Scott Duffy: Where Will The Opportunities Lie On The Other Side of This Pandemic, Episode 26

Good morning, everybody.

Good morning. It's Tuesday and welcome to what NOW with Scott Duffy. I want to thank you for more ever you're joining. If you're watching us live on Facebook or YouTube, Periscope, LinkedIn or Instagram, I want to welcome you. And for anyone who's new to this program, when you drop in, if you're watching live on social media, if you could write down what your name is, give us your name, the industry that you're in and the biggest challenge that you're having right now are questions that you have so I can work to shape the rest of this show around you. Again, my name is Scott Duffy and I want to welcome you. There is so much to talk about today. There is so much to talk about. It just seems that every day we have new news break as soon as we get off the air.

And it's been a really busy morning. And so I have a bunch to share with all of you about stimulus checks, Eidl, ppp, some new news and some really good news, too about a path that we may be taking to start to open the economy back up and help us to get back to work. And so I'm pretty pumped up this morning. I gotta share. You know, sometimes, you know, I wake up or, you know, go to sleep. I typically go on online around midnight to see what's happening in the overnights in other parts of the world to shape the news the next day for this program. And then we, what I do is I get up early and I'm reading through the news, I'm watching, I'm talking to people. And some days the news and the sentiment has been really down and really low. But today I'm feeling really good. I'm feeling really positive about the outlook, even though we're filled with a lot of uncertainty about when this whole crisis is going to end, when we're going to be able to return to a normal or new normal. There's a lot of uncertainty around that. There are signs that are starting to emerge that are super positive. And boy, I'll tell you, I could use some good news. So today I'm going to focus a lot of our time on that, on the good news and how we take advantage of this good news to help us to protect ourselves personally, to help us to stabilize our businesses and to help us position ourselves to really take off on the other side. Bobby Joe, good morning. I want to welcome you. If you're new to this show or this stream, if you could drop in, share your name, the industry you're in and the biggest challenge you're having or questions that you have. I want to spend as much of the time as I can on this program shaping the show around you and the questions that you have and what's most important to you. Like I said, a whole bunch to talk about today. We're going to get started here in just a minute. Right now, we're going to let this stream propagate across the Internet. For those of you who are watching on Facebook or YouTube, on Instagram, LinkedIn or Periscope Live, I want to welcome all of you and I want to thank you for joining us again. I'm Scott Duffy and this is what Now. So.

Gosh, like I said, I'm feeling good this morning. I'm starting to see a consistent barrage of good news and things I think are going to point us in the right direction to help us get out of this crisis and get back to work to get money flowing back into our account. So this is all really good stuff and that's what I'm going to focus this show around. So we are just about 30 seconds out, so I'm going to let this propagate just a little bit longer and then we're going to be going live.

On nationwide radio. And I want to thank all of you guys for joining.

And there's so much to announce this week, too. We have a big event. Mark your calendars. The big event is Thursday, May 21. It's from 8am to midnight. It will be the biggest live stream broadcast in the world focused on business. We have got a roster of celebrity entrepreneurs, entertainists, artists, entertainers, artists and athletes that is totally second to none. And these people are going to share stories, inspiring stories and encouragement and tools, specific lessons and tools that we all need to help us come out stronger on the other side of this. All right, it is time. We got five seconds. So I just want to say welcome and thank all of you for joining again. If you're here in social media on the stream, please drop in your name, industry you're in and the biggest question you have so I can shape this show around you. 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 10:00am Pacific Time to watch the live broadcast on Facebook and YouTube, listen nationwide on Dash Radio throughout the day or download the podcast. This show is for entrepreneurs, 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, or they saw their consulting contracts canceled just like that. It's for people asking, what do I do now and how do I come out of this crisis even stronger now? Our focus today is going to be when do we go back to work? And when we do, what opportunities will that create? When do we go back to work? What opportunities does that create and how can we seize those opportunities? But before we drop in, I want to share with you a little bit of news. First, the World Health organization is reporting 1.9 million cases of coronavirus this morning and 120,000 deaths worldwide. Now we are still not. According to WHO, at the peak of this virus in the US there's 560,000 people infected and 23,000 deaths. Here in the United States, all 50 states, check this out. All 50 states are under disaster declarations. For the first time in the nation's history. 95% of the US population is under stay at home orders and 70% want to stay at home under lockdown until they know that things are safe to go back to work. Nearly half of those employed think that they will lose their jobs if they don't go back soon. And 17 million have applied for unemployment over the past, over the past month. Now, just to give you some perspective, and then we're going to shift all those really great news just to give you some perspective. During the Great Recession of 2008 and 2009, it took 44 weeks, that's roughly 10 months to reach the unemployments that we've reached in just over three, three to four weeks. So it's really crazy how much change has happened in such a short period of time. And I just want to congratulate you, I want to congratulate everybody for getting through it and getting through this point because this has not been easy. This has been pretty doggone cray cray. I mean, none of us have ever experienced anything like this. This is a once in a generation type of experience where our nation has literally shut down. We have locked down 95% of the population and we have had to change the way we work, the way we interact, the way we play, the way we sell, the way we do business. We've had to change everything virtually overnight. Now there are a growing number of people across the country that want to get back to work and their voices are starting to be heard, especially in states that haven't been hit as hard as states like California and New York and Seattle and Illinois and Louisiana, there's several states that have very few infections. And people in those states are really starting to become vocal. They are really starting to scream out that they're ready to go back to work, in fact. And, you know, I want you to think about this. You know, some people, you know, may wonder why people, you know, why there may be folks out there that are pushing so hard to get back to work when there's still so much uncertainty about whether or not they can be infected or spread this or whatever the reason is. If you're watching me today and you're in a live stream, this assumes a couple things. This assumes you have an Internet connection somewhere, you have a device that's connected to the Internet and you have the ability to get on online and to watch this broadcast.

