The Seven Triggers of Crisis: Safeguard Your Business and Gain a Competitive Edge

0:01 Welcome to The Coaching Equation, brought to you by Empire Partners and hosted by Ryan Lang and Brooke Bishop. Our mission is to help you build a profitable and impactful coaching business by cutting through the noise and all the expert advice to deliver tried and true, actionable insights that you can deploy in your business today. Each week, we bring on expert guests, unveil cutting edge tactics and strategies, and share the secrets and stories that we've gathered from working with the most successful coaching companies on earth. Welcome to episode 15 of the Coaching Equation podcast.

0:42 I'm your host, Ryan Lang, CEO and co-founder of Empire Partners. And listen, anybody can win in business when everything is hunky-dory and it's going well, right? But here's the truth. We all know this. It's true about business as it is in life. Everything is not always going to go your way. There are going to be challenges. There are going to be problems. In the words of Mike Tyson, everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth. And you will get punched in the mouth. So today's episode is really about getting proactive. It's about being able to identify those challenges before they even show up at your doorstep. So you bring proactive instead of being reactive. And in the episode, Brooke and I are going to break down seven specific challenges that you need to be aware of so that you can plan proactively and keep yourself and your business in forward momentum while leapfrogging your competition.

1:33 Buckle up and let's get ready for episode 15 of the Coaching Equation Podcast. Welcome back to the Coaching Equation Podcast. I'm your host, Ryan Lang, co-founder and CEO of Empire Partners, alongside my co-host and co-founder, Brooke Bishop. What's up, dude? What up, what up? How's it going, man? It is going. It's a little humider than usual down here in Music City. I just lost you. It's going. Although I don't have jack crap to complain about, considering what you've been going through lately, so... Life's been crazy, to say the least. A little toasty. All right, man. Well, let's dig in. So I love what we're talking about today because it's so timely.

2:15 You know, one of the things that you and I touch on with our clients constantly is... how we're dealing with external circumstances and what we're making those circumstances mean, how they may or may not be impacting our businesses, our clients, all of that kind of stuff. So I want to start by having you just kind of introduce the concept, where it came from, and then we'll really dive in and dig in on this one. Absolutely. As it pertains to coaches running their business, one of the biggest things that'll take a coach out of the game or take any business owner out of the game for that matter is the lack of ability to prepare or to anticipate. And so what we very rarely do, and actually it was interesting, I worked with a gentleman a little while back on basically asset protection and how to structure your world so that you're insulated and all that kind of jazz.

3:05 And it was really fascinating because he was a retired attorney who got into the world of asset protection. And his whole concept was he would talk to people about what he referred to as the dark side. And it was all the most crazy, awful things you could ever experience. And his philosophy was, let's have this conversation once so you can set up your world so that you're protected. And you never have to think about it again. And you never lose sleep over it. You never have those what if dynamics. Yeah. And in the world of business, I had never heard of anybody bring this to the table until I was at an event with Tony Robbins. And so what he refers to it as is what he calls the seven triggers of a crisis. And in essence, it's go to the dark side and plan for lack of a better term plan for shit to happen so that if when there's an emergency, you break glass, but you don't have to lose sleep over it because you've never thought about it or these things don't come out of nowhere and bite you in the rear and take you out of the game.

3:57 Yep. Be ready so you don't have to get ready. Exactly. Yeah, it's preparation, right? It's like have a backup of food supply in case the shelves go dry. You're not sitting there going, I never thought about there never being any food at the supermarket. It's like, yeah, guess what? If toilet paper went out of stock a couple years ago, there's probably a good chance that food might go out of stock too. So great. Stock your house with an extra week's worth of food and be prepared. I totally agree. And I think one of the reasons I love that we're going to dig in on this today is that some people who are going to be listening to this have been through not just a crisis, but crises, right? Plural. Mom would be proud. But you know, when you're starting your business, and you're trying to figure out all of the different things, most people as normal human beings, we're just focusing on trying to get revenue in the door and trying to get clients and trying to keep things afloat.

4:50 And we're not thinking down the road far enough to even see some of the things that can and in some cases, almost inevitably will happen. Because you know, we've just got all that other stuff like right in our face day in and day out. And so, I think this is going to be insanely valuable. Number one, there are going to be people you will find yourself nodding your head at some point during this episode and going, shit, yep, you know, felt trapped to that one. And some of you are going to be listening to this, hopefully very intently going, ooh, didn't think about that, didn't really consider that that might be a possibility. So I think it's just really valuable all the way around. And I think this is a conversation that we want to have as early as this humanly possible, because I'm not shy to out myself When I first really got into leadership positions in the prior business that I built alongside my partners, I had no idea what I should be protecting myself against, you know, paying attention to all of those things.

5:45 I was just focusing on being the best that I can be day in and day out, which is great, except for the fact that somebody's got to be watching that and somebody's got to be paying attention to that. And a lot of the lessons that I learned very early on, I had the benefit of a knew some of the things to look out for and pay attention to, just like Tony did for you. So with all that said, let's dive in here. Where are we going to start? Let's start with the one that's probably got the most buzz lately. And this will make a heck of a lot of sense. So the first of the seven triggers of a crisis. So just to lay the groundwork on this. Any one of these things can create massive havoc in your business.

