Start With A Win - The World is NOT Ending! How to Thrive During an Economic Downturn

Episode Date: September 28, 2022

The world is changing at lightning speed. The media seems to only offer discouraging news about the current economic situation. While it is natural for some businesses to suffer during these times, many will actually thrive. Adam discusses strategies for achieving health and happiness in the midst of challenging shifts in the economic cycle. First and foremost, people need to take care of their own wellbeing before they can engage in positive relationships with others. When personal health is top priority, only then can someone create meaningful friendships and strong familial bonds. The ego must take a back seat. When people’s relationships to themselves and others are in order, they can bring positivity and problem-solving skills to their business. Fostering a thriving business in the midst of an economic recession means making yourself as valuable as possible to your clients, employees, shareholders, and your community. Personally connecting with a targeted audience on a human level is now more important than ever. And never underestimate the power of hope. So instead of believing the news and assuming the worst about the future, expect good things to come out of tough situations.Main Topics:In a recession, people tend to hide, suffer, or thrive. Tips for being one who thrives (03:17)Becoming the most valuable version of yourself (05:57)How physical health can literally save your life (10:25)Applying strategies for health and happiness in business (14:30)Big picture overview for direction of the economy and what to do with your cash (18:40)  Episode LinksI Can't Make This Up: Life Lessons by Kevin Hart Connect with Adam:https://www.startwithawin.com/https://www.facebook.com/AdamContosCEOhttps://twitter.com/AdamContosCEOhttps://www.instagram.com/adamcontosceo/Listen, rate, and subscribe!Apple PodcastsSpotifyGoogle Podcasts

Welcome to Start With A Win, where we give you the tools and lessons you need to create business and personal success. Are you ready? Let's do this. Coming to you from Brand Viva Media Headquarters Studios. Headquarters, studios, studios, headquarters. HQ Studios. HQ. S-T-U. That's right. What's up, producer Mark?

Oh, you know, just living, loving, loving, living. It's all good. Oh, wow. I feel like we're on fire today. I know. Today's a good day to have a good day. So I'm all about it. Bam! That's awesome. The intro, you're doing a little bit of that robot. If you don't watch this on YouTube, you can always head over there and see all the fun. I would not watch that. It's very embarrassing.

No, it's good stuff. Can you just blur out my face so nobody can tell who I am on that? So my son just did his first homecoming dance. He's a freshman in high school. Yeah. And he did it this past weekend. Did he practice a couple of routines or whatever? You know, I tried to show him some moves. I was like, your dad was quite the dancer back in his day. Bam! But he was

like, people don't dance these days. Yeah, the moonwalk. People don't do that anymore. Yeah, or the pop and lock or But he was like, people don't dance these days. The moonwalk. People don't do that anymore. Yeah. Or, yeah, the pop and lock or whatever it is. Did he get down on the ground and try and spin around? Yeah. A little break dancing. Yeah.

You know, I think the 80s probably had the best dancing as far as like, you look at all those old movies and stuff. Right. You probably can vouch for this. Is it people just moved? Did you just call me old? No, I didn't call you old. I'm saying you can vouch for this. Is it people just moved? Did you just call me old? No, I didn't call you old. I'm saying you can vouch.

Like you were in high school. Yeah, like in the late 80s. And so it's like, I like in references that, you know, there's movies where people are just like flaring around and there's not like a dance unless it's like the electric slide or something like that. It was just like wiggle your body around. Yeah, wiggle your body. That was the dancing style of the 80s. But now it's like more electric slide right it was just like wiggle your body wiggle your body that was the dancing style but now it's now it's like more of the tiktok yeah they got all these

hand motions yeah and then you get like three or four people that all have to do the same thing yeah at the same time and you're like whoa yeah it's way more intimidating i think that than it used to be back because even in the in the 90s it was you know just kind of move side to side and lots has changed my hands it has it has well lots of change in the world a, it was, you know, just kind of move side to side. Lots has changed, my friend. It has. Well, lots of change in the world. A lot has changed in the world. And it's interesting because I feel like every time I get on YouTube or get an email from, you know, somebody, it's just, are you prepared? And a little bit of like doom and gloom. You think? Yeah, just a little bit. And for me, I always just try to stay present because in the

