The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Ideas For Starting A Business While Helping Save The World

Episode Date: March 24, 2020

Ideas For Starting A Business While Helping Save The World

Hi folks, Chris Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com, thechrisvossshow.com. Hey, thanks for tuning in. We certainly appreciate you guys being here. I hope everyone out there is having a safe and sound quarantining that we're taking and doing to lower the curve of the infection rate of the coronavirus. A couple of things I want to say to that before I get to our topic, just please don't hoard. Don't be selfish. The food system will be fine, but if you're hoarding, you're breaking it right now, and you're making it harder for other people that are older or have a

tougher time getting around from getting the groceries they want. I haven't been able to get hamburger for my dogs. I'm not buying a lot, but buying hamburger for my dogs, I think in the first few days of the announcement, I had trouble with milk and butter and eggs. And I know lots of people are having to just drive around to find just basic things. Stop hoarding, stop doing everything. I mean, ideally, at best, according to, I think his name is Dr. Fauci, 1% of people will die with this thing, which is a horrible number to have to think about. But we don't all have to be hoarding everything. Like, everyone's seen, like, way too many fucking zombie apocalypse movies, okay? Calm the fuck down. It's a good thing you people weren't in, uh, in, uh, England. I'm always

reminded of that. Keep calm and carry on thing that, um, Churchill put out during the, uh, bombardment of, of London and, and, uh, England, uh, during the Nazi, uh, attack. Anyway, let's get to some, let's get to some, uh, creative tools, things that can make you think, make you interested, maybe take this time for an opportunity to help yourself, help the world. Keep in mind when you're an entrepreneur, what you're doing is you're helping solve the world's problems or your problem and your problem, your pain. And normally when you find that you have a problem since we're pretty common humanity you find that other people on that problem

and they will pay you directly in proportion to the value of what you can give to them to fix that problem or pain that they have so they don't experience it and that's pretty much how products work, how resolutions work, how services work. We help each other and we pay each other based upon the value that presents in our lives. So, uh, right now, I believe next week, the, uh, I believe, um, uh, Goldman Sachs is, or JP Morgan, one of the two, um, is saying that there will be 2.25 million unemployment filings announced next week, which is huge if you're familiar with what it normally is. It's like a giant right curve just straight up in the air on a 45-degree angle.

Or, I'm sorry, a 90-degree angle. It just goes one way and then L's up. 90 degree angle. So that means a lot of people are going to be employed. Now hopefully they're taking some short term unemployment insurance and they'll be rehired by the companies. Once we get through maybe a month or two of this, that remains to be seen of course. There are some people that are getting paid to be at home by their employers. And taking care of for a few weeks while they try and figure out where we're going with this thing. So you've heard my stories in the prior episodes about what I did when I got employers to pay for me to have some time off.

I went and started my own companies. So this may be an opportunity for you. So I want to talk to the people who have always thought about starting their own business. Maybe you're an entrepreneur looking to expand your business to other companies and revenue streams. Maybe, you know, you're out of work. You're finding yourself out of work and you've got to figure out how to get some money. You might have some unemployment insurance coming for a while and maybe you can take advantage of that time to do something to give you the fashion freedom where the only person who can lay you off in the future

is yourself it's a pretty nice feeling when you're the only one who can lay yourself off because you're not at the whim and willy of you know any guy who decides they don't like you and you're fired. It's happened to me when I was young. And so this may be a great opportunity for people out there. Now, let's go to the other part of this. So right now we're in a pain position. We're starting to see creatives across America that are trying to help with the surgical shortfall of equipment for hospitals. So we're seeing people that are making, sewing masks to give to hospitals. They're making their own masks for that. We're seeing people that are, I'm

