Andrew (00:02):
The fitness industry is changing by the day. On August 10th, author Mike Michalowicz spoke to a group of gym owners about reinvention. What follows is the audio from Mike’s presentation based on his new book, “Fix This Next.” This is Two-Brain Radio with your host, Chris Cooper.
Chris (00:18):
Hey guys, it’s Chris Cooper with a word about Arbox. Arbox is a leading gym management system offering a full suite of tools and features. Arbox provides gym owners with a dashboard that includes quick access to Two-Brain Business metrics that are key to optimizing your business. With a glance, you can usually review length of client engagement, average, monthly revenue, new versus lost members, and so much more. Visit arbox app.com /TBB to schedule a demo and learn how you can take your gym to the next level. For Two-Brain Radio listeners, Arbox is offering a special deal where you can save 50% off your first three months using the platform. Hey guys, we are here today with Mike Michalowicz, everybody knows he is one of my all-time, favorite authors and speakers, and we’re going to talk about the path to reinvention.
Chris (01:16):
So Mike was live in our Tinker group and he ran a three hour seminar a couple of weeks ago, which was really profound. And topic of that seminar was his new book. We had so much success with that webinar that he asked me to come back and just talk to everybody for half an hour. And so, that’s what we’re here to do today. We’re going to talk about the path to reinvention. Nobody needs this more than the fitness industry right now. And so I’m really pumped to get him on here.
Andrew (01:46):
And now here’s Mike Michalowicz.
Mike (01:48):
That destablizes, it brings to light that there’s a destabilized economy and it puts us into this freefall. Then we see small business respond in a very common, predictable pattern. So we go back to 1929. There was the introduction of the gold standard.
Mike (02:06):
And with that, Wall Street collapsed. And then we went into a depression, small business is actually the one that pulled us out of it. That’s why you hear these stories, that small business continually, you hear stories of small business continually being the success stories coming out of difficult times. Well, fast forward to more modern times, I was around in the seventies as a kid, and I remember the OPEC oil crisis. Not that I called it that, I just remember my mom pulling up into a gas line. The gas line was miles long. You gotta to have an odd or even numbers as the first digit on your plate to get gas. Same circumstance, an external influencer, a destabilized, and already unstable economy bubbling below the surface. We go into this downward death spiral and then small business pulls us out. Fast forward to 2000 with the.com bubble, Harris tax, 2008, great recession, the housing collapse, 2020 is COVID.
Mike (03:00):
So there’s already a destabilized economy. COVID hits it, and we are experiencing the fastest economic decline since the great depression. I know Wall Street may not be reflecting it but main street is. And I’d actually love to see in the chat. How many folks here in your own neighborhood, your own community have seen some businesses go out and actually you can put the number. How many businesses have you seen go out of business in this market? I’m in a little town here. It’s called Boot New Jersey. I’ve seen four restaurants, shutter their doors. Actually, there was a costume shop, that has been around forever. They were so popular around Halloween just closed their doors a few days ago, a month or two before Halloween. So I see Chris five, Matt three in your downtown, Jim, Brian, see 10 Matt. Six.
Mike (03:50):
Yeah, five. So isten. That’s probably not what you normally see. That’s not a typical three or four month period. So we’re in this decline. Well, the good news is there’s a predictable trajectory and I want to give you some tools. This is all based upon a book. I wrote that I have strategically positioned right there, called fix this next to navigate this, but I’ll hold this close. If you all want, by the way, you can get this graphic at a website called recessionresponse.com. There’s no sign up or any of that stuff. It’s just sitting there, and other graphics, here’s what we go through this trajectory right here. It says the word shock and this little dotted line coming into it is the destabilized economy. Then there is an event that causes shock. And what happens in the shock phase is people freeze up.
