Staying Flexible Through Uncertainty | Ep 15

Speaker A

00:00:00.400 - 00:23:31.560

This is episode 15 and I catch you up on the changes to the podcast, as well as strategies to put yourself in positions of strength through the uncertainty around us. This is the Bottleneck Breakthrough podcast.

I'm Josh Long and this is all about helping you find and fix the biggest challenges in your business to unlock growth and profits that last. Hey. Hey. Welcome to the podcast. For those of you that have been listening for a while, I am back from a long break.

I think the summer of 2020 will go down in the history books.

Actually, all of 2020 will go down in the history books, but the summer will be most meaningful, memorable for me because of so much change and time just stretched on indefinitely. Moving back to California was a big part of it.

From Hawaii we found ourselves isolated and alone and feeling quite and we never got island fever, as people say, but we definitely felt the isolation of being on the most remote, populated land mass on earth while everything was locked down and the governor was essentially killing the economy. They're trying to get Covid to be eradicated and never have another case again.

Which I don't know about you, but I find that quite ironic when we've been dealing with viruses that have been around for at least 100 years and circling the globe and mutating and evolving, and once the virus is here, we just seem to deal with it. So as we were there through the spring, through early summer, it got quite lonely.

I found myself posting so much more on Facebook as an outlet because I'm an external processor and it's part of being an extreme extrovert is so much of what's inside your head doesn't get clear until it comes out of your mouth.

And to be honest, I actually found the exercise of posting thoughts, especially controversial ones or ones that stirred the pot on Facebook, to be a worthwhile exercise for my thinking process. Obviously, I think social media is a big black hole and a big distraction.

And then watching the social dilemma on Netflix just confirmed all the concerns and negative sides of social media.

But by going through the exercise of posting and having others challenged my thoughts, people that disagreed with me, outright trolls at times, it helped me get really clear on what I think, what I believe, and what matters to me.

And I think it all culminated a couple weeks ago with a post I'd had a bunch of people argue, or a few people arguing with me, why I kept focusing on Marxism and socialist doctrine because watching the riots over the summer and statues being taken down and cancel culture and all that stuff is just right out of Marxism's playbook in the Communist Manifesto and what we've seen in other communist countries around the world. And what I realized a few weeks ago was that so many people become single issue voters in campaigns when there's somebody running for president.

And if they don't support their single view, whether it's, I know many people are single issue voters on abortion topics and pro life topics or pro choice topics or whatever. And I realized that at the end of the day, I'm a single issue voter when it comes to anything related to freedom.

And so when I look at the ballot this year and look through the lens of that, especially out in California, so many of the bills or proposals or whatever are all some form or another to reduce our freedom, increase our taxes, increase regulation, and put some level of oversight on us that reduces our freedom.

And I'm not going to get into the whole political debate right now of Trump versus Biden, but I think it's pretty clear that the agenda of the left this year has followed so much of the Communist Manifesto, whether they did it intentionally or not, it lines up point by point from all the things I said earlier.

So as I've gone through this summer and refined my, I guess, debate skills on social media, which is quite a pointless exercise in the grand scheme of things, I realized that this podcast is going to evolve because I realized that just talking about business strategy all the time and trying to come up with worthwhile angles for business owners to look at and think about and expand, it feels like I run out of steam pretty quickly because I felt like I dumped as much as I could into my book and don't want to just keep rehashing what's in my book and don't want to keep saying, well, you know, when you get to a million dollars, then it becomes a management problem. You got to become an organizational leader and you got to communicate better and you got to set deadlines and you got to hire the right talent.

And all the basic stuff that I help clients with over and over and over ends up being a pretty boring podcast of beating it into your head a hundred different ways. So my thought is that the podcast will evolve to discuss beyond just pure business strategy.

I think getting into discussions, again, I don't want to make it a political discussion, but I think factoring in politics of how to look at them and how to analyze policies that are coming that may affect your business, I think is worthwhile.

And I think the whole landscape right now, from the COVID lockdowns and the changing guidelines and rules, I Mean, we moved back to California from Hawaii and everybody thought we were jumping from the frying pan into the fire, politically speaking, because Governor Ige in Hawaii and Governor Newsom in California are both some of the most extreme lockdown and policy or emergency order giving governors in the nation. And I think looking at what we've seen Newsom do in recent months or weeks creates all sorts of uncertainty when it comes to business owners.

And business owners I'm talking with that were opening because they were allowed to have people dine inside. And then now Newsom is rolling back some of that in certain counties.

And it's just this ever shifting landscape that definitely affects your ability to lead and grow and make plans and strategize of where the market's going. Because it's just, it's so much uncertainty.

And I know I spoke about that in a previous podcast when all the lockdowns were happening in March and April, and just the extreme uncertainty then, that felt like we were living in a third world country or a corrupt country, because that's what those people there live with all the time.

