#145: why playing it safe might be the most dangerous move //recession prediction // next level pros podcast

Speaker 1 Recession is in the air. The stock market has tanked over 4,500 points in the last four days.
Donald Trump has initiated reciprocal tariffs across the board.

Speaker 1 We've got business owners that are calling me up and saying, what do we do? Do we keep our business open? Do we wind it down? Do we keep things rocking and rolling? Do we go all in?

Speaker 1 All these questions are going through people's minds right now. JP Morgan just recently said a 60% chance of a complete recession in 2025.

Speaker 1 What are you doing right now to make sure that your business is recession-proof? All this and more on this episode of Next Level Pro.

Speaker 1 Yeah, so, I mean, dude, 2025 is crazy. Donald Trump is coming in hot.
This guy is freaking throwing just haymakers from the left corner.

Speaker 1 And you just have no idea what's going on. It's been wild.

Speaker 2 Whether you agree with Trump or not agree with Trump, regardless, there is change happening.

Speaker 1 There is change. And we could talk a little bit deeper about that, but I think it's more important, like, what is happening right now in business? A lot of people are scared.

Speaker 1 A lot of people got things going on. I mean, me and you just got off the phone yesterday

Speaker 1 with a couple business owners. They said, hey, Chris and Darrell, we want, these are guys in our community.
They've ran this business for quite a few years.

Speaker 1 And they are doing everything which they feel is in their power to keep this thing rocking, but the overall macro economy is hurting them.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I think it's a really interesting aspect because people are really concerned with what to do.

Speaker 3 And the concern comes from

Speaker 3 what used to work isn't working anymore.

Speaker 3 And really,

Speaker 3 that's the point that we're at is like everything's got to change.

Speaker 1 Which actually is a good reference to one of my favorite books, Who Move My Cheese. Yep.
Right.

Speaker 1 You read that book before?

Speaker 1 It's a fantastic book. Real small, easy read.

Speaker 1 basically the premise of the book is you got two uh you got two mice and then two little people and they're going every single day and they go through this maze and they find their cheese right and they go and whatever your cheese is money relationships whatever they're going and they're getting and it's always there they show up they do the same thing and it's there then one day it's gone Right.

Speaker 1 And they're like, whoa, dude, who moved my cheese? Right. And all of a sudden, so what happened was these two little guys, they keep showing up and like the cheese still isn't there.

Speaker 1 And one guy finally realizes like, man, I got to change it up. I got to do something different in order to find cheese.

Speaker 1 And so then he started like wandering out and going through the maze and looking for the other cheese where the other guy literally kept showing up every single day and be like, dude, what the freak?

Speaker 1 Where's my cheese? And so same thing, right, going on in business right now is like guys are doing the same thing that worked back in 2020, 21, 22, and it no longer works in 23, 24, 25.

Speaker 1 And they're like, who moved my cheese?

Speaker 1 But one of my favorite things that comes from that book, not only is the little guy that he's out looking in the maze, but the little motto that he preached to himself as he's out looking for new cheese.

Speaker 1 And the thing that he kept repeating to himself was, what would I do if I had no fear? Yeah. Right.
Because it's really easy in a time like this to be overtaken with fear, right?

Speaker 1 Like, dude, I'm looking at my stock portfolio right now and I'm like, holy crap.

Speaker 1 Like, there's a little fear creeping into Chris Lee's dumski you know I'm like uh

Speaker 1 is

Speaker 1 should I what should I do and so a lot of times like when things like this are happening we get we get paralyzed and we're paralyzed by fear and so we do dumb things we just keep showing up to the same spot versus asking ourselves okay if I wasn't fearful If there was no fear, what is the action that I would take today?

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 3 I've made some of the best decisions in my career when I've been able to like repeat that self over and over to myself I think what we see is there's a there's always these times and or these moments in time where you have to change the way you think and so you know we're talking about recession proofing your business but truthfully it's recession proofing your mind right right how do you think because a lot of times you just get comfortable it's like hey it's working why change um this is the time where it's like okay things are gonna change and i mean i even love what president trump's doing like everyone's like this isn't gonna work this is gonna crash our market.

Speaker 3 And he's like, and I think all he's doing is negotiating.