Mike (04:39):
So COVID hit and people are like, what is this? This was back in March. What is this? This can’t be, this is gonna be quick, a pandemic? This is going to go away overnight. And a lot of businesses get startled and do nothing. Well, the businesses that did nothing go into an inaction state, says here and go into business collapse. I suspect of all the things that folks are sharing here, 10 businesses during a pandemic, Jim, Brandon sees five, six other businesses. I suspect these businesses you see going out of business, a portion of them went out of business because of inaction. They were in a shock state. The next stage we go through as we go through this decline is called the desperation phase. The desperation phase is where people start to gobble up resources at an inordinate speed or take actions and measures that are inappropriate, but just extreme because they don’t know what else to do. A personal example.
Mike (05:38):
This is what toilet paper. It’s weird. But when COVID hit all the stores went out of toilet paper, chances are in your own community, you probably saw your place be depleted of toilet paper, which is bizarre because I don’t think you need more toilet paper for COVID, but that’s what happened. And I’ll tell you what happens. The desperation stage. It’s a herd like mentality. So what happened in this environment was some guy with toilet paper, some guys at a store, and he’s like, Oh, I need to buy some toilet paper. He’s like, Oh, I should buy another pack. I was forgetting, we need more toilet paper. As he’s buying it on the news channel. It’s like COVID crisis pandemic. And someone observes this guy taking toilet paper. And they’re like, Oh my gosh, I need more toilet paper. Oh, there’s a COVID pandemic. I should grab some.
Mike (06:24):
And they grab an extra roll. And then the herd mentality kicks in that store gets depleted because everyone’s taking extra rolls, rolls of toilet paper, the shelves go empty. Those shelves go empty. That person calls her friends and says, you know, Walmart here is out of toilet paper. You better get some quick, the COVID pandemic and another store happens. And by the third or fourth store in that town, the news picks it up and says, look, there’s no toilet paper. And then the world emulates it. That is the desperation where we’re taking these large illogical decisions. And in business, you saw it with PPP loans and EDILs and different loans. Now let me be very clear. I’m not saying it’s a bad move.
Mike (07:03):
It may actually be a very good move strategically, but many businesses took those loans without any consideration. Oh my gosh.
Mike (07:12):
We gotta grab it whenever you take a loan, regardless of the parameters around it. Why do you need that loan in the first place? Because if you need money, that means there’s something systemically wrong in the business. So we’re ignoring a systemic problem where money will fix it. No, money will bridge or put that problem out to bay for a little bit, but it may not resolve the issue. So we still have to get back to the core issue. That’s what you see in the desperation stage. Some businesses taking big actions in the wrong direction. There was one business right down the street from here, who said, we’ve got to cut costs on our items. We’re gonna cut prices because we need to sell more, we have to sell our way out of this. And they cut their prices by, I think it was a 50% and I know insider access.
Mike (07:55):
I’m not gonna say their name. Their margins were 10%, which meant they were losing 40% of every transaction. They sold their way out of business so fast. They shuttered their doors. It’s right down the road, same side as we are. That’s the desperation moves. Thoughts, big moves without consideration. My goal in our call here is the move us through evaluation deliberate action to really get us positioned for the surge. Evaluation is where we consider what’s working within our business. And what’s not working with our business and start amplifying what’s working and discarding what’s not working. Some businesses get into this analysis paralysis phase here, and will continue to spin out of control. Our goal here is to get to deliberate action. Deliberate action is where we start amplifying ehat’s working where we adjust to the customer demand and it positions us for what’s called the surge opportunity, which is coming.
Mike (08:41):
And I don’t know for your business, if it’s a few months away or a few years away, but here’s what’s happening. You have your gym and this is your supply and here’s your customer demand. Well, businesses are going out of business, right? So your competition is going out of business. Customer demand remains. Now it doesn’t remain active. That’s the key. It remains in what’s called a pent-up state. Some people may not be going to the gym right now because of fear for COVID. They may not be using your services for other reasons, but they’re going to want that service at a future point. So they’re in a pent up demand state, not active demand. Supply is decreasing. If we can sustain, at a certain point, the pent up demand becomes activated demand. I mean, they say, I gotta get back out there.