And the reality is that's a luxury in this country. That's a luxury. The ability to work at home is a luxury because so much of our economy is dependent on services that require people to use their hands either to get in front of a cash register, to build a car. It doesn't matter what it is. They can't do those things at home. So you're seeing in states like Michigan, where people want to go back to work and build cars, those states are becoming much more vocal, the citizens, about getting back to work.

And it's really interesting because you're starting to see this morning talk of several countries beginning the process later this week and beginning next week of getting back to work. In fact, Denmark is already outlining how they're going to get their kids back into school. And there's a growing push by our federal government to ease restrictions and the stay at home orders. And what I would expect after watching President Trump last night is I would expect an announcement to come this week for how he's planning to reopen the country. And I think this is really, really, really good news. Governors on the east coast, in the northeastern states and on the west coast along the Pacific, California, Oregon and Washington are now working together as teams. So you have the east coast team and you have the west coast team, and they're working as teams to collectively collaborate on how they will effectively ease up on stay at home orders and cooperate with people moving between states and things like that. So again, I think that this is a really, really great news for all of us that are really ready to get back to work. There are things like there is motion, there is momentum behind all of this, starting right now. Now, what does that look like? It's highly likely that a reopening doesn't happen all at once. It happens in phases. In the first phase will not take place in the places that are hit most hard. The first phase will take place in areas of the country or areas of the world that have not been as impacted, where the rate of the spread of the virus is really low, where there is a really low likelihood that there's going to be an outbreak, a major outbreak in those areas, those are the areas that we would expect to open up first. So the first thing to take in consideration is geographic. The second is, is occupation. So some occupations will likely be allowed to go back to work quicker than others. So, you know, as an example, doctors going back to work, or dentists going back to work, or attorneys or accountants that don't have to interface with a lot of people every day will probably be the first professions that are enabled to go back to work without any penalty or anything like that. The third thing is how many people come together around your business. And, and this is really important because, you know, for me, I'm in the live event business, so the ability for me to be able to throw live events in the near future is just, you know, that's not a thing. To have a live event where people are in person, that's just not going to happen. So again, this is all going to come down to first, where you live, geography, second, what occupation you're in, and third, how many people have to come together in, in a group at one time in order to, in order to, to do whatever it is that you do. Now I would expect measures like distance, wearing masks, no parties, things like that to remain for months when it comes to big gatherings. Some of the guidance that we're hearing today is that you have CEOs, like the CEO of Life Nation, the biggest provider of concerts in the US who said just this morning that he does not expect to see concerts take place, big live in person events for at least the next 12 months. And so what I would really say is that what it looks like we're approaching is not the beginning of the end, but rather it's the end of the beginning of this phase. And the good news is it looks like we're getting closer to kind of this, this part of this crisis coming to an end, which is super cool. But again, we need to realize that we have a long road ahead now. Other good news is there are 70 coronavirus vaccines that are currently in development globally. And we expect to hear later this week from a couple of companies that have developed antibody tests about where they are in the process of getting approved by the FDA and when they can roll out again. This is really, really great news because.

