The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Tips For Business’ And Unemployed Right Now In A Recession

Episode Date: April 11, 2020

Tips For Business' And Unemployed Right Now In A Recession [powerpress_playlist]

Hi folks, it's Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com, thechrisvossshow.com. Hey, thanks for tuning in guys. We certainly appreciate you guys being here. Welcome. I hope everyone's staying safe and healthy with the coronavirus epidemic, quarantines and all that good stuff. A lot of my friends are trying to figure out new ways to pass the time as they are doing stay-at-home measures, quarantining, all that good stuff. My heart goes out. My best wishes and blessings go out to people who may have died or lost loved ones or loved ones are currently suffering in hospital or other issues or complications they may be having from this virus.

This virus is no joke. I was reading today about a marathon runner, a guy who was, I think, in his 40s or late 30s, ran marathons, fairly healthy guy, a little bit of asthma. I guess he was using marathons to overcome his challenges with the childhood asthma. He got the coronavirus. He got on a ventilator. He was able to come off that ventilator. And now his lungs are so scarred he pretty much thinks he won't be able to run a marathon ever again and he can barely stand to

shower or stand for long periods of time, which is a very sad and horrible tragic thing to have happen and there's lots of tragedy around us. So we're going to talk today about a few things, a few tips for businesses, because I've been seeing a lot of businesses that are struggling to survive. I've been hearing about people struggling to survive. The jobs rate, of course, if you've seen it, is going through the roof. I think we're now up to 16 million unemployed, and we're seeing numbers that are just crazy. And these aren't recession numbers.

These are depression numbers, which is not healthy for the country, et cetera, et cetera. We are seeing some hope in the leveling off or reducing of people entering or being put on ventilators entering the hospital in New York. So hopefully those are some good signs that they are past their peak. The rest of the country, though, has to go through this wave of peaks, and this is going to be really important. Before I get into our notes on how to take a business and make it work, I want to talk about just one thing, if you will take me through this. I did some using the John Hopkins website today.

I used the numbers that were on there, the death rate, the kill rate of the coronavirus. And it's largely being ascertained right now. And in New York and places, there's people dying in homes. They don't have the testing to be able to test if the people had COVID-19, that's what killed them. So these numbers are vastly underrated. We know that China lied on a lot of their numbers. But let's just use the numbers off the John Hopkins site so that we can just at least have a balance of some sort of truth and accuracy. And I think it's plausible to state that these are underrated numbers and they are much higher than they are. So according to the John Hopkins thing, and I want to bring this up because I have people

tell me all the time, they're like, why do we need to do this? Why is this important? I don't care. I feel healthy. I'm young, whatever, blah, blah, blah. The other thing I've been hearing from people lately is they've adjusted the numbers where they're hoping with the stay-at-home measures we put in place, only maybe 60 to 100 or 200,000 people might die from this as

opposed to the millions. Like 2 million people, I think was one of the projections early on. But let's talk about why this is important and why we must keep endeavoring towards staying at home, protecting people. My mother has an immunocompromised system. She has asthma. She's allergic to just simple things like my dogs and the environment. And I'm scared to death because this virus will kill her, and I really don't want that. My mom's very healthy. She hasn't had a heart attack. She hasn't had any major health events, and she's going on 77.

She's trucking hard, and she could probably make it to 100 the way she's going. She might be more better in shape and more mentally fit than I am at this point. She's a sharp one. So this is what we're doing this for. We're doing this for the elderly. We're doing this for my two sisters who are stuck in care centers. One was born with cerebral palsy and she basically suffers mental deficiencies of cerebral palsy. She's basically about a three-year-old, but she has a cognitive awareness of her surroundings and the fact that she's in pain, suffering, or anything she might go through. So my other sister suffers from MS and now suffers from massive dementia from MS and is locked to a wheelchair and sits in a care

home as well. If you saw on Instagram, I posted videos of me and my mother going and standing outside their windows, waving to them, talking to them through the window. The order release, of course, let you, you know, they cracked the window a little bit so you can at least say hi, take some videos and pictures and let your loved ones know. But these people are very scarily trapped in these homes, and we're seeing these care centers running problems. So the numbers are 6% is the kill rate around the world for the coronavirus, which is pretty freaking huge when you think about it. Right now in America, we're operating at about 3.7% to 4% of the kill rate. It seems to vary per day. I took this measure earlier today and got 4%.

