Transcript
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Hey, this is James, the
founder of sweet fish media. If you've
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listened to beb growth for a while, you probably have an idea of what
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we're passionate about. Loving people really
well, a constant pursuit of learning and
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inspiring people to own their careers.
With all the craziness happening with this virus,
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we are incredibly fortunate to be in
the business of podcasting. So many
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BB brands are looking for alternatives to
their inperson events that are being canceled,
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and our business is growing as a
result. Please don't miss hear me on
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this, because I'm not saying this
to Brag. It is heartbreaking the economic
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impact this is having on so many
businesses. But being in the business of
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podcasting, the demand for what we
do has increased and because of that we're
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looking to hire really talented people to
help us serve that demand. So if
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you like what we're all about it
sweet fish and you're looking for a great
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career opportunity, hit us up.
There's a link in the show notes where
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you can apply today. I'm really
looking forward to meeting you. Hey,
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there everybody. Drew McClellan here from
Agency Management Institute. Very grateful to be
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back with the BE TOB growth folks
on their agency tracks. So thank you
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to everyone at be to be growth
frien inviting me to continue to contribute content
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there. If you are not familiar
with me or agency Management Institute, we
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are an organization that helps small to
midsize independently owned agencies all over the globe
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run the business of their business better. Most Agency owners are brilliant at the
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client facing stuff, but many of
us, myself included twenty five years ago
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when I started my agency, many
of us are accidental business owners. So
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we either got let go, we
left a job, we've decided to hang
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up a shingle as a freelancer and
next thing we knew we were running an
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agency. And we didn't go to
school for that. We didn't learn how
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to run a business and things like
financial metrics and pnals and how to look
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at the numbers and know if you
can afford to hire a new person.
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All of those things don't come as
naturally to us, and so that's what
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Ami is there to do, is
to teach and coach and help and serve
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agencies so that they can build a
business their agency that is scalable, that
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is sustainable and if they want to
down the road, that it is sellable.
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So that's what we're all about.
But today what I want to talk
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to you about is what is on
everyone's mind right now, and that is
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covid nineteen. So I'm recording this
on March thirty, so we are about
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two weeks or more in to sheltering
in place, or at least social distancing,
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and most of us are working from
home. I'll tell you I've been
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talking to agency owners pretty much from
seven am to midnight every night for the
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last couple weeks, seven days a
week, and the stories I hear from
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them are very different. So I
have some agencies that we work with that
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literally are busier than they were prior
to the virus. The client mixed they
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have, the type of work they
do is in demand and they are swamped.
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On the other end of that spectrum, I have agencies that have literally
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watched in the last two weeks fifty
percent of their adjusted gross income walk out
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the door. And then there's everybody
else, somewhere in the middle and and
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that's, I guess, a reminder
to us that this is not a one
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size fits all crisis and that everyone
needs to be smart about how they approach
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this crisis based on how it's impacting
their agency. What I want to talk
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to you about today is your number
one focus and goal, and want you
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to think of yourself as a captain
of a ship and you are in charge
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of your vessel, which is the
agency and your job. Right now,
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your ship is being pummeled in a
storm. It is a rough water,
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lightning, thunder tossing and turning storm
and and and for some of you it's
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the worst storm that your ship has
ever endured. For others, if you've
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been around for a while, maybe
this isn't as bad as nine eleven or
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the recession about seven hundred and eight. You've certainly suffered other storms, biggest
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client walking out the door. But
our job as agency owners and leaders is
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to get the the ship to calm
waters, and so that is not only
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surviving the storm but also making sure
that we have enough gas or fuel and
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anything else we need provisions to actually
survive the storm and then navigate our way
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to calm waters. That's your number
one job, and to do that you
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need to remain calm, you need
to be confident and you need to be
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compassionate and all three of those,
I think, are being sorely tested.
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For most of us right now.
