I highly encourage you. Taking a look at this, at this space now some good and inspiring stories that I saw over the weekend. First of all, I frickin love entrepreneurs. I love entrepreneurs. I love just business in this country because, because it's people like you and me that identify the problem, figure out how to solve it, figure out how to get it financed. And this weekend, so we had a Problem. Two weeks ago, three weeks ago, we had tests for coronaviruses that weren't working, that were ineffective. And in two weeks we've gone from those tests taking eight days to take and to turn around with a result to over the weekend we were, it was announced we were down to 45 minutes to last night, 15 minutes and this morning five minutes to take a test and to get the results. And that is a result of American businesses, American leadership really seeing a problem and getting to work and figuring out how to solve it. And I love this expression, you give an entrepreneur a big problem and not enough, quite, not quite enough time to solve it. And it's amazing to see what they're able to do. The other innovation, by the way, that came out of that process of simple testing is the way that we test. And again, it's innovation. What used to happen, actually, what I believe is happening until tomorrow is you would take a swab, actually the doctor would take a swab. Now check this out. They have to put on a mask, they have to put on gloves, they have to put on something to cover themselves, a protective suit. They would take a swab, they would put it way up your nose, okay? They culture and then what they do is they put it in a bag, they go into the next room, they'd submit it. Now check this out. You got to take off your mask, throw, throw it away, throw away your gloves, throw away the protective gear and you need new stuff. Now again, that is a reason why I've been saying this and nobody's believed me. That is why a hospital in New York dealing with this coronavirus, the average hospital goes through 70,000 masks a day. 70,000. So the innovation that came out of this is now they developed a self administered test. So what you're able to do is the doctor can come in or the nurse, they're in their stuff, they give you something, they set it down, you take it, it's a phone thing. You, you do this swab, you put it in a bag, you write your name on it and other information and you drop it into a thing. Now you've self tested, takes a matter of minutes to get the result back. And the person who gave that to you, the medical professional, doesn't need to change. So think about how much that is going to save in terms of innovation. So again, super cool. What else did I see this weekend? Cigna and Humana. If you have Cigna or Humana healthcare insurance and you're afraid of going to get tested, you're afraid that Maybe you're sick and you can't afford to cover the cost. They are coming to covering 100% of the cost of coronavirus treatment, which I think is super cool. And I would expect everybody else to fall in line after that. So that's, that's super cool. Now, with regard to protecting you, let's talk about that today. With regard to protecting you through this crisis, we now know that we're going to be under these stay at home orders and social distance distancing as a country for at least the next 30 days. And if you take a look at most of the data out there, it shows that we'll probably be in that position much longer. If you want to learn more about coronavirus, how it works in some of these timelines that everyone's looking at, take a look in our group. Dr. V. Duck Vong, really good friend of mine, he's a member of our mastermind group. Doug did an incredible video that he posted this weekend, incredible video that will help explain all of this to you. It's about 30 minutes long. It's gotten 3.5 million views in about 48 hours. I highly recommend that you take it out. Check it out, it's in this group. So if we're figuring that it's going to be at least 3, 30 more days of social distancing and probably, like I've been saying, we're going to be in this position through the end of the summer. We got to do a couple things. We got to protect our cash, we got to adapt our businesses, and we need some new business lessons to help us to get there. On adapting. I'm sorry, on the cash. Number one, quick reminder, if you haven't seen this program before, I need you to go back to your bills the last two months, print them out, and any auto pays that you don't absolutely need. I need you to kill those things today. Kill them today. Number two, with regard to your rent, your mortgage, your credit cards, other big payments that you make, I need you to go and either call those people who are holding those loans or go to the websites and what you'll find is everyone will work with you. Car companies are pushing back payments, deferring payments three to six months. Credit card companies, three to six months. Rent one to three months, Mortgage companies up to six months. What this does is enable you to protect your cash, to push back these payments without any negative effect on your credit. Super. It's so, so important. And if you need a job, go and find a job. There's been over 3 million jobs that have opened up in the past two weeks. And here's what's really cool. I've shared with you some of the places that are hiring in this group and on this program. Everyone from Amazon hiring a hundred thousand people to Instacart. Instacart that goes into grocery stores, takes your order and brings it home. Hiring 300,000 people. Well, there is such a need to bring people into these companies quickly that what's happening is instead of paying you monthly or paying you bimonthly, many of these companies over the weekend have adapted and now they're paying daily. So if you need cash right away, many of these companies are paying daily. And