6:25 Anytime you have two of these things that happen, be prepared for your brain to melt. And as we go through these seven, most people are going to be listening to today's episode and they're gonna be like, there's quite a few of these that are happening right now. So not saying this for doom and gloom or to scare anybody, but again, it's to bring an awareness to this side of your business. You got to protect your blind side. But now the more you can anticipate and get ahead of these things, it gives you a massive strategic advantage in the marketplace. So the first one for today is changes in technology. Okay. So changes in technology is the first potential trigger for a crisis. Anybody heard of AI lately? Yeah. Anybody that's a professional copywriter that just got their rear end handed to them because now a piece of software can do your job lickety split way faster, way better.

7:12 Right. When we look at, you know, people who worked at a fast food restaurant, I haven't been to a fast food restaurant in probably over a decade and a half. However, from what I've heard, if you go to McDonald's these days, I don't even know if they have humans there anymore. I popped in to grab an ice cream for my mom a couple of months ago, and there were humans, but far fewer of them. Like I actually ordered the ice cream off of an LCD screen. Yeah. So, changes in technology. I mean, and I know the example that Tony loved to use when he was explaining this at his events is, you know, Blockbuster had the opportunity to purchase Netflix. Back when they were, I think they had an opportunity, it was only for a couple million bucks or something that was very reasonable. And they're like, no, we're the cornerstone in the marketplace and we don't need to buy them.

7:54 We're the biggest and we're the gorilla, right? And at the end of the day, where's Netflix today? Where's Blockbuster, right? Like I still have my Blockbuster card somewhere buried in one of my... My storage bins. I think I still owe them quite a bit of money. Probably have a DVD somewhere lying around that's still there. Multiple. But as it relates to the world of changes in technology, you know, we've looked at different LMS softwares or coaching people who are doing one-on-one coaching for forever. And they're only doing one-on-one coaching. They haven't started to bring in technology into their service offering. Is it a must? It's not necessarily a must, but I can tell you three to five years from now, if you're not leveraging specific technology as part of your service offering, your competition will absolutely have the ability to take you out because they have community or because they have different ways of communicating or because they have different ways of adding that much more value or because they can play in a different pond and out deliver your service offering.

8:50 So changes in technology is a huge one. No question. And I think, you know, we did a great episode a couple months ago with Stephen Hilgert, who's an AI expert and super good dude, very smart guy, marketing expert as well. And, you know, it was really like, look, there's not a question of whether or not people are going to pass you by. If you decide, you know, not to leverage this stuff, it will happen. And so the question is just, do you want to play or do you not want to play? Yeah. And I think one of the other things as well, when we talk about changes in technology, I think one of the things that's a major danger zone for a lot of people is that we have seen this plenty. People have a tendency, especially when they fall in love with a platform to build their business around a specific platform.

9:33 Let me tell you how much it sucks. When that platform, either A, the company goes under, they get acquired by a different software, they make wholesale changes that don't fit with your business anymore. And I think that one of the things, in addition to just being willing and able to leverage new technologies that will help you get farther faster... I think you also have to have your head on a swivel, to use the old football analogy, and make sure that you're ready to pivot and that you know how you would pivot. God forbid something happened to some of the platforms that you really use day in and day out. Because it certainly happened to me more than once where I fell in love with the software and it either A, stopped working as well as it was working for me before, or B, went away altogether, etc., etc.

10:21 I've seen it time and time again. So that's another big kicker as it relates to business. It's just you've got to... Got to be aware of what else is out there and how you might pivot if some of your favorite platforms did go away or change drastically. Yeah. And technology can fall into a couple of their camps too, right? Because there are marketing technologies. So if you're not paying attention to the meta companies or the LinkedIn companies or these ones that, again, they know once you're hooked in their world, they've got you by the shorthairs on this because... they can hold you hostage because they know you are dependent on them. So just being mindful and staying on top of those things. And again, I just know so many of our coaches are in that school of thought of, I don't like technology. I don't want to have to learn another technology.

11:02 Technology makes me petrified to have to go do this again. And I don't want to have to adopt something new. If you're not staying up to speed on it, Your competitors that are coming up the ranks, they definitely will be. So you want to be mindful of it. Yeah. And I'll just say this too. Just like anything else in your business, guys, if let's just say you just heard what Brooke just said and you went, ah, damn it. Yeah, that's me. Or maybe you didn't say, damn it, that's me. Maybe you were just like, yes, that's me. I happen to hate technology and I don't want to have anything to do with it. Just like every other area of your business, it's not that you've all of a sudden got to be a whiz at this stuff, but you need to understand enough about it to at least understand its place in your business and whether or not it's a good place for you to be playing.

