Rock the Recession | Jonathan Slain | 291

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September 28, 2020

Jonathan Slain is an entrepreneur, business consultant, and recovering investment banker who helps best-in-class companies worldwide achieve their vision of success. Alongside his business partner, Paul Belair, Jonathan wrote the best-selling book, Rock the Recession, and now leads the Rock the Recession summits, which help business leaders get recession ready. He is a recession expert and speaker and has been featured on FOX Business, Cheddar TV, Yahoo Finance, and more.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn: 

  • Why Jonathan Slain helps business leaders survive and thrive during recessions
  • The lessons Jonathan learned from his biggest business failure
  • Jonathan’s advice to business owners facing the current pandemic and the subsequent recession
  • The first step to creating a plan that will help you rock the recession
  • How to reframe recessions as massive opportunities for business growth
  • Strategies for attracting, hiring, and cultivating relationships with “A” players
  • Jonathan reveals the recession secret that he learned during his time as an investment banker
  • The action steps you can take today to get recession ready

In this episode…

Are you recession ready? While no one could have prepared for the unprecedented events of 2020, some companies were better set up for survival than others. Many businesses have even managed to thrive during the COVID-19 pandemic, thanks to some careful planning and a mindset shift.

When the Great Recession hit the US, entrepreneur Jonathan Slain was not ready. Now, he wants to help other business owners avoid the mistakes he made—and his expertise has never been more essential than right now. So how can you reframe your current challenges and start rocking this recession?

In this episode of the Growth to Freedom podcast, host Dan Kuschell talks to recession expert and business consultant Jonathan Slain about how to rock the current recession. Jonathan shares the lessons he learned as an entrepreneur during the Great Recession, his strategies for creating a recession-ready plan, and why he sees the current climate as an opportunity for massive growth. Tune in to learn how to help your business survive—and thrive—in 2020 and beyond.

Resources Mentioned in this episode

Sponsor for this episode

Thanks for listening to this episode of growthtofreedom.com.

Are you struggling to get a steady flow of new clients every day? Or maybe hit a plateau or hit a wall in growing your business? Well, let’s help you solve this problem today. Let’s review your business and have a conversation. You can do that for free today at breakthroughstrategycall.com. That’s breakthroughstrategycall.com.

In addition, if you’re looking for a simple way to implement some of what we’ve been talking about in today’s episode, I want to encourage you to get our free small business toolkit. You can get that at activate.breakthrough3x.com. That’s activate.breakthrough3x.com.

If you’d like access to the special resources and all the show notes for this special episode, make sure to visit growthtofreedom.com.

Episode Transcript

Dan Kuschell 0:03

Welcome to growthtofreedom.com, the show that brings you inspiration, transformation and leadership. We’re helping you connect the dots, see the blind spots and get unstuck. So you can go out, create more leads, create more sales, create more profits, so you can have a bigger impact, have a bigger reach and make a bigger contribution. You know, let me ask you, are you facing a downturn right now, you know, maybe with the economy the way it is, or at a place where you’re at risk, because of the economy of losing your best client or maybe a handful of your best clients. Well, if so, you are going to love today’s episode, today’s guest expert, Jonathan Slain. Jonathan is the best-selling author and works to help businesses prepare for recessions both with big economic downturns, as well as the potential risk and hedging your risk against losing some of your bigger or better client Write so that you can not only survive, but more importantly, so that you can thrive, right? Is that what you want? If that is what you want you you’re gonna love today’s episode. In fact, you may want to grab a pen maybe want to grab a piece of paper. By the way, if you want to come back to this episode, you can do that at growthtofreedom.com/291, that’s growthtofreedom.com/291. If you never want to miss an episode, you can go to growthtofreedom.com/subscribe so you never miss an episode. Today we’re going to talk about Rocking the Recession, Rocking the Recession and our guest expert today is Jonathan Slain. Jonathan, how are you doing?

Jonathan Slain 1:38

Great. Let’s rock Dan.

Dan Kuschell 1:40

Awesome. Well, I mean, you and your business partner have quite a fascinating story. I mean, you’ve done some amazing things, you know, from building companies, growing companies, selling companies, angel investing, you know, media regulars. I mean, you’re who’s who in, you know, with your expertise. So like, why are you guys doing what you’re doing? And what can we Learn from it.