actually seeing some of my technical people friends, they're crowdsourcing and trying to make 3d models of rebuilding ventilators you've heard that we're out of ventilators to uh ventilate people to make them be able to breathe when their lungs are not working correctly uh and there's some innovation to that that could possibly take place that would be incredible especially since this disease attacks the lungs 3d printing has been asked for for other things and I know there's a lot of 3d printers out there that are really good at it they're just amateur printers there might be some companies out there that are pro printers but this is an opportunity that it's not just it's not just to make money, but realizing that there is a dire,

dire valid need for these products to save lives and save people. And given, it may be something you could build the foundation of a business on. You could even start it as a charity, giving stuff away, helping people crowdsource it or crowdfund it. And then once we come through this other side,

you could flip it right into a business and say, okay, well, now that everything's on settled ground, we're going to turn this into a business or whatever. You may be able to, if you're smart enough, go approach the U.S. government to see if you can become someone who is, someone who is, you know, who can be a vendor working with the U.S. government. Or maybe reach out to your local hospital, see what they need. I mean, certainly one or two people, you know, or a few people can go ahead and sell some masks.

But maybe you're a company that could scoop up some sewing machines, turn into a little business. Maybe, you know, sell those at cost to the hospital, or maybe you could come up with a way to crowdfund or source it or find an investor really quickly to fund the basics of it with the understanding that once you come out of this dire financial situation that you could go, hey, we're going to flip this into a company full-time because obviously there was a shortfall before and we're going to try and professionally make it there. So there are a different amount of opportunities you can do. You could start a delivery service. It'd be a little bit challenging right now, but maybe you could figure out a way

to pull that off, putting it on Facebook ads. I've been seeing, it's kind of interesting, I've been seeing all these Facebook ads for lawn people Who mow your lawns It's pretty crazy I was like, I didn't know there was that much money But certainly There are going to be a lot of old folks That are going to need a lot of help

I think If old folks are a couple They may end up losing a spouse I know food delivery is important, medical delivery is important, all sorts of different assistance. And I've seen this in the most recent years. We've seen more senior assistant program company-based, well, companies going on, and they're dealing with seniors,

how to help them, how to get support for them, how to monitor them, how to work with their thing. I know this is a big popular ad I always see about how you can get someone. They're like a nurse, but they're more like a commercial nurse. And they will make sure and take care of your elderly person so that they can stay in their home. A lot of elderly people want to stay in their home. They do not want to be thrown into a care center. They do not want to be stuck in a hospital.

I can't blame them. I certainly would want to be home myself. And so there may be some different things you can do that way. Maybe driver delivery services, taking seniors back and forth to different events, taking them maybe to the store. One thing that's going on right now in my state is the hoarding was so stupid. They put in that three days a week, and this is just at the one store, but three days a week, Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday, they open the store for an hour or two in the morning

after it's been freshly stocked and they let people in that are over 65 and they have to show their ID. And the challenge with that is there may be not a lot of elderly people who can go out and get this done. After this crisis happens, evidently with COVID-19, there is some scarring with the lungs from my understanding. You can correct me if I'm wrong, but, uh, I would certainly think that sadly, if seniors had that happen to them, they survive the Corona viruses. We hope they do. Um, that if there's

scarring or issues with them, maybe there'll be more of them on oxygen tanks. I've had some, uh, girlfriends that had parents on oxygen tanks. It's very hard on them. They can't be very mobile. Maybe this could be something you could help them out with either delivery or transportation. Oxygen tanks, of course, I think there's some special licensing you'd probably need to have. But maybe transportation, maybe buying groceries, maybe being a personal shopper. Here's an idea. Oh, wow. Here's an idea. Oh,

wow. Here's an idea for you. Okay. I'm going to give this one to you. This is a great idea. Okay. Maybe offering yourself up as a custom shopper for clients where you go and do stuff. Now there's a lot of different services, Instacart and all those things, and they're hooked up with the stores and you may not be able to get into them. But what if you did this? What if you started running ads or reaching out, telling people that, hey, you know, if you're doing this with Instacart or maybe some of these other bigger companies, they're doing deliveries for everyone, which means might be a higher contagion process there. Certainly we love the people in Instacart, but when we get the products in the bags,

