Scott Duffy On What Does The Future Look Like. How Can You Reshape It To Benefit You

Good morning, everybody.

Good morning.

It is Scott. And we are just kicking things off here on Tuesday. And I'm going to give a little bit of time for people to. To jump into the. Into our live today. And good morning. Dave Drever. How you doing, bro?

Good to see you. Hop in. Derek, good morning to you. Aaron. Aaron, we got to connect.

Good morning. Do you pronounce it Margulit? That is a pretty name. Margalete. Awesome.

Awesome. So we're going to give it a few minutes for people to jump in this morning. And we have so many things to talk about.

We kicked this program off yesterday, and again, my idea here was to really create a community, to create a forum of people that could share, really, how to manage through these times, how to manage through a combination of coronavirus.

Recession, and all the uncertainty that surrounds us as business owners today. And.

I have received. I received about 300 direct messages yesterday after we did our.

Facebook Live, and it was shared around with people that had all kinds of questions. And we're going to use a lot of those questions to help kind of set the table for today's discussion and to help deal with or at least discuss some of the issues that are coming up the most frequently right now. Again, in my messages, what I'm seeing on television, if you guys aren't watching it, I've been watching the press conference this morning with Donald Trump and his team. I was up early getting updates and running around the Internet trying to find information to help all of you to manage through these crazy times. And while we get started this morning and before we really dive into it, I'd ask all of you to please share this Facebook Live with your groups, with your communities so we can. We can get the word out. We can help as many people as possible. And I also want to ask that during this program, you guys, I mean, let's make this a conversation. And I'm relying on you as much as you may be relying on some of the information that I'm going to provide. So please jump in with any questions that you have. Things that are working for you right now, things that aren't working for you right now, as we kind of go into our first true week of what feels like lockdown. And that lockdown word is a big word. And the folks that I was speaking to late last night this morning really were sharing with me that it's important for all of us to be prepared to be locked down, at least in most big cities, with an order coming at the national level starting later this week. And so, you know, this is the right time for all of us to be preparing. This is the right time for all of us to do the things that we need to do personally to protect ourselves and also professionally to protect ourselves. So, again, I just want to welcome everybody. Tim Owens, I see that you just jumped in. Patrick Carney, it's great to see you, Julie. Amazing to see you, Julie. This feels in many ways so much like some of what we went through back in.

2008 when I look at the airlines. John Stein, good morning. It's good to see you. And again, as we wait for more people to jump on, if you would like to, I would ask to please share this with your community, share this with your followers, share this with your fans so that we can get as much help as we really can from the community with regard to what is working and what is not working today as we all kind of collectively move forward. Like I mentioned earlier, I have gotten so many incoming calls, texts, emails, direct messages following yesterday's Facebook Live, and some of the same themes keep coming up. And so those are all things that I want to make sure that we address today. And again, if there's anything that you're experiencing right now at home in your business.

Anything that you want to share, please bring it up so that we can. We can address it. And while we're waiting for more people to hop on. Good morning, Andrea. What's up, Jim? What I would like to do is just a quick summary of some of the things that we talked about yesterday.

And the first is.

Hold on one second.

The first is. The first is this. You know, I used to think, and for me, this was pre 2008 thinking. I used to think that the most important job for me as a business owner, whether I was a solopreneur or was an entrepreneur that had a bigger company, that the most important job for me had something to do with leadership or communication. It had something to do with building a great team, having a great plan, whatever. But what I actually learned is that the most important job for all of us has nothing to do with business. The most important job for all of us as entrepreneurs is learning how to protect yourself. So if things don't work out as planned, they take longer than plan, they go sideways. Financially, you can protect yourself as much as possible so that you can bounce right back. And so the first thing that I shared with everyone yesterday, the first thing I asked all of you to do was, number one, protect yourself financially. And some of the ideas that I shared were to go through your bank statements. Open up your bank statements over the last two months and take a look at things that have been hitting your account automatically because sometimes we lose track of those things. Take a look at what's hitting your personal bank account, like autopays, like apps that you subscribe to on a monthly basis. Take a look at things like your.

Your car payments, your rent payments, your credit card payments, things like that. And what I recommended yesterday was, number one, to cancel everything that you do not absolutely need right now. Cancel everything that you absolutely need. That's number one. And number two, for bigger payments that are recurring payments, things like your, your rent, things like your, your mortgage, things like your credit cards. Make sure right now, I have several friends, several colleagues that have done this. Make sure to reach out to your lenders, your credit card issuers and things like that and tell them that you need relief. And what I'm finding is that these groups, these are giving relief from 30 to 60, in some cases to 90 days. So if you say, here's the situation that I'm in, here's what's going on with my business, I can't pay this credit card bill right now, you know, what they will likely do is hold off that payment for the next 30, 60, 90 days. So again, we found this with a lot of issuers, we've also found this with other lenders. So friends of mine that have, they've got commercial lines of credit, they've got commercial loans, they're reaching out to the banks, they're finding the same kind of response. So again, the number one thing that I want to ask all of you to do is make sure that you protect the cash that you have in the bank by not overspending and canceling anything that you're not using personally. And in your business, any apps getting relief on credit card payments, getting relief on mortgage payments, getting relief on lines of credit and other banking stuff as well. It is also my understanding.

