Next Level Pros - #145: why playing it safe might be the most dangerous move //recession prediction // next level pros podcast

Episode Date: April 17, 2025

Welcome to a new episode of Next Level Pros! Today, get ready to learn about surviving (and thriving) during economic chaos. Chris, Daryl, and Levi break down how to overcome fear, get creative with your business, and turn a potential recession into your personal comeback story. They'll show you why getting uncomfortable might just be the best thing for your business right now.Highlights:"What would I do if I had no fear?""Your experiences are a reflection of your internal thoughts, beliefs and emotions, not your external circumstances.""Most businesses are run by older people, but there's a lot of opportunity for younger people with ambition.""52% of Fortune 500 companies were started in a recession."Timestamps:0:00:00 Recession Alert: Economic Challenges Ahead0:01:33 Changing Strategies When Old Methods Fail0:04:03 Recession-Proofing Your Mind0:08:35 Opportunities Born from Economic Shifts0:10:27 Overcoming Ego in Business Challenges0:14:16 Transparent Leadership During Tough Times0:19:47 Finding Strategic Partnerships for SurvivalWant me to teach you how to grow your business? Text me! 509-374-7554Want access to more of my content? Click the link below for all of our latest updates and events!https://linktr.ee/nextlevelprosWant to be a guest on our show? Apply here!https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1YlkVBSluEKMTg4gehyUOHYvBratcxHV5rt3kiWTXNC4/viewform?edit_requested=trueWatch my latest PodcastApple - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/next-level-pros/id1687030281Spotify- https://open.spotify.com/show/1e0cL2vI1JAtQrojSOA7D2?si=95980cd4e55a437aYouTube- https://www.youtube.com/@NextLevelPros

Recession is in the air. The stock market has tanked over 4500 points in the last four days. Donald Trump has initiated reciprocal tariffs across the board. We've got business owners that are calling me up and saying, what do we do? Do we keep our business open? Do we wind it down? Do we keep things rocking and rolling? Do we go all in? All these questions are going through people's minds right now. JP Morgan just recently said a 60% chance of a complete recession in 2025 What are you doing right now to make sure that your business is recession proof all this and more on this episode of next level Yeah, so I mean dude, dude, 2025 is crazy.

Donald Trump is coming in hot. This guy is freaking throwing just haymakers from the left corner. And you just have no idea what's going on. It's been wild. Whether you agree with Trump or not agree with Trump, regardless, there is change happening. There is change. For sure. And we could talk a little bit deeper about that. But I think it's more important. Like what is happening right now in business?

A lot of people are scared. A lot of people got things going on. I mean, me and you just got off the phone yesterday with a couple of business owners. They they said, hey, Chris and Darrell, we want these guys in our community. They've ran this business for quite a few years and they are doing everything which they feel is in their power to keep this thing rocking, but the overall macro economy is hurting them. Yeah, I think it's a really interesting aspect because people are really concerned with what to do

and the concern comes from what used to work isn't working anymore. And really that's the point that we're at is like everything's got to change. Which actually is a good reference to one of my favorite books, Who Moved My Cheese. You read that book before? It's a fantastic book. Real small, easy read. Basically the premise of the book is you got two mice and then two little people and

they're going every single day and they go through this maze and they find their cheese, right? And they go and whatever your cheese is, money, relationships, whatever, they're going and they're getting in. It's always there. They show up, they do the same thing and it's there. Then one day it's gone, right? And they're like, oh dude, who moved my cheese?

Right? And all of a sudden, so what happened was these two little guys that keep showing up and like the cheese still isn't there. And one guy finally realizes like, man, I got to change it up. I got to do something different in order to find cheese. And so then he started like wandering out and going through the maze and looking for your other cheese, where the other guy literally kept showing up every single day and be like, dude, what the freak, where's my cheese? And so same thing, right, going on in business right now is like guys are doing the same

thing that worked back in 2020, 21, 22, and it no longer works in 23, 24, 25. And they're like, who moved my cheese? But one of my favorite things that comes from that book, not only is the little guy that he's out looking in the maze, but the little motto that he preached to himself as he's out looking for new cheese. And the thing that he kept repeating to himself was, what would I do if I had no fear? Yeah.

