 How your small business can survive the recession. Are you worried about what the future holds for your business? You should be. What do you do to prevent your business from becoming another closed business statistic? In this video, I'm gonna give you the exact steps that you can take to prevent your business from going out of business and actually thrive in the future. And we're starting right now. Hey, I'm JR Fisher. Welcome to my channel. If you haven't subscribed, do so. Click that button down there. Don't forget to turn on all notifications. Be part of the Fisher family, the VIP group that gets notified every single time I do one of these videos. Now I've been online since 2009. I've sold all kinds of products, including digital and physical products. We've done millions of dollars in sales. I actually own a survival food company which is thriving during coronavirus. But I'm here to talk to you about what you can do to save your business. There's some things you definitely need to do. Now, are you having problems in your business right now? If so, put those comments below. I'll be happy to answer any questions you may have. Now let's jump into it and let's figure out what you can do to save your business. Oh yeah, and one other thing. I've got a free e-commerce course. It's a $97 value and I wanna give it to you. Absolutely free, it's down in the description there. You just click the link and learn. No credit card required. Now, by most accounts, we're going into a recession and it's probably gonna be kinda long and it's gonna get a lot worse. So what can you do to prevent your business from going out of business and more importantly, actually thriving during these times? As a business owner, you're gonna be forced to make some really drastic decisions and they're not gonna be popular but these things are gonna have to be done if you're gonna survive over the coming years. Now, however long you believe this recession is gonna be, I would always say prepared for a long, deep recession and that way you're not caught off guard. You need to also assume it's gonna get worse because it probably will and even if you make that assumption and it doesn't, you'll just be more prepared. Now, the real secret to surviving a downturn economy really is cash flow. So we're gonna talk about that in this video. I wanna share with you some tips that you can take right now to improve your cash flow. So let's get going. Now, there's actually four main ways that you can preserve your cash flow. The first one is to reduce and slow down your cash outflows. The next one obviously is to increase and speed up cash flows that are incoming. The next one is to position your company for a recession. And the last one, you gotta get people involved. You've gotta get your team to be more productive than they've ever been before. So the first one I said, number one, reduce and slow down outflows of cash. This is where your outflows go towards your expenses. It's time to look at all your expenses right now. Now, how can we do this? The first thing we can do is we can reduce our monthly rent. If you're renting a building, if you've got a brick and mortar, if you've got an office somewhere, you need to actually negotiate a lower monthly rent. Now, in times like these, landlords understand that they're gonna lose some tenants. So it's a great time for you to renegotiate your monthly rent payments. The next thing you wanna do, number two is get discounts on utilities. Now, some of us think you can't do that, but you actually can. Consider utilities like your water, power, internet, phones. You need to call the vendors of all these products and try to work out some type of deal. Many of these big, big utilities are willing to work with you on a payment plan or reduced amount monthly. Now, if it's something like an internet provider, something along those lines, let them know that you will be motivated to switch service providers if they can't work with you. And that will oftentimes wake them up and let them know that they're gonna have to work with you. Number three, cut wasteful discretionary spending. What do I mean by that? Look at all the subscriptions you have right now, whether it's magazines, whether it's associations, any of those things that you don't necessarily have to have, you're gonna wanna look at those and cut those. Now, don't go overboard. Don't cut the coffee machine expenditure for your employees. Don't cut birthday cakes when somebody has a birthday in the office. These things are actually morale boosters and they'll make your employees really care about you more because all the other businesses are gonna be cutting all expenses and they're not gonna be thinking about their employees and those little things that actually motivate them to wanna work there. Number four, you're gonna wanna lease rather than buy. Now, before you may have bought new computers for the office, but you may wanna consider leasing. And I know a lot of these vendors are gonna tell you, well, if you buy this copy machine or you buy this printer outright, of course you're gonna save on the price, but that saving on the price, if you run out of money in six months won't make much difference if you don't have a business anymore. You'll just have a bunch of equipment. Number five, pay payables later. Now, this is not something you just wanna automatically do. What you wanna do is contact your vendors, your suppliers and say, hey, we're having a problem right now, can I get 60-day terms? Can I get 90-day terms? Can I get 120-day terms? And that will free up some cash to help you run your business. Now, you never know when having cash on hand for an extra 15 or 30 days can actually save your business. Now, the flip side of this is, if your vendors do not wanna reduce their price or they wanna give you longer terms, you may offer them, if I pay upfront, if I pay sooner, will you give me a discount? A lot of them are short of cash also, and if you offer to pay them right now, a lump sum, you can oftentimes get a discount off what you would normally pay. And the next thing I said is to increase your cash flow that's coming in. Here's how we can do that. You can do exactly what you are trying to do with vendors. You can contact people who owe you money and let them know if they pay you now and they pay you the full amount now instead of using the terms that you had set up, that you'll give them a one or 2% discount, and that will increase the cash that you have coming in so you can use it for your bills. Now, be careful on this, and you're gonna have people contacting you too, so you kinda gotta play both sides of the fence. But make sure you're not offering terms right now. Just because you did it in the past, you're not a credit card company. So try to get away from the terms, let them know that you need to be paid upfront, and offering that one or 2% discount if they do that can oftentimes motivate them to wanna do it. You also wanna look at your receivables. I know a lot of you guys would let a vendor slide 30 or 60 days and not really say anything about it, but now's the time you need to kinda tighten up a little bit there and let them know you do need the cash and they do need to pay you when it's due. Now, there's kind of a saying here about the squeaky