Latest / Ambitious Podcast / EP.64: If You’re Wondering “Is It Me or the Economy?” — Listen to This | The Ambitious Podcast

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EP.64: If You’re Wondering “Is It Me or the Economy?” — Listen to This | The Ambitious Podcast · Ambitious Podcast

0:00
Is my business broken? Like are people just not buying
0:02
from me? Are people just not spending?
0:04
Anybody who tells you that you will never be touched in a
0:07
massive shift in the world, frankly is manipulating you and
0:11
is telling you something to make you buy a big promise that
0:14
doesn't exist. Not going to happen to me, not
0:17
going to touch me. I hate to break it to you, but
0:19
it's something that you're going to have to experience.
0:22
The world is changing. There's policies under
0:24
consideration, big changes in government, but what does it
0:27
mean for us? What does it mean for an
0:29
entrepreneur? What does it mean for you and
0:31
for your business? Does this business even have a
0:33
future? You must have a bulletproof
0:36
mindset to be able to experience all the resistance and still
0:41
have resilience during times of, for example, a reception.
0:45
Anyone who's been in business for decades will tell you every
0:48
business has to adapt. Every business is impacted.
0:50
Whether they survive is the difference.
0:54
Hello and welcome back to Ambitious.
0:56
Today we are diving into a topic that I think is going to be
0:59
very, very relevant for you and probably something to be honest,
1:03
that you're already hearing, seeing, experiencing right now
1:07
in your world. And the way you hear and
1:09
experience that can be from a variety of different sources.
1:12
So it could be, you know, when you tune to the news, you see
1:15
things and conversations about the fact that the world is
1:18
changing, there's policies under consideration, big changes in
1:22
government and what that's going to mean for all different types
1:24
of businesses, people, individuals, communities and so
1:28
much more. And the thing that I know is
1:31
that many of us are surrounded by these conversations, but we
1:34
also don't necessarily have people telling us, OK, but what
1:37
does this mean for me as a business owner?
1:40
So if there are changes in government, if there are changes
1:42
in policy, for example, like, you know, banning of TikTok,
1:46
right, was something that was up for discussion.
1:48
If there is changing even in the world economy and how people are
1:53
spending and understanding of the stock market and what's
1:55
happening there. We know all these notifications
1:58
are happening, but what does it mean for us?
2:01
What does it mean for an entrepreneur?
2:02
What does it mean for you and for your business?
2:05
And so today I want to unpack #1 how we actually understand
2:10
changes in the economy as business owners.
2:13
What does it mean for us? How do we understand that and
2:15
really make a contextual to what it means for us as business
2:18
owners? But also, what are signs that,
2:20
you know, maybe your business is being impacted or is starting to
2:25
see changes that are a result of the changing economy?
2:29
And also, what can you do to prepare your business should you
2:33
go through a tough season or a tough period in the world or in
2:37
the economy? And I want to say, you know,
2:39
obviously there's a lot of media and there's a lot of different
2:43
things that will throw around this word of recession, right?
2:45
We've been seeing a lot of that all over of this kind of loom of
2:49
a potential recession being upon us or the starting of a
2:52
recession. And I'm not here to speak on
2:54
that today. But what I am here to speak
2:56
about is helping you to navigate tough times in business from an
3:00
environmental standpoint. And another example of this
3:03
would be for example, COVID. When COVID happened, there was
3:06
such a big environmental shift, meaning everything around us as
3:10
business owners. If you you were someone who had
3:13
a restaurant at that time, you were feeling the impact of
3:15
COVID. I know someone who's, for
3:17
example, a makeup artist and she goes on site on location with
3:20
people and she couldn't because of COVID.
3:22
So no matter what business you're in, in some capacity,
3:26
when there are changes in the world, your business is also
3:29
going to be impacted. And so today's episode is
3:32
designed to help give you an understanding of how to
3:35
understand what that means for you, and again, also how to
3:37
navigate steps and actions that you can take.
3:48
So listen, the first thing that I want to I want to say is I
3:50
want to take away, you know, this.
3:54
I think truthfully, if I could just label it candidly, like
3:57
this fear that so many of us have around what these times
4:01
will mean for us and this belief that's going to basically wipe
4:04
us out in business. Because the way that I look at
4:07
business, especially in context to tough times is the fact that,
4:10
you know, tough times are going to happen.
4:13
You're going to have storms that happen in your business.
4:17
And truthfully, I will say, of all the businesses that I've
4:21
seen that have been around for years and years and years, they
4:24
take efforts to protect their home and to create a lot of
4:27
stability in their home that can weather a storm.
4:30
And I really believe that, again, things are going to
4:33
happen in the environment, things are going to happen in
4:36
the world, and shifts are going to change.
4:38
But the only thing that you can really control today is
4:41
understanding #1 how you prepare yourself, but #2 how you respond
4:46
in the sense of in the moment, what you're going to do in the
4:48
actions you're going to take. And we're going to talk about
4:50
both today. So I also want to normalize, you
4:53
know, any type of, you know, recession or potentially a
4:57
change that is a significant strain in the economic condition
5:02
is typical every 5 to 10 years. That's something that as a
5:05
business owner, if you're thinking you're going to be in
5:07
business for the next 20 years and you're just not going to be
5:09
impacted by that. There are literally stats to
5:12
tell us that these situations of economic strain are happening
5:16
every 5 to 10 years. So the thing I want to note
5:20
about this is for you, I need you to go in acknowledging and
5:25
accepting and being aware that there is going to be some form
5:29
of financial or operational strain every one to three years
5:34
in your business and a more severe and a more prolonged
5:37
hardship roughly every 5 to 10 years, OK.
5:41
So you can experience a little bit of strain in your business
5:43
once every three years, one to three years, and a little bit
5:47
more of a prolonged strain, you know, due to something, for
5:50
example, like a recession, should that come to be every 5
5:53
to 10 years. And so I think it's first really
5:56
important for us to acknowledge the fact that, you know, no
5:59
business is really ever recession proof.
6:04
And what I mean by that is there's no business that during
6:08
a recession or tough economic time is going to become
6:11
completely untouched. And anybody who tells you that
6:13
you will never be touched in a massive shift in the world,
6:18
frankly is manipulating you and is telling you something to make
6:22
you buy a big promise that doesn't exist.
6:24
Anyone who's been in business for decades will tell you every
6:27
business has to adapt. Every business is impacted.
6:30
Whether they survive is the difference, which is really how
6:34
they respond to the changes. And so with this, when we look
6:40
at how they respond, for example, one of the things that
6:42
we know is when COVID, for example, happened, there was a
6:45
lot of businesses that with that rattling of the cage of how they
6:49
used to do business really being flipped on its head overnight.
6:53
82% of those businesses went out of business strictly based off
6:57
the fact that they didn't have cash flow.
6:59
They physically did not have enough money to sustain the
7:02
storm. And so it's really important for
7:05
us to acknowledge that this is going to be part of our world.
7:08
So I'm not here to be the doom and gloom.
7:10
I am. I'm actually here to be honest,
7:12
to inspire you, to support you to, to have you back in the
7:16
driver's seat and realizing, OK, like this is something that I
7:19
have to be ready for. And the example I give to
7:22
clients is like, if you're somebody who lives in a specific
7:25
area in the world where tornadoes happen, we're not
7:28
going to say, like, I just put myself on the street.
