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Right. There’s always going to be outside shocks to the system. Just when you view it from an economic perspective, actors make moves. It shocks the system in some way. And that affects how cash flows, how business operates. Be it an election, something else, a housing crisis, a bubble popping. there are so many different things that could change how the market around you operates. So what are, for lack of a better word, evergreen strategies that you should put in place as a consultant to make yourself more resilient, to make your independent business More independent, more healthy, more not isolated, but more, I’m struggling for the word here, outside of the influence of the shocks, more resilient.

I don’t know the name of the application, though. Ah, yep, you’re right. Yep. So

Completely agreed. I look around at major disruptions or major shocks to. I’m U. S. -centric because I’m in America. So I look at things like the gold rush, the Great Depression, the 2008 housing bubble. People made money in each of these opportunities or each of these crises because. There are opportunities to make money. There will always be an opportunity to make money. And you hit the nail on the head when you said it’s about identifying those expensive problems and following where the money is. There will always be. Some set of people who need a problem solved. It might mean that your consulting business in the shape it is in today, or your independent business, it’s not solving the same problem that people need solved anymore, which means you need to. Do market research, identify if you need to choose a new target market, figure out if you need to solve a new problem, and maybe invest in education to learn how to solve said problem. But I look around and say, you know what? If the Great Depression hit, the Great Depression 2. 0 hits tomorrow, well, there’s going to still be people spending money. There’s going to still be. Cash changing hands, I might need to make a radical, jagged shift in what my business is, what services I’m providing, what market I’m targeting, and what problems I’m solving. But Am I dedicated to practicing a craft or a discipline that no longer is in demand? Or am I dedicated to operating an independent business to make money? I fall very much on the second half of that equation. I’m in the business of doing business, not necessarily the business of practicing a particular discipline. So when I see the trade wind shift, I see it as an opportunity to say, hmm, this is interesting. I want to sit back and just like look and observe and see where are things changing? What things are changing? What new needs are being exposed? And how could I help people satisfy or resolve those needs and be compensated fairly for having taken that action? So, in any sort of Economic shift, shock to the market as a whole, I feel like there are opportunities for consultants to for any business owner to make more money. But you have to be open minded. You have to be receptive to changing what your business is. In order to succeed, evolve or die.

And even a shift from SaaS to more e-commerce.

I really, really think they do. But I think it needs to be cautiously approached. I think and again, it comes back to market research and just observing the market. Let’s say there’s a shock, and you notice that, oh wow, a lot of businesses serving a particular market have gone out of business, but that market still exists and they still have needs. Well, there’s maybe a smaller pie there. It could only support, say, three businesses of a type in my town instead of the 10 that used to be there before. But there’s no reason why I can’t modify my positioning to be one of those three. So any sort of shock like this provides a reset, in a sense. Makes the membrane preventing you from entering that business arena a little thinner, a little easier to get past. So, I definitely do think that a shock to a system, be it Hey, we’re in a boom right now, or hey, we’re in Great Depression 2. 0, or hey, this economic shock just happened, all provide opportunities to revise positioning. Revise the services you offer, revise even your pricing. I mean, you might enter a depression-esque era and say, you know, I’m going to raise my pricing right now because here’s an opportunity for me to position myself as top of market. There might be fewer people at top of market who are buying these services, but I want to position myself to serve them exclusively. So very much yes, in response to that.

Yes. I mean, I think it’s a universal constant that business will change and business will change around you. And If we were in 100% absolute control of our businesses, well, it wouldn’t really be a business anymore. It would be a solved problem. What I enjoy about business is the fact that it’s, in a lot of ways, a continually unsolved problem or an evolving problem around me. And Each week, each month, each year, I get to focus on a different facet of it. And as I start understanding it more, new problems are unlocked and new areas of my business become implemented, and I get to grow in new directions. Shocks like this provide inspiration and also a push to grow a business. But I think back to the positioning comment and think about somebody who’s positioned very much as a generalist. I build WordPress websites, I write PHP. I think economic shocks like this will hurt generalists the most because they’re an undifferentiated commodity. If you’re a business owner and suddenly saying, huh, it looks like revenue is going to be 50%. This year, what it was last year, you’re going to search on more affordable sites. You’re going to go with the Upwork developer, even if there is a future cost of making that business decision. you’re going to avoid hiring a generalist and go for more of a commodity option, which means positioning and being specific in who you work with and understanding the Business reasons that people hire you as a consultant become even more important because that’s where you stand out. If somebody says, I have half as much money this year as I did last year, why should I hire you? you need to have a very convincing answer to that that goes beyond I’m really good at the PHP or I’m really good at the WordPress. It needs to be, well, you have business problem A. By solving business problem A, you’re going to make this profit paying back the investment you made in hiring me. And everything else is just going to be more profit. You need to be able to have those conversations with clients, and it starts with positioning and it goes on to understanding the market you’re addressing and the problems they’re experiencing. But if you can’t have those conversations, if your conversations are I’m great at swinging the hammer. I’m great at this skill. More likely than not, that’s going to be a contract or an opportunity that’s closed off. So I think positioning becomes even more important than we usually say it is.