that may be something, if you have a business you want to think about with your workers to help to provide them with a sense of stability and some money to go home and to feed the families and to pay to keep the lights on is paying daily. This is a new thing that we're seeing. It really came on over the weekend, so I wanted to share it with you now, every day I love to give you guys some ideas on how businesses are adapting. Because, you know, the most important skill that any of us can have today is the ability to adapt. And what happens too often is we get too stuck to the way that we used to do things. We think that because something worked well three weeks ago, it's going to work well today or into the future. But the most important thing that we need to do is listen to our customers and adapt. And there's some really cool innovation that has happened and, and been announced over the weekend. I've shared with you things over the past two weeks. Some simple innovations that happen immediately, like fitness instructors, yoga studios, wellness centers, taking their courses and putting them online. And what this was able to do in many cases is, number one, keep these companies or these. Some of them were studios, some of them were solopreneurs. It's enabled them to continue to get the subscription revenue that was already coming in the door. Now, maybe less, maybe they've had to alter their programs. But teaching yoga and having somebody do that at home or a fitness class or meditation class or a wellness class can be the type of thing that you easily repurpose and innovate and show at home. So we've talked about things like that. We've talked about people who are in the salon business going and doing in home haircuts and nail parties and things like that. But a couple things I found this this weekend that I thought were super interesting. The first the medical waste business is completely taking off. If you're looking for a business to jump into, a business to jump into, the medical waste business has completely taken off. Notaries have completely taken off. I told you, I did. My trust over the weekend, I can't get in front of, so he has to send a notary to come see me. If you want to earn extra cash, it's a great place to be. Payroll cards. This is a new innovation. It's something that's really started to take off over the past couple weeks. What's happening is many people out there because workers, because they need quick access to cash, or gig workers, new gig workers need quick access to cash. Or we have a small. We have a business and people on the front line are hiring quickly. And these people are recently unemployed. They need quick access to cash. Now what we see happening is these companies are beginning to distribute PayPal cards and other types of payment cards. So now payments can be made on a daily or twice a month or on a monthly basis directly to a card that you can debit from immediately. And I'll tell you why that's also an incredible innovation. What we've seen as the markets dropped since this whole thing, this coronavirus pandemic started is a lot of people are out of cash in their bank accounts. And so what happens is when our employees are out of cash in their bank accounts, any money that direct deposits into those accounts goes to pain how overdrawn they are, and instead. And so they don't get access to the cash. So a lot of people are choosing to go to these jobs that are now being formed and they're asking for these cards. So, again, just something that I wanted to share, another innovation that I saw this weekend that I thought was super cool. And we're going to talk about this in a second, how to get here. Open Table. So Open Table is a business that makes all of its money being paid by restaurants or advertisers, but primarily restaurants that enable you to go onto an app. So you go onto an app with Open Table and what you see pop up is the inventory of all of the local restaurants. And you can set a reservation in OpenTable that goes to the restaurant and that's how they do their booking. Well, can you imagine if your opentable and so many, if not nearly all of the big restaurants or restaurant chains in the country have closed down, how in the hell are you going to support your business? Or what are you going to do? I'll tell you. You are going to talk to Customers, you are going to ask the market, you're going to, you're going to look around and instead of trying to innovate and come up with some idea yourself and thinking, you know what, maybe this is a good idea, maybe somebody will want this. What Open Table did is, and I really applaud these guys is they went out there and they talked about to business owners all over the country and they asked, what do you need? We have scheduling software. So you know what they're rolling out this week with Open Table, you are going to be able to reserve the time. You go to the grocery store. Now, this is a huge innovation and this is a great example of listening to customers on both sides. Grocery stores have been completely overwhelmed by, by long lines and huge surge times. And it creates all kinds of issues. It creates issues in terms of restocking, you know, so you go in and you can't get what you need. And it's not that they don't have it. It's they're in a customer demand surge period. So they can't go to the back and bring it out. So, you know, it creates those kinds of issues. And then on the other side, customers don't have the time or don't want to wait in line so close being so close to other people that may infected. So OpenTable said, what if I solve the problem that both of you guys have and now you go to our app and now you schedule your time just like a restaurant and that's how you get in the grocery store. Man, I thought that was a great example from Open Table about how to innovate in this market.