7:30
I'm not going to be touched by a tornado.
7:32
Tornadoes are possible for specific, you know, houses in
7:36
any certain area, but the houses that sustain are the ones who
7:39
built themselves in a certain way or who have actually
7:43
prepared, you know, tornado bunks and in your areas, in
7:47
their home that they can be at when these storms arrive.
7:51
And so we see this even, for example, you'll see footage on
7:54
the news of floods and people, for example, during floods who
7:58
have this one home that seem to be untouched because of how they
8:01
set up and structure the surrounding of their home.
8:03
Same thing with the fires. There are locations where, you
8:06
know, those homes that were untouched by fires.
8:09
So yes, you know, all of us are going to have us surrounding us.
8:12
But how we prepare for it is what we're here to talk about
8:14
today. And also, I think this is one
8:16
that I really want to emphasize. Since World War Two, there have
8:21
been over 13 different recessions that have happened,
8:23
all on average lasting around 11 months.
8:26
And the 11 months aspect is the one that I want to accentuate
8:29
here for you. Because the important thing for
8:31
us to recognize is that when things are changing in the
8:34
world, when we are experiencing these really tough economic
8:38
strains, we also need to remember that they don't
8:40
necessarily last forever. Now, again, yes, some will last
8:43
longer and shorter, but on average, we literally know by
8:46
data that they last around 11 months on average.
8:50
So what does this tell us? It means that if you are someone
8:53
who's going through a tough time, it does not necessarily
8:56
mean that this is going to last five years.
8:58
It doesn't mean it's going to last eight years.
9:00
It could mean on average, that it might last around 11 months
9:04
to one year in length. And so when we're thinking
9:07
about, OK, how do we navigate a tough economic time as a
9:11
business owner or entrepreneur, it's no longer about this idea
9:14
that we have to figure out what we're going to do for the next 5
9:17
years. We need to be able to get
9:19
through the storm that just like, you know, a tornado or a
9:22
flood or a fire is going to come and it's going to go.
9:26
But whether we navigate that time and survive, that really
9:30
depends on a variety of factors which we're going to dive into.
9:33
So one of the things that I want to do is I want to equip you
9:36
with an understanding and an awareness because I think a lot
9:38
of the time as business owners, we can feel like we know things
9:43
are changing in the world. We know that there's things that
9:45
are shifting, but we're not quite sure, is this my business
9:48
that's the issue? Or is this the fact that the
9:51
world is changing and my business is just simply being
9:54
impacted? And so I want to equip you with
9:57
some signs and really like symptoms, frankly, of things
10:00
that you're going to see in your business that could be a very
10:03
clear indicator that you're being impacted by the changing
10:07
of like the world economy. So really I want you to almost
10:10
think about these as like your, you know, resistance symptoms
10:15
show up list. So as things show up, these are
10:17
going to be the symptoms that you're going to feel of times of
10:20
resistance. One of the biggest ones that
10:22
many of us are all going to feel scene experience is sales and
10:25
revenue dips. So this can actually be fewer
10:28
sales. It can be drops in conversion,
10:30
and it can also be things like higher unsubscribe rates from
10:34
something like e-mail and also higher abandoned cart rates.
10:38
Here's the thing, fewer sales in general when you feel like
10:41
you're not making as much money as you once did, I want to
10:44
normalize that because sometimes what can happen and you know,
10:47
there's businesses even in the last year who've been having
10:50
these conversations, they start to feel like they're alone.
10:53
You start to feel like, is my business broken?
10:55
Like are people just not buying from me?
10:57
Are people just not spending? And the thing we want to
11:01
remember is that even in the tough times, there will be
11:04
people who are making sales, but sales can feel harder and it can
11:08
also feel like you're not generating what you used to,
11:11
especially the speed of what you used to.
11:13
So you want to remember that you will see typically fewer sales
11:19
and you also are going to see a drop potentially in conversion
11:22
at these times. And with that, people who are
11:24
looking at your offers maybe or seeking out your offers, but not
11:28
necessarily completely fulfilling the process.
11:31
And because of this, when we see a dip in sales, what's directly
11:34
tied to that cash flow restraints, which is the fact
11:37
that many of us, because we're maybe not making as many sales,
11:41
may even see a dip in our monthly recurring revenue and
11:44
the monthly cash that we're bringing into the business.
11:47
Or we might even see things like, you know, more delayed
11:50
payments from clients, more failed payments coming in,
11:53
feeling like you're having to make more flexible payment plans
11:56
for people as a result of the times.
11:58
Or you might even find in some industries, the things that used
12:01
to be like premium pricing that you feel like you almost like
12:04
didn't even need to sell before it felt like they would just
12:06
kind of sell on their own. You're like, wait a second, now
12:09
we're really having to sell these.
12:11
And so if you're somebody who also feels like you're having to
12:14
really push your premium price points that maybe before you
12:17
didn't have to push or promote, this can also be a indicator of
12:22
cash flow tightness, which is a result of the times.
12:26
Now, the other thing that you'll also see is going to be things
12:29
like customer behavior shifts, which are things like talking to
12:32
people in sales conversations where you're feeling like
12:36
they're asking for discounts, they're asking for, you know,
12:39
extensions, maybe even having people increase the amount of
12:42
refunds that they're asking for. And the most significant that I
12:47
see with customer behavior change right now is the fact
12:50
that people are taking longer to buy and there's actually an
12:53
increase in the frequency of how many people or how often people
12:58
are ghosting. I was talking to a business or
13:00
the other day who has been in business for many, many years
13:04
and has been through like easy times and hard times.
13:06
And they were saying, you know, like back in the day, you used
13:09
to be able to have someone see you, find you.
13:12
And within like 24 hours, a good majority of people had the
13:16
ability to invest. And now it feels like the same
13:18
conversation of a sales conversation might, number one,
13:22
take multiple touch points, but it also might need more time in
13:26
the sense of like, you know, say it was 2 days, might take, you
13:29
know, four days could up take up to 10 days for that person to
13:32
convert now. And so it really starts to
13:35
rattle us as business owners, right?
13:36
Because we wonder, OK, is my sales process broken?
13:38
Is this, you know, something that I'm doing wrong?
13:41
Is it the client's not serious? We start to get in our head
13:43
about what do all these changes mean?
13:45
And so I want to be here as a place to tell you that if you,
13:48
during resistance or changing times in the world are seeing
13:53
your sales processes extend and seeing them get longer, that is
13:58
actually normal. And that is actually typical of
14:01
any time that we are seeing a resistance or massive changes
14:05
happening in the world. And that is because, you know,
14:08
there are people who start to get nervous.
14:10
There's people who start to get, you know, pulling their purse
14:13
strings closer, if you will, because there's so many changes
14:16
and uncertainty happening in the world.
14:17
And so they're making the investment in the buying
14:20
decisions with a more critical and analytical mind than they
14:23
may have previously. So with this, you'll also see
14:27
people that are wondering about urgency, which is the fact that,
14:31
you know, can I DIY this on my own?
14:34
Can I potentially get something free information wise, like a
14:37
download or ChatGPT or somewhere like a book or a podcast?
14:41
Can they solve their, their problem on their own?
