194. Business Continuity Planning During A Crisis — A 3-Step Framework Part 3 of 3

Business Continuity Planning During A Crisis — A 3-Step Framework Part 3 of 3

Carl Taylor, is a serial entrepreneur, running businesses since the age of 15, he’s the author of 2 books and an all-round genuine guy.

While he’s owned multiple businesses in varying industries over the past 18 years, today he’s the founder and CEO of Automation Agency, a digital marketing implementation service that helps coaches, consultants, and business owners to maximize their marketing while minimizing their tech and team headaches.

He’s also the host of The Future of Humanity Podcast, where he discusses what the future may hold with scientists, thought leaders, and business owners.

Business Continuity Planning has become critical since the coronavirus pandemic. This 3-part series on how to PROTECT, PIVOT AND PROFIT is a powerful resource to help you get yourself back on track as a business owner. I recommend grabbing a pen and paper and taking notes

In the first part, of this 3-part series on business continuity planning for a crisis, Carl Taylor and I talked about how to protect your business from the economic fallout that’s resulted from the recent Covid19 pandemic.

The key elements of the protect framework were:

• Minimise risk to your business and your personal investments
• Maximise the return you’re making on your investments
• Maximise the reward you’re delivering to your clients by adding as much value as possible
• Ensure you have a way to release your stress and stay healthy

In the second part, we talked about how to pivot in response to the rapidly changing circumstances since the pandemic turned our world upside down

The key elements of the pivot framework were to revisit the way you:

• Sell to your target market
• Serve your clients
• Communicate with your market (what you say)

If you find this video useful, I’d be grateful if you could please leave a comment below this YouTube video. It would help the video climb the rankings and would get out to more people that need it.

Links Mentioned:

• www.carltaylor.com.au
• Facebook Group
• www.givingpledge.org
• www.automationagency.com
• www.GetMeToDone.com
• www.Productiveinsights.com
• www.YouTube.com/ProductiveInsights
• https://productiveinsights.com/the-eisenhower-matrix/

Related Episodes:

• 192. Business Continuity Planning During A Crisis — A 3-Step Framework Part 1 of 3
• 193. Business Continuity Planning During A Crisis — A 3-Step Framework Part 2 of 3

Ash Roy and Carl Taylor Video Transcript (This transcript has been auto-generated. Artificial Intelligence is still in the process of perfecting itself. There may be some errors in transcription):

Carl Taylor (00:00):

And then because you know we’re in this uncharted territory, all this stuff’s changing and we’re not, you know, we’re like, Oh, we’ve never been in this scenario before. This time it’s different. You know when you go back and look through history pretty well every time someone has said this time is different. Yeah, 99.5% of the time it hasn’t ended up being very different.

Ash Roy (00:22):

Welcome back to the productive insights podcast. This is Ash Roy, the founder of productiveinsights.com and the host of the productive insights podcast and this is episode 194 with my friend Carl Taylor who has been on the previous two episodes. We’ve been talking about the three-step framework to help us through this challenging time we are all facing with the whole coronavirus and COVID debacle. Episode 192 was the first part of this three-part series, and we talked about business continuity planning, and we talked specifically about how to protect your business.

Ash Roy (00:56):

So part one was protected, part two was the pivot. That was episode 193, and we talked about how to pivot your business to suit the current environment, which then leads us to part three, which is about how to go back to a profitable business after having protected and having pivoted. So I’m very excited to welcome Carl Taylor back to the podcast. Welcome, Carl.

Carl Taylor (01:20):

Thank you. It was great to be back.

Ash Roy (01:22):

Great to have you here, man.

Carl Taylor (01:23):

I feel like I’m part of the furniture now. I’ve been here so long.

Ash Roy (01:26):

Yeah, you’re looking at part of the furniture. Absolutely. By way of introduction, if you haven’t already heard the first two episodes of this three-part series, I highly recommend you do that. Episode one in this three-part series is productiveinsights.com/192. How to protect two was how to pivot that was productiveinsights.com/193, and three of this three-part series is profit, and that’s.

Ash Roy (01:48):

productiveinsights.com/194. That’s where you find all the show notes, cheat sheets, all that sort of stuff. Now you can also access this on our YouTube channel, which is at youtube.com/productiveinsights. This episode is brought to you by the productive insights membership program that you’re gonna learn more about at getmetodone.com and also by the automation agency, which you can learn more about at automationagency.com or productiveinsights.com/automation. If you haven’t already subscribed to our YouTube channel, I highly recommend you do that. There’s a lot of useful content out there. So Carl, do you want to do a quick recap of the first two parts?

Carl Taylor (02:23):

I was just thinking that I was thinking, let’s do a quick kind of quick recap, and ultimately, you know what, what’s happened here is that the world is rapidly changed around us, right? And so rules are rapidly changing. Even from when we released and recorded and then released episode one of this three-part series, things have changed even more since, right? And so the rules are constantly changing all the time. We’re in this kind of uncharted territory, or governments are rolling out stimulus packages. They’re doing things that have never been done in history before. There are all these uncertain timeframes, you know, certain lockdowns certain changes, no one can tell us when exactly they are going to end. And so that’s created an of chaos and panic.

Carl Taylor (03:00):

And so what I’ve tried to share in particular the first few episodes is that, well firstly we need to go back to foundations, right? If everything’s changing, then what can we go back to? But solid, unchanging, never really changes. And then the necessary foundations of any business, that’s things like you know, to get customers, you need to be marketing. It’s to be running a profitable business. You need to have your costs less than what you’re bringing in, right? To create profit. You need to be selling more than you’re spending. So managing that cash flow and the actual cash flow is King. You know, it’s not profitability is King, it cash cashflow. You may have heard the saying before, if you haven’t, you know, revenue is vanity. Profit is sanity, but cashflow is reality. And so, you know, cash flow is, is the main thing that we need to be managing.

Carl Taylor (03:43):

And we talked about that in part, one of these and then because you know we’re in this uncharted territory, all this stuff’s changing and whatnot and we’re like, Oh, we’ve never been in this scenario before. This time it’s different. You know when you go back and look through history pretty well, every time someone has said this time is different, 99.5% of the time, it hasn’t ended up being very different. It doesn’t mean this is not going to be different. I can’t tell you that with absolute certainty, but all I can tell you is when we go back, and we look at the history books, when we look at what’s been happening over the last multiple decades, hundreds of years, that there are some foundational things we can, we can grasp onto and going, we will get through this these times. It temporarily, the shifts and changes. They may be some lasting impacts, but ultimately they will be an elastic band effect, right?

Carl Taylor (04:27):

You stretch in elastic band, you stretch an elastic band. Eventually it comes back to where it was. Maybe it’s just a little bit more stretchy. It’s not quite exactly where it was. That’s kind of what’s happening here. Right? So we will get through this. The share markets will go back up. Um, people will get employed again. It’s going to be painful for a short period of time for a number of people. But ultimately we can grasp onto, because of the risk, we remember our history, we can get through this and then because we don’t have the, all these timeframes, the timeframes are uncertain. What we need to have is plan As, plan Bs, plan, Cs, plan Ds. You know, right now is not the time to have burn the boats only plan a, I don’t have no other plans because plan a has to work right now.