Mike (09:31):
I need this service and they start going up. We cause now you’re here and demand is up here. This gap between us is the gap between supply and demand, which means there’s an opportunity to gobble up. There will be a moment that people are going to want your services more than ever. And I don’t know if it’s two months or two years away, but there is something you can do today to prepare for that. It’s start recruiting. Now. Be very careful. I’m not saying start hiring. I am not saying start expanding, hiring. I’m not saying bring on more technology. I’m just saying lay down the groundwork, put the tracks in place. So when it comes to recruiting right now, reach out to coaches and so forth and say, Hey trainers. You know, would you be interested when we start moving again for us to talk with you start building those relationships, start considering what’s out there so that when the demand gets reactivated, you very quickly can get an infrastructure in place to support that demand.
Mike (10:30):
Now, there’s also an opportunity in this moment to shift what we’re doing. Here’s the strategy I want to share with you. It’s called the upstream look. There’s a massive opportunity for businesses right now. And most businesses are doing the wrong thing. We’re looking downstream. As an example, my business has lost some clients and I anticipate your business has lost some clients. This is my percentage. So this is not a data back, but it’s experientially backed that about 10% of clients at any time in any economy are on the fence if they should be doing business with us, 10% of clients are like I don’t really know if I’m driving benefit. I don’t really know if this is really good for me, you know, with my business, like, you know, Mike’s a nice guy, but I don’t really know if I get benefit.
Mike (11:18):
And sometimes it works, but most times I’m not getting—they’re in this waffling state when an event like this happens COVID or any outside event, now they have a justification to no longer do business with me. So that means 10% of my clients go, you know, Mike’s a nice guy and all that stuff, but I don’t know if I can do business with him because the COVID crisis. It may be a subconscious thing, but they just reach out to say, Hey, I can’t, I can’t keep paying you, Mike. I’m outta here. COVID-19, you know, affecting us. Or they just don’t hear from, they go cold turkey, but they have a justification to leave me. That’s the downstream loss. And I believe about 10% of us are going to lose our clients. Not because of anything we could do, just because they’ve been waffling. The mistake, many businesses do self included. Historically I looked down the stream and say, Hey, come back.
Mike (12:10):
You know, what can I do to save you? How can we improve ourselves? Whatever. The bigger opportunity is the upstream look. Your competition. My competition is losing 10% of their client base. Now you got to look at the collective competition. I have 450 clients, accounts of bookkeepers in my one business. 10% technically are going to go away. So that’s 45. Upstream my competition is servicing about 50,000 accountants and bookkeepers that I could be serving. They’re also losing their 10%. That means I have 5,000 customers entering the upstream and I’ve 45 going downstream. If I am looking downstream, I have 5,000 are gonna blow by me, not see them. I need to turn and focus on the opportunity. Here’s the opportunity. Those clients are entering the market. And they’re saying, you know what? I always been on the fence about the other guy. I wonder who else is out there?
Mike (13:04):
They’re in the know like, and trust stage they’re reevaluating. Some of them are in what’s called imminent demand. Meaning they have a new need. They need to satisfy right away. They want service right away. Another portion of them, the larger portion is like, you’re like my last service provider. Let me see if I can find new one. They’re kind of looking around and sniffing. Either way. I need to start building know like, and trust. Well, how do you do it? First of all, for their congregation points. When they entered the market, where are they collectively looking for new information? Are they going on podcasts and listening to podcasts around how to get fit? Are they buying magazines? Are they checking out certain blogs? Are they going to certain other community things, other activities to kind of satisfy, at least partially what they were doing in the past.
Mike (13:53):
Those are congregation points. We then put ourselves there and market to it and how we market to it right now, the best marketing in a situation where people are a large base of your prospects are now in a new know, like, and trust mode, the best way to market to people in the know like trust mode is through education. So I believe right now the cheapest, most effective form of education is video based.
Chris (14:16):
This is Chris Cooper. Your members are buying supplements somewhere. So they should buy them from the person who cares about them the most: You. And you should work with my friends at Driven Nutriion. Jason Rule and the Driven team puts customers first and provides a huge product line with some of the highest margins around. They’ll even provide training to help you grow your retail program. Curt Hendrickson of Iron Jungle CrossFit says Driven “has you, the affiliate owner in mind. Driven nutrition has some of the best support I have seen from any company we have partnered with.” To find out how to make more money with supplements, visit driven nutrition.net. Now back to the show.