11:47 Just like any other area in your business, you need to make sure that if you don't understand it, that there's somebody that you're working with that does. Really, really, really important. So yeah. Spot on. All right. So you want the next one? Give it to me. Number two out of the seven triggers of crisis. So the first one was change in technology. Number two is changes in culture. That's never happened before either. So changes in culture. If we look at these last few years, we had COVID that happened, right? We've had massive changes in culture as it relates to politically. We look at Gen Z. We look at staffing. We look at all these different shifts that have been transpiring across the globe. We've got, look at changes in culture.

12:28 We're in an election year. Do we think that that's going to have impact on culture? Like last week, we had some massive hiccups with somebody who was at a rally who tried to, they tried to assassinate them, right? Do we think that that could potentially affect culture and everybody's eyeballs and affect how people react or how they interact or how they participate in marketing or how they engage in a sales engagement? Or how could it potentially trigger them to behave differently as a client? So changes in culture are really, really important. And again, you don't have to make knee jerk reactions to this, but you want to be prepared to know how are you going to navigate if when changes in culture are happening? Do you want to be ahead of the curve? Do you want to change your stance on things? Do you want to go all in on your perspective of things? Or do you want to go more neutral?

13:10 So I think it's just an important one to be just, again, really mindful. Changes in culture are going to happen, right? You look at even dynamics like cryptocurrency. That's a big change in culture. Like, do you have the ability to take payment that's not just somebody's credit card these days? Do you have the ability to take it via PayPal? Do you have the ability to take it through, you know, Stripe or Affirm or these different ways? Those are cultural shifts and they kind of intertwine into technology. However, if people go, I don't feel safe giving a credit card over the phone, I don't It's kind of a big deal if you don't have a way of supporting where people are at. Yeah, I totally agree. And I think when we talk about, I mean, this is true for really anything that we're going to talk about, but especially as we talk about changes in culture, I think it's really important when there are big things that are going on in our external world that we as business owners are very clear about the meaning that we place around it.

14:02 Because especially if you are like many of our clients, and you're still taking a lot of your own sales calls, or you're interacting with clients or customers on a day in and day out basis, you know, or even if you're doing higher level business development type stuff, I can guarantee you that other people have already placed a meaning around it. And just like any other interaction, you know, we've got two different frames colliding. and two different belief systems colliding in an interaction. And I think it's just really important that you're very clear about that. I remember during COVID when there was such a sense that any high ticket sale was just dead.

14:46 Nobody was going to pay for anything anymore. Everybody was freaking out. If you had any kind of service related business, everybody was just freaking out. And one of the things that I got to witness was a great situation where, you know, your uncle, one of my most important mentors, Mark von Muser, did a phenomenal job during that time of shepherding a team of people through a very difficult period and giving them a really clear and clean meaning around where we were at. All of a sudden, it was like, well, I can make it mean A or I can make it mean B. At that time, there was a clear and clean meaning around like, whoa, hold on a second. People are going to be at home. They're going to be gobbling up personal development and trainings and courses and things like that at a rate like they never have before.

15:31 This is the best time. And consequently, that group came out on top as a result of that. So there's so many different powerful examples of it. I got to see one firsthand in that particular situation. And it's one that I look back on fondly because it's such a great example of just the situation was what the situation was. We just made it mean one thing instead of the other. That's a great example of it. And I think there's a second side to this, which is be mindful of when there's changes in culture. If when you want to go all in, let's say there's a social... I don't want to call it social injustice, but let's say there's something socially that's happening and you're like, you're fully into it and you fully believe in one particular way.

16:12 Make sure you do a double take to say, does my ideal client profile, are they going to be all in on this if I go all in on it? Because you can also be very, again, if there's something that's very passionate and near and dear to your heart, you might go all in on it because it's really important to you. If it's not important to your client base, you can also shoot yourself in the foot And it may have nothing to do with what your offering is. And it may have nothing to do with what you provide in terms of a service. So just be conscious about the things that you're promoting and that you're going front and center. Again, it doesn't mean that you're not behind it. And it doesn't mean that you're not passionate about it. But be really mindful of, does it serve your client at the highest level? Does it serve your business at the highest level? Does it serve you at the highest level? Is it good for the greater good?

16:52 And are you ready to go all in? So there's numbers of examples we can give on this of companies that went all in on a social dynamic, a cultural shift, and they shot themselves in the foot unnecessarily, and it had nothing to do with their business model. 100%. And you know, before we move off of this one, because we spend so much time talking about sales around here and for good reason, during times where there is a lot of change in culture, there's political unrest, you know, a lot of... societal issues that are at play or in question, be careful during your sales calls. And don't fall into the trap because here's the truth. At the end of the day, it is almost a guarantee that during any period of time where there are difficult or polarizing external circumstances in the world, someone is going to come on your phone and want to start talking about it.