It'S easy to imagine a world where you take your phone and you're subscribed to, or you have an account with Google or with Apple who are now working together. And what you do is when you want to check into an event with a lot of people or you want to check in to go to work at a big company that you may need to show a barcode or something like that that shows that either you've had it in your immune, that you've had an antibody test that shows that you have immunity or that shows a vaccinate, shows that you had a vaccination. So those three scenarios are being talked about all over. I have friends in very big companies up in Silicon Valley and throughout the world, consumer packaged goods companies, technology companies, oil and gas companies that have a lot of workers come in to big buildings every day. And they are all, on top of what I just shared. They are all talking about what type of measures they're going to have to enact from a security standpoint, not just to make sure that this doesn't spread, but really to help protect themselves in the future from a future illness or a future pandemic or something like that. So I think it's going to be really interesting to see the way all this emerges over the next. Over the next. Over the next few months now, a couple more stories I've been reading about in the last 24 hours. The first is this. Police are asking people to stop calling 911 because they're out of toilet paper. I mean, seriously, you got to give me a break. Police have been asking people to stop calling 911 because they are out of toilet paper. So please, please don't do that. Second, the CEO of Unilever. The CEO of Unilever was on CNBC today and was really insightful with regard to consumer behavior, consumer purchasing behavior during this period and what he expects to see over the next 12 months. Now, if you don't know, Unilever is a big global consumer packaged goods company. It's based in Europe and they are also the number one seller of soap in the world and one of the top sellers of toilet paper. And one of the things that he was sharing is he was talking about this concept of hoarding. So this is truth. Since all of this started about four weeks ago, I have not been able to buy a paper towel. So I went to five stores on Sunday, five markets on Sunday I went to a couple of the day before. I've asked people like at CVS and Walgreens when they restock the paper. I have not been able to buy one time. And toilet paper has been its own, its own issue. And he was asked about this idea of hoarding and shelves being empty. And what he shared was in other parts of the world, hoarding is not a thing, not like it is here in the US he said it's really a us thing. And he explained that in other parts of the world, people, number one, they eat less and a lot less. Number two, they live in smaller homes and have less storage. Number three, they have far less disposable income. And number four, they have far less access to credit. And so what we've seen in the stores in this hoarding has not been happening in the same way in other parts of the world. And I just thought that that was really interesting. The other thing I thought was interesting was his concern about obesity. Here's why. When you take a look at the products that are selling the most, it's sugar, sugar, sugar and sugar. Anything with a lot of sugar, it's pastries, it's donuts, it's candy. Anything with a lot of sugar is selling. And people are at home eating a lot of comfort food and they're putting on that. Freshman 15 now here's the thing as it relates to putting on weight and obesity, what we learned yesterday from the state of New York is the number one cause of hospitalization for coronavirus patients in the state of New York is obesity. The number one cause of hospitalization is in New York for coronavirus virus patients has been obesity. And so again, stay away from the sugar and stay away from the comfort food as much as, as much as you can.

Yesterday I mentioned on the show, before we get to all of our, all of our business today, yesterday I mentioned on the show some comments that, that Fauci made, Anthony Fauci made on a Sunday talk show that I was watching with Jake Tapper. And when he was being interviewed on the show, he was asked like it was the biggest setup interview. It was just one of those where it was a gotcha interview. The questions by Jake Tapper, and I don't care that it's Jake could be anybody for this kind of interview. It was such a, I'm going to get you, I'm going to get a sound bite. It was like one of those things to trap this guy who clearly is just trying to be honest. He's trying not to be A sellout. And. And he was asked about. He was asked whether or not closing the country early or than we did could have saved more lives. And he looked at the answer to the question, and he said, you know, it's just like, it's a hypothetical, and it's just, like, so hard to answer. But he said, obviously, if you close something earlier, then maybe you could save more life, but that doesn't mean that we didn't close at the right time, you know. And so the headline after that interview, in the headline all yesterday was about fire Fauci was he had undercut Donald Trump. And I shared with you a story about media training. And this is a great lesson for any small business. What I shared with you is that as it relates to media training, I've done a ton of media training. There's a couple things that you learn. One of the things that you learn is you learn to clearly define your talking points. So clearly define your talking points, and it's typically the three points that you want to get across whenever you're interviewed. And it doesn't matter what the question is that you're asked, you want to answer with one of those three talking points. And when you're finished, you try and come back to those talking points. And I share that when you get off your talking points, and it doesn't matter if you're doing a podcast or you're doing a live stream or an interview for entrepreneur.com or a magazine or newspaper or the television media, if you're asked a question, you're asked a question. And when you're asked a question, you start to think about it. You start to get in your head a little bit, and in your gut, it feels like you shouldn't say what you just kind of want to say, but you do it anyway. The odds are that that was the wrong thing to say, number one. Number two, it is highly likely that that's the headline. It just always works that way. The thing that you think you shouldn't say always becomes the headline. And so it was interesting because Yesterday I saw Dr. Fauci on the news, and he apologized and he said, he talked about basically this process, and what he talked about was having a poor choice of words and it kind of being in there, and maybe he shouldn't have said it, and it was just the wrong choice of words and kind of, you know right away. So again, when you're talking to folks today about you, when you're talking about your business, how have your three talking points stick to those Talking points. And by the way, as it relates to talking points, the most important talking point that all of us need to nail down.

