Peaceful Profits Podcast Ep. 21 - Is Your Business Prepared For The Worst?
Synopsis:
In this serious, practical episode, Mike Shreeve lays out a calm crisis plan for entrepreneurs: when costs rise, trust drops, and need surges.
You’ll learn how to trim fulfillment waste (not growth), hoard cash for runway, “expense match” ads and payroll, extend nurture + follow-ups, deepen offers, and build a rock-solid team and marketing environment.
If you’ve been eyeing Peaceful Profits coaching, Peaceful Profits services, or want resilient Peaceful Profits marketing strategies, this is your blueprint to stay steady and serve more clients when it matters most.
Transcript:
Is Your Business Prepared For The Worst?
[00:00:00] Hello, my dear friends. Hope you're doing well. Mike Shreeve here. This episode is going to be a little bit more serious than past episodes. And that is because the world just continues to get serious. So I am recording this in the very beginning, early stages of the Russia-Ukraine conflict. This is coming now after Two plus years of the world being in various stages of lockdowns and dealing with the virus and the political [00:00:30] implications and the unrest and the division and the the sense of unease.
And now we're looking at record inflation and the housing markets a mess. And I'm making this episode in the middle of a historically tumultuous time. And I'm doing it because this is not for me. the first historically tumultuous time that I have been a business owner. And so what I want to do is give you some of the lessons that I learned the first [00:01:00] time when things were very difficult that I'm applying to this time.
Now there's a couple of disclaimers I have to give you here. I am not an economist. I'm not an economist. I am also not a fortune teller. I do not know what's going to happen in the future. I am very weary. of anyone, especially in the internet marketing space, who is overly confident about their predictions for the future.
There's a whole list of biases as to why those individuals have that kind of confidence. [00:01:30] None of it is really based in reality, okay? I am not confident about the future because I understand history. Okay, I understand how fast it can change, how often people are wrong, and et cetera. So I'm not a fortune teller, and I'm not an economist.
I cannot tell you what's going to happen in the future. What I can do is tell you what I'm doing to prepare, regardless of what happens. So I'm going to tell you a bunch of things, and [00:02:00] these may sound like things that you should only do in an emergency, But what I do is I do these all of the time. So you only have to go through a tumultuous period as a business owner once to learn the hard lesson, which is it's much better to be prepared than it is to feel like you are going to be right by guessing a certain way.
So again, regardless of what happens, I don't actually care. I'm going to be prepared. Does that make sense? For me, it's not about trying to [00:02:30] guess. It's about dealing with what I know I can control. Okay. In order to understand how to best prepare for what may or may not happen, it's important for us to take a look at historically consistent, what you may call natural laws or things that happen regardless of the specificity of the event.
And there are three things that happen as they relate to business. And please understand, I'm only talking about business here. I'm not an expert in any other area. I've only been doing [00:03:00] business for 15 years, so I'm maybe not even the best expert on business. But in my experience. When things become difficult externally, there are always three things that happen.
Thing number one, costs go up. Costs go up in the real world. Right now there's talk of gas costs going up. There's talk of inflation. There's talk of, hiring people to work on your team is getting more expensive because they have more choice. Facebook ads are getting more expensive.
Everything goes up. Gets more [00:03:30] expensive costs rise. Okay, that's important to understand as a business owner costs rise The second thing that always happens is that trust goes down So as things become more expensive as a business owner the ability to get people to purchase from you becomes harder The ability to have clients, even people who've already paid you, trust you becomes harder.
Trust goes down. As people are bombarded by messaging, as they're distracted, right? So one [00:04:00] thing that people don't realize happened in the past year or two or three or however many years we've been going through this stuff, is that a lot of people on their team, a lot of their workers, were very distracted.
Which means that, by definition, they were paying the same price for much less. They were questioning what they were suppo you know, they were I'll give you an example. A very good friend of mine owns a company with quite a few employees that has a very direct competitor that went belly up this year.
And there was a lot of news surrounding [00:04:30] that failure. That it was the failure was due to an industry wide shift that was going to affect all of the companies You know in that industry and my friend mentioned that it was so hard to convince You know his team and his staff that no, we're fine. We hedged against this in advance.