14:44
And people start to really look at their own internal, you know,
14:47
resourcefulness really that will look at, OK, do I need to
14:51
invest? Is this something I need to
14:53
invest in? And you also because of that are
14:57
going to see that transferred to your sales process, right?
15:00
So another sign is also in the team and operation bucket, which
15:05
is you're going to find that, you know, you're probably going
15:08
to have hours getting cut because people need to save
15:11
money. They're looking at, OK, where
15:13
are we bloated within the business, meaning where are we
15:16
spending a lot, but maybe where can we afford to be more
15:19
strategic or cut back a little bit?
15:21
And then when people see those areas, they say, OK, great,
15:25
well, I'm going to cut back on those and try to use that to
15:28
stockpile money and save money. And with this, usually because
15:32
people are cutting back on team, maybe it's Ava, maybe it's
15:36
someone that you've completely outsourced to like an agency.
15:39
It could be a contractor, it could even be like a full on,
15:42
you know, full Time Team member that you've had to move to part
15:45
time because of that. When we see shifts in team, we
15:48
also see people who get very burnt out because the business
15:52
tasks start to pile up and pile up.
15:55
And with that, you don't have as many team members as you once
15:58
did to support you with the things that you're looking to
16:00
do. So with this, we usually have a
16:04
lot of hiring freezes, which means that people are, you know,
16:07
generally speaking, not hiring as much because of concerns
16:10
around money. And because of that, you're also
16:13
kind of seeing the lack of delegation translate into lack
16:16
of growth of the business. So it really has a domino
16:19
effect. And another thing that I see is
16:21
people downsizing their offers, which is the fact that they are
16:24
looking to, you know, really look at how they can streamline
16:28
their offerings to not have so many things that they need to
16:33
promote and sell and most importantly, have money to
16:37
deliver, right? So say I'm somebody who has, you
16:41
know, 4 Co coaches. Well, if I have a program and a
16:43
mastermind that has four Co coaches and I'm looking again,
16:46
to reduce cost, potentially I might reduce that offer down and
16:50
focus on something closer like a group program or a course or
16:54
something that's a little bit easier from a delivery
16:56
standpoint. And of all these things I've
16:59
listed, this really messes with your mindset because it with all
17:05
these changes that we talked about, right?
17:06
If we're looking at, OK, well, sales aren't what they used to
17:09
be and they're not as easy as they once were.
17:11
The cycle's a little bit longer. I'm having some failed payments
17:14
coming from clients. I'm feeling like cash flow is
17:16
feeling a little bit tight. People aren't buying the way
17:18
that they used to. You know, organic reach maybe
17:21
isn't getting on social media what it once did.
17:23
I'm worried I might have to cut, cut down hours, right?
17:26
Like, as I'm listing these off, I don't know about you, but I'm
17:29
already feeling anxious. Like I'm like, OK, whoa, what an
17:31
environment to build a business in.
17:34
And the thing that we want to remember is like in these times
17:37
when you're seeing all of these situations happen, we start to
17:40
second guess. We start to wonder, like, am I
17:43
cut out for this? Is my business going to make it?
17:46
You know, is this my business problem?
17:49
Or is this something happening in the world problem and it's
17:51
just kind of, you know, grazing by me and impacting me.
17:54
Should I be pivoting? Should I stay in what I'm doing
17:57
or should I pivot? Maybe you have anxiety around
18:00
any future planning and, and worrying about, you know, can I
18:03
even sustain this business long term?
18:05
Does this business even have a future?
18:08
And so there's so many mindset hurdles that also come up for
18:12
us. And one of the things I want to
18:14
say is if any of these experiences or things that
18:17
you're thinking, you're feeling that maybe you're even doing or
18:21
going through right now, I want to say, first of all, I see you
18:24
because there's so many business owners that I work with who when
18:28
times are difficult, really have this internal dialogue of like,
18:31
am I the problem is my business feeling?
18:34
Or do I feel like there's resistance of the world that's
18:37
just impacting me? And this is just a storm that I
18:39
got to prepare to navigate. And so 9 times at a time, I will
18:44
say that there are a lot of things that a business can do to
18:49
protect themselves. And as a result, I'm not of the
18:51
belief that, you know, in these times that you have to surrender
18:56
and be like, well, times are tough.
18:58
I gave it a go. You know, I tried to try to grow
19:01
the business, tried to scale the business and it just I can't
19:05
right? It it's an it's a decision to
19:07
lean in. It's a decision to weather the
19:10
storm. And I want to give you an
19:12
example of this because, you know, even during COVID, right?
19:15
Think about the fact that you're a restaurant and you're somebody
19:17
who needed people to be in your location, you know, butts and
19:21
seats, as they put it, to get people in your store or in your
19:25
restaurant to be able to sustain.
19:27
Well, if a restaurant didn't shift to doing something, you
19:31
know, before restaurants opened up and everything again, if you
19:33
hadn't shifted to doing something like, you know, an
19:36
Uber Eats or a DoorDash or something along that line, like
19:40
you killed your business. Your business went under because
19:43
it, it meant that you were not having a way to generate
19:46
anything during that time. I also saw this, for example,
19:49
like a makeup artist, as I noted, if you're somebody who
19:52
during COVID was not able to meet in person, you can either
19:55
say, hey, well, I gave it a go, like, I guess it's what takes
19:58
out my business. Or you could decide to make a
20:01
online digital product that teaches people how to do their
20:03
own makeup at home and find a way to deliver intentionally.
20:07
I had a really incredible girlfriend who had a wine
20:10
business and she pivoted beautifully.
20:12
And she's such a testament to this because she was doing in
20:16
person wine tastings for people. And so when COVID happened,
20:19
again, no people getting together.
20:21
So she was very smart and basically decided that she was
20:25
going to do virtual wine tastings where the bottles of
20:28
wine were shipped to your house and you all met on Zoom and had
20:31
kind of like tasting notes and an experience with people, which
20:34
filled the gap of not only allowing her to continue to do
20:37
wine tasting things, but it also allowed the main thing that
20:40
people wanted during COVID to happen, which was community and
20:42
connection because so many of us were lacking that from being
20:46
isolated. So the reason I mention this is
20:49
there's also, I want to, I want to show you an opportunity to
20:53
decide to see the storm, acknowledge the storm and do
20:57
something anyways. And so I wanted to dive into the
21:00
stats and I wanted to dive into signs because I think to start,
21:04
we need to 1st acknowledge storms are going to happen.
21:10
As I said, every one to three years you were going to
21:12
experience some resistance of some aspect.
21:15
You're going to experience an intense resistance every 5 to 10
21:18
years. So if you were in this bucket of
21:20
like, not going to happen to me, not going to touch me, I hate to
21:24
break it to you, but it's something that you're going to
21:27
have to experience. So you will experience rain in a
21:32
storm over you at some point in your life.
21:34
That is inevitable. However, whether you are in the
21:38
middle of a rainstorm, wearing a sweater or wearing a waterproof
21:42
jacket with an umbrella is the difference of what we're going
21:44
to talk about today. The next 7 steps are going to
21:46
help you to really be able to create resilience in resistant
21:51
times. There's seven things that I
21:53
would focus on for every single business as core principles that
21:56
will help you to be able to have that waterproof jacket, to have
22:00
that umbrella to navigate the storm of a changing world of a
22:03
changing economy. So the first thing we're going
22:06
to dive into is step one being you want to look at how you can
22:10
diversify your income streams. So one of the things that many
22:14
people will do is that they have this belief.