Is our introduction. It's our 30 second commercial. It's so important and so many of us, we just don't get it right. And think about it, how many times have you asked someone what do you do? And the person looks at you with like a blank stare or what they do is they continue, they say, I do this and this and this and this and they go in a circle. And when they're finished, you have no idea what the hell they're talking about. How many times does that happen? It's happened to all of us. I know, I've been guilty of it too. So how do you create the perfect 30 second commercial? By the way, today it can't be the 30 seconds. So when I was growing up, it was a 30 second commercial. And then the Internet came and it was like a 25. And then social media came and it was, it was, it was, what was it? 20. And then came TikTok and now it's 15 seconds. And so how do you do it? Number one, here's what you do. You write this down. Number one, what is your name and your title in your company? My name is Scott Duffy. I'm the founder and CEO of SD Media. Okay, that's number one. Number two, what do you do? So here's my name, title and company. That's one sentence. What do you do in one sentence? What is the market that you serve in one sentence. How do they benefit in one sentence? And then finally, do you know anyone? You end with a question. Do you know anyone that could use this type of service, that could use this product or use this service? So when I'm giving somebody a 30 second commercial or now it's a 15 second commercial, what I do, my name, title and company. One, here's what we do. Two, here's who we serve. Three, here's how they benefit. Four, and then five, I end with a question and that question typically turns into a response that's yes, I could use that, and opens up a greater dialogue or no, but I know somebody that could use that which turns typically into an even bigger dialogue. So it's so important that you know, when we're thinking about our talking points that we start with the most important, which is telling people who we are and what we do and the value that they get by purchasing their products and services, how they benefit. So super, super important. Now, before we get into the meat of today's, show. I just want to welcome a whole bunch of people here. So first of all, I want to say hello to my man, Randy Garn. It is so good to see you. Love you, brother. I will talk to you later today. Helen, it is great to see you again as well today. Steve Bentley, thank you so much for joining us. Sita Thompson, Bobby Jo, I see Lisa, I see Ashley from all of you over here on YouTube, thank you so much for joining. And again, if you're just joining this broadcast, please write down your name, the industry that you're in and the biggest challenge you're having or question you have so I can shape the rest of this show around you. Now, let's talk about cash.

With regard to personal stimulus. There is a lot of news over the past 24 hours that I wanted to share. The first of all is related to unemployment. So here in the state of California, I have talked to several people over the past 24 hours that have begun to receive unemployment from claims filed in the past two to three weeks. So if you have filed for unemployment, you haven't heard anything back, watch out, take a look at your mailbox because you would be getting that check not in the form of a check, but in the form of a card. It is like a debit card. That's how it will get to you. And here in the state of California, I hear those cards are starting to be mailed out and received. That's number one. Number two is personal stimulus. So the first personal stimulus checks, those, those checks that started at $1200 per month, $1200 as a one time check from the government to taxpayers to help them to offset this price they're paying by not being at work. And those personal checks start at $1,200 for people who earn less than $99,000 a year, they start at $1,200. And for each additional child, for each child, it's an additional $500 for a family of four. A family of four, you're eligible for up to $3,400 in a one time payment. Now this program was announced two, three weeks ago and I probably get more. I get a lot of emails and a lot of texts and DMS about this particular program. People are asking where is their money? I haven't heard anything back. I did what I was supposed to do. Where is my money? Here's some great news. That money started to be started be delivered over the weekend. So it was delivered over the weekend. And according to Secretary Treasury Mnuchin last night. 80 million taxpaying Americans, 80 million people who filed taxes in 2018 or 19 and had payment information with the government, meaning they had information filed with the IRS that said what their bank account and routing number was. Those 80 million people should be receiving money in their account no later than tomorrow. So if you fit into that category, make sure to check your bank account because the odds are you're going to be receiving money no later than tomorrow. And I have already spoken to several people that looked in their bank accounts yesterday and today and have seen money hit from the federal government so that money is being delivered, which frankly is pretty amazing that in such a short period of time, the government that has never had to do anything like this was able to put together a bill, pass a bill, figure out how to get the IRS integrated into this plan and get money into 80 million people's accounts. That is all happening right now. And again, I've talked to several people that have seen that money already hit. Now here's the thing. If you do not receive that money or, or if you did not file taxes in 2018 and 19, the government wants to get money to you as well. And so tomorrow there will be a new tool that goes up from the IRS that enables you to enter your Social Security number, to authenticate your person, to authenticate yourself and enter your, your banking information so they can get a deposit to you quickly as well. This is a huge breakthrough because what it was looking like just a few days ago was that people that did not have that information with the government, we're going to have to wait. And this is what we're hearing from the government may have to wait until the end of the summer to receive it. But now what we're hearing is there will be something up online tomorrow and you'll be able to go in there so that you can get your money quickly. I think that is amazing, amazing news with regard to the ppp. With regard to the ppp, here's I want you to know the PPP program is just over a week old. So a couple of weeks ago the government passed a $2 trillion stimulus package. Of that $2 trillion, $350 billion was set aside to help businesses, small businesses. That program was called the PPP for the Paycheck Protection Program. And the way it was built, it was intended to help get money into work, into business owners pockets so they could pay people while the company, while the country was closed. That money from the PPP could be used to pay for payroll, utilities, mortgage interest and rent and if you used 75% of the money towards those things, all of that money that you just got as a loan could be completely 100% forgivable. How amazing is that? Well, last week, last Friday, a week ago Friday, so just over was closer to 10 days ago, the government rolled out, the Secretary treasury rolled out the plan for the ppp. How you enroll, what kind of banks you go to, and lenders, how this whole thing works. What we learned is that it was an SBA program. It would be in. The way an SBA program works is the SBA gets behind banks, community banks, and other lenders that are SBA certified. Those companies, those banks take in applications, decide whether or not to approve or not approve applications. If they're approved and. And they decide to lend the money, then the SBA will back that loan.

