Scott Duffy: What Should I Be Focused On Now?, Episode 32

Good morning, everybody and welcome. Welcome to what now with Scott Duffy. I'm having a great morning and I am so excited to be here with you guys today. For wherever you're joining us from, Facebook or YouTube, LinkedIn from Periscope, from wherever you're joining us from Dash Radio, I want to say thank you so much for joining today. Today we got a big show. I'm super fired up to be here. I've had such a great morning. We have a lot of really good things going on out there today, a lot of real positive news to pass along to you. And I'll tell you during a time where there's so much bad news out there, it's great to wake up to some positive things to start out the day. And so I can't wait to share some of this good news with you again. This is Scott Duffy. If this is the first time that you have joined the show, if you could drop into our comments and please write down your name in the industry you're in and the biggest challenge that you're having today, anything that you're working on so I can make sure to customize this show around you and what it is that you need. We have a lot of information to share today, including different parts of the country that are beginning to ease their stay at home orders and look at new ways of opening their economy. We got some news from Treasury Secretary Mnuchin today with regard to the new stimulus bill. So, so we'll talk a little bit about that. And I really want to focus today on this idea of what should we be focused on now? What are the things that we should be focused on now in order to get the most out of now, but also position ourselves going forward? Where does our head need to be? What do we need to be focused on? So we're going to be paying a lot of attention to that today and we're going to give this just another minute to propagate across the Internet. I want to thank all of you guys for joining. Thank you so much. Jim Blakemore, great to see you this morning. Patrick Harney, great to see you this morning. Sita Thompson, great to see you this morning. Over here I got Steven Fielding, thanks so much for joining and I really do appreciate it. And I really do appreciate you. We got about 20 more seconds until we're live. And so again, I just want to say thank you. If you're just joining, please share, please share this with your family, please share this with your friends, your colleagues, your coworkers, and also drop your Name into the comments, the industry that you're in and the biggest challenges that you're facing or questions you have so I can shape the show around those today. Thank you so much.

And here we go.

Good morning. My name is Scott Duffy and this is what now with Scott Duffy. I want to welcome you from wherever you're listening. You can tune in each day at 10am Pacific to watch the live broadcast on YouTube and Facebook, listen nationwide on Dash Radio throughout the day or download the podcast. Now this show is for entrepreneurs. It's for small businesses and those thinking about starting their own companies. It's for people affected by this economy. Maybe they lost their business, their job, they were furloughed or they saw their consulting contracts canceled and boy, that seemed to happen in a heartbeat. It's for people asking, what do I do now and how do I overcome this or come out of this even stronger? And our focus today is going to be on kind of on what now? What should I be focused on on now and what will have the biggest impact, the biggest financial impact for me if I focus on it today going forward. But first, we want to start with the news.

In the past 24 hours, the US has reported 825,000 cases of coronavirus and just over 45,000 deaths. Now that number has doubled in just over a week. And what's interesting is we're finding here in California that the first cases of coronavirus based on antibody testing actually came weeks before was previously thought. And I have to share with you guys my experience in coronavirus because I am like certain that it went, that I had it. And then my daughter had it back in January, I got sick. I got, I do not remember ever being as sick as I was in January, actually four or five weeks. So ending December, going into January and I got, I had a fever, I had all of the symptoms that you hear about today with coronavirus. I had it for two weeks. I had to go to urgent care twice. They couldn't figure out what it was. I had a couple day reprieve and then I basically got it back, which is very similar to what happened with Chris Cuomo from cnn. So I had this experience and it was just crazy. And then my daughter, my youngest daughter Lexi, she's 10 years old. Lexi had a terrible cough, had to be taken to the hospital. She was sent by Hoag Hospital to Children's Hospital because, because they thought that she had pneumonia. A normally super healthy young girl. And she went through a two week period where she went through all of the symptoms. And this was in January. So it's really interesting that with the antibody testing we're starting to see that all of this, that in California we may have been affected as far back as November and December, going into January by coronavirus. So that was my experience and I'm really looking forward to getting the antibody testing to see if this is something that I had. Now we are all hoping, all of us. Last night I think I was more stir crazy than I've been through this whole thing. I was so stir crazy and I wanted to go to the beach and just go for a walk. So I drove down there and the police, there was no place you could stop anywhere they were sighting people, they kept clearing the side of the road. So I just kept driving.

