Dave Braun
00:00:03
Hello, everyone. Welcome to the HireMyVA Team and Business Building Podcast brought to you by Yoogozi.com. And in this podcast and at HireMyVA, we help you to reclaim your freedom through hiring and thriving with Virtual Assistants without breaking the bank. And the most famous bank in your mind, and in mine is my own bank and your bank, something like that.
Larry Broughton
00:00:23
Close enough.
Dave Braun
00:00:25
Yeah. Hey, I’m Dave Braun. And as usual, I’m here with my good buddy, friend, and business partner, Larry Broughton. Larry, I’ve seen you coach so many folks, we talk about ways to help our clients. And it’s like, you just keep coming up with new things all the time, really do a great job of identifying what’s holding folks back.
Larry Broughton
00:00:49
David, you do too, awesome. It’s good to see you handsome, Dave, love you, and I’m glad you’re in my life. And yeah, this is good. I’m glad we’re doing this.
Dave Braun
00:00:59
Yeah. This would be an interesting episode. This is a good question.
Larry Broughton
00:01:03
What are we talking about today?
Dave Braun
00:01:05
Okay, here we go. The question is—episode 145. How can my business survive the current inflation environment and what most people feel is an upcoming recession. If we’re not even in one?
Larry Broughton
00:01:24
We’re in one.
Dave Braun
00:01:27
So how do we survive it, Larry?
Larry Broughton
00:01:29
Well, let me start with this. I don’t even wanna start with how to survive. I just want to give acknowledgement that recessionary times suck.
Dave Braun
00:01:37
Yeah.
Larry Broughton
00:01:38
Man. I mean, it’s scary cuz you don’t know how long it’s gonna last. You know, particularly depending on where you are in the country and what industry you’re in, some recessions last longer than others. And it can be frustrating to see, well, gosh, I’m in a industry that’s getting killed and this particular recession, it didn’t get killed in past recessions and you get resentful of seeing other people out and their businesses are thriving. You know, it’s tough emotionally to go through. And then particularly in inflationary times, not only is busting the chops of your business, but your own personal finances get crushed. So it’s when acknowledged that recession is hard. It’s hard. And there are some people, Dave, who get in and out of business, their timing is just perfect. You know, they get into business during a—A lot of people say that recessions are the best time to start and launch a business.
Larry Broughton
00:02:42
Okay. Some of the biggest brands that we know and use today, we started during recessions. And some people just time it right. They get in during the recession and it grows and they get out before the next economic downturn. But if you’ve been around for any number of years, more than just a few years, you’ve been hit by some cycle of recessionary recession and inflationary times. So I just wanted to start with that, just acknowledge that it’s hard. And I hope this is the time that you’re rallying your troops and talking to mentors and those types of people. So some people tell you that if you’re in business, now’s the time to double down on your business and say, I’m in this to win it. And particularly during the one that we’re in right now during this—We’re recording this in mid-2022.
Larry Broughton
00:03:44
And you know, we’re on the coming out of what people are calling this pandemic era, is that they had to pivot because all of business was changed. You gotta pivot your business. And so what do you do? That might be kind of some similar things. And so the first thing I would say is you need to make sure that your financial house is in order. So what the hell does that mean? Well, make sure that you know how to measure your numbers. I mean, measure your performance and you got some really important key performance indicators that you’re looking at and control your cash. Cash is absolutely king during these times. Because the cost of debt goes up during these times and the cost of products and services goes up. So make sure that you’ve got enough cash. Now in the old days, two years ago, the survey I saw said that the average business has 20, I think it was 27 days of free cash on hand. I used to think that we were smart cookies by having between 90 days or 60 days. But I could tell you like the new businesses that we’re launching Dave, we’re looking to have a full year at a minimum full year of cash flow on hand, or else we don’t do the deal.
Dave Braun
00:05:00
Yeah. And the hard thing about that is at inflationary times, the value of that cash that you have on hand goes down, but you still have to have a certain amount of cash. You’ve got to, even if it goes down because you’re maybe leaving opportunities on the table.
Larry Broughton
00:05:20
Yeah. Well—
Dave Braun
00:05:21
And you may need that cash, like you said to survive it.
Larry Broughton
00:05:25
Yeah. Well, if you look at some of these big businesses, they have so much free cash on hand. They wait for these economic downturns because that’s when they go on their buying sprees.
Dave Braun
00:05:35
Yeah. It’s so funny mentally, when we talk about the stock market being down, you know, right now it’s down 30% or something like that from its peak. Then you factor in the money that was is in there is buying 10% about less than what it did. So you’re purchasing power maybe down 40%. Well, most people would be like, oh now is the time to sell. But smart folks will usually look at this as a time to buy.
Larry Broughton
00:06:05
Yeah.
Dave Braun
00:06:05
Yeah. Because it’s on sale. We don’t go into a store and buy the highest price stuff all the time and be so happy about it. We’re excited when we get stuff that’s on sale.