So everybody that I know, that had a company, everybody I know went and applied or did everything they could to learn how to apply. And there were a ton of questions. And what they learned last week, and this is what was really tough is what they learned last week, is this program had a lot of, had a lot of awards that need to get worked out in the government over the last 24, 48 hours is starting to roll out some ways that those warts are getting worked out. So, for example.

Things you need to know.

The. The government has distributed already. Now, I just want you to keep in mind, I do not know one person that has received any money from, from the PPP program. And everyone I know in my network that has a business has applied for it. I believe everybody has applied for it. I do not know one person. I ask every day on the show if you've received it, you were approved and received it, and you got money to send that to me. Send that, put that in our group because I want to learn.

I don't know anybody that's gotten money. This gives you a sense of how many people have applied for this loan. I don't know anybody that's gotten it. The government has already distributed 230 billion of the 350 billion in a week. They distributed 230 billion of the $350 billion in loans in a week, and I don't even know anybody that's gotten it. That number is multiples and multiples and multiples. When I looked at the data, more lending done in a week than the SBA has ever done in its biggest year. It is crazy. So the program is working in certain places for certain people that have gotten in line and gone to the right places to get the funding. The SBA has also increased the number of approved lenders. So we've gone from about 3,000 approved lenders to 4,600. This is a really big help. And yesterday we saw a couple of companies come online as new companies that could help to get this PPP program.

For you. PayPal, QuickBooks, I've talked about, Kabbage. These are all companies that can now help you through this process. At least that's what they're claiming. Community banks are still the best. So even though I don't know anybody that's received the money, I do know one person that's been approved, two people that have been approved, and I have heard of a third person that's that I know of that got approved as well. None of them have gotten the money. The one common thread with all of them is they all went to community banks. Not one of them went to a big bank. In fact, the people that I know, and even people that have a really big payroll at places like Wells Fargo.

With, with Wells Fargo Chase, JP Morgan, stuff like that, they have all expressed to me what a pain in the neck it's been and how tough the process has been with those banks. And one of the things that we're seeing with those banks is that the standards that they're trying to hold businesses to when applying for this SBA backed loan are the same, if not more stringent standards that were used before this crisis. And what the government promised is relaxed, reduced requirements in order to get the money and to get funded. And so there's been a total disconnect there between small business and big banks. But what I will say is through community banks, through credit unions, things like that, the process seems to be working. So I would reach out to those guys. Also, more good news about money. This week states were promised by the treasury to be given through stimulus a certain amount of cash. The first half of that money goes out to states ahead of schedule this week and the second half goes out next week. There is another $2.3 trillion in liquidity that's been announced for mid sized businesses. That's businesses with 1,000 to 10,000 employees. Now look.

On every other day, I think I've spent more time teaching and training and not only sharing information, but tools and things like that to help you guys manage through this, this crisis. But I've had so many questions since last Friday about these areas. Now that there's some new news coming out, I just think it's important to share and it's something I can refer. We can refer people back to. So again, some. I just think that this is really great news because I know that I've been frustrated. I know that a lot of you have been frustrated. A lot of our friends, our family, our coworkers, our employers have been frustrated because they heard about all this cash they would have access to. They jumped on top of it. They did everything that they said that they were told to do, and then they heard nothing. But what I want to share is in, you know, a week, week and a half, government, which moves like a big, you know, it takes miles for a big aircraft carrier to turn around government, which is just like that big aircraft carrier, has really created and implemented some amazing things. Should the money be hitting in a relatively short period of time? If you've gotten any of this money, will you please do me a favor and let me know in one of these threads? So whether you're watching on YouTube or Facebook or LinkedIn or Instagram or Periscope, I would love to know if you have received.

