727: Rock the Recession: Reinvent Yourself, Start That Business or Pursue Gig Economy Side Hustles with Jonathan Slain

Robert Plank 0:00 Marketer of the day. Episode 727, rock the recession. Reinvent Yourself, start that business, or pursue gig economy, side hustles with Jonathan slain. Hey everyone, and welcome back to the marketer of the day podcast. We are here with Jonathan slain from recession.com and Jonathan spent the last great recession huddled in the fetal position on the floor of his office. He borrowed $250,000 from his mother in law to survive, and he paid his mother in law back. And he's now a highly sought after consultant. And Jonathan not only understands how to prepare your business for the next major recession, but also how to turn it into a profitable opportunity. And he will be educating us today about economics recessions, and we will be having a lot of fun and finding out what we need to know to not only survive but also thrive in the these up and down roller coaster times that we may be living in or maybe living in the future. It's kind of guaranteed that we don't know what to expect. So Jonathan, glad to be talking to you. Hey,

Jonathan Slain 1:08 thanks for having me on. Let's rock All right, let's

Robert Plank 1:11 rock the recession. And so what, like, first of all, why is that? Why is your branding, out of all the things that could be, why focus on the recession? Because, like, I guess there's a lot of mixed feelings with that, right? For some people it's good, some people it's bad. So why is that your your jam? Why is that what you focus on?

Jonathan Slain 1:28 Yeah, so as we were thinking about the content, I didn't want to just regurgitate the conventional wisdom about recessions. You know, the you should just fire people, cut overhead and just try to survive. That didn't really seem like the message of where I was coming from and what we wanted to add to the conversation. So Paul baller, my co author, and I, we really had something to add, which was that recessions are massive opportunities. If you know where to look, if you prepare yourself, then you can really rock the recession. You can grow your business. I know a lot of the audience that we're talking to today smaller businesses. Maybe some solopreneurs want to figure out how to break through to the next level. And so it's really thinking through that recessions like the Great Recession. That's where we got the whole gig economy. It's where a lot of companies that we know as major unicorn brands today were first forged. And so my message is one of you know this Corona recession, it's going to be a big recession. It's going to be long, it's going to be deep. Let's figure out how we can actually benefit if we're smart as entrepreneurs. That's why the branding is rock the recession,

Robert Plank 2:38 fantastic. And and I think this is, this is, I think this is so important, because it's easy to let the self fulfilling prophecy win, right? It's easy to hear the doom and gloom and say, well, I might as well just give up now, because things will decline. So I might as well just let it happen and then, like you said, like so many, so many things like, needed to change, but didn't have really the push that that was required, until some big catastrophe economically happened a minute it pushed it. And he said in there that the gig economy happened last time around, and some of these unicorn brands. And so if someone hears that and they say, Well, I don't know what maybe I don't know exactly what the gig economy means, or some of these, maybe household names that were just nothing before didn't exist or now exist, like, maybe, is there a handful of these kind of companies that really stand out for you, as far as, like, the biggest success stories of the last recession?

Jonathan Slain 3:34 Yeah, I think we're talking when we talk about gig economy, we're talking about things like Uber. And agnostic of your views on Uber whether or not you love the company or you don't like the company, it's thinking through that a lot of what drove us in the great recession is that we had a lot of people unemployed all of a sudden, and so that's where the millennial generation especially starts to pick up. This idea of always having a side hustle, of having multiple streams of income and enjoying being able to do things like whether it's Uber Lyft or or even Upwork or Task Rabbit, all these ideas where you can do some gig work, you know, where it's like, just doing a gig for somebody else, some sort of service task really became a major part of the economy, whereas before that, you really worked in a job. It was 30 years, and then you got a gold watch, and now we're much more in tune with you. Maybe work for a couple years at each of your different opportunities before you move on to the next one. You have a side hustle going at the same time, you have a podcast on the side to amplify your major focus of work or your income stream, that's what I'm really referring to. And I think what we're going to see, you know one thing, it's funny, you're asking about the branding rock the recession. I think I may have screwed that up. So I want to admit here that I probably should have called the book dodge the depression, because I really think that given. The gravity of coronavirus and the severity, the the speed with which it's dropped us into recession. This might be more of a depression than an actual recession,