we wipe them down or we're very careful at removing the stuff. And we realize those people are good people. It's just that they're delivering for everybody, and they're also out shopping, and they're out in the public sphere. So there's a high propensity or chance that they could pick this stuff up, and they could just be an asymptomatic spreader to all of us. So we, we just got to be careful and I'm sure they are as well. Um, but here's an idea, you know, what if you said, Hey, I'm the personal shopper for people

and I'm only going to have a 20 clients and I'll personally shop for you. And to my knowledge, there isn't any licensing for this unless you put the person in your car. But you tell the person, I will personally shop for you. But you're going to know me as your personal shopper. You're going to know that I'm only working with a certain amount of clients. And that I'm going to be doing everything that I can to ensure that I don't pass you COVID-19 virus. And you'll be much safer because you're not dealing with a big company that might have the potential, whatever, or

you don't know the driver. So now you'll know the driver. You'll know the person who's doing your shopping. Um, maybe there's other conciliarity service, conciliarity services. you can offer older people at home or people that maybe are, might end up housebound from the results of some of what's going to go on for the medical thing. I would say to you, and this is, I don't get into politics much on this show, but I would say to you, I would think that when we come out the other side of this, we're going to realize that spending all this money for wars and military, and I'm not saying that all that spending is bad, but sadly, we can start a war tomorrow and land a billion planes and spend trillions of dollars to kill a mortal enemy with a bullet. We have been hijacked and overrun by an invisible enemy

that you can shoot with a bullet, and our ability to fight that from like a military sort of concept of number of hospitals is scary. And so we, I think, are going to come out the other side of this and realize that health is the true wealth of this country, and we all need to invest more in hospitals, in medicine, insurance care, things of that nature. Pick your political spin. But I do believe that we're going to come out of this with a whole different value system as to what health means. And we see political parties go, yeah, well, I have my insurance. You should get insurance

You should work hard enough. So F you but I think what's going to come out of this is We will have people that will realize that your next-door neighbor or the person standing beside you Insurance is as important as his because if he gets sick and gives you the virus One or both of you could die, and this is a life and death issue. So there you go. You've got some opportunities there of what you could think of to take and do. Now, some of these hospitals, once they come out of this, where we're trying to flatten

the curve, this is like a 30 to 60 day thing. They're talking it could be a year and a half to two years from now to find a cure. So that gives you quite the ramp up where maybe you could get your foot in the door, do some free things on the mass. Maybe here's another idea. Okay. So, you know, I don't want to give you ideas suggesting, Hey, let's profiteer off of a horrible thing. No, this gives you the propensity to build something that could save lives. And once we come through the curve, you could go back to build something that could save lives. And once we come through the curve, you could go back to investors and say, hey, let's turn this into a full-time business now that everything is good.

But in the future, what you could do is maybe learn what these guys are doing, and then you could build a better mask build a better face mask one that's more efficient one that's designed better maybe i know that i know one of the companies that we reviewed on the chris voss show is a mask company called i believe it's vog mask and they've since sold out of all their units but they've got a company called vog mask and all they really did was took n95 mass and they colorized them they personalized them in reality it's kind of funny it's just it's pretty much mostly the same mask and they have an organic one but all it was personalized them and they just made you know different colors and prints and

things of that nature and that's people love that sort of stuff so maybe you could figure out a way to make a better mousetrap if you will a better better valves like they're doing for the um for the breathing um uh ventilators and stuff they're doing maybe been a better better ventilators and things of that nature maybe you could find a better way to design masks or do different things in the medical field. And a lot of this stuff you can't really get done unless you go help out. Maybe give some of your time and effort. I'll tell you a story that's fairly famous.

