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SPEAKERS

Jeff York, Brad Werner

 

00:12

Hi, I'm Joel Davis,

 

Jeff York  00:13

producer of the creative distillation podcast. Today's episode is taken from a webinar hosted by sea use lead School of Business and led by Jeff and Brad, on how to plan pivot and persist in this era of COVID-19.

 

00:31

Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining us. My name is Amanda Kramer and I'm the Alumni Engagement Program Manager at the ²ÊÃñ±¦µäs lead School of Business. These are certainly trying times and here at ²ÊÃñ±¦µä we have gathered our world renowned faculty and alumni to provide Frank and timely insights for life during and after the covid 19 pandemic. For today's webinar, we're excited to have Associate Professor of strategy and entrepreneurship and research director of the Dominguez center, Dr. Jeffrey York, joined by strategy, entrepreneurship and operations instructor and Faculty Director of the Deming center, Brad Werner, here presenting entrepreneurial approaches to COVID-19. How to Plan pivot and persist. Welcome Jeff and Brad, and thank you so much for being here.

 

Jeff York  01:18

Great. Thank you so much, Amanda, and thank you to everyone who's joined us today. Brian and I are just thrilled to do this. We we embarked on a journey right at the start of the pandemic, to go out and try to understand what is an entrepreneurial approach to this horrible situation we found ourselves in and we've been friends for for many years. And more recently, as Brad has become the teaching director at the Deming center and I've been the research director, we started to have conversations about academic research. And very quickly, Brad start asked me Will Okay, how is that useful to me? As an entrepreneur and investor or even a teacher? What can I take from this research? What can I do it? And I just we both enjoyed the conversation so much, we decided to start a podcast. It's called creative distillation. And on it we seek to distill entrepreneurship research into actionable insights. We've got, I think, six episodes and the seventh coming up soon. And the last three episodes, we've really focused on learning about what are some of the things we can learn from entrepreneurship research, and apply them to our current situation. And so today, we're going to do another level of distillation, where we try to take everything we've learned and everything we both know, through having been through many ups and downs in business and in markets, and seen a fair bit in our careers to try to help entrepreneurs and those that are interested in helping entrepreneurs to think about the things they want to do. So first off, I just wanted to lay out an agenda for the day. So I talked a little about who Brad and I are you kind of heard our BIOS from Amanda, thank you. Very nice, Eric duction, then we're going to talk about what we've learned, and we're trying to distill it down to three basic principles of planning, pivoting, perhaps that should be cut it with a question mark, really, because you know, we're not sure every business should pivot right now. And then persisting you know, what, what can we take from COVID-19? How do we move forward? So with that, I thought I'd let Brad do a little bit of introducing his background and how he came to be here today.

 

Brad Werner  03:30

Sure. Thanks, Jeff. Yeah, so I've moved to Boulder, approximately five years ago from Chicago, spent my life as a commodity trader, I'm actually still a trader of boards of many businesses have started many myselves, myself and been an entrepreneur before the term entrepreneur was common. But the bottom line of what we're here to do today, I think, is there any active academic research that actually will help the people in the trenches around the people that are suffering? How can we kind of show some tools or give you some tools, or strategies to actually instead of having this one is as bad as this is use it as an opportunity to have your businesses and grow stronger on the other end?

 

Jeff York  04:20

Yeah, and I think, you know, my background I worked in industry for, I guess, about five years after doing my MBA. Prior to that I was the founder and co manager of a whitewater rafting company been involved in technology startups and consulting at Oak Ridge National Laboratories. And I've been at Leeds for about 10 years now. Doing research and teaching. And, you know, it's one of the wonderful things about living here in Boulder is that we have awesome entrepreneurs like Brad that move here and want to get involved and giving back and teaching and we've just been so fortunate to have him join us and be here. So these are all the roles that Brad and I play. And Bob, we got part time podcaster. I want to mention that because this is actually an episode of our podcast. So, if you don't want to watch on YouTube, it'll be posted on our podcast page, which you can find by just typing, creative distillation and Deming center. And you'll find us there at the Deming Center for Entrepreneurship at Leeds

 

Brad Werner  05:21

summit. And Jeff, the podcast is a blast. I'm assuming Today, we're gonna have a lot of fun as well. The audience needs to know though because it's called distillation. Normally, our podcast started some sort of brewery distillery. Today, though, I can assure you that I'm coffee and water, at least to this point that how you coffee water?