Right, because it's really easy in a time like this to be overtaken with fear, right? Like dude, I'm looking at my stock portfolio right now and I'm like, holy crap. Like there's a little fear creeping into Chris Lee's Dumpski, you know? I'm like, uh, should I, what should I do? And so a lot of times, like when things like this

are happening, we get paralyzed. And we're paralyzed by fear and so we this are happening, we get paralyzed. And we're paralyzed by fear, and so we do dumb things. We just keep showing up to the same spot versus asking ourselves, okay, if I wasn't fearful, if there was no fear, what is the action that I would take today? And I've made some of the best decisions in my career when I've been able to repeat that self over and over to myself. I think what we see is there's always these moments in time where you have to change the

way you think. And so we're talking about recession proofing your business, but truthfully it's recession proofing your mind. How do you think, because a lot of times you just get comfortable and it's like, hey, it's working, why change? This is the time where it's like okay things are gonna change and I mean I even love what President Trump's doing like everyone's like this isn't gonna work this is gonna crash our market and he's like and I think all he's

doing is negotiating. Well and at the same time it's like something's got to change. Correct. Right some has to change we got AI coming down the the pipeline robots are gonna be taken over the world, right? They're gonna start manufacturing like the things that are valuable are gonna be land and natural resources and energy and who owns the manufacturing, right? So like all those things in place you have two choices, one kick the can, yeah, right? And have some other future president take care of it or you bite that freaking bullet right now and you start negotiating a new economy. I've got a quote here, it says,

your experiences are a reflection of your interstate thoughts, beliefs, and emotions, not your external circumstances. Hey guys, it's Chris. Hey, a lot of you leave comments asking for help. Do me a real quick favor. Shoot me a text at 509-374-7554. That's 509-374-7554. Shoot me a text, I'll answer and help you with whatever you need. Don't worry, I got

you back. Let's go back to the show, baby. So we actually talked about this in our last workshop, how people a lot of times we are in our like own constrained jail cells that aren't even locked. We think we can't change. This is my lifestyle. I have to keep doing the same work. It's really easy when you're running a successful business to think I'm above that work. I'm not willing to get back in the field.

I'm not willing to get back into the grind. I'm not willing to cut out my lifestyle or anything. Then we sit there and we show up To where the where there's no cheese wondering like man. Why can't I keep? Sustaining this lifestyle. I think I don't know a book It was but this book talked about the concept of boxes that we create and then we always think think through those boxes and the strong Where this drew a strong point for me was a marriage, right?

You always think like we have to be married together And so you limit the way you think based off of we have to be married and it's like just remove the box of like No, we don't have to be married But what would it be like if we had created the happiest marriage, right? Same thing with business like you don't have to be a business owner But what if being a business owner was the greatest thing you could do in your life What should that look like and so you remove the box of like I have to run this business or I have to survive this It's like remove those things that constrain your thinking and along with that would be like I have to keep these certain employees

Or I I have to keep running out of this certain office or whatnot, right? You can sell the office you can fire employees. You can make changes, you can get back out on the doors, you can do these things that are the grind. But yeah, like like I said, we we create those boxes that are just so constricting. But they're very subtle, too. They're subtle, and they're very they're very constricting. And what was interesting, so I'll just share like with me and my wife, we talked about it like okay Like if we were dating again, what would we do differently? How would we act differently towards each other and it really did change a lot in our relationship of like hey We don't have to fit in this box like let's let's treat each other like we would if we were dating each other whatnot

And I think I think same thing with business is like you get stuck in this fear loop of like, oh no, this is gonna be tough, this is gonna be challenging. So now everything you approach, you approach with like, it's gotta be tough, hard, it's tough times, things are getting harder and harder, versus like, this is the best opportunity of my lifetime. Everything's changing and I gotta figure out the niche. And the reality is, if you look at businesses, like most businesses are ran by older people, right?