present moment, things are great, you know? Yeah. And I don't get stressed. I don't worry. And I can just kind of focus on, okay, what's the task for today. But I think that we get bombarded by all this stuff, the news and the stock market, all these things where I think they kind of want me to live in fear and worry. Totally. Well, let's talk about this. I want to talk about a couple things. One, I want to talk about fear and your fear response. But I also want to talk about what's going on in the world today and what should we think about as business leaders, entrepreneurs,

and participants, if you will, because we're all participants in this big economic situation that we're part of. And what we know is during these situations, there are some that hide, there are some that suffer, and there are some that really thrive. And generally, the hiders come out and they're a little bit less than they were before, or they've certainly declined because they're not doing anything to take advantage of the situation. You've got the sufferers who typically just go, oh, my God, here's on fire. And they generally make massive, brash movements that are impulsive that end up hurting them in some way, shape, or form, both personally or financially or in their job or whatever.

And then you have those that take a deep breath, calculate, and come out ahead. And I want to kind of talk about that a little bit. But first of all, I mean, and you've asked me this, where are we at? Where are we going? Right? The reality is the decline in the economy is not done yet. And that's what everybody... I mean, tomorrow, it's not going to be like, ta-da, it's springtime. We're heading into winter. Right. Wow, look, your 401k made 300% in one week, something like that. It's not going to happen that way.

Here's the reality is nobody knows when the bottom is going to be and interest rates are going up. The stock market is going down. Inflation is increasing. Depending on who you talk to, some people are like, it's only up a little bit. Other people are like, if you look year over year, it's up a lot. I think it's up the highest in four decades or so right now, if you look at the overall increase. The reality is things are more expensive for people. Money is harder for people to get.

Money is worth less for people. So everybody essentially call it what it is, but I saw a figure the other day. Everybody took like a $450 to $500 a month pay cut in their household on average. And you're like, well, wait a second. Where did that go? Well, everything's more expensive.

And if you look at some of the key factors out there, some of the things that cost you the most money. So you've got food, you have fuel, and you have shelter. Call it those three things. And I can guarantee you that your job did not start paying you more in order to meet that amount. So what do we need to do? We need to be better as human beings in what we do, what we spend, and how we make. And the best way to do that is to become the most valuable human being to yourself and to others you can possibly be. Okay. So if we want to become the most valuable to ourselves and to others, it's kind of like that when you're on a plane, right? Put your own mask on before you help somebody else. Ooh, good analogy.

So we want to start with that, right? So we want to help yourself first. Okay. So what are some things that we can do to help ourselves first? What does that look like? First of all, we have to take care of ourselves as human beings really well. I'm not saying this is not, first of all, Mark, this is not a binary thing. This is not do this or that

when it comes to take care of yourself or go do better at work. I'm not telling you focus on one thing and ignore others. I'm saying, and ultimately, you have to ensure that you're, I'll say this, focus on spending your time effectively, not wasting your time in the doldrums of life.

So that is the binary situation. Do good, not bad for yourself, for your business, for your relationships, for your finances, things like that. And if you can make that observation, that decision in a binary manner, then I think you can incrementally improve. But ultimately, if you are not healthy and happy, nothing good is going to happen with you, for you, to you. So healthy and happy, what does that look like? First of all, let's talk about our relationships. Okay. Those are fundamentally, the biggest thing standing between you and great relationships is your ego. Right. Easily. If you can put your ego aside and you can smile and you know that you're a happy person and you have happy people