We're totally going to be okay because The people on his team they were seeing the news and they saw the news was so trust doesn't just go down amongst prospects You It goes down among team. It goes down amongst the even your own [00:05:00] loved ones, right? As people become afraid for whatever reason, right?
This isn't a political thing. I'm just saying, as people get afraid, one of the first things that goes is trust. We're social animals as human beings. We measure our trust based off how we feel. If we feel afraid, trust goes down. It's that simple. So costs are going to go up. Trust is going to go down. These are two central components of running a business.
Trust and cost, but here's the thing and it's the [00:05:30] old Mr. Rogers quote, I think it's mr Rogers apologize if it's not where he said when he was young his mom taught him and whenever something bad is Happening look for the helpers because there's always helpers in this case while costs go up and trust goes down perhaps the most important indicator of The most important variable that relates to us in the help industry actually goes up and that is that need increases during [00:06:00] times of difficulty So if you are in the help industry, it doesn't matter if you have done for you done with you courses It doesn't matter what niche you're in.
It doesn't matter what you're doing The need for your services, the need for what you can do for people, is going to increase. Now I don't say that in an opportunistic kind of way, like rubbing your hands together and cackling. I'm saying that in a, in, in, in the way of you must realize the responsibility.
You must realize [00:06:30] the responsibility and plan for it. I'll give you a very brief example. Very early on in my career, I got caught in the housing crisis of 2007, 8, 9, basically until 2010. And one of the niches that I was working in that time, was I worked with real estate agents. So I did their marketing and things.
I had a handful of clients who were real estate agents. When it was getting harder and harder and harder for them to sell. As their own [00:07:00] costs increased and trust decreased from the buyers of homes were losing 20 30 40 percent of their value What do you think happened to the real estate agents their need for better marketing?
What decreased or increase it increased? If people and look that's a very direct example But just think about what has happened over the past say year or two When big things happen, it shakes people It helps them to prioritize what they actually [00:07:30] want. You look at, say for example in the United States, we've had this mass migration from cities to the suburbs.
And a few people hit in the rural, not as many people as they originally thought. It looks more like it was a city to suburb rather than city to total rural. But a lot of people changed their priorities. They really questioned what was important to them. So look, there are things occurring on the world stage that you think, my business isn't affected, my audience won't be affected, my people won't be affected.
And I'm telling you, they will. Because they are citizens of the world. [00:08:00] They the events that are occurring are causing them to rethink stuff. There's a lot of people right now that are, actually going to get their New Year's resolutions because of what's going on. I know that, that sounds cavalier, and I'm not trying to make light of anything.
What I'm saying is, your audience right now, you have to understand the psychology of your audience. Psychology of the people who are potential buyers of yours. That it is not unaffected by what's going on. It is absolutely affected. So think about that. Okay. And I'll give you some examples of what we're [00:08:30] doing to prepare to be able to deal with that.
Okay. So costs go up, trust goes down, need goes up. That is what is happening. And it's happening right now as we speak. All right. So the first thing that we, how can we prepare and what are we going to do about costs going up? The first thing and the obvious thing is to reduce expenses. Okay. But I'm going to tell you something that's very important.
You do not reduce expenses at the expense of growth. So what a lot of people do is when cost goes up, they start [00:09:00] cutting expenses that are centrally, that are tied centrally to the things that are growing their business. So for example, they'll cut ads. Ah, ads are expensive. I got to cut them off.
Or they'll cut their marketing team. Ah, it's all getting expensive. The problem with that is this, that ironically, the best way to beat rising costs is to grow better and grow faster because stopping growth restricts what? Cash. If you stop [00:09:30] trying to grow, stop trying to collect cash, stop trying to drive revenue, then you are restricting the thing that you need the most of when costs increase.
Now, when we say reducing expenses, again, most people say, okay, I'm gonna turn my ads off. I'm talking about looking at alternative ways to fulfill. The first cost to look at is fulfillment is your fulfillment cost because your fulfillment cost is the easiest thing [00:10:00] to change without having a bunch of negative consequences.
So oftentimes this means looking at operational inefficiencies in the way that you fulfill. Now, for example, you look at most companies and they are bloated. In the health industry, right? People don't know what they should be paying. They're often overpaying. Or they have three or four people doing the job of one person.
