Peaceful Profits Podcast Ep. 5 - State Of The Union 2021 (Part 2)
Synopsis:
In this Peaceful Profits State of the Union (Part 2), Mike Shreeve maps out the big forces reshaping the help industry—and how to win despite them.
You’ll learn why inflation quietly reduces your buyers’ spending power (and what to do about it), how to splinter your flagship offer into smart, lower-friction price points without cannibalizing sales, and why continuity beats cash reserves when markets wobble.
Mike also shares Peaceful Profits marketing strategies for boosting client retention, shoring up vendor/team relationships before a storm, and “making hay while the sun shines.”
Most importantly, he explains why downturns often increase demand for real help—and how Peaceful Profits services, coaching, and training programs can position you as the trusted choice. If you’ve wondered how to protect margins, keep LTV rising, and stay calm while others panic, this episode is your playbook.
Transcript:
State Of The Union 2021 (Part 2)
[00:00:00] Limited friends. Hope you're doing well. Welcome back. This is part two of the State of the Union, 2021, the Help Industry. If you remember from the last episode, we talked about two of the big trends that I'm seeing right now in those in the business, in the market, in the industry, in the vertical, and that those of us who help people to achieve something, whether coaches, client service providers, professionals, agencies, freelancers, coaches, course creators, et cetera, if we help people, we have a very different set of dynamics at play in succeeding in what it is that we do.
We covered two big ones that are occurring right now that are [00:00:30] forcing external pressures on what we are required to do to stay successful and thrive in the market. We give a few sort of ideas about that. If you haven't listened to that episode, I highly recommend that you do as a precursor to this one.
In case you skip that other one. I wanna say the same thing that I said in the beginning of the last episode. I'm gonna be talking about some external events that have occurred in the world, political, et cetera, and I want you to understand, what's more important to me than the actual event itself is the people's reactions to those events.
What those events have done to the people that I serve. 'cause the people that [00:01:00] I serve, the people who I help, my clients, my customers, those are the people who keep the lights on the event, doesn't keep the lights on the. Chatter doesn't keep the lights on the the talking heads on the tv. Don't keep the lights on.
The people who are watching the talking heads, the people who are affected by the stuff going on, the people who are experiencing what they're experiencing because of the events that are transpiring, those are the people that I care the most about because of those are the ones who directly keep my lights on.
I, my business in the help industry, your business is nothing. My business is nothing [00:01:30] without the people that. We serve. So in today's episode, we're gonna be talking about two of what I think are even more important trends and po potential predictions that have even bigger impacts than the original episode that aired the other day.
So let's talk a little bit about that now. As we know, and again, this is not a commentary on the event but we do need to understand that these events are happening. We know that right now. In the United States, especially worldwide, but definitely in the United States, we are [00:02:00] printing cash like crazy.
Okay? The government is printing an insane amount of cash. There has not been, to my knowledge in recorded history, a time where this much cash printing has led to anything other than the devaluing of that cash. It's not a political statement. That's just basic economics right now. That's important, not the look.
The event is the event and we can all have our thoughts and feelings about it, and that's not what we're here to talk about right now. What I'm most [00:02:30] concerned with is what does that mean for the people I serve? What does that mean for my market? What does that mean for my customer base? Because if the money that they were going to pay me with suddenly becomes less valuable.
What can I do to make sure that I'm not the one stuck paying for that devalued currency? Too many business owners don't think through external [00:03:00] events and then are basically victimized by other people's decisions. My personal philosophy is that part of the freedom of owning a business is the freedom to stand up.
Against having to pay for someone else's bad decision. If I wanted to pay for somebody else's bad decision, I'd go get a job and go work for some crappy boss somewhere. Okay. So again, this isn't political. I'm not, there's, this is not I'm staying center line on this one here because it's a [00:03:30] complex political issue, but also arguing about the complex political issue is completely avoiding the most important.
A player in this issue, which are the people that it affects directly, a, k, a, our, the people that we serve. Okay? So let's have that discussion first before we armchair quarterback the rest of everything else. So the first thing that is going to happen is that the people who buy from you will have less buying power [00:04:00] than they have had in the past.
That is going to happen. That already is happening. Okay. People are noticing they go to restaurants, they go to grocery stores. Their money doesn't buy the same that it used to buy. If you're in a B2C world, say for example, fitness, and most of your clientele have a job, you need to understand that these people are not getting raises that match the rate of inflation, [00:04:30] which means if you work with people who have jobs.