Carl Taylor (05:04):

That is not the right attitude right now. It’s to go, okay, I have a plan a but I also have a plan B and plan C I plan D maybe even all the way to Z. Right. That, that, that depends on you and your situation. Right. When we first, I think when we recorded, um, part one of this we were talking about, I think I mentioned the bootcamps could be still groups of 10 whereas now when we’re recording to part three of this, there is really no bootcamp. It’s personal training. So things have changed. So you had to have, you might’ve had one plan A, oh I’m running boot camps and now you’ve had to move maybe to plan C. we’ve gone on doing personal training online and in person. So these are some of the shifts that you just need to be able to, to flow with.

Carl Taylor (05:41):

And when we resist, when we resist what, what is, that’s when we create all this friction and pain and stress. So we just need to have some plans to go, okay that sucks. This thing happened. All right, next plan. What am I going to do now that these don’t have to be written down? Plans let me stress that. Like the plans I have are in my head and they’re not written down. They’re not like, you know, all these things. I’ve just got them in my head to go, okay, well if that changes, here’s what I’m going to do instead, or that changes. Here’s what I’m going to do instead. And eventually I’ll get to a point where maybe I’ll end beyond a new plan, the past Z, who knows? But you just got to be able to roll with that. And then ultimately because of chaos and panic, what we need to do is just find our calm and have a plan just to have a plan, be okay with the plan changing.

Carl Taylor (06:24):

Don’t be attached to the outcome, but just know that you have a plan. You can make decisions and be calm about it. You know everything’s coming at you. And I know it’s easier said than done even for me over the last few days. Between the last episode we recorded in the one we’re recording now, you know, I’ve had high stress levels. Things have happened in my personal life and my business life that has meant that stress levels and the cortisol in my body has been a lot higher. I’m not pretending in any way, shape or form that this is easy, but I’m sharing with you what I’m doing to cope and I’m sharing with you the way I’m looking at it and not just me, but some of my very successful friends in a way that we look at. Talk about it. Even just yesterday I was on a, on a call with a bunch of my very successful business friends and we were just sharing, you know, what’s been working well for us this week.

Carl Taylor (07:05):

One of the wins we’ve had and you know there’s a lot of wins still happening and there’s some really cool things happening in the business world. So if you are a business owner, this, this is not the end. There are some really good opportunities which we’re about to talk about when we talk about profit and we just finally recap. We talked about protecting, pivoting and profiting. Protecting is about, well the first thing is how do you protect your business? How do you make sure that you are protected in a way that you’re going to stick around? And obviously the government’s stimuluses and things that have come in. If you’re from Australia, there’s a lot. And I know even in the US they’ve been rolling things out. So pay attention to those, take advantage of those, monitor your cashflow, look at, you know, categorize your costs and double down on your investments.

Carl Taylor (07:42):

When it comes to pivoting, you just, you need to pivot, you know, the what you’re saying, you need to pivot the way you’re selling and you have to pivot the way you serve and deliver what you do to your clients. And that might be changing your entire model or it might just be the medium in which you deliver what you do. So go back and make sure you listen to those previous two episodes to cover that. And today I want to talk about profit, which is ultimately, and we did touch on this, you know, some people might be like, Oh well what are you talking about? Profit in this time of crisis. You, you know, we should be caring about people’s lives. And absolutely we do. And I do. And the reality is, as I see it, until something major changes, and I don’t think this is that event, I’m happy to be proven wrong.

Carl Taylor (08:20):

We are going to continue to live in a capitalist society. And those of us in the Western world at least, and in a capitalist society, as much as it might suck money is this thing that kind of opens up doors and makes, can make life easier. And I know that that sucks. I know it’s not fair.

Ash Roy (08:36):

Well that’s the accepted medium of exchange.

Carl Taylor (08:38):

Yeah, it’s the rules we’re playing. And so I live in two camps. You know, there’s part of me that goes, well, it’s all good. It all, you know, it’s all made up. Money doesn’t really exist. And there’s part of me goes, but I live in this world where this is the rules and this is how the rules of the game are played. And so therefore, if I’m in that world, while I can be aware that it’s all stupid at the same time, I should be aware that these are the rules and here’s how I can play to win.

Carl Taylor (09:00):

So, and here’s one of the big really big things. There are going to be some people, hopefully not you listening, but there are some people out in the world who believed that for someone to win it means someone else has to lose. And I don’t subscribe to that. I, you know, I believe that there are multiple opportunities and I’m always looking for where are the win-win wins? Where are the win opportunities for me, where everyone ultimately is winning. I truly, I truly believe this is not just like I truly believe that business when done right, and I’m not saying everyone does it right, but business when done right and sick and building of wealth outside of business as well. But business is one of the best mediums for building wealth. When you do that, right, you ultimately can truly be the rising tide that brings all these boats, your friends, your family, your loved ones, your clients.

Carl Taylor (09:45):

You bring those people with you and you ultimately can help them have a better quality of life. And that’s what I truly believe. And you do that when you have that win-win attitude. When you have that, how do I serve, how do I help? How do I give, how do I truly solve a problem, which is what a business is about. So when I’m talking about profit, I’m talking about how do you ensure that you are making money, that you are solid, you’re able to look after your family, you’re able to look after your staff, your team if you’ve got team, because it’s in your interest to have a profitable business so you can keep those people employed so that they can then serve their family. They can look after their friends, they can give gifts, they can buy things, they can look after and feel like they’re not stressed out.

Carl Taylor (10:19):

And ultimately the more that your okay and you’re able to serve and give that and you can spend in the economy, you can go out. I mean, right now we can’t go out as much, but you buy online, you’re buying things, you’re engaging in other people’s products and services, then you’re ultimately helping contribute to everyone else’s quality of life. And I truly believe that, and this is not something I’ve believed always, this is a more recent shift in my 18 years in business, I’ve only really started to come to this point of realizing how how much wealth can truly be a contributor.

Ash Roy (10:47):

Sorry to interrupt, did you start when you were three years old?

Carl Taylor (10:51):

No, I started when I was 15 and I’m currently almost 34 I’ll be 34 very soon. I know I don’t look at it. Well I played a little game once, went around in a bar and we’re kind of using it as a pickup line was terrible pickup line, but we did this little test of like under 30 or over 30 and pointing at me and just going around to different groups of people.

Carl Taylor (11:10):

This is a while back and consistently it was under 30 under 30 under 30 everyone was very shocked when they found out, Nope, I’m over 30. Yeah. So like the thing here is though that business can be a real medium and I believe that for a business to truly work, unless you are specifically building a not for profit business and that is different, you should be working on the pursuit of a profit. And so what I’m going to share with you is just a few ways that you can be looking at you as an individual, but also you and your business can ultimately try to profit in these uncertain times. Where are the opportunities that are going to be available for you right now? Where are they right now? And I’m not saying you have to take them, I’m putting that in your court, but I want to open your eyes potentially to some different ways.