Any money. So, Chris, first of all, welcome to Chris Nagle. Thank you so much for joining, Chris. We're going to have you on the show here with our sponsor in a week. So I'm really looking forward to that. It is. That's the way a lot of people have felt. A lot of people felt like the government almost wants us to fail. Like the government feels like small businesses have the liquidity of companies like Apple and Google and Facebook. Like, we can just, we can just hold on, you know, we can just tighten our belts. We can hold on for a little bit longer in order to, you know, and we can ride this storm like the big companies can. And you know what? Just ain't the case. That's not the case with small business. Now, I'll tell you one thing that I did here yesterday that I really did think was a cool idea. And this related to restaurants. So I have a ton of friends that own restaurants. And these restaurants, you know, everyone's closed. A lot of my friends are calling me right now. They're calling me right now about.

Should they file bankruptcy, should they wait, is the PPP gonna get to them in time? They're concerned. It's just an idea. But one of the things I heard yesterday, President Trump talk about was the idea of reinstituting or going to Congress and reinstituting the tax deduction for meals that used to exist for business. So if you took someone to lunch or you took somebody to dinner and it was for a business purpose.

It was for a business purpose. You could write a big portion of that meal off. And that was one thing that brought a lot of additional business to restaurants. When that deduction went away from our taxes a couple years ago, it dropped the amount of spending nationwide at restaurants. What he was talking about was bringing that back as soon as possible and rewriting that into the tax code so we could begin once everything opens up, to get back to restaurants and to spend more, knowing that we can deduct some of that. And you know, Chris, you're right. Bad tenants. One of the things that keeps coming up with friends of mine that own property and that have tenants, so they own apartments, they may be leasing something out to a con in a condo, things like that. They're. They're. They're saying to me they can't evict bad tenants.

And it comes to me in a variety of different ways. So one way I hear them talk about this is they'll say, look, I have tenants. I have to pay my mortgage for that property every single month. Every single month. And I don't, you know, I. So I need. I need rent. So what they've done is they've gone back to their mortgage holders, and in many cases, the mortgage holder, the lender will give them some kind of deferment on payment. A lot of my friends have received six months of deferment on their mortgage payments. So what they're able to do is work with those tenants and give them more time. I have other friends of mine that rely. They haven't been able to get that deferment. They need that rent payment. And the tenants have gone dark or said that they can't pay or whatever, and they can't be evicted right now. Because I believe, if not the whole country, most of the country has no eviction type of mandates. Like, I know in California, you can't evict somebody right now for not paying rent. And then there's the third kind of person that I talk to that has a. Has a building or has a property and they rent it, and their sole source of income is coming from that renter. And so they may not even have a mortgage, but they need that money to eat, and they need money from that person who's. Who's renting that place or leasing from them. And so they're in their own bind. And it is such a. It is such a tough place to be on both sides, because on one side, how can you fault somebody that's told they can't come to work, they can't do anything to go to work. And we know that most of this country lives paycheck to paycheck on the other side. How can you not fault somebody that wants to get the rent, that they're under a contractual thing? So, you know, what I've encouraged people to do is both the people that have the place that they're renting or leasing and the ones that are leasing the spot or renting it to get on their toes and go talk to each other and engage and try and work something out. Even if you are renting a place and you can only get a little bit of cash, but that's what they do. I mean, like, but that's what they have. Like, take the cash, take whatever you can. And if you're a renter and you're just hiding, I think that's an awful place to be because, you know, there's a human on the other side of the transaction. There's a human on the other side of the transaction. And so that's what I would. I would suggest.

I am. I want to come back to you, Chris, because this is a really timely topic. So what you're saying is that bad tenants are squatters and tenants that purposely don't pay rent and create damage. You had court orders to evict people. Now you can't evict and the property is sold, can't close until tenants are out. Banks have been very good with deferments, but that is not the issue. So, Chris, so what do you do? I'm just wondering how you, how do you handle.

That kind of situation?

That's a tough one. And Craig Collins, you have a question about business insurance. So many lenders out there are. I would call. If you have business insurance, call your lender. Because many lenders right now, they're not necessarily advertising it, but they're offering it, are giving a rebate on your insurance policy if you pay on a monthly basis. And they're doing that because you can't work right now. So there's nothing to insure. So I've seen that. The other thing I've seen is from.

Auto insurance companies doing the same thing because you can't drive and go to work, they're giving some type of rebate. Not all, but some of them. And so I think if you're looking for cash right now, this is. Why not try everything. That is definitely a place you can go also. I just wanted to come back for a second. I want to come back to unemployment. So if you have never applied for unemployment and you're applying for the first time, even if you have applied for unemployment, some states, again, this is government. Some states make this process so complicated. I walked somebody through the process a couple of weeks ago. I took them to the California EDD website, Employment Development Department website. I did a zoom call with them. I took them step by step by step through the process. It was all electronic and I was still confused. So every day I share with you an example of a company that is adapting to this market and hearing what customers are saying. We've had 17 million people apply for unemployment. More people have applied for unemployment in the last month than when we had the Great Recession in 44 weeks. It's crazy and it's hard. So there's a company called Not Pay, Do Not Pay. It's the Do Not Pay app in the Do Not Pay app bills. It's been around for a long time. Bills itself as the first legal bot, first legal robot that's available. And it provides all these really cool and great service and things like that. But it's all been built as a bot, so it can take you through a lot of different processes and guide you through a lot of different things as a bot. So they have created, they have added to their app.