22:16
OK, well, I, I have this one way I've made money and I don't want
22:20
to change it. And again, as I said with the
22:22
examples I just outlined, if you are somebody who is so and Gary
22:27
Vee talks about this, I love this quote from him.
22:29
If you romanticize the way you do business, it is the fastest
22:32
way to go out of business. And it couldn't be more true
22:34
because if you are someone who's only going to say I only do this
22:38
offer, I only make my money this way, I only sell in this
22:42
specific pathway. It could be the mindset and the
22:46
belief in the perspective that frankly puts you out of
22:48
business. So we want to be open to not
22:51
relying on just one offer. We want to be open to looking
22:54
at, OK, are there ways I can get creative about where I sell and
22:59
where I generate income for the business that would allow me to
23:01
help a wider variety of people. So this could be, for example,
23:06
if you are an agency doing things like, you know, in person
23:10
intensives of people less of a, you know, three or six month
23:13
contract. It could be the consideration of
23:15
adding digital products to your business.
23:17
It could be adding things like affiliate income or VIP days.
23:22
It could be looking at just how can I diversify the different
23:25
types of offerings that I have to really allow myself to not
23:30
only have income coming from different places, but also to be
23:33
able to resonate with different types of ideal clients who are a
23:37
good fit for each one of those services or offers.
23:40
And So what I see often times is people will look to say, how can
23:43
I have this mix of both, say, passive income or low ticket
23:47
items as well as high ticket items or things that are more
23:51
considered to be active delivery.
23:53
We can look to diversify what it is that we're offering.
23:57
So we have more offerings for more people with a wide variety
24:01
of problems. So as a result, you're able to
24:03
solve more problems for more people.
24:05
So first we want to look at is actually diversifying your
24:09
income stream. So I'll even give you an example
24:11
for myself. You know, one of the things that
24:13
that we do when we see that things are shifting or are
24:16
changing in the world is that we look to go to our offerings and
24:20
say, OK, great. How can we get, how can we get
24:22
innovative to make sure that we really are focusing on helping
24:27
as many people to solve as many different types of problems as
24:29
possible. So for example, we have a free
24:32
ambitious network, which by the way, if you want to join us
24:35
inside, just message me the word ambitious on Instagram and I'll
24:37
get you added in there. We have the ambitious network.
24:40
We have things like our membership, which is the scale
24:42
sessions membership. It is a monthly membership for
24:44
hot seat coaching for like $100 a month.
24:47
And we also have a mastermind. We have VIP days, we have
24:51
private mentorship. We have a plethora of different
24:53
types of call it products or offerings that really are
24:57
tailored to different people with different problems.
25:00
So it means that let's just say if there if I had the
25:03
alternative, if I just had one mastermind and I had nothing
25:06
else to offer people. What it means is that I am
25:11
really pouring all my eggs in this one basket.
25:14
And it means if the market decides that that's not what
25:16
people want, if people are not investing in that the same way
25:20
during trying times, or if people just change their buying
25:23
behavior in any way. If that's the only thing that is
25:26
the basis of the business, it has more risk associated with
25:30
it. So what I usually will do is if
25:33
I feel like there's a change happening in the market, I will
25:35
look to diversify my offerings, to diversify the amount of
25:39
people I can help, the amount of problems that I can solve.
25:42
And I then use that to gather information to see what trends
25:45
are happening as to what are people buying and why are they
25:48
buying it in the sense of where is the traffic going and is it
25:51
shifting? Because I will tell you, even in
25:53
the last, I want to say three years, I have seen such a big
25:58
shift even in my own product suite as to how people are
26:01
buying and what they're buying and why they're buying it.
26:03
So I look to diversify to make sure that I'm always got
26:07
something to help me to gather more of that information.
26:10
And also again, more people and more problems.
26:13
The second thing that you want to focus on is really building a
26:16
cash cushion. And I cannot emphasize this
26:20
enough, the amount of businesses that are running frankly, dare
26:24
you know, basically we call it paycheck to paycheck, you're
26:27
running month to month and you are frankly 60 days away from
26:32
going out of business because you don't necessarily have a
26:35
cash reserve. And now as I say this, I know
26:38
someone's going to say, well, Kate, like that's easy to say
26:41
when you're making a lot of money and you know, you're
26:43
selling a lot and you're generating a lot of sales.
26:45
But this doesn't have to necessarily be, you know,
26:48
somebody who's making $30,000 a month or $100,000 a month,
26:51
right? This can even be if you are
26:53
someone making paying 7K right now or 5K right now a month
26:58
taking a little bit a small percentage of every single
27:01
month. And putting that aside and you
27:04
kind of can even have this. Like for me, I have a kind of
27:07
auto deposit every single month that comes off of my business
27:11
bank accounts and as well my personal bank accounts and that
27:15
little reserve. And again, the number is not
27:17
what I'm worried about here. I'm not saying you have to put
27:19
away 500 or $1000. It's all relative to how much
27:22
your business is making. So it's really matter of a
27:24
percentage of your total income that month, but you should be
27:28
taking and having an auto deposit of a certain amount of
27:30
money allocated to a different account for you to build a cash
27:33
reserve. Because as I said, let's go back
27:36
to the beginning stat. We know that on average, there's
27:39
been 13 different recessions that have happened since World
27:42
War 2, on average lasting around 11 months each.
27:46
So what it means is that if we have cash, if we have money to
27:49
keep us afloat, it means that we can survive the storm.
27:52
What we're doing with that cash, I want you to literally think
27:54
about it as like your little bunker.
27:56
You're creating your little bunker and your Survival kit in
28:00
your storm bunker to allow you to weather the storm.
28:04
And that cash in your business is that thing you need to have a
28:08
cash reserve of anywhere between minimum three months up to six
28:11
months of operating expenses to allow yourself to have that
28:15
safety blanket to not feel like if something doesn't happen the
28:18
next 60 days, your business is going to go under.
28:21
So the thing that I want to invite you with is to not need a
28:25
recession to happen, to not need, you know, everything in
28:29
the world to completely blow up in order for you to take action
28:32
on this. This is something that you can
28:34
do today. Right now as you listen to this,
28:36
you can decide I'm going to even, let's just take, you know,
28:39
$200 a month and I'm going to start to put that away.
28:42
And once that gets transferred out of your account, that's not
28:44
money that you're going to be looking at.
28:46
It's a it's an amount that you want to leave in a separate
28:48
account that you know, sits there for your rainy day fund.
28:51
The fact that something is going to happen in the business one
28:54
day, one month, and you're going to experience some kind of
28:57
resistance in some fashion, and that's going to be there to
29:00
support you. So you also want to know your
29:03
numbers monthly. One of the things that I often
29:05
see too with businesses is that they have P and LS, they have,
29:09
you know, profit and loss. They have cash flow sheets.
29:12
They have a general understanding of how much the
29:15
business is making. But I find a lot of the times
29:19
business owners are surprised by their financial circumstances.