 

Jeff York  05:42

No, no, I've got a my herbal tea that's a really mellow out during the pandemic. I just didn't get into amped up about everything drinking coffee all day. But right, yeah, usually, usually, we kick it off with a discussion of a local craft brewery or distillery and interviewing the founder. So, you know, we're not trying to advertise our podcast, but please go check it out. Hopefully, it's fun listening. And we think we try to really take it to a place where we get to some actionable insights, sometimes merge. We'll try that again today. Right. And

 

Brad Werner  06:15

so then, we actually talked about today's format, Jeff kind of showed you the overview, what we will do is go and have a chat maybe for a half hour and kind of our thoughts here, and then open it up for questions actually hear from you. And if there's ways that we can help the individual participants on this call,

 

Jeff York  06:34

yeah. And and we are more than happy to try to help as best we can. One thing I will say, though, is we can't really provide consulting, you know, specific answers for your specific business today. But the wonderful thing is, there's a an organization going here and see through the Deming center called co venture Ford. That's co venture Ford, and we'll have the URL at the end of this if you do need help. I know I've consulted with numerous businesses, I know Brad as to and we have a whole group of folks who have some experience, they're more than willing to help. Even if it's just talking to someone about getting another perspective, we're happy to do what we can there. So totally great. Today, I think I can sum up our message today. And in three words, plan pivot persist, hence the title, but actually, we could probably do it even just one word is take on it two words. Yeah. All right, screwing that up. Take action. I think both Brad and I have been teaching entrepreneurship and involvement long enough to know that when you think about entrepreneurship, and you think about it from an academic field, like we teach a lot of things in the business school, we teach marketing, forecasting, financial forecasting, accounting, strategic planning, those are all wonderful and immensely useful tools. But they don't tend to work as well under conditions of absolute uncertainty. What I mean by uncertainty is, it's not risk, it's where we just don't know what's going to happen. And to me, that is what entrepreneurship is, it is the science of action under uncertainty. And so by definition, you have to take action. And I know that's not easy in times like this, believe me, we're all experiencing it. But you've got to act. And so what we're going to try to do is give you some direct, very, very quick takeaways of what you can do to get moving and get going on this. Not that we think Yeah.

 

Brad Werner  08:29

And you know what, I echo that Jeff 100%. I mean, in a sense, it's a little bit of human nature to say, Oh, my God, the world is falling, going put your head under a pillow, and it'll go away, this will not go away. And if you think it's going to go away, you're actually putting your family and your business in danger. So act. And in the other thing, the acting right now, you are acting in a time of uncertainty. So there is risk in acting, just so I just like to put that on the table. But there's a lot more risk in being inactive. So you do have to do something, you do have to, in a sense, start to plan and understand what this new reality may look like for you and your business.

 

Jeff York  09:06

That's right. And and this comes from both the wealth of experience and the research. So that's what we're going to go today. So these are sort of the three stages we're thinking about as you move through this pandemic. We'll talk about each of these in more depth. I'm not gonna belabor it here, we'll come back to this, but this is where we're going today. This is the path we're going down. So first off, when we first started talking about this, Brad mentioned the idea of financial triage. And I was like, Well, you know, I mean, I've been a wilderness first responder, I understand triage, but financial triage was sort of the first step and I was gonna let Brad

 

Brad Werner  09:41

talk a little Yeah, so so financial triage is really important. In a sense, it's taking taking a picture of your current situation, and dealing with it, and creditors are not going to go away. Period, they're not going to go, they're not going to go away. And if you put your head under the pillow and you don't talk to them It actually kind of encourages them to go after you. So the number one thing you need to do, if you're in any sort of issues with any sort of creditor is call them and talk to them, then I would suggest create an entire list of accounts payable. It could be two or three items, it could be hundreds of items, depending on the size of your business, and then create a hierarchy. Right? So what is the most critical what your goal is? How do we stay open one more day? Because you can't do anything if you're closed down. So you have to figure out who do we need to pay? Or what kind of terms do we need to kind of agree upon to be able to be open the next day, and then stay on plan and maintain that communication with your creditors all the way through this. So you know, week now that you've kind of put them all at bay, do do periodic check ins with them. So they know you're still not hiding them. You didn't you didn't put them off for one time that you recognize that you have these obligations. But I would say in this time, it's really, really important to reach out and talk to all of those people and understand where they're going. And in a sense, what you're doing, you're doing them a favor to because they may have hundreds of people, hundreds of customers just like you do, and getting kind of a feel of where their customers are, it allows them to plan to because otherwise you can have this just tremendous domino effect, which is not going to be good for anyone.

 

Jeff York  11:17

Yeah. So Brian Do you would say that's, that's the first thing, get your house in order, know where your biggest liabilities are, and deal with them in a forthright manner. Because, you know, having worked in commercial banking, I know, nobody wants anyone to not make payments, of course, they really don't want is for people to not make payments and then not know that you're going to make the payments.