And last night I ended up going for a walk and I was so stir crazy. I'm curious, have you guys gone through this? Are any of you going through this? I'm doing everything I can to keep busy, to exercise, to connect with people like you. And last night I just kind of hit that. So we're all hoping that these stay at home restrictions ease soon. And we're all asking when we can go back to some sense of normal once again. Now, the federal government, they begun to ease restrictions by offering guidelines for getting people back to work. But I gotta tell you, I'm confused again. Here's what I mean. When the virus first hit, each city did its own thing and each county did its own thing. By the way, there's 3,000 counties in the United States. So each city was doing its own thing, each county was doing its own thing, each state was doing its own thing and the federal government was doing its own thing. And so that was really confusing because I'll tell you, I live in two places. So I have a place in Newport beach right across from Balboa Island. So I have a place in Newport beach, which is an hour from New York, where I. I'm sorry, from la, where I spend most of my time. And so for those of you who don't know this kind of geography, you have la, you had an hour south, you have Newport beach, you had an hour south, you're in San Diego. Now here's the thing. I would go back and forth between those three places for, because of where I lived and because of work. And it was so confusing because what I could do in LA was one thing, what I could do in Newport was another thing. And what I could do in San Diego was a different thing. Now it really helped when the state Created kind of a universal stay at home order and told us all what to do. I thought that that was helpful. So when President Trump said, here are guidelines for reopening your state, gave them to the governors last week, I thought that we would have kind of this orderly type of rollout and it would be really clear to us kind of what was going on and what we're supposed to do. But here's the thing. The reality is that the states are pretty much throwing out these restrictions, at least most of them so far. And so what you're seeing is states like Georgia that are completely opening up their economies, and they're not doing it in a phased approach. They're doing it all at once. I'm in Los Angeles, you know, we, we have a really strict stay at a home order here. But I heard last night that Orange county, where Newport beach is an hour down the road, they're talking about opening things back up again.

So I'm confused. What am I supposed to do and what does this mean for me and for my business? Because at the end of the day, I just want to know what I'm supposed to focus on and what I can do in order to, to go out there and generate income and get my business rolling again. That's what I want to know.

But I'll tell you, every little area of the country doing its own thing, to me, that's incredibly frustrating. And the reason.

Is because I'm still afraid of the spread of this virus and the potential of us having to shut down. And the reason is that last night we learned in China that they are actually pulling back from the openness of letting people go back out and opening their economy again. What they're finding is their infection rate has spiked up again and they have ordered the close of gyms and other areas where people are really tight, or they're using common equipment and common tools and things like that, because they are afraid. And they announced last night that they are at the beginning of a second wave of this infection. And so for that reason, I hope, at least I hope here in my state of California that as we roll out, we do it in a smart way. And I hope that areas like LA and Orange county and San Diego work together and are really smart about this. And here's why.

Governor Cuomo in New York, this is a time where you see real leaders look like step up. What Governor Cuomo did is he created basically a network where he got the Northeastern states to basically agree on how they would roll things out together. And the Reason that's important is let's say, like in my example, let's say LA stays locked down and San Diego stays locked down, but they open up the beaches where I live in Orange county. And everyone from LA and everyone from San Diego, including the people that are sick, are all going to come to the beach where I live. And so I think it's really important that we all work together. And I want to get out there as much as anybody. Like I said, I was so stir crazy last night. I was so stir crazy. I so want to be able to turn the engine of my business back on so much. I just hope that we don't get out there too early and I hope that we're, we're smart about the way that we, that we do this. So back to my earlier question. When and how do we reopen? When do we all get rid of these stay at home orders? When do they get lifted? The answer, I think at the end of the day is going to depend based on what we're seeing on where you live now. Four weeks ago I said on the show, it was actually five weeks ago was the week that all this stuff came down. I said, when you took a look at the initial data that we saw, the very early data that I believed that we would have like some type of lockdown.

Things would be shut down. This is before stay at home orders until August. And guess what? This morning Treasury Secretary Mnuchin was on CNN and he said the goal right now is that everyone is back to work and all stay at home orders are canceled by the end of the summer, the end of August is what he's pointing to. So again, as you're planning and you're thinking about your budget, you're thinking about your business, you're thinking about getting relief, you're thinking about those things. Like I said from the beginning, I want you to plan until the end of August because I think that is what the government is looking at, all the federal government and the state governments as when they really hope to be opened up with all the stay at home orders canceled. So what now, you know, what should you be doing and how should you be preparing right now?

Some good news. A new stimulus bill is about to be passed by Congress and signed by the President. My guess is that Trump signs this on, it still has to be voted on. My guess is that Trump signs this on Friday. Now, we all heard yesterday how the government failed in many ways at the ppp. Every day I talk about the ppp, right? Every day I try to answer your questions, we have brought people in from the sba, from the Small Business Development Council, had people come in from banks to share what it is that you need to do in order to best position yourself to get government stimulus through this program. And what we learned yesterday was that this program, which we were told was built to support Main street, actually supported Wall Street. Roughly 250 billion of the $350 billion intended for small business went to public companies. What a frickin joke. What a joke. So what should we expect from the new bill? Well, I'll break it down for you when we know more. I'll break it down for you when we know more. I'll bring the same people back on to help break it down. Honestly, I don't really expect it to be much better than what we saw in the first bill. I think there's going to be more money. I'm hoping that they create something in this bill which I heard is not in what is being voted on tonight that doesn't allow bigger companies to be able to have access to this capital.