The number is kind of updated, and now it's 3.7%. And I saw people online today, a lot on Twitter, Facebook, people are like, well, I don't understand why this is so bad because I guess yesterday they started revising the numbers. They're revising their hope for the numbers, and they're saying these numbers could be, you know, 60,000 to 100, 200,000 instead of millions. And people are like, oh, why is it, you know, this is just like the virus. And this is like the flu and, you know, 62,000 people die like the flu. So what the hell is the big

deal? Well, here's the key. We don't have to lock down the whole country. We don't have to stop on the planes. We don't have to lock down the economy. We don't have to lock down the whole country. We don't have to stop all the planes. We don't have to lock down the economy. We don't have to put everyone to have a job during the flu. We're doing all this to keep that number low. That low number is really important because if I take the 4% kill rate, and I'm using a figure of 330 million Americans. I believe it's 330 to 350 million. We'll know more in the most recent census.

But the last number is 333 million Americans. You times that times 4%. That's 12,210,000 people that could get killed from this thing. 12 million people that could die. There are some states that that's, if you took a few small states in America, that's probably two, three, four small states in America that you would virtually wipe off the MAPS population.

Just like take those states and just throw them away. So that's the reality of this. And so us taking these measures is very important and it doesn't mitigate in any way, shape, or form the importance of this. So so us taking these measures is very important, and it doesn't mitigate in any way, shape, or form the importance of this. So there's my PSA for the day. So I want to talk to you guys about what you can do as a small business. This is a really important time. It's a really creative time.

If you're an entrepreneur, you want to be an entrepreneur, you've got paid leave from maybe your unemployment, you've got paid leave from your job, you know, I'm sure that you need to be looking for a new job. And of course, it's very tough, there's going to be a lot of people you're competing with, etc, etc. And so this is a good time to take and look at how to be an entrepreneur. If you listen to prior shows that we've done in the Chris Voss Show. We've been kind of doing a series last little while on what people are doing, what some ideas are for how to survive this recession and everything else. So I want to give you some more tips. Prior to the show, we had the CEO of Gifter 3 app on and he's out pushing his company called Gifter App. So if you get a chance to check that out, you can go to gift3rapp.com and check it out.

One of the things I talked to him about is he mentioned that they were reaching out to a lot of mom and pop stores and food stores, restaurants, etc., etc. And he said they weren't interested in doing anything much of the time because they weren't sure if they were going to business a week or two or a month from now. They weren't sure they were going to be in business. So let's talk about some of the things that you should be doing when you're in this sort of process. The most important thing to do in a recessionary period or a lull like this is to work harder than you've ever worked in your life. This is the time to not sit on the sidelines. This is not the time to sit in your lazy way recliner and watch Netflix and

stuff. This is a time to sit down with your business and rock it as much as you can. Now, I've talked in the past, you've probably heard on the podcast about one of the things that I used to do with my business is I used to get out of my office on weekends. I'd take like weekend trips, weekend vacations, I'd call them. And I'd book a hotel someplace and maybe some fun thing to do in that city. But I would usually drive there and with a girlfriend or a friend, business partner. Uh, we'd take a drive out, uh, you know, go to whatever the event was, concert, uh, you know, different things, conference, et cetera, et cetera. Um, and I'd bring a legal notepad with me and, uh, and, and, you know, on one hand,

having a computer is nice. Having a computer is nice to be able to just type your thoughts onto the computer. But the problem is there's a lot of temptation with that. So indulge me if you will. The problem with having a computer is you're like, well, let's type some notes on how I can do my business better. Then you're like, well, oh, there's a ping from Facebook. I better go see what that's about. Oh, there's a ping from Twitter. I better go see. Oh, there's a ping from my email. I better go see what that's about. Oh, there's a ping from Twitter. I better go see. Oh, there's a ping from my email. I better go see what that's about. Listen, take a yellow tablet, a piece of paper, something like that. Get off your computer and start writing down steps that you can take now to save your business,