Jonathan Slain 2:01

Real simple in the Great Recession 10 years ago, I had no plan. And so I owned a fitness business entrepreneur, like a lot of our audience had some employees. And when the great recession hit, I want to come clean, Dan about the worst thing that you can try to sell in a recession is personal training. And so nobody wants discretionary Personal Training in a recession. And I didn’t have a plan. So the reason that I survived the recession, and it still pains me to admit it is because my mother in law loaned me some money. And when I say some, I mean a quarter of a million bucks. And so you know, now I’ve paid her back. So Thanksgiving isn’t awkward anymore. But that’s the reason that I’m doing this. I want other companies, other business leaders and owners, to not have to borrow money from their mother in law. And I want to They have a much better experience in the Coronavirus recession, to be able to look forward to it and grow their business.

Dan Kuschell 3:07

Yes. And you know, as you’re watching or listening right now, are you like, have you hit a wall maybe hit a plateau, right where you feel stuck, you’re gonna want to pay attention to what Jonathan can share with you with his experience with his business partner, Paul, and how you can rock the recession too. Now, I’m curious. You know, Jonathan is you know, you’ve navigated building and growing companies, your fitness business having get this loan for your, from your mother in law, like what was your like, what what was your biggest takeaway from this? Knowing what you know, now, I’m curious, like, what would you have done differently before the last one.

Jonathan Slain 3:45

So a lot of it comes down down to having a plan. So the big difference the reason that Paul and I co-authored the book was that Paul had a plan going into the Great Recession, so he and his team invested a million dollars and They bought an HP AC company, you know, very simple business heating, cooling, going into the Great Recession. And they had a plan to turn that company into a much bigger company using the recession as a tailwind. They grew the company over 63 months, and then sold it for over 70 million. So for the audience trying to digest that, that’s a million dollar investment 63 months, and then they sold it for an American Dream exit over 70 million. I can’t tell you the exact number because of non disclosure that Paul has, but it was a big number. The reason I bring that up as because he had a plan. They knew that in a recession that people that needed hv AC wouldn’t want to buy a new air conditioner or an expensive new heater. And so they focused on service, they flip that business that they bought from 80% installation, and 20% service completely flipped it to 80% service and 20% installation. They did that. And a lot of HVC contractors weren’t willing to do that. Because imagine the huge upheaval, and I think a lot of contractors too, they like the quick hit the adrenaline of selling a deal, installing a new air conditioner and getting a big check, right then in there, much harder to make money, one service call at a time. It’s a pain. But Paul and his team saw that people wouldn’t want to spend a lot of money all at once, and that they would be willing to just patch up their their units with chewing gum and duct tape, and 100 $200 service calls would be much more palatable. And so that really allowed them to take off. So I think for the audience, it’s just thinking through in this recession that we’re in right now, how can you pivot to other services or reframe what you’re doing? offer your clients or audience what they need, in a way that’s a lot more palatable. And that might mean changing your entire business model.

Dan Kuschell 5:56

Yes, and as you’re listening as you’re watching right now, you know, I hope You’re really tuning into what Jonathan, you know is sharing with you. The beauty of being a small business is you can pivot like a speedboat. But these big giant companies many times, it’s like an aircraft carrier, and it can take them a long, long, long time to finally make the turn. Right. So you can outmaneuver the bigger companies with smart strategic strategies, you know, and a great case in point, you know, if you, you know, take what Paul just shared in the lesson, right? If shifting from installation focused or their differentiation at the time, which was installation focus, to service focus, what’s your differentiation, right, what makes you unique to solve your customer or your clients problems today, not six months ago, because it might be different today than it was six months ago. Another great example of this let’s look at the big box stores out there, the big box brands if you will in retail, right you’ve got Ace Hardware compared to say, you know, a big box brand where those big Box brands really focus a lot of times on renovation, right? renovate, renovate, renovate. And Ace Hardware is focused on preservation. Right, which is one of the reasons they have over 5000 locations around the United States or maybe now the globe. So what can you do to differentiate what can you do to set up your pivot plan so that you can outmaneuver the competition? Now? You know, Paul, as you look at, like, the journey you’ve been on, right, and, you know, the big rise of success, you know, the, the, you know, the ability to rock the recession, right? What What has been your personal business, biggest business failure? Maybe you’ve already described it, but what was your biggest business failure? What did you learn from that, that our viewers our listeners could learn from too?