Larry Broughton
00:06:15
Yeah. You know, Dave, it reminds me, we did a podcast on this tool—I think we did, 48 Powerful Ways to Improve your Cashflow. Did we do a podcast on that?
Dave Braun
00:06:28
I don’t think so.
Larry Broughton
00:06:30
Well, we’ve got a tool on this that we can suggest that people get. I’ve got it here somewhere, in fact, I think it is right here, and it’s 48 powerful ways to immediately improve your personal and business cash flow. And we can offer this to you. And so I would say really start looking at ways to improve your business cash flow. And at the same time, I wanna make sure that you are also focusing on reinforcing your branding to the world, make sure that people know who you are. And so, I know that we’ve talked about that as well. And we have this webinar, it’s one of our most popular webinars that we’ve done. It’s called setting out the honey pot and there is a link— and we can put this and Daphne or whoever’s gonna be doing this, we can put this in the show notes and put it on the screen here too is if you go to Yoogozi.com/rv, then you can get these, both of these for free.
Dave Braun
00:07:40
And there’s one other thing that you get, which is our third point, I think.
Larry Broughton
00:07:43
Which is what?
Dave Braun
00:07:45
The revealed audio.
Larry Broughton
00:07:47
Oh yeah. So what is the revealed audio? Well, I think what we talk about is, also during these inflationary and recessionary times is this is the time as you know, you were talking about leaning in, doubling down. Make sure that you show up like the leader that your team and clients need. This is a scary time that I do see in some businesses, the leaders, all of a sudden start retreating, they don’t come outta their office. And so I forgot about that. So we’ve got this revealed CD and that is right here. Well, it used to be a CD, but now it’s an audio downloadable file. So if you go to that same link, then yes, you’re right, you’ll get the Powerful Ways to Improve your Cashflow. You get the sending out the honey pot webinar and you get this a revealed CD. And I will tell you this, I’m not exaggerating. We’ve received several messages, text messages, and emails from people who say that that’s a very powerful audio. It’s like about an hour, but some people have said it has saved their life. This is not me saying this. These are messages that we’ve got. And it’s a few years old, but it’s still very powerful stuff.
Dave Braun
00:08:59
I think it’s timeless.
Larry Broughton
00:09:01
It is. Some of theis stuff are timeless things. And so, I’m not ashamed to say that that during these difficult times I’ve actually done therapy and do therapy regularly. I’m a big believer in different forms of therapy, whether it’s talk therapy or EMDR therapy or whatever it is. And as a leader, you don’t oftentimes as a business owner, you oftentimes don’t have this category of people you can go to and share your biggest deepest, darkest secrets. Dave and I do because we are intentional. We’ve got a couple of groups that we belong to where things are held in strict competence. And we can do that. But most people don’t. And so oftentimes a therapist is a good place to go for that. You know, are you really gonna go to your team members and say, Hey, my biggest fear is that I can’t pay your paycheck next week.
Dave Braun
00:09:57
But we do need as human beings, we do need somebody in our lives to confess those things too. We do need somebody to get those things off of our chest to get them out of our mouth. Because once they come out of us, then they start losing their power. And if we talk about it with somebody who can speak some wisdom to us, then we can potentially do something about those. So these things will lose their power and we can use them to maybe fuel ahead. And so fuel ourselves ahead. And a therapist is a person that could help us do that.
Larry Broughton
01:10:34
Yeah. These negative dark thoughts are oftentimes like cockroaches. And if you ever walked into a dirty restaurant in the dark and then turn on the lights, what happens when those lights go on? All those cockroaches scatter. Well, it’s kinda like that, shining a bright light into the corners of your light sometimes.
Dave Braun
01:10:56
Yeah. And so I think a lot of this— we’re gonna talk about this further, there are a few more points, but a lot of this ends up being some of the basic stuff that we need to do as business owners and leaders, regardless of if there’s a recession.
Larry Broughton
01:11:12
What’s that?
Dave Braun
01:11:13
Doing all these things? We should be watching our cash flow. Thinking about therapy, we should be building our brand. We should be improving our leadership continually, not just in recessionary times, but every time, all the time.
Larry Broughton
01:11:29
Yeah. Well, you know what also we should also be doing is something, no matter what time it is, is what value are we providing to our current clients.
Larry Broughton
01:11:39
Again, if you’re gonna retreat to your office, you’re not providing value to your team member or to your clients. So you’ve gotta really make sure that you’re leaning into these people, telling them how appreciative you are, that they’re on your team, that they are your clients. Because I can tell you this, there are a lot of savvy business owners that during recessionary times they’re going out and trying to get more clients and those new clients could be yours. So if you’re not building a relationship, someone else is going to be. So maintain, don’t lose your client to someone else. But what else can you offer them to reward them for sticking around? I think that would be an important thing to consider as well, as well as, you know, are there new products or services that they’ve been asking for that you can now provide? It’s one of the things I love about you, Dave, you’re such a learner and I see the services that you’re now providing your clients that you didn’t offer a couple of years ago or a few years ago. You listen, Hey, will this be of value to you? And then you onboard people, and experts into your business to allow you to provide services to these clients.