Or are dependent on the employee employer relationship to generate income, you have to understand that your group of people are going to be hit. The hardest business owners are going to swing the most. In other words, this will crush some businesses, like just completely wipe them out. This will. For those other businesses who are savvy, actually help them in some [00:05:00] ways.
And we can have a totally different episode on how inflation can help certain business owners if they play their cards and if they set certain strategies. What I wanna talk about here is what you need to do in preparation for whatever is going to end up happening to your client base.
Okay? So the first thing that you ought to start doing. And by the way, I'll say one thing before we get into this. I never recommend short term strategies. I would, and I understand this is not a popular opinion, I would rather borrow money [00:05:30] at low interest than engage in short term strategies because the money can be written off the time that you lose by engaging in short term strategies.
You don't, you can't get that time back. And I'm a big proponent of valuing time above all else. So when I'm talking about reacting to inflation or a devalued currency, these are things you should have been doing anyways. It just so happens that as as a business owner, sometimes you're not as [00:06:00] clear about what your priorities should be because it seems like everything is a priority.
What I'm suggesting to you now is that external forces are creating these things now at these ought to be your priorities, okay? So you don't get caught out. All right, so the first thing you can do in reaction to inflation or devalued cash is to create multiple price offerings. Alright? So let's say that you have a $10,000 offer, whether it's, 10,000 upfront, you got payment options or whatever.
That's pretty standard. Maybe it's a coaching program and whatever it is that you offer for $10,000, [00:06:30] one of the things that I recommend is taking a look at what is it specifically that you offer in terms of the outcomes you provide. What are the outcomes you provide in that $10,000 offer? It better be more than one.
For $10,000, if you only offer one thing, then you know you might, unless that one thing is for 10 grand, you'll make me 150 grand by, I dunno, flipping a switch in my business or something. But you probably have multiple outcomes within that, right? Let's say for example, it's $10,000 and you help people build a webinar funnel, okay?
And you [00:07:00] teach them how to get the traffic. You teach 'em how to build the page, you teach 'em how to write the copy, you teach 'em how to set up their webinar, you teach 'em how to do all these different things for 10 grand. That's a lot of outcomes. Now, you may in your mind it's only one outcome, it's a webinar funnel.
But see if you can break down what it is that you do. Let's say you have a fitness program. It's 3000 fitness program. You help people, you build their nutrition plan, you build their workout plan, you have accountability. You have, one of the things to test in your business is to determine if it's possible and make sense.
And unfortunately, we're not gonna have enough time in this audio to really break it down, but this is one of the things that we do with our [00:07:30] clients. See if you have room to splinter. From your core offer, from the thing that you offer to people, multiple pricing options for some of the other outcomes.
Take fitness for example. Could you splinter off just the nutrition plan and instead of offering, instead of making it a requirement of your $3,000 package, is it something that you could offer for a thousand or 500 or [00:08:00] $36 a month for 12 months or some other? Arrangement that still makes financial sense to you, but that you sell only now, this is so important.
Okay, this is so important. So we don't wanna cannibalize our core offers, right? We don't want to make unnecessary assumptions. We always offer the core offer first, but can you downsell to those who say, I really don't have the money. I can't afford this. Can you downsell into [00:08:30] some other outcome? Because while I can't predict the future so far, we have not overnight so far, can't predict the future.
Nobody knows what's gonna happen, but so far we have been able to overcome all previous periods of inflation. Now what does that really mean? What it means is that while. For sure a hundred percent. People are going to have less money than they have probably had [00:09:00] in a while, at least probably since 2008.
We will be able to get over that to survive through that period. What you need to do is create lifelong customers and clients. You have to get off of the modality of buy my one thing or die attitude, which has been made popular by ironically, somebody who has more than one offer is running major sales right now, et cetera, et cetera.
Clearly isn't following their own advice, multiple offerings they're powerful. [00:09:30] They work. There's a reason that nearly every single business in the world has multiple offerings. It makes life easier. The fastest way to create multiple offerings is take whatever your core thing is, splinter it off, and then offer it as a down sell to capture what is, in my opinion, one of the biggest sources of lost revenue, which is people who simply don't have the money for that specific thing, but don't know how to tell you that.
So they just say, I can't afford it. But maybe they just can't afford that specific thing. Maybe what they can't afford is to be in your group and devote 12 weeks, but they tell you, I can't [00:10:00] afford it. Maybe they actually have the cash. They don't have the cash and the time. Maybe they don't have the cash and the time and the interest to get all of the outcomes that you offer.