Carl Taylor (11:51):

You may not have thought about what’s going right now and where they will be. They will be opportunities for you to take action if you choose to. That could ultimately in the longterm really escalate your financial position, which and wealth, which in the capitalist society we live in is something that we all kind of is this kind of part of the rules. If you choose to play. And so that’s, that’s my, my bit on it. Like I’m not saying that I liked the rules. I’m not saying I fully agree with the rules but it’s like you play a computer game or something, you know the rules are the rules and you went that way, you win it. So that’s what you do. So that’s kind of the context of what we’re talking about yet. Any questions Ash before I just dive in and start sharing some stuff?

Ash Roy (12:25):

No, but I just want to bring out a point we made earlier, which is it is possible for a business to be profitable but not necessarily cashflow positive. And we saw that happen with Amazon for a long time before they were profitable. It was also possible for a business to be making a loss and still be cashflow positive, which I’m not suggesting you do by any means. But the point is if you only focus on profit and ignore your cashflow, it is quite possible that you’ll end up in a position where you don’t have a business, what an accountant would call a going concern. And then there is no question of profit in the future. So I think while some people don’t necessarily agree with this philosophy, I do believe that it’s important to look after your cashflow and your profit and your revenue in that order of priority. That’s my perspective. Now, I’m not saying that means you’re going into a loss to make money, that’s stupid. But I’m just saying make sure that you have cashflow and make sure you are solvent for the foreseeable future so that you can continue to keep the lights on or else you ain’t got no business.

Carl Taylor (13:27):

Yeah, it’s in everyone’s interest for you to remain in business and for you to be successful in business. It truly is in everyone’s interest, the government’s taxpayers’ interests, the employees that you can serve your local community because you’ve got money to pay, like it’s in everyone’s interest for you to succeed. And I know for my, for me, and I know Ash, it’s in our interest. We want you to succeed. So there’s a really good philosophy by Clayton Christianson, who was the one who kind of initially coined the term disruption, which a lot of people in business talk about now. And then he went a step further and he created the jobs to be done theory and

Ash Roy (13:58):

He wrote the innovator’s dilemma, didn’t he?

Carl Taylor (14:01):

Can’t remember, I don’t know but sorry. He’s a professor and he talks about the jobs to be done theory, which is what is the job that you are hired to do? All of us, whether it’s a product or a service where we’re hired to do a job, right? Like you go and buy a milkshake, you are hiring that milkshake to do a job. And that job is in some people’s situation just to have a drink, right? To quench thirst. But in many other people it’s actually, you know, to entertain the kids, to distract, to have an outing. Like there’s various other things. And when you start to really drill down to what is the true job to be done that your product or service solves, it can start to shift. So it’s like another way of looking at like what business am I really in is a great question.

Carl Taylor (14:40):

And one of the ways you can drill down to that is what are the jobs are, what is the job that my product or service is, is hired to do? And you know, Netflix, you know, they talk about their competitor. Their competitor is not like Stan and Disney plus it’s, it’s, yeah, it’s sleep, it’s a board games, it’s sex, it’s all these other things that people might be doing instead of watching Netflix. That’s really what they understand. And when you can start to understand that, it can help shift your, your office. So yes, you are in a pivot situation or there’s something.

Ash Roy (15:06):

So if you’re a content marketer, for example, you might think that your competition is other content marketers, but maybe it is actually your customer themselves, the news. Because ultimately you’re competing for share of mind. How do you get share of mind in a constructive way? I’m not talking about those awful disruptive headlines that create panic and fear that’s, I’m not for that at all. But I’m saying, how do you constructively capture people’s imagination and grab share of mind. And in my opinion, Apple does this really well.

Carl Taylor (15:36):

That was a good little side note. Let’s get into into profit. So just like in the previous episodes, I’ve got a nice alliteration for you to remember this. So we got three P’s when it comes to profit, we’ve got personal propositions and promotions. So, so let’s talk about that. What are the opportunities for us to profit on a personal side of things. Personally, where can we profit in this? So first up, the Sharemarket, right? Right now there are huge amounts of that. I think we’re about 30 something percent drop. We’ve had a few couple of days at the time of recording this. So that’s going up a little bit more. No one has a crystal ball. I don’t have a crystal ball and I’m not a financial advisor. I’m not giving you personal individual advice. All I’m sharing is the way I view this and I look at it and you can choose to take from that what you will.

Carl Taylor (16:18):

So just, let’s make that clear. I’m not telling you to do anything.

Ash Roy (16:20):

And whatever Carl said, I said as well, right?

Carl Taylor (16:24):

Like this, this is just general advice based on my own experience and my, my viewpoints and it’s up to you to make your own decisions. But ultimately, the way I look at it right now is when I think about what’s going on, there’s two, there’s two types of investing in the share market, right? And maybe right now you’re going, I don’t invest in the share market. If you’re in Australia and you have superannuation, you invest in the share market, correct. Whether you’re aware of it or not, that’s what the share market, that’s what the super is. And something to consider if you want to be aware, is right now the government is now saying people can withdraw $20,000 10,000 a year out of their superannuation funds.

Carl Taylor (16:56):

I personally would not be doing that unless I was in a really, really bad situation for a number of reasons because the compounding of that over a period of time is worth hundreds of thousand dollars, far more than the $20,000. But I get that some people need to take that and I’m okay with people doing what’s right for them, but I personally would not be doing that unless it was the very last drawer I had. The other reason that that’s important for us all to pay attention to is the people who do choose to sell, who do choose to take out their 10 their $10,000 each year is going to create a mass selling event of those foot. For that money to come out of the superannuation. The superannuation funds have to sell their shares, which will put downward pressure on share prices in what those super funds are invested in.

Carl Taylor (17:39):

So it’s something also to keep in mind. Now there’s two types of share investors. There’s short term investors and there’s longterm investors, people who are in the superannuation funds, that’s a long term investment, short term investment in people who are day traders or or short term, you know they buy one and they go, I hope I buy it at $2 today and tomorrow it’s $4 and I’ll sell or you know, a month’s time, it’s $4 and I’ll sell. I personally don’t subscribe to that. That’s not my cup of tea. So I got really no views around that. Like that’s what you’re trying to do. Timing the market, trying to buy low sell high is what you’ve got to do. If you’re a longterm investor though, you should be looking at the share market with a 10 year. So what I would say is if you’re currently sitting on the sidelines going, Oh, I’ve got some spare money or my share Mark, my ship portfolio has crashed, should I be selling it?

Carl Taylor (18:25):

Well if you sell it, you will realize the losses. Right now it’s a paper loss. It’s an imaginary loss. Yes, it was higher, you know, even a few months ago. But right now the lower prices is only a paper loss. You haven’t actually realized that loss. If you choose to sell, you will realize those losses get, I’m not telling you not to do that. I don’t know what you’re invested in. That’s your call. But I just want you to be aware that if you do that, you lock in those losses. Whereas if you’re prepared to write it out, if the things you’re invested in, you still believe in 10 years time they’re going to be around. There’s still going to be a good business this cause. That’s when you buy a stock or you buy a share. You are actually buying a business.