around and you want to engage in happiness with them, sometimes it means accepting or sucking it up or going, I'm sorry for things. I mean, what is the largest debt of gratitude you can pay or largest piece of gratitude you can pay to somebody is saying, I'm sorry. And how about I love you or something like that? You know, it's, I see my friends. I'm like, Hey, I love you, man. I tell you that. I see, I'm like, Hey man, I love you. You're like, Hey, I love you back. And it's, we're great friends. We care about each other and And we do great things together. We have a lot of fun. We went out to lunch the other day. We do business together. We help grow brands and things like that. And we also do difficult things. I mean, you're holding me accountable

to creating some content and working on things. I'm holding you accountable to working on things. Yeah. But we care about each other as human beings. I look at my family life and I go, okay, we have challenges here and there. First of all, no ego. Go in there. What's best for the people and the situation? I love yous. Let's make this happen productively and in a great way. And let's all be happy and enjoy our lives. And the same thing in your business, go in there. And even if somebody's grumpy and grouchy and you know, whatever, you've got that, that cranky person that wanders in the front door of your, if you're in a brick and mortar B2C or whatever, or even somebody on the

phone in a B2B and they're like, I'm having a bad day. You're like, you know what? I love your passion for this. Let's see how we can make this a great thing. Yeah. So, I mean, first of all, be happy. Be good to yourself. Be good to others. Yeah. Well, you know.

Relationships. And one thing I wanted to say about that, because it made me think of, you know, being good to yourself. And you talk a lot about, you know, health and fitness and all these other kind of things. And it made me think about, it's interesting for me, I feel like I've crossed over, you know, when you're, I think below 40, you think you're invincible and you'll live forever and you won't get sick and you're, you know, you feel great all the time, you know, and you can go to bed late, wake up early and things are fine. And then I finally hit the point to where I started looking at my health and my life and thinking like, man, I'm

super thankful, one, that I'm healthy, you know, and then two, I need to make sure I maintain my health because, you know, I want to see my kids get married and I want to have grandkids and like, you know, like, oh, what can I do to prolong this? You know, it's like for the first time, I think in my life, I've thought of my health as something that's really important. I don't think I've thought about it like that before. But it made me think of this story. I read Kevin Hart's book. He's a comedian.

And he wrote this book. And he actually had gotten in this crazy car accident. And the doctor pretty much told him that if he wasn't in shape, like if he wasn't fit, that he would have probably been paralyzed for life. But because he had abs and like core strength and all these other kind of things, he survived this car accident. And he thought, and when the doctor told him that, it was this moment of, man, I didn't like going to the gym and I didn't like getting up early and I didn't like pushing myself and working hard and like getting abs. But in that

moment, that saved my life. Totally. You know, it's fascinating. I have a friend who was in a off-roading accident like that. And he heard the same thing from his doctor. Wow. And you know, you're like, whoa, wait a sec. There's something to creating this physical resiliency within your body. And I'm also speaking from a position of, I had a friend pass away this weekend. Right. I'm so sorry. And I look at it and I go, okay, how can I do my best to not have that happen to me? And I love him. He actually did take very good care of himself, but didn't keep an eye on the heart and things like that. I just went and did one of those heart scans and stuff like that not long ago.

And you just got to watch yourself. You got to watch yourself. My dad just went through, had some cancer removed and things like that. You got to keep an eye on those things. And we all experience those. And unfortunately, you know, I was talking to Kelly this weekend. She goes, you know, we have a five in front of our age. And unfortunately we lose more friends now than we did before.

I'm like, why is that? And she goes, I don't know, but we got to do everything we can to prevent it. Yeah. I said, correct. So this is kind of the second part of this is your health and your fitness. And I say health, by the way, 90% of your body composition is made in the kitchen. It's not made in the gym. That other 10% is polished up in the gym when you create muscle tone and you help that muscle tone burn those calories. But ultimately,

it's the garbage you put in your body that makes bad things happen and the goodness you put in your body that makes good things happen. So think about that when, you know, if you're eating an unhealthy diet. And here's how you know if it's a healthy or an unhealthy diet. Does it come in a package? Unhealthy, generally. Did you cut it up and cook it yourself? Right. Yeah, yeah. I mean, think about that. If you just ate fresh vegetables and proteins

that either walked or swam or flew, you know, probably five days a week or whatever, your body would be like a totally different situation. And you drink a gallon of water a day. You hydrate. People are like, that's a lot of water. It's not if you like start with a glass. Yeah. When you wake up in the morning.