Maybe you, again, let's go, say you have a 10,000 offer. You help people to create a webinar funnel. Maybe they only want to know how to write the webinar. They already know how to do all the other stuff. So they can't afford to pay you 10 grand because they just need to find the webinar script, so there's a lot of different ways to create downsell opportunities. So let's say you're selling on the phone, or [00:10:30] you're selling via chat or however you sell. Somebody comes to you and they say, this is what I want. You say, I've got a $10,000 opportunity. Here's what it is. Here's what it covers. Here's the outcomes you can expect, da.
Here's how it fits into what your situation is. And they come back and they say, Ugh. I just, I don't know, it's maybe too much. And you say, okay of all of the things that we've talked about, what are you most interested in? And they say I really just wanna learn how to do a webinar. I really just want the nutrition plan.
That's what's, that's what I'm really focused on. Okay. We actually sell the nutrition plan separately. Actually, I do have something where now it still needs to be high quality, [00:11:00] but nine times out of 10 down sells should require 0% of your time, 0% of your needing to. Bend over backwards for the individual who isn't quite ready for your main core experience.
But again, the reason I mention creating lifelong customers is because the down sell should deliver a result. I can't tell you. I'll give you, I actually, I can, I'll give you an [00:11:30] example. Many years ago. I think as far back as 2014, which in the world of internet marketing is decades.
In 2014, I had a customer who bought, I don't know, it was probably like a $7 offer. And from that $7 offer, they went on to build an entire copywriting business. 'cause it was like a $7 ebook, how I started my copywriting business or something like that. It was a long time ago. Might have even been 2013 or 2012, somewhere around that time period.
And they they went on, they followed [00:12:00] me for years and years. They never really bought anything else. And all of a sudden we offer the done for you service, which at the time was $30,000. And they came to us and they said, oh my gosh, I've been waiting for you to offer something exactly like this.
30 grand, plopped it down, no problem. Now they're paying us $5,000 a month and dah. And we have profit share and it's this whole thing. But we're talking about they bought into the Done for You program a year ago. And it took that long from whatever it was, 2013, 2014, [00:12:30] multiple iterations of different businesses until now for them to drop that kind of money.
What I'm proposing to you is that during times of economic depression, during times of inflation, if you can increase the volume of impact. I know that's a cheesy word that gets thrown around and people totally misuse it. If you can get people results, even if it means you slightly earning less per result delivered, I can promise you that the [00:13:00] long game pays off that when things return to normal, hopefully they do.
We, time is never guaranteed. We don't even know if we're gonna wake up tomorrow, but assuming that is what will happen. You will have a significant pool of very well qualified prospects to remarket to. There's nothing like going to somebody and saying, Hey, I just wanted to check up on the $500 offer thing that, how's the nutrition plan going?
Oh my gosh. I started the nutrition plan and I [00:13:30] did it for six weeks and I lost 15 pounds and it was so great. It's the best thing I've ever done. One of the things is I just really realized like I probably need accountability. Ha. It just so happens I offer accountability and my $3,000.
Would you be interested? There's not a better sales call process than that. It doesn't get better than that. That's about as good as you can get. And here's the alternative. During an economic depression, you do nothing during an economic depression. When people come to you for the $10,000 offer, $5,000 offer and can't afford it, you say Get lost.
And [00:14:00] you're sitting there paying, whether it's through time or whether it's through money, paying to bring people into your business, paying to bring people into your business, and then you just keep turning 'em away. Why? Because their dollar has been devalued. Why are you sticking yourself with the bill for other people's decisions?
See, in my opinion, you create multiple offer pricings, maximize earnings per conversation. You maximize earnings per conversation. It's a much easier metric to measure in your business. [00:14:30] It's also the most important one. You can make all sorts of decisions about your pricing models and how many different offers you have, what those offers look like, et cetera.
What I don't recommend though, is going out and like creating 90 more offers. You don't need to do that. It doesn't really actually make any sense either. We want to give people an opportunity to come back to us later and buy into the main thing. So that's why I say take your main thing and splinter it.
Okay. That's one of, this is one of the things that we can do as cash becomes more expensive as it's devalued. Another thing is, and I'm gonna say something here and I wanna make sure [00:15:00] that we are clear about what I'm saying. Cash reserves are critical. You need to have at least three months of operating exp expenses.