Mike (14:48):
I’m partial to YouTube, just because owned by Google. So it’s very, find-able, there’s other types of educational based type stuff, but what can we do to educate the market of what’s going on? And it’s not by saying, Hey, here’s my business. I’m doing amazing things. Check out how great I am. Here’s what you can do for you. Instead. It’s just providing them education and then telling them about you. Have you ever been on YouTube? And like, you look up how to do something and you find the video. Like we had these flies in the house coming out of one of the drains in our house, like how to I get rid of drain flies. And I go on all these videos where it’s like, Hey, my name is Jim. And we do pest control with this wonderful organization and blah, blah, blah.
Mike (15:32):
I’m like, just tell me how to get rid of the flies. 20 minutes in the video or something. He’s like, Oh, just put boiling water down this sink. Thank you. If he’s, if he simply said, pour boiling water down the sink in the first three seconds and said, Hey, there’s other pests that you can’t get rid of. My name is Jim from Jonesville pest control. I can help you with those. He had won me over through the education. What’s called, front-loading give the powerful tip right away. You know, I introduce, hi, I’m Joe. I got a tip for you. Here’s how you get rid of it, boiling water. Done. If you want to learn more about me, you do that at the end. It builds a much better know, like, and trust. All of us have this opportunity. And you have so many services, you provide you so many tips.
Mike (16:13):
You can give, put out tips out there and be regional specific. If you draw and I think everyone here, Chris, and most people draw people from their local districts, from their local areas, kind of like real estate agents. Well, here’s one thing we did for real estate agents. We told the agent I was working with to notify, I’m sorry. Not notify. To build the know like, and trust by serving the region really well. Here’s what we did. Real estate agents also struggling during COVID because of all these different requirements with masks and all this stuff. And for a while, you couldn’t even show houses. They can do it again with certain precautions. So these real estate agents reach out and say, what do we do? Well, let’s look upstream for the new know like and trust. Who’s entering the market. And, one thing we did was we started doing videos, but the real estate agent I was working with specifically started doing videos for the town. So I’m not going to share their name, but let’s pretend they’re in Boonton. And they say, Hey, real estate in Boonton and then what she was doing was the know like, and trust. She was educating people on the town, so she interviewed the fire chief. She interviewed the police chief, the school principal and vice principal, the mayor of the town, about the community, the police chief what’s going on with, you know, crime is market. How is this market? How are we enforcing COVID? The fire chief, same thing with health and EMITs. These different educational things. So now people looking, they’re interested moving into Boonton or whatever.
Mike (17:51):
Now have this know, like, and trust this agent. She became the spokesperson, basically the journalist for the town, you have the exact same opportunity. You can do district marketing. So you don’t just give, you know, Hey, I have gym fitness and you know, tips for you. Generically, you can say, Hey, if you’re in the town of Boonton, here’s the workout path I’ve created for you. You know, you can go from here, you can run past the waterfall. You can do this, you can do the different exercises and you can do something scripted specifically that area drawing the people you want from the area. So it’s another technique. OK. I want to do, I’m just trying to bowl through stuff here. I want to do this thing called the product path, and this is a way Chris, that we can create new offerings in this market.
Mike (18:47):
Now this is a five stage plan to bring out a product to full scale. I actually just want to talk about phase one, which is called the beta phase. And if you understand the beta phase in this market, there’s opportunity to reinvent yourself. Now, remember, I really believe we are in the great reinvention. So 2008 was the great recession, 2020 is a great reinvention. Business must change because consumer demand is changing, which means you will need to change to address consumer demand. The only way to do this is to understand what the customers want. So you do it by asking, you know, you do it by testing. That’s the element people will usually miss out on many people ask their customers and say, Hey, what do you want from me now? How can we serve you now? Which is good. But we really need a test because at the end of the day, people speak the truth, not through their words, but through their wallets.