wheel gets oiled. You know, don't make a phone call and try to get your money in and not get a return call from that person. You'll wanna call them the next day too, sometimes twice or sometimes three times a day, send them emails and phone calls because everybody's gonna be contacting businesses at this point and the squeaky wheel gets oiled. So if you're the one who contacts them more often, more frequently, and nice about it, but more frequently, you're gonna find that you're gonna collect a whole lot more money than there's other companies that notify them once a month. Of course, you want to keep your existing customers. Now, how are you gonna do that? You don't wanna cut so much that you can't service these customers properly. If you have a better priced product in the market, remind them of that. We just went through the coronavirus thing and we're selling cases of meat and we haven't increased our prices in five years. So when somebody would contact us and say, hey, your price seems high or can you give us a discount, I would let them know. I'd say we haven't increased our prices in five years. This is actually a great price and we could have increased the prices because of the fact that there was such a high demand that we chose not to do so. Next thing is you wanna double down on your best customers. Those people who've been with you for a while, those people who've stuck with you, you wanna give them excellent service. You wanna let them know you really appreciate their business. You wanna give them better service than you ever have before because a lot of companies are gonna be looking for your customers right now and if you're not treating them right, you're gonna lose them to another vendor. And you could do little things like friendly reminders, call them, email them, send them birthday cards, whatever occasion is up, give them cards for that, send them gift boxes. All those little things will make a big difference when you're trying to keep customers. Now, the third thing I says was position your business for the recession. You know, in a business environment that's a recession, it's very different from the years that are good years. People look at things differently, they spend differently. So let's check out how we can do that. The first thing I always like to look at is lowering inventory costs. So we're gonna say inventory costs. How much of your cash is actually tied up in inventory? Do you really need a hundred units of an item? Could you get by with 50? That way you don't have your cash tied up in inventory. Next thing is revamp your product line or marketing campaign. You know, during a recession, people spend a whole lot differently and if all the products out in the market are all the same still as they were before the recession, the only thing they're gonna go for is price. What extra value can you offer your customer? What can you show them that your product is better than the next person? You know, a lot of people will race to the lowest price, but that's not always the best deal if you have a better product. Look for opportunities to leapfrog the competition. What do I mean by that? There's gonna be a lot of business out there that is gonna be available to you. A lot of those people that were your competitors out there may not be treating their customers great. Now's a good time to really vamp up your marketing campaigns and go after those customers that your competitors have. And the last thing is team productivity. Everybody's gotta step up right now. Everybody's gotta work a little bit harder. Everybody's gotta do a little bit more. Not if they feel like it because if they wait until they feel like it, they'll never do anything. And the point of this is if you step up now and you work harder now, you're gonna have a business. If you don't, you could actually lose that business. And the next thing I wanna tell you, and I hate to say it, but cut once, cut deep, and do it sooner than later. And what I mean is if you've gotta get rid of people, go ahead and do it. Decide who you're gonna get rid of, go ahead and get rid of those people. It's gonna hurt, it's gonna hurt them, it's gonna hurt you, but if that's what you gotta do to make your business survive, that's what you gotta do. The first thing you gotta do, if you're a business owner, is you gotta think of your family first, then you think of your business family. Your family cannot pay anybody if you go out of business. So you're gonna have to cut the people that you just don't need. And the other people are gonna have to pick up the slack and do other things they weren't used to doing. Now the next thing you gotta do is reduce hours before you reduce salaries. And what do I mean by that? I mean that instead of cutting somebody's pay and expecting them to do the same amount of work, if you've got hourly employees, the best thing you can do is actually cut hours. Instead of cutting their salaries. Because if you cut the hours instead, they look at it as, well, I get to work less, but I'm still making the same amount per hour. If you cut their hourly wage, they look at it, well, I've gotta do the same work and I'm doing it for less and they're gonna resend you. Don't forget, you gotta cut your own salary too, okay? You gotta watch your own expenses. If you're cutting everybody else's and still paying yourself the same amount of money, kinda unfair and people will resent that. Next thing is you wanna get all your employees on the same page. And what I mean by that is everybody's gotta understand why you're doing what you're doing. If you just cut people, if you just cut people's salaries, if you start cutting all these expenses and nobody understands that the reason you're having to do this is so that you can actually stay in business, they will understand it a whole lot better because the people that are left, the people that you haven't laid off, understand that all these cuts are necessary so that they have a job at all. That's not altogether bad to actually show them your expenses, to show them the difference of income that you have coming in in the expenditures. And once they see that and they understand that in their heads, they'll get it that you're actually trying to save their jobs too. Now, keeping your business afloat during every session, it's tough, okay? It's tough decisions and it takes tough management. But you're tough, right? You can handle this, right? You're actually helping a lot of people if your business stays open because your customers are gonna be helped, your employees are gonna be helped and more importantly, you're gonna be helped. So make these decisions upfront and do it now. These are super important decisions to make now so that you don't have to make the same decision six months down the road and it's gonna cost you even more money then. Now, have you been affected by the downturn in business? Have you been affected by what's going on in the world? Put your comments below. Put in there what you've done, what you haven't done, the issues you're running into. I'll be happy to answer any questions that you have. I really appreciate you watching this video. Don't forget, I've got a $97 Ecommerce course that I'm giving away absolutely free. 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