to improve your business, to realign your business. And this is kind of a great creative period right now because you're not in your office most likely. Some of you may work from home, but you're not necessarily in your office. You're kind of out of your environment. You don't have the busyness of your business going on that's keeping you busy. So this is a great time to look at every aspect of your business and go, what are we doing? How can we do it better? What are our inventory spends? What are we doing for marketing? What are we doing for all this stuff? And to re-analyze your business from an out-of-the-box sort of situation, from a stamping outside of it, and going, why do we do things this way? How can we

do things better? And all that good stuff. And I talk about this in several of my different podcasts. I've done this so many times where I'm not afraid to challenge my ideas. I know that I don't have all the ideas in the world. In fact, if anything, I don't. Trust me. But I do get some good ideas every now and then. I need people I can run those by. But for the most part, I challenge my ideas.

And so a lot of times I would sit down with my business and go, who made these rules? Oh, you did. Okay, great. All right. So why do we do things this way, Chris? Why do we do things this way? I don't know. You made those rules like a year ago. Why do you do things that way? Well, is there a way we can do this better? And so I look at the formulas and the processes in my business to make them do better. Number two, this is not a time to dial back on your marketing. You may want to make sure that what you're doing is effective. Maybe if you've got some sloppy marketing, you know, a lot of people had a lot of money before

the recession, you know, they're just throwing money, pay for this, pay for that, whatever. But take a, retake a look at your marketing, but do not stop marketing. The worst thing you can do right now is to stop your marketing. Now, you may need to invest in other creative marketing or let's say, for example, you're a small mom and pop and you haven't been doing heavy marketing. Now is the time to get back on that Facebook page. Now is the time to get back on that Twitter account, start pounding stuff out, start letting people know about your business, start offering specials and deals. My email box is full of marketing from large companies down to small mom and pops that are starting to utilize their lists.

Let me ask you this. Do you have a list? Have you invested in, say, Aweber or some of the other different list services out there? Have you have a list? Have you invested in say Aweber or some of the other different list services out there? Have you built a list? The companies that were smart have built a list right now and for this moment, and they've been building it for years. And what they're doing is they're delving that list and starting to talk to people. Hey, you know what's funny is one of the most important things you can tell people right now is, hey, we're open. Like I'm writing people that I've done business with

for 10 years and saying, hey, we're open for business. We're still doing what we were doing before. And we're open, we're active, we're not on vacation, we're not on layover. We are still here. My biggest challenges to some of the people in contact, of course, aren't. So I'm not getting some of my emails answered. But that's okay. The people that are, that are working from home, I'm actually having a better chance of getting in touch with them because they're actually not doing their work at the office. They're just sitting at home processing emails, talking to people, and trying to keep the

wheels spinning as much as they can But they certainly have a lot more time to look at my stuff than when things are extremely busy And this is one of the things I told my CEO friend at gift or three app I said I said, you know what? This is the perfect time to build your business because right now you can actually get owners on the phone You can get the contact person that you need to talk to on the phone. Before this, everyone's making all sorts of money. They're rolling in dough.

Everyone's got plenty of business. Everyone's bellies are full. They're all happy. You call in some business. You're like, hey, I can show you a way to make more money. They're like, yeah, we got plenty of money. Yeah, just say, yeah, call us next week. We're fine.

Right now now you call people, you can offer them businesses or services or products that can help them make more money and survive this recession. They're going to probably give you a listen. Okay. So, and that, and it's all depends on your approach and of course how you sell and all that good stuff. That's another factor. But, um, this is a great time to reach out to those companies and start opening new doors, start getting new relationships, start listening and talking to your customers. So if you don't have a list, if you're not using a list, MailChimp is one of my favorites to use. That's what the Chris Fosch show uses. Start getting a list going. Start looking through

your contacts. You should have built a list. Start looking at your Facebook marketing. But one message you want to start sending to everybody is, hey, we're still open. We're still doing business. If you're a small food company or a mom and pop store, hopefully you're still doing deliveries and pickups at your drive-thru and all that good stuff. You maybe can't open the shop, but at least you're still cooking.

You're keeping some of those employees going. You're keeping the cash flow going. Cash flow, I talked about this in the, I think, two episodes ago. Cash flow is one of the most important things you can take and do because it's going to keep you alive. It's going to pay your rent. It's going to pay employees. It's going to keep you from having to do layoffs.

