The 5 Pillars of Business Resilience

Is your business ready to weather this storm? What are the key things you should be preparing for? I'll be sharing my thoughts on how you can come out of these crazy times on top.

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Hello, everybody, welcome to today’s live stream How you doing? I hope you’re all staying safe. I hope you’re all doing really well. And I’m gonna start off today with a with a question for all of you old geezers, like me. And the question is do you remember Gilligan’s Island? Yeah. that that that that that that that? Yeah, well, you know the most fabulous thing about Gilligan’s islands were the rewrites because they’re still going on and I like every time I can get a chance I still like Gilligan’s Island. And the reason I’m telling you this is because today’s presentation today’s live stream is a rerun but it is a little bit improved. And it’s backed by we have some people asking me to repeat and we also had some difficulties with the recording for the first version. So hey, today we are going to talk at one more time about the five pillars of business resilience. Okay, lots of you probably didn’t get in and listen to the first one. So here’s your chance. If you did, listen, keep listening.

And again, this one’s a little bit better. And it’s also, you never know you never know what you might have missed the first time around. So thank you very much for listening in. And, you know, business resilience is not just something that we should be thinking about right now because the whole damn world is falling to pieces. Okay? We should be thinking about business resilience as entrepreneurs all the time, but the truth is, the world’s falling to pieces right now and it’s a damn good time to think about business resilience. So let’s jump in there and talk about the five pillars Okay, we’re in stormy seas and the next few months are not going to be easy and I mean months it this isn’t going to be a week. You know, you can listen to everyone but this there’s still some there’s there’s time ahead of us. Hey, there is Storm, stormy weather ahead for a while. And recovery isn’t going to be miraculous.

It’s going to take a lot of effort on our part as entrepreneurs to pull society back up and and get things moving again. So, with this in mind, it is so so important to understand, you know, the the way people are thinking and the way you have to be adapting your business right now, to a new world. Okay? First of all, I don’t believe we’re ever going to go back to the end of January, okay, things are going to be different. This is an inflection point. And, you know, there isn’t going to be a back to normal, there’s going to be a forward to something new that we’re going to just have to learn to love. Okay. But I want to talk to you because I’ve done this. A lot of times I’ve talked about this a lot, but It’s so important that I just gonna repeat it and pounded into your heads. So you can just chalk it up to me being a, you know, just a boring old geezer, he repeats his stories, but every human being has three braids. And in today’s climate in rough stormy, what whether you must be even more conscious of the three brains that every one of your clients has. And this is really, really important, okay. And everybody thinks of a brain as a ball of gray matter, right? That’s kind of wrinkly. And you know, that’s, that’s what you think of as brain. Okay? And that is the cerebral cortex. Okay, the brain that everybody thinks about when you think brain is the cerebral cortex, and it is where abstract thinking lives. It’s where logic lives. It’s where reasoning lives and, you know it is of the three brains we’re going to talk about right now it is the least important.

Okay? Do not let anybody convince you that the cerebral cortex is the most important brain because it isn’t, okay? The second brain that every human being has is called the limbic brain, okay? And the limbic brain is where emotions come from. That’s where happy comes from. That’s where sad comes from. That’s where lonely comes from. That’s where, you know, elation, or you know, anger, all these these emotions come from your limbic brain. And it’s a part it’s, it’s it’s deeper down under that cerebral cortex, and it’s controlled by hormones and it is a it that’s, that’s the second brain that every human being has. Then the third brain is the reptilian brain and it’s stick. It’s down here. It’s right there. It’s it’s a little ball, okay? And it is, has only two functions, survival and reproduction. That’s what the reptilian brain does. And the reason I’m telling you this is not because I want you to become neurosurgeons or I want you to, you know, be fascinated by human physiology, which we all should be. And this is really cool stuff. But the reason is because the reptilian brain controls all the decision process, okay? The order of decision making is reptilian and limbic and cerebral, okay? So under normal circumstances, your money your messaging and your marketing marketing need to be focused on the limbic and the reptilian brains. That’s just the way things are It doesn’t matter what you sell doesn’t matter if you sell cars, you sell hot dogs, you sell You know, b2b, you know, sophisticated b2b Consulting Services, I don’t care.