Jonathan Slain 7:50

Yeah, for me, it’s really this idea that I didn’t have a plan going into the Great Recession. So when it hit, I hadn’t worked through those phases of grief Dan. So, like, the the phases of grief model, whenever there’s a big crisis in our lives, we get emotional because we are human. And so again, we start with being in shock. And then we get to denial. Ultimately we get to anger and then bargaining and then acceptance. I want the audience to be able to get to acceptance quicker, because it took me a long time, it took me months of being under my desk in the fetal position, until I finally worked through the shock, denial, anger, bargaining and got to acceptance and right now I still feel like as I’m talking to people around the country around the world, even that people are still angry about what’s going on. So now we’re angry that we have to wear masks. We’re angry that this is happening now. Right before I was going to get to retirement or right before I was going to be able to really have a breakthrough. I was finally figuring it out with my business. And then this hits you know, a once in a lifetime pandemic or angry about the protests that might be also further impairing things, or the government with the PPP or not the PPP. In any case, the whole the whole point here, Dan is just if you have a plan, and it’s down on paper for what you want to do to rock the recession, then right now you can be rockin, you can be executing and just moving forward. It’s hard to spend money on marketing when a recession is going on. So if you have that plan, and you can just execute that should help you to hold yourself accountable and your team accountable. It’s also hard to make a lot of the tough decisions. Now that you know, we’re shooting this filming this at a time when the PPP is just about to run out. Do businesses have a plan for what they’re going to do? Once they don’t have those PPP funds to help support them, or what they’re going to do once federal unemployment once that boost runs out? And so depending on when we release this episode, there’s all those ideas and One last thing to shoehorn in is that I am worried that we’re going to have a big second wave of the Coronavirus. I mean, we’re talking right now during the summer, we’re seeing some spike right now, after Memorial Day. That’s just really the first wave coming back. We haven’t even gotten through the first wave, let alone in the fall when everybody’s stuck indoors. You know, I’m a Cleveland guy. So right around, right around October, we’re all going to be stuck inside again, here, the snow will start flying. So what is your plan for that? That’s what I want the audience to be thinking through.

If you have a plan, and it's down on paper, for what you want to do to rock the recession, then right now you can be rocking. - Jonathan Slain Click To Tweet

Dan Kuschell 10:40

And as you’re listening or watching right now, like would it be worth right to get to a place of acceptance sooner, right to have more freedom, peace of mind, clarity, certainty, confidence, that you can withstand the shifts, right, because you can curl up in the fetal position, you know, like Jonathan described, or you can have a plan for success. I plan to thrive, right to go beyond survival to actually Making it Work. And actually, most much wealth in our country’s history has been created in times like this. Wouldn’t you want to steps to be one of the next one? Well, guess what, when we come back, we’re gonna have Jonathan walk you through a plan that you can get in place the steps you can take, to prepare to move towards acceptance, to also get ultimate clarity, certainty, confidence. So you can rock the recession that and a whole lot more coming up. We come back on growthtofreedom.com. Thanks for listening to this episode of growthtofreedom.com. Are you struggling to get a steady flow of new clients every day? Or maybe hit a plateau or hit a wall and growing your business? Well, let’s help you solve this problem today. Let’s review your business and have a conversation. You can do that for free today at breakthroughstrategycall.com, that’s breakthroughstrategycall.com. In addition, if you’re looking for a simple way to implement Some of what we’ve been talking about in today’s episode, I want to encourage you to get our free small business toolkit. You can get that at activate.breakthrough3x.com, that’s activate.breakthrough3x.com. If you’d like access to the special resources and all the show notes for this special episode, make sure to visit growthtofreedom.com. Welcome back to growthtofreedom.com. Now, Jonathan, you know what I’d love to have you share. I mean, like, let’s talk about the plan. You know, that old adage I think it was an Allstate commercial many moons ago, a few decades ago. It says most people don’t plan to fail. They just fail to plan. Right? And so you brought up the idea of a plan right moving helping move to get to acceptance sooner that you know can bring clarity, certainty, confidence and a whole lot more. Like what steps would you take or recommend somebody taking to get their plan in order to get their house in order so that they can withstand, you know, the downturn in the market. or losing clients, that sort of thing? What would you recommend?