And then when hopefully this thing ends soon and we go through the curve and everything else, hopefully when this thing ends, you can get ramped back up as quick as possible because you're going to need to do that as well. So take a look at all the different marketing aspects you're doing. You've got plenty of time now to be sitting on that Twitter account humming it out. I've seen so many businesses that just make me mental over the last couple of years. I've been complaining it for a while that they've abandoned their Facebook pages. They've abandoned their Twitter pages. No one's posting because everyone's got plenty of money. They're like, yeah, we don't need to do all that sweat equity stuff. Yeah, we don't need to do all that sweat equity stuff. Um, yeah, we don't need to do lists and mailers

and emails. I mean, and a lot of companies did that, man. I was seeing Del Taco emailing me like, I don't know, every other day. It's almost like daily that they're emailing me now off the list. I'm on some list, you know, for, I don't know, a free taco for my birthday or some shit. So, um, this is a great time to start reopening those channels. When I went through this session in 2008, that's what got me here on social media. Social media was a free sweat equity marketing platform where I could market. Sit down too and look at different ways that you can expand your business. Don't just ask for people's business. Ask for referrals. Get on Yelp. Check the people that have come by

your place and say, hey, you know what? I've been amazed at how many companies, how many businesses, how many restaurants never respond to anybody on Yelp. They don't respond to anybody on Google reviews or Amazon reviews. This is a great time to sit down and go, Hey, let's respond to some of these people. These are the people that will come back to your business. These, these are your current customers. You know, you may have heard the old adage over the years that it takes six times. it costs six times more effort and money to get a new customer than a current customer. So if you have a business right now, what you need to do is think, okay, so we have people that have been here before. They've eaten our food. They love our food. Maybe you find some people that hate your food. This might be a great time to write them and say, hey man, I know you're

having troubles. We'd like to get your business back. How can we get your business back? What can we do for you? How about a free set of fries? There's a business here that I'm really impressed by, JW Burgers. And I got to tell you, I swear to God, it's the CEO or one of the founders. And he answers every one of those damn Yelp reviews, and he apologizes when people don't like the food. He tries to get them back in to get the food. This guy's got a multi-chain of humongous amount of burgers, I don't know, burger places. I don't know how he gets the time to do this, but he gives a damn,

and you see that, and when you go into his Yelp and you go, wow. So this is a good time to get back into that guerrilla marketing. That's what you need to do. Maybe there's a couple of great guerrilla marketing books. I can't think of their authors off the top of their head. But if you go search Amazon guerrilla marketing, this is the time to do that sweat equity. So if you're sitting around going, I don't know if I'm going to be in business in a month or two, I got to tell you, people are still buying stuff.

I've been kind of actually surprised. I've actually been selling more stuff. I've been focused on selling more stuff since this started because normally I make a lot of money in some other different areas that are kind of locked down right now with shows and conferences and interviews and CEO things that we do. And so I've been focused more on selling products and making products and finding things that we do. Um, and so I I've, I've been focused more on selling products and making products and finding things that people need. And even, even just goof off products, you know, like people, people, you know, have been just buying stuff. Um, you know, things like speakers,

different things that you might have, um, that you don't want anymore. Um, I'm really surprised people are still buying stuff like, like, okay, we're not worried about running out of money. Yeah, we might have 16 million people unemployed and those 16 people may be suffering. We might be having, I don't know, let's call it, I don't know, 50 million people hurting financially right now from this recession so far or tightening their belt. There's 330 million people in America. A lot of them have really good paying jobs that have probably paid them some sort of layover for this time period or maybe they have really good insurance or unemployment insurance. I don't know.

But a majority of this country is going to keep going on. There's a lot of people who are retired. I should probably look up the retired figure of how many people are retired. Those people have money. They've built it up. They've got 401ks and everything else. And those people usually have pretty good nest eggs in the baby boomer generation. There's people still buying stuff. So what I would do is reach out to people, let them know you're open. I believe that's the number one message you got to be pounding to people. We're open. We're here for you. I got to tell you, in my area, we're on a stay-at-home thing in Utah.