Speaker 1 Well, and at the same time, it's like something's got to change. Correct.
Right. Something has to change.
We've got AI coming down the pipeline. Robots are going to be taking over the world.
Right.

Speaker 1 They're going to start manufacturing. Like the things that are valuable are going to be land and natural resources and energy and who owns the manufacturing.
Right.

Speaker 1 So like all those things in place, you have two choices. One, kick the can

Speaker 1 and have some other future president take care of it, or you bite that freaking bullet right now and you start negotiating a new economy.

Speaker 3 I've got a quote here. It says, your experiences are a reflection of your inner state, thoughts, beliefs, and emotions, not your external circumstances.

Speaker 1 Hey guys, it's Chris. Hey, a lot of you leave comments asking for help.
Do me a real quick favor. Shoot me a text at 509-374-7554.
That's 509-374-7554.

Speaker 1 Shoot me a text. I'll answer and help you with whatever you need.
Don't worry, I got you back. Let's go back to the show, baby.

Speaker 1 So we actually talked about this in our last workshop, how people, a lot of times we are in our like own constrained jail cells that aren't even locked, right? And we think we can't change.

Speaker 1 This is my lifestyle.

Speaker 1 I have to keep doing the same work. Like, it's really easy when you're running a successful business to think, I'm above that work.

Speaker 1 I'm not willing to get back in the field. I'm not willing to get back into the grind.
I'm not willing to cut out my lifestyle or anything.

Speaker 1 And so then we sit there and we show up to where the, where there's no cheese, wondering like, man, why can't I keep sustaining this lifestyle?

Speaker 3 I think, I don't know what book it was, but this book talked about the concept of boxes that we create. And then we always think through those boxes.
And the strong,

Speaker 3 where this drew a strong point for me was a marriage, right? You always think like we have to be married together.

Speaker 3 And so you limit the way you think based off of we have to be married and it's like just remove the box of like no we don't have to be married but what would it be like if we had created the happiest marriage right same thing with business like you don't have to be a business owner but what if being a business owner was the greatest thing you could do in your life what should that look like and so you remove the box of like i have to run this business or i have to survive this it's like remove those things that constrain your thinking and along along with that would be like i have to keep these certain employees or i i have have to keep running out of this certain office or whatnot, right?

Speaker 1 You can sell the office. You can fire employees.
You can make changes. You can get back out on the doors.
You can do these things that are the grind. But yeah, like I said, we create those boxes.

Speaker 1 They're just so constricting.

Speaker 3 But they're very subtle too. They're subtle and they're very constricting.

Speaker 3 And what was interesting, so I'll just share like with me and my wife, we talked about it, like, okay, like if we were dating again, what would we do differently?

Speaker 3 How would we act differently towards each other? And it really did change a lot in our relationship of like hey, we don't have to fit in this box.

Speaker 3 Like let's let's treat each other like we would if we were dating each other or whatnot.

Speaker 3 And I think I think same thing with business is like you get stuck in this fear loop of like, oh no, this is gonna be tough. This is gonna be challenging.

Speaker 3 So now everything you approach, you approach with like, it's got to be tough, hard, it's tough times, things are getting harder and harder versus like, this is the best opportunity in my lifetime.

Speaker 3 Everything's changing and I got to figure out the niche and the reality is if you look at businesses like most businesses are run by older people right and and it's a great time to be older people but like there's a lot of opportunity for younger people who have like a lot of ambition too so there's just no matter where you're at in life like there's so much opportunity you just need to change your lens and realize what's going on and take advantage of it there there's a cool stat you were you were talking about as far as like the the fortune 500 companies what was that yeah 52 of fortune 500 companies were started in a recession.

Speaker 2 That's pretty wild.

Speaker 3 Why do you think that is?

Speaker 2 I love the idea of just an industry shift. I mean, and we experience many versions of recessions every day in our lives and experiencing the real world.

Speaker 2 And one of the coolest things I've learned from both of you guys is when we studied Outwitting the Devil by Napoleon Hill.

Speaker 2 and how the devil, if it was like an entity, how it would control you. And one of the best tools it would use is complacency, being stagnant, just kind of on cruise control.

