Now we're not going through anything near as horrible as that, but the economy is tough right now and you need to know how to navigate it in your business so that you can make it at the other end and be one of the winners through this crisis. Today, we're going to explore how to adapt, how to stay flexible, how to position your business for success so when the economy does uptick and turn for the better, you are ready to win. Let's start with step number one, so important, and that's focus on cash flow. A lot of people, when they hear the word cash flow, they're not really sure what it means. Well, all it means is that you have enough cash on hand to be able to make some decisions, to have options. You have cash coming in regularly, whether it's daily or weekly. You're not just waiting for one big lump sum every quarter or from one client or whatever it might be. Your ability to manage money coming in and out of your business can really determine whether you're ready to weather the storm. So if your cashflow is weak, this is the time to straighten it out. That's why I highly recommend whether you're starting a business or you're in a current business to inject some reoccurring revenue, if not all reoccurring revenue in your business. Most of my successful businesses have all been based on reoccurring revenue. I had a software company called Webinar Ninja that got acquired, reoccurring revenue. My business right now, $100 MBA, this podcast, our sponsorship, reoccurring revenue, our program, reoccurring revenue. The point here is that you want to make sure you have reliable cash flow on hand. So as an action step, I want you to audit your cash flow, identify areas where you can start cutting unnecessary expenses, but also explore ways to create consistent income streams like subscriptions or retainers. Step two, reassess your customer's needs. This is a step a lot of people just skip altogether when things start getting tough in the economy. In a shifting economy, your customers' priorities and pain points, they're going to change, right? Staying in tune with their needs and ensuring that you remain relevant in their eyes so they're like, yep, this company's valuable. I can't cancel them. I can't stop paying them. I can't stop using them because they're still addressing my needs because they adapted. We noticed that during economic downturns, customers value tools that save them time and help them cut costs. So when the economy is bad, they're looking for ways to save time so they can spend time doing other things to make money or something that's gonna save them money. So we highlighted those benefits in our marketing when we were selling Webinar Ninja, our software. We show them how much money they're saving compared to cobbling all these other tools versus using ours. So as an action step, survey your customers, email them, talk to them on the phone, reach out to your customers, engage with them directly, and understand right now during this time, what's their biggest challenge, right? Adjust your offering, adjust what you're giving them to align with their current needs right now. Let's keep it moving. Let's go to step three, build a financial cushion. I'm a big believer in having a cash safety net in the bank. Having that safety net gives you breathing room. It makes you able to have the ability to have strategic decisions, to make strategic decisions that are smart instead of decisions out of desperation. It allows you also to invest in opportunities that come about, like an acquisition, buying a smaller company to help your company, or buying a new tool, or making a hire, or buying new equipment for your business, whatever it might be. The point here is that when you have cash on hand and you have a financial cushion, you have power. This is how it works. In a bad economy, interest rates go up. So cash is expensive, meaning to borrow money from a bank is really expensive these days. So you have more bargaining power, the fact that you don't have to borrow. You have cash on hand, you can make a decision quickly, and you can even negotiate some deals depending on what the deal is and who you're negotiating with because business is all negotiable. But more importantly, we think it's bad now. You don't know how bad it can get. So it's good to have a cushion to make sure that your expenses are covered. Many experts say that you should have at least three months of operating expenses saved up just untouched in the bank. I think that's actually cutting it really close. Three months is like this, a quarter, very fast. I'm of the opinion of Bill Gates, founder of Windows, who always had a year of expenses in the bank just sitting there. And that's my belief. I think this gives me a cushion. It allows me to feel like no matter what happens in the next year, I'm able to operate my business and I have the cash to do it. Now, that seems extreme, but I like to have that safety. It gives me peace of mind. It allows me to sleep better at night. Now, as an action step for you, start saving 10 to 20% of your monthly profits into a business savings account. Just automate it, okay? Gradually build that cushion to three to six months, to a year, if you like. And what you'll find is that every month you do this, you save 15% and a few months, you have another month of runway and another few months have another month of runway. And by the way, you could speed this up by lowering your expenses, okay? That way, you don't need that much runway to cover a lot of months. Step four, diversify your revenue streams. Relying on one income stream is risky, especially in uncertain times, okay? You never know when the economy will affect a certain market and therefore affect that revenue stream. Say for example, you run an agency that helps people design websites. If your job is just to design new websites, then you might be relying on an income stream that might just stop because people are not building new websites because they're not investing in new websites because the economy right now is quite slow. But if you are also fixing current websites, improving, optimizing current websites to get them more money to remember, we talked about saving money and making more money and also saving them time, being on retainer, lowering their costs when it comes to their server costs.