It'S my understanding you guys have probably seen this in the news as well, that, that there is going to be some kind of announcement over the next couple of days at the federal level with regard to rent and with regard to company leases. So what I would say is, you know, most people do not pay their rent until the first of the month. And if that's the case and you're worried about that, I would kind of suspend that worry right now. I wouldn't go there because I think that there's going to be some kind of relief that is given to everyone to all of us with regard to rent payment and, and commercial lease payments. So those are things that I wanted to share.

We talk about protecting yourself financially, protecting your business financially. That was the second thing that we hit on yesterday and we talked about going through the same exercise again with your bills, with your lenders and things like that. You know, the most important thing today, your number one job of being in business today is to be in business tomorrow. And when we're faced with uncertain times, the thing that we have to do first most and be the most committed to is acting quickly and acting quickly around preserving our cash. So again, protect yourself financially, protect your business financially. The next thing that we talked about yesterday was controlling the narrative. And by the way, I'm going to jump in to the questions that I received in just a bit, but I wanted to review what we talked about yesterday. Tim Slevin, amazing to see you. Daniella, Janice, great to see you in here today. And just a reminder to please, I ask you to please share this on social media, this Facebook Live, in this group with other folks that may be able to benefit as entrepreneurs. So we talked about protecting yourself financially. We talked about protecting and preserving your cash and your business financially. The next thing that we talked about yesterday was controlling the narrative we within your company. And it's so important. And I remember sharing a story about my experience last week and how it relates to controlling the narrative. Last Tuesday, this time last week, I was speaking at an event. It was a yoga conference in Ojai. And everyone who was at the event had been in session the entire day. And so nobody was looking at their phone. They didn't really have access to all of the real time news that was breaking. And when I finished my session and I walked out to where I was going to sign books, I signed about 200 books. When I walked outside, people were picking up their phones and looking at the news for the first time. And it was crazy. Here's what happened. They had spent a bunch of time that day and the day before talking about the business and the vision for the business and a little bit about how what was going on in the economy and with coronavirus may impact business owners. But it was a very positive dialogue. But here's what happened. What happened was when those 200 people lined up to get get the signed book, what they started to do is they started to look at the news and they saw for the first time these headlines. They saw that the city of San Francisco had closed down all public events, that the Golden State warriors were not going to allow fans into their stadium. They saw that Rudy Gobert from the Utah Jazz had been diagnosed with coronavirus, that the NBA had shut down. They saw that Tom Hanks and his wife Rita were diagnosed with coronavirus. And so what happened was they started to create this own dialogue in their head. They started to define kind of what this meant to them and create their own narrative for what would happen with the company. Unfortunately, the leader wasn't there, wasn't there to see this. So by the time we got to the last person in the line, the narrative around the company was pretty doggone negative and what it could mean to these entrepreneurs, these franchise owners, these business owners. And so the number one thing that you need to do as a leader today when you have a team, is to control the dialogue. And the way that you control the dialogue is not by trying to avoid the facts, what's going on out there. It's not by trying to hide from the truth. Because here's what happens in a company. What happens in the company, especially the more people that you have that work for you in this business, whether they're employees or contractors, is the bigger your company gets, the more time you spend managing, and the less time you spend directly interfacing with customers. So what happens is when bad news happens, it's highly likely that those people that work for you knew what was coming way before you did. And so there's really no point. There's no use in trying to hide from things. Instead, I would be completely straight up about, here's what's going on, what's going on in the market, here's what we know or think we know about how that's going to impact our business. Here's what that means to you. And then what I would do is, is I would engage my people and ask for how they may be able to help, or what kind of solutions or how the business can adapt to what's going on in the market. And this is so important because we've gone out there and we have hired great people. This is a great time to engage.

With those people and to get their feedback. One of the things we talked about yesterday was protecting your business by getting in front of customers. There's never been a better time to get in front of customers, customers. And the reason is you have an opportunity as a business owner to actually take advantage of this situation. And taking advantage doesn't mean taking advantage of people, not in that sense, but really taking advantage of an opportunity by identifying what are the new needs that are arising for your customers in this market and how are you uniquely positioned in in order to develop products and services or create changes in your existing products and services to better address those needs. So what I recommend you do today, and again, just summarizing from yesterday is I recommend that you get the phone, you get in front of as many of your customers as you can today and come from a place of service. I recommend that you do this with a video if possible, so that person can see you and you can see them and that emotion will transfer through in your empathy. Get on Zoom, get on Facebook, get on, you know, get on Google Hangouts or Skype, one of the free platforms. But ask these customers, you know, what it is that they're going through, what new needs they anticipate, not just today, but over the coming months, how your current products or services may be able to help, and if there's anything that they see that you can do with your product or service to adjust it, shift it, adapt it to better address what they believe are their new needs.