Ash Roy (19:01):

Part of the company. And as Buffet says, if you’re not going to hold it for 10 years, don’t hold it for 10 minutes. I’m a big fan of Warren Buffet. If you want to learn a bit more about investing, there’s the intelligent investor. It’s quite complex and boring to read, but chapter eight is where you start. But the other book that talks about the 10 fundamental principles, Buffet uses, I think it’s called a new Buffetology written by his ex daughter-in-law, and I’ve read it from cover to cover and it was very enjoyable. He talks about durable, competitive advantage being one of the things, there’s other factors he looks at as well. You know, if a company is involved in, in buybacks, which means when the share price goes down, they buy back shares, which I think Apple has been doing. If the company has strong cashflow, as you can see, Apple fulfills a lot of the criteria. So he owns a lot of Apple even though he’s never historically invested in tech. But if you want to learn more about investing at this time, that’s not a bad book to start off with.

Carl Taylor (19:50):

Totally. Agreed. And so just really take away and understand that if you’re buying shares, you’re buying a company, that’s what you’re doing. And so yeah, you do my, my view is that I want to have a longterm approach on this. So when you start to go one buying the company, you can start to disconnect. Not 100% but you can start to disconnect a bit from what the price is doing. Cause you might go, Oh well prices have dropped. I’m going to buy it today. But what if it’s down another 10% tomorrow? Well, if you’ve got, let’s say for example, you had 50 grand to invest, don’t put it all in at once. You know what I bought? Put in five grand now and then maybe, yeah, tomorrow or two days from now it drops another 10% good news. You still got another five grand you can put in and actually you’ve got another 45,000 to put in.

Carl Taylor (20:29):

So you put 5,000 in again, maybe it drops a bit further, maybe it goes up, who knows? I don’t have a crystal ball. No one can tell you what’s going to truly happen, you know, technical analysis, all this thing, like there’s math, but no one truly knows because the Sharemarket is a mix of fundamentals of finance and then human psychology. And right now a lot of the drops, not all, but a lot of the drops have come from a human psychologist. Yeah. So right now, a lot of things that are still fundamentally worth a lot of money have just dropped in price. They’re on a bargain discount, not because there’s something wrong with the company just because everyone else is fearful and they’d been selling it. So just just know that that you know in terms of what you’re going, Oh, should I buy, should I not understand that it’s a longterm investment?

Carl Taylor (21:12):

If you have that longterm view, if you’re like, you know what, I don’t need this money for 10 years time and I know it’s going to be better off then don’t feel like, Oh, if you bought it today and it goes down another 50% tomorrow and you’ve got some spare cash, put it in again. If you don’t have the spare cash, sit tight, just go, okay, well you know, timing, that sucks. But in 10 years time it’s not gonna matter to me. So that’s my thoughts there. There are opportunities for you to buy right now when it comes to the share market to be buying businesses at a discount at lower than what I used to be. And there are opportunities there for those who want to take it and have the spare cash. Now obviously if you have, you’re like up to your eyeballs in debt, you’ve got other things, you’ll probably get a higher return on your investment by paying off that debt and you’re paying a high interest rates, you’ll get a better higher return on your investment of paying down that debt than you would buying an investment.

Carl Taylor (21:55):

So do your math, get some personal advice if you need to read some books. But yeah, look, just run the numbers and make sure you, you, you feel like you’re making what’s going to give you the highest return, but don’t be afraid of the share market. In fact, there were some really good opportunities to profit in the share market right now as long as you’ve got that longterm view.

Ash Roy (22:13):

And by the way, I just looked up the name of the book, it’s Buffetology and it’s by Mary Buffet.

Carl Taylor (22:18):

Love that. So, so that’s your first opportunity, right? How can we personally, how can we personally be profiting in this? Looking at investments, looking at share markets, looking at other things. Now we’re talking about share market, but you might have some other opportunities come your way depending on where you’re at, where you can invest in a friend’s business because they need a loan or something to get them through.

Carl Taylor (22:34):

Obviously do your own due diligence on that. Don’t just invest because they’re a friend. Make sure it’s actually a sound business investment, but there are opportunities there personally that if you’ve got spare cash you can take advantage. Not take advantage is the wrong word, but you can, there are opportunities are plenty and there are opportunities for you to take the second type of way or we want, we can take advantage of profiting right now is through propositions and when I’m talking about propositions, I’m specifically referring to acquisition. So if you’re a business owner, which Ash, I believe most of you listening are. Yes, there are opportunities right now for either you to propose or someone to propose to you for an acquisition to occur. Meaning you have competitors, you have suppliers, you have other businesses. Maybe even some customers or some other complimentary business that would attach well or that you already do a lot of business with that during this time they’re going to, they might be in a not as good situation as you and that’s not necessarily because of any fault of yours.

Carl Taylor (23:29):

It might not be any fault of theirs. It’s just because of the market. Things have changed but you might see some opportunities that the current owner doesn’t or maybe the current owner is just exhausted, they’re tired, you don’t know their personal situation and for whatever reason maybe there’s a divorce still happening. I mean divorce is probably going to go up through this period, so there’s going to be opportunities whether it’s right now or whether it’s in the coming months or years. There’ll probably be some opportunities to do some acquisitions and that means you can grow your business faster by acquiring those businesses and you can do that very, they’re profitable businesses for sale. There are also a lot of unprofitable businesses for sale. Many people wouldn’t know this, but I was a licensed business broker for at least a year and a half. I used to teach people about buying and selling businesses, and I can tell you that the number of businesses I looked at that you know, they asking high amounts, this is during good times, they’re asking high amounts that they can not justify how it is worth that.

Carl Taylor (24:22):

Usually they put their finger in the air and said, I’m in debt of $400,000 so I want $400,000 for my business. And the business, when you then start to look at it, it’s like, Hey, I’ll give you 50,000 for it. So not everyone will take that. And you’ve got gotta be mindful. Obviously we’re not here to screw anyone, but it’s about understanding what is the value in what are the opportunities. And if someone has stuff and you can come in and buy that business and keep those stuff and the only I can walk away without having to worry about it, that can actually be a huge gift that you can give that person. So there are opportunities for you to look out there for you to acquire suppliers, people that you worked with and you, they’re part of your supply chain. Be building those relationships.

Carl Taylor (25:03):

Be aware if you are, if you are cashed up and you are interested in acquisitions, have those conversations with your suppliers. Talk to them and just go, Hey, just letting you know like I’m on the, you don’t have to say I want to acquire you. You can say I’m looking to do some acquisitions over the next coming period of time. If you come across anyone, if anyone of, and that’s a good way of talking to your supply is another good way to find out if your competitors are under strain because you can talk to your supplier and say, Hey look, I’m looking to acquire, uh, possibly some, you know, a competitors in my space. If you hear of anyone who’s maybe struggling or they’re, they’re really needed, have a cash injection or they’d be open to selling, I’d love for you to just give me a hit or tell them to contact me.

