so we're dealing with a pandemic right
now it's pretty rough a lot of people
are out of work a lot of companies are
failing
luckily I'll put that in quotes luckily
our company is surviving and I put luck
in quotes because our company is not
surviving because of luck
our company is surviving because of a
few strategic decisions we made about
seven months ago should have made them
about four years ago that made our
company pandemic ready without even
knowing there was gonna be a pandemic so
let's talk now about how to keep your
company pandemic ready so that when this
happens again in the future or any
disaster happens you won't be at risk of
losing all your clients and having to go
out of business the first thing is you
want to keep a war chest
with at least three months of expenses
now I know that sounds tough to do but
we're seeing now based on this current
situation why having three months of
expenses is important it's something
that people in the personal finance
space have been talking about forever in
business it actually even has a name
it's called a war chest build your war
chest up to at least three months
because who knows you might lose clients
for some other reason it doesn't have to
be a major pandemic that stories
everything could be anything the best
way to have a war chest is to pay
yourselves first and then pay your war
chest second and then pay your expenses
third so let's say you make ten thousand
dollars in a month
you grab 3k for yourself put 3k in your
war chest and then now your expenses
have to be 4k or less and that locks in
your profit margin and that ensures that
you're gonna have a good war chest if
you're in one of these businesses that
have an extremely low profit margin now
you're seeing why having sixty thousand
dollars in drop shipping sales is a bad
idea because let's say you have a one or
two percent margin like a lot of these
businesses that run off Facebook ads do
you're gonna have a really hard time
building up that war chest you need a
higher margin business and that should
not be something that deters you that
should not be something that turns you
off instead it should be illuminating
when we realized we needed a war chest
and that our lead generation business
with its twenty to thirty percent margin
wasn't going to be enough that's when we
started adding all these digital
products and consulting and high margin
activities to our business because we
realized if we didn't have the profit
margin to bank a good war chest we were
at risk of falling apart if something
exactly
like this happen so make sure that you
have a war chest with three months of
expenses we've generated millions of
dollars in revenue for our clients and
ourselves just from Cold email the
problem is if you've tried cold email
it's not as straightforward or easy as
it looks we've put together the cold
email optimization checklist that we use
internally to make sure all our cold
emails are of the highest quality in a
very straightforward checklist format to
get it go over to email 10k.com
slash checklist the second thing you
want to do to keep your company pandemic
ready is to have multiple products and
services ideally in different industries
one reason why we were able to float is
we are very diversified we have a
software business where we're selling to
Shopify stores we have a marketing
agency where we're selling to other
agencies we have a digital products
business where we're selling to other
entrepreneurs and we have a coaching
business where we sell to established
business owners those are four different
niches and all of them are doing okay in
this market the lead gen business is
down a bit coaching is kind of
flatlining the software business is
actually going up and the course sales
are actually going up as well well a
couple are going down a few of our
product lines are going up and that is
the glory of having a diversified
product line now I'm not saying start by
selling five things at once
you want to follow the process that we
go through in our business course email
10k.com we’re going out to the market
and you're finding one product or one
service that really is gonna sell using
a no-brainer and then what happens there
is you find a service that works then
you outsource deliverables by hiring
team members to do those or sending them
to a partner agency then you use your
time to go find another product that is
going to take you to the next level and
I'd say you're safe with about three or
four products the more diversified the
better as long as you're not spreading
yourself too thin meaning if you're
running four products you're not going
to work on all those products I don't
touch our software business I really
don't touch our lead gen business or our
coaching business the only businesses
that I touch every day our YouTube
channel some of the analytics and
marketing for the Alex Berman brand
running Google Ads managing specific
YouTube content things like that and all
of that will be outsourced soon it's
just as I'm spinning up new things I
test them out I run them as hard as
possible make them profitable and then
outsource them I'm not about outsourcing
before things are making money as I've
talked about a million times before on
this channel subscribe if you haven't
because you'll hear the same thing over
and over again and hopefully one day
it'll click and you'll be successful the
third thing you want to do for your
business is have long term contracts
that are hard to cancel think about the
rent on your house or your apartment
let's say you're paying for example
$1,000 a month if you wanted to stop
paying in March you have a year-long
contract right you sign in January
January a thousand February thousand
March a thousand if you wanted to stop
paying in March they would make you pay
months of your contract you're either
paying four thousand to buy yourself out
or you're losing two thousand with your
security deposit and because people
don't want to lose that money they're
gonna stay for a full year you can do
the exact same thing with your contracts
with our coaching program we allow
people to pay for a full year and get a
discount on the coaching but if they
cancel after two months they have to pay
the difference between the discount and
the full rate and that reduces
cancellation a lot of businesses do that
even your cell phone company you sign
for a year you signed for two years and
if you want to cancel that early you
have to buy yourself out of that
contract that is something that
businesses do and that you can do to
ensure that clients stay with you let's
say you're a marketing agency and your
clients paying you for K a month and
then this pandemic hits instead of being
able to cancel immediately you want them
to have to pay a twelve to fifteen
thousand dollar fee to cancel because
then they'll rather stay on for a couple
months you ride out the pandemic
together and then in two months when all
of this passes you're good to go and buy
all of this passes I mean either we're
all gonna be dead from Corona or no
one's gonna be talking about it in four
months that is how to keep your company
pandemic ready have a war chest with
three months of expenses sell multiple
products and services ideally two
different industries so you're
diversified and have long term contracts
that have cancellation fees in there
thanks for watching the video subscribe
for more content like this let me know
what did you do to keep your company
pandemic ready or what do you wish
you've done did you learn anything from
this video comment let's start a
conversation let's talk to each other a
little bit like this video to encourage
this type of content on YouTube if you
want a step-by-step strategy to grow
your business and expand even in these
trying times check out email 10k com
it's a tested strategy our students have
made over four million dollars with this
course and I don't know another course
that can say that check that out below
and I will talk to you later thanks for
watching I'm Alex Berman