17:44 And by the way... They're not just going to want to start talking about it, but in a lot of cases, they'll even go as far as to link those external circumstances to where they are or aren't. Do not let yourself fall into that trap. Number one, just don't play the game. If they want to bring it up, I mean, I don't know how you feel about it, but man, I wouldn't even go there. I would segue in. Unless I align with it, that'd be the only circumstance I would go, hey, you know, I agree with you. That'd be the only time I would because it can be a rapport killer. You can. If they go, I'm... I'm voting for, you know, whatever they are. I'm voting for whoever I'm voting for. And you go, oh, I disagree. Like you're dead. Like you're toast. Because right now the world is stacked against you from a place of polarity to use your language there.

18:26 It is set up right now to create polarization intentionally because they know where everyone's eyeballs are going and they know how everyone's going to behave. So just be mindful that your prospects, they're coming to your calls polarized. So yeah, you're spot on brother. I agree with you a hundred percent. And just make sure as well that when you get someone, this is no different than any other limiting belief. And that's really what it is at the end of the day. If you happen to find somebody on your sales call that is tying external circumstances to why they can or cannot do something or can or cannot be something or, you know, what their results are. It's still your job by the end of that phone call to get them past a limiting belief and get them stepping into the higher version of themselves, which certainly wouldn't be believing that.

19:09 So I just that's a big one at this period of time. And for those of you taking sales calls, someone to be on the lookout for. So, all right. Great. All right. So number three. So number one was change in technology. Number two is change in culture. Number three is changes in the economy. So we already mentioned it's an election year, right? Is there a high probability that there's going to be some fluctuations in the economy? You better freaking believe it. So there's massive changes right now, both in terms of the valuation of people's 401k plans, gold, silver, their IRAs. There's massive shifts that are happening in the real estate market right now. Interest rates. Yep. There's massive changes in terms of the valuation. We look at inflation.

19:51 Like, are these things having an effect on the marketplace? Are they having an effect on our client and their buying behaviors? Heck yeah, they are. Does this affect how you market to people? Does this affect your own margin? Does this affect decisions that you make? Does this affect your own staff because of the economic shift that's taking place? So it doesn't mean you have to become, you know, an expert economist, but you sure as you know what better be aware of what's going on Because it's going to change the behaviors and how people operate. This also just one that I know we not to totally derail, but like as an example, our credit card processor. So we use Stripe. So for a lot of the coaching financing options that used to be available to people a year ago, many of those are no longer.

20:33 They're not even in business. They're no longer funding people. So you got to stay ahead of that curve. And I know one of the that we recommend is Affirm. which is a native thing that's baked right into Stripe. Well, guess what? If you're using Stripe as your payment processor, you can now do financing and it's native and they drop the installments right in your bank account. Like that's a cool thing to be ahead of the curve on, but you also want to be mindful. Are you paying for services that you're not even using anymore because the economy has shifted? Like, again, these are all things to just kind of start to ponder because if there's changes in the economy, it's going to play into how you function, how you navigate. 100%. And I think you bring a couple of really good points. Number one, it's obviously, as business owners, we need to be aware of the changes in the economy.

21:16 Because, well, first of all, you know, yes, as it relates to like our payment processors, and what financing our clients will or, you know, will not be able to take advantage of. But in addition to that, listen, if you are a smart business owner, You're paying attention to what's happening in the outside world as it relates to finance and the economy. And you may make different business decisions during times of fluctuation in the economy than you would at other times. And that's something to pay attention to. You know, some of the biggest business successes that we've ever seen have come in down economies. And it's because the people running the ships at those companies or the individuals that, you know, made investments, snapped up companies, decided to start services, had played it smart at other times.

22:03 So I think there are incredible, incredible lessons to be learned as it relates to potential changes in the economy and how that can play into your business. And then obviously, to your point, Brooke, there's also, again, bringing this back to sales, there are, you know, we're talking about not human behavior. When somebody comes on your sales call, you think that somebody is going to behave a little bit differently or may display slightly different buying behaviors during an economic downturn than when everything's flying high. I mean, yeah, I'd say so. I would say so. Actually, for a little shameless plug moment. So close everyone's sales training that we deliver. By the way, that whole process was built in 2008 in a mega downed economy when there was no money for marketing, when people were down and out, when there was no financing.

22:50 People couldn't get credit cards, even if they begged, borrowed and would steal to try and get one. So that whole model of things that we've crafted is structured for down economic turns. So just a little shameless plug there. Yeah. And I'll just say this. I don't want to just leave that there. For those of you that are listening to this right now, and you're not familiar with our Close Everyone sales training, look, we'll give you our sales script, the sales script that was built during one of the most difficult economic periods of all time. And you can get that. Just go to empirepartners.io forward slash script. We'll put that in the show notes, link it up for you so you can go grab that. It's 100% free. Go grab it. Sweet. Love when there's a freebie giveaway.

23:32 All right. So number four. So we have number one is change in technology. Number two is change in culture. Number three is change in economy. Number four is changes in your customers' lives. So what does this refer to? Let's say for the last 10 years, let's say the bulk of your clients were baby boomers. Is it humanly possible that your marketing strategies and your languaging and your sales approach or even the technologies you're using, if you've been massively promoting to baby boomers, is it possible that your demographic and clientele has changed? right? Is it possible that their buying behaviors are different? Is it possible that now you're, let's say baby boomers are still your target client, but now you've moved all your stuff over to cryptocurrency.