Robert Plank 5:10 scary stuff. But what, what I have noticed with this recession and with the last recession, it seems like that we have that early warning, right? Like you think back to even 2007 before that recession really kicked in. Like people knew that these things were coming, but there was a lot of maybe ignoring reality or hoping it would all work out. So that's what's good, at least with, with everyone talking about it, is we have some kind of advanced warning. And kind of, like you said, like, this will last a while, might lead to a depression, but Well, cool, now is the time to take some action and do some forward thinking. So as far as where people are at today, with, say, if the recession is coming or the second Great Depression, or whatever it may be, what can and what should we be doing? Should we be looking into side hustles? Or should we be putting in those extra hours to make that or that dream business work? Or like, what? What do you recommend people be thinking about focusing on doing these days? Yeah, so

Jonathan Slain 6:15 the first step in to put the book together, we really looked at successful business owners from the Great Recession in earlier recessions, the.com burst in recessions since World War Two. And what we found is that they started step one was really to benchmark their readiness. And so on recession.com which is our website, we've got a free it's completely free, 20 question assessment. It's the recession readiness assessment, and in five to 10 minutes, you'll get your score. So if you score a zero, then you're likely to have a bankruptcy in the upcoming recession. If you score 100 then you're probably looking forward to this recession because of the massive opportunities that you're going to have. So right now, we're trending at about a 52 is the average score. So if you go to recession.com, and take it, you'll see if you're better than 52 you're probably better prepared than average. And below 52 then you've got some work to do. But benchmarking, knowing how you are set up versus everybody else, is probably the first thing to do if you want one action item, one like real actionable takeaway from there, I think it's starting to work. Through the 20 questions, and the ones that you're red on, meaning not very prepared for, try to bring those up to a yellow. The questions that you're yellow on, try to bring those up to a green. And that's how you'll improve in your score before we're into the depths of this recession. And like you said, I think the good news here is that, since the world is on pause right now, you kind of do have a little bit of time to start getting ready to rock, because nobody can move about at full speed. So I think really, the entrepreneurs that are putting in the time and effort right now are going to be the most successful and the most well positioned to be able to rock the recovery.

Robert Plank 8:08 Super cool everyone, even while you're still listening or watching this interview. Go do recession.com and take that quick test, maybe even while still listening. And when you say that there's that that score zero to 100 and a lot of, like, the average there is 52 what comes to mind, at least, knowing nothing about your test, is that there there are a lot of, at least in my small town here, there are a lot of, like, restaurants and small businesses that have just given up. They've just they've closed their doors. And you wonder, like, how are they even paying their lease on their office space? And there's a handful of mom and pops that are kind of transitioning and doing like online delivery. They're having workers work from home, if possible. They're doing curbside. They're getting involved with the various apps, especially the restaurants, getting involved. No GrubHub, DoorDash, and so that's just what comes to mind there. So when, if these businesses, if they score high, are there a few, like, a few things come to mind as far as what they're doing, right? And if a business scores low, are there a few easy things that you're noticing there as well? Yeah,

Jonathan Slain 9:19 so for the businesses scoring high. These are the ones that probably have a strong balance sheet, meaning that they had saved up for a rainy day, so they've got cash, enough cash to get them through the tough times and also to invest. So when you're thinking about it, there's a lot of assets to be had in a recession. So think through like, if you're a restaurant and you are interested in getting into pizzas, and you want one of those expensive, fancy pizza ovens, your options are to buy it from Italy, and they can ship it over, and you can start brand new, or you can start having conversations with your bank to let them know the kinds of equipment you're interested in. And. When the bank has to foreclose on other restaurants that do go out of business, then maybe they call you as a customer of the bank and let you get access to that equipment for cheap. One thing I know is that banks do not want to own pizza ovens. They want to quickly sell those assets. Because if you think about it, if a bank forecloses on a restaurant, they're going to have to go to that restaurant. They're going to have to take a truck. They're going to have to get the pizza oven out of the restaurant and then take it and store it somewhere. They're going to have to hire somebody to auction it off. That auctioneer is going to want a third of whatever they sell it for. In any case, it's a mess. So if you can talk with your banker and let them know, Hey, I'm looking to grow my business, I'd love to get a pizza oven or whatever kind of business you're in, and those large assets are for you. It's really letting your banker know what you'd be interested in, and that's how you can set yourself up for some of the great deals that I think are going to come to those of us who are smart enough to start having those conversations now. So another tactical thing to help yourself get in position to be able to move forward.