Carl Taylor (25:39):

Or you just build that relationship. So you can be aware of it. Start to have those conversations just so people know that you’re on the lookout, you’re open to it. Yeah, so that’s the like you can acquire competitors supplies, you could do customers I, it’s not as traditional, but you might do it if there was a strong reason to do that. Maybe you’re a wholesale and you want to get into the retail space. It might be something you might do. The other type is, I don’t know your situation. I don’t know where you’re at. Maybe you’re exhausted and you’re thinking, I’m just going to shut it all down because it’s all too hard and that that is devastating. Now there are some businesses that it’s not worth much. I mean, I’ve done that. I negotiated many years ago, I negotiated a cafe. They weren’t badly in debt.

Carl Taylor (26:16):

They had all these problems and I offered them like, I’ll give you a dollar and I’ll take the business off your hands. And that was a good deal for them because it just meant that they could get out of their laces, like get out of all these different things. So you can get businesses without having to pay a lot of money and I’m not saying every business is going to give you cash, but you probably have some assets that are worthwhile. So if you are in that situation where you’re going, I’m just going to shut it all down, it’s too hard. I’ve lost everything. Yeah, you still have value maybe in your email database, even if they’re not active customers, but you’ve got a list of people who know like you trust you or have a specific market. There is someone who will see value in that.

Ash Roy (26:47):

I think it’s also important when you’re considering selling a business, you need to ask yourself what value is this business to the person who I’m selling it to. So for example, let’s say you have an email list of 100,000 subscribers that you have an email for a year. In marketing terms you’d call a dead list. But then you approach somebody who’s an expert at reactivating dead email lists and they have been doing it for 20 years for our human sake. To them, that list would be a lot more valuable than it is to you. And if you understand this, then you are able to negotiate a better price for your business if you’re looking to sell it. So it’s very important to ask yourself, this business may not be worth a whole lot to me, but what is it worth to that business that I’m looking to sell it to?

Ash Roy (27:33):

Considering their assets, their core competencies, their capabilities, and the other collateral that they have available to them.

Carl Taylor (27:40):

Definitely 100% like a business is worth what someone’s willing to pay for it. You know, people kind of know that in, in, in property and often people forget that that’s exactly how it is in business. You know, even at the end of the day, it’s whoever your buyer, whoever you’re selling it to, it’s going to be what it’s worth to them. Selling to someone on a more strategic front is a higher value to them. Like if you were to sell to a competitor, you know, I understand that maybe you’re a sole trader and you don’t have a big team and stuff, but others do and so a bigger, a bigger company might go, Oh well I can buy you, I don’t need your accounting department cause I’ve got my own accounting department’s list instantly, $20,000 more saved and so that’s, there’s already instantly some some value there.

Carl Taylor (28:17):

So there are ways that when they buy, build up, buy out your opinion, they might be giving you a job as well. They might be buying you. I know people who have done acquisition, I personally not done it yet, but I know people who’ve done acquisitions not because they care so much about the business they wanted the founders.

Ash Roy (28:32):

The competency, like Apple bought Siri and I can’t remember if this is the correct number, but apparently Job’s called this guy something like 37 days in a row until they caved in. He also wanted Dropbox, which he couldn’t get and then he said he would vary them. That obviously didn’t happen. Kudos to Dropbox, but Apple is constantly acquiring businesses. They recently acquired an app called workflow, which now they’ve called workflows and they’ve baked into their iOS. It wasn’t Apple’s idea, but they’re constantly doing it and they’re doing it very successfully to Apple.

Ash Roy (29:00):

It is worth a hell of a lot of money. When Facebook acquired WhatsApp or Microsoft bought LinkedIn or when LinkedIn bought Linda, Linda was bought for 1.5 billion or something like that and it was started out of a one person garage.

Carl Taylor (29:13):

Yeah. Yeah. So I think that the thing here is to, before, if you are in that situation where you’re going, I just want to shut it all down like my businesses is, is killed, like I get it and that sucks. And I hate that you’re in that situation. So before you just shut the door and do an audit, look at what you’ve got, look at what assets are in there, including yourself, and then go, who would this be valuable to?

Ash Roy (29:35):

Yes, and think from the other person’s perspective because it’s not only when you’re thinking of your that you should think from their standpoint. It’s also when you’re looking to sell your business to somebody else, to a potential buyer, think in their shoes because when you put yourself in their shoes, you might discover a value that they are dying to get their hands on that is worth a lot of money to them and you might end up with a lot more money in your pocket than you thought your business was worth. Particularly if you think of it from their perspective and not your own.

Carl Taylor (30:05):

Oh a hundred percent like it breaks my heart when I say people shut down their business. And I’ll give you an example. I mean it’s not necessarily great example in this time time period. I wouldn’t be actively looking to buy a cafe right now personally. But a couple of years back I was looking at cafes and there was a particular cafe in Paramatta and I spoke to the owner and they were wanting, I’m kind of roughing the numbers cause I don’t have all the details. I’d have to look it up properly to remember my notes, but I think it was around $400,000 they wanted for the business. And I sat down with the owner and I chatted to them. It was all fit out, like it was fairly recently fade out. Yet I had staff, I had all these things, they only just recently shut their doors so they weren’t trading anymore.

Carl Taylor (30:42):

And she, she needed to get to, I think it was South Africa to look after her father or someone was sick and family and she had to get to South Africa yesterday. She needed to be there already. And so I said, look, I can’t justify giving you the 400,000 I’d be open to giving you maybe 100,000. And then maybe I could put like you know, another a hundred thousand dollars in say a year and a year, half time based on, on the results we get, you know. And so I was offering it almost half what she wanted just with payment terms. And she ultimately turned me down and I found out many months later that she ended up just shutting the doors completely. And she didn’t take any like shit that was $200,000 or at least a hundred thousand dollars she could’ve had day one and she, she, for whatever reason, turn that down and then months later she ended up walking away with zero. Nothing, nada. And that breaks my heart that, that that happens. So

Ash Roy (31:28):

and that’s destruction of value, even from a social perspective,

Carl Taylor (31:31):

100% it’s, it’s devastating. And so please don’t let that be you. Look at what you’ve got. Look at who would it be valuable to. And don’t be afraid to, you know, get over your ego a little bit. Maybe if that’s what’s in place and talk to some people and just go, Hey look, I’m thinking of selling. Hey, I’m not, you know, talk to your competitors. Talk to your suppliers. So st reverse, you know, talk to your suppliers, talk to your competitors, talk to the people who are your customers, who may be want. Like if you’re a middleman, you’re one of your customers might want to buy you. I can tell you that if you are, I know, let’s say you’re a wholesale supplier, there’d be a lot of people who would happily love to buy that cause then instantly all of their competitors become customers because you know the moment they buy their wholesaler one, they get cheaper prices and all of their competitors now become customers.

Carl Taylor (32:11):

The moment they do that like that is strategically brilliant and it’s a good opportunity. So please look at that. The propositions there for either you to acquire or for someone to acquire you.That’s really your, your second P in terms of profits. So we talked about how can you profit personally as an individual by looking at your, your share markets, your investments, you know, look at where those are and where the opportunities and the share market is lower. It’s not going to stay lower forever and you’ve got a longterm investment strategy there. You know, you don’t have to worry about what’s the price doing today. If it goes down, it means it’s more on sale. If you believed in it and you pay, if you paid $5 and today it’s $2 if you still believe in that product, why wouldn’t you buy more at $2?