And finally, we talked about taking care of yourself. And this is an incredibly important topic and one I want to spend some time on today. One of the things that I found is I got more. Check this out. I got more incoming messages yesterday following our Facebook live, following this community's live about depression than anything else. So I wasn't getting questions as many questions about specific things related to managing or communicating with my team or, you know, things like that. What I heard the most about was, was depression. I heard from people that have had issues with depression and getting out of the house and engaging with people is something that, is something that helps them and it's something that they rely on every single day. I've heard from people that are in a position now where their business.

Was just kind of hanging on, right? They were living paycheck to paycheck. They were able to manage kind of week to week or month to month. But with this uncertainty with customers, automatic payments declining with canceling of some contracts, they don't know what to do when they're scared and they're feeling depressed. I heard from other people whose businesses were jamming, but overnight they were shut down. Whether they were restaurant owners, there were people in the travel business. And maybe some of you can relate to some of this. And so the question I want to pose to all of you is this, how do we get through this period and not let depression get the best of us? How do we get through this period in a way where we actually every day can Wake up. And we can wake up strong and we can manage really effectively through our day. How can we manage our mindset and manage it in a way that we not only bring ourselves up, but. But we serve as an example for the people who work for us, and we serve as an example for our customers and our clients and our prospects and things like that.

So this is one of the things I've been thinking about since our live yesterday. And here's some simple ideas. The first idea is this. It's really important for you, particularly now that we're all working from home. It's really important for you to get yourself on a schedule. So I did a lot of research on this, and this was the number one thing that I learned that helps people at home to stay in a positive mindset. Number one, we've got to get ourselves on a schedule. That means when you're getting up and get up at the same time during the day, when you're getting to work and what your workday looks like. And it has never been more important in this schedule to, like, literally lock in time for movement and exercise. Because motion creates emotion. You change the way you move and you change the way that you feel. If I were to ask anybody to describe what a person who was depressed looked like, it would be really simple to do. That person would typically not be standing or sitting straight. Their shoulders would be slumped, their head be down. Their breathing would be low, it would be shallow. Their eyes would be dead. And that's a person that's depressed. If I describe to you a person that wasn't depressed, a person that actually felt good and felt positive, how would you describe that person? Well, it's completely opposite. Their eyes are. They're standing up straight or sitting straight. Their shoulders are up and they're back. Their eyes are up, their chin is up, Their breathing is closer to their chest. And so what happens is, as we're sitting at our desks or we're moving around our homes and we're trying to work, and we get fixated on the news, we get fixated on television, we get fixated on blogs, we get fixated on all this stuff, what happens is it creates this emotional thing that happens inside of us and it bums us out. And we go from here to here. And so what's really important is to get up and to move around. It sounds so doggone simple. But right now, the simple things are the most important things to help us through this time. Motion creates emotion. Change the way you move, you change the way you feel this doesn't mean you have to go run a marathon. What this means is get up and walk around the block, get out of your house and get some fresh air. Doesn't mean you have to go to the store. Like I said, you could just walk to your car, but move around. It's so important. The other thing is this.

It is never more important to control the dialogue that we have in, in our heads right now. Never so important. And by the way, this is a practice. Controlling the dialogue in our head when things are tough is like building a muscle. It's something that we have to work on every single day. And you know, I'll give you an example. Right now everyone is waking up and they're watching the news and they're asking themselves two questions. The first is, what does this mean? Right? What is going on? What does this mean and what should I do? What does this mean and what should I do? And with so much uncertainty, it becomes really difficult to answer those questions, have concrete answers. And so what happens is we start to ask ourselves these really disempowering questions. We start to take ourselves into a loop. And this is so doggone important. What happens is our brains are just like Google. And what I mean is, whatever question you ask Google, it's going to give you an answer. So if you ask yourself a question like, you know, something doesn't work out, why do I suck? Google is going to. You type that in. Google is going to come up with answers to support why you suck. In fact, if you type in why do I suck? The last time I did, Google came up with seven and a half million answers in just a second. But if you start to ask yourself empowering questions like, all right, what can I do today? What can I do today to.

Serve my customer better? What can I do today to feel better? What can I do to figure out how can I take this opportunity right now to find ways to build products or deliver my products in a new way to help not only create financial stability, but really set me myself up for the future? What's going to happen is your Google like brain is going to come up with 7 1/2 million answers immediately that will put you in a completely different state. And what will happen is the answer to those questions will change the way you feel. The way you feel will change the way you behave. The way you behave will change the actions that you take and put you in a much better position in order to manage through this crisis.