29:22
They're surprised by how much they're making or frankly not
29:26
making. And so that to me is really a
29:29
byproduct, the fact that you're not tuning into your numbers
29:32
nearly enough and you kind of are just to be honest, putting
29:37
them on a on a side burner and not really wanting to
29:40
acknowledge them. And it's because you're not
29:43
acknowledging them that often times you can end up in a worse
29:46
financial position than if you had been regularly looking at
29:49
them. Because if you're looking at
29:50
your numbers regularly, you can see, hey, we have a six month
29:53
runway here before cash starts to kind of, you know, fizzle
29:56
out. We have a three month runway
29:59
here before cash starts to fizzle out.
30:01
So because of that, when you have better eyes and visibility
30:04
in your numbers, you can also strategize and get ahead of
30:08
what's going to be coming down the pipeline your way.
30:12
And also which will help with this is really making sure from
30:15
a cash flow side you are prioritizing monthly recurring
30:18
revenue or at a minimum you're really, really good with
30:21
financial management. So what I mean by that is if
30:24
you're someone who's doing a lot of pay in fulls or you have even
30:27
potentially a service, that's a very front loaded investment.
30:31
So for example, say I'm like a web designer and I have a big,
30:34
you know, one week project for somebody and at the end of that
30:37
week, that's the end of the payments.
30:40
It's fine if you don't necessarily have the payments
30:42
drip out themselves over three to six months.
30:44
But what I need you then to do is to be someone who's really
30:47
smart with money and can make sure that you're taking that
30:50
money coming into the business and you're planning out where
30:53
that needs to go over the next couple months.
30:55
The one baked in I would say leverage point about monthly
31:00
recurring revenue and having payments going out, you know
31:03
every three months, six months, nine months, 12 months is the
31:07
fact that it usually kind of is almost like built in operating
31:10
system that allows you to manage cash better.
31:13
Because if I was to hand you $100,000 right now and you're
31:18
not good at cash management, you're going to blow through
31:20
that $100,000. If I give that to you in
31:23
increments of $10,000 over an extended period of time, you're
31:28
only going to be able to typically do so much damage
31:31
because you're only getting so much money at a time.
31:33
So you have more opportunity to be able to adjust it and turn
31:37
things around. So I really want to make sure as
31:40
#2 you have a three to six month cash reserve.
31:43
You are somebody who is not going to wait for tough times to
31:47
happen for you to start focusing on saving.
31:50
You are looking at your numbers regularly and consistently and
31:53
you are focusing on building monthly recurring revenue.
31:56
So again, this is just really a matter of how can we get the
32:00
cash to weather the storm. Think about your money is your
32:03
bunker. So we really want to make sure
32:05
that you have some good, nice, safe support around you.
32:09
Now, the other thing, which is number 3 is going to be looking
32:13
at how your offers need to be adapted to shift to the market.
32:17
And here's the thing I want to say with this, this does not
32:19
mean that you have to create a bunch of new offers necessarily,
32:22
right? Like for me, I wouldn't say that
32:24
I've created a ton of new offerings in the last two years.
32:28
I've created a handful of a couple, but I wouldn't say a ton
32:31
by any means compared to say some competitors.
32:34
But what I mean by this is you have to optimize your offers to
32:39
be needed in the current market or in a shifting market.
32:43
And what I mean by that is this is not a moment where anything
32:47
can feel like a nice to do, a nice to have or a nice to invest
32:51
into. When somebody is going to invest
32:55
during a tough economic time or a shifting market, they're not
32:59
investing in a nice to have service.
33:01
They're not investing in a nice to have program.
33:04
They're investing in things that they deem and feel and think are
33:08
essential to their survival and they're thriving during this
33:12
time. So if your offering is not
33:14
something that's somebody sees to be a necessity to be a actual
33:18
need for them to survive and maintain through these times, it
33:23
means that you're going to see that reflected in your sales and
33:26
you're going to see it reflected in the amount of people that are
33:29
investing with you. So how do we fix this?
33:32
How do we focus on this? It's really focusing on, you
33:36
know, the urgent, the pain point specific problems of why someone
33:40
needs you. So this means, for example, not
33:43
marketing things up. Well, when you work with me, you
33:46
know, 12 months from now, we're going to help you to do this.
33:49
We're like long term, this is where we're going to get you.
33:53
We want to think if we're in like a really difficult economic
33:55
time and people are wanting to see, you know, results, they're
33:59
wanting to see movement. They want to see signs of
34:02
momentum. Telling them that they're going
34:04
to be in a great place two years from now is not necessarily
34:06
going to make them excited about investing.
34:09
So we want to look at what are more relevant promises, what are
34:13
more relevant outcomes that I can make sure they know that I
34:17
feel comfortable to say we will help you to achieve blank.
34:20
So even pain points, right? When I'm speaking to pain points
34:24
in marketing, if I'm seeing, we talked about earlier the signs,
34:28
if I'm seeing that someone is having longer sales cycles,
34:32
well, I might want to speak to that and say, hey, are you
34:35
somebody who feels like you're having longer sales cycles?
34:38
It's taking you 6 to 10 days to close somebody who used to close
34:42
in 48 hours. If so, you're not alone.
34:45
And we basically are going to teach you how to be able to
34:48
consistently convert people, even though the timeline has
34:51
shifted. So it's speaking to and
34:54
acknowledging what the ideal client during a changing time is
34:58
going to experience. And it's also saying, how are
35:01
you going to help fix that? How are you going to help that
35:04
person to overcome it? And so the pain points of how
35:08
you talk about your service and your offer should be very
35:11
relevant to what that person's experiencing today, not just in
35:15
general around your offer or in general around your service, but
35:18
specifically today. What are they going through?
35:21
What are they seeing, what are they hearing?
35:23
What are they experiencing? And how can you speak to that
35:26
with your offer? And most importantly, how can
35:29
you speak to the goals they have right now, not in general with
35:33
your offer or in general with your industry, but when it comes
35:36
to right now, if they invest with you, what do they want the
35:39
most? And are you speaking to that
35:42
versus just the general messaging that you always have
35:44
had around your offer? And I want to clarify because I
35:47
don't want this to be misunderstood.
35:49
This is not to say that you're giving false promises.
35:52
You're also not, you're not just throwing out whatever you want
35:56
to say to make someone invest. What you're doing is you're
35:59
taking the true and the trusted outcomes that you know for your
36:03
offer service, and you're actually giving those contexts
36:07
to the current times. One of the easiest ways to win,
36:10
regardless of what's happening in the market is to make sure
36:13
that your marketing is in consideration of the market.
36:17
So like, if someone like, like myself, say, as a business coach
36:21
is seeing so much change happen all over the world and I just
36:25
didn't acknowledge it, you'd think, OK, this feels like it's
36:30
not really landing with me because everything she's saying
36:32
is not at all what I'm experiencing, right?
36:35
So one of the things of even why I want to record today's episode
36:38
for you was because I knew that this was something you're
36:40
experiencing. This is something that you are
36:42
going to feel, if you're not feeling already, you're going to
36:45
feel at some point in your business.
36:47
And so it would be a disservice of me to not talk about it.
36:53
And instead, we can make this a place where we do talk about it.
36:56
And now you have a place to come back to.
36:58
You can ask questions about this in the ambitious network.
37:00
We can have a communication around it, right?