In my opinion, that's survival mode 1 0 1. That is the best way to thrive during economic ups and downs. But let's be real. If your cash is being devalued, holding onto that cash means you are holding onto loss. Okay? So the money becomes less and less value as inflation gets worse and worse. So cash reserves are [00:15:30] important, but understand that during economic hard times, they become less valuable.
So you need to be filling your cash reserves. That's number one. But number two, understand that continuity is way better than cash reserves. If I'm sitting at a table. With my team and they're like, Mike, what do you want us to focus on? Continuity or cash reserves? I'm saying continuity 110 times out of a hundred.
What is continuity? Continuity is some kind of rebuild in your business, which is to say that each month you don't have to start over from zero because you have a [00:16:00] number of people who are committed to have committed in some way contractually, whether it's a subscription thing or whatever it's you have going on in your business that you know next month.
This, X dollars should end up in our bank account regardless of what happens outside. I've got 10 people paying us $5,000 a month, say, for example, that'd be an example of a continuity, and they're contractually obligated to keep paying for the next six months. I've got a contract of basically, whatever, what I say, 10 people.
10 people paying [00:16:30] $5,000 a month. That's $50,000 a month for the next six months. Okay. That is so much better than cash reserves. But again, I gotta be careful here. Cash reserves are critical, but cash reserves are a reactive strategy to external forces. Continuity is a proactive strategy to external forces, so when you have continuity in your business, cash reserves and the devaluing of those reserves [00:17:00] as inflation gets worse.
Affects you less than if you only had cash reserves. So let's think through for this for a second. You have 10 people paying you $5,000 a month, let's say for example, in whatever you've got going on, some kind of one-on-one, or maybe it's a a service you have or it's a, some kind of coaching thing.
You've got together mastermind, whatever it is, and you have $50,000 a month coming in and all of a sudden the world goes to just absolute pot. And it's the worst inflation we've ever seen. And oh no, the sky is falling. And what are we gonna do? [00:17:30] With cash reserves say you've got three months. Most businesses don't, most businesses have I think it's like a week and a half or two weeks I think is what I saw.
But let's say you have three months in cash reserves. As the world is collapsing, as things are going to crap, your cash reserves are not only being devalued, but you're spending them. So your risk of going out of business increases with each passing day, week, month. 'cause money is constantly going out with [00:18:00] continuity.
If it's contractually locked in now, are people gonna break their contracts? Sure. When the world goes to crap. If you're good at what you do, you will protect these people though so that they don't have to so that it makes sense for them to continue to give you $5,000 a month. But let's just assume for simplicity's sake, they all keep going.
You have not just money to cover what's going on. You ha you know that over the next six months. You will have money coming in, and here's the difference. Okay? Now of course it all looks different on your balance [00:18:30] sheet and wow, it's so great. I'm still making lots of money and this is wonderful, and all that kind of good stuff.
But when it comes to leadership, when it comes to running a company, when it comes to making it through difficult times, there is a huge difference between watching the money bleed out and knowing that money is coming, which is the difference between continuity. I know money is coming and relying on cash reserves, which is watching the money come out, you will make.
A significantly different set of decisions depending on which of those realities you are living [00:19:00] in. And that's important because when times get tough, decision making and strategy becomes the most critical skill in your business. You have to get away from this simple minded 19-year-old. Nothing against 19 year olds.
I was one once too. But nothing nothing is more shallow or more revealing of someone's lack of expertise when they say that marketing is the most important thing in your business. It is not. Marketing is not the most important thing in your business when things get really hard, strategy and decision making is so much more [00:19:30] important.
It's been marketing, sales, finance, operations. Your ability to make critical decisions in times of uncertainty will outweigh any other action you or anyone else on your team can make during difficult times. Having the protection of continuity will allow you to make decisions beyond a self-imposed deadline called cash reserves.
So cash reserves is a deadline. If I only have three months of [00:20:00] expenses in my business, I have a hard deadline of three months. If I have ca and those are current expenses, so I can't increase my expenses, I can't mess around with my expenses, that cash is also being devalued as we're going through inflationary periods and et cetera, et cetera.
Continuity, however, is not necessarily a deadline. Here's the difference between continuity and cash reserves when it comes to deadlines. I know in six months the contract's going to be up. And you say Mike, that's the same exact thing as saying in three months, I'm outta cash reserves. It's not the same thing at all.
In six months. I have [00:20:30] six months to figure out how to get those people to re-up. Very different. Very, if you haven't experienced it, you probably don't believe me how different it is. But if we're talking about in three months, I'm out of cash versus in six months. I have six months to figure out how to get them to re-up with me.