24:16 Is it possible that you're going to have hiccups because they can't even enroll because you're accepting crypto? I'm using that as an extreme example. However, if let's say you've been predominantly marketing to baby boomers or millennials for the last 10 years, and now you're in a Gen Z ecosystem, they make different moves. Better freaking believe it. Do they behave different? Is their core value system very different than the other generations? So you've got to be really, really mindful of the changes that are happening in your customers' lives, how they behave, where they're actually giving their attention. So here's another one. If you've been doing the bulk of your marketing on, let's say, radio ads or commercials on TV, and your clientele is now over on TikTok or YouTube, is it possible that that could massively affect the way your business runs?

24:59 100%. Definitely can't. I couldn't agree more. And you know, this is one, we've seen this front and center a couple of different times. You know, one of the interesting things at play here is that, you know, when you do a really good job of defining, well-defining your customer avatar and you're well-niched, which, you know, we've talked about and we'll continue to talk about the importance of that. The better job you do with that, the more you're going to have to pay attention to this. Because you've got a group of humans that's going to be directly impacted by various changes in their lives, in their age, in their demographics, in their industries. We worked over this past year with somebody who was fantastic at shepherding people to the next level in their careers in the tech industry.

25:48 massive problems in that industry this year. And that was a really interesting one to play part to because there was a lot of pivoting that had to happen based on that. And one of the things, I mean, this is true about any of these seven triggers that we're going to talk about today, but especially here, you know, We have choices as business owners when these things come up to just go, Oh, I'm just going to stick with my thing. It'll be fine. Or to really recognize that there's a reason to pivot and to figure out what it is that our customers need. At the end of the day, that's what this boils down to with this one is making sure that you can think through to what my customers need based on the changes that are happening in their lives.

26:29 Because ultimately, that's... That's what all of us exist for is to be able to deliver what our customers and clients truly need at a very high level. Well said, dude. Well said. All right. So number... What does that bring us to? Cinco. Number five. Cinco de Mayo. So number five. Number five is changes in your employees' lives. Okay, so this is really, really important. I worked for an organization at one point in time. I was the youngest person by like 22 years in terms of on the leadership team. Well, guess what? Everybody was making decisions, not based on where the company was gonna go over the next decade, That whole leadership team was making decisions based on their own retirement. So guess what? They tightened up the purse strings. They tightened up marketing spending.

27:10 They tightened up hiring. They tightened up literally everything across the board because their lives and they were in a position of leadership. They were anticipating and they wanted to make moves for their benefit, not the benefit of where the company needed to roll. So is it humanly possible that if your staff or your team members' lives change? Actually, check. Here's another one. You have a team member who gets pregnant. Could that change the way they behave? You have a team member who's getting married. I've seen that a few times, maybe. Just a couple. If you have a team member who's getting married in three months from now, is it possible that that's going to change the way that they behave in terms of where their attention goes and how much time they take out and what their availability schedule and how they work with their other team members? So when we look at changes in employees' lives, here's another huge one that we've seen.

27:53 And you've got a shameless plug that's coming here. Minimum wage in the United States. Has that radically affected a lot of companies that are here stateside? Heck yeah, it has. You know, we went from, you and I, we're going to date ourselves here. But when I was growing up, my minimum wage was like, I think $5.23 or something crazy. In California, it's now $23.80 something cents. That's nuts. Does that change the way that businesses behave? And does it also change the way that your staffing comes in expecting to get paid certain amounts and behave a certain way? And they want benefits and guaranteed those things are going to be playing in. So one of the things that we've done to help combat this, by the way, part of why we're such big advocates of our VA services...

28:36 is we have different countries who have different exchange rates and they have very different employee-employer relationships. They have different dynamics of gratitude. They work at a very different way than some of the Gen Zers who are coming out of college and they want to get, you know, they want to get a raise in their first week and they're asking, when's my next promotion? And, you know, there's a whole plethora of things I could go on a tangent on this one. But changes in employees' lives is paramount. And if you're not looking at who your team is, and if you're not thinking ahead of where and what might be coming up for them, I think one thing to mention on this one as well is that this one in particular to me is not just about external factors that might be affecting your employees' lives.

29:18 That's certainly a big part of it. But one of the things that we have to be on the lookout for as business owners as well are changes to our company. that are then affecting our employees' lives in one way or another. And in some cases, there are changes that have been triggered by one of these other triggers, by the way. And in other cases, we've got changes that we make, decisions that we make as business owners or decisions that we don't make. that end up having a ripple effect on the people that are working for us and with us. And I think it's really important. I know, you know, Brooke and I have both been party to this in a number of different occasions, but not having awareness around the impact that your decisions make on the lives of your team, your employees, your contractors, your assistants, etc.