Jonathan Slain 13:02

For sure. So, first year, the first thing is to benchmark where you’re at. So you need to know, what’s my starting point. And so Paul and I, as we were looking for resources, we read every academic paper ever published with the title of recession or anything related to it. We read every book on recessions, as we were putting together our materials, the one thing we didn’t find was an assessment. So that you could tell how am I doing right now with preparing to rock the recession? So we put one together, it’s just on recession.com, which is our site, it’s free, it takes, you know, 10 to 15 minutes, you answer 20 questions, Dan. And then you come out with a score from zero to 100. If you get a zero, then I would start talking to a bankruptcy attorney. Now, if you get 100, you’re probably licking your chops excited for this recession, because of the massive opportunities that you’re going to have. And I’ll tell you I just checked before we started recording 62 is the average right now of everybody that’s filled it out. So if you’re above 62, better than average, below 62 have some work to do. And then you get a bunch of tips on what you can do to help improve your score. That’s the first thing. And then from there Dan, depending on where you’re deficient, or where you’re strong, I would start building your plan to rock the recession. So, so far, we’ve talked a lot about like, what’s the emergency break? You know, what can I do if I’m not prepared to rock the recession and the recessions rocking you, but I’m really a lot more interested in how companies can use this massive opportunity to put a silver lining on this Coronavirus. Like recessions only come around once every 10 years. big opportunity for savvy entrepreneurs. And during the break I was just looking companies started during the Great Recession. I want to have this list ready for you in the audience. WhatsApp, Venmo, Groupon, Uber Pinterest, Slack, Square. I mean, all these companies that we think of today’s household names and unicorns, were just things that started during the Great Recession. So I get really jacked up when I start to think about massive opportunity here.

Dan Kuschell 15:14

And as you’re listening, as you’re watching, what is your massive opportunity, right, you might have that little voice of doubt in your head Go and there’s no way we could be a WhatsApp, right? There’s no way we could be this or we could be that well, what if you could? Like what if you could get the right plan in place to not just withstand this but to thrive to grow? Right? We believe that you deserve and have the ability to make a bigger impact, make a bigger difference, have a bigger reach, have a bigger contribution in your niche if you do it. Right. Right. So So Jonathan, as far as, you know, a plan, you know, we’ve got the benchmark idea that we’ve got build your plan, what are some of the key tools or key things that someone should be looking at building into their plan that you’ve seen of some of your clients that you’ve worked with.

Jonathan Slain 16:06

I love it, Dan, and I don’t want to just regurgitate the conventional wisdom. So let me try to give your audience a few things that I hope they haven’t thought about, or heard yet. A couple of questions to ask yourself. So first, like this recession, if we were doing this three months ago, all of my clients and the companies I work with were screaming, can’t find any talent. You know, talent, unemployment was at record lows. impossible to find a players. What do I do? You don’t get it. You’re a consultant. You don’t hire people every day. It’s really hard to find great people. Well, right now fast forward, we’re in a time of unprecedented unemployment going the other way. There are so many a players in the market. So are you having the conversations with the people that you want to hire, to let them know about all the cool stuff that you’re doing to bring them into the fold. So the first thing is to have a list, I want your list of 10 People that you’d love to hire. And then I just want you to have conversations with them once a month, once a quarter, just to let them know about all the cool stuff you’re doing at your company. And that’s the way that you start to cultivate an A player, you don’t find an A player on LinkedIn, or Indeed, they don’t go to the wanted ads, they use their network. And right now is a great time to be networking. So that even if you’re like, you know, I don’t got it right now, I’m not hiring anybody. You can come rocking the recovery when we get there. And you’ll have those people that you have relationships with, but A players need a relationship to join you and what you’re doing. And so right now, I want you to be thinking through having that list and touching base with them. So that’s one thing I would start with.