Those are two very different problems, two very different likelihood of success rates as well. Because if you serve someone well, especially during difficult times, their likelihood of re-upping with you is very [00:21:00] high. The likelihood of somehow coming up with a way to hit your monthly income with starting from zero in three months because your cash reserves are running out, that's not as high.
If you lose your whole business and have to start from scratch, from zero, you have to go through the whole process of restarting again. And we all know that not every business is successful. There's lots of factors at play. It's a very risky endeavor. And so if the challenge like you, you get to choose your challenge.
Either figure out how to keep the people you already [00:21:30] have or figure out how to get new people in three months while the money is draining out. Now, obviously I recommend you have both. That's the ultimate, but I'm trying to get you to think here and look, maybe I'm totally wrong. Maybe there will be no inflation.
Maybe this will be the first time in the history of the world that we will have figured out how to print massive amounts of money without devaluing the currency to the point where we experience very serious inflation. Maybe that will happen,
but. Whether that happens or [00:22:00] not, doesn't continuity sound nice? I recommend continuity, a continuity, cash reserve combo regardless of what's gonna happen in the future. What I'm trying to point out to you is that if inflation does in fact happen at what I personally believe it will happen at, this isn't gonna be a nice to have.
This will be a necessity to be able to ride it out. Okay. The next, so that's that's one of the things to think about. The next is along the same lines as of, basically what we're talking about is retention of [00:22:30] paying clients. That's what continuity is. There's another thing that we can do when cash becomes more expensive, and that is to work on our team and vendor retention.
Okay? So if the dollar becomes less valuable and we have team members and we have vendors, the worst time to find replacements. Is during times of devalued cash because what it will end up happening is as the cash is less valuable, you'll get locked into [00:23:00] contracts, payments, pricing arrangements, which reflect the devalued dollar, and then once it corrects, you are stuck.
And that person essentially. Set up for themselves. I don't think they do this on purpose, but I, again, this is just from experience here, and this might be a little bit too advanced and nitpicky and da dah da. But I'll give you another reason to really work on team and vendor retention during difficult times, but team and vendor retention.
If somebody locks you in when cash is low and they're saying, look, I, you used to charge [00:23:30] eight grand a month, but I need 16 grand a month now. 'cause the dollar's way down dah da. When it all corrects you're now overpaying. When everything corrects and now you've got all sorts of problems.
But even more than that I'm gonna sound like a little, I'm gonna sound like a scrooge here. I have found that during difficult times, vendors, especially sometimes team members there are levels of desperation which cause people to do things which end up being quite detrimental to those that they [00:24:00] hire.
I don't even think it's a morality judgment personally. I was homeless many years ago, so it's very difficult for me to look at somebody who steals a piece of bread because they're hungry and say that they're a big piece of crap. You know what I'm saying? I've been through the bottom of the bottom.
If you've never been through the bottom of the bottom, you can sit on your high horse and cast moral judgments all you want. But the reality is, when you are in a mode of desperation, you do desperate things. Okay? That's just the reality. This is not, this isn't the Hallmark channel here.
This is how the real world works. Sometimes [00:24:30] during, say for example. I remember 2008, 2009, there was a significant amount of ven, what you could roughly call vendor fraud. Coaches and freelancers and agency owners making promises they knew they couldn't keep. They, maybe they used to be able to keep them because pre 2008, before all the external pressures and the problems and things like that, they had enough staff to do it.
But since then, they fired their staff. They've had to make changes da, et cetera, and so they're relying on old promises under completely different conditions. They charge the same [00:25:00] prices. You hire them and you've hired them in the middle of a massive mess, right? They're too busy fixing their failing business to be able to help you with yours and what happens to you.
You get stuck with what? You get stuck with the bill for someone else's choices. Again, remember I said it's not just about the government here, I'm, I, just, I as a business owner, don't want to have to pay for your stuff that you have to figure out. Okay? So when when you are hiring in the middle of [00:25:30] volatility, you are increasing your risk of hiring and bringing into your own business that same volatility.
So for me, when I see on the horizon. Events which are going to increase chaos, volatility, unpredictability. Step one for me, tighten the team. Sit down. I think of it you're on a ship and you see the storm in the sea and you don't just let the crew [00:26:00] find out in the middle of the storm, you huddle everybody up.