You’re done, you know? Yeah, more and more I’ve revised my thinking to be that, just like you’re saying, understanding the craft of business is important. We could slot in a specific skill set or specific discipline. I mean, look at me. I had no knowledge of SEO. I ran an SEO consulting company for two years. I sort of invented a thing called outreach and started popularizing it. I built that skill set up from drawing on research I did in the sales and the marketing arenas. So Through it all, it’s been a focus on understanding: well, how do I sell as a consultant? How do I build a business? How do I build something that’s durable? And if outreach dies out tomorrow, if whatever skill I’m practicing dies out tomorrow because of a shock to the system or something else, I still have that framework of how to business well. And I could slot anything else in. I mean, over the last two weeks, I’ve texted you, I think, six different business ideas with varying responses from eh, no, to that’s a good one. Any single one of those, I could slot into a framework of operating a business well, and it would produce money because, as we’re both saying, understanding that craft of business, understanding how to get wallet-out customers, that is the primary skill. Whatever it is you practice as a practitioner, I’m a developer, I’m a designer, I’m an outreach consultant, that is secondary, honestly. Secondary to that skill of understanding how to sell or how to understand the problem somebody’s experiencing.

Right. Let’s grab a designer, somebody who’s really, really good at web design, UI design, and say, Whatever reason, Photoshop, it’s now banned in the U. S. You need to learn another skill. Well, with a couple months of research, you could become pretty damn decent at. Almost anything that you want. I mean, we have Josh Kaufman’s writing in the personal MBA about rapid skill acquisition. Tim Ferriss is writing along the same track. Malcolm Gladwell talking about the idea of 10,000 hours of practice to become an expert. And 1,000 hours of practice to become decent at it. I even think there’s a 100-hour barrier in there where you cross that 100-hour mark and you’re good enough to practice this skill. Slotting in a new skill isn’t the hard part. Understanding how to do the craft of business around that skill, that’s the important part.

One thought that comes to mind is With shocks to the system, be it a political, an economic, or any other type of shock to the system of business around you, there often are. Early warning signs, like we’ve just gone through a U. S. election. There will be shocks to the economic system because of this U. S. election for a range of reasons. But We have these leading indicators. We know the election just happened, and we know it’s going to be a few months before stuff actually starts to hit the fan. So You might have a 6 to 12 to 18 month countdown to prepare yourself for that. Okay, how do you build up your pipeline in the meantime? How do you invest in yourself in the meantime? How do you make sure that your skills aren’t disposable to a client, but are indispensable to a client? So when that client has to make that choice of, hey, I’ve got two expenses here and I need to cut one of them. You’re the person who’s guaranteed to keep that position, to keep that contract. Those are, I think, the key questions to ask whenever you see a shock like this heading down the bottom. I have conversations with all that clients about what.

Yeah, for sure. One of the most valuable things I recommend students in the W Freelancing Academy do is reach out to past clients and just ask. Questions around the business problem you are helping them solve. Not even the practitional, or not even the skill you practice, like, hey, was my code good? But So, why did you hire me to build this web app in the first place? What was the fundamental business problem? Okay, tell me more about that problem and go deep on understanding it. Because if you’re showing that you understand the craft of business and you’re able to talk with them as a peer, it once again is another asset you’ll have. It’s another reason they’ll think. This is somebody I want to keep on. This is somebody I want to keep working with because it’s not just I hand them the project and they do the project, it’s I discuss the project with them and they help me understand how to improve my business.

I’m looking at my own business right now, and I’m saying, like, if I’m expecting shocks to the system in the next six to 12 months, well, While my business is doing well right now, I want to make sure I’m investing in myself. And what does that look like? Well, maybe it’s finding contractors I could delegate to or finding courses that teach me how to address aspects of businessing that I’m not that great at yet, or setting up repeatable systems and standard operating procedures so I know I have a Flow to generate new clients. I’m very, very fascinated with the practice of generating client referrals right now. And so I’m thinking, well, hey, I want to build up a standard operating procedure. In three months, I know I could always have this referral system going where I’m reaching out to friends, family, contacts, past clients to drum up new work. Maybe it’s only 20% as efficient as it would be in a boom economy, but still if out of every 20 emails I send I get one new client. That’s going to be pretty damn good. And that’s going to further insulate my business against these shocks. And when we come out of a recession or come out of a shocked system, my business will be in an even better position to capitalize on the growth around.

Yeah. I mean, honestly, passive income is a good option, especially if you. If you’re in the situation where you have high-priced consulting services, but you’ve accidentally priced yourself out of the market because the economy has shifted under you, looking at group coaching options, looking at one-on-one mentoring options, looking at Creating a video course like or a book like the A-B testing manual or the Outreach Blueprint could be great ways to add new revenue streams. And I guess that’s another way to make a more durable business. Look at it and say, how many different streams of revenue do I have coming in, and what percentage does each one account for? For me personally, one stream is coaching. One stream is my consulting work. One stream is my info products. Info products are probably 5% of Kaiko’s income. Coaching, maybe 10%. The rest, that 85% is all consulting. So if I lose a consulting client, it’s a big shock to my business’s system. So I want to diversify that basket and expand it however I can. Bring on another one or two coaching clients, ramp up how I’m selling my info products. So I might split my time and attention across these three, but the benefit to me will be: well, hey, if I lose a client, I’ve picked up some additional revenue from coaching work, or I have a group coaching program now, or my info products are selling well, and that makes it more stable in the long term. Great, great thing to point out.

Very much so.

Now, I have full intention of my business being around, Kaiko being around in 10, 20, 30 years. The shape and form of it will probably be drastically different. Will I still be doing outreach consulting in 10 years? I don’t know. But I know that I will be providing business value to clients and customers in some way. And whatever way that is, that’s going to come from observing the market, figuring out the pains and problems, and figuring out. Is it a consulting solution, an educational product solution, another type of solution to solve that need? And that’s how I’m going to make my business survive for the next, gosh, 30 plus years.