Dave Braun
01:12:44
Yeah, absolutely right. You know, I can’t remember, Larry the exact podcast I listened to, but oh man, I wish I could remember that person’s name, but they talked about a way to do this. And one of the ways that you guys can do this and as I’ve thought about it is, think about where you are, your business is in, in your client’s chain of them delivering a product or a service. Think about where you are and then think about the product or services immediately before they come to you and immediately after they go to you.
Larry Broughton
01:13:23
Yeah.
Dave Braun
01:13:24
And then, see what can you start thinking about absorbing? So for one of the things like in a web development business, one of the things that clients are gonna always want is gonna be traffic to their site. So you can develop the website and then start thinking about SEO or advertisement, social media, all that kind of stuff because that’s the next thing in the chain. So think about folks, what’s your business, what comes before you, and what comes after you?
Larry Broughton
01:13:53
So smart, so smart. And you’ve been doing that.
Dave Braun
01:13:57
Yeah. Yeah.
Larry Broughton
01:13:59
I think though, Dave, and this is another one of those web podcasts that we could go on for a long time about, but I think one way to just kinda wrap this thing up is to remind people of what you and I have got. We’ve got an accountability group. We got some people that we can go talk to that we can really share our biggest deepest, dark secrets and fears about we can ask for advice from, but also we’re both involved in masterminds and coaching, you have coaches. You’ve gotta have that in your life, particularly during these difficult economic times of a recession or inflationary times, because what you’re gonna learn from these mastermind groups, your coaches, is information that you didn’t have access to otherwise, best practices, ideas, what’s worked what hasn’t worked. So with a fresh set of eyes. Say, Hey, have you considered this? Or, Hey, I know someone who can help you with that. I think it’s so important to actively and intentionally seek support ideas from people outside of your own little head right here.
Dave Braun
01:15:07
Yeah. And Larry, I always try to think of analogies, what we’re talking about is like this, to help explain it in my own head and to other folks and I love sports. And one of the things that I thought about was when there’s a team that’s having some issues, a lot of times what they’ll do in the middle of a season, the coaches will be like, okay, they’ll do two things. One is we gotta simplify our offense or simplify our defense. We gotta simplify. So that’s one thing. The other thing is we need to go back and practice our blocking and tackling. We need to go practice our free throws. We need to take some extra batting practice or whatever that is. So it’s that little extra thought to make things simpler. And then going back to some of the basics and that’s why Larry, this episode was about basics. I think that we came up with. These are real basics stuff.
Larry Broughton
01:16:10
Yeah. But we need reminders of the basics. If we don’t have the basics down, we can’t build on the advanced techniques. The advanced plays. We gotta have this stuff. And we always need the TFTRs on the stuff.
Dave Braun
01:16:25
And for example, if you don’t have your financial house in order, you don’t have a way to evaluate some of these new products and services that may be considering you won’t know how much to charge. How do I know if it’s profitable, how much do I spend and maybe tools to help support that or training, whatever? So you need to have some of those fundamentals.
Larry Broughton
01:16:48
Yeah. Good, good. Well, I’m glad we took just a few minutes just to do some of the thanks for the reminders things on this. And just to remind people, Hey, we get it. We know that these recessionary and inflationary times are difficult and scary, but reach out to folks. If you’ve got questions or concerns, you just want a little bit of help on something, put a comment in the comment box, and reach out to us. There’s a bunch of ways to reach out to us through social media, through our websites. Jump on some of these Q and A calls, and join the community. We’re glad to help. You know, we’re all about being aggregators, taking ideas from everybody else and sharing them with our tribe.
Dave Braun
01:17:28
All right. Well, we’re gonna do a little bit different ending today because we just talked about simplifying the basic blocking and tackling folks. One thing that we want you to do right now, just one thing. What we talked about earlier is go to Yoogozi.com/cashrv. You should see it on the screen here where to go. You’ll see it in the show notes, but go there and get that free download. You’ll get three things. Those are basic blocking and tackling items that you need to have in your business. Go there and do that now.
Larry Broughton
01:18:02
It’s free.
Dave Braun
01:18:03
Yeah. It’s free. You’ll get some email follow-ups to help you go through that. So just go there and do that. You will not regret it for sure.
Larry Broughton
01:18:13
Yep.
Dave Braun
01:18:13
That’s it. Okay.
Larry Broughton
01:18:14
Good. Go do something significant today, my friends. All right. God bless you. God keep you. God hold you. Till the next time. We’ll see you later.
Dave Braun
01:18:22
Bye.