And the reason that it's taking three or four people instead of one person, it's not because those three or four people are lazy. It's because the system sucks. It's because it takes three or four people just to [00:10:30] hold the darn thing together. If you took a couple of weeks, maybe even a couple of months and redesign the system that you use to fulfill, you could cut your costs in half.
And here's another thing because a lot of people look I get it we hire people we were very emotionally attached to them We feel responsibilities to them. I'm actually not the kind of person that says you should start slashing staff because Reducing cost is the same way as saying so Let me see if I can explain this clearly if I come into your company and say I can get the same Amount of fulfillment the same quality of [00:11:00] fulfillment for half the price most people hear that and they say oh that means we're gonna slash half the team What I am saying is that you can get twice the fulfillment for the same price.
Okay? Those are the same things. Making it half as expensive is the same thing as getting twice for the same price. And what did we say just a second ago? What are the things that you don't want to do? You don't want to restrict revenue. So literally, by trying to reduce fulfillment expense by looking at operational inefficiencies in systems, you can actually, what?
Get [00:11:30] twice as much revenue out of the business that exists today. So as costs begin to rise, it's not about hurry, run and turn off all the things that are giving us money. It's more about looking out. Okay. Now it's really time for us to be more efficient And that includes those of you who don't have a team.
So you may not have a team and you're asking how can I reduce fulfillment? You might need to switch business models if you're entirely done for you trading time for dollars and please understand done for you trading time for dollars is not the same as All done for you, [00:12:00] right? Not all done for you is created equally.
What we do with our clients, we try to help them find it whatever offer they're comfortable with. Done for you, done with you, courses, whatever. But if you are straight time for dollars, that's very inefficient. And as costs go up, and it becomes more and more expensive for you to acquire customers or whatever even just more, it becomes more expensive for you to live.
Your housing cost goes up, your gas go, prices go up, your utilities go up. If you're time for dollars, you are in a mathematically unwinnable situation. Meaning the numbers are against you. [00:12:30] You change the model. So that your delivery of the end result, which is that's what people are paying for, becomes more efficient to deliver.
All right, and that's one of the ways that we can battle rising costs. The next thing, so that's reducing expenses. The next thing that I like to do is hoard cash. Just get as much of it as possible whenever I can. And look, there's a lot of really smart investment advice, which I am not contradicting.
However, one of the Best things [00:13:00] you can do for yourself in business is to buy runway. Here's what I mean. A minimum of three months expenses. That's like bare minimum six months expenses is in my opinion, the start of a sweet spot because if costs rise and they continue to rise, what happens is if you don't have Operating expenses to pay yourself that includes yourself and your team and etc To include [00:13:30] spending money on ads for six months, even if they don't work and etc If you don't have that at play Then what happens is the increase in expenses whether it's through the paid ads or whatever those expenses might be all of a sudden Shortens your ability to react I'll give you an example if facebook ads tomorrow decided to cost twice as much You Wouldn't even be, it's not even outside the realm of possibility.
Facebook could come out tomorrow and say, look, our shareholders are P. O. 'd, the Meta thing didn't work like we thought it was gonna, [00:14:00] and here's what we need to do, we need to double our prices. We've been undercharging. Most companies are gonna be done. Not within months, within a couple days. Because that single variable, that change, shortened the company's ability to react.
and to make changes to deal with the external forces. If you have six months of operating expenses, or three months at a minimum, you've got some time. And you have some [00:14:30] ability to think things through and to not be so reactionary and to maybe even, look, sometimes the best thing to do in business is just to wait it out, see what the next opportunity is, right?
If you don't have that, then everything is something you have to deal with now. And that's when businesses fall apart and crumble. Okay, then the another thing that we can do and which I really like to do, especially when things are crazy is I'm sure that there's a name for this. I don't know what the name is.
I just call it expense matching. Okay. So what do I mean by that? Every major [00:15:00] expense in my company has to have a corresponding revenue stream attached to that expense. Example, if I am paying for ads, I need to have something in my company that its only role is to pay for the ads. So that means if I spend a dollar on ads in my company, I need something that will offset that cost for me.