But we'll break it down for you. And I was really hopeful this morning, I tell you, I woke up, I was hopeful. I got the news. I read it last night. I read it this morning. I watched all the news channels. I'm like, on this one, all they're going to care about, all they're going to focus on is it's on us, it's on the small business. Until I heard Nancy Pelosi speak. And look, this isn't about to me, Democrats or Republicans or Trump, I don't give a shit. All I care about is small business. All I care about is entrepreneurs. All I care about is if somebody tells us that they're creating a stimulus program for us and that we should be able to apply and be on the same ground as a big company. I just want somebody to follow through on what they told me they were going to do for us. That's what I want.

So this morning I'm all pumped. I'm listening to Nancy Pelosi. She gets on the air, but instead of talking about small businesses, what she talked about and the importance of this plan, it was about Russia. I'm like, what? She's like, it was about Russia. She said that what's really important about this bill and getting in this bill is that the Russians are still trying to mess with our elections. So it was really important that there's stuff in this bill to help deal with that in our elections for November. And I'm thinking to myself, these are two completely different things. Look, I don't want anybody messing with our elections. But you know what I want more right now is I want money in your pocket. If you told me that you applied for unemployment or Eidl or PPP or anything that's offered by the government, to me, what's most important is that you get that. And for me, what I want is I want my elected government officials to say, I hear you, small business, and I am in your corner. I'm not just in the corner of the person who paid the most for my reelection campaign. I want them to say, hey, we're here for you. That's what I want. So this morning, when I heard Pelosi talk about this, I was just like, you got to be kidding me. Here we go again. So, you know, like I said earlier, I am incredibly hopeful, by the way. I am a really positive and optimistic person by nature. So I am hopeful and that this program is so much better than the first one for us and that we have more access to cash for us.

But what I heard this morning, I thought was pretty, pretty disheartening, and it led me to believe that we just need to watch out. So.

Next.

I think that this is good news. I think that, you know, government stimulus, at the end of the day, there's a lot of different things the government could have done during this time. And one of the things is they could have sat on their hands. One of the things is they could have just done big company bailouts. But what they have done, what they have done, whether I like where that initial PPP money went or not, what I do know is they are providing stimulus. They are actually getting cash into companies. And I think if nothing else, that government is through providing fiscal stimulus, they're having a positive impact on psychology. And I think that that's a really important thing for today. Now, some real good news. When we get back to traveling again, like we are used to, United Airlines is removing. So they have announced they are removing middle seats. They're actually blocking them off. So they're not pulling them out, but they are blocking off middle seats. And.

The question I have is, are they doing that? Like, is this karma? Is this karma for the airlines? Because I know that typically when I fly, like, it's so tight, and it just seems like every year people get bigger, but the space between us and the top of the seat that folds into our head in front of us get smaller. And so I'm just wondering if this is There's a little bit of karma here in, in for, for the airlines.

It's, it was really a trip when I saw that. Now the best news, the best news today, and maybe the best news of the year is what I heard today, that Top Gun 2 Top Gun 2 Mavericks has a release date and the release date is Christmas. So here's the thing.

Here's the thing. And we need a little levity today. Here's the thing. How many, first of all, how many of you saw the movie Top Gun? I hope that, you know, when, when I was a kid and I was 16, the movie Top Gun with Tom Cruise came out. And ever since I saw the first scene of that movie, so there's a scene at the beginning, if you haven't seen it, where, where Tom Cruise and another, he's a pilot of an air, of a plane and he's with another guy, another fighter and they're landing on an aircraft carrier and it's a really scary, intense scene and it doesn't look like he's going to make it. And at the last minute they land on the carrier. Well, ever since I saw that movie, in that first scene, Since I was 16 years old, the number one thing on my bucket list. So I got that bucket list, that list of things I want to do before I kick the bucket. The number one thing on my bucket list was I wanted to land on an aircraft carrier. I thought that would be so cool. So a couple years ago I actually got the chance to do it. I was invited by the Navy to go and spend 24 hours on an aircraft carrier, the Stennis, so 24 hours on the Stens, and follow the captain of the ship, who was a commander of a nine ship fleet, to basically learn how this person led, how he led a 5,000 person ship plus all of these other ships so that we could go, so that I could go and share these lessons, these awesome lessons about the Navy with others.