Dan Kuschell 17:45

And that’s a great insight. And here’s something to think about, like, you know, Jonathan brought up the network, right your network now, you know, whether you’re a small business, whether you’ve got a lean team, whether you’ve got a giant team or anywhere in between, right What do you want You want to get more with less, don’t you? Right? So how could you take this idea of your network, those top 10 people that you’d love to hire, to stay in communication with them, and even expand and extend that just a bit, right? Because they’re not going to go on indeed, they’re not going to go on zip recruiter, they’re not going to go on like job placement boards traditionally, right. But you may have them already in your social media circle, they may already be a friend of yours on XYZ social media, or they might be on your email list already. You know, just kind of following you at an arm’s length level with what you do. Well, what if you used things like your social media to put a post on your hiring? What if you put out an email to announce your hiring and all the cool things you’re doing to stay in communication? I’m thoroughly convinced, you know, watching Uber For example, I believe Uber utilize this strategy very well. Probably one of the best I’ve seen. And that is they’ve run radio ads before consistently for years for hiring drivers. Now think about the psychology. If you’re a consumer and you have no interest in getting a job on Uber, but you constantly hear that they’re hiring, we’re hiring, we’re hiring, we’re hiring, right? And they do this in a lot of different ways have different types of postings, different types of ads, different type of testimonials, but you hear we’re growing or growing or growing or hiring, if you were thinking of working with them, number one, wouldn’t you be intrigued to at least want to know more be if you’re a customer of theirs or a potential customer and this company is always growing and thriving? Wouldn’t you want to be a part of that culture to a hiring strategy is also potentially a great client generation strategy. done right. So take what Jonathan just shared with you, and plus it, right, adding the social media, the other pieces that we talked about. So Jonathan, so we’ve got hiring, what’s another step somebody can take to secure you know, their, their ability to thrive during these times these recessionary times.

Jonathan Slain 20:03

Alright, Dan, I want to lean in here. And I want to give the audience a very big coming close, I want to give the audience a secret. And that’s that I’m actually a recovering investment banker. So I want to disclose that. And so as a former banker, one thing I know is that in recessions, there are a lot more assets available from companies that get foreclosed on. And so think through this over the past three months, 100 days with Coronavirus, the bankruptcy courts have large, in large part been closed. And so now I think what we’re going to see is a wave of bankruptcies. And when those companies go bankrupt, those assets will be available from the bank. So think about it this way. If you’re an entrepreneur and you’re like man, I’ve always wanted to start a I don’t know distillery, but those stainless steel tanks, you know, the massive ones you always see it like Brewer breweries. I assume those are really expensive. But if you can talk to your bank, or you could talk to a bunch of bankers and let them know, hey, I want to get into the distillery business. If you see a distillery come available, I’m your guy, or your gal, call me and I will be happy to deliver a cashier’s check to you, then the banks will reach out because banks don’t want to own big distilling tanks. It is a pain for the bank. Trust me as a former banker, they have to get them appraised. And then they have to set up an auction. They have to figure out how they’re going to store them and secure them. And then the auctioneer wants a third of whatever they recover. It’s a whole big process. In the last recession. One thing that was very successful for me personally, was buying gyms that closed and then selling off their equipment. They would call me and say, hey, we’ve got $35,000 of equipment. If you can pick it up next week, it’s yours. What do you want to pay us and I would give him $1,000 for this equipment, I’d bring it back to Cleveland and then be able To sell it for 20. So again, I think you need to think opportunistically, but now is the time to have those conversations with your banker, or with several bankers to let them know what you’re interested in, so that they can call you proactively, because they’re going to want to get that stuff off their books. So that’s the second thing that I would do to rock the recession.

Dan Kuschell 22:20

Now, this is great. And as you’re listening, or you’re watching right now, I’ve got two and a half pages of notes. So number one, you know, benchmark your business, right? And they’ve got a great assessment, you can go to a recession.com, recession.com. Number two is build a plan. Right? We’ve talked about a couple steps of the plan. Now, Jonathan, if people want to go deeper, and they want to go deeper on, you know, an expanded plan beyond, you know, the idea of benchmark talent acquisition, getting assets, where can people go to learn more about your process, and capitalizing on what will happen with the recession and thriving?