Mike (19:43):
And if you ask customers, how can I serve you? Now? They’ll say, Oh, you’ll simply do online, you know, training and we’ll be good. OK, how much are they going to open our wallets for that? That’s the real measure of their engagement. People demonstrate their appreciation and value they see in you by the spend. If someone, if someone buys a little diamond thing for $5, we all know it’s a cubic zirconia. If that exact same identical thing is $5,000, we all know it’s the real deal. So people will associate the value they see in you by the dollar they spend. So that’s what we need to judge. That’s the key framework for the beta stage. Here’s how the beta stage works. We reach out to your existing clients and past patrons too. I don’t care what stage your business is in, the one asset every business always has, even if it’s out of business, is its past patrons. That will always exist. So reach out to them and say, Hey, thank you for being a client of ours. With these unique circumstances are going on here. We want to serve you better ever. What can we do for you? Get their feedback, have your own ideas, to do virtual. I heard one was doing a, they call it a cul-de-sac workouts. They were going to communities and these big cul-de-sacs and doing workouts in a circular area where it’s safe and stuff like that. So they come up with an idea, say, it’s the cul-de-sac workout. That’s what we’ll call it. And the next thing they did then is they reached out to their past patrons and said, Hey, we’re starting a new program. We’re going to go into local towns.
Mike (21:14):
We’re gonna have our mobile vans show up. And we’re going to use these 25 minute workouts, whatever. And, we’re gonna come to your town. And we plan to sell this program for $150 a month, or whatever the number is. But since we’re just starting this program, we know it’s not gonna be perfect. There’s gonna be bumps and bruises. Therefore we’re interested in bringing on 10 or whatever the number is, but a limited beta group to test this out at discount price. So while it’s going to be $150 a month, we’re going to sell it for $70 a month for 15 people just to get the kinks out of the system. The key here is a few things, scarcity, meaning it’s a limited number of people. Dollar point is being reduced. So they’re getting significant benefit.
Mike (22:04):
But the biggest part is integrity. It’s not developed yet. Is something that we’re testing out. The beta program. The beautiful thing about the beta program is if you can sell the tell, you can sell it just on the concept. I call it, sell the tell. You can sell the tell and people buy it. That means they can envision it. We’ve been in it enough that they see value in it. So instead of developing a system, instead of renting the van, getting equipment to see what happens to see if anyone on the list will buy into it. If no one buys, there’s your answer, sucky idea. Don’t pursue it, reinvent it. That’s a flub, but at least it didn’t cost anything except for 20, 30 minutes of thinking up the idea. If you can get people to put money, if they depart with money, they’re validating your idea, they’re saying, you know what?
Mike (22:50):
That’s a good idea. Then here’s what you do now. You’re in beta. You actually do it. You try to improve it. You get their critical feedback. There will be the bumps and bruises, but you innoculated them for that by saying, there’s going to be bumps and bruises. You continue to adopt it and improve it over the next few weeks or months, I do quicker. If I could. To cater to them, then you roll it out to the full market at the full price. Here is the powerful thing you’ve been doing it. So now you have testimonials. You say, listen, we have 10 customers that went through his program. They absolutely loved it. And they will because you modified it and enhanced it for them. They loved it. We’re now coming to your cul-de-sac or whatever the program is, and you start selling it, sell the tell.
Mike (23:34):
That’s the new form is create an offering in less than 24 hours and just make it all verbal, where you’re not buying equipment. You’re not making any financial commitment. Just reaching out to your base and seeing if people will pay for it. If no one will pay for it, you’ve got to enhance the idea before you roll it out. OK. Another technique, one step back technique. Here’s another way to go reinvention. Look at your final historical offering and rewind it in steps. Now I’m gonna give you an example with a restaurant, cause I’ve been doing this with restaurants, works with gyms, whereas with any industry you just need to spend time going through this process. Again, this is all these spreadsheets I’m showing you are at recessionresponse.com if you want. But here’s the ones step back technique. Look at your historical final offering.