30:12 is very, very dangerous. And sadly, I've seen it far too often. And the collateral damage that can happen is oftentimes swift and irreparable in some cases. So I say this only to say, I think we still need to make important and best decisions for our businesses. Sometimes that includes making hard decisions that aren't necessarily going to go over well, or that may be difficult for people that work for us, or may put strain or stress on our teams. But... We need to be thinking through that and really realizing that those decisions that we're making can have a major impact on other people's lives as well. And that we have to be prepared for the repercussions and or prepared to support them at an extremely high level.

30:57 So we don't have repercussions. Very well said. That brings us to number six. So just to do a quick recap. So we have changes in technology. We have changes in culture. We have changes in economy. Changes in your customers' lives. We have changes in your employees' lives. And that brings us to number six, which is change in your own life stage. So what that means, so similar to changes in your employees' lives, if you're the business owner, is it humanly possible that your own life stage is going to drive a lot of your business decision making? So if you're thinking of retirement, or if you're in go-go mode, or if you are, let's say you're just starting up with your coaching business... Is that going to affect how you make moves and how you make decisions in the business?

31:41 This is really critical as it relates to building your team. So if you're building up your team and let's say you hire, I'm just going to play with numbers here. Let's say you're 60 years old as a coach and you hire all your staff and they're all in their mid-20s. And you're making all kinds of business decisions on the next 5 to 10 years of your life, whereas they're going to want to make business decisions for the next 20 to 30 years of their life. So your own life stage and your... So here's another way to look at this. Your own physical health. If you're not taking care of your physical health, does that have the potential of negatively affecting your business? If you got sick and you had to step away from your business for the next six months, could your business run without you? If somebody in your close family, if a spouse or one of your children, somebody who parents, I know we're both dealing with this, right?

32:24 Supporting a lot of our parents based on where their health is at right now. Are you in a position as your business structured in a way? And are you anticipating the things that are coming down the line in the event thereof? Right. So it's another critical piece of the puzzle. One of the things that I think that we don't think about all that often as well is when it comes to our lives, what do I want at this stage of my life? Because if God willing, hopefully many of you are going to end up owning and running your businesses for long periods of time. And, you know, I think that when we start, we sort of just go, oh, okay, you know, I'm just going to do this and this is how it's going to be. But at every stage, things change.

33:05 We change. Our circumstances change. What we want to do, the things that we want to take part in in our business starts to change over time. how we want to participate starts to change. And I think this is another big piece of the puzzle is as we go and as we grow, we need to be honest with ourselves about what we want and what a wonderful business looks like at this stage of our lives. Because how many times have we had the conversation with somebody, Brooke, who you know, is talking about, you know, maybe they see somebody else doing one thing. They see somebody else that has, you know, 10, 15 team members and they got four or five people on a sales team and stuff like that.

33:46 And they're driving towards that. And then they just one day go, I don't even know that I want that, but I feel like I'm supposed to want it. You know, it's one of those things where in a lot of cases, sometimes it's that we see other people doing it and we think that's what we should want. In other cases, we had a dream at one point. And as our lives have evolved and our businesses have evolved. We fell out of love with that dream and it ain't the thing anymore. And I think it's really important to factor that in because when we talk about triggers of a crisis, there are a few things that can put a business truly in a crisis faster than being completely disconnected with where you're driving, what the outcome is, what the goal is, all the things.

34:29 If you're not connected to that, there's trouble on the horizon. Yeah. You want to see a business melt down, take a business owner that's disengaged or they're no longer passionate about their product or service, especially in the coaching industry. If you're a coach and you lose that love and passion that you have for your clientele, game over and it'll go away real fast. And we were just... I just want to link this one as well. We were just talking about lives of employees, contractors, people that are working for you. One of the greatest gifts that we have is the opportunity to lead other people in our businesses day in and day out. And so many of them get inspired by... and truly join our mission, you know, get on board with our passion.

35:15 And it's so important for each of us to check in with that, make sure it's still resonating, make sure it's still what we want, because we owe that to the people that are fighting so hard for us day in and day out. And it can have a massive impact. I mean, that can drastically change things for an employee, for anybody who's ever worked for someone who was not passionate about what they do, or was disillusioned with it, it ain't fun. And it's a stark contrast to what it feels like to go to work for an inspired leader that's on fire for what they're doing day in and day out. Or an inspired leader who is living an incredible life and has put very capable leadership directly underneath them that can go inspire those people, you know?

35:59 Massive contrast. No, you're spot on, man. And that really is what the crux of all this is. How do we become better leaders? How do we maintain that passion? And how can we be mindful of our own life changes as this thing goes and knowing and anticipating where we're going? at, how we want to play, how we want this thing to orchestrate. I'm really glad you brought it up the way that you did, because at the end of the day, this is your own business, right? As a coach, you're running your own business. You don't have to run it any way anyone else tells you how to do it. Like level set your own expectations, but make conscious decisions and make it from a place of intention. Don't make it from a place of reaction. And again, be really, really mindful of your own life stage as it relates to your decision making and how you're building your business.