And it's a great time to be older people, but there's a lot of opportunity for younger people who have a lot of ambition too. So there's just, no matter where you're at in life, there's so much opportunity, you just need to change your lens and realize what's going on and take advantage of it. There's a cool stat you were talking about

as far as the Fortune 500 companies, what was that? Yeah, 52% of Fortune 500 companies were started in a recession. That's pretty wild. Why do you think that is? I love the idea of just an industry shift. I mean, and we experience many versions of recessions every day in our lives and experiencing the real world.

And one of the coolest things I've learned from both of you guys is when we studied Outwitting the Devil by Napoleon Hill, and how the devil, if it was like an entity, how it would control you. And one of the best tools it would use is complacency, being stagnant, just kind of on cruise control.

When you have these recessions, it's all cyclical. After the recession, there's always a boom right after that. That boom is caused by the companies directly in this example, or the people that are able to figure it out and see this recession as an opportunity rather than a threat. We were able to figure that out in the solar industry during the The sickness we might not say on on the podcast But we made a huge pivot from going from door-to-door sales to to remote sales you know the greatest story of all time that I think about like

this aspect of like some hardcoming and then you have to fix it is Is George Foreman. His story is incredible. He like quickly rose in boxing, became world champion, went to the Olympics, made a ton of money, and then his manager lost all his money. And then he found himself in the 40, I think he was 40 something years old,

48 I think or something, he was really old. Seemed impossible for him to get back into boxing. But he knew that's how he could make his money. Went back into it and became world champion again. But I just think of that as like there's always this take two or step or like the second act that can be so much bigger than where you're currently at. And so instead of like worrying about how it's going to play out, just just know it's gonna play out for your benefit. Yeah I think I think the hardest mental shift for that is like overcoming the ego of like I am too good for this because right George Foreman at age 48 dude I've already done

it I've done like why would I get back in the ring and and box and you know the the same thing from my life has happened a couple different times. After my first business failed, I started up a couple other businesses and Darryl and I were running just a couple of little small businesses. Ultimately, the opportunity was presented for me to go and work for somebody else. That was one of the hardest ego, like it seems so little now, but in the moment, it was so hard for me to mentally get over this barrier

that like I work for myself, there's no way I'm gonna go work for somebody else, there's no way I'm gonna go start knocking doors again for somebody else. Until like when I made that shift and was finally able to just overcome the ego, like things magic happened for me over the next four and a half years, working for other people, winning Range Rovers, making four to five hundred thousand dollars a year, learning strategy that

we were able to go and parlay up into Solgen. Like that was one huge moment for me just overcoming that. The other one was what you talked about in 2020, right? Like we go from the shift, right? We're selling 30 to 40 accounts a week going into the sickness and March 2020 hits. And literally the week that they shut everything down, they canceled the national championship and everything else for basketball,

we sold one account that week. I don't know if you guys remember that. And that was scary. It was just like, ugh. And so again, I had to go to myself like, what do I think I'm above and what am I willing to do? And so right again, got back, I was on the phones, I was making calls, I was doing sales, just to prove to other guys that like, hey look, I'm not above this.

And I think we all have to go through moments like that in our lives and maybe right now that's it for your business, right? Like you're going through some struggle, you've been above doing the sales, you've been above doing the work, you've been managing, you've been doing all these different things. Like ask yourself, am I truly above this or am I willing to roll up my sleeves, get back to work, and do the hard things that my ego is keeping me from doing in order to keep this thing rolling?