You say you see out there, you see the horizon. We have to go through that. I need to know that you're on board. I need to know that you're gonna be here when it's gonna get rough, when it's gonna be bad, and I need you to do this and I need you to do that. And I need, I'm gonna rely on you for this.
I'm gonna rely on you for that team. And vendor retention in advance of events, whether it's external or whether you've created the event yourself. Say you run outta cash, for example. Circling up the [00:26:30] wagons, doing the hoorah speech, all that kind of good stuff. Developing the relationships. Pulling in the people that you've been waiting to bring onto your team.
I would say bring people onto your team when the weather's nice, not in the middle of the storm. So if you've been, ah, I was gonna hire this guy and I was gonna bring on this person, but I've just been waiting around and I don't really have a good reason. I just don't feel like bringing on a Facebook ads person right now.
I don't feel like bringing on a virtual assistant. I don't feel like bringing on what I'm suggesting to you is that you probably should bring it on sooner rather than later. [00:27:00] Considering what's coming. You don't need to be. And here's another thing to think about. When there is chaos outside and you're trying to deal with the chaos of a new hire, it's very difficult in the world of small business, right?
We're not talking about big corporations who have all sorts of advantages that we don't have. I'm talking about it's you and a handful of people. Your core team. Not to sound cheesy, but the warriors that come with you the band of brothers and sisters. It's, it can get that.
It can get that intense [00:27:30] relationship wise during times of volatility. My recommendation to you is that you build the team, you build the vendors, you make the connections, you work out the kinks. Now, not in the middle of all the chaos, but now the biggest regrets I have as a business owner are when I waited too long and I tried building teams in the middle of chaos.
Rather than during times of [00:28:00] nice weather basically. Alright, one last thing here and then we'll move on to the second piece of state of the Union trends I'm seeing. And it's make hay while the sun shines it. You ought to be pushing your business and collecting as much cash as you possibly can right now, knowing that very soon it's going to get pretty hard.
You know when, whenever I see somebody say something like, oh no, email is dead, or Oh no, [00:28:30] Facebook ads are dead, or Oh no, this is dead, or That's dying, or this is on the horizon, most people see that and they start jumping. I see that and if that's something I've been using in my business, I'm like, okay, then I better squeeze the last bits of juice out of this thing because that's way easier to do than trying to start something new.
Most people don't realize that. Most business owners don't realize it 'cause it's actually quite boring to do. It's not exciting. It's hard to trick your brain 'cause you have the fear, oh no, am I wasting opportunity somewhere else? There's a whole [00:29:00] level of how do you actually squeeze the juice out before it all goes bad.
But it may, Hey, while the sun shines is a concept of understanding that yes, something bad is happening, you can see the clouds rolling in. So you better pick as much of a crop as you possibly can. 'cause when you wake up tomorrow, the hale's gonna come down overnight and it will beat your crop into the ground.
And you'll be lucky if you have a few stalks left, so may hay while the sun shines. Harvest while you can harvest. Plant extra seeds. If you think that there's [00:29:30] still time between now and when this is going to happen. That kind of mentality. It's not a doomsday mentality. It's not, oh, it's over. When the clouds roll in, it's over.
It's more of a, when the clouds roll in, we're gonna have to figure something out. But for now, we need to make hay while the sun shines. We need to spend as much as we can on ad advertising. We need to build as many acquisition offers as we can. We need to email our list as often as we can. We need to do everything that we can as often as we can.
And I know some of you're listening to that and you're just exhausted [00:30:00] already. I don't want to No, please. No, not Another thing I thought this was peaceful profits. I didn't wanna listen to Gary Vaynerchuk lecture. I don't think that farmers make hay by themselves. Not the farmers.
I know they either have machinery or staff or family or help of some kind. Make hay while the sun shines is not an admonition to increase labor. [00:30:30] It is figure out, it's really an admonition to be smart, to be smarter, to say now it's really time to figure out how can we get as much hay from the fields as possible.
I have to be careful because I think hiring is serious business, but. Part of making hay while the sun shines is calling all hands and saying, if you've ever been apart, if you ever want to be apart, if you're here to help out, now is the time to help out. And I can [00:31:00] promise you that, while I've definitely made a lot of mistakes over the years and while I have some regrets.
In terms of, trying to bring teams on during chaotic periods and maybe hiring the wrong people or making mistakes in, in building team and things like that, as all business owners do, I've never regretted putting out the call for all hands. That has always worked out in my favor. I cannot think of a single instance where making sure that we were [00:31:30] maximized to the capacity that was realistic.