When I go out, the drive-thrus are packed. Like there's people around the block on the drive-thrus. And they can't get in, of course, to eat. But they're sitting in the car, so they're fairly safe with the health. And hopefully, when they come in contact with the food preparers and stuff those people are all wearing gloves and masks and you know everyone's wiping down their food and all that sort of good stuff but there's still business and sales going on don't let this get you down and so take a look at grill marketing don't kill your marketing budgets just kind of take a look at where some of the fat is that you can possibly trim.

Take a look at your budget, see what you can do, and keep the business going. And, of course, you need to balance that with your employee costs too as well. You may have to lay off some of your employees or furlough some of your employees. I'm hearing a lot of good things about some of these business loans, and I'm hearing a lot of bad things about some of these business loans, and I'm hearing a lot of bad things about some of these business loans. And it sounds like it's going to depend a lot upon your relationship with your bank, your credit, and your ability to repay the loan, and your business, and all that good stuff.

So I would say look into it. Look at the opportunities that are there. But really understand you have the ability to make cash flow with what you're at. How can you do it? Um, you know, I mean, if I saw a guy the other day that had a bike business and, uh, and you know, no one's coming into a store anymore. Best thing I do is start contacting clients, start contacting people that have been there before. Hey, this is Mark with Bikes Anonymous or I don't know, you know, whatever. Bikes are us, okay? Hey man, just

wanted to touch base with you. We sold you a bike last year. Is everything going okay? Is there anything we can help you out? Are you maybe in the market for a new bike? We've got some really good specials going on with what this recession is. That's one way of maybe doing that or sending them a mailer or a marketing email if you've got that data. This is one of those times where you should have been collecting all this data so that when things go bad, you can tap into these resources. So if you don't have them set up, this is a great time to use your creative juices to start getting that working and building so that you can survive the next one of these. This will be the second giant massive recession we've had in, what, 10 or 11 years? It's likely we'll have another one in 10 or 11 years, the way we're going,

and the way these viruses keep coming out and all sorts of craziness happens. Certainly this country is going into a lot of debt, and that's not going to help its monetary cash flow situations either. So you may want to keep that in mind. You always want to prepare for a rainy day, especially when you're in business, because you never know when the model is going to change. And I've been in a lot of different businesses where everyone's making killer profit, everyone's making fistloads of money, and then one night, uh, one day, uh, some change flips the switch, some economies flips the switch. And all of a sudden you're bleeding red,

like it's nobody's business. And you're like, this used to work. Why isn't it working anymore? So, um, hit up your current clients, let them know you're open for business. Let them know you're still working hard. You're not on vacation. And ask them, how can we help you? How can we do stuff? And hopefully your business maybe helps support other businesses where people achieve what they want to do. If you're a person who's an employee right now,

I've talked about this on my prior four shows or so, take a look at maybe how you can become an entrepreneur. Maybe this is a great way to study, be entrepreneur, how to study being a salesman, how to maybe look at your asset toolbox or skills that you have, uh, within you to take and move that to the next level. So, um, those are some different tips and tricks that you might be able to use. I highly recommend trying them. And, you know, worst case scenario, if you end up finding a job somewhere, you'll certainly hopefully be a lot smarter and you'll have gained a lot more knowledge. Best thing to do is if you're unemployed, if you're on furlough,

don't use this time to just veg out and watch Netflix all day long. Seriously. Use it as a way to improve your quality of life. Use it as a nice, wonderful timeout vacation, a way to start thinking out of the box and rejigger how you approach your life and everything else. This is a great time to rework everything. And that's what I recommend. Let everyone know you're open. Put signs out front. Yes, we're open. Put things in your window. Yes, we're open. Do this. Take it to the next level. Here's the specials. We've got specials. Come in. We've got, you know, the, you know, 30% off this.

Buy one, get one free. Whatever it takes to get the stuff in the door, to keep the gears and stuff moving is really freaking important. Try and keep your head in the game. This is a time where if you can keep busy, there's going to be less pressure on you to fail. Or think about failing. Keeping busy, keeping your employees busy and everything else. Just rock it and roll it as best you can and get her done. So those are some of my thoughts and some of my ideas.

But don't cut your marketing. Don't cut your ad spend if you can keep away from doing it. You may need to balance, like I said, some of it with the fat. But don't cut marketing. You cut marketing, no one's coming to your business, and then you're definitely dead in the water. You've got to keep rowing the boat, and marketing is the way that you keep rowing the boat, letting people know that you're out there. You know?