Your messaging needs to be always focused on your on the limbic and reptilian brains. But right now even more so. Okay? Right now everybody is scared. That means reptilian brains are firing on all circuits. People are worried about survival, okay? They’re worried about their futures, they’re worried about their jobs. And if you don’t reframe your marketing, with that in mind right now, you are going to be irrelevant and you’re going to be ignored and you’re also probably going to come off as cold and heartless, okay, so really, you must take this moment and rethink your marketing and your messaging and adapt it. Okay. Don’t be using the same messaging you were using three weeks ago. It’s a bad idea. Okay, that is my little rant. But it is a key ingredient of business resilience, okay? If you don’t understand this, you’re going to suffer. Okay? So the three brains, please remember that. Okay, let’s talk about business resilience. So let’s talk about withstanding those. Those hurricane winds. Okay, let’s talk about being strong and weathering the storm. Okay. So the first pillar of business resilience is operational resilience, okay? This is what most of you think about when you think of resilience, okay? You think of the practical operational stuff that you need to get done to keep your business going. Okay, and I’ve divided this into two two main areas location, resilience, and team resilience.

Okay, location. resilience, obviously is very important right now because of the lockdowns because of the you know, the orders to you know, stay away, stay in place. did not move to not travel to not, you know, to work from home. Okay? So that means that you need to be prepared to be resilient a friend in, you know, with problems about your location. So remote work, online service shifts and lack of access, lack of access, you know, what if you replace can’t get to the office or shouldn’t get to the audience office, it preparedness for this is very, very important. So, you know, these are things you need to be thinking about team resilience. Who are your essential team members? What are your backup plans? You know, how do you keep people coordinated? And on the same page? How do you make sure everybody has access to the information they need to get their jobs done? And how do you keep your team productive? Okay, these are the key ingredients of team resilience. If you focus on these and you really you know, and you put in place measures that improve On these friends, you’re going to be much you’re going to be stronger. Okay? So this is operational resilience, and it’s probably what you know, most everybody’s talking about right now is, you know, remote work and zoom is a good is a bad, you know, don’t forget backups. Don’t forget making sure that people can actually access information.

Don’t forget, you know, the productivity loss of not being able to see your team members physically, you have to, you know, they’re there. They’re there on the other side of the cloud, so to speak, it doesn’t matter if they’re across the street or across the planet. it complicates things, okay. And I’ve run remote teams now for many years. But it takes a special skill set, it takes a you know, it’s not the same as when you have everybody in the office, you could just kind of, you know, walk around and talk to people and see how they’re doing and you know, you don’t have that luxury when you’re working remotely and you To supplement it with tools, with systems and with maintaining that human contact with your team. Okay, so that’s operational resilience. second pillar is financial resilience. Okay? And here you need to be thinking about reserves, money in the bank receivables that you’re going to be that are coming in your cash flow plan planning. You need to be thinking about financing. So supplier financing really important. Can you can you shift part of your risk to suppliers and spread it out a bit? Obviously, credit and another financing source is equity. Okay. Maybe you need to be thinking right now of bringing in new investors. It’s hard I understand that right now. People, investors are just like other human beings are scared, okay, and they’re worried and they’re very cautious and they’re going to be taking baby steps and they’re going to be looking for Really, really good deal.

Okay, so it is what it is, you know, think about convertible notes, think about, you know, ways of doing, you know, so that you’re not giving away the farm. But don’t close the door to that there are people, you know, investors out there interested in, you know, taking advantage of the moment and you know, that can be something important. Finally, for financial resilience, you’ve got to think about planning, what’s your burn rate? How’s your cash flow plan going? You know, I don’t really care about your balance sheet right now. I don’t care about your profit and loss. The most important thing right now is do you have fuel in the tank to get to next week next payroll Next, you know, next month, six months from now, okay. that those are the that’s the questions that you need to be asking yourself and really focusing on so that’s financial resilience. Okay? Cost resilience. third pillar Here, okay, yeah, it’s time to batten down some hatches. Okay, we saw the stormy seas you know, hey, you don’t if you’re going into rough what rough seas, well, you close the hatches, you close them down you you know and you try to make sure that your boat your ship is as watertight as possible, right? So things to think about subscriptions, okay? Look at all those recurring things that you’re paying for all the time that maybe, maybe now you can prune them down and look at your location cost.