I can't think of when that has ever been a bad thing. It doesn't mean it's always gone smoothly, don't get me wrong. If you've ever tried to pull in all the hay before the storm comes, if you've ever tried to harvest everything before the hail beats the crop down, if you've ever been a part of that cycle, people aren't lollygagging and having conversations, they're running, they're grabbing whatever they can.
It's difficult. It's something to I don't wanna understate that, however. Here's your [00:32:00] alternative. The alternative is six months from now, you're sitting there saying, I wish I had, which personally, I can't think of anything worse than having opportunity right in front of me and saying, I wish I had.
What's worse is when you say, I wish I had just, I wish I had just done that thing. I wish I had just done that, and I think over the next couple months, a year or so. There are going to be opportunities that present themselves for which not acting on them [00:32:30] will create that regret. All right, so that's, those are just four things that, I'm thinking about.
I'm advising our private clients. I'm wanting to share with you about what do you do if there is inflation, what do you do if cash is, wildly devalued. Which I, I think is, there's a high likelihood of that occurring. And so anytime there's a high likelihood of something, I wanna make sure and check off all these boxes.
These are the boxes that we're checking off and making sure that we have in place. Last trend, and then we'll close this up for part two of the State of the Union. We've talked a lot about negatives. We've talked about there's a flood of new people. We've talked about traffic [00:33:00] costs are going up and we've talked about having cash value problems.
But there's one thing that I think is so important, and I know I'm talking to a lot of people who are, who consider themselves self-made, right? Pulled yourself up from your bootstraps, created your own thing, and that there is a lot of truth in being self-made. But there is also a huge factor to success, which is luck.
And I'll tell you my luck. Okay? And this isn't to devalue being self-made. I have worked my butt off. I believe I deserve every penny of [00:33:30] every dollar I've ever made and all of the ex auxiliary benefits that come from it. But I had to, I had a couple of very lucky things happen to me, and I'll tell you why this is.
Important because I think one of the luckiest things that could happen to any of us is about to happen, and if you aren't aware of that stroke of luck, you will miss it. And then you'll wonder why all of your hard work isn't paying off. But I've had a couple of strokes of luck. One is when I was homeless, there was a librarian who was kind enough to point me to the section on writing when I told them I needed some way to make some money [00:34:00] and allowed me to use the public library computers to start a writing business.
That's number one. The writing business idea did not come from me. It came from the librarian. That is luck as if how do you replicate that? I would not be where I am at today if it were not for that first writing business that I started many years ago in 2007, and the spark of that was that particular librarian.
That's luck. The second bit of luck is that while I was on those library computers, to this day, I have tried to rack my brain to figure out how this happened. I somehow stumbled upon [00:34:30] Jim Rome. And I stumbled upon Jim Rohn via YouTube videos that were illegally downloaded, right? It was like it was Jim Rohn's intellectual property illegally downloaded, and I sat and I watched hours and hours and hours and hours, completely changed my life.
So in conjunction with a new writing business, discovering Jim Rohn, I was off the streets relatively quickly. And I have been on this process since then, this journey. And I still to this day, listen to Jim Rowan this morning. I was listening to him for about an hour and a half now. This is luck. I don't know how I stumbled upon Jim Rohn in the [00:35:00] YouTube videos.
I was probably looking at cat videos and for some reason back in 2007 or whatever, 2008, whenever it was that I found him, the YouTube algorithm wasn't quite what it is today. To be totally honest, I don't even know if it was YouTube specifically or some other streaming site In 2007 Point is found Jim Rohn.
That's Luck. The third thing that happened to me, and here's where it becomes relevant for you. The third thing that happened to me, which was incredibly lucky, is that I started my business in 2007, which was a year for me to figure my stuff out. Before the Great Recession. [00:35:30] Now, here's why I can say with confidence what I'm about to say.
I got lucky because during that recession when everything was collapsing, the need for help was significantly higher than it had been at other times. In other words, the opportunity. For me to ply my trade to helping other peoples [00:36:00] was increased many fold during that critical moment of my particular career.
I can tell you without shame or embarrassment that there were people who were hiring me in 2008 and 2009, and even into 2010, who would not have hired me except that they were desperately in need of help. Because I'd only been around for, I didn't have a huge portfolio. I wasn't super experienced.
I'd only been homeless like maybe six months or the year before. I was not a candidate [00:36:30] for some of the people that I hooked up with back then and took on as clients. Those were opportunities that I experienced because. Anytime there is this kind of volatility, which I believe is, I don't know if it's the same as 2008.