Jonathan Slain 22:55

Yeah, thanks, Dan. There’s two spots. So the first is Recession.com. Yes, that really is our website, you and I talked a little bit about how we came upon that before we got started today. But you can just find all my contact info is on Recession.com. And there we’ve got a bunch of products. So there’s a workbook if you want more, if you want us to take you through exactly how you do all these different tactics we talked through, you can grab a copy of the workbook, I’m happy to give you a coupon code to Dan, that you can put in the show notes for your audience, if they want to get the workbook for cheaper. If you own a small business, and you want to do a day with your team to rock the recession. Then we also have a set of posters where you can do a full day of cultivated exercises with your team to talk through all these different items we talked about on the website. And then there’s also this other little known website called amazon.com. The audience might have heard about it. That’s where if you want to grab a copy of Rock the Recession, you can do that there. That would be great too.

Dan Kuschell 24:00

So I want to encourage you to go to recession.com, that’s recession.com, get access to the resources they’ve got available, take the assessment, go get the book either on the site or on amazon.com. If you want to get the workbook, get the workbook, it will be a great complement will become a lifetime companion. If you’re looking for a way to have immediate, useful tools, strategies, templates that you can use, not just once, but you can be using over and over again so that you can drive now, what would you hope, Jonathan, that would be 1 to 3 action steps that our viewers or listeners would take from our time together today?

Jonathan Slain 24:36

Yeah, well, number one, you got to start with the the assessment. So Paul, and I did it specifically because Paul and I with our behavioral profiles, we love to know where we stand. You know, we want to know how we’re measuring up and just benchmark so go to recession.com, do the assessment, 20 questions 15 minutes, you’ll get a score from zero to 100. The second thing I would do right now is to Develop your emergency brake.

Develop your emergency brake. - Jonathan Slain Click To Tweet

And that’s just my fancy way of saying, What’s your plan if things get worse for your company or your situation. So I know that I’m all about rocking the recession, I want to be very positive. And at the same time, Dan, I want to be real. You know, all we’ve learned over the past hundred days that I think we all can agree on, is that things are going to keep shifting. And nobody knows not me and not any other experts exactly what’s coming next, in the midst of this pandemic, so have your emergency brake plan. That’s your way of working through the phases of grief now, so that you don’t have to be like me, in the Great Recession under your desk in the fetal position. You’re going to have your plan, you’re going to calmly walk over to the glass, you’re going to break the glass, you’re going to take the plan out, you and your team are going to execute. And then the third thing would be now start to think about the blue ocean strategies. How can you be a company that comes out of this recession stronger, you may be smaller as a company but smaller but stronger, how Can you roar in the recovery, and remember, you’re in good company. GM also started in the recession, GE going back, several recessions will start nersessian. So, again, it’s just to remember that this is a time of massive opportunity, as well as it being a very difficult and challenging time. But you get to pick the attitude you bring to it. And that’s what I hope you take away from from our talk today.

This is a time of massive opportunity, as well as it being a very difficult and challenging time. - Jonathan Slain Click To Tweet

Dan Kuschell 26:25

And if you want to go deeper with what Jonathan’s been sharing with you, you want to, you know, hedge yourself against, you know, downturns in the market, the economy, losing a client losing your biggest clients, like what can you do to protect and then also set the stage so you can grow and thrive and make a bigger impact. You can go check out what they’re doing it recession.com that’s recession.com, get all the complimentary resources we’ve talked about. By the way, if you want to come back to this episode, you can do that growthtofreedom.com/291. Check out all the show notes, all the links to the resources we’ve talked about growthtofreedom.com/291 if you never want to miss an episode, go to growthtofreedom.com/subscribe. now, Jonathan, what is what is a possible question or or? Yeah, possible question that I should have asked you that we didn’t get to cover yet?

Jonathan Slain 27:15

Yeah, I think one of the things is like, where do I go? So people might be like, okay, all this stuff that you’re talking about sounds great with trying to find opportunity, but I don’t even know where to start with that. So for me, a lot of it, I use a resource called ibisworld.com. IBisworld.com. I have no affiliation. I don’t get anything if you go there and sign up, but they sell research reports for every industry. And they predict what that industry how it will do over the next five years. So for me, it’s been interesting reading those over Dan because it brings up ideas that I never thought of on my own like right now. tortilla manufacturing is really hot. So if you for some reason, have a part of that Or could pivot to where you’re a supplier or a vendor if you’re a construction company, and you can somehow get smart on how you help other companies build tortilla manufacturing facilities. That’s a niche that I didn’t even know existed, but maybe a niche that you and your team can exploit. Also veterinary clinics, like I know, everybody’s like, you know, in a recession, you want to run the government work or run to health care, because they always have money. Well, right now, health care is hurting bad. They do not have a lot of money right now. But veterinary clinics, what I’ve learned is that regardless of how bad it gets in the economy, your dog gets sick, your cat gets sick, you’re still taking them to the vet, you know, you’re still putting it on a credit card. So veterinary clinics are doing very well right now. So again, thinking through AI, you know, what can you do to support if you do promotional products, how can you call on those veterinarian clinics? If you do marketing, how can you find a list of veterinary clinics to market to for your services? Or consulting or manufacturing or construction, just looking for those hidden niches that you can then fill in pivot to. That’s definitely one place that I would start.