And so I'm going to take a little Break here. I just want to say hi to some folks. I want to say hi to Pat. Good to see you. Bob Strobel, thanks for jumping in, Joe. It's great to see you. Mike Schultz, Amazing. And what I want to do is I want to read some of the comments or questions that are coming up from you and begin to drop in to some of the things that have happened in the last 24 hours and as business owners and how can we adjust? The kinds of questions I'm getting from people are like, how am I going to meet payroll? How am I going to meet payroll and feed my family? At the same time, I'm getting questions like, how am I going to pay my business's lease? How am I going to pay my own rent? How am I going to pay for food.

When the cash that I have in the bank goes away? If I have a bigger company, how am I going to manage that business? And those employees? Now, they've sent everybody home. So we're going to get to answers for those things. But first, let me jump into some of the comments here and what you guys have written. Patrick, you say after 39 years meeting every Tuesday in person, we had our yes Mastermind meeting virtually for the first time. Interesting to hear how each of us is taking this time to reinvent themselves and creating opportunities.

So the question I have, Patrick, is how did it go? And was there anything that you learned by meeting with your team or meeting with this mastermind virtually that we can take away to hold better meetings with folks that are remote online? I'd love to hear kind of what you learned and what you took away. Mike, as a sales team, we get energy from interaction. That is so true. Asking all of our salespeople to remove the tape from the cameras on their laptops so they can connect with customers face to face and ensure they get up, dress up for success. You know, I found that I'm going to be straight. I woke up this morning, I was up really late last night and I woke up this morning and the last thing I wanted to do was to get dressed for work. It was the last thing I wanted to do. I have this ritual. So I'm in LA and I have a new I'm doing national radio. It's starting soon. And with this, it may get pushed back a little bit, but the studio is on Hollywood Boulevard. And what I do every morning, and I've been doing this for months now, is I get up, get in the shower, get up and go through my routine. So I get up, I Do some exercise, I do some meditation, I get in the shower, I get in my car and I drive as if I'm going to my morning radio show. I visualize it. I drive in every single day. I drive by the studio and the studio is, it's built right on Hollywood Boulevard in an all glass like fishbowl thing like Times Square. And so I picture myself in that space and things like that. And I picture what we're talking about and the impact that we're going to have. And I drive back.

Today. That was the last thing I wanted to do today. What I wanted to do, well, it was probably stay in bed today. What I wanted to do was kind of, you know, grab some coffee, slow, roll it into the day, things like that. And what I realized is there was never a more important time to actually do the work, to get up, to get dressed, to do that drive and to basically operate like I would every single day and every single day when I was like crushing it. And I really think that this is important for you as well. It's important that you create your new at home routine, your new at home schedule and you stick to it. And by the way, if you're managing folks, if you're managing contractors, if you're managing full time employees and those people are not with you every day, it's never been so important for you to make sure that you are in a routine with those people who are now at home. And what does that mean? What I'm doing is I actually I'm scheduling four calls a day may seem like overkill. We do a morning call, we do a like around a lunchtime call, we do around a three o' clock call and we do a closing the day, winding up the day call. These are so incredibly important because what I'm able to do on those calls is number one, I'm able as a leader on each call to control the dialogue with the folks that I'm talking to. I'm able to come from a place of being positive. I'm able to come from a place of reframing and reshaping what is going on out there and how it's going to affect the team. I come from a place where I'm keeping other people on schedule. As leaders, our job is to serve. And by keeping people in this routine and on this schedule, what it does is it helps them to stay positive, it helps them to stay up, it helps them to do and also it's what's getting the work done with so much for people to focus on right now and all this negative dialogue. By keeping people on a call frequently throughout the day, doing it face to face like this, what happens is, again, I'm able to keep them engaged. I'm able to keep them engaged in my work. And this is incredibly important.

People, because if you have employees and you have contractors that work for you, that depend on you, that you depend on for your business, you may have to make some really tough choices right now. You may have to make some really tough choices. You may have to let people go, you may have to pause contracts, you may have to do those types of things. And this is a really important thing for us to talk about because in 2008, when the market and by the way, it's so important to talk about because for most business owners, either, the number one or the number two line item for them in their, in their budget, what they spend every month is headcount. So here's the thing. You have to take a look at this economy right now and you have to be asking yourself, if things were to stay the same as they are today through August, which is the long term timeline that Trump has given us through August, what does that mean for my cash position? What does that mean for the revenue that's coming through my business? And what am I going to be able to spend? And if what I'm going to be able to spend in order to keep cash in my pocket is going to require, it's not going to be enough to maintain my staff, or at least my staff as is. Don't wait. Do not wait. The biggest, one of the biggest lessons I learned in 2008, when the market crashed, is to cut once and to cut deep. Because here's what happens. What happens is, again, right now, everyone's asking themselves, what does this mean? What's going on around me and what do I do? And if you start to cut staff and you make small incremental cuts, the rest of your company, the rest of the staff, the rest of your contractors see what's going on in the world. So if it's really small, what's going to happen is they're going to start to ask themselves, well, wait, am I next? And so what happens in that case? What happens in that case is they start to stop thinking about you and your work, what you rely on them for, what you count on them for. Instead, they spend all of their time updating their resumes, they spend all of their time updating their LinkedIn. They spend all of their time texting and emailing Messaging to their friends to find out what they're doing if they're going through the same experience also. So what I recommend, the best thing for everybody is to cut fast and deep. Protect yourself. Again, your number one job as an entrepreneur is to protect yourself financially. Your number one job as a business owner today is to be in business tomorrow. And so if you're going to cut fast, cut fast and cut deep. Now, if I'm on the other end, if I am a consultant, if I'm a contractor for somebody, there's never been a better time for you to don't wait. Okay? Don't be on your heels. This is the time to get on your toes. Get on your toes and ask that person that you're working for.