37:02
You can have somebody to go to for what you're experiencing in
37:05
a current moment. And you can be that same person
37:08
for your ideal client. You can be the person who's
37:11
acknowledging what they're experiencing and if they feel
37:14
safe to come to and to talk to you about it because you're
37:17
acknowledging it. So you really want to look at
37:19
making sure that your marketing is really dialed to what's
37:23
happening in the current market. And by that we mean specific
37:27
pain point messaging, specific desires to their current moments
37:31
right now, and also making sure that your offer feels essential
37:35
and not a nice to have. It must be a need to have in
37:39
order for people to invest during trying times.
37:42
Now #4 is really focusing on retention and relationships.
37:48
I will say one of the things that's going to help every
37:51
single business, and it doesn't matter what kind of business you
37:53
are, is retention. Because if you are somebody that
37:57
has a really loyal client base, if you're somebody who has
38:01
clients that love your offers, love your experience, love your
38:05
service, happy clients are clients that frankly cost a lot
38:11
less to retain than it would take for you to acquire new
38:15
clients. OK, So when you're in a
38:17
difficult time in the world or in your business, what you
38:20
actually want to do more than ever before is you want to focus
38:24
on how can I make sure that my existing clients are not only
38:27
satisfied, but they are overwhelming overwhelmingly
38:30
happy with the service. Because when your clients are
38:34
happy, they stay. And if you have clients that
38:36
stay, it's going to be 10X easier than you trying to find,
38:40
you know, 5-7 new clients versus having the existing five to
38:43
seven clients that you're working with right now re sign
38:46
into their existing service or another service with you.
38:49
And this can also with a tone of, you know, retention, but
38:52
also relationships. This can also be seen with
38:55
community. I will say, you know, when times
38:58
are difficult in the world, people more than ever want
39:01
community. We want connection.
39:03
We want to feel like we're around other people who
39:06
understand us and who get what we're going through in business
39:10
and who understand our experience.
39:11
And so one of the things that I will say is that there's a real
39:15
opportunity for every single business owner right now to
39:19
leverage building a stronger community.
39:22
This can be through social media, it can be through DM
39:24
conversations you have with people.
39:26
It can be giving to your your e-mail list.
39:29
It could be creating a free community.
39:31
You really want to think about how can I pour into my audience?
39:34
Because the building of the community is really something
39:38
that again, is going to be fostering the relationships, the
39:41
people that you already have underneath your nose.
39:45
So many people when they are feeling resistance around sales
39:48
will feel like, OK, well, how do I go and get myself, you know,
39:51
20 new clients or 25 new clients?
39:54
But I would also invite you to think about how many of those 25
39:58
clients you want to work with are sitting right underneath
40:00
your nose right now. The people that are in your
40:02
community, the people who just need more relationship with you,
40:05
more connection with you to want to invest.
40:08
Instead of trying to say how can I go sell someone on me right
40:11
now, how can I go sell someone on wanting to work with me sell
40:14
someone on investing in my service.
40:16
Ask yourself how can I go serve my community on social?
40:20
Free community e-mail list in my DMS.
40:24
How can I go serve my audience to literally create a no brainer
40:28
opportunity for someone to be supportive with me than in a
40:31
paid offering? So you really want to focus on
40:35
times where you feel like you're having maybe less lead flow
40:38
coming in, less messages coming in, less applications happening.
40:42
You have people underneath your nose right now that you're
40:44
working with or that have been your community surrounding
40:47
forever and are going to be 10 times easier to build business
40:52
off of. And to be able to nurture those
40:54
relationships and continue those together than the idea of
40:58
starting a whole new relationship with someone,
41:00
especially in a time where we're already struggling with trust.
41:04
So the other thing that I would say around messaging, and this
41:09
is the thing that I, I really want to hammer home around
41:12
marketing, which is #5 people need to be seen in the pain
41:16
they're experiencing. And people need to feel like you
41:20
understand their goals and their desires.
41:22
Something that will sink the boat during a trying time when
41:28
you are marketing is marketing fear.
41:31
And that is because people will initially invest with someone
41:37
who scares them because it means that, OK, whoa, this person is
41:41
the crystal ball. They're telling me I got to do
41:43
this. I got to, I got to act on it.
41:44
I got to act on it. But the person that we invest
41:47
with, not just short term, but long term is the person that we
41:51
feel like we can truly trust. And someone said to me, OK,
41:56
well, should I be doing more agitational marketing?
41:59
Should I be doing more of this marketing?
42:00
And I said, listen, if you are somebody who's already terrified
42:04
and scared of things happening in the world and all the
42:07
situations that are happening, who do you want to invest with?
42:10
The person who says, this is the reason your business is going to
42:12
go under, This is the reason you're never going to make it.
42:15
This is the reason that you'll never succeed?
42:17
Or do you want someone who says, hey, I see you in what you're
42:21
experiencing? I feel you.
42:23
I know you're probably having AB and C occur right now.
42:26
And I want to let you know, here's how I overcome this.
42:29
Here's how I navigate it. And here's how I'd be supported
42:31
to help you to be able to get to the other side, right?
42:35
Like here's how we can make sure you win even in the face of
42:39
resistance. So the thing I want to say with
42:42
marketing right now is a lot of people can generate and I've
42:46
seen it happen and it's unfortunate because it's
42:48
manipulative, but I've seen people generate quick cash off
42:52
the fact that they're playing into fear.
42:54
Like if you don't do this thing, your business will never sell.
42:57
If you don't do this thing, you'll never get clients during
42:59
these times. And people who often times buy
43:03
into that type of thing or people who don't necessarily
43:06
have long term vision, they're very in the short term of like
43:09
what I need to do right now. And they can't really think or
43:12
see further than that. But then what happens is when,
43:15
again, we talked about those 11 months when the veil lifts, they
43:20
feel manipulated because they feel like this was just a
43:23
basically leveraging their pain for your own personal gain.
43:28
And so instead, we want to be the lead.
43:30
We want to be the confident person.
43:33
We want to be the one who acknowledges the circumstances
43:36
and also looks to showcase all the opportunities of how you can
43:41
still navigate what's in front of you.
43:43
So we're not looking to be the person who says there's no
43:46
storms here, it doesn't rain here.
43:48
If you come to my side of the Internet, you will never
43:51
experience pain, ever. Guess what's going to happen in
43:54
the first moment that that person experiences pain.
43:58
Now I don't trust you. Now it tells me that whatever
44:02
you marketed to me was literally just a scam to try to get me to
44:06
invest. So anyone who says like, OK,
44:09
well, if you come to my side of town, you're not going to have
44:11
or experiencing any of these problems.
44:13
Well, that can feel really sexy, right?
44:15
Sounds sexy. You mean if I invest with so and
44:17
so, I will never have to care about anything happening in the
44:20
world? Well, on a short term basis,
44:22
even for me. Wow, that would be really great.
44:25
That would sound really enticing.
44:28
But when I experience that resistance now, I'm pissed
44:31
because you told me if I came into your world that I wouldn't
44:34
experience resistance. Whereas let's go to person B
44:38
Person B says, listen, there's a lot of resistance and change
44:41
that's going to happen in the world.
44:43
And I'm going to be the first person to tell you you're going
44:45
to experience it. When you buy a house in this
44:47
area, you will experience at some point a tornado that's
44:50
going to pass. The difference is when you buy a
44:53
house that's made by us, we build it in such a way that
44:58
means that the damage will either not occur or will be
45:01
decreased by 70% of what other businesses will.