Carl Taylor (32:48):

Um, it’s like your favorite cereal. You go to the, you go to the supermarket, you buy your cereal, you go in the supermarket the next day, it’s half price. What do you normally do? Do you bitch and moan that, Oh, I bought it yesterday. No, you usually buy another three boxes at half price. Right? So this the same thing with the Sharemarket. Go and do that with the share market. If as long as you’ve got the cash, and that’s, that’s the trick is buying, buying slowly, especially in a falling market so that you don’t put all your cash in and then, yeah, tomorrow it’s half price and you’ve got no money to put in. Yes. You don’t staged approach. Yeah. Dollar cost average it when you’ve got that longterm approaches is your smarter way of looking at it. And then secondly, look for acquisition opportunities. Either for you to be acquired or for others for you to acquire to help you grow faster when you’re out of this.

Carl Taylor (33:30):

And that’s why when you go back to what we talked about with protecting a business, having access to loans and cashflow and injections of money, you might not need that to run your business. It might be a good opportunity to have that though so you can then acquire a business and grow faster through that. So there are a lot of, there are a lot of successful businesses that either got started during the great depression or they expanded through acquisitions in the like in the great depression and we’re going to see that over the coming months. We’re going to see on the public markets probably a few acquisitions happen publicly of big companies that get acquired by others even, I don’t know if it’s going to happen, but there was even, you know, rumors, people talking about after pay might be prime for an acquisition right now. So who knows what’s going to happen, but just but just know that this is what kind of the wealthy people, the smart people are looking at.

Carl Taylor (34:14):

And I want you to think of it that way so you don’t miss out on those opportunities. And then really the third one that applies to everyone. So if you’re kind of sitting there going, yeah, that’s cool, but those don’t apply to me, that’s fine. But this third one applies to you. If you are in business right now, or even if you’re not and you’re listening and you’ve been an employee and you’re a little scared about, is there going to be income coming in and my job safe, every single one of us can be doing the third P, which is promotions. Promoting. Get out there and start promoting. Run promotions. And what is a promotion? A promotion is, I have an offer. And you communicate that to your market. Now if you’ve got an email database that you haven’t been contacting, now is the time to start contacting them, add value, add value, and let them know you’d go to promotion for my clients had automation.

Carl Taylor (34:55):

See I have specifically rolled out and taught the my clients two particular campaigns that I believe everyone should be running right now. One is called a quick cash campaign. It’s specifically designed, it’s about four emails that you send to your email list. It’s only really useful for you if you have an existing audience, but it’s a quick way of going. You you find a product or service that you have always sold or maybe you used to sell in the past and you come up with an offer. Maybe it’s a discount. I’m not a huge fan of discounting, but maybe it is. Depends on what the product and service is. Bonuses are always good. Instead of discounting, signing bonuses, adding in payment terms, various ways you can add more value to it to an offer.

Ash Roy (35:30):

And if you have spare capacity, let’s say you know your business has gone quiet, you can add a limited time bonus by saying know if you buy X, Y, Z and offer within the next day, week, whatever you get an hour of one to one time with me.

Carl Taylor (35:43):

Yeah, a hundred percent a hundred percent. So just come up with an offer and then put it out there. And so this four day kind of email, the quick cash campaign is about basically emailing them four times over a period of usually a week about this offer. And you have a deadline when the author goes away and that’s kind of the effectively how the quick cash campaign works. If you, if you are listening and you are an automationagency client in our client Facebook group, we have training videos, we have scripts, we have templates, we have all sorts of things that’ll help you to watch that. So feel free to access it if you haven’t already. The other type of campaign that I, I’ve really been pushing all of my clients to run is what I call a fill your calendar campaign. Because if you remember what we talked about in episode two of this three part, I think it was, and I talked, I talked about the number one thing we most need to be doing right now is having conversations and conversions happening and conversations, right?

Carl Taylor (36:35):

Conversations is where the money comes from and so the best thing you can do, especially if your, your cashflow is tightening up and you’ve got time on your hands, you want to be getting on the phone with as many people as possible. And so this filial calendar campaign is specifically designed to get people onto the phone. And so we do that. You can run this to cold people. You can be running Facebook ads, you can be doing it, you can do it to your existing audience. You can put it on LinkedIn, you can put it on your social media. I wouldn’t probably put it in any print media at the moment. Most people are probably consuming online radio. You could potentially do it radio depending on your business to get people to this. People are listening to radio. You could do YouTube ads. There’s various things you can do.

Carl Taylor (37:10):

But ultimately what you do is you lead people to a webinar, an online event, and that online event is where you add value, add value, add value. Look if you can, if you know how to sell on webinar, which is a, is a skill in itself, go for it and feel free to sell off the back of the webinar. If you don’t, don’t worry so much. Just get out there, deliver lots of value on that webinar, be helpful, be serving whoever shows up and ultimately then go, Hey, and then, Hey, what’s, jump on a call and do a strategy. Don’t give all the answers away if you give all the ends the ways that they don’t need to have a conversation and work with you, that may not work in your favor, but the, the reality is that probably the people who most will happily buy from you, other people who didn’t have the time to show up on the webinar anyway.

Carl Taylor (37:49):

So the goal is really not so much about getting people on the webinar. It’s there for those who want it and need it, but the goal really is to get people on the phone call. But if you run ads saying, jump on the phone with me, you’ll probably have a far lower conversion rate than you would if you ran ads saying, join me on this webinar. And then everyone who registered for the webinar, whether they show up or not, you’re offering that. They jump on a call with you and you can have that one on one conversation and that’s a really good way to fill your your calendar.

Ash Roy (38:15):

Do you recommend running the ads to the webinar or do you recommend running the ads to build your email list and then nurture them onto the webinar from your email list? You can do both.

Carl Taylor (38:26):

It really depends on who you’re targeting and the urgency you’re in. You’ll probably get a lower cost per lead if you do the opt in first then to the then to the phone call, so, but it will probably take you a lot longer so you can totally be running. Like if it was me and I was needing cash, I’d just be running the ads straight to the webinar. But absolutely you could test that and play around with that where you’re going getting people into like a hand raising offer of some kind, like a PDF, but you want that PDF to be relevant to the topic of the webinar to get a nice flow through.

Ash Roy (38:55):

Absolutely. And by the way, since we spoke in one of our previous recordings, I did go and check out our ad costs and I have started to come down so I’ve been doubling down on advertising and our list is just exploding right now. I mean we do have a really good opt in the nine step business growth mind map, which kind of has been endorsed by some of the people that digital marketer, which helps. It’s been going great. And by the way, if you want to download it, just go to productiveinsights.com/subscribe.

Carl Taylor (39:22):

Sounds amazing. Yeah, and definitely the guys here, if you haven’t already doubled down on your Facebook ads or any ads, we talk about Facebook ads a lot, but that’s just Google ads dropping as well in price. Yup, yup. Because there’s just more ad space for people to be seen and there’s less people are pulling back on their advertising.