Speaker 2 And so when you have these recessions, it's all cyclical. And after the recession, there's always a boom right after that.

Speaker 2 And that boom is caused by the companies directly in this example or the people that are able to figure it out and see this recession as an opportunity rather than a threat.

Speaker 2 And we were able to figure that out in the solar industry during

Speaker 2 the sickness. We might not say on the podcast but we made a huge pivot from going from door-to-door sales to to remote sales you know the greatest story of all time that i think about like

Speaker 3 this aspect of like something hard coming and then you have to fix it is um

Speaker 3 is uh george foreman

Speaker 3 his story is incredible He like quickly rose in boxing, became world champion, went to the Olympics, made a ton of money, and then his manager lost all his money. And then he found himself in the 40.

Speaker 3 I think he was 40 something years old, 48, I think, or something. He was really old.

Speaker 3 Seemed impossible for him to get back into boxing.

Speaker 3 But he knew like that's how he could make his money, went back into it, and like became world champion again.

Speaker 3 But I just think of that as like, there's always this, this take to or step, or like this second act that can be so much bigger than where you're currently at. And so instead of like,

Speaker 3 you know, worrying about how it's going to play out, like just know it's going to play out for your benefit.

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 I think the hardest mental shift for that is like overcoming the ego of like, I am too good for this. Cause right, George Foreman at age 48, dude, I've already done it.
I've done it.

Speaker 1 Like, why would I get back in the ring and box? And, you know, the same thing

Speaker 1 from my life has happened a couple different times.

Speaker 1 So like after my first business failed, I started up a couple other businesses and we were, Daryl and I were running just a couple little small businesses.

Speaker 1 And ultimately, the opportunity was presented for me to go and work for somebody else. Dude, that was one of the hardest ego,

Speaker 1 like it seems so little now, but in the moment, it was so hard for me to mentally get over this barrier that like, I work for myself. There's no way I'm going to go work for somebody else.

Speaker 1 There's no way I'm going to go start knocking doors again for somebody else.

Speaker 1 Until like when I made that shift and was finally able to just overcome the ego, like things magic happened for me over the next four and a half years, working for other people winning range rovers

Speaker 1 making four to five hundred thousand dollars a year learning strategy that we were able to go and parlay up into sold gen like that was one huge moment for me and just overcoming that the other one was what you talked about in 2020 right like we go from the shift right we're selling 30 to 40 accounts a week going into the sickness and March 2020 hits and literally the week that they shut everything down, they canceled the national championship and everything else

Speaker 1 for basketball, we sold one account that week. I don't know if you guys remember that.

Speaker 1 And that was scary, right? Like it was just like, oh.

Speaker 1 And so again, I had to go to myself, like, what am I, what do I think I'm above and what am I willing to do? And so. Right again,

Speaker 1 got back. I was on the phones.
I was making calls. I was doing sales

Speaker 1 just to prove to other guys that like, hey, look, I'm not above this. And I think we all have to go go through moments like that in our lives.
And maybe right now that's it for your business, right?

Speaker 1 Like you're going through some struggle. You've been above doing the sales.
You've been above doing the work. You've been managing.
You've been doing all these different things.

Speaker 1 Like ask yourself, am I truly above this? Or am I willing to roll up my sleeves, get back to work and do the hard things that my ego is keeping me from doing in order to keep this thing rolling?

Speaker 1 Because ultimately, there's a few levers in business that you can pull.

Speaker 1 There's not a lot of levers. One, you can raise your price.
Two, you can sell more product. And three, you can cut out expense.
And so the first two, those are really just mental levers, right?

Speaker 1 Like changing your price.

Speaker 1 You can probably charge more and you don't even realize it. And so you just got to go out and get over your own ego of like, this is going to be too expensive.
The other thing is driving more sales.

Speaker 1 Chances are, as as a business owner, you can influence more sales if you roll up your sleeves and you get to work, whether it's knocking doors, making cold calls, posting on social media, doing different things to be known and seen that your product exists.

Speaker 1 and doing efforts that you just haven't done in a long time, right? Like those are the two. And then the third is cutting out expenses.
Like sometimes you got to let people go.

Speaker 1 Sometimes you got to like who forget what everybody else thinks about you, like giving up the car or giving up the whatever else, and you just got to cut the expenses out.