And that's what causes economies to stagnate or die because nobody wants to invest capital in them, because they don't know with any level of certainty that if they invest capital that the rules will stay the same and that the plans and the strategy that they made to follow that align with those rules will be able to be executed and that they'll make a return on that capital.

So I think factoring in policies that we see coming down the pike are important, especially with the absolute amount of uncertainty that's been going on this year and, and now we're in the midst of this election that just happened this week and the uncertainty around the states and who's going to win and whether it's Biden or Trump or whatnot, and how long that's going to play out and how many lawsuits and when the delegates actually vote or the electorates or whatever actually vote. So I think covering some of that going forward will be interesting.

I think getting into more of lifestyle optimization, I don't want to get into like body hacking or health hacking or anything like life hacking stuff like Dave Asprey or those guys.

But I think as business owners, if we factor in some of the ways we handle our energy, the ways that we set ourselves up to be burned out, or as a friend of mine used to tell me, give our soul every day to our business and then have nothing left over for our family or friends or for our own sanity, or for our own downtime. I think talking about those kinds of things are important, too.

I've had a lot of conversations in the last six months with business owners about protecting themselves, putting themselves first, which is such a foreign concept for so many of them that are conscientious and empathetic and caring of others. They just give and give and give, and then they're empty. And so I think focusing on some of that stuff will be really helpful.

And right now, I think just go through your last week or last month, and even if it's just the last day and say, where am I unnecessarily giving of myself too much? Where am I taking the short end of the stick?

Where am I saying yes to things that aren't moving the needle and that are consuming my resource energy, my energetic resources, and cause me to be burned out or be short or be hangry or any of those things with the people around you? Because when you're in that state of depletion, nothing really good ever comes of that.

And a lot of us are survivors and have high, high tolerance for pain and discomfort and some form of suffering, but that doesn't mean we should.

And so I think as you go through the uncertainty of the election and the uncertainty of your marketplace and heading into the holidays, which is always a trigger for a lot of people, I knew a lot of guys that had addiction issues through college, and once Thanksgiving hits through the end of the year, it's a major trigger for relapses, just because of the emotional toll that those times of year have on people that didn't have the greatest families or didn't have the greatest experiences around those times. So I think strengthening up your energetic reserves, your emotional reserves right now is critical.

And I think being able to make space for yourself without feeling guilty, without feeling like you're disappointing others or letting others down or things like that is really important.

So I think the other change that I want to do with this podcast is have guests on, and I'm again, an extreme extrovert, and I thrive off of the feedback loop of conversations. And I think we'll be able to get to more meaningful discussions and more meaningful depth of things in those conversations.

So I'd love to hear who you think would be interesting to have on as a guest. I don't want to go down the typical carousel of podcast guests that everybody else listens to and has on the on the circuit.

I know, like, Matthew McConaughey, who's a neat guy, and I know he just made the rounds because he just came out with his book that I'm sure is neat.

But I don't want to just be the soup du jour or guest du jour at the moment because I think digging into more meaningful stuff and more timeless stuff is useful. So if you have anybody that you think would be interesting to have on as a guest, message me, shoot me a note. Facebook's great Facebook messenger.

You can do it in the group bottleneck, breakthrough method.

And yeah, I'm excited to see who comes on and what kind of neat conversations we have and what kind of expansion we get into now for the meat of today, I think the biggest advice I'm giving my clients right now is to stay lean, stay nimble. There's so much uncertainty in the marketplaces.

We all feel that there should be some reaction to the lockdown, to printing all the money, but it's really been hijacked, I think, by this election and waiting to see who wins and waiting to see where the world goes. And so a few things, a few very practical things to look at.

I was just on a call with a client this morning who's wanting to get into paid traffic and has always lived on word of mouth and referral and some SEO.

And he has so many basic things that need to be set up that jumping into a six month contract at two grand a month with another two to five grand a month in ad spend is incredibly premature and incredibly risky.

So we're advising him to work with a freelancer that we know and just do a small experimental month, put maybe three grand into it and get some of the fundamentals in place and find out where the weak spots are and where the funnel breaks and then fix those and shore up a whole bunch of other small things like his automation, follow up automations and things like that in his business and then slowly ease into paid traffic. Because paid traffic, if you've never done it and you want to try to get it figured out, is a giant.

It's a huge opportunity, but it's also a huge amount of effort and testing and experimentation and management to get, get right.

And so by easing into that, we're reducing his capital risk significantly, probably taking 20 to 30 grand and holding onto it, deferring that for future investment and also not risking him getting a whole pile of leads, which is rare, but getting a whole pile of leads and then tapping out his staff on fulfillment so the ease into it. So don't sign any long term contracts, don't jump into new things that are unproven for you find ways to test quickly, test affordably, experiment.

And especially when it comes to staffing, there's a lot of people that are looking to transition to better jobs. They're frustrated. They've.