I like low ticket courses. I like books. I really like books. And that is what I call expense [00:15:30] matching. You've got this thing called advertising that fluctuates, right? So this is a problem that a lot of people have advertising costs fluctuate. And they can fluctuate within a quarter, they can fluctuate annually, they can fluctuate with just a random, two or three days.
For some reason everything is more expensive. They can also fluctuate as you scale. One day you're spending 500, then 1, 500, then 2, a day. If you are only selling something that's a fixed price, That you know it in and of itself fluctuates Maybe you have a couple good days of sales calls then a couple of good days And then a couple days that aren't good sales [00:16:00] calls and etc That's you know, a five thousand dollar group coaching program is not matching expenses against advertising It's comparing apples and oranges in terms of how the revenue is generated You take a low ticket offer that requires no input from you requires no sales process from you It's generally stable because the same sales letter the same ad the same offer and you attach that to that variable called paid traffic You Much easier to sleep at night, especially when things get more expensive.
Another example, if you have to pay people every [00:16:30] month, you better have something in your business that pays every month. And my recommendation is that you work very hard to match the expense with the outgoing. If you have 50, 000 a month in staff, you probably should have some kind of continuity that pays you at least 50, 000 a month.
All right, this is again. We're not talking about fun sexy how to be rich and drive Lamborghinis, right? We are talking about how do I prepare my business? For when stuff gets hard For when things get [00:17:00] out of control When the external forces and look I get it mindset, right be amazing no matter what happens out there keep moving forward but I'm also realist.
I've been doing this for 15 months. I didn't just learn or sign off 15 months 15 years I didn't just learn last week about mindset. Okay, so Mindset's great, but there are realities that we have to deal with. And one of them is if there's a certain type of expense in your business, you need to have a certain type of revenue stream to match and offset that expense.
Okay, so those are just some [00:17:30] ideas and those are the types of things that we do again As I said at the beginning of this these are not things that we do only when stuff is getting bad This is what we do all the time to stay prepared for when things are getting bad Okay, the name of our company is peaceful profits.
This is how you have a peaceful business just think about what I've described to you Imagine for two seconds if that was your business and think about how much better that would feel than probably what you have going on right now. That's not a dig, that's me. Again, I've been doing this for 15 years.
I've seen in the back ends of thousands of businesses. I know what most of them in the help industry look like. Very few [00:18:00] of them look like this. Six months cash reserves, expense matching more efficient delivery, so fulfillment costs are very low, etc. The good news is none of this is rocket science.
You can do this. You don't have to be that good at marketing and sales or anything. You just have to sit down and do it. All right. Number two. So number one, costs go up. Number two, trust goes down. Okay. So when trust goes down there's a couple of things that we have to understand. There is no trick to making someone trust you.
Okay. [00:18:30] There just isn't. There, there are things you can do to. help to facilitate the things that someone needs in order to trust you. But it's a lot like gardening, okay? You can't actually force a seed to grow faster. What you can do is manipulate the soil, manipulate the temperature and manipulate light exposure to give the seed the [00:19:00] best chance to grow as quickly and healthily as possible.
But there is no button that allows you to press, fast forward on the seed. You can only manipulate the surroundings. For us, we call this the sales and marketing environment. Okay. If you think of every prospect or every customer that comes into your world, think about that saying. That world contains some kind of environment.
That environment can be your social media profiles, your email [00:19:30] list your Facebook groups. It is the world that you have created online that delivers messages to that customer or prospect. So as trust goes down, sales and marketing environmental control becomes the focus. How can I create a better environment to nurture my leads and customers into whatever the offers are that I'm trying to sell?
The first thing to understand is that as [00:20:00] trust goes down, people don't stop buying, right? This is the thing, when people say a market is jaded, it doesn't mean they stopped wanting the thing. It just means there are more hurdles to overcome to convince them that you are the person who can help them.
Example, if I let's say I want to start a business. Say for example, this is an easy one. I don't all of a sudden stop wanting to start a business just [00:20:30] because I'm hesitant to purchase. I still want that. Let's say that I'm trying to reverse type 2 diabetes without prescription pills and I want to do it, you know using diet keto, etc It's not that I all of a sudden stop wanting that or even more stop needing that I still want it Even if I had some bad experiences in person and now I'm a little bit more hesitant and more shy and jaded and etc So as trust goes down you have to understand is that the hurdles stack up, okay?