How is this affecting your business? What does this mean for me? Find out, right? Get clarity. What does this mean for me and what can I do to better serve you today? Based on what else is going on? Like, what other work can I pick up to help you? I'm not going to charge you more. For what more work can I pick up? How else can I help? How can I carry some of this load? What can I do to better serve you? What new needs do you have today that you didn't have yesterday? If you get a feeling that this person may need to let you go, that this person may need to make cuts, this person may not be able to pay you next time you're due, then I would address that stuff and see how you guys may be able to create some kind of new arrangement. But the idea is the people who are proactive now are the ones that are the winners. It's the people that stay on their heels. It's the people that hope that this will go, this will pass. They're the ones that always get hurt the most. And by the way, hope, I mean, I remember hope. Hope is not a good strategy. Hope is not a good business strategy. If you are waiting for the cavalry to come. And I have been myself where I was waiting, I was hoping somebody would come and save me. Waiting for the cavalry to come. Well, it's not coming. What you have to do as a business owner is take massive accountability, massive accountability today. Do not let questions or do not let thoughts go through your mind. Like, the reason I'm having issues is because of the market. The reason that you're having issues will be your failure to adapt down the road. So again, take massive accountability for everything. And that is a really important step for all of us to do today. Patrick, I want to Go back to you. So we were talking about the mastermind that you held yesterday and instead of holding it in person, you held it virtually. And by the way, we're going to talk about the event business in just a second. So you said that you learned that the same rules that we had for in person meetings didn't work when you were online. You'll be introducing new rules of the game for next week. People don't remember that they are on camera. Noticed a few were not fully engaged.

So that's a really good point. How do we keep people engaged today? How do we keep people engaged today? If you're talking to somebody and you're concerned that like I can tell you, I had my first coaching call this morning at 7:00 and I was working with somebody who had to shut down their office, send, they sent 25 people home, 26 people home, their kids, school system had shut down the school system for the next month. And this person had some real stuff that they had to deal with in their business like all of us today. The thing is, as I was talking to him about those issues or he was talking to me about those issues, I knew there were 25 other things that he was thinking about at the same time. So the question is including at that time, by the way, one of his sons walked into the screen and wanted breakfast. So the question I have is how do we keep people engaged? How do we keep them focused on what as business owners, we want them to stay focused on when they have 25 other things that are distracting them that are just as important, if not more important. And the other question I want to throw out to the group is this. I want to throw this out if you have kids and the school system has been shut down and or it's been modified and your kids are with you at home all day when you're working. And that wasn't the case before. How do you do it? Like what strategies are using, what tools are you using? How are you structuring the day? How are you able to get the work that you need to get done done and at the same time take care of your kids. If any of you guys are working on that or working through that issue, I would love to hear what it is that you think and what it is that you're doing. And I've shared on our wall and I'll share it again some tips that I've been given on how to structure the day. And I actually reached out last night to my kids principal and she sent me A long email of not only ways to structure the day for your kids, to keep them engaged so as an entrepreneur, you can continue working, but what she also did is she gave me an incredible list of resources of free tools, of free training, of free online education that you can get your kids engaged with to keep them busy and keep them learning while you're focused on doing your work and bringing cash in to your. To your family.

Mike, you said here that we need to. A meeting is a conversation rather than a presentation. In a conversation, by definition, you need to listen so you're ready to respond. That is so true. I think, Mike, some of what you're getting to is like what you talked about earlier is it's never been more important for us to.

Be able to do what we're doing now to leverage online video, to talk to people and to have real conversations. We all know that today, the way people are, we're so addicted that when we're on the phone with somebody, you know, looking over here, I've got my Sennheiser headset, I'm on the phone with somebody, you know, what are the odds that I or you are answering an email or responding to a text because that person can't see us? I think it's really important that we do things with video right now so that we're engaged with people. We can keep them engaged, we can read their body language. And I would really focus on. On the human side of your customers right now. I would really spend my energy focusing on, you know, just be a good person, be a good listener, be a good asset, be a good resource. And as it relates to your product or service, whatever it is that you sell or you're trying to sell. You know, again, in this conversation, really look for.