45:06
So here's what I want to note between these two when you're a
45:10
person B, I'm acknowledging the environment I am pre handling.
45:15
And if you guys have listened to George's customer journey
45:17
episode, this is really important.
45:18
It's one of his five steps. People don't trust people who
45:23
don't pre handle difficulty. So if you were in your marketing
45:26
being like not an issue here, we make money here, we scale here
45:30
and nothing is going to touch us.
45:32
The first time someone experiences resistance when
45:35
you've said there's no resistance on your side of town,
45:37
now I don't trust you. When you are a business that
45:40
markets and says listen, you will experience resistance.
45:43
You will feel times where things feel difficult, and I'm here to
45:48
support you and give you the strategy to be able to handle
45:51
that faster and easier than anybody else.
45:54
But yes, you're still going to experience it.
45:57
You have such a deeper trust because they've acknowledged the
46:01
difficulty that's going to come your way.
46:03
And when that difficulty arises, as it will, it means that you're
46:07
going to trust them as a lead, as a resource for you instead of
46:12
the person who gave you this dream that wasn't real in an
46:15
effort to basically have a quick conversion and ultimately losing
46:19
trust with you. Meaning long term, you don't
46:22
trust them as a business and as a brand anymore, Versus the
46:25
other person who acknowledged it was going to happen and told you
46:27
that they would lead you through it.
46:29
So #5 is you have to tighten the messaging up.
46:33
You have to really make sure that you're leading to shift
46:37
your content, your messaging to acknowledge the stress levels
46:42
that people might be feeling. Acknowledge the uncertainty that
46:44
they might feel. Acknowledge you know how they
46:47
might want to take caution and certain things in their business
46:50
or in the transformation that you provide for them.
46:53
You want to be the lead at the front who acknowledges it but
46:56
helps to guide them anyways #6 is going to be probably, I would
47:04
say that the underbelly of all of it.
47:06
And that is the fact that you must have a bulletproof mindset
47:13
to be able to experience all the resistance and still have
47:17
resilience during times of, for example, a recession.
47:22
You have to have a very, very, very strong mindset to know that
47:27
difficult times in business, like we talked about with the
47:29
stats are going to happen. That's going to be an inevitable
47:33
for every business owner. You're going to experience a
47:35
season where things are going to be very difficult from a sales
47:38
perspective, marketing perspective, offer perspective.
47:41
It happens everywhere and you want to remember that because
47:46
you experience a resistance, it doesn't mean your business is
47:49
going to fail. It doesn't mean your business is
47:51
going under. It means that we have an
47:53
opportunity to pivot. It doesn't mean that because
47:56
something's coming, this is the moment that your business fails.
48:00
It's also really important from a mindset perspective to
48:04
surround yourself with people who will acknowledge these
48:08
conversations, who will acknowledge the environment, and
48:11
who also have strategies and ways to be able to navigate it.
48:16
Just kind of like we went back to with messaging, right?
48:18
We were talking about the person who doesn't acknowledge versus
48:20
the person who does. That's also not just important
48:22
for you in marketing, but also for your own support systems.
48:26
You want to make sure that if you are going to be surrounded
48:30
by people right now, you're not surrounding yourself with people
48:32
who won't acknowledge the elephant in the room.
48:35
You need people around you who ultimately can guide you on
48:40
acknowledging the current circumstance and also helping
48:43
you to say, OK, so here's how we're going to navigate it.
48:44
Here's what we're going to do. You don't want people who
48:48
invalidate the experience and you also don't want anyone who
48:51
catastrophizes the experience, meaning if you go to someone,
48:55
they say, Yep, well, like this is when businesses die.
48:57
This is when businesses go under.
48:58
We want people to look at the opportunity for growth, the
49:01
opportunity for expansion and where can we pivot and get
49:05
innovative to make sure that we always are thinking, you know, a
49:08
couple steps ahead for our own growth and success.
49:12
And one of the important mindsets you have to have is
49:15
that you have to stay grounded in the long term vision.
49:18
It can get really difficult during and you probably even
49:22
have this in your life when you're in these really difficult
49:24
times, you're like, I can't even focus on the future.
49:26
I can't even focus on thinking long term vision because I'm I'm
49:30
stuck in just what I'm experiencing right now.
49:33
I'm stuck in just the moments that I'm already going through.
49:37
How can I possibly think about my business in the next three to
49:39
five years? How can I think about my
49:41
business in the next 10 to 20 years when it feels like I might
49:43
not even survive the next three to six months?
49:46
The thing I want to say is you will not overcome the next three
49:50
to six months because that three to six months is going to
49:54
require you to see how getting through it would bring you to
49:58
that long term vision. The only why that is actually
50:01
deep enough to truly help you to overcome those difficult
50:05
resistance periods of three to six months of what you're going
50:08
to have to go through is the fact that you have that vision.
50:10
You know what you want to achieve.
50:12
You've got your eye on the prize of what you're looking to do and
50:15
that you're going to sustain and hang on to that vision
50:17
regardless of how rocky the waters are, right?
50:20
So when we, you know, are in the middle, again, I know it's just
50:24
the easiest analogy to give. If we're in the middle of a
50:28
storm and we know that there's lightning and there's rain and
50:30
there's wind and all these things, you know, you can say,
50:34
OK, great. Well, like I give up.
50:35
Or you can say, listen, I'm going to just breathe through
50:37
this, you know, bunker down, stay inside.
50:41
And after that, it's going to come, it's going to go and we
50:43
move on, right. You, you realize that this is a
50:46
season, it is a period. And so you're going to bunker
50:49
down with some of the strategies we talked about, right?
50:51
Tightening up your messaging, focusing on your retention, your
50:53
relationships with your community, optimizing your offer
50:56
and the way that you're positioning it, managing your
50:59
cash flow, diversifying some of your income streams, right?
51:01
You can do that. That is the bunkering down.
51:04
You're going to bunker down and focus on the needle movers.
51:07
And then when you do that, you can say, OK, great.
51:10
I am only doing that because I know where this business can go.
51:14
I know where this business is headed.
51:16
I know the vision of what I can do with this.
51:18
And I'm not done. And this storm is not the thing
51:22
that's going to take my business out.
51:24
I'm not letting the next three to six to our earlier stat 11
51:28
months be the difference of whether my business is around
51:31
for the next 11 years. So let's get to work.
51:35
That's what we need when we are experiencing massive shifts and
51:39
changes in the world. And I will be right there with
51:42
you. I've had those moments where I'm
51:44
like, Oh my goodness, because there's massive changes
51:46
happening. But then I remember all that
51:50
I've put into this and all that I have, you know, created.
51:54
And when I had those trying times, I'm like, I am not done
51:57
yet. And this season is not taking me
51:59
out from the big overarching vision and thing that I know in
52:04
my heart and in my soul that I am designed to do.
52:08
This is where the business is meant to go.
52:10
And this season is not going to be the reason I'm not
52:14
successful. This season is not going to be
52:17
the reason that this business stops here.
52:20
And so you have to have that bulletproof mindset of
52:22
recognizing that this is a season and you have to focus on
52:26
the long term vision of what you know in your heart, with your
52:29
team, with your clients is possible for you and for your
52:31
business. And the last of all of these is
52:35
streamlining and simplifying. This is where we cut unnecessary
52:38
tools. We cut unnecessary
52:40
subscriptions, we cut unnecessary expenses.