Okay, can you you know, if more people aren’t coming to the office, can you downsize? Can you consolidate the people that are coming into a smaller space and, and change? Yeah, it’s a pain right now. It wouldn’t be I mean, you know, big movements are hard to make. Can you renegotiate? Can you talk to your your landlords or your whoever your you know your lease holders and say hey, can we bring down the cost because otherwise you know, you may not have a Paying tenant after this is all blows over external services, really look at your external services and say, Hey, what is necessary and what isn’t? Cost of goods and services? So raw materials inventory, obviously you need to be thinking about that, you know, planning it out really well now isn’t the time to have big surpluses in your inventory, team costs. This is what everybody’s thinking about. I want you to be cautious, okay, for a couple of things here. First of all, it’s really easy to think, okay, I just need to cut payrolls. You got to be smart about this. You also have to think about what comes next. Okay. So that’s why when I mentioned you really need to identify your essential team members, you really need to, to look at, you know, the possibilities of reducing your team costs without, you know, without reducing your team or reducing as little as possible and that you know, I understand it’s, these are hard decisions and and you got to make them.

So there may be team members who can’t keep on but you know, do remember that, that, that it’s a domino effect, you know, we’re all paying for this in the end, you know, people can’t go hungry. So you know, we have to all do as best we can and try to keep things going. By the way the new these new SBA loans for payroll protection loans. I don’t understand it’s, it’s, I still haven’t figured out how to get through the process yet because, you know, banks are all up in the air and it’s really complicated. But there are resources out there. bonuses, look at bonuses, look at benefits, look at other ways that you can reduce your your HR costs, without necessarily, you know, reducing team members if you can avoid it. Okay? That’s cost resilience. Now let’s talk about revenue resilience. Okay, you got to really think this through your current clients, these this is your treasure this you’ve got to really focus you’ve got You know, I talk to my clients all the time about being customer centric, because it’s all about who you serve. But right now, customer centric isn’t a cerebral, abstract concept. Okay? This is reptilian. This is survival, okay? You need your customers, you need them to be as healthy as possible so that you can stay healthy, you’re going to have cancellations, you’re going to have payment problems, they’re going to have special needs. So start anticipating it, start figuring it out before they call you.

Call them, sit down with them. And now is the time to be talking to your best customers as often as you possibly can. Okay, stay stay close to them and keep them you know, make sure you’re, they they think of you as part of their team and not one of those external services or that they have to cut back on. Okay, contracts in your pipeline. You’re going to have slowdowns. You’re going to have reasons thence. So start thinking about risk reversal. Start thinking about how you can reframe every deal that you have in your pipeline to make it more reptilian for your customers. Really stop and think about the arguments you were using to close sales a month ago don’t will not work right now. They aren’t enough. So stop and think about them, think them through figure out how you’re going to reframe so that your customers and your prospects are still interested and we’ll close because people are going to be purchasing, okay. It just be you know, if this is as bad as the Great Depression, and maybe it will be maybe that’s going to be 20 25% unemployment, maybe 30%. That would be really terrible. That still leaves 70% in their jobs working, okay, that still leaves businesses looking to solve problems and meeting you know, suppliers.

So, you know, it is a question of how you frame yourself. In the market and how you position yourself with your clients and with your prospects, but if you think that you can just cross your fingers, you know, put a little go to church and put light a candle and you know, your your pipeline is going to survive. That’s not a good thought. That’s not a good strategy. Be proactive, start thinking about it. And then start thinking about alternative revenue streams. Can you virtualize your the way you your products and services? Can you come up with new ways of fulfillment? Can you lower come up with new lower priced alternatives? Can you package your products and services in a different way? Can you can you add new new things, training, consulting, you know, anything that you can do to bring in extra revenue is going to help keep your business afloat and keep you more resilient. So really important, their revenue resilience. These are really important ideas. And finally, strategic resilience. Okay. Look, you this goes this talks directly to you. And this is a message from me, Dennis Lewis to you. Look, I’m looking you in the eye right now. Okay, maintain your focus. It is so important. We are critical as entrepreneurs, we’re critical. We’re essential to coming out of this crisis, okay? We are the ones that are going to save the day.