Speaker 1 And so, like, all three of those are really just very ego-driven. Hey, guys, it's Chris.
If you're finding value in what you're hearing, go ahead and like and subscribe.

Speaker 1 That way, people just like you can find this content for free here on YouTube. Now, let's dive back in the show.

Speaker 3 I think what would be really good is let's, let's kind of recap our phone call for from yesterday for people who are like in a situation or get in a situation where it's like, man, we've got three months of cash flow.

Speaker 3 We've got six months of cash flow.

Speaker 3 You just mentioned a few things you could change, but I think there were some really important things we talked about on that call that I think could really benefit people.

Speaker 3 One of them is just having the honest conversation, the hard thing about hard things.

Speaker 3 And I think what that looks like for you, and we've had that before, where it's like you sit down with your people and you say, hey, here's our situation. Here's what we got to accomplish.

Speaker 3 Otherwise, we're out of business.

Speaker 1 Yeah, so really that's what I like to call the battle cry, right? Like the battle cry, like people want to be a part of something. They want to be fighting against a common enemy,

Speaker 1 whether that's survival or a competitor or whatever else, right? Like everybody wants to be on the team fighting.

Speaker 1 And to your point, it's the word is transparency, creating transparency in your organization, right?

Speaker 1 If your company, if your employees don't know that you are struggling and you can't barely pay the bills, then you are missing out on an incredible opportunity to sound a battle cry and get people behind.

Speaker 1 Because ultimately, even if you think your people don't know you're struggling, they know. They know.

Speaker 1 They've seen, if they've seen good times and now it's bad times, chances are it's not going to be some huge surprise when you come to them and be like, yo, we are losing money every single month.

Speaker 1 And that's, that's what it was with this guy, right? We were, we were talking to him, like, hey, what's your longest tenured sales guy? He's like, seven years.

Speaker 1 I'm like, you think that guy doesn't know that you're struggling right now?

Speaker 1 Like, like, he saw the good days when the incentives were flowing and like, I mean, cash was literally just falling off the pickup trucks, you know?

Speaker 1 He saw those times and now you're like pinching pennies and not even leading sales meetings and everything else. You think he doesn't know?

Speaker 3 I think what this gives you, you have two, two outcomes. You have buy-in and you have people that leave.
And I think the people that leave, you need gone.

Speaker 3 You need those people out of your business because they're hurting your business if they're not there fighting for the business.

Speaker 1 Absolutely.

Speaker 1 absolutely yeah so it's a win-win scenario you get rid of the the non-players or you get that freaking buy-in because because chances are if guys don't know that you need for this particular example they're doing 25 to 30 accounts a week and they needed 35 to 38 accounts to break even if guys don't know that

Speaker 1 they are going to give up early right hey i've already done enough for me but if they know that the team needs more the team needs that extra effort that extra hour a day, the extra two hours a day, the Saturday, they are going to give it because they know that it is needed.

Speaker 2 As an employee that went through this from you guys being the owners and I was an employee, like what I always commended and spoke about to other people that worked at other places like friends and family was they were always looking at, oh my gosh, what are you guys going to do?

Speaker 2 And I was like, we're going to figure it out.

Speaker 2 And I thought it was so cool to experience it from an employee perspective of like, the way I perceived it was if we can get through this, when we get through this, this is going to provide an opportunity for myself to be like, hey, I was a part of that champion team that was able to get through.

Speaker 2 And these were the other people that were able to get through with me. And that's going to leverage myself as a better opportunity as an employee later on down the road.

Speaker 1 Which the psychology is like, everybody loves an underdog.

Speaker 1 I mean, when you're looking at a championship game, nine times out of 10, you're going to cheer for the underdog.

Speaker 1 So if you can help people realize that they're a part of that underdog story and there is a way to get out, dude, buy in where most of the time our fear is like, oh, if they know that we're an underdog, they're going to want to leave.

Speaker 1 They're not going to want to fight. They're not going to like, no, dude.

Speaker 1 We are wired to be freaking fighters. We are wired to survive, not to die, to go and make it happen.
So like, freaking get that.