So what it takes to convince somebody will be more than what it used to take to convince [00:21:00] someone Now, the way that we can measure this as an actual metric is that your sales cycles become longer. They're longer sales cycles. So what used to be, say for example, a lot of people talk about VSLs and webinars and how they don't work as well anymore.
They still work. The problem is they're harder to cash flow because it used to be when there wasn't a, a saturation of providers and in certain niches and things when ad costs were much less expensive. [00:21:30] What would happen is you'd have a bunch of people hopping into, they hadn't been quite jaded yet as a market.
They hop into a webinar, they hop into a VSL and they think this sounds really good. This is a presentation on the internet. I think, this looks good. He said all the right things. She did all the right things. I read all the emails. I'm gonna book a call today cause I'm ready now. Okay. So from click to booked call two or three days maximum, right?
So if you're spending a thousand dollars a day, you only have to spend it for two or three to three days before the person's on the call and they're closing sales. And [00:22:00] oftentimes you could close them one call and all that kind of stuff that still happens, right? That still is a viable model.
There's things you have to do from a copy perspective and an offer perspective to be able to get around the jadedness, but the lower trust audience, they go through that same webinar. And what do you think happens? Now they gotta go research you. They gotta go think about it, they gotta go check out the other providers, cause they're on 6 to 15 different email lists.
And they no longer book a call 2 to 3 days after. Now it takes them 2 weeks after. [00:22:30] Now it takes them 90 days after. They want to be in your environment for a while to see what you're all about, and etc. They were convinced on the webinar, they were still sold into it, they still think it's a great idea, it's just now it's taking longer, because there are more hurdles for them to overcome.
So what do we do about this? First off, my recommendation is don't spend money on ads unless you can offset it. Remember, that's what I talked about earlier. I expense match. So I don't, I try not to run ads to ice cold traffic on something that has cash flow issues. Alright, so we offset the ad cost.
The other thing that we [00:23:00] do and there's really only two things that you can do. One is to Invest more in nurturing. So understanding that people are taking longer and the reason they're taking longer is because they have more objections and hurdles and etc So that means we need to provide them more content more reasons more objection handling So that's just content one on one send out the emails do the follow ups post on your whatever more whatever it is that you use in your business Make sure that you are staying in front of their field of vision.
It's called front of mind marketing. Stay in front of them for longer and more [00:23:30] consistently. That's one way to do it. And it's part of you can't not do that. It's something that has to happen these days. And then the other thing is you increase your manual follow ups. This, especially the internet marketing industry, just as a general rule, really is awful about follow ups.
Either it's, overly aggressive and hilariously bad, right? What did I can't remember. I was on somebody's mini chat or something the other day, and the follow up was just my name with a question [00:24:00] mark? I don't know, it was just, it was so bad. There's no way to interpret that in a not embarrassingly bad way, right?
It's are you trying to like, be rude about it? And you're saying, Michael, hello? Or, are you just really that bad and that's the only thing you could think of as a response and etc. Anyways, point is, most people in the internet marketing world are horrible at follow up. They don't do it enough, they don't do it long enough, and they think it's a trick.
So they're trying to come up with the perfect script and they're trying to like, I'm gonna use these principles of psychology that, it's not even real, but somebody told me it's real, so I'm gonna do it. [00:24:30] That's not really how it works in the real world. If you look at companies that actually do real numbers, where like 10 million a year is a laughable joke, we're talking about 100 million a year plus companies, their follow up is longterm.
They have databases of prospects, which means they track people. They are very respectful because they realize they're talking to a potential client not a mark Right and i'll try to scam someone that's actually talking to a potential client and it's consistent So for [00:25:00] example, you might get and look you can track this with your own self right now Of the conversations that you've had in the past 90 days By percentage how many of those people and look whether the conversation went well or didn't that's another thing, right?
People are like i'm only going to follow up with people who were going to close but just didn't have their credit card Of the people you've had conversations with in the past 90 days, how many of them, one, have you followed up with consistently on at least a monthly basis, and two, how many of those people [00:25:30] do you have a six month follow up process planned and ready to execute for by percentage?