Well, yeah. And then I, you know, I find I drink more water when I am able to get to the gym and push myself. Yeah. That's like, I'm more thirsty and I can get that gallon in.

Totally. So. Totally. Yeah. So, I mean, it's, I'll just say,

you know, when, when we break it down to, okay, all that crazy garbage going on in the world today, what should we be doing? First thing is take care of yourself. You can't put your mask on first before helping the person sitting next to you. You can't help others until you are happy and healthy yourself.

So absolutely the best way. But I want to move on to the next thing also, because I know we could talk for hours about personal wellness. Yes. And if you listen to this podcast, that's part of it. So let this be a reminder to take care of your health. Get that scan or that checkup you've been avoiding. If you haven't been to the doctor for a while, get that blood work. Make sure you're good. If you haven't had a physical, a wellness exam in the past 12 months, go get one for crying out loud people. I mean, it's blood. It's like half hour, 45 minutes of them sitting there asking you a million questions and listening to your body and

giving you the once over and you're like, oh, wow. Okay, great. So do that. Do that. All right. Now we'll move on to the business part of things. The business part of things. All right. Now that we've taken care of ourselves. That's right. We need to take care of our business. Our business. So when you look at what is a business, a business is a function of delivering value that has expenses to create for the result of revenue. And then when you take and you subtract the expenses from that revenue, you get your profit, essentially. Okay?

So what are our levers here that we can pull? First of all, the value piece. You have to be more valuable and more connected to your customer base than ever before. I added connected to that because that will allow you to leverage and scale the number of transactions or the size of transactions that you conduct. So if you're not working on pulling that lever of how do I connect better with my audience during these tough economic times, because they're doubting everything that comes across. They just watched CNBC or Fox News or, I mean, who knows what, Bloomberg, any of these business things. And they're like, interest rates are skyrocketing and everything's costing you more. And I just went out and said,

everybody got a pay cut in their household, you know, 500 bucks a month. And you're like, what? Yeah. I mean, it costs more. So how do you make more money in your business if people are taking a pay cut? You give them more value because they're going to choose between the things that are valuable and the things that are not valuable in their lives. as a human being to your community as a product or service that you provide. Very important. If you've lost value or you're taking your eye off the ball, because a lot of people did during the pandemic, the economy was cranking. People were getting free money in the mail and they were just running out and spending it. That's done. Over. Finished. And now they're like, tell me why I should buy this. You should be able to tell them why they should buy it. Yeah. So think about that in your business. Now also think about your expenses.

Are you wasting money? Are you wasting money? Everything from, I'm sorry, you can't keep your friend who's just kind of hanging out in the back room and picking up a paycheck anymore because they're not adding value. By the way, good employees cost nothing. And I don't mean you don't pay them. I mean, they make more money than you pay them. Good employees cost nothing. If they're not a good employee, consider how do you get them to cost nothing in your business. And by the way,

everybody's like, unemployment's so low right now. Unemployment is going to increase. That's part of slowing down the economy is unemployment is going to increase. Yeah. Once all these companies aren't getting all that cash that came for free from everybody, they're going to be like, oh, we made less money last year, so we can afford less people. Yeah. Everything's a cycle. Yeah. Cash flow is a cycle. Unemployment's a cycle. Interest rates are a cycle. The housing market's a cycle. All this stuff is a cycle. And just draw a big circle around and go, where is it right now on the cycle? And where is it going to go? And then where is it going to peak?