Mike (24:25):
So the final deliverable that a restaurant does, for example, they food on the table for people to eat, you have someone leaving your facility feeling strong and powerful or in control or healthy, whatever it is, define that final feeling when someone walks out. Then we do is we start rewinding it step by step and say, what are all the steps we take to get that final deliverable? Let me go back to restaurants. It’s a very clear illustration. One step before putting food on table, we carry the food to the table. So food’s on the table for people to eat. But before that a waiter’s carrying food to the table and putting it down. That one step back could be an offering. Carry in food to table, carry out takeout. A potential offering. Many restaurants are doing it. When you findone step back offering, the real opportunity is what’s called amplification.
Mike (25:17):
Remember I said, if something’s working, do a bigger amplify. Well for these restaurant in town there was only one doing it, actually in our whole community. It blows me away why more aren’t. They teamed up with a food truck. They said, carry out is a big deal. So what we’re going to do is we’re gonna load a food truck that’s gonna carry hot meals right into people’s towns and into their neighborhoods. And literally like an ice cream truck. And you can get your hot meal for dinner. So you don’t even have to think. You don’t have to order anything. There’s a hot meal away in there for you. If you want it. Now they’re taking orders too. But this restaurant is not a restaurant. It’s a cooking center. They’re packing up these trucks. These trucks are doing runs with these beautiful meals delivered to communities.
Mike (25:59):
And because you order it instead of like the traditional take-out where everyone’s going to wait a half hour to queues up where a guy runs a meal and runs back and forth. This truck is bringing like 60 meals into a neighborhood. It’s like, you’re delivering all the meals. One, two, three. Cul-de-sac is my hot word for today and pick it up. So one step back, but you keep on rewinding. So one step back from carrying food, the table restaurant prepares food in the kitchen. OK. So preparing food in the kitchen could be an offering. How do you amplify that? Well, you can teach people how to prepare food in their own kitchen. You can do videos, you can do cooking classes. And so there’s a restaurant actually. I don’t know why I’m pointing here cause it’s actually Mexico. That’s a long point, but there’s a restaurant way down in Mexico
Mike (26:47):
That is doing cooking classes around different fish dishes that they do and past patrons, they reached out and they said, here’s a way to connect with the community. See other people have fun it’s a two hour session. It breaks up the monotony of a day being at home. And now you’re cooking a meal and seeing each other and you’re charging. I think it’s like $150 a session equivalent, including ingredients and stuff, but the typical meal they were selling for maybe a $50 is three times it, and they don’t even have to cook it. They just delivered the ingredients for the week. So a really powerful way. Keep on going one step back with restaurants. You can keep going back, but you can do it in gyms too. Keep on rewinding step-by-step and saying, what are all the links we get to the final product? You know, they’re there.
Mike (27:31):
People are using equipment. Maybe we can help people specify equipment and set up a home gym, you know? And this is really, I’m just thinking off the top of my head. So I’m just riffing here. So don’t take this, but really rewind all the steps. Maybe you’re helping people with checking that their measurements and stuff like that. Can they do it remotely or is a new way of doing it where you can deliver equipment, and they can report. Could they do the equivalent, I guess, spit test where you’re obviously not spinning, but they’re sending in some measurements and you do some calculation and you come back with a report for them. So you’re tracking your improvements over time. Can you do a virtual? I know this one gym was doing virtual runs like everyone’s at eight 30 Eastern time was doing a run together.
Mike (28:13):
And there were reporting times when they finished and they use an app to do it. Like, what are the new things you can do by doing one step back? And when you do the one step backs, now, you know how to deliver to your customers through a beta, say, Hey, we’re trying something out new. Would you be interested participating? Here’s what the final price will be. Would you be interested in trying this out of the beta price? We’re only taking 10 people on to do the first one. OK. I got more for you. I know I’m speaking so fast. Partly because I had technical problems connecting, partly I’m from New Jersey. So I talk really fast, and I’m really anxious to help you out. I did ask in advance, if I could share this.