52:43
We automate wherever we can. And we lean into what is really,
52:47
really, really moving the needle, what are the things that
52:49
are the most effective in the business and leaning into those,
52:52
right? So the thing I want to say is
52:55
when you're really, really strong, right?
52:58
When your business is super strong.
52:59
And what I mean by that is your marketing's working, your sales
53:02
are flowing, your cash flow's managed, there's money coming
53:05
in, things are dialed. When you're super strong, you
53:08
physically have the ability with your business to handle more
53:12
weight, which means to handle more bloat, to handle more
53:16
within the business. When you're struggling, when
53:20
sales are not flowing the way that they used to, when the
53:22
marketing is not activating the way it once did, when the sales
53:24
cycles are longer, when maybe you're starting to have to tap
53:26
into those cash reserves. This is where you have to be
53:30
really conscious of, OK, I am getting weaker and weaker and
53:33
weaker. And so I need to be really
53:35
conscious where do I need to hang on to what weight?
53:39
Meaning if I, let's just say have, you know, again, thinking
53:41
about me hiking and I'm really strong at the beginning and I've
53:44
got 4 bags on my back and one is full of food, the other one is
53:48
full of water and the other one is maybe some entertainment.
53:52
And the other one is clothing. Well, if I start to get really
53:54
weak and I can't carry as many bags, which bag do you think I'm
53:58
going to get rid of? Right?
54:00
The entertainment. And that's because we need food,
54:02
we need water, we need clothing. So what happens when we're
54:05
looking at these times where we're feeling extra strain is
54:09
that we need to be really conscious of not removing
54:12
everything. This is not by any means to say,
54:14
you know, kill every investment and remove every team member.
54:16
It's not to say that. It's to say that, you know, when
54:19
business is going really well, and I see this all the time with
54:21
scaling businesses, when business is going really well,
54:24
we have a tendency to operate and invest and to spend based
54:29
off the assumption things are going to continue to go well,
54:31
right? So we have a lot of this bloat
54:34
that happens in the business. And the thing that's really
54:37
important for people is that when you're in these times that
54:39
do feel a little bit more difficult, we have to be able to
54:42
say, OK, great. Well, where can we decrease the
54:45
bloat? Where can we really go back to
54:46
just what moves the needle and absolutely nothing else?
54:50
So this can also mean, as an example, say you are somebody
54:53
who has a core marketing channel.
54:54
So I'm just going to say for, you know, information purposes,
54:56
let's just say it's Instagram. If you have your core marketing
54:59
channel as Instagram, but you're somebody who's got LinkedIn and
55:02
e-mail and podcast and TikTok and YouTube that you're paying
55:06
for the area you have to protect around your investments.
55:09
Say you have an agency who manages all of those.
55:12
You might say, hey, I really need to cut back to just doing
55:15
podcast and Instagram because we need to reduce expenses and I
55:19
have to protect the the needle mover that helps to protect the
55:22
outcome. So this is not to say that
55:25
you're supposed to cut back and just never spend during these
55:28
times. I would actually say investing,
55:31
you know, is a very important thing during these times because
55:34
you need to have support, but it has to be in the right areas.
55:37
It can't just be general support.
55:39
It shouldn't just be I'm just investing to invest.
55:41
It needs to be having a really, really good critical analysis of
55:45
where is support needed, where do you need to move the needle
55:50
and who do you need to help you to get there.
55:51
Is it somebody doing it for you, meaning you have very little
55:54
time? Or is it because you don't know
55:56
what to do, which means that you need someone to teach you how to
55:59
do it, like a consultant. So this is really where you're
56:02
going to lean into removing anything that's not necessary
56:05
and reducing the bloat that is happening in the business, which
56:08
typically is a byproduct of extra resources you had when
56:12
things were going really well that you may not have if you're
56:15
starting to come up against some resistance based on the current
56:17
market. So today I wanted to talk about
56:23
this topic because I really want to normalize what happens when
56:29
things change in the world and the domino that has on us in
56:32
business, right? We went over a little bit of the
56:34
understanding of how to know whether your business is
56:38
experiencing some of the resistance in the world.
56:41
Is it impacting your business? What are stats, right?
56:43
We went over the stats that also helped us to understand how
56:46
frequent is this? How common am I going to be
56:48
experiencing this and should I end up not only, you know,
56:52
having this go through and pass by over my business, but also
56:56
I'm seeing the impacts of it? How do I prep for it and how do
56:59
I navigate it during these times?
57:02
That's what we found obviously within the seven steps, which
57:04
was helping you to kind of go into the seven areas for your
57:07
business to use those as a way to really become resilient
57:12
around resistance. So listen, I know that today's
57:16
topic is not maybe as, dare I say, exciting and uplifting as
57:21
mindset episodes or personal development or sometimes, you
57:24
know, sexy marketing and sales. But here's the thing I will say
57:27
is that the thing that really allows businesses to succeed
57:30
long term is not always going to be the sexy stuff.
57:34
I really want to applaud you if you've gotten to this place in
57:36
today's episode, listening all the way through, investing this
57:38
time into yourself, being willing to see resistance and
57:43
acknowledge the resistance that's happening and look at,
57:46
you know, right in the face and say, OK, great.
57:48
I see you. I acknowledge you and I'm not
57:51
going down without a fight. That's what happened today, that
57:55
that's what you're doing by investing in yourself, by
57:57
listening to information like this and pouring into really
58:00
understanding it and how you can adapt with your business.
58:03
And I also want to say this is something that I know many
58:05
people don't have a resource to go to.
58:08
So if you are somebody who feels like there was a download for
58:12
you today, there was a take away that you'd love to share.
58:14
I always, always, I can't tell you enough, I love hearing your
58:17
messages and just your takeaways from the episodes.
58:20
I can't tell you how much it fills my bucket.
58:22
I, you know, I'm over here always wondering like, does this
58:24
land, do you love it? Does this kind of feel like it
58:27
hits home for you? And I always love to hear from
58:29
you. So if you have a couple minutes,
58:32
I would absolutely love to ask a quick favor.
58:33
If you are somebody who loves, you know, the ambitious podcast
58:37
you listen each week, if you're one of our OG listeners, thank
58:40
you so, so much. We obviously could not do what
58:42
we do without all of your incredible support.
58:44
And so I just wanted to say if you have a quick moment, if you
58:46
guys can hit that, follow that subscribe button where you're
58:49
listening, if you want to leave a review on the show or inside
58:52
of the ambitious network, it would mean the world to us.
58:54
All the feedback from you really does allow us to make sure that
58:57
this show and every single episode is tailored to what
58:59
you're going through, what you want, and what would be
59:02
supportive for you as a person and also as a business owner.
59:05
And so I can't wait to bring more topics and conversations
59:08
just like today to you. If you have anything you want to
59:11
talk to me about an extension from today's topic, I would love
59:14
to hear takeaways from you. So if you want to send me a
59:16
message in the DMS or if you also want to shoot me a message
59:19
in our chat inside the Ambitious network.
59:21
It's our free community, which is all designed for us as women
59:24
and business owners to connect. And if you're not quite in there
59:27
yet, message us the word ambitious.
59:28
And I would love to add you in there.
59:30
But with all that being said, I cannot wait to see on the next
59:32
episode. And, as always, stay ambitious.