And that just brings me to this idea of adapting and this idea of, you know, how do you do it? OpenTable is a great example of listening to customers and giving them what they need the way that they need it. And again, the two most important questions that any of us will ever ask when trying to adapt our business during this period is, number one, what is most important to you? The customer, what's most important to you? The second question is what has to happen? What has to happen? Or how do you know that you're getting what you want? Here's the example. What's most important to you? And hello. Tara Garrison, you're amazing. This example is for you. So what's most important to you? I want to exercise. Okay, cool. I want to stay in shape. How many people do you know right now? Maybe it's you. Maybe. How many people do you know that are afraid that they are going to Put on more weight over the next month than any time in their life. I'll tell you what, I think I'm pretty disciplined when it comes to the way I eat. I drink a ton of water, I got a big jug next to me right now, but, but when I'm in Newport beach, the way I've set my place up, my desk and my studio at the house is right next to the kitchen. So you know, as I'm going through the day and I'm sitting there and I'm doing my work and you know, whatever, and I kind of look over and I kind of think about what's in the cupboard. And it's really easy to go over, eat and to snack or my daughters will come in and they'll come in and they'll start to cook something or bake something. Man, that sounds good. And it's really easy to walk over there. So there are a lot of people right now that are concerned about, about gaining weight and not staying in shape. So if I ask somebody what's most important to you or what is it that you want and they say exercise. Well, what has to happen? Because a lot of people have a different definition of what exercise is or what exercise means or how they should exercise. And so the second question, what has to happen? How do you know that you're, that you're getting what you want? And what will happen is the person will start to give you their rules about what it is that they would pay for as it relates to exercise. Well, it's got to be easy if it's live. It's got to be after I get my kids up and running in the morning. You know, if it's live, it's got to be something I can do with weights or without weights if it's live. And what's going to happen is they'll give you their rules. And so our job then is to match our product or in our innovation, innovate we by simply matching that customer's buyer blueprint. And I just want to encourage you to do this because if you don't, you're going to screw up just like I have in the past. I'll give you an example. One of my biggest screw ups ever when it came to innovation and taking a product to market. I mean, I screwed the pooch on this one. So a few years ago I was speaking at an event, there were like a thousand people there and I got at the stage and a bunch of people came up and they were, they had business ideas and one of These people said to me, I've got an idea. I've got something I want you to do. And he said, and there's no way you can say no. And I said, what is this? And he said, I have a list and this list has over 20 million people on it. 20 million people. And this person came, check this out, from a Christian call center. So the biggest Christian call center in the United States over the years has been developing this list. And here's how they got it. Say you watch somebody like Joel Olsteen on the weekend or TD Jakes or one of these big televangelists when they say, call to make a donation or call to buy this or call to do this. What happens is you would call to this private label, this white label call center. So you would think that you're talking to TD TD Jake's team, but you're talking to this guy's. And what they did is a deal with the call with the televangelists. And they said, we will reduce the amount we charge per call if we can own the data with you. So this guy comes up to me, he said, I've got 20 million names, all the data. We know everything about these people. I want you to market to the list. And I'm thinking to myself, with 20 million people, there's no way that you can lose. So I actually went and raised money. I partnered with people, all that kind of stuff. And here's what happened. For the first campaign, I decided that we were gonna mail one offer to a million people. One offer, one email offer to a million people. And by the way, I gotta tell you something, just the idea of emailing to a million people, like, just doesn't happen. Like it was. That alone was crazy. Here's the thing in life, I used to believe when a good opportunity was presented to you, say yes and figure out how to do it. But what I've learned in my life is that is the wrong way to move forward. You have to say yes and then figure out who knows how to do it. So what I did is I didn't follow my own advice. And I'm like, here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to mail to a million people. And I picked a product because I felt with a million people that we could mail to, there was no way. If I just picked any product and cast the widest possible net, there was no way that a bunch of people wouldn't buy. I'm rich. So here's what happens. I send the Email out. We send the email out, our team, and.