Mike (28:52):
So I want to ask something and I know this is a bold ask, but I do have two reasons, actually one, cause I think it will be of great service to you. Secondly, selfishly, it does serve me. Here’s the ask. This is my book. It’s called “Fix This Next.” Everything I’m sharing from you. It’s actually derived from this book. I wrote this book for business crisis. I never expected what we’re experiencing now, but businesses need to adjust. And this book is five years. of my work it’s the best of my work. I’ve written other books like profit first and so forth. This is the best of my work. I know it will serve you. Here’s my ask. Would you please get a copy of this book right now on Amazon? Any format you wish audible, Kindle, hardcover. If you already own a cover, would I be so bold as I get a second copy for someone else that would benefit a colleague or something like that?
Mike (29:40):
The reason I’m asking the benefit to you is for the it’s less than $25. It is my best work. It is the most affordable, effective way I can serve you. I have individual reason to, and this is the selfish reason. If we do this collectively, Natalie, thank you for supporting me. If we do this collectively right now, if you get this book, the Amazon engine, how it works is it starts promoting to other entrepreneurs. So selfishly, if you get it now, Amazon will promote to other entrepreneurs. It’s the greatest way for me to spread the word in the book. I’d be honored if you get it, Ashley, you rock. Post in the chat. Natalie, you rock Eric. You guys sign one. That’s awesome. If you’re willing, Erica, if I can be so bold to get a copy for a friend. Awesome. Jill done and done.
Mike (30:21):
You rock everyone. That’s buying a book right now, too on it. Diane, you guys are awesome. You’re going to make me baby cry here. Do not do this. Thank you, David Green, Kim, you guys rock. Here’s the deal. Now it’s going to girl cry. My mascara. So email me here, mike@mikemichalowicz.com. In the subject line put Chris Cooper is super duper. And put a thousand exclamation marks because I’m going to send you, I have lost content. There was about 40, 35 to 40 sections of this book that did not make the final cut. I think you’ll enjoy. I will send it to you as a PDF. You don’t have to send me the receipt or anything. It’s totally on the honor system.
Mike (31:14):
I trust you. Just put Chris Cooper is super duper. Exclamation mark. I will send you our content and thank you everyone. Ordered three copies, Chris. That’s huge, Caroline. Thank you, Liz. Thank you. Everyone’s doing it. Thank you. Honestly. You’re really serving me and I promise you, this book will serve you. You must be successful. OK? Now let me tell you why you must be successful. The global economy needs success. We’re experiencing right now is tremendous macro economic shift. Macro economic shift is where there is something beyond the local regional change that is affecting everybody. And therefore the markets change. As I did my research around this, of every macroeconomic shift we’ve had every recession it’s been consistent, small business, you, have gotten us out of it. Here’s why. As I was studying this, I saw that the big companies today’s Amazon’s Airbnb, Google, those companies are on the equivalent of a tanker ship.
Mike (32:25):
The economic shift is a tsunami wave. It is massive coming right toward the boats and the tanker ships can’t turn fast enough. They can’t catch the wave. It’s gonna bowl them over. Or if anything, there’s going to ride over the swell, but they’re not going to catch the momentum. Us small businesses we’re on jet skis. We can just turn and zig and zag on dimes. We can get ourselves in the perfect position to catch the momentum, the shifting demand. That’s what the tsunami is. There’s a massive shift of foot of demand. People want new services in new ways. Big companies can’t. Those big competitors of yours. Well, I heard one went out of business already. The big ones are going to continue go out of business. Small ones who adjust. They’re the ones that are going to be the successful ones. In fact of every recession, we’ve seen a small business, become big business.
Mike (33:18):
Airbnb came out of a recession. Google and Apple came out of recession. Microsoft came out of a recession. Procter & Gamble—all these companies, these big names you know nowadays came out of recessions yesterday. So now it’s your turn. Here’s the deal. I know. I know that we globally will come out of this recession. I know this is the great reinvention and I know small business. That’s going to do it. My question is, why not you? Why not this your turn? If you’ve envisioned your definition of success, why not make this the opportunity to grab it? Because you can reinvent faster and quicker than the competition. Easier than the competition. The mistake, I see businesses doing the small businesses, doing the big businesses too, is trying to stick it out the way it always was. Just trying to buy time. This is not about time.