Robert Plank 11:06 Fantastic. I love it. So you're saying that we need. Oh yeah, no,

Jonathan Slain 11:09 I was gonna let you recap, and then I'll kind of give some thoughts if you're in the red and your business is not in shape to pounce right now.

Robert Plank 11:17 And, well, yeah. And I was just gonna say that I like that, that way of thinking, there of of be on the lookout for those good deals, right? Because there's always that that I don't know what you call, like, the over enthusiasm, right? Of let me be super leveraged, let me get super fast, and let me time things just right? And it seems like your way makes a lot of sense, where you kind of be a little a little more careful, a little more strategic, and use this time to get whatever assets at a discount. I mean, there might even be like, if someone out there say they don't even own that pizza restaurant, and their dream has always been to own one, maybe this is a good time to be on the lookout for a business that's going under. Or maybe there's, you know, the owner of that pizza restaurant in town. Maybe they're tired and they're they're about, they're like, I don't I don't want to wait this out. I don't want to wait all these years for it to go down and come back up. That might be a good time to just be on the lookout for whatever assets to get at a discount, either either pieces of the business or the whole entire dang business. Yeah,

Jonathan Slain 12:19 no, I love that, and I think that's a brilliant point, because right now is probably the worst possible time that this could have happened for baby boomers that were on the precipice of retiring. You know, they we were having some great years in the economy. 401, K's were at record highs. Stock portfolios at record highs. Everybody was trying to squeeze one more year out of this record run since our last recession, didn't want to sell their business quite yet, and then boom, we drop right into a recession, maybe a depression. I think a lot of baby boomers that own businesses, that own those restaurants that you're referring to may not want to go through another cycle. They may just be done. They don't want to spend the three to five years slowly clawing their way back to even slowly rebuilding the business. So if you are in the audience, and you're an entrepreneur and you do want to own a restaurant or a service business, I think now is a great time. It's in listen, I understand it could be construed as opportunistic, but I think that, in all candor, a lot of these businesses are going to go out of business in any case. And so if you're entrepreneurial, if you're hungry to own a business, I think it's a great time to start having conversations with business owners and just seeing if they are ever interested in selling or having you take over their lease, just letting them know that you're out there and that you're interested. That's how these great deals get made. That's why I think recessions can be great opportunities if you're a hungry entrepreneur and you are doing the legwork now,

Robert Plank 13:52 and I'm hearing from you a lot of like, keep the get those feelers out there, right? Have those conversations, make it known with your banker, or there's people in town, and just kind of see what happens and and, and, like you said before, don't be I mean, there's not unlimited time, but there is some time to figure things out. So don't be in a huge rush and say, I need to buy all this stuff now. I need to make all these changes. I'm hearing from a lot of you is, is build these relationships, or keep their relationships alive with the people that may need your help in one form or another. Right? The bank wants to save that hassle of auctioning things off. The Boomer, it doesn't want like he wants to see the pizza place stay open, even if he's not running it. He doesn't want it to wait until it goes to 0% so I'm just hearing a lot of get their relationships going with the people that will need your help soon.

Jonathan Slain 14:47 Yeah, you're right on it. And I think a lot of that is that I don't want the audience to be like spiders. You know, a spider weaves its web. It picks the best possible spot it can find in. Weaves a web and it waits and hopes that something hits it so that it can then pounce on it. That's not the approach that I think will lead entrepreneurs to be successful in a recession. I think we need to get out there and proactively have 10 conversations with 10 potential restaurants just to continue the metaphor that we started, and then maybe one or two of them will end up being a great situation, a great opportunity for you. I just don't want people to think that these things just kind of some people get lucky, and that's why they always seem to be the ones that get put into business. For a lot of us, I think it's having the Insight now to be having conversations in 10 different places with 10 different bankers, and that's how the smoking deal happens to be. You. You've got to put yourself in the middle of the street if you want to get run over, is what I'm saying. So that's really I just want the audience to lean into the potential here, instead of leaning back and hoping that they just get lucky with with a deal like the ones that we're contemplating. I

Robert Plank 16:00 like that a lot. Have 10 or 20 maybes happening, and then one or two will work out, and the other 18 will just be things that never happened. And the reason why you lucked out was because you you had all those, all those possibilities out there. It's like how they say, the harder I work, the luckier I get, and and so, yeah, this is a lot of great stuff, and in these last few minutes, I want to make sure that we know all about the rock the recession book and about the recession.com website, and we've got a few little tidbits. But is there anything that you feel like we left out that people really need to know about that's super juicy inside the book or in the website or both? Yeah.