And where is it going to come back? And you can never guess the peak or the valley. But here's what you can guess. A lot of times you can guess the direction. And the direction is just look at the last week or the last few weeks. It's typically going to continue to go in that direction unless there's some sort of a black swan event or there's some sort of a massive economic change. And massive economic changes in the positive direction don't happen overnight. In the negative direction, they do. In the positive

direction, it takes a while for them to start to come back. So think about your business. And then, so we've got expenses, reducing expenses, increasing value, reducing expenses. And by doing that, you should be increasing your revenue and profitability so that, one, you can take better care of your customers, your employees, your stakeholders, the people that provide this great experience for your customers, and also your shareholders. If you own the business, you should be paid because you own the business and you're doing a great job of it. So consider those things. So that's the business part of this. Let's talk about the economy part of this briefly, just to kind of put a bow on this whole situation and wrap it up here. But ultimately, the economy, I hate to say this, just to kind of put a bow on this whole situation and wrap it up here.

But ultimately, the economy, I hate to say this, the economy is going to continue to decline a little bit. Interest rates are going to continue to go up, which is going to push stocks lower continuously, most likely. And I'm going off of what I'm not telling you to pick anything, and I'm not an economist here, but I certainly read and listen to a lot of them, and they're like, interest rates are going up, and the stock market's going down.

Think about that. What does that mean? If you're sitting on some cash right now, I'd be looking for a place to put it when stocks start leveling out and possibly going back up. More money is made in a bad market than in a good market. Why? Because people see an opportunity in a bad market. They're like, oh, I'm going to jump in. But what is the increased aspect of that? It's risk. In a good market where things continue to increase, you're like, oh, low risk. But at some point, you're like, I'm not making as much.

And you're definitely not going to make as much as those people who made it at the turn. But the reality is, if you're on some cash right now, there's some places to put it. Talk to your investment advisor. I would get a qualified investment advisor to talk to. I'm not going to give out any names or anything like that. People are like, who should I talk to? Your financial advisor. Exactly. Simply put, yeah, if you don't have one, go talk to your banker. See if they can recommend. Interview some. Show me your portfolio and the trends that you've created. Maybe now is the time to get a financial advisor if you don't have one. Good idea.

A fiduciary. Yes. Also, I would recommend, folks, it's Q3, Q4, actually Q4 now. Yeah. Go talk to your tax planner, too. Make sure you're sitting good on that. Think ahead. Everybody thinks today. Think ahead is what I would say. But ultimately, let me put a bow on this, Mark. Take care of yourself.

Take care of your business. If you're an employee, be the best employee you can be delivering that value and managing your expenses and being happy. Hello, people want to work with happy people. And then understand what's going on in the economy. It's a cycle. Yeah, have some hope. That's what I think. You know, totally thinking about 2008, the doom and gloom, the same kind of stuff on

the news every night, you know, pretty crazy. Yep. But then there was a sense of, you know, now we have that as a 2020, like it wasn't so far ago that I can't remember it. You know, like the great depression was something that it's like, Oh, I, I can't remember that, you know, but 2008, I can remember and remember it was very similar energy and vibes. And you know what, it all worked out. And like, we came out of it and just to have that hope, like, yeah, things might get difficult and they could be difficult for you right now, but you know what? Have hope for tomorrow. So here's what I want

everybody to do. I want everybody to work on this for three months, three months, give me 90 days, work on yourself, your relationships, your business, and understand what you're doing with your money for three months. What happens that changes habits and we move in a great direction. 90 days. 90 days. Who can't do that? Right. Well, awesome. Well, hey, thanks so much for sharing that with us today. And thanks for listening to Start With A Win. If you're wondering how to grow your business,

we just talked about this, it might be something you're missing and it's not sales and marketing. It's something most people don't even think about until it's too late. And that's leadership. So if you're ready to grow your leadership, whether you're leading yourself or a team, leadership is the key to next level growth. Now, if you're wondering what exact steps you need to take to grow as a leader, head over to adamcontos.com slash leadership to find out more.

And until next time, remember, start with a win.