It's pretty difficult to be calm in this
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chaos of unknowns, and it is
awfully difficult to be confident when you every
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time the phone rings or your email
payings, you twitch because you're afraid it
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might be a client pulling the plug
on a project. I get it,
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but we have got to dig down
deep and we have got to find a
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way to have confidence in the fact
that we will weather this storm. We
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absolutely will. Your your ship is
built to whether this storm. Now,
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that doesn't mean it's not going to
take damage. It doesn't mean it's going
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to look exactly the same or as
pristine as it did as you entered the
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storm. It may look a little
banged up by the time you get to
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the calm waters. For some of
you it may mean that you don't have
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as many crew anymore, that to
survive the storm, you actually had to
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lose some of your crew. So
I'm not saying this is easy. I'm
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not saying that this is a given
without effort and sacrifice, because I think
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we're going to have to do both. We're gonna have to make some sacrifices
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and obviously it's taking a huge amount
of effort. Many of you aren't sleeping
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well right now. You're struggling with
what to do next, and your job
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is to get to those calm waters
and the compassionate part. It's your people
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are afraid as well, and so
for you to be sensitive to what's going
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on in their life, that they're
worried about their elderly parents or they're trying
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to homeschool while they're still trying to
work. You know this is this is
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challenging for everybody and I think sometimes, when you feel the weight of the
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world on your shoulders, as I
know many of you do, compassion can
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also be in short supply. But
how we show up in this, how
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we show up as a leader,
is going to be so critical to how
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we look when we do get to
those calm waters. The more you can
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guide and lead and support your team, the more you can guide and lead
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and support your clients, even if
they've pulled the plug on a project,
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that you would still be reaching out
to them, that you would be supporting
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them, being a good listener,
because right now I think a lot of
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people just need to vent or think
out out. All of the those things
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will influence how quickly you get to
the calm waters and what it looks like
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when you get there. But you
absolutely need to be managing by the numbers
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right now. So if you are
familiar with Ami's metrics, you know that
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all we care about is adjusted gross
income. So, for those of you
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that are not familiar, let me
remind you. You have your gross billings.
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That's everything you build a client,
all of your cost of goods,
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which include any ninety nine contract labor, and what's left is your adjusted gross
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income, and that's the money that
you get to keep to spend on running
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your business, and that Agi gets
broken up into three buckets. Fifty five
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percent of your adjusted gross income should
be spent on loaded payroll, so that's
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salary and benefits. About twenty five
percent should be spent on overhead and ideally
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in non covid Nineteen Times twenty percent
of it should be profit. Now I
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will tell you right now that for
many of you who have had clients hit
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the pause button, you're not going
to hit twenty percent profit in this season.
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But what I want to make sure
you don't do is go into the
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red because, again, remember you've
got to get to those calm waters with
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the provisions that will allow you to
start back up. Clients are going to
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be anxious, they're going to be
just hungry to make up what they've lost
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during these few months and you have
to be ready to help them. And
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you can't do that if you're limping
along with no supplies and the boat is
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barely, you know, breaking the
water because you're so heavy with that.
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So I want you to manage to
the numbers fifty five, twenty, five,
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hundred and twenty, and if the
twenty is only five, that's fine,
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but it can't be negative five can
be negative one. You've got to
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stay in the black. A lot
of you have already gone through and slashed
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any unnecessary expenses. That's a great
plan. Many of you are working with
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clients on payment plans and things like
that. Also a great plan, but
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you've got to keep watching the numbers. This is not the time to stop
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looking at your financials on a regular
basis. Hey, everybody logan with sweet
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fish here. You probably already know
that we think you should start a podcast
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if you haven't already. But what
if you have and you're asking these kinds
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of questions. How much has our
podcast impacted revenue this year? How's our
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sales team actually leveraging the PODCAST content? If you can't answer these questions,
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you're actually not alone. This is
why I cast it created the very first
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content marketing platform made specifically for be
tob podcasting. Now you can more easily
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search and share your audio content while
getting greater visibility into the impact of your
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podcast. The marketing teams at Drift
Terminus and here at sweetfish have started using
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casted to get more value out of
our podcasts, and you probably can to.
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You can check out the product in
action at casted dot US growth.
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That's sea St Ed dot US growth. All right, let's get back to
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the show. The other thing I
want you to think about is Bizdev I
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know it sounds crazy that you should
still be planting seeds right now because no
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one's in the mood to buy,
although it will tell you. I have
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agencies that have landed new clients in
the midst of all of this. In
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some cases it was work that they
already were pursuing and they were pretty far
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down the lane with this prospect,
but in other cases they literally picked up
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the phone or answered email and a
brand new client walked in the door.