Jonathan Slain 16:40 So the takeaways are, start with doing the free assessment on recession.com and then with the book, which is just on Amazon, you can really start to have an emergency break. So for the solopreneurs out there, for the small businesses, I think it's having an emergency break, whether it's for your business or for your personal life, or maybe both of those overlap because they're closely intertwined. But if this thing continues longer than we're anticipating with coronavirus, if it does turn into a sustained recession or even a depression, then what's your plan? So say your income going into coronavirus was 200,000 a year, and you see that income drop to 150 what would be the things in your life that you would cut if you saw that income drop in half? So now it's more like 100,000 what would you cut? If it's 50,000 what would you cut so that you could survive? So I don't want the audience to get the impression that it's only about rocking the recession, because I understand that a lot of people are hurting right now that a lot of our incomes have been dramatically affected. So I think the thing that gives us psychological safety is to have that recession plan in place, that emergency break, and then, you know, you have it, if you need it, you'll calmly walk over, break the glass, take out your plan and execute instead of being huddled in the fetal position like I was, because I didn't have a good plan in the Great Recession, and so now I have a plan, and I am looking forward to opportunities to pounce, but I just wanted to kind of shoehorn that in at the end here, so that everyone that is hurting right now and does need a plan also has a starting point,

Robert Plank 18:18 and that's Good life advice in general, right? Not just with your business, not just with money, but have some kind of a plan. It does not mean that you necessarily have to use it or that you need to get stressed out about it, but it makes a lot of sense to make have the plan in advance. That way you're not acting out of fear like a lot of people do when suddenly they're out of time, they're out of money now they have to do something desperate or do something that, in in hindsight, is stupid, so you just have that plan in place already.

Jonathan Slain 18:49 Yeah, what I'm saying is, I want you to preserve your best options, because otherwise you might be choosing your least bad option. And that's just human behavior. So the psychology of it is just have a plan, have it written down, and then review it every month while we're all getting through the corona crisis together. And then you can take action as needed. It's instead of winging it, it's having that foresight to put it down on paper now in the cool, rational light of day before CNN and Fox are constantly just putting recession across the headlines. Yeah,

Robert Plank 19:25 I agree completely. Get ahead of it. And I can tell that when people get your rock the recession book, they'll they'll be really entertaining, because I like a lot of your, your your wordage here, some of your your metaphors, things about like, don't shoot Don't be stuck with your least bad option. You talked about things like be in the street so you can get run over. And that's really encouraging, because there's always that fear of when you when you learn things about like money or economics or business, there's always that fear that it'll be super dry and boring, and I can tell that you like. To liven it up. So we said that the book is rock the recession, which we can find on amazon.com, correct, correct. All right. And then recession.com and I checked that a few days ago. And there's all kinds of cool things to read and resources, but the number one thing people should be doing is click on the link and go to that assessment, figure out where you're at. Just takes you a few minutes, and that way you know if you're a 40 or a 60, and you can begin with that plan from there, because now you know what your strengths and weaknesses are, what to focus on. So we said rock the recession. Book, recession.com. Anything else? Jonathan, anything to for us to think about anything, to add any place for us to go. What do you have for us as we wrap our wine down here,

Jonathan Slain 20:47 I will get you a coupon code if you want one that you can put in the show notes, that way, if people also want to get our rock the recession workbook, where we've got the resources to walk business owners through exactly how you're going to create your first written recession plan. That's all part of the workbook. And happy to get you a code so that the audience can also get that as well.

Robert Plank 21:12 Fantastic. We will put that in the show notes. And in the meantime, you out there in podcast land, go to recession.com that's R, E, C, E, S, S, I O n.com, go to the website, fill out the assessment. We'll see you there. And thanks so much, Jonathan for taking the time and telling us what we need to know. I really appreciate you being here. Thanks

Jonathan Slain 21:35 for having me on. Really appreciate it, and for all of you listening, just go out there and rock on

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