They're the first robot lawyer. That's how they position themselves. They have added a new feature to help people to get unemployment. It will walk you through getting your unemployment. It's pretty cool. And you pay for it. And so here's the thing. It's just another great example of how people, businesses are listening to their customer or they're listening to their prospect or listening to the market. And instead of sitting at home and going, hmm, gosh, what's a great idea? I need to come up with an idea. By the way, this is the way most businesses start. I have an awesome idea. I'm going to build it and then I'm going to. I'm going to put it out there. Instead of doing that, what they're doing is they're going, what do customers need right now? Let me go talk to some people. What do they say they need most? What would have to happen? How would they know they're getting what they want? What would they be willing to pay for it? Like.

Don'T sit at home on your computer trying to come up with that next big idea. You will learn far more talking to people in five minutes than you learn in five weeks trying to just figure it out online by just coming up with a crazy Idea, go and talk to people, and these are what these incredible innovators are doing today. And then when you find something, I want to encourage you, when you find something that you want to pursue, to focus on building one thing and one thing only. Build one thing, really nail the one thing and then move to the next. I want to give you a couple of quick stories. The first is, and for people who, who I know, for people who follow me, you may have heard this story before. I think that the biggest mistake that entrepreneurs make is they focus on too many things at once. And I call this hammers and nails syndrome. And here's what I mean. What I mean is this. If I were to give you one hammer and one nail, your job's simple. All you have to do is bring that hammer back and drive that nail into a piece of wood. Really nail that one business. Now, the odds are you're going to miss the first, the second, the third time, you, you may never get it right. But I'm going to bet on you. I'm going to bet that you're going to nail it. So let's say I give you two hammers and two nails. You got a problem. Who's going to hold the nails? Now let's say you find somebody crazy enough to hold it, you have to grab two hammers, bring them both back, and strike at the same time. Think about how hard that is with two nails. And the odds are you'll miss the first, second, third time, you may, you may never get it right. Let's say you do and I give you 10 hammers and 10 nails. You get the point? The biggest mistake entrepreneurs make is they focus on too many things. So what I say is this, right now, don't focus on doing everything. Focus on doing one thing, really nail it and move on to the next. Get that one thing out quickly. I believe that today 75% of the way there is good enough. The extra 25% of the time and money it would take to get out there was putting something out there isn't worth it. What's more worth it is the feedback. And then you take that feedback and you go back and you iterate and you improve in the eerie launch. Because it's not about more. I used to think that more was everything. I had to do more. I had to have more of a site, more products, I had to have more features. I had to be able to do more things. I had to have more design, I had to raise more money. I had to give myself more time, more, more More. I used to think that more is better. You know what? That's bullshit. More is more. Money at risk, More time at risk, more complexity. More of an opportunity for the competition to pass you up. More reasons that you're going to fail. More. We don't want more, we want less. So we're going to focus on one thing. We're going to do that thing really well. We're going to launch it early, get lots of feedback. 75% is good enough. We're going to focus on less, not more. And instead of trying to do something for everybody, what we're going to do is focus on one body. One body, one person. I used to think that the best way to take products to market was to basically create something, cast the widest net possible, see how many fish I could bring in. But what I've learned is that the riches, especially today, are in the niches. The riches are in the niches. The deeper you go with a single solution, the further that you drill in with a single solution, you will find you can grow further, faster and with far less capital than you ever imagined. And so that's what we're going to do. We're going to do less things. We're going to nail them. Well, first of all, we're not just going to sit behind a computer and come up with ideas. We're going to talk to people. We're going to ask them what they need most today. What do you need? And what has to happen? How do you know you're getting what you want? Then what we're going to do is we're going to go build that one thing for that one person. If it's a big market, it could be a billion dollar idea. So we're going to build that one thing. When we're 75% of the way there, we're going to launch it. And by the way, this doesn't have to be technology. It could be your notary service, it could be your lending service, it could be your hair cutting service. I don't. But think about how many people are going to need a haircut when this whole thing is over. Right? 75% of the way there. We're going to push it out. We're going to be really good at listening. Okay? Instead of thinking that this is right, we're going to let customers play with whatever it is and give us feedback. Then we're going to go back and we're going to iterate. We're going to improve it, we're going to change it. If they don't like it. We're going to kill this thing if it's not feeding us, we're feeding it. Kill it if it's feeding us. If people like this thing, they like this. They want more of this. Maybe they want it in a slightly different way. Then what we do is we continue to pump the gas even harder. We push it out to more people is what we do. That new and improved version. We'll never do more. We will never do more. We'll always do less. And that way we will put ourselves at less risk. And that is so important because I used to believe that the most important job for me as an entrepreneur had to do something with business. And it's not the most important job of any entrepreneur is learning to protect yourself. So if things take longer than planned, they don't work out as planned. Like this product we're talking about, they go sideways. You can respond quickly and you can bounce right back. You know, I'll share a story. I'll share a story. So.