For, you know, ways that you can provide solutions to the person that you're engaged with. Look for ways, you know, that you can adapt your product, your service to whatever their new needs are. Today I want to go back to rent because I got so many incoming messages about rent last night. If you're worried about how you're going to pay rent, whether it is your business's rent, your lease, or you're worried about how you're going to pay your personal rent, what I would say is most people pay their rent on the first. I haven't talked to anybody that doesn't. Most people pay their rent on the first. And I would expect there to be something that comes from the government. I'm in California, probably faster from the state of California on how Rent is going to be dealt with. I think there's a very high likelihood that people are not going to have to pay their rent or their lease or their mortgage. I think we'll probably follow a lot of what Italy is doing in this area has already done. And so I would say, you know, don't let that be a worry for you right now. I would say put that one aside and give that a few days. I think that that issue is probably going to resolve itself. Another question is that I've gotten a lot of is, what if I get sick? So I had two people reach out to me, one in our group. Thank you so much. And one in a text. What if I get sick? How do I continue to manage the company and to do it remotely? And this is a great question because as we talk about innovation, one of the things that my bigger company friends and clients have told me is they're running into issues sending people home that they never anticipated. So one of the issues that they're running into, and this goes from like Google all the way down to small businesses, is they're sending people home that would normally not work remotely. So they may not be outside sales reps, they may not be area managers or division managers. And what's happening, you're sending people home to work, but people don't have the equipment. They maybe they're used to working on a desktop at the office, but they don't have that at home, or they don't have a laptop at home, or they don't have something. They don't have their home system set up to get through a firewall of their big company so they can actually work and be engaged while they're at home. So the first thing that I wanted to share is around this issue is if you have sent people home or you're considering sending people home, it is really important to make sure that you get everybody on the same tools and the same systems and the same platforms, and that you're thinking right now about how to make sure that you can make their job as easy as possible while working from their house. This may mean for some people, you need to invest in a laptop or what I found. So this is what a lot of my friends are doing. A lot of my friends aren't going out and buying laptops, like, you know, $2,000 Apple computers, and they're not buying, you know, these, these Microsoft, you know, Windows, you know, Lenovo devices and things like that. A lot of my friends are buying Chromebooks for their people right now. So this is a really good way to keep your cost down. You can get Chromebooks out there for $150, $200. You turn them on, they connect directly to the Internet. And if your business runs through apps, if it runs through online services, it runs through the cloud, there is nothing that those Chromebooks can't do. So again, for people that I know that have to buy quickly, have to buy in a budget and have to buy a lot of these things, they've been buying Chromebooks. That's number one. Number two is printing. I have had friends that have had to buy printers for people on their staff. The number one way they've been doing it is they've been going on Amazon and they've been finding great deals that have been delivered by prime either in the same day in big cities or two days. So that problem has been taken care of. The third thing is everyone that wasn't using Zoom, that I know is using Skype like crazy now or they're using Google Hangouts so they're really leveraging online video. It has become a great tool that if you weren't using it, people are using to manage their teams. So again, if you are concerned that you're going to get sick, if you are sick or if you're thinking about sending people home, the first thing is get people set with all the right tools so they're able to work efficiently. The second thing I would say is get people get your home based team now on a schedule. It's never been important. Have that morning call early, have that morning call early. So people are up, they're ready to work, they're talking to you on their camera, they look like they're ready to show up. And then I suggest setting 4, 3 to minimum calls during the day to check up on your people, to check up on your teams. What I would also do is if you have a right hand person in your company, I would trade off, I would trade off running these meetings and the accountability with that person every single day. So if one of you gets sick, then you're in a position where the other can take over and have that happen seamlessly. So these are some of the best practices I'm hearing from people who are working from home right now or managing teams for the first time at home. If you guys have great ideas or ideas, please post them, Please share what's working, Please, please share whatever you can to help this group to succeed.