Speaker 2 Yeah, we had so many company-wide meetings that

Speaker 2 you guys were bringing this stuff up and you guys were like, look,

Speaker 2 we don't even know what we're going to fully do in the next month or two months, but we need you guys. Like, if you guys aren't here, we need to figure this out.

Speaker 2 I thought that was like really cool to experience. And then in hindsight, you know, you fast forward one or two years down the road, you start remembering those times.

Speaker 2 And it becomes like what you were talking about, everybody loves a common enemy. When you go through a tough experience like that, it creates a bond like no other.

Speaker 2 And like the employees that went through that, you're tied to each other.

Speaker 3 I recently learned this. When you experience the same emotion, strong emotion with someone, like it bonds you.

Speaker 3 Whether that's a good or a bad emotion, when you experience the same emotion together in the same situation, it bonds you.

Speaker 1 So fear. Anything.
Yeah, like all the different things.

Speaker 3 It bonds it's the same, right? If you go to a haunted house and one person thinks it's funny and the other person thinks it's scared, no bonding.

Speaker 3 But if you guys both go and you're both scared or both excited, it makes complete sense. They're bonds, yeah.

Speaker 1 The other thing we talked about uh another strategy was um finding strategic partners if things get really really tough is not just you there's a lot of piece of people out there that are also struggling and if you can figure out strategically how do i piece things together to create a better opportunity for all of us like dude everybody wants to be a part of an opportunity yeah one of the things that we suggested is like hey look is there potentially a sales dealer out there that is tired of the sales dealer grind really doesn't have any equity built up in their business that you could offer a piece of equity of your business to these guys and just them alone will get you over that break-even hump get you to profitability like wouldn't it be worth it wouldn't it be worth it to offer these guys a 10% stake in a business that is essentially worthless right now you know and so it's like yeah getting creative there's so many ways that you can get creative from a marketing standpoint strategic partner standpoint a grind standpoint that was the other thing that we talked about is like dude get back on the doors like let these guys see you going out and making sales.

Speaker 1 Stop worrying. Stop strategizing and start doing more revenue generating activities.

Speaker 2 And Vivet had one of the greatest stories to get through that, you know, being able to come to their own employees and ask for money.

Speaker 1 It's one of my favorites. Yeah.
Yeah. I mean, one of my favorite stories ever.
During the 09-10 recession, Vivet had to go and get money from Wall Street to be able to fund their accounts coming up.

Speaker 1 And Wall Street said, no, we don't have the faucets off. We have no more money and so the only way that they were going to survive was they had to go so Todd goes to his to his employees and says yo

Speaker 1 um

Speaker 1 we're not getting the money he was very transparent we're not getting money the only way we're going to survive is if We go and find investors. We want to open the

Speaker 1 investment to you guys. We owe you this big back end check coming up in January.
How many of you guys would be interested in putting that money towards equity in the business?

Speaker 1 Dude, it was something like like 90 of back-end checks were plowed into equity and all these guys went just this classic underdog story yeah dude we're gonna fight with you to the end todd and dude those guys made so much money on that equity getting through that recession what i want to highlight with that too is you can't wait until the recession hits to try to bring morale and culture together yes like that was fostered of years of good culture absolutely absolutely So at the end of the day, guys, we understand during times like this, it's hard to maintain good morale, good culture.

Speaker 1 The way you do it, you got to sound the rally cry.

Speaker 1 Really dig into the fact that people want to be a part of a good underdog story.

Speaker 1 They believed in you good times. They're going to believe in you in bad times as well if you're willing to be transparent and really get that buy-in.

Speaker 1 And then ultimately, Focus on revenue generating activities.

Speaker 1 Like this is, that's the thing that's going to move the needle stop the strategy stop all these different things refocus put in longer hours one of the guys things that we talked with these guys about is like okay look instead of seven six seven eight hour days you need to do now 12 hour days do eight hours towards revenue generating activities and then then three to four hours to like maintain and make sure that everything's being managed correctly like that's the level of commitment that you have to have when it gets rough and tough and ultimately it's what's going to push you through make you one of these Fortune 500 companies that was able to survive.

Speaker 1 Because ultimately, he who survives is ultimately going to thrive when the economy comes out on the back end. Until next time, let's go.