I'm guessing if you're like most people in the help industry, your percentages are 10 percent or less for both of those questions. If you were to raise that to 20%, you would double your results. If you raised it to 50%, you've now 5x'd your results. So as trust goes down, as trust goes down, what you have to understand [00:26:00] is that the result of decreased trust is a requirement for more nurturing.
And no disrespect to anyone, but another way of saying nurturing is hand holding. Walking people through the sale. Saying, what do you need? What can I do to let us help you? Where are you? Tell me what you're thinking. What is it that you are looking for? Is there something I can do to convince you? These, this is modern selling in [00:26:30] jaded markets During a time where things are crazy and it looks to me like it's only going to get crazier again.
I'm not Nostradamus I cannot predict the future if doing something like this is quote unquote beneath You may need to be changing jobs pretty soon Like it might be forced upon you because this is what is happening and is going to continue to happen Is that trust is being reduced? It's not like your competitors are out there Like making people feel better about the situation, right?
[00:27:00] I can't tell you how many phone calls we have from the big gurus former customers and they're like Hey, I bought this guy's thing and it spent I spent all this money and then they kicked me out of their program And it totally sucked in so In the help industry, most of your competition isn't actually stealing customers from you because customers typically spend, they buy more than one course, they buy from multiple gurus, they're on multiple email lists.
What your competition is doing is making your future prospects more jaded by ripping them off. So that's only going to continue to happen. to [00:27:30] accelerate as the market becomes more saturated. And if this is scaring you, I'm not trying to scare you, okay? I'm trying to tell you what's happening so that you can hedge against it, because look, again, those jaded people, it's not that they're never going to buy something, it's not that they all of a sudden don't want the thing that they wanted when they bought from your competitor, it's that they are scared.
They need handheld towards the sale. And again, not everybody's that way and I'm not trying to make big, [00:28:00] broad sweeping statements, but just think about it. Think about the calls you've had. Think of the tone. Think of what they've said Think of if somebody's ghosting you it's probably because they're what afraid to say no and they're afraid to say no because they Really want it, but they don't know how to say that they don't want it.
They have questions They're afraid to ask etc. So you can see the signs All right, if you really think about it, you can see the signs of this already occurring. It'll likely get worse Okay, so that's really all you can do right you can nurture more and you can increase your follow ups We are constantly trying to improve both of those things [00:28:30] as a company To be prepared for this slide towards less trust.
Alright, now, number three. And this was the good one, remember? Okay, so we got through the bad ones. Whew! This was a heavy episode. Costs are going up, trust is going down, but need is going up. Need is going up. So there's a couple of things that you can do, okay, to make sure that as that need is going up, you are being positioned to deal with that need.
Number one is the need of your customers and clients will increase. [00:29:00] So if you're not regularly improving your offers to account for an increased need, You are not serving your customers and clients. I'm not saying you're not going overboard. I'm saying you are not serving them period It doesn't mean that everyone has to get access to everything you ever do for one price forever I'm not saying that at all.
I'm not saying don't charge. I'm not saying, Compile everything into one offer and i'm not saying any of that I'm, just simply saying that if you made something that's three years old take a look at it Needs have changed. I don't know about you, but the world sure feels different [00:29:30] now than it did just two years ago, than a year ago, than six months ago.
Who knows what's going to happen in six months from now. So as the owner of a business in the help industry, whether it's done for you, whether it's done with you, whatever it is, constantly reexamining and asking, is this product, does this offer match the needs of our customers and clients currently? If it doesn't, time to improve.
And I'm guessing it probably could use some improvement. From what I've been seeing in the market, and I'm a rabid buyer, a lot of people are [00:30:00] stuck in 2018, 2019. Not a lot of people have adjusted for the past couple years. So consider that. So that's one thing that we're trying to do, and we're always trying to work on it.
Next is, most people don't have strong enough or deep enough offers, okay? So I'll give you an example. Most people are always trying to look at how can I do less for more money? When there is a tremendous amount of money to be made by figuring out how to give someone all of [00:30:30] it Everything again. I'm not saying that you go do this.