 

Brad Werner  11:37

That's right. And and the other thing is, is that you may actually find terms that are still gonna This is the the first start of bringing your business back to health, right? Because terms can be changed. Is it possible to rewrite leases, those types of things? So there probably are some opportunities in here. It's a really difficult conversations to have, trust me, I've actually done this myself. It's really difficult. But I think that the overall benefit is far far outweighs the act of inaction.

 

Jeff York  12:05

Absolutely. So then, so going from having your own house in order, I wanted to talk a little bit about some, some research links we had, I guess it'd be three podcast episodes ago, we were interviewing Jenny Dinger and Michael Connor, who are both leads PhD alarms, that a paper they did that's really interesting. And understanding what happens in recovery of entrepreneurial communities in the wake of disaster. So example, they were looking at the the tornado in Joplin, Kansas and, and things like this. And so while it's important and critical, of course, to do the financial triage that Brad referred to, the other thing is not to become so inwardly focused, that you're not part of the community you're embedded in. What Michael and Jenny find in their research is that when entrepreneurs reach out and work collaboratively with their community, they recover much faster. And there's this cyclical effect of of folks understanding what resources are available, what kind of consulting is available, and even just the psychological benefit of talking to people that went through the same thing you did. But here's the critical tipping point they found in this research, you have to also start to make sure you're encouraging other new entrepreneurs. And that sounds really counterintuitive. Because you say, Man, I've got my own house to keep an order. I've got my own problems, how can I possibly start to help someone else who's starting a business? The reason you want to do that is because in your geographic community where you're located, you need that influx of new businesses. And you'll also benefit from the perspective of someone who's just trying to start their initial foray during the pandemic. I mean, imagine how difficult that is, we saw this with all of our students, having to rejigger and replaying what they're doing. So those are just two insights from from the research, we found about staying in touch with the community encouraging growth not becoming, hey, we're the group that's been here before, nobody else's welcome. That actually doesn't lead to fast recovery, what these the community recovering is being open and encouraging to new startups as well.

 

Brad Werner  14:04

Can I add just a couple things? Because I think you're dead on. And so the way that I would distill it as an action item to people that are listening on this call, is networking is important, right? You just you can't do this in a vacuum. Right? So number one, stay engaged with your industry, conversations, connections, right? Make sure because my guess is that in your specific industry, you're gonna have a lot of people actually dealing with the same problems, right? So continue your conversations with your customers 100% and your suppliers. Everybody needs to know what's going on. My guess is there actually may be some pieces of information and small tweaks you can do to your business to give you even a better competitive advantage that then before the crisis hit us. It's also a chance to upgrade your team in many, many companies right now. When when you're in a almost zero unemployment environments. Now that we have this big rash unemployment, there are really going to be great opportunities to upgrade your team, and redefine all of your stakeholders, not in stakeholders, not just who financially gains from you, but try to understand all of your stakeholders in your business universe. And then hopefully, you can expand your advisors or your mentor team as well through this, and I think that all of those may actually give you a bit of breathing room, once again, set the set the stage for this being an opportunity for you to grow your business when we come out of this on the other side.

 

Jeff York  15:30

Absolutely. And what you're saying is dead on support, by the research read, what expert entrepreneurs do is they engage in a process it's called effectuation. And effectuation is differentiated from causation. Not casual, casual thinking like that's my undergrads talk about as though that caused a lot of rather than trying to make sure you know what the goal is, and gathering the means to go pursue that goal, starting with what you have, and figuring out what new goals may emerge from that. So those conversations Brad was talking about, that you have with your current stakeholders, and even with potential stakeholders, is what this model is all built around. Now, I showed this slide to Brandon is like, what the heck is that? Dude, we're not doing that to people always. Wait, dude. This is the conversation we have every week on the podcast. But instead, I'm gonna simplify this, the effectual process is pretty simple. Start by reflecting on Who am I? In other words, what do I care about? What is what the most important thing I want to do here? What do I know? What's my background? What's what do I know about what's the industry I'm most familiar with? What are the things that I know about that I might not be working in, in my current business, and perhaps most importantly, whom do I know? And then from those three things, and this should be like a 10 minute exercise on a piece of paper, start thinking about what can I do right now, and then start simply talking to people. And the way this process works is your commitment now is sitting down on a piece of paper for 10 minutes, and then calling up people and having conversations, we're not talking about making huge risky bets, expanding in new markets, nothing like that. In fact, you're just gonna feel better