They may not have been downsized, but they realize that working from home with the company they've got really sucks and they're looking for something better. And so there's a lot of great people out there that are trying to move up and out of their negative situation.

And they may be really expensive, they may be really talented, but they may be expensive and they may may not move the needle for you. So got lunch today with a couple friends that are trying to do that. One's got an agency and the other's a creative director.

And what I'm going to propose is that we do a small experiment and start out with a few projects and see how those go before making full time offer or going right to 100% capacity at the highest rate for this creative director. So there's a lot of options. You just have to decide that you can make them happen.

The problem I hear so many times is oh, that's not how it works in our industry, or that's not possible or nobody would agree to that.

And the reality is, one benefit of COVID is that we can ask for whatever and just blame it on Covid if people say we're crazy, but there are no rules. Everything's make believe. I don't know if you've picked up on that yet, but it's all make believe.

Everything in life, it's policies and rules that are made by people just like you and me that are just trying to figure things out and they're all malleable. There's ways around every law, every rule on earth and it's just up to what do you want your reality to be?

Do you want it to be that you can't offer project work because nobody in your industry would go for it?

And so you just have to wait until you save up enough cash and have enough clients in the hopper to feel safe to hire somebody at 120,000 a year role and hope that they work out and don't take six months of your life away and 60 grand of salary and blood below a bunch of clients. Or can you say, let's try with a couple projects and date a little and if it works, then we'll ease our way into something more long term.

So I just, I think now is the time to stack the deck in your favor and make everything as low Risk and flexible as possible for you contracts. I think with the retail issue right now, 40% of retailers are not paying rent.

So landlords are hurting, property owners are hurting, and I bet there's a lot of property out there that you can experiment with. I mean, we just came through Halloween and we see all of the Halloween stores that pop up for short term, they get short term leases all day long.

So why is it okay for them to do short term flexible leases when you can't do that?

I mean, the market is ripe for creative deals right now and the goal is to stack them in your favor, put yourself in a position of strength, put yourself in a position of flexibility, reduce your risk so that you can take more, take more chances and experiment more and find where the market's going and what opportunities are there in the marketplace.

So I think that's really the big advice I'm giving everybody right now is conserve cash, structure deals in your favor, test quickly, test often, try new offers, try new services. I think that too many times we get stuck in, oh, well, this is how we're set up to do it and this is the best way we do it.

And it's like, well, are you sure there's not a better way? Are you sure there's not a better opportunity? And is it necessary to add all this fluff and, and all these things and have all these processes?

So I think that's the big opportunity right now is as you look at opportunities, keep reminding yourself, how do I continually put myself in a position of strength?

How do I keep stacking the deck in my favor and not take terms that are putting you in a spot that you'll regret later, Especially if the market turns, especially if policies come through or regulations come through and cause you to be on the hook for a big lease that you can't even move into the office?

I know a couple companies like that right now that built out great big offices and they can't move into them even though they're paying for the lease and they paid for all the tenant improvements. And so it's just the game of make up your own rules, make it for how you want, and try to get yourself in a position to thrive.

So I hope that's useful.

I hope you guys are able to find the positive through all this uncertainty, that you're able to find the place in the market that you can serve your clients best and get past the frustration of the regulations changing and get past the frustration of whatever injustices you see.

I think that's a big One for me was getting frustrated at seeing all the cities burn with the riots this summer, and no recourse and no outrage over that, while businesses were being destroyed in the process, and the business owners were considered selfish for wanting to get back to work. So I know that distracted me, and I'm sure there's even more that you see right now that can be distracting.

And my encouragement is just to stay focused and reach out.

If you're having a hard time focusing, I'm happy to reframe stuff and get you reset with that focus and Hope you finish 2020 strong in spite of all the insanity.

I know most of my clients are up year over year because we chose to say that they're essential and weren't following the edicts of their dictator governors. And it was a lot of work and a lot of mental gymnastics to get to that point to believe that we could get away with it.

And we have, and it's been no problem. And everybody I know that's taken that path and chosen to say that they're essential is up.

I mean, a good buddy of mine has a surf shop over in the coast, and we just visited him last week, and he's up 300% year over year, and he's in retail. But he decided after April that he's essential. And they've managed to do just fine, actually. They're thriving. So it's the craziest of times.

And it all comes down to what do you want your reality to be and how are you going to craft it to be that way? So go make it be.

And I'm excited to hear get feedback from you on how this helped you reframe the rules and put yourself in a position of strength and to get out ahead of the marketplace because the world needs you. The world needs more people like you that are out there serving and helping and creating and innovating. And entrepreneurs make the world what it is.

Everything that we have, everything that we benefit from, everything that is a luxury or a necessity in life, was created and produced by an entrepreneur. And it's what makes the world better. So go do it. Go be the light in the world and make everything around you better. Have a great day.

This podcast theme music is an excerpt from Triptych of Snippets by Septah Helix. It's used under Creative Commons.