I'll tell you what happened. In less than five minutes, we were cut off by just about every Internet service provider, right? So that was. That was problem number one. Everyone cut us off as spam. That was number one. Number two is.

Guess how many people signed up for the order. Out of a million people that we mailed.

Zero. We did not get one person to buy the product. I cannot even believe that. That. To this day, I can't even believe that happened. Not one person, not one person bought this product out of a million people. And so what I did is I kind of stepped back and it was a huge failure. And I. I said to myself, you know, Scott, you gotta follow your. Your own advice, your own counsel. Who is the best person in the world at figuring out what to do with this list, in this data. So I asked my network, I put it out, and I was in. I was introduced to somebody named Ben Morris. Ben Morris is the best data guy that I know on the planet. I've worked with him so much since then. And what Ben did. Ben did is he said, scott, it's not the size of a list. It's. It's the quality of the list. We've heard this before. And he took this entire list and he put it through these three big databases and he broke it down. And what he found is, out of these million people, we could break those million people into 10 big buckets. And then we chose one of the buckets. And he said, let's really niche this down. He said, scott, I promise you the niches, the riches are in the niches. Let's break this down. He said, let's come up with a super targeted customer avatar. And I said, what does that mean? He said, well, let me help you. He said, is this a man or a woman? This customer, this target. I said, let's say it's a woman. He said, great, it's a Christian list. Let's give her a name. Christina. How old is Christina? And we came up with an age. She was 40 to 50, 55 years old. Where does she live? Is she an empty nester? Does she like pets? Does she like big pets or little pets? Does she like dogs or cats? Does she like big dogs or little dogs? What kind of little dog does she like? And what we did is we came up with a list of 50 different things. We just asked ourselves questions. 50,000, 50 different things about this one very specific target customer. And guess what? Out of that 20 million people, that original list 300,000 people met our perfect criteria. And so then all we did is this. All we did is this is we talked to that one person. And here's the thing Richard Branson taught me. If you, if you solve one problem for one person in a big market, it's a billion dollar business. So all we did is love on and start writing and talking to Christina. And guess what? We did our first email campaign to that 300,000 people and it was one of the most successful things I've ever done in my life. And so what I really encourage you to do, what I really encourage you to do is this is while you're thinking through adapting and adjusting and iterating and repositioning your business for this market, don't get in the trap of casting the widest possible net. Don't just throw as many things as you possibly can against the wall. What I want you to do is use the example of open table. Go out there and find people out there that are having real problems and listen to them. Find out what is most important to them. What would hap you, what would what has to happen? Or how do they know they're getting the things they want and then just focus on solving that that problem for that one customer. And the deeper you go with that one person, the further and faster you'll go and with far less capital. So again, it is all about that target customer. By the way, there's some people who are just jumping in that I want to say hello to. First of all, Doc v Duck. If you have not seen Duck docs video from this weekend about coronavirus, you need to jump into our group, into our thread right now. And again, if you aren't a member yet, please join. It is what Now An Entrepreneur's guide to Managing through Coronavirus Recession and Uncertain times. And all day, every day I'm out there trying to cultivate and curate for all of you the very best resources to help you to move your businesses forward, to help you to protect your cash, and to help position you to come out of this thing much stronger than you were before it all started. And Doc Dr. V. Doug Vong did a video on what coronavirus is, what it means to you and what it means in terms of our timeline. So how we should be thinking about this for Our business got 3 1/2 million views over the weekend and it's in our thread. Please take a look. Also in our thread we have links, direct links to SBA programs, to government grant programs, to other lending programs. Again, we've gone around and we've cultivated all of this and curated it. So take a look. I'm trying to save you time and I'm trying to help you to get there faster. So please, please take a look at that.

Juan, it is great to see you today. Thank you so much for dropping by. James Blakemore, amazing to see you. Julie, Ben, so wonderful to have all of you guys here. Thanks for joining. Tarek Garrison, love you to death. And thank you so much for joining. By the way, if you're getting any value out of this show today, would you please just do one thing for me? Would you please just share, please share this with other entrepreneurs that you think could help, could get help from this program and also guide them to Take a look in our thread in our group and you'll see prior episodes labeled by what we're talking about to help answer questions that people have today. Super important.