Dan Kuschell 29:10

That’s, that’s amazing. And I want to encourage you if you want to go deeper with these strategies and a whole lot more, find the hidden niches, to be able to set yourself up to rock the recession, to be able to be in a place where you’re as a successful leader you prepare for you thrive and create wealth, right through the downturns. Guess what, you can do that right now by going to recession.com. That’s recession.com, check out the book, check out the resources, get the workbook and a whole lot more. Paul, it’s been awesome to have you here with us. I’m curious. You’re in Cleveland. Right? What’s that? What’s something that most people don’t know about you? I’m curious.

Jonathan Slain 29:53

So, for me, Paul’s down in Florida. I’m up here in Cleveland. I am an avid Lionel train enthusiast. So I don’t think I’ve ever talked about that on a podcast or on TV. But in my basement my father in law got me hooked. And what I love about that is I have two girls that are seven and nine years old. And we’ve tried pets we’ve tried fish tanks, we’ve tried dogs, but those you have to feed like every day, and it’s hard to leave them. I love about the trains that we can go work on it for a couple hours get into it, and then we can walk away from it for a month, a year and nobody dies nothing bad happens. So big into to getting to do that with my girls.

Dan Kuschell 30:39

That’s amazing. I have never heard that on a podcast before either but I can picture it clear as day my uncle Mikey had uncle Michael he had trained sets with like cities. In his I mean it was rooms full of the different crossings. It was amazing. All the details like walking into a Disney movie to a degree. So What what he had had, if you get a chance, I’d love for you to send a picture over, right that we can post in this episode of your Lionel trains that we can just drop in here. That would be a lot of fun. You got it Dan. If you’re intrigued by rockin the recession, right? You want to be a leader who thrives. You want to help your team thrive, help your team prepare, you want to help create more wealth during the downturn, go check out what they’re doing. Recession.com and Don’t be shocked if you get hooked on Lionel trains, as well. He’s Jonathan Slain. I encourage you to take action with what he’s been sharing with you, you know, get an assessment, right? identify where you’re at, get a benchmark of where you’re starting today. Right? start preparing now, right? When’s the best time to dig a well, right after you’re thirsty or before you’re thirsty? You know the answer to this, right? This is a simple, easy way to be able to do that you can start acquiring great talent, you can start acquiring great assets. They have dozens and dozens of others. strategies you can put in place to and you take the first step by going over to recession.com that’s recession.com so seize the day. Make it a great week and guess what? Tell us how you enjoyed this episode share it with someone you care about if you know you’re a small business owner you know an entrepreneur you know a CEO, you know a founder who’s looking for additional tools to put in their toolbox to help them in their teams. Yeah, share this incredible gift with them you can come back to the episode of growthtofreedom.com/291, that’s growthtofreedom.com/291, never want to miss an episode go to growthtofreedom.com/subscribe, that’s growthtofreedom.com/subscribe, seize the day, make it a great week and we’ll see you next time on growthtofreedom.com. Thanks for listening to this episode of growthtofreedom.com. Are you struggling to get a steady flow of new clients every day, or maybe hit a plateau or hit a wall and growing your business? Let’s help you solve this problem today. Let’s review your business and Have a conversation you do that for free today at breakthroughstrategycall.com, that’s breakthroughstrategycall.com. In addition, if you’re looking for a simple way to implement some of what we’ve been talking about in today’s episode, I want to encourage you to get our free small business toolkit. You can get that at activate.breakthrough3x.com, that’s activate.breakthrough3x.com. If you’d like access to the special resources and all the show notes for this special episode, make sure to visit growthtofreedom.com.

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