Actually, before I share this, let me come back to comments. I want to talk to you guys. Kimberly, it is good to see you. By the way. Kimberly sent me a really awesome email yesterday, which was this incredible, like, it was a grid of all the different, like, payment things that we can get from the government and how they work and how they qualify. And Kimberly, I hadn't seen that. That was so good. I tried to copy it, paste it, I tried to put it on the things so that we could push it to everyone in our group. If there's a link that you could give me that I could share with people, that would be amazing. That was so, so, so good. So I really do, really do appreciate it.

All right, the story. So I'm a guy. I've shared this with you before. I love, I love space. I cannot wait one day to go to space. I know I'll be there. I cannot wait. And I'm a geek that will sit at their computer. And I will, by the way, if you were looking at my bookmarks on my, my Chrome right now, you would see that I actually, I've got videos and there's a bookmark to YouTube, to my favorite compilation of rocket ships taking off. I geek out on this stuff. I turn the volume up all the way. I watch. It gets me totally pumped. So anyway, I have always wanted to meet an astronaut and I always wanted to ask an astronaut this one question. And the question is, when you're watching astronauts re enter the earth's orbit, there's a period of time, it's like seven minutes, where the entire spaceship is covered in. In a ball of fire. It is so crazy. And I've always wanted to ask, ask an astronaut, what's that like? So, of course, you know, a couple of years ago, I. Years ago, I meet. I meet commander the space shuttle. And this commander, the space shuttle, he commanded more space shuttle flights than anyone else. And so I asked him, I said, I have a question. I said, when you're coming back and you're real, you're coming back into the Earth's atmosphere, and for those seven minutes, the thing is completely surrounded by a ball of fire. I said, are you, like, freaking out? And he laughed at me. And he said, absolutely not. He said, actually, my eyes are down. I'm looking down at the controls. He said, I'm working, I'm busy. I'm landing this thing. He said, but, but there's a moment just before that that gets tricky. And here's what he shared. He said, scott, I want you to imagine that you're flying the space shuttle like I am 20,000 miles an hour upside down and backwards, like this. He said, you're flying the space shuttle 20,000 miles an hour upside down and backwards. And in order to position yourself to land, he said, you have to flip the space shuttle all the way upside down. He said, picture this. He said, picture. There's a needle at the tip of the nose of the space shuttle and the tip of the needle on the tip of the nose of the space shuttle. He said, when I bring that thing over and I hit the Earth's atmosphere, he said, if, if I am off by more than one or two degrees in either direction, the tip of the needle at the tip of the nose at the tip of the space shuttle going 20,000 miles an hour while flipping it. He said, if I'm off by 1 or 2 degrees, the second I hit the atmosphere, the whole thing explodes. And I'm like, what? And he said, yes. I said, wow, that sounds risky. And here's the lesson. He said, no. He said, scott, risk should never be risky. Risk should be well thought out. It should be planned for in advance. Systems should be put in place, alarm bells should go off. So if things don't work out as planned, you know it quickly, you can respond to it and you can course correct and adjust. So we don't do more around here, we do one thing, we do it well, we get fast feedback and we course correct. And that's why we are the people that will create great products and services. We are the people that will adapt, that will adjust, that will iterate in this economy. We are the people that will figure out what the biggest consumer and business needs are and we'll build the right single things around those things. So when the market comes out and it starts to correct, we're the best position. We are the rocket ship. We're not watching it. We are the rocket ship because that's who you are. Here's the thing. I may not know you personally, but the one thing I know about you is there is greatness inside of you. And sometimes that greatness just needs to be unleashed. And when people want to unleash their greatness, the first question they have is, how do I do it? And as it relates to launching stuff, I just shared you the form share with you the formula. So with that, it is time to go. I want to thank all of you for joining today. If you got any value out of today's broadcast, would you please do one thing? Would you share it with others? Please share this with other people. We have so much cool stuff to announce. I'm so close to announcing it. We have a big event coming up. We have big television partners, we have big radio partners. This thing is going to be all over the world. We got partners in China, now in Europe and all kinds of stuff. It's going to be really cool and I can't wait to share and I thank you for joining us every single day until we talk tomorrow. Thank you. Thank you for joining us and keep breaking through.