There's another thing I wanted to hit on today and.

Something that has really hit close to home.

Over the weekend, and that is.

Suicide and drug use through this period. Suicide and drug use through this period.

So.

We talk a lot about what's happening, what to do. I try and give you tips and tricks, like every day to help you to protect your cash and to stabilize your company and all that stuff. But there's something else that's going on out there that's the real, real. And what's going on out there is there are a lot of people that are really hurting and they don't know what to do and they don't know what this means for them, and they don't know how to handle and how to manage the stress. And I know how that feels firsthand. I know how that feels firsthand.

Years ago, when the market crashed in 2008 and I lost everything before turning it around. When I kind of went through this valley, you know, I lost, went upside down, $400,000, nearly $400,000 and, and had to recover. And what I did and the way I did, all of that went away and I had to reinvent myself. And the money was going out of my account faster than I ever could have imagined. And I basically froze. It was as if I became paralyzed.

I just stopped. And while I stopped, money kept coming out of my account. I kept getting deeper and deeper in a hole and I started to go down this rabbit hole in my head that led to a really serious depression. And, you know, over time, I, you know, I contemplated and really, my life was probably saved at one point by calling a suicide helpline I was in a church parking lot in my car and I was about to make some really bad decisions. And the one thing that I know is this. The one thing I know is that.

We should never be making our biggest decisions at our lowest point.

And I know that when someone's depressed and someone is really hurting.

What is low to them feels like something that maybe they can't get out of, maybe that they're embarrassed of, maybe they don't want to talk about, maybe they don't want to even acknowledge is happening to them. I know how hard it is to get out. I know how unrational your mind becomes. And so.

What I really want to encourage you to do is keep your eyes open for others right now. Keep your eyes open because there are millions of people out there that really need help. And if you're talking to someone, by the way, I'm going to. I can't. I debated on whether or not to do this, but I'm going to be partnering with a national suicide prevention hotline and I'm going to be putting the link inside of this thread. If there's anyone that you know is having a really hard time, please, please talk to them. Please encourage them to share. Please get them help and support by getting them on or to a hotline. Because people who are running these hotlines are really amazing. They're, they're coached, they're trained to help people in those positions. And if you are watching today and you're having a really rough time and you're not really, you're not sure where to go, you know, shoot me a dm, shoot me a dm, shoot me note, shoot me a text, shoot me an email and I would love to, to, to be there for you. But again, I wasn't sure if I was going to talk about this today. I wasn't sure how personal I wanted to get.

But I know that I've been that close and I know that as we go into April and four more weeks of these social distancing things and businesses remain closed and more entrepreneurs go out of business and more people run out of cash, that this is going to become a bigger and bigger issue. So please, please, keep your eyes open. Listen to what people are saying and how they're talking. Watch how they're holding themselves and their posture. If they have a self defeating kind of way, language is everything. Language is everything. If people are talking in a self defeating way, don't just let that go over your shoulder. Know that they are probably crying out for help and I want to share also. I mean.

You know, some of this is really hard to share, but I want to share that everybody's been through it.

There was one guy I was. I was talking to this weekend. He has over 200 franchises in the United States. 200 franchises. Business was going amazing. Had more money than you could have ever imagined just this weekend. And then one day, he lost everything. And when I talked to him, I said, where are you right now? And he said, I'm in my office. I'm actually curled up against the wall right now, laying down. I do not know what to do. I'm telling you, we've all been there in some shape, shot fashion or form in our lives. And the more successful somebody is professionally and financially, the more likely that they've been there in their business. They always remember the pain. And as a result, they are always, always, always willing to help.

Let me share another story. So I'm kind of going sideways today. I hadn't planned to talk about this, but I got a text right before we started, and it really bothered me. And I'm going to call somebody afterwards. And I haven't been able to stop thinking about it through today's program. So I apologize. Maybe we're not talking so much about business today. Maybe I'm not spending as much time as I should teaching you how to go and adapt.

But for the last 10 years, I think what's worked is.