36:41 Well said, my friend. All right. So bring us home, Daddy-O. Let's do this. Seven. Number seven. All right. So just as a recap, so for everyone who's been listening the whole time, number one is change in technology. Number two is change in culture. Three is change in the economy. Four is changes in your customers' lives. Five is changes in your employees' lives. Six is changes in your own life or your own life stage. And then number seven is changes in competition. All right. So full transparency, I worked for a very large coaching company. And when I first started there, I said, great. Do you guys have any competitive analysis against the top five to 10 other companies that are in the marketplace with you?

37:23 Now, this was in a real estate coaching business. Do you want to know what they told me? We don't have any competitors. I about fell out of my chair. And I'm like, dear Lord, help me. You're in one of the most competitive coaching spaces. And I could have named, I mean, I already knew because I was already in the space. But I'm like, there is no less than, and this was in the early days of coaching, there was no less than 15 to 20 competitors. And the arrogance of we don't have any competitors was not good for them in terms of for their marketing, for their sales, for their coaches, for recruiting, for all the things of how they played. They had no clue what their competition was doing. Because very, very dangerous landscape.

38:04 And again, and I want to preface this because this is the other side of the kiss of death. Just because your competitors are doing things doesn't mean you necessarily have to do everything that they're doing. That's right. But you sure as shit better be mindful of what they're doing because guess what? It's going to come up in marketing. How do you differentiate yourself? It's going to come up in sales. Well, why should I work with you versus working with them? Well, why are you charging this price versus what they're charging? Well, they're doing a monthly installment plan. You're only doing paid in full options. Okay. Well, they have coaches that have this background. You don't have any of that. Like you've got to be aware of the landscape. Again, you don't have to make moves on it, but you've got to know what's going on. Because if you can't differentiate yourself or if you can't stay ahead of the curve, if you can't be optimizing your deliverables, the competition is going to come up and they're going to bite you in the rear.

38:49 It's just guaranteed. And I think you bring up a really good point in that we can't purely make decisions based on what our competition is doing or not doing. That's not a good way to do business. However, knowing is absolutely vital. And especially making sure that you or somebody on your team is at bare minimum just paying attention to what's going on in your marketplace. It'd be a good idea to find out, you know, what's going on over there. And, you know, there are going to be times... We've seen this in business time and time and time again.

39:30 Someone has a great idea. They start a business. Things are great. Someone else looks at the same idea, throws their spin on it, and then it's greater, right? And... We've seen it over and over again. And I think to your point, I think it's just really dangerous to get in that spot where either there's the arrogance around, we don't have it. We're so good. We don't have any competition or nobody can do it exactly the way that we do. And I think there's also just so much danger in not recognizing that if you're doing something well, there's a decent chance that even by way of flattery, somebody else is going to go, man, this is awesome, but I got an idea to make it awesomer. I also think that when we talk about changes in competition, when somebody takes an idea and they improve upon it, which that's innovation, it's capitalism, you know, it's what we love in this country.

40:19 I think that we miss the fact that they've found new ways to serve your customers. Yeah, I just said that. They've found new and better ways to serve your customers. So what this really boils down to is making sure that not only are you just at least paying attention to what people are doing, why do you think they're doing that? What are the needs of your customers and how are they changing? Because one of the things that we've definitely seen in business over time, and this is any business, is companies getting lazy and not paying attention not anticipating.

41:00 You know, you led with a couple of words that sort of insinuated at the beginning of all this, Brooke, that we need to be anticipating these challenges. Well, in the same way, we need to be anticipating what our customers might need or want. And the more that we can stay ahead of that, the easier it's going to be for us to navigate, you know, the challenge of a change in competition. Yes, yes, and yes. And I would even go as far as saying become obsessed. And when we look at these seven triggers of a crisis, these are also just really creative ways to stay cutting edge on what your product and your service and your deliverables are. If you're always looking at it going, how can I improve my technology? Okay, cool. We can tweak it this way.

41:40 How do we make this better for our clients? How can I be more aware of what's going on culturally and what's happening with where my ideal clients are at? And like, how can I be ahead of that? How can I be paying attention to where people's financial lives are at? How can I find other solutions? We have a lot of clients right now that are creating drop offers because they're seeing a lot of constriction around their core high ticket stuff. That's really, really intelligent to do, right? You know, how do we look at changes in our customers' lives? What's going on in our customers' lives right now? Okay, we know that's an election year. How can we be of service? How can we leverage that to our advantage versus getting our ass kicked by it because we haven't been thinking about it? Like each one of these triggers of crisis is also another way to stay ahead of the curve. When we fast forward all the way to changes in competition, there's so much magic that can happen in what we call R&D, right?