Ash Roy (39:38):

and more people as you said, are online, there’s more eyeballs available right now because they’re not going to work

Carl Taylor (39:42):

so, so take advantage of that. These promotions. So they’re, they’re two promotional campaigns that I believe we can all be running right now. The quick cash campaign and the fill your calendar campaign. Again, automationagency clients I’ve got done for you emails, templates, examples, scripts to help you roll that out really fast. So if you are automationagency client and you haven’t come across that yet, contact the team or jump into our Facebook group that all of this stuff is in the Facebook group. So yes, that’s your, your three Ps. Personally, looking at the, the investment opportunities for you personally, proposition, looking at the acquisition opportunities for either you to be acquired or you to acquire others and the promotions that you can run. And I recommend those two key promotions in particular. That’s what I’ve been telling my clients. That’s what I’m looking at for my own businesses.

Carl Taylor (40:23):

But I would also encourage you to look at your own. Don’t feel like you just have to copy me. Look, you know, you know your market better than I do. You know your business, but run promotions, be cold, calling up all customers and telling them about a promotion you have. I would encourage you to make the promotion linked. As we talked about in the second part of this, this three part series we talked about pivoting and what you’re saying, making sure that what you’re saying about your author is in line with what’s going on in the current conversation and I think I mentioned it in part two but I didn’t not to say it now. Why right now we don’t want to be selling aspiration longterm people right now and not even though they might still in their head go into, they’re not able to think one year, two years from now.

Carl Taylor (41:03):

They’re thinking right now, so link, whatever it is you do. You sell your products and services. Link it to the now because if you don’t, if you link it to, oh in five years time, here’s what it will be like. Like you can mention that short, but if that’s your primary bit, it’s, it’s just, it’s gonna fall on deaf ears because they’re just, they’re close to that long. They’re like, I can’t even make decisions about tomorrow or next week because the change might happen. So keep your stuff short term. Ideally within a three month period is my recommendation. If it’s three months from now, you probably

Carl Taylor (41:34):

get some, some bite in, if you can bring it shorter, even more amazing. But if you’re talking about like, we do this thing and we’ll grow your business over the next 12 months or the next two years, that’s cool, but you need to give him something about here’s what we’re going to do for you in the next six weeks or something so that they can go, yeah, that’s what I really want. That’s what’s going to get me over the line. Also, if you’re talking to people on the phone, you might want to, if you know sales, often in sales, you know we know that purchases are emotional decisions, but in in times of uncertainty like this, people are going to lean a lot more on their logic. So if you haven’t, if you are selling purely on emotion, you need, you should be doing this anyway cause people need, there are different people in different balances but really make sure you’ve got some good data statistics, case studies, whatever to show that you can logically back up whatever it is you’re saying you can do for people because that again will help you in a climate like this to sell more.

Carl Taylor (42:24):

So they’re really your biggest opportunities for profit right now? There’s probably others but they’re the ones that I focus most on and my friends are as well.

Ash Roy (42:31):

You know, automation agency put together a beautiful case study for me. I mean I gave them all the copy and stuff, but I put it together and it is still working for me both as an opt in, as an as a conversion tool. So I can tell you a case studies work really well. And there’s a very simple framework that I learned from our common friend, Taki Moore, give credit where credit is due. You talk about the before state, the problem you set out to solve with your customer or client. Then you talk about the during state, which is the work you did together. And ideally you want to create what Taki calls a product handle. So my five step framework to launch a podcast or my nine step framework to grow your business profitably, or the three step framework to protect, pivot and profit, that’s something quantifiable.

Ash Roy (43:15):

It’s something that the people can hang their metal hat on. And then third part of the case study framework is the end state. The outcomes. What results did you achieve? And so the middle part allows you to showcase your expertise in your framework and often the person looking at the case study and imagine themselves in the shoes of the person who you have been helping in the case study. And then the final part, if you wanna include it as a call to action, where you might say with my podcast case study, for example, I said most of the things I did with my client, Amanda Farmer who was the person that was featured in that case study. Most of these things you will only ever do once. Why bother doing it yourself when you can outsource it, someone who does it for a living plus you’ll save yourself months of time and it, because it was targeted at lawyers, if they spend two months trying to figure out how to launch your podcast, they will have lost whatever, 20 $40,000 worth of business when they can just pay 10,000 for it and have it done for them without having to even think about it. So that’s a basic little high level business case argument, which is something you can love together on a case.

Carl Taylor (44:15):

Yeah, case studies, you can make great opt-ins or conversion tools or bonuses. You can do cover that in a webinar. You could go through that on a webinar as well and can create content. Just go through one or two case studies, so amazing framework to to share it.

Ash Roy (44:27):

We started out by talking about the situation we were in. We talked about the importance of going back and listening to the first two parts of this three part conversation. You then mentioned Carl, we always say, Oh but this time is different when we are in a crisis like this, but 99.5% likely or this is not different. You talked about the elastic band effect. You said we’re probably snapped back to some version of the situation we were in before.

Ash Roy (44:49):

Sure there will be things that have been changed, but we will be in some version of what was the previous normal. It’ll just be a new normal so you don’t have to have written down plans, but you do need to have plan A, B, C, D and this is not the time to go with the burning your boats and have only one plan strategy. You do need to have backup plans. The important question to ask yourself right now is in this time of prices, how do I ensure my businesses? Okay, so I can continue contributing and we talked about the importance of cashflow as opposed to a profit and that cashflow is a higher priority right now. Then profitability, not to say that you shouldn’t be profitable, you should, but if you don’t have cashflow then you may not be around for another three months to be able to be profitable, so get that very clear.

Ash Roy (45:35):

You mentioned Christian Claytonson, the job to be done theory and then you went on to share the stuff that I love, which is your three-part alliteration framework, the personal proposition and promotions framework, which is part of the pre part of this profit approach on the personal front, look at the Sharemarket, look at freeing up cash from your superannuation if your back is completely against the wall, but it’s not recommended. Again, none of this is financial advice. You do need to speak to your financial advisor. This is just something to consider, but it is not advice. Then we went on to talk about propositions. Either you can propose to acquire other companies or you can consider being entertained by other companies, but when you do always think of it from the other person’s standpoint, particularly if you’re considering being acquired, if you feel that you have to shut the doors, don’t act from a point of despair.

Ash Roy (46:23):

Think about what value would this business have to that person there. Sure, I feel like the business is run into the ground or I feel like I can’t keep the doors open, but maybe that guy or that gal there has all these other assets in her sphere of influence that she can leverage to make massive use of this business and therefore it’s worth a lot more to her. So once you understand what it’s worth to her, then you go with the proposition. You can also consider downstream acquisitions and upstream acquisitions, suppliers, buyers, those sorts of things. Then the last P was promotions start promoting and a really good case in point is the fact that my Facebook ads have dropped quite significantly, so we’re doubling down on that advertising and we’re growing an email list really quickly. You need to be looking for opportunities like that. If you’re listening to this, and then Carl, you talked about a couple of excellent tools for people who are automation agency subscribers. That is a quick cash campaign and the filled with your calendar campaign which you have laid out and I’ve looked at some of the stuff you’ve sent and it is fantastic. It’s pretty much plug and play, but even if you aren’t an automation agency subscriber, you can listen to this episode and you can get some high level ideas and then go and create your own version of it. Do you have anything to add?