Because ultimately there's a few levers in business that you can pull. There's not a lot of levers. One, you can raise your price. Two, you can sell more product and Three you can cut out expense and so the first two those are really just mental Levers right like changing your price You can probably charge more and you don't even realize it

And so you just got to go out and get over your own Ego of like this is gonna be too expensive. The other thing is driving more sales. Chances are as a business owner you can influence more sales if you roll up your sleeves you get to work whether it's knocking doors, making cold calls, posting on social media, doing different things to be known and seen that your product exists and doing efforts that you just haven't done in a long time, right? Like those are the two.

And then the third is cutting out expenses. Like sometimes you gotta let people go. Sometimes you gotta like forget what everybody else thinks about you like giving up the car or giving up the whatever else, and you just gotta cut the expenses out. And so like all three of those are really just very ego driven.

Hey guys, it's Chris. If you're finding value in what you're hearing, go ahead and like and subscribe. That way people just like you can find this content for free here on YouTube. Now let's dive back into the show. I think what would be really good is, let's kind of recap our phone call from yesterday

for people who are like in a situation or get in a situation where it's like, man, we've got three months of cash flow, we got six months of cash flow. You just mentioned a few things you could change, but I think there were some really important things we talked about on that call that I think could really benefit people. One of them is just having the honest conversation, the hard thing about hard things. And I think what that looks like for you, and we've had that before,

where it's like you sit down with your people and you say, hey, here's our situation, here's what we gotta accomplish, otherwise we're out of business. Yeah, so really that's what I like to call the battle cry. The battle cry, people wanna be a part of something, they wanna be fighting against a common enemy whether whether that's survival or a competitor or whatever else right like everybody wants to be on the team fighting and to your point

It's the word is transparency creating transparency in your Organization right if your company if your employees don't know that you are struggling and you can't barely pay the bills then you are missing out on an incredible opportunity to sound a battle cry and get people behind because ultimately even if you think your people don't know you're struggling they know they know they've they've seen if they've seen good times and now it's bad times chances are it's not gonna be some huge surprise when you come to him and be like, yo we are losing money every single month and that's what it was with this guy right? We were talking to him like, hey

what's your longest tenured sales guy? He's like seven years. I'm like you think that guy doesn't know that you're struggling right now? Like he saw the good days when the incentives were flowing and like I mean cash was literally just falling off the pickup trucks you know? He saw the good days when the incentives were flowing and like I mean cash was literally just falling off the pickup trucks You know he saw those times and now you're like pinching pennies and not even leading Sales meetings and everything else you think he doesn't know I think I think what this gives you you have two outcomes You have buy-in and you have people that leave and I think the people that leave you need gone You need those people out of your business

because they're hurting your business if they're not there fighting for the business. Absolutely, yeah, so it's a win-win scenario. You get rid of the non-players or you get that freaking buy-in. Because chances are, if guys don't know that you, for this particular example, they're doing 25 to 30 accounts a week

and they needed 35 to 38 accounts to break even if guys don't know that they are going to give up early right hey I've already done enough for me but if they know that the team needs more the team needs that extra effort that extra hour a day that extra two hours a day, the Saturday, they are going to give it because they know that it is needed. As an employee that went through this from you guys being the owners and I was an employee, what I always commended and spoke about to other people

that worked at other places like friends and family was they were always looking at, oh my gosh, what are you guys gonna do? And I was like, we're gonna figure it out. And I thought it was so cool to experience it from an employee perspective of like, the way I perceived it was if we can get through this, when we get through this,

this is gonna provide an opportunity for myself to be like, hey, I was a part of that champion team that was able to get through. And these were the other people that were able to get through with And these were the other people that were able to get through with me. And that's gonna leverage myself as a better opportunity as an employee later on down the road.