42:23 Rip off and duplicate, right? Like looking at the biggest players in your marketplace, pay attention to what they're doing as it relates to their marketing. All of it's available to you. Look at what their ads are doing. Get on their email lists. Look at what they're doing. What are they talking about? Again, it doesn't mean you have to mimic it, but you should sure as heck be mindful of what they're doing. And I don't know which fast food chain it was. It might have been Taco Bell. I could be wrong. But I believe I think it was Taco Bell or Burger King was one of those guys. They saw all of what McDonald's was doing when McDonald's was blowing up. And McDonald's marketing budget was massive. And so let's just pretend for a moment it was Burger King. Somebody's going to be able to put in the notes that, no, it was so-and-so.

43:04 I don't remember who the heck it was. But nonetheless, every time McDonald's would throw up a McDonald's, let's pretend it was Burger King, they would pop up on the same block at the same corner. Why? Because McDonald's was already doing all the market research. They were doing all the population control. They were doing all the different numbers to figure out where did it make sense to put up a burger joint. Well, Burger King didn't have the same amount of revenue to throw at that research. So they just said, well, if they're setting one up, we're going to go set one up too. And so you can pay attention to those things and you can ride the wave of people who are out ahead of you right now. But again, you got to be mindful. You've got to be anticipating. You got to be paying attention. If you're putting your head in the sand like an ostrich and you're just hoping to God that your competition is not going to just eat up your market share. Here comes the hurricane.

43:44 Watch out. Yeah, totally agree. And I think I, you know what, dude, I was thinking about it. I think it wasn't Burger King. It was McDowell's. McDonald's. Little Coming to America reference. Come on, man. Yes. Yes. Don't they have a remake coming out? Well, he did one. What was it? Another sequel. Yeah. They're doing a sequel. Yeah. It was like two years ago. Yeah. I'm joking, of course, but little reference. Come on now. Coming to America. I got to watch that. It's been too long. Yeah, so good. So good. Man, this was really a great episode. I hope that if you've been listening to this, I hope that you found value. One of the things that I love to just lead people with today as well is that each of these triggers is an opportunity.

44:27 You started to get into this just a second ago, Brooke. Each of these triggers is an opportunity for us to improve and grow and strengthen our business. And one of the reasons why I loved digging in on this topic is that we can just get so much tunnel vision in terms of what is going to actually improve our business. It's just, well, I just need more clients. I just need more clients. I need more leads. I need more sales. It's not that those things aren't important. But these are seven different things that if you're paying attention and you're anticipating and you're getting ahead of the curve can absolutely turn the dials in your business. And that's what, you know, what we like to talk about is that is that this is not rocket science at the end of the day.

45:11 These are just dials. Every one of these is just a dial. And if you know how to turn it or you're paying attention to turning it when somebody else is not, you get the chance to get ahead. So, you know, make sure as you go back and re-listen to this episode that you do it through the lens of, hey, yes, these are things to look out for, but they're opportunities. In every potential pitfall, there's an opportunity for us to capitalize on. Absolutely correct. And anything that could be, you know, it's like what a pen could be something that is used as a tool. It can also be used as a weapon. And these, to your point, these triggers of crisis, they can hurt you, they can take you out of the game. And if you stay ahead of the curve, they can also put you that much further ahead.

45:52 And it's not so much that you just, you wipe out your competition. It's not so much the competitive game. It's more that you are, you're staying ahead of the curve so you can help serve more people so that you can be really thinking and anticipating the way they see the world. It's so that you can be a stronger influencer. It's so that you can be a better leader for not only your clients, but also for your team, for yourself, for your family, for the sake of your business. So these are critical pieces. I hope that everyone who's listening will be able to go back on this one and take some copious notes. And they're going, holy crap, I should have pulled over for this one because there's a lot of pieces to the puzzle that's woven in this. But we encourage you guys, take these seven triggers. Again, you don't need to live in the dark side of things. But we do encourage you maybe once a quarter or once every six months, you definitely take a step back and go, okay, what's going on with my competitors?

46:38 What's going on in technology? What's going on in the economy? Like, again, go back through these seven and check in and just get a pulse just to make sure that you're staying on top of things. Yeah, 100%. 100%. Dude, great stuff. You know, when you said pen a minute ago and you said weapon, I could not think about the fact that I totally had a pen knife when I was a kid. Did you ever have one of those? Yeah. I totally had a pen knife. Yeah, they are dope. They are dope. Talk about, I'm going to take this in really the wrong direction here. I need to just go have a margarita and call it a day. Now, I can't stop thinking about that either. I got pen knives and margaritas here. Go to your local Mexican food restaurant. Go to your local Blockbuster. Oh, but you can't.

47:21 Oh, man. So many fun tangents. Yeah, no doubt. All right. Well, I'm going to go create a crisis with a margarita and a pen knife and watch Coming to America. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Coaching Equation Podcast. Brooke, as always, this was a blast, buddy. Good stuff. And we'll see you guys on the next episode. Take care. Thank you for listening to this episode of The Coaching Equation. Please hit subscribe wherever you listen to your podcasts. And if you got value out of this episode, we would be so grateful if you would share it out with a friend and leave us a review on iTunes or your favorite platform. To learn more about Empire Partners or to inquire about working with Ryan and Brooke, please visit www.empirepartners.io forward slash go.