I believe it was Microsoft or IBM. You'll have to forgive me. I believe it was IBM. Or maybe it was another Silicon Valley company at the time, had the mouse, and they were toying with it in their, I believe it was their research and development. And so one day, Steve Jobs is taking a tour. He's just volunteering, getting to know the company and wandering about,

or they're taking him through a tour or something of that nature. And he sees the mouse, and they're working in R and D. They're trying to figure out a way to make it work. And I think somebody made the comment, well, he's like, well, you know, what's that? And they're just like, I don't know. We can't really think that anyone would ever want to use this thing. He copied the technology, you know, the concept of the idea and thereby the rest is history.

He brought the mouse, of course, to computers. So that's a big thing. So you've got to get in there. You've got to ask questions. How could I, you know, this is what an entrepreneur does. They ask questions. How can I help you better? Is there a way that I could build some sort of company or product that would make your job,

doctor, nurse, hospital, government oversight thing like the HHS or the CDC? How can I make your lives better or maybe improve something? Like something to improve, what would it be? You can certainly see people that are putting up patterns of the crowdsourcing for the ventilators, different parts and pieces. You're seeing people that are crowdsourcing mass that they can get to hospitals. This is a great opportunity to do some of this stuff. So, you know, and again, I just want to come back to this. I think it's pretty obvious. We're not looking to make money in a time of need or to put anyone over a barrel or be like, Hey, how come I got rich doing this? But what we're doing is we're

trying to save these people's lives. We are woefully undersupplied and we really need these supplies. And this could be an opportunity where if you've lost your job because of this virus, you can give back to society. You can give something back. What I would do is I would go find some investors for it and say, look, we're going to start this company and we're going to operate at cost, or I'm going to have you pre-fund us into the loss of what we can do to make these things. Because here's what happens. Say I found an investor.

An investor said, Chris, and if you remember, Amazon's co-founder or Amazon's founder operated a near loss. I think it was like 10 or 15 damn years. It just went on forever. But his investors knew that he was building a machine that was so huge, it would become a juggernaut. So here's what I would do. I would go to some investors and say, look, uh, let's take and, uh, have you invest in this thing? We're going to sell it at cost to hospitals, or we're going to donate it. And it's, and doing that donation is going to help us with marketing and getting people to know who we are. But here's the thing, donating this stuff is

great. You could do that for a year to two years, or maybe a year. Donate it, help fill the curve, get yourself known as the champion who came in and helped save the day when America was at its darkest moment. And then you've got that moral authority to work for your company and go, hey, we're going to start selling these and make more money. The great thing is you've already got maybe hospitals or companies or doctors or nurses, both big and small around the country, that can now say, you know what? We've been using your masks, as an example, for the last two years. Yeah, you got us hooked. We want to keep doing them.

You do such a great job running the company. You listen to us as a customer. You give us what we need, and there you go. I mean, that's one of the best things you can ever do for business and marketing. When I first started my career company, and people were looking at us going, you're just a startup. for business and marketing when I first started my career company and the people were looking at going you're just a startup like what what what are you gonna do you know there's FedEx here and there's UPS and this US Post Office and

there's a bunch of other local delivery services and I said look here's what I'll do I'll give you a month of free service with us and and if you don't like us at the end of the month don't pay us but if you like us at the end of the month and what we've done for you I want your business we know how many people are lost with that guarantee zero and we took on clients that we had for I, 13 years by the time I shut down that company and moved to Las Vegas. And we still, at that point, had some of our original clients after 13 years. Just extraordinary when I always think about it. So there's an opportunity, but we had to give it away for free to start.

And certainly, you might have to do it away for free to start. And certainly you might have to do that. You may, you may find some people that will pay you. I'm sure. I know that hospitals are desperate because of their finances, but I'm sure there's a lot of, uh, individual doctors around the country, little doctor's offices, and they can't get the same supplies. They're fighting to get the same supplies. So maybe you can hit them up as a viable market to at least pay you cost or maybe half cost. Um, but then when you come out here, you'd have already your customers in place. Um, you communicate to them, Hey, in the near term, you know, pricing, uh, will go up once we get out of this crisis. And, um, maybe you could pick up some government contracts,

things of that nature. I think that'd be really cool, but I think a lot of people could benefit from the personal shopper experience. Part of what's going to happen too. And the reason I suggest that as a great idea is we're going to, this is going to force us to kind of adopt or adapt adopt and adapt to teleworking is going to get us to learn to order delivery more to go to stores less even once we come out of this there'll be more and more people who just got so used to being this way living at home working from home uh shopping from home more and more that's where the power is going to be. And it's going to be hard for us to change back, especially if this quarantining goes on for a long time. So because of that, I could see a real boom in a personal shopper thing. I mean, if I had money,