So I'm totally pumped. I'm like, yes, I'm there, totally fired up to do it. Here's the thing, I was so excited that I hadn't even really thought about it or put together that in order to get there I would have to land, I'd have to fly and land on that deck. And the thing is, over the years I'd had a couple of really kind of scary situations on commercial planes, on trips. And I became a really nervous flyer, like a total white knuckler. And so I'm thinking to myself, oh my gosh, how am I going to do this.

So I came up with a plan. And my plan was I was going to go down to the base, which is Coronado in San Diego. I was going to go down to the base, I was going to meet the pilot and I was going to explain the anxiety that I had around around flying this plane. And hopefully this person could calm me down. That was my plan. So I get down there early and here's what happens. I get down there early, I ask for the pilot. The pilot comes out. I'm thinking, this guy's going to be like old, like Yoda. This kid did not look like he was 17 years old. And he comes out with a total opie face. And he says, he introduces himself and I'm like, oh my gosh. And I said, I have a question. I said, how long, how many times have you landed on an aircraft carrier? And he looks back at me and he said, Sir, 76 times. I've landed on aircraft carrier 76 times. So I'm like, yes. I said, so what that means, what you're telling me is that every time you go out and you land, like you've done it so many times, you're cool as a cucumber, like you're not worried at all, like, you got this thing nailed. And he totally got serious. And he looked at me, he goes, sir, every time I land on the aircraft carrier, I am absolutely terrified. And I'm like, whoa. He said, but the terror is a good thing because what it does is it keeps me alert. And I'm like, okay. Not what I wanted to hear. He said, maybe now's a good time for me to tell you about the three scenarios. I'm like, three scenarios? Nobody even told me there were scenarios. He said, well, look, here's number one scenario. Number one is we go out and we fly out to the aircraft carrier. And I think it was like a two or three hour flight to get to it. And they were like just getting ready for war games kind of crazy. And he said, what's going to happen is we're going to come up and we're going to see the ship on our left. And he said, we're going to get permission to land. And here's what happens. He said, from the time we get permission to land and we're coming up alongside that ship, we have 14 seconds, that's it, 14 seconds to ride along the side of the ship, to bank and make a turn, to line up with the deck and land on the carrier. And he said, and here's the Thing. He said, this is not going to be like a Southwest Airlines flight. He said, that ship is moving forward, it's bobbing up and down and it's going left to right. So we have to match in mirror in our plane that perfectly to land. He said, the second thing is we have to try, we have to chop the wire. So if you saw a Top Gun or you've ever seen a thing of a plane landing on an aircraft carrier, what you see is at the end of the Runway where you first get on, there's like a wire that goes across, actually a wire that goes from one side to the other and there's a hook that drops out of the plane. And the hook is supposed to catch the wire and supposed to stop the plane. That's how it works. You go from 160 miles an hour to zero in less than two seconds. And he said, so here's the thing, he said, we got a little problem. He said.

The swells are like 20ft today, so we're bobbing up and down and side to side. And he said when we come down, that wire is like three inches off the deck. And I have a three foot margin of error going 160 miles an hour to nail it. I'm like, what? He said, so here's the thing. We're going to do what us pilots call a controlled crash. And I said, what is that? He said, what's going to happen is we're going to come down and he said, and we are going to smash. We're going to smash. And the way it's going to work is I'm going to yell 10 seconds before we land. Brace. You're going to brace for a crash. We're going to smash onto the deck and we're going to drag along the deck. You're going to hear metal hitting metal. And he said by getting so low, it gives us the best chance to hook the wire. And he said, and if we do it the first time, he said, that's awesome. He said, you get out, you have a great day. He said, that's scenario number one. I'm like, what the hell? He said, let me tell you scenario number two. Scenario number two. He said, we come in and he said, we come down and boom. And. And he said, I miss the trap. And he said, if I miss it, this is where things get tricky. He said, now I have less than 2 1/2 seconds to recognize I missed and get the plane back up and to fly around. Otherwise we go off the other side of the deck into the water. And he said, that leads to scenario number three. Scenario number three is a water landing. And he said, and they will tell you all about that when you get all buckled in to the plane. I'm like, damn. Last thing I asked, how many times have you missed? And it was like, march. He said, I haven't missed one time this year. I'm like, awesome. So here we go. We take off. Boom. We're over the ocean. Boom. We get out ship over here, okay, about three hours out. Come in. The pilot says, all right, I see it. We got 14 seconds. Boom. We come around. 10 seconds out, he yells, brace. We come down, hit the deck, and we missed. I was so scared. So we come back up, and we go back around the second time. So nervous, so scared. Ten seconds out, he yells, brace. We come down, and we missed again. Third time, we come around. Third time's a charm. Not for us. Boom, we missed.

Fourth time, we nailed it.