Which the psychology is like, everybody loves an underdog. For sure. I mean, when you're looking at a championship game, nine times out of 10, you're going to cheer for the underdog. So if you can help people realize that they're a part of that underdog story and there you can help people realize that they're a part of that underdog story and there is a way to get out, dude buy in where most of the time our fears like oh if they

know that we're an underdog they're gonna want to leave they're not gonna want to fight they're not gonna like no dude we're we are wired to be freaking fighters we are wired to survive not to die to go and make it happen. So like freaking get that Yeah, we had so many company wide meetings that we were bring you guys were bringing this stuff up and you guys like look We don't even know what we're gonna fully do in the next month or two months But we need you guys like if you guys aren't here we're going we need to figure this out I thought that was like really cool to experience and then in hindsight, you know You fast forward one or two years down the road You start remembering those times and it becomes like what you were talking about

Everybody loves a common enemy when you go through a tough experience like that It creates a bond like no other and like employees that went through that it you're tied to each other I recently learned this when you experience the same emotion strong emotion with someone like it bonds you Whether that's a good or a bad emotion when you experience the same emotion together in the same situation it bonds you so fear Anything yeah, like all the long as it's the same right if you go to a haunted house and one person thinks it's funny The other person's you scared no bonding But if you guys both go and you're both scared or both excited.

That makes complete sense. The bonds, yeah. The other thing we talked about, another strategy was finding strategic partners. If things get really, really tough, it is not just you. There's a lot of people out there that are also struggling and if you can figure out strategically how do I piece things together

to create a better opportunity for all of us, like dude, everybody wants to be a part of an opportunity. Yeah, one of the things that we suggest is like, hey look, is there potentially a sales dealer out there that is tired of the sales dealer grind, really doesn't have any equity built up in their business, that you could offer a piece of equity of your business to these guys and just them alone

will get you over that break even hump, get you to profitability, wouldn't it be worth it? Wouldn't it be worth it to offer these guys a 10% stake in a business that is essentially worthless right now? You know, and so it's like, yeah, getting creative. There's so many ways that you can get creative from a marketing standpoint, strategic partner standpoint,

a grind standpoint, that was the other thing that we talked about, it's like, dude, get back on the doors. Let these guys see you going out and making sales. Stop worrying, stop strategizing, and start doing more revenue-generating activities. And Vivid had one of the greatest stories to get through that.

Being able to come to their own employees and ask for money. It's one of my favorites. Yeah Yeah, I mean one of my favorite stories ever during the oh nine ten recession Vivint had to go and get money from Wall Street to be able to fund their accounts coming up and Wall Street said no we don't have the the faucets off we have no more money and So the only way that they were going to survive was they had to go so Todd

goes to his to his employees and says yo we are not getting the money he was very transparent we're not getting money the only way we're gonna survive is if we go and find investors we want to open the investor investment to you guys we owe you this big back-end check coming up in January. How many of you guys would be interested in putting that money towards equity in the business? Dude, it was something like 90% of back end checks were plowed into equity and all these guys went just this classic underdog story,

yeah dude, we're gonna fight with you to the end, Todd. And dude, those guys made so much money on that equity getting through that recession So what I want to highlight with that too is You can't wait until the recession hits to try to bring morale and culture together Yes, like that was fostered of years of good culture Absolutely, absolutely So at the end of the day guys, we understand during times like this

It's hard to maintain good morale good culture the way you do it you got to sound the rally cry really dig into the fact that people want to be a part of a good underdog story they've they believe you good times they're gonna believe in you in bad times as well if you're willing to be transparent and really get to that buy-in and then ultimately focus on revenue generating activities. Like this is, that's the thing that's going to move the needle. Stop the strategy, stop all these different things, refocus, put in longer hours. One of the things that we talked with these guys about is like, okay look,

instead of seven, six, seven, eight hour days, you need to do now 12 hour days, do eight hours towards revenue generating activities, and then then three to four hours to like maintain and make sure that everything's being managed correctly. Like that's the level of commitment that you have to have when it gets rough and tough, and ultimately is what's gonna push you through, make you one of these Fortune 500 companies

that was able to survive, because ultimately he who survives is ultimately going to thrive when the economy comes out on the back end. Until next time, let's go.