You may not be prepared to do This is very difficult to do but I'll give you an example. We offer a funnel guarantee service So you come to us and we literally guarantee the financial results of the funnel That's an example of a deeper offer For a client base that has stronger needs why because a lot of our clients bought a bunch of funnels from a lot of people With no guarantee and so they come to us [00:31:00] wanting something deeper something more you have to look at your business to figure out what that is for you But let me like let's not get it twisted.
It costs 55, 000 This isn't a 25, 000 funnel bill. We sell 25, 000 funnel bills. Not everybody needs the bigger, deeper, etc. So we've got the 25k version. We even have a 15, 000 version. But we also have the bigger, deeper version that starts at 55, 000. And those people who [00:31:30] need it, buy it. So take a look at your, again, your environment, your sales and marketing environment, this world that you've created.
Are there opportunities for people to, with you, go deeper? That you just haven't thought of or you haven't put together yet? Don't be afraid to make those offers. And don't be afraid, and to be frank, it's more than not being afraid. Don't be so foolish as to accept anyone. It is very difficult to qualify for a guaranteed funnel offer.
Very difficult. On [00:32:00] average, we turn around, we turn away almost 90 percent of the people who want it. And that's not about ego. That's because how deep it is. What the guarantee is. We have to be very careful about who we allow in because of what the guarantee is, what the terms are, the contract, etc. So this is, again, this isn't about trying to grab up as much money as possible.
It's about creating an offer that is really deep. Really powerful. And it's deep and powerful because it actually delivers on what people really need. People don't need a funnel that sits on their shelf. They need a funnel that's guaranteed to [00:32:30] work. And so that's what we offer And then we make the look just having the money isn't one of the requirements, right?
There's lots of people who have the money that we turn away all the time. And so that's important as well When looking at who it is that you're going to be offering this to how you're going to offer it anyways, we help people create these kinds of offers all the time Okay, next is as need goes up in the world One of the things that I like to do is to focus on team building You and I mean that in two ways. One, building the team I already have. And two, growing the team I have. [00:33:00] Now why is that? As things become difficult, There are going to be things that your clients and customers need, which would be insane for you, by yourself, to fulfill. But, your clients and customers probably do need it.
So maybe your clients and customers need more communication. Maybe your clients and customers need more hand holding in this area that you hadn't anticipated, that a year ago clients didn't need, but now they do need. And et cetera. You're looking for ways to expand your ability to essentially service [00:33:30] needs which you yourself are not necessarily capable of doing, either because of time constraints or ability.
So In times of difficulty, one of the things I like to do is hire my most difficult hires. Because the most difficult hires are the ones who are supposed to come in and add something that doesn't currently exist in your business. The easy hires are for people who are just replacing you, right? So you're the one who can train them, you know how to tell them what to do, you can, take a look at their work.
A difficult hire is somebody who comes in and does something you've never done before, you have no idea [00:34:00] how it's supposed to work, and etc. Those are the harder ones to do. So I like to do that when things are a little bit shaky and a little bit wild because, and I'm going to sound like, I don't know, you can judge me however you want, but because interestingly, they need it too.
So when things are wild for everybody and things are difficult for everybody, when there's a great resignation going on, when people are scared and they don't know what to do, it's the perfect time to find really good people who need work. It's the perfect time. [00:34:30] And you can, if you do the other things that I talked about, Setting money aside, matching expenses, all that kind of good stuff.
If you are, and you're managing your sales cycle because trust is down, etc. You can actually become a beacon for some really talented people who they themselves are going through scary times, and expenses are going up for them as well, and they're having a harder time landing clients, or landing a job, or their business just shut down.
You can become a beacon. You can literally become a rock in a very chaotic [00:35:00] world and that allows you to attract some really incredible talent. So this is some kind of higher level stuff and maybe some of you who are listening to this aren't quite at that point in your business but it's something to consider even if you aren't there yet.
Because what you're considering is not necessarily should I hire someone right now you're considering how can I get my business to a point where no matter what's happening in the outside world I can literally become a rock for really talented people to come and participate in what I'm doing. [00:35:30] This is how you build what we call peaceful profits, right?