What I always say is this. I don't know about you, but to me, that feels like every single day as an entrepreneur. That feels like every single day going through this whole Covid. This whole coronavirus thing. COVID 19. And the reason is, sometimes in business, it doesn't matter what we do. Like, we could have the perfect idea, the perfect team, the perfect plan, the perfect financing, Everything in place. We could execute flawlessly. We line it up, but we miss for whatever reason, and we have to get back up on our feet. We have to go back around. We have to do it again. And sometimes we have to do it a second, a third or fourth, a fifth time, however long it takes. But eventually, I would bet on you. I would bet you'll nail it. So today, long story short, when I heard that Top Gun 2, that inspired all of that in me, has a release date, I was pretty fired up. In fact, I was so fired up, if you go into our group, if you haven't joined it yet, what now with Scott Duffy? Gonna what now with Scott Duffy, go into our group and join our group. It's a public group. Every day, I'm posting new information about this pandemic and how you, as a business, can take advantage of opportunity out there. I'm gonna post the new trailer for the movie. So there you go. All right, let's take a quick break. I want to say hello to a few people who are joining us. Sarah, good morning to you. Helen, good morning to you. Terry Simpson, always good to see you. Marzina, great to see you again. Sita, good to see you. Ashley, good to see you. Let me look over here. Steve, it is good to see you. Bill Terry, wonderful to see all of you today again. If this is, if this is the first time you joined, please drop your name into the comments on whatever your industry you're in and the biggest challenge you're having or any questions you have today that I can help to answer for you. So let's get to business.

I always start the day when we talk about business, about talking about cash because again, cash is like oxygen for an entrepreneur. So we talked all week about unemployment. I've heard about more people getting checks, actually cards like debit cards in the last week. Still, some, some states, like California, several people I've talked to applied over four weeks ago and still have not heard a thing from the state. So if you have not heard anything, you are not alone. If you haven't heard anything, go onto your state's unemployment site to check on the status of your, your filing with regard to personal stimulus if you haven't done it already. If you have not received your check or your deposit into your account, Please go to irs.gov Click on the blue button and there you can enter your personal information and banking information or where you would like them to send a check in order to get that money into your account as fast as possible. Eidl I don't have anything new to report other than they are working on funding this program. I think up to $60 billion. Original funding was for 10 billion to help small businesses. Don't know anyone that's gotten actually I know one person that's gotten the Eidl loan. He got it for $1,000. He applied for 10 and that's the only person I know. But with this new funding, hopefully that will help. And the PPP again, we expect a vote and a signature from the president by Friday. We'll break it all down for you. So what do you do now? What do you do now to adapt? What do you do to make sure that you're focused on the right things, asking the right questions and doing the things necessary in order to get through the next few weeks as strong as possible.

So one thing I just want to bring up is I have been really surprised.

I've been really surprised at the number of people that offer services that I use or that I could use. This could be video, could be marketing, it could be writing, it could be photography, it could be video editing, it could be social media, things like that. People who have reached out to me and offered to help or to provide a service or that wanted to pitch their service, and then when it comes time to get their proposal, how out of whack their proposals are with the current market. And so here's the thing. It's not that I don't want to pay. And by the way, I'm speaking on behalf of anyone that is paying for services right now. It's not that. I just want to say that what somebody was charging, including myself, for a service five weeks ago, six weeks ago, when our market, our financial system, was at the highest peak it's ever been in our country in our world's history, what you charge then maybe. In fact, it probably is different than what you're able to get now. And the reason is the people that would be paying you, there's just this domino effect where they're bringing in less revenue, and so they can afford to pay you less for the service. So I had a couple people really shoot themselves in the foot in the last week with me, and this happened with a friend of mine as well. And I actually reached out to one of them and I said, you know, I really love you and I think you do a great job. And I said, but. But your pricing is just kind of, really, kind of out of alignment with what is going on right now. And what the person said to me is, well, that's what I need now, given the way my business, you know, has changed and given the way my, in this case, her husband had lost his job. That's what I need now to get by. So that's what I wanted to charge you. Here's the thing. What's going on at your house is not my problem. Right. What's going on at your house is not my problem. It's not your employer's problem. It's not. Whatever. And I think it's important to talk about this because what we need to do is we need to make sure that when we're selling something, we are completely in line with the market. What people need, the way they need it, and what the right product and price fit is for the particular time and circumstance. And so I just want to encourage you guys and gals out there, don't adjust your prices higher because of something that's happening at your home. Adjust your prices to fit the current market, because that's what's paying you. That's where you're going to get paid. And again, I just wanted to share that experience because it probably resonates with a lot of people that are out there. And I think that as we go through.

The next few weeks, particularly the next month, I expect May and June to be by far the two roughest months that we experience as a nation with regard to this virus.