Our trainers, our guides, our influencers, our media. It's all been about work harder. It's all been about work more. It's all been about hustle, hustle, hustle. And what I think all of us need to do together right now is bring love back into business. Bring love back into business. Because that's really where it starts. And what we need today. We have to love ourselves more than we've ever loved ourselves. We have to love our customers and care for our customers more than we ever have, because that's the only way we can adapt. We have to love the process. We have to fall in love with this process because it's going to make you better. And that's where we have to start with the foundation of love and business. And by the way, if any of this stuff resonates even with people that you think may be having a rough time, could you please share it? Could you please share this and let them know. Let them know I'm here. Let them know you're here. Let them know that we're all here for all of these people and we're going to start with love. And we're going to come from love, because that's the only place that we can do it. Okay? It's the foundation of everything.

That's really all I want to talk about right now. I'm just so concerned about a couple. I just. I care so much about people, and I know that you do, too. I have a friend. Let me tell this story. I have a friend, one of my best friends. And one of my best friends is very sick right now. She's very sick. And.

This friend had an event, and it was about five years ago, and it was a huge event, and she was in the public eye. And she called me. She. She wouldn't. She'd be okay with me using her name. Michelle called me and she said, this is 17 days before the event. She said, scott, she said, I have a problem. I said, what? She said, I am over a million and a half dollars under where I'm supposed to be. I can't afford to pay for the venue. I have thousands of people coming, and all of my big sponsors have pulled out.

And she said, they don't know what to do. And so I said, great, I'm on my way. So I went over to the house, and she was a wreck, because who wouldn't be, by the way? We've all been here in some way in business. And she said, I don't know what to do. And so what I did is I said, here's what I want you to do. You know, so many people, amazing people that have built incredibly successful things. They're incredibly successful business owners. I said, I want you to write down a list of the top 50 people. And then we did some other things.

And then what she did is this. And then what she did is she went to the convention center. She left her. Me. She went to the convention center and she talked to the person who ran it, and she said, I just want to share. I was just with Sky. I just want to share. This is where I am.

And she got really emotional. And the person who ran the convention center said this, said, michelle, I got one question for you, and one question only. What is your favorite flavor ice cream? And she's like, what? He said, what's your favorite flavor ice cream? And she said, strawberry. And he said, great, let's go across the street and get some strawberry ice cream. And he broke her pattern. And right there, she had an ally. And she went back after having that strength, and she started to reach out to all 50 people on her list. And she said, where she was. And instead of these people saying, how could you do that? How could you let that happen? Why would you do that? And making her feel awful, every single person to a person said, why didn't you share this sooner? I've been in this position or something like it before, and I just want to help. We're all in this together. Well, because of that help, she was able in 17 days to turn everything around and launch a successful event.

But here's the thing, and she and I have talked about this publicly when she announced. So I know she would be fine with me saying this is that she is. She's fighting cancer right now. And she had gone to an intuitive, and the intuitive said to her, said to her first meeting, I see what's in your body effectively. And this is when it started. And it was right in the middle of that period. And so I'm bringing this up because stress has a real emotional and a real physical impact on our bodies. So I need all of you right now to commit to a couple things. Put good things in your body. Move, keep it moving during this time, take care of you. That's the number one person to take care of you. And if you or someone that you see out there is really struggling mentally with their focus, okay, then we need to help them. Now, in terms of focus, one quick thing I want you to do, one exercise is this. When I was in that low spot in my life where I was in Newport Beach, I was in a church parking lot, I was in my car, and I was ready to make a couple of really bad decisions, and I called a suicide hotline prevention hotline. They got on the phone, and before I knew it, my car had a bunch of people around it. Anyway, it stopped some really bad things from potentially happening. And I share that with you because I want you to know if you're having a hard time, that we all. Many people go through this, but what happened is I learned a lesson out of this, and it took a friend to help me there. And the lesson was all around gratitude. And this is the last thing I want to share with you today is this, is that when you're going through a rough time, the place that you have to double down right now is gratitude. Because gratitude changes everything. And it changes everything because it shifts your perspective, and it gets you to focus on what you have instead of what you don't have. And so what I started doing is this. What I started doing is. And thank God for my buddy Dave Meltzer. My buddy Dave Meltzer. Many of you know him. If you don't go follow Dave. He's amazing. Dave is the one who gave me this exercise. On my phone. I have an iPhone. I set an alarm for twice a day.