Where other people are contributing. It's not just you all the time having to drag everybody through. Because I'm going to tell you, when things are hard, you do not want to have a business where you have to pull everybody constantly. If your team isn't contributing and helping to lift each other up, helping to lift you up, Difficult times.
That's when I see business owners break. It's more than just the financial piece, right? It's the emotional stress. [00:36:00] It's the sense of responsibility. When it's constantly you having to come up with the money making ideas. When it's constantly you having to save clients. From whatever, refunding or whatever it is.
When it's constantly you, that's when the external world gets chaotic that's what breaks you. It's not even the money necessarily. So something to think about. How can I get my business to a point where it is a rock? And it's a place where people can come they can be a part of a team You know, look i'm going to use some words that people may find silly, but i'm just going to say it Where it can [00:36:30] be a safe place Where it can be a family where it can be refuge where it can be You know a place that While everything else is a mess We can get together You To take care of each other, to have community, to build something awesome.
If you can make your business that way, you'll never have problems attracting talented people. It's not easy to do, but the real, the point is that having a business that is a rock, [00:37:00] that's the trick, right? And it's not even necessarily. So a lot of people think that the business that, that can survive chaotic times is a business with mega high margins.
That's not necessarily true. A business is one that does seven figures in revenue. That's not necessarily true either. There are other things than just money that make a business operationally sound. And hopefully by listening to this episode, you were able to take a look at what some of those things are and hopefully you can make some [00:37:30] adjustments to your business today so that you can prepare for whatever comes.
Because it doesn't matter if it's today or tomorrow, if it's what's happening in Ukraine, if it's the inflation, if it doesn't matter what the event is, and if it's the events that are happening now or the events that are going to happen in 10 years, or the events that are going to happen in 30 years.
There will always be events happening. So that's why, like I said at the beginning of this episode, we are not preparing for this specific situation. [00:38:00] We are always preparing for all situations. It's the best way to not get caught off guard. If your current plan is to deal with it when it happens, I'm telling you, you will never be ready.
Because stuff happens fast. I don't know if you remember, two years ago, it went from this thing in China, to it's never coming here, to everybody locked down. In a matter of, I think, two or three weeks. That's not a lot of time. The thing that's going on right now, Between Russia [00:38:30] and Ukraine and the world and we're talking two or three weeks.
Now you may say I was aware of it months before and that's fantastic. You're a very smart person. Congratulations. You're in the minority. For most people, it's the things that we don't see coming that end up hurting us the most. And there's, even if you're the smart person who knew everything in advance, months in advance, there's something that's going to catch you off guard.
That's just, you can't be constantly checking everything all the time. You can never be productive. You have to focus and actually work on stuff. And that means you're going to have blindsides. Create a business that can withstand that. [00:39:00] And if you do that, you'll be fine. And not only will you be fine, but you may be able to create a place for customers and clients and team members to find refuge in when things are difficult.
That's our goal anyways, it's what we try to help other people do as well. And hopefully this episode has been helpful. I think we'll end it there. It's a heavy one, it's a longer one. Not trying to scare anybody. Just trying to help people get prepared. Okay. And again, not necessarily for this specific thing.
I don't know what's going to happen, [00:39:30] but just in general, always being prepared for no matter what happens when it happens is the goal of peaceful profits. And I hope it's your goal as well, too, because if you're able to sustain chaos and you're in the help industry, remember when I talked about need goes up, I want thousands of you to be able to prosper.
during difficult times. Because if there are thousands of you in mental, emotional, financial spots in [00:40:00] your life where you can help others, that's still not enough. We need millions of you to do that. As need increases, the need there is no end to need. If a couple of us, if hundreds of us, if thousands of us, will still be short.
Hopefully again, hopefully this has been helpful. I think I'll end it there. I could go on for hours about this, but Peaceful Profits is all about being that rock, being prepared in advance, and making sure that you are implementing the basics in your business to be the one who can get through the chaos.
Not [00:40:30] necessarily unscathed. It's still gonna be hard. You'll still feel it, but you'll be able to come through the other end. Having a better business, being able to have helped people along the way, and I don't know if there's anything better than being able to do that. Hope you have a wonderful day my dear friends, and I'll see you in the next one.