I mean, Jesus, if your business is going down, maybe buy an outfit, stand out there with one of them signs out front. What's the worst that could happen? You get some business that comes in the door and everything else. Start some support your local business campaigns. There's lots of support your local business campaigns going on right now. Get involved maybe with them and promote it. Hey, we're still here. Our employees are still here. One thing I've been seeing on the emails I've been getting from companies is pictures of their families, pictures of the employees, and in kind of like sort of employee family settings, like, hey, here's our employees. Please keep coming out here. Please keep spending

money. We're being safe. Let them know what you guys are doing to be more safe. I've been seeing these. I saw tonight what was kind of interesting. I believe it was for the company Allstate, and they had this Zoom video sort of. It wasn't from Zoom, but it was like a webcam video that wasn't slicked up or anything else. In fact, they kind of left the blurps in there from the Internet thing, and it was their CEO talking to customers

about what they're doing for customers. I thought it was really brilliant. It wasn't slick. It wasn't sharp. Um, the guy did the thing. You could even see the, you know, the little gaps of the timing from the, uh, from the thing, but he did it because he, number one, he's setting example. He's letting people, um, he's empathizing with people who are like, we're all in this together. I feel what you're feeling. You feel what I'm feeling. We're all stuck at home, no matter who we are. And let's all get through this together.

That's really important. This is another time, and we can make this like a part two of this thing. This is another great time to start pulling your clients. I mean, what a great time to remind them you're a business. Maybe start making some posts on your Facebook page or your Twitter or your Yelp saying, hey, you know, right now we're retaking a look at our business. What could we do better for you? Maybe it's time to read those Yelp reviews.

I'm just shocked at people that don't read their Yelp reviews. I'm shocked at people that don't even answer their bloody emails when I tell them how bad their product or quality or service is. Maybe it's time to get to those and then start writing people back and saying, hey man, what do we need to do to earn your business back? What do we need to do to earn your business back? What do we need to do to get you back in the door? And maybe take a look at them and go, wow, people really don't like our XYZ donuts. Maybe we need to make better donuts because people don't like it. And then maybe reach out to some of those people, reply to every freaking Yelp post that you can, and maybe go through your Facebook fan page, see what people have been posting there. I'm just amazed. You'd be surprised. I mean, I contact,

um, some of our marketing, we contact a ton of people on Facebook pages. The amount of response we get is like, I don't know, 5%, maybe 3%. Like literally there's so many Facebook fan pages that are walking around as zombies. It isn't even funny and no one's monitoring it. Same thing with Twitter. Um, and so this is a great time to get in there check all that stuff out see what's going on see what some of the feedback you've been getting on your business and then of course take that feedback and make it better this is what you should do anyway guys um so there's some ideas that i'm going to give you i'm going to be sharing more of those the next few days.

And, of course, we'll have some great CEOs on to talk about some of the different aspects of what they have coming up and how to survive this recession, some of the great ideas they have or business models they have, etc., etc. Be sure to refer the show to your friend. And, of course, this is a great time to listen to old episodes of the Chris Voss Show podcast. We actually keep 300 of our old podcasts up for you. So you can take and listen to them anytime you want. And you can go back through 300 of them. Now, there's 468, I think, now, or something like that. We're almost 700. But you can go back and listen to these and hopefully learn some different things

that you could to use in this time of need. Anyway, I hope everyone stays blessed. I hope you all stay safe. Please, this virus is no joke. A 4% kill rate if you get it. That's not something to gamble with it. And, of course, that's just an average rate across the board. People that are in their 60s plus have about an 85% kill rate.

So that's what those numbers are based on. So do it for the right people and everything else. That's very important. Those are some numbers from Italy, by the way. So we don't want to see that happen. So make sure that you do your part. We do our part. We're all losing money.

This is very painful for everyone financially. Staying at home is painful for everyone financially. But we're all in this together. We're all Americans. We're all human beings around the world. And we all want humanity. And we just got to get through this and the things that we can do now to improve our world that improve other people's worlds is

probably the most important activities we can take and do thanks for tuning in guys we'll see you next time