Economically. And the reason is, I have a lot of friends that were holding on in terms of keeping people on board or planning to bring people back that had been let go or furloughed restaurants that were planning to reopen, that were waiting for stimulus cash, and they're at a point right now where they're not able to hang on yet any longer. By the way, if you're in this position, you're not alone. And if you need to talk to somebody, I'm happy to connect with you. And so what I just wanted to say is, I wanted to say that, you know, I think it's really important, maybe more important than ever, that we stay focused, no matter what is going on around us, that we stay focused on things that are going to pull us forward. Because whatever it is that we focus on determines how we feel. However we feel determines how we behave, however we behave determines or impacts the results that we get. The results that we get determine how much money is in our bank account, and we all could use that cash right now. So I think I may have shared this before, but when it comes to focus, there's so many choices that we have in every single moment. There's so many different things that we can focus on. When I worked for Tony Robbins a zillion years ago, we used to do this exercise. And the exercise that we used to do is we have a room. We have everybody stand up and say, you got a thousand people in the room. What we do is we look around, and we would ask everybody to do this one thing for 10 seconds. For 10 seconds. For 10 seconds, I want you to look around the room, and I want you to see everything that you see that's green, green, green, green. And if you're home, I'd like you to close your eyes and do this. Look around. Or actually, not yet, not yet. I want you to look around your room first and look for everything that you see that's green. So green, green, green, green, green, green, green, green, green. In this room, I know I've got green grass stuff behind me, there's a green button. On my printer over here, on my audio board, there's a bunch of green buttons. On my video.

Board, there's a green button. So green, green, green, green, green, green, green, green, green. Now close your eyes and tell me everything that you saw. The room that was orange.

Or that was yellow or that was purple because it was all there. You see, whatever we focus on and we focus on consistently, that's what we get. And unfortunately, what most people focus on is the brown. They focus on the crap in their life. And it's easy to do, especially in an environment like the one that we're in today, where whenever we turn on the television or whenever we go to a website or we refresh our news or we get our news feed on our phone, what we tend to see is good news. So what we have to do is we have to stay focused on where we want to go. I'll tell you a story. Excuse me.

Another thing on my bucket list. So we were talking about bucket lists. Another thing on my bucket list was always learning how to drive a race car. And I went with my buddy Greg Reed. We went to Las Vegas with a few people, and we went and took race car driving lessons. And it was really cool. It was a road track. It wasn't a NASCAR track, so it wasn't an oval. It was like a le mans track. And I was in a. It was cool car. I was in a Ferrari Modena, brand new, souped up, super low, crazy fast, all that stuff. And I remember when I. When I started the lesson, I sat down. I think I learned more about business that day than I did driving. Because the way that my lesson worked is I sat at the. At the steering wheel, all buckled up, my hands on the wheel, 10 and 2 and the drive. And the instructor sat in the passenger seat, and they were at an angle like this, and they had their hand out, if you can see it like that. And their hand was right off of my steering wheel. And the first thing they said to me is, your job is to keep your eyes up and to keep your eyes on the horizon. You got to focus on where it is that you want to go. Now, here's the thing. When you're going 5 miles an hour, 10, 15, 20, 50 miles an hour, keeping our eyes up and on the horizon, that's not a hard thing to do. You're just cruising along. But here's what happens. The faster you drive, the faster life comes at you, the more things that are going on in your business, what happens is, as these things happen, you take your eyes off of the horizon of where you want to go, and you drop your eyes to what's right in front. Now, as a race car driver, what happens is you go from looking out there where you want to go to looking right over the edge of your hood, so you look like right over the edge of your hood. And what happens is you see every drop of water, you see every bump in the road, every pebble, all that stuff. And so instead of focusing there, what happens is you focus there. By the way, if you're a skier, this is called looking over the tips of your skis. You know what happens? You look down, you fall right over. So as a race car driver, as you see all this stuff, what you start to do is make these really fast, quick, quirky adjustments. Now, doing, doing. Let me get my hands up here. Doing this at 5 miles an hour don't mean nothing. Doing this at 150 miles an hour takes you right into the wall.