Mike (34:18):
This is about adjusting and offering new something that catches on. But the only way to find it is to start testing things out. Don’t do just whatever else the industry’s doing and try to go virtual and try this. Try to go back steps, try to rewind, try asking your customers what they need and do it empathetically. Here’s my final thought. I got an email on the exact way not to communicate and handle your business in this market. And it was from Chevy. So sorry to be publicly bashing Chevy. I own a Chevy car. You know, whatever, Chevy’s fine. I don’t care. It’s fine. And they sent me an email that says, Hey, as a Chevy owner, we want you to know we’re still around and that we’re ready to serve you. In fact, we can do oil changes for you right now.
Mike (35:11):
And I’m thinking, Oh, and they opened up the worst line ever by the way. Said we’re all in this together. Please never use that in communication. That is the most pandering comment in the planet. No duh, we are all in this together. Thank you, Chevy for the education. And then it said, it said, we are ready to do an oil and I’m like, Oh, you mean you think I’m traveling a lot right now? You think, Oh, I’m trying to go from my infected town to new, infected town, thanks Chevy for that opportunity. And it says, Hey, beyond that, we can even get you a new car. I’m like, no, no, thanks. I don’t need that now, but there’s a better communication I got from United. And this is the lesson for us. United reached out first empathetically, the opening line email says we can’t imagine what you’re going through.
Mike (35:59):
We just imagine it’s challenging. And we want you to know that we, that we hope that this email finds you well, what’s so powerful about the opening is the transparency and they don’t know what’s happening with you or meet individually good communication. Then it said, we’re still here to serve you, but we realize you may not need our services. A form of a transparent acknowledgement. That’s right. I may not need your services, but we’re here to serve you in a new way. If possible, please give us your feedback on what we can do for you. And then it went on and serve me in the email. Anyway, I said, and by the way, because you’ve been a loyal member, cause I travel United I’m in New Jersey, that’s their hub. They said, cause you’ve been a loyal member. We’re sending the benefits for another year or two.
Mike (36:46):
They proactively did something to benefit me. Your loyal members. What have you done to proactively reward them without them asking? That’s an opportunity. What have you done to be empathetic and saying, we don’t know what you’re going through. The challenges you face. And we know that you may not even need us in the way you did in the past, but if you need some new way, we’re here to learn, to put the understanding on us that we have to adjust saying, what can we do now? What do we have to learn? We’d love to hear from you and how you can serve. You send out an empathetic communication, be loyal to your historically loyal customers. And that will start your jet ski adjusting and turning and catching this wave. You know, we, as small businesses have a responsibility to be successful in this market. You must be successful.
Mike (37:36):
This is not a time to shirk responsibility. It’s not a time to say, I’m getting pulled over. I guess I’m done. No, this is the time to step up and stand up and move forward. We have to because the economy needs us and a small business. Many small businesses will do it. Now with what you just learned. I hope it’s you. Chris. Thank you so much for letting me share this. I appreciate you brother.
Chris (38:00):
Thank you, Mike. Always love having you on and we get so much value from you. I really appreciate it. In the private Two-Brain group right after this guys, I’m going to buy another 20 copies and ship them out. We’ll have a little contest and thank you, Mike. “Fix This Next” really is your best book. And you know, we make three of your other books required reading already. So thank you.
Mike (38:24):
Thank you for everyone. I saw all the names scrolling by. Actually I’ll pull up my email now. Kimberly Wilkes says Chris is super duper. Pete Rollette Josh Kimberley. Andrea Savard is just gets porn and Josh PJ Melanie. Ashley do there’s too many.
Chris (38:46):
All right. I’m glad to hear it, man.
Mike (38:48):
This is awesome.
Chris (38:49):
Yeah, we’ve been looking forward to this. All right, man. Thanks a lot and stay safe in Jersey.
Mike (38:54):
Be well, everyone take care. Bye bye.
Andrew (38:59):
Thanks for tuning into Two-Brain Radio with Chris Cooper and business author, Mike Michalowicz. Please subscribe for more episodes wherever you get your podcasts.