Carl Taylor (47:34):

No, I think you wrapped it up perfectly. The only thing I w I guess I would potentially add there is, as you said, if you’re not an automationagency client, you know I choose not to provide the done for you, like roll it out. That’s something I choose to give to the clients who have been with me for many years or new clients who choose to trust in us. But it doesn’t mean that you can’t run out, run your own quick cash campaign. A quick cash campaign, just to summarize again, it’s four emails, four emails separated maybe by one or two days amongst them over a week with a fixed finite like here’s the offer. The offer goes away on this day at this time and the the different emails are designed to basically introduce the offer, make sure they understand what it is and you just talk about that same offer and the problem it solves multiple different ways.

Carl Taylor (48:14):

Maybe you share a case that’s really what the quick cash campaign ultimately is and you would send them to like a landing page where they can just sign up and buy. Unless you’re trying to sell something high price, then maybe you’re going to send them to a phone call and it’s limited phone calls. Whereas the phileo your calendar campaign, which is more the webinar to phone funnel. Well that’s like if you do Googling online you’ll find things that explained to you what a webinar funnel looks like and ultimately all you want to do is drive people to a phone appointment when they registered for the webinar and when people have attended the webinar or didn’t show up to the webinar, you just want some followup emails to encourage them to get on the phone with you and obviously have some tangible offer of work.

Carl Taylor (48:51):

Don’t just go, Hey, get on the phone with me. Like have some sort of tangible hook handle what this phone call is. An example in my own business might be like an implementation consult where we map out exactly what you need to implement. Right. That might be an example of something I could offer as a phone conversation just so that it’s showing this intangible value, that value there. And you can lead people into that whether they attend the webinar or not. So you want whatever the call to be standalone valuable, whether they’ve consumed any other content or not. So that’s what you need to go and do. There’s a bunch of landing pages and emails mixed into that. So you can, you can do that without us, but obviously if you want some help then I’m happy for you to work with us to, to get it done.

Ash Roy (49:32):

I’ve interviewed some very bright people on this podcast and I’m thrilled to have you on and I believe you have put your knowledge into written form and there’s a book coming out soon or is it already out?

Carl Taylor (49:45):

So yeah, I have a new book coming out soon called becoming Bulletproof I think. I think we should have your back. I talk about that. Well, I think we should too. I do have a book I wrote like 10, 10 years ago called Red Means Go, which is out in the world and you can find that. But yeah, my new one Becoming Bulletproof. I’d love to come on and talk about that.

Ash Roy (49:59):

All right, well let’s set it up man. We’ve got to do it. We’ll do it again soon. So thank you for being on the show now. How do people find out about you and is there anything else you’d like to add before we say goodbye?

Carl Taylor (50:09):

Look, I just want to add that, you know, whatever you’re going through right now, wherever you’re up to, just know you’re not alone. All of us have our dark days may as well. Like you might listen to this and go Ash and Carl, we’ve got this stuff sort of, you know, it might be a bit more private, but I have my moments where I’m feeling stressed, I’m feeling overwhelmed. Like it’s natural. We’re human, it’s human. So

Carl Taylor (50:28):

if you are in that state right now or you were just in that state, don’t think there’s something wrong with you. Don’t feel like you’re not, you don’t have your shit together like other people do. We all go through it in different highs and lows. Like, trust me, you are not alone in this no matter what you think. And there are people out there to support you some, yeah, sure. It might be through a paid service, but others just, you know, lean on people around you, friends, family, mentors. You know, if you’re not a part of a community pay, you get a part of a community like Ash’s community. Just get involved in a community free or paid. Don’t feel alone, don’t feel like there’s something wrong and ask for help. Please. And I know this comes from someone who has not been historically great at asking for help.

Carl Taylor (51:04):

This is not the time to feel like, Oh, I might bother someone if I call them, pick up the phone and call them if it’s, if they’re busy and they can’t answer the phone, they won’t answer the phone.

Ash Roy (51:13):

You know what I’ve been doing is I’ve been reaching out to my past members and saying to them, do you need help? And so many of them do, and I don’t see this as the time to charge for everything they were once my customer. So I believe in looking after them and we have these productive sprints, which we don’t do on most Tuesdays and Thursdays. So a lot of them who are unable to pay, I’m saying, listen, just come along for the sprint and the sprint is basically we just use a Pomodoro technique. We get on a zoom call and we just Springs. You can choose whatever you want to work on in that 25 minutes sprint.

Ash Roy (51:42):

There’s no set agenda. We’re in this together. I don’t feel isolated and I don’t feel alone and it doesn’t cost me a whole lot more to do it. I’m not paying zoom any more money to have them on the sprint. So it’s just one way in which you can support your current and past members or other people who need it.

Carl Taylor (51:58):

100% like just, I think this is a great opportunity for us all to come together. Remember what’s truly important. Yeah. Look, this episode was talking about how do you profit and make money, but at the end of the day, money’s not what’s important, right? The relationships we have and our own mental health is important. So look after yourself. Do what’s important for you and especially with all the isolation stuff happening, like it’s important to connect with people in whatever forms are possible.

Ash Roy (52:21):

and profit is not only financial in my opinion, like you know Dean Jackson who you’ll hear from soon on this podcast, he was talking about referrals and he was talking about how sometimes when someone refers you they don’t always necessarily do it because they’re doing it for you.

Ash Roy (52:37):

They get their own little kudos from it because as tribal creatures we all feel a certain dopamine hit. Get the kudos from referring somebody to a service or product that is actually good value so that person profits from doing the referral and we profit from seeing that person get a bit of kudos and we profit from seeing other people better off. It’s not just about money.

Carl Taylor (52:58):

100% and I’m excited for that. That episode, Dean is a master of any conversation I ever had with Dean is always super smart. You talk about bright people. Dean is one of the smartest men I’ve ever met and that’ll be a great episode. So people should check that out. In terms of where people can find me, you can find me at carltaylor.com that’s where you can generally get an overview. It’s not always kept 100% up to date, but it’s generally where you can find ways to contact me and see what’s kind of going on my books, et cetera. I also do have a free Facebook group for entrepreneurs and you can find that quickly and easily by going to Carl taylor.com/pool. P O O L as in like a swimming pool because group is called entrepreneurs by the pool. Feel free to join that and just chat away, share what you want, ask questions. I’m in there to be honest, not enough people take advantage of it, so if you do join the group, take advantage of it. You know, just ask you questions, share what you want. Outside of that, obviously automation agency is there to serve you if you need help or want help with your tech, Ontraport, Infusionsoft, active campaign, click funnels, WordPress graphic design. That’s the stuff we do. Go through Ash’s, link of productiveinsights.com/automation.

Ash Roy (54:02):

if you’re not watching this on YouTube, I recommend you check out our YouTube channel. There’s a lot of useful content on that youtube.com/productiveinsights. Bye for now and I’ll see you again soon. Carl, we’ll record that episode in the near future. I’ll set it up with you.

Carl Taylor (54:17):

Awesome. Looking forward to it. Thanks for having me.