Depression again. If you want to rewind. If you're just joining us, I see a bunch of people just joined us at this point in the conversation. One of the biggest things, the number one thing I received messages on. On the last 24 hours is depression. I'm having a rough time. I'm really scared. I'm really bummed out. I'm not sure what to do. I'm not sure what this means for me. I'm used to getting out. I'm used to interacting with people. If you rewind just a little bit, we talked about depression and how to manage through this difficult time. Again, it's very simple. Comes down to two things. Number one, managing your physiology. How you're managing your physical body. Motion creates emotion. Never a more important time to schedule movement into your day. Number two is your psychology. It's managing the questions that you ask yourself. It's managing the dialogue that you're having inside of your head. You know, it's kind of a crazy little example, but when I worked with Tony Robbins, we used to do this thing where, say, I'm in a room of a thousand people and we're talking about focus and we're talking about. What we used to do is ask everybody to stand up and to look around the room and just play along. Think about this yourself. Look around the room and find everything you see in this room that's green, green, green, green. Just find everything that you see in this room that's green, green, green, green. 10 seconds. Green, green, green, green, green, green, green, green, green. If you're looking at my video, see the green grass behind me. If you're looking at my video, see this green drink that I'm having right now? Green, green, green. And then we'd ask, close your eyes and tell me everything that you saw in this room that was orange or pink or red. And in a room of a thousand people, there'd be plenty of that stuff, too. There's so many things to focus on. Whatever you focus on, you're going to get. And the way that you control your focus is by controlling the questions throughout the day that you're asking yourself. Ask yourself empowering questions as opposed to going through a rabbit hole like, oh, my gosh, what does this mean to me? Oh, my gosh, is my business going to close? Am I going to be able to pay for this? Am I going to be able to pay for that? Am I going to. And taking yourself down a really negative cycle. Stop yourself when you notice that you're there and start to ask yourself empowering questions. How can I use this experience to get closer to my family? How can I use this experience to strengthen myself. How can I use this experience to strengthen my business? What opportunities were lying dormant in my business that I didn't see before but this is forcing me to see now? Where are those things? Because that, by the way, that's where the innovation comes from. That's the magic. Because we have to find the magic. And there is magic in everything. That's where the magic will come from, from this particular thing that we're all going through, this crisis. It will come through the innovation. It will come from people like you and me finding new ways to solve the same or old problems. I'll give you some examples. So in the last 24 hours, some things that I've heard about. So one of my good friends, a member of our mastermind group, he is the biggest supplier of drivers to the gig economy in the United States. So whether it's Amazon or Walmart or grubhub or places like this, the odds are if you're ordering something and it's getting dropped at your house, it came from through or somehow my friend's company touched it. And what's happened is, you know, he's gotten a series of calls. He's got a ton of calls. Some of those calls have been from restaurants that now have to deliver and need drivers. Some of those calls have been restaurants that are shutting down that can no longer use him. Some of those calls have been from big boxes who are looking at what's happening and using this opportunity to build and launch new online delivery services. So, you know, there's some changes in some innovation there. I can tell you, with my kids. So my daughter, one of my daughters, her favorite thing to do, her favorite thing to do is art. She loves art, she loves painting. And there is a place, look it up online, called Timore in Orange County. It's in Newport Beach, Corona del Mar. And what the owner of Timmery did is realize that I'm going to have to shut down my store and I can't have a bunch of kids coming in and adults coming in in classes of 10 to 25 every single day.

Because it's not allowed anymore and we're all going to get sick. So what she did is she acted like this and she created an online program. And what she does is she just sends you a password to where it's taking place after you pay her. Cost her next to nothing to do, next to nothing to sell. So now what she has is, I believe it's A$3, A$3, A$10 and A$20 option for being able to log in and to get daily courses for her on painting and on drawing and things like that. And so immediately she was able to adjust. And she's crushing it because there's all these parents in, you know, in our area whose kids are home that are looking for things for those kids to do. Now there's an affordable way to do it in the event business. So I'm in the event business, and this has had a dramatic effect on our industry. From people that are running events, from people that are speakers, from people that are venues, from contractors to marketers to SEO, people paid to help get people to the events. There is a huge trick lockdown event. And so the question is, what do you do if you're in the event business? And what are most people doing? They're going online. They're working right now to try and figure out how to take their events and. And make them virtual.

Either by bringing the same speakers that were going to come to an event into an online type of event and selling it, maybe not at the same rate, but at a discounted rate. So here's a lot of what I see going on. If you're in the event business, what people are doing is they are taking events that they've had to cancel. They're making those events virtual, and there's software that enables you to do that. They're making those events virtual. They're charging people to go to those events, meaning if they've already paid, their payment gets behind the wall into those events, and then those people are still eligible to go to their live event and not pay any more down the road. Then what they're doing to bring in additional cash is they're charging a small fee, a very small fee for people to come to the new. This newly created digital event that was taking place with a live event. And they're giving an incredible discount if they want to sign up for the event that's now been replanned down the road. And so I've actually seen a lot of event people bring in cash over the past two, three weeks by doing this, if you're an event manager. So this is becoming really hot right now. A lot of people don't know how to put on events. I mean, I gotta be honest, I don't know if I wanted to bring in a bunch of speakers, you know, whether they were here or I wanted to bring in them in and like, dial them in and stuff like that. I wanted to do it behind a paywall, or I wanted to at least do it behind something that was password protected. So maybe I get people to give me their email address, now they're in a sales funnel, and then I'll give them a code and they can get behind. I don't know how to do that. And so there's a lot of people that are like me in the same scenario in the event business. And so my challenge to you is if you're an event planner and this question came up yesterday. Thank you so much. If you're an event planner, this is an incredible opportunity for you to go to other people in our space, in this event space with kind of a event in a box type of kit and help them to do that, to manage. It's one thing for me to be able to say, take your events online. It's another to be able to know how to do it. It's another to be able to be the kind of person that can execute it. So if you're that person, you're that. That person that knows how to do it, build a business around that. That could be an incredibly great business right now. I saw another person who started a business so in his area, in his neighborhood. This person is about 65 years old. There's a lot of elderly people. And those elderly people can't shop right now. They can't. Or they don't want to go out, and they don't want to shop because they're high risk for coronavirus. And so they're afraid to get out there in front of a lot of people. And so what he's done is he's developed his own, in this neighborhood, his own system of basically getting orders from people over the phone and in email from this population, which is typically 70 years old plus. And what these people are doing is they're paying him to go and effectively do their shopping and drop everything at their doorstep. By the way, it's a high school kid, okay? It's a. So this guy lives in the neighborhood. It's his son. It's his son that came up with this idea. So my buddy's about 65 years old. His son is a junior in high school over in Orange county. And he's going through this neighborhood and he's doing like pickup and delivery service for elderly folks. And they're so happy to do it. They're so happy to pay him. He's making money.