I don't know. Okay. I'm not smart enough to tell you what's going to happen to the future. What I am is experienced enough to tell you that if something does happen, and this is the most important thing to understand, the number of people who will need your [00:37:00] help, because we're talking about the help business will increase 10, 15, 20 fold.
Okay, so what? What does this actually mean? It means that as you are thinking about how to differentiate yourself as you're thinking about how to offset the costs as you're thinking about things, you can do multiple price offerings, putting your team together, creating continuity, things like that. At the end of the day, if you rely on this very simple principle of thinking of how can I [00:37:30] help people who need help?
Which seems so simple and almost oversimplified. If you can let it be a directive in your business, if you can sit down and as a business owner, think to yourself, how else do these people need help? If you think to yourself, how can I help them better? How can I get them better results? How can I make it easier, faster?
Safer, more guaranteed, less work, et cetera. When you adopt that mindset, and look, it doesn't matter, [00:38:00] freelancer coach, course creator agency owner, whatever it is you do, if you lead everything you do in your marketing, how can I market in a way that helps people, that it's, it is what we love to do. We sell a book.
That book is our marketing, but that book also helps people who read it. We sell little courses that get people results, et cetera, et cetera. So if you lead with, as the guiding star of your business and help business thinking about how can I help [00:38:30] people understand that whatever happens over the course of the next six to 12 months, which I may be completely wrong in terms of the flooding of the market and traffic costs going up and cash losing its value and all that kind stuff, I might be totally wrong, but if I'm right, even just a little bit.
You are going to see an increase in demand for people who can actually help. In times of plenty, there is a higher tolerance for lower [00:39:00] expectations. Heck, does that mean? It means people will hire people and continue to pay people that might not be giving them the results they desired, but because cash is easy, because things are nice.
They're going to avoid the conflict of dealing with that, and they're just gonna say it's not terrible results. It's good results when they're cash strap, when everything's falling apart and when it's just not looking good outside, that tolerance goes away. What that means is you're going [00:39:30] to see a high turnover in the vendor space, which is to say people will be getting fired a lot more quickly for not delivering results.
Which is an incredible opportunity for you if you know how to create and craft offers. If you know how to market yourself in a way, if you know how to build and retain customers through acquisitions, if you know all of the core things that we teach and that other people teach and just good solid business sense, it means that you're gonna have more opportunities than you can even possibly imagine [00:40:00] during times of economic uncertainty.
And I think that's the big one that I want you to take away from this two part podcast episode, I guess you could call it a series, is that yes, there are really serious and sincere tactical things you can do. There's also a philosophy that you can adopt, and the philosophy is that you are in the help business and that [00:40:30] people need help more than ever when things get tough.
Use that to guide the decisions and strategies you choose. And in this particular industry, you'll never go hungry again. And that may not mean anything to you, but I've been hungry before and it's why my philosophies tend to be, how can I guarantee that things will always get better for me and my business, this is one of the core philosophies that we adopt.[00:41:00]
It's one of the core philosophies I recommend to all of my clients. I don't know of a better way to successfully stay in business for decades than this. So that's it my dear friends, if you would like any help with any of the things that we have talked about over the past two podcast episodes, if you wanna be a client, if you wanna work with us, we have lots of different options.
Our goal is to help you. We are definitely in unique position as a provider of help to the help industry. We [00:41:30] very much see ourselves as the butterfly effect in the sense that if we can help you to help more people, that maximizes the reach and impact that we have had in the world and makes what we do worth doing.
So if you are in the help industry, if you help people, again, professional freelancer, agency owner coach, course creator, if what you do helps people get results of some kind. Go to peaceful profits.com/call or hit reply to any email that you might get from us. Both are staffed and monitored [00:42:00] by people that we call advisors.
They're members of our team who are well trained in everything that we do. They can give you advice, they can tell you what you may need to do next in your business to get your business to where it needs to go. And then, of course, if we have solutions which will help you to achieve whatever it is you need to achieve faster, easier, more guaranteed.
Give you the tools, give you the path. Either do it for you, do it with you, help you to do it yourself. There's all sorts of options and ways that we can help you to grow your business and create peaceful profits. The first step of that, of course, is to [00:42:30] go to peaceful profits.com/call or reply to any one of the emails that we send to you and have a quick conversation to see how we can work together.
So that's it my friends. Hope this has been helpful, and I'll see you in the next.