So the second thing that you learn during race car driving lessons is you learn how to crash. And it's such an important lesson. So I told you that the instructor has their hand up on your. On your steering wheel. Boom. And what happens is, when they think that you look really comfortable, they take the hand that was close. And by the way, you're so focused on the road, you don't even realize their hand is there. They take it and they press it on the wheel, close it, and they tug just a little bit. Just a little bit. And what happens is you feel out of control. And when you feel out of control and when you feel in fear in life, what do you do? What do you do? You change your focus from here to whatever it is that you fear most, right? You change your focus from things are awesome, and that's the goal I'm going to hit. That's the direction I'm going to. To whatever it is that you fear most. So as a race car driver, what you fear most is the wall. So watch what happens. Your hands are here, your eyes like that instantaneously like that. Your eyes fear. Boom. Go straight to the wall. And what happens is, as your eyes go to the wall, it turns your head, and turning your head, turns your shoulder, and turning your shoulder, turns your hands. And so before you know it, without even thinking about it, you're going right into the thing that you fear most, into that wall. So the instructor has only one job after that. And their instructor, their job is this. They take their hand and they put it really gently up against your head, up against your helmet. And what happens is, by doing this instantly, without thinking about it, what happens is your eyes. Boom. Go back to where it is you want to go, which pulls your head, which pulls your shoulders, which. Which turns your hands. And that is how you get out of a crash.

So here's the thing. Right now, the very most important thing that you can do, the very most important thing that you can do for your business and your finances is to keep your eyes up on the horizon, to stay focused, no matter what the noise is going on out there at where it is that you want to go. Because when you do, when you stay focused on where you want to go, you make these really smooth, long course correction adjustments. You see what I'm saying? And that is what takes you to where it is that you're going to be. That's how you do it. So the most important thing that you can do right now to get to where you want financially is to block out the noise. Focus on the green and not the brown in the room. Keep your eyes up and on the horizon. And if you feel yourself going in the wrong direction, because what you're focused on is your fear, what you feel, give yourself a little tap on the head and bring your body, bring your eyes back to where it is that you want to go.

Does that make sense? That makes sense to anybody. Because that's it. The difference that makes the difference between people that have everything and people that don't is they've learned to control two things better than anyone else. Two things. That's it. Two things. Number one is what they focus on, and we just talked about that. And the second is how they move. That's how they move. How they use their physiology is assuming that we all have the same or similar physiology, because motion creates emotion. You change the way that you move. You change the way that you feel. You change what you put in you. You change the way you feel. Why do people smoke? People smoke because it changes the way that they feel. It's an instant change in their physical state. Why do people overeat or eat? Like, right now, it's all about pastries. The pastry business is up 60% in the last month. Why eat pastries? Because that sugar, that taste, whatever, what you put in your body changes the way you feel, right? Exercising changes the way you feel. And however you feel is going to change the way you behave. However you behave changes the results that you get. The results that you get changes how much money is in your bank account. So I know it's not a. It's not like a. It's not like a business lesson. So when people ask me, and they ask, you know, Scott, what is it that I need to do now? What do I got to do right now in order to put more money in my account. A lot of the times they're surprised because they expect me to say something like apply for the PPP loan, you know, or let's, let's adapt your business model or go pick up this book. And usually what my advice is, is. And it's not advice, it's counsel. It's focus on something different. Make a different choice. That's what you need to do, is make a different choice about what it is that you focus on, because it is a choice.

Now if you have a difficult time getting to that place, you feel that there's so much that's pulling at you or pulling you down, how do you become really great at making choices like this? How do you strengthen the muscle? Because this is all about building a muscle. That's all it is, right? These choices are muscles that we're building. And if we want to flex them, what do we do? We have to start the process of building our resistance to wait. Or building our resistance to negative news by dropping into gratitude. It's the simplest way to do it. You may sound say that sounds cheesy. That sounds woo woo. That sounds like a bunch of bullshit. I was with you until now. Well, not with me then. Fine, go somewhere else. Here's the thing. Gratitude changes everything. Gratitude changes everything because it shifts your perspective and in a heartbeat, and it gets you to focus on what you have versus what you don't have. So if you're trying to manage your focus during these times, the easiest way to do it is this. You set an alarm.

This is what you do on your cell phone. It's really simple, okay? So you can see, here's my alarms, okay? Boom, boom. Every day. So I get up 4:45, 7:30 is my first gratitude alarm. My second is at 7:30 at night. Okay, here's what you do in the morning. In the morning, okay? When your gratitude alarm goes off, by the way, make it your favorite song or something like that. You can change the alarm tone in your phone. When your gratitude alarm goes off, I want you to say out loud three things that you're grateful for. Three things that you're grateful for. And the more you do this, the more it will go from just saying them to actually feeling it. Okay? So three things that you're grateful for if you want extra credit. Because right now, man, we really need to control our focus. And controlling our focus in part means we really need to love on ourselves. We really need to love on ourselves. Because it's so easy during this period to be asking questions like what if? Or why me? Or how could I do that? Or how could I be in this position? Or. Or why am I the only one? Or gosh, damn, I feel alone or isolated. I feel like I'm not worthy. I feel like there's something about me that's not good enough. Like it's so easy to go there. So easy. But we're not going to because we've made a different choice. Because people who fricking crush it make different choices, right? And it's interesting because if you take a look at a choice and let's say it's a 1% choice that you make today and how it impacts your life, look at what happens to that 1% in a day, in a week, in a month, in a year. You see, that 1% is the difference that makes the difference between people who are exceptional. And number two, I take a look at today. I took a look at the results in this world that we get. I take a look at results, okay? And here's what I see. We get great results, we get good results, or we get poor results. And here's the thing. Whatever level you perform at, you will get results that are one level below. And here's why. If you do a great job, if you do a really great job in whatever it is that you do, you will get results in the marketplace that are one level below you will get good results. And the reason is there are a lot of people just as good at you that are doing just as great of a job as you. So if you do a great job, you get good results. If you do a really good job, you do a really good job out there, you get poor results. If you do a poor job, you're out of business.