So the idea is, you know, what can you do to shift or reshape or readjust your business today? The odds are you don't know the answer, the odds are you do not know the answer. Today. Your customer does. So start asking more questions. Start asking people more questions. What do you need? What's going on? You know, what's your big pain point? You know, where are you struggling the most and adapt and maybe what this means? Because cash, you know, cash is like oxygen for entrepreneurs. Without. Without cash, our business dies. So in order to create cash, to create more, generate more cash, what we may have to do as entrepreneurs is we may have to pivot out of something that we were doing now into something new. Julie. Hi, Julie. Yes. If you're a solopreneur, I think that this is more important than ever, is just to start going around and asking questions. I have the benefit through, like this forum or through. Or through other groups or just because of what I do in my industry where people are constantly coming to me and they're sharing what their pain points are and they're asking for help. And so I'm curious, in the marketing space, in the PR space, in the brand creation space.

What do people need the most?

When do they need it? What kind of budgets do they have? Or are there other things that we didn't even think of that are happening with our customers that maybe don't even relate to any of that stuff that come up during a conversation? And we're like, I can do that. And so we have to kind of put the core business on hold and reposition into something into something else.

I just. I'm trying to remember. I talked to somebody this morning.

Gosh, that was in the same exact position. Hold on. It was.

I talked to somebody who put on events. I talked to somebody who put on events. And that's what they did. Actually, they didn't put on many events themselves. They were a speaker. Let me be clear. They were a speaker. Their whole thing, their whole business depended on. On their ability to get hired and paid to be on stages. And that whole business has gone away for them for the foreseeable future. And the more people they talked to, the more they kept hearing that other people in their position had kind of pigeonholed themselves into being keynote speakers. And that's where all the money came from. And they wanted to put together products and digital products, but they had no idea how to do it. What this guy is really good at is, is this guy is really good at taking your content and then putting it into a program, like creating manuals, creating workbooks, helping you to be able to communicate your message, like in really short bursts that are really good. For video training. So what he's doing is he's killing, not killing, but he's putting on hold the keynote speaking business and he's going to start marketing today. Basically, I will create your program for you in a box. If you're a keynote speaker, they can't get on stages. What I found is when markets shift.

The more narrow our product is, once we find what the need is, the more narrow it is. The riches are in the niches. The deeper we go with a very specific target, with a very specific solution, the less it typically is to market to that customer and the easier it is we get for that, for that customer to start virally talking to other people that have the same problem about the solution that we're offering. And so I really encourage people today find a specific problem. If you're a solopreneur, do it. Find that problem by asking people what their pain points are and people that are already paying us and people that we've already been serving and then pivot to. That is kind of the way I've been, I've been looking at it.

So we have about another minute. If you have anything else that you'd like to add, any questions, any comments, if you have anything that comes up during the day that you would like me to respond to in the group or that you need help with right away, just shoot me a message. If you have a bigger company and you're in the process of repositioning that company, you need help, somebody standing back, like stepping back, it's not as close to your business as you are and figuring out how to rejigger this whole thing. Please reach out for me. I'm spending almost all of my time doing that today with entrepreneurs.

If you find things that are helpful tips, please post them to the group. So again, anything like Julie's questions question right there. I'm going to make that like a study over the next 24 hours. If you are a solopreneur, what are the top five things you should be doing today for your business and to be generating cash, even if it comes from different places. So again, share anything that comes up, anything that you can find that would be able to the group first. I don't want that to be, I don't want that to include things that are fear based, hype based, that are going to kind of wind people up. What I really want is this group to share is stuff that's working or that's not working now. Like things that we can use today that are super actionable in order to move our stuff forward. We are all in this together. Here's the thing I love about entrepreneurs. I love the way Trump brought in private, the private sector to help with this problem because I believe that entrepreneurs like you and me, we're the ones that are going to change the world. We always do. We're the ones that identify the biggest problems, figure out how to solve them and figure out how to fund them. There has never been a more important time for an army of entrepreneurs just like you and me to go out and to really change things. So I just send you my love, I send you my gratitude and I wish you guys all the best. I look forward to talking to you at 10 o' clock in the morning Pacific time tomorrow. Please share this if you found it valuable with your groups. And until then, you guys keep breaking through. I'll talk to you soon. Bye bye.