7:30 in the morning and 7:30 at night. And when my alarm goes off, it's my gratitude alarm. And I've been doing this for years. As soon as it goes off, I say out loud three things that I'm grateful for. Three things that I'm grateful for. And it doesn't matter how big or how little they are, it could be, I'm grateful for this microphone. I'm grateful that my Internet is still up today. I'm grateful for this water. I'm grateful for whatever, right? Three things that I'm grateful for. And what I do is I taught my daughters this lesson from the very beginning. The alarm, the sound of the alarm was set to whatever their favorite song was at the time. So my gratitude alarm started out with Barney as the song. My gratitude alarm was barney. So it's 7:30 in the morning when you would hear I love you, you love me from that purple dinosaur. My daughters knew that it was time to say thank you. And automatically to this day, whenever they hear that alarm go off at 7:30 in the morning or 7:30 at night, they y in my house, they yell thank you. And then everyone says three things that they're thankful for. If you were with me at 7:30 in the morning or 7:30 at night and my alarm goes off, we do this together. But let's take it a step further. I want to give you extra credit. Okay, so we're going to start with gratitude. Twice a day. Do it for 30 days. It will change your life forever. Because again, twice a day, it's going to shift your perspective no matter what's going on around you and get you to focus on what you have versus what you don't have.

And the second thing is love. So I have kids. They're 10 and 11. They're amazing. I love my kids with every ounce of my soul, with every part of me. And I'm so proud about the way I love my kids. And about a month ago, somebody said to me, what would happen if you loved yourself the same way that you loved your kids? What would happen? And I thought about that, and I realized that one of my goals in life, something I pray for every day, is I want to be the biggest conduit of love on this planet and share it with entrepreneurs. And I want to help entrepreneurs in that way. And what I learned is you can't give what you don't have. And so until you open yourself up to receiving, until you love yourself that much, you can't love people anymore. And so, and so I do this. Now it's 7:30 in the morning, I do my gratitude alarm. Three things I'm grateful for. And then I say three things I love about myself. And then I take it one step further and I say three things I forgive myself for. Three things I forgive myself for. And it's an incredible exercise. You do that for a day. Oh wow. You do that for a week. This is crazy. You do it for a month. Holy shit. It's incredible. Look, there's an exponential factor in the way that we get results in the universe. If I do something today, I get the power of that thing to the first power. If I do it two days in a row, there's an exponential thing that happens. I get that to the second power. Three days to the third power. You see how momentum builds? Now here's the thing. You want to lose 10 pounds, you go on a 30 day diet. @ the end of the week, you throw it all away and you eat like junk. You eat like crap. Well, that following day, that Monday, you have to start again with that thing to the first power. Does that make sense? You have to start over all that momentum. So you get to the end of the month, day 30, and there's two people. One person has lost zero weight because they started over every week. The other person has lost not 10 but 20 pounds. And the difference is they understood the exponential factor related to doing something every single day. I always say this. I'd rather practice something five minutes a day than five hours on Saturday. And that's why. So again, your assignment today is this. It's simple. Your assignment is to set your gratitude alarm for 7:30 in the morning and 7:30 at night. Say three things you're grateful for and say them out loud. If there's people with you, make them do it as well. Also, if you want extra credit in the morning, three things you love about yourself and three things you forgive yourself for.

We got to do the work. And there's never been a more important time to do the work than now. There's never been a more important time for people like you and me to dig in, to double down and improve ourselves so that we can move ourselves and the people around us and the businesses that we have forward through this crisis. I love all of you. I can't wait to see you tomorrow. Please, if you got anything out of this, this show today, Will you please share it with others? I've got some really big announcements this week. I can't wait to share. We have a, we have a digital conference that's being planned two weeks from now with some of the biggest brands, some of the biggest trainers, some of the biggest celebrity entrepreneurs in the world. I'm really excited to announce a new sponsor this week. A big national sponsor is one of the biggest companies in the country is now jumped in to support this show and some of the things that we're going to be doing.

It'S really exciting and we're just going to get this word out to more people come from love, be grateful and I look forward to seeing you tomorrow. Take care. Bye. Bye.