But there. And by the way, to get from poor to good is a lot of work. And to get from good to great is a lot of work. But there's one more level, and very few people are willing to play at this level. And that level is badass Outstanding results.

I guess that's the name. Badass Outstanding Results. And here's the thing. To get from great to badass, outstanding is like a little bit of work. That's it. It's like making the one extra call, doing the one extra thing, focusing on one extra exercise about gratitude every day. It's the one thing. It's the one thing. It's 1% more that makes the biggest difference. And the people who perform at that level, that extra 1%, because you get a level down in results, they're the Ones that get the great results in our market. So how do we do it? So how we do it is we start with gratitude. Okay, so three things that you're grateful for. That's number one. Second thing I want you to do.

Say out loud three things that you love about yourself. Three things that you love about yourself.

This is so important. Imagine this. Imagine that you're say you're the kind of person that loves and you love a lot. You love deeply like you love really deeply other people. Imagine if you turn the love that you gave to others on yourself.

Imagine if you were as non judgmental as you are with others. With I have kids, My kids screw up, I don't care. Like, I am so non judgmental. Imagine if you were as non judgmental with others. If you were that non judgmental with yourself, how would you feel? How would you feel? How would that impact the way you behave? And then because you're behaving differently, how would that impact the results that you get? And how would that then impact the money in your account? You see, it all starts and it all ends with love. See, the love is the most important part in business. It's all about starting with loving yourself through gratitude. And this love. You start by loving yourself, by loving your customer, by loving what you do, by loving the process, because the beauty is in the process. And so what I am suggesting is you start number one, three things I'm grateful for. Number two, three things I love about myself for extra credit. Look in the mirror when you're doing this exercise. And then finally, three things. Three things.

That you forgive yourself for. What are three things that you forgive yourself for? You know, it may be you forgive yourself that your company went out of business. It may be you forgive yourself because you got out of shape and overweight. And maybe you forgive yourself because of the way you talk to somebody or you treated somebody. Maybe you forgive yourself because you slept in today, whatever it is. But you do three of those things every single day. And what happens is you completely change what you focus on. It becomes a muscle. It becomes a muscle. And I was taught to just do the first, the gratitude. Do it once a day. I do it twice a day, so I get extra credit. I recommend you do it twice a day also. And here's the thing, the last thing I'll touch on today because we're almost out of time, is that there's an exponential effect to the results that you get in this life based on how consistent you are. Now, what do I mean by that? What I mean by that is if I do something today. So I do my gratitude exercise today. I get the result. Let me do exercise. It's easier. Let's say I want to lose 10 pounds in the next 30 days and I exercise today, okay? I get the power of the exercise, that benefit to the first power. I do it two days in a row. I get exercise to the second power, three days to the third power. Here's the thing. I get to the end of the week, I get to the end of the week, and on Sunday, I blow it all. I don't exercise. I eat like shit, okay? So I have to start again on Monday. And on Monday, I get the power of that thing to the first power. It's the exercise. I start over again. 30 days goes by. There's me and somebody else. We both wanted to lose 10 pounds. I lost one, and that person lost 15. What's the difference? The difference is they exercised every day. They have the exponential power of that thing to the 30th power. There's like this multiplier effect that happens, that takes place. And it's so important to know. I would rather spend five minutes a day on something seven days a week than 50 minutes and try and do it all on one day a week. Because you don't get any of that multiplication exponential power factor in your results. And so that's what. That's. That's what I would be thinking about. So as it relates to gratitude, as it relates to your focus, get it in at least once a day, every day. Do it for the next 30 days. It will change your life, it will change your business, and it will change your bank account forever.

I want to thank all of you for joining today. Love y'. All. I appreciate you being here. For those of you who are watching or listening for the first time, you can tune in each day at 10am Pacific to watch the live broadcast on YouTube and Facebook list nationwide. Throughout the day on Dash Radio, you can download the podcast. My name is Scott Duffy. This is what now. And I look forward to seeing you again tomorrow. Take care.