Don’t look for politicians to do it. I don’t care what color you are. I don’t care what kind of cap you wear, I don’t care right now. Doesn’t matter. as entrepreneurs, we’re the ones that are going to do the work. We’re the ones that are going to keep people food on people’s tables, we’re going to keep the economy going. So it’s really really important. Don’t just don’t go Netflix crazy. You know, hey, you can watch a movie every once in a while you can you know, that’s fine. I admit. I watched all of Picard. It was amazing. I loved it. It’s great. But that’s that’s for Sunday morning, Saturday mornings, you know, fine, you know In the evenings, great, maintain your focus right now keep your eye on the ball, you got to keep maintaining your company top of mind for your customers. And that talks about that means you’ve got to be focusing on your content strategies, you’ve got to be relevant, you’ve got to be interesting, you’ve got to be engaging, and you’ve got to be really providing real value to your customers, okay? It’s going to be easier than ever to be forgotten. So you have to be a useful resource. You have to be there for your audience. Okay. And then you have to start planning for what happens next. Okay, it’s not just about surviving, it’s about coming out on top. And, you know, I’ve been sending a lot of personal messages out and talking to CEOs and founders and startups and big companies and, and, and I and I’ve been talking these last weeks, all about the same idea.

It’s all about coming out on top, and you’ve got to focus on a strategy that allows you tu tu tu tu actually not just, you know, coming out on top is surviving. It’s coming out the other side, but it’s coming out stronger than your competition. Okay? It doesn’t mean necessarily that your your revenue is going to go up? Probably not, you know, it doesn’t mean that you’re going to be thrilled with your results for 2020 Probably not. But if you’re there for 2021 and you’re at the top of your game and you’re a leader in your marketplace, then man I am so proud of you. That is that is for you have to be focused on. And that means that when you’re analyzing your costs, don’t forget this after scenario, okay? So, you know, I know there’s a tendency right now that says Like, cut everything you can, but don’t do it. Okay? Don’t. Don’t stop your marketing. reframe your marketing, make it smarter, make it more cost efficient, make it more limbic and reptilian Yes, but don’t stop. Okay. It’s essential that you’re not scared. Stop, and don’t cut your whole team away. Because though you’re going those essential team members may not be there later for you. Okay? They’re gonna remember, they may find another job, they may go out and open their own business. Who knows. So, you know, now is the time to be smart in the now and in the later. Okay? And you’ve got to find that balance.

That’s key to strategic resilience. Okay, hopefully, yeah. 22 minutes. This one’s been a little bit longer than other times. I hope you’ve enjoyed this. If you have any questions, please, by all means. leave them in the comments below. Give me a few likes, give me some made me know that you’re out there and you care about these live streams I’m doing every day. You know, I told you I do these not only for you, which I hope you find them helpful and interesting and engaging. I also do them for me because it keeps me focused. It keeps me engaged. I’m under lockdown. You know, and so it’s good for me to but I really like to hear from you guys. By the way, we have a business resilience checklist that we’ve put together based on the ideas that I talked about today. If you want a copy, I’ll give it to you free, all you have to do is leave a comment and a like on this post on this video on LinkedIn. And I will get that to you. Okay, that’s my word to you. And it’s free. There’s no nothing to sell just just a it’s a nice extensive checklist that you can you can go through in your business and make sure that you’re not forgetting key things. So thanks again, many thanks for listening in. Here’s my contact information. You can find me here on LinkedIn. And yeah, we have an exciting CEO interview for tomorrow. So stay tuned for that. Oh, by the way, if you haven’t already done so please go to Amazon. Check out my book, the whole the crypto printers. It’s good stuff. It’s a fun read. You’ll enjoy it. That was a shameless plug. And thank you very much for listening in. I appreciate it very much. Take care. Stay safe. Talk to you tomorrow.