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So how we sell right now is
going to be different. This is not
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hard cell time, this is not
cold calling time. This is going back
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and nurturing existing clients, former clients
and prospects that you already have a relationship
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with and you were going to show
up to help them, not to sell
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them anything when they are ready to
buy, when they are in a position
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to spend money, because some of
them right now are on lockdown in terms
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of their budget, just like many
agencies have locked that down. But you
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want to be there to be helpful
to them and you want to keep planting
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seeds. Thoughtful, sensitive, not
selling, not pushing, just you being
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helpful and coach your clients and prospects
through this weird, weird time that we're
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in. They don't know how to
respond to this either. They don't know
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what to do with their social media, they don't know how to change their
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digital ads, they don't know what
stories they should be pitching to the media.
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You can be amazingly helpful to them
in all of that. And if
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it's just a quick phone call and
you're just spitballing ideas, don't send them
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a bill, send them a note
letting them know that you enjoyed the conversation
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and that you hope their family as
well, and you look forward to sitting
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down over a cup of coffee or
a drink when everybody can physically be in
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the same space again. Be Be
good people, be caring people in your
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community. Take an active role in
serving your community. One of the agencies
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we work with in Bangor, Maine
pulled together a list of all of the
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places that senior citizens and people with
compromised immune systems could shop when they had
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sort of special shopping hours in all
of the stores and Bangor and they published
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a guide and they released it for
free and they're getting a lot of great
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press from that, which is not
why they did it. They did it
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because they're good people. But there's
nothing wrong with also getting good press or
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getting noticed for being a good person, because that will pay out for you
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later. So my message for you
in this episode is really you've got to
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be thinking about how you survive this
and you have to survive it strong.
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So if you have to make cuts, if you have to fight for a
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rent reduction, whatever it may be, now is the time to do it.
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Don't delay this do it right now, get it done as quickly as
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possible, and we are putting out
all kinds of content. We've got a
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document that talks about how to talk
to your landlord about getting a rent reduction.
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We have documents on the care act
and all of the different relief loans
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that are available to small businesses.
Like agencies, we have a ton of
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resources on our website. No email
required. We're not going to try and
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sell you anything. We're just trying
to help agencies get through this. So
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if you head over to agency Management
Institutecom Covid, you will find resources organized
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by weeks or the most recent resources
are at the top of the page and
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then you can work your way down. But we have podcast we have videos,
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we have documents from the federal government, we have documents from the US
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Chamber for Small Businesses. We've got
all kinds of resources there that we would
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love for them to be helpful to
you and for you to take full advantage
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of them. I'm going to be
back soon with other ideas for how you
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can survive this, but for now, just know that you are not doing
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this alone. Please feel free to
come talk to us at the am I
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facebook page or anywhere else that you
can find us. I'm available on Linkedin
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and other places. Don't do this
alone. If you belong to another peer
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group other than am I, reach
out to those people, connect with those
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people's if nothing else, commiserate with
those people. Remember this is this is
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a long haul for us. We're
not out of the woods yet and we've
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got several more weeks probably, of
working from home and managing all of this.
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So take care of yourself, take
care of the agency so that you
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can get to those calm waters and
you can come out of the storm strong
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and ready to go and ready to
make up the revenue you've lost and help
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your clients do the same. All
right, I'll be back soon with more
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ideas of how you can survive the
crisis. Again, thanks to our friends
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that be to be growth, and
I will be back soon. Thanks for
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listening. I hate it when podcasts
incessantly ask their listeners for reviews, but
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I get why they do it,
because reviews are enormously helpful when you're trying
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to grow a podcast audience. So
here's what we decided to do. If
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you leave a review for me,
to be growth and apple podcasts and email
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me a screenshot of the review to
James At sweetfish Mediacom. I'll send you
205
00:15:56.289 --> 00:16:00.090
a signed copy of my new book. Content based networking. How to instantly
206
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connect with anyone you want to know. We get a review, you get
207
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a free book. We both win.