I got to be freaking honest with you. I had, if I had a buttload of money and I didn't give a crap and I was thrown out the window, you know, I was a millionaire or something I would take and hire a personal shopper, someone I know. I like people. I know. I don't like people. I don't know. I mean, I like them, but I don't know them. You know what I'm saying? And if I'm going to trust you with my food and contact to not get the virus, I'm going to pay you. I'm going to pay you my personal thing because I'm thinking that you'd be less risky than the other. And I think we're going to want more things brought to us, more things we can order. So there may be a whole new thing. And then from out of that, you could create a company

of people that do the same thing, that act as personal shoppers and do your personal shopping, if you will. So I think there's a lot of opportunity there. And hopefully maybe I've given you guys some ideas. Maybe go into some websites, read what's happening in the hospitals, what they need. maybe talk to some of your hospital or doctor friends and say, hey, what's going on where you're at? How is this crisis affecting you? How can I help? What can I do? If you could make something better or have a pain point fixed, what can I do for you? And then from out of that might hopefully burgeon great ideas that would not only enrich you in the future, make your life better because you fix the pain and challenges of people and hopefully save some lives.

You know, there you go. So sit down and try and utilize this time to change your life. I hope everyone will do that. Make sure you hug and care for the people that you love and know. Remember that whether there's a virus or not, we sometimes are living in a limited timeline that we don't know. One day your spouse can't come home, doesn't come home. One day something happens to a family member and it's gone. And so whether it's this virus or something else,

hug each other, tell each other you love them, especially when you're healthy and take care of each other and take care of the world. If you will, we're all doing our part. I'm not sitting at home all damn day and, you know, limiting my shopping and not going out to eat all the time. I'm not doing that for me. Okay. I'm a single guy. I got no kids. If I'm gone, Hey, I had a great life. Okay. That just happened. I just don't want to be painful on the way out, at least for a long period of time, you know, just, just take me out. But, um, for most of you, uh, there's, there's pretty good value in sticking around and being a part of this world. So let's track it wherever that rant was going.

Just take care of each other, people. I mean, just seriously do. We don't know when we're not going to see each other again. And it's important to tell each other you love them, care about them, and spend some quality time. But when you're not spending quality time and doing all that, try and see if you can use this as an opportunity to make your life better. And maybe your employer is keeping you, and you know they're going to keep you for a long time. They've just got you on a little bit of a furlough.

Maybe sit down, take a look at their business aspects. Maybe your business prospects may be moving up through their country. It's definitely late. It's 2 a.m. here. They're moving up through their country or their country. It's definitely late. It's 2 a.m. here. They're moving up through their company. Maybe reevaluate your whole experience with your personal company you're working for and maybe figure out how maybe you can get better job advancement opportunities or maybe you can contribute better to them or become a better employee in the section that you're at. Uh, when I was a kid, I worked for, um, uh, um, a big bell company and, and I was a sales trainer and I was like, you know what? I'm going to be

the best sales trainer there is, uh, or, you know, can, who can be for the company? Not that there was, I mean, Zig Ziglar and there's no way I can compete with him, Brian Tracy and everybody else, but you know what I mean, the best in the company. So that's the focus you can do. And maybe you can re-look at your job in a new way and make a difference in it. So there's all sorts of ways you can take time with this opportunity. Don't panic. Be wise.

Be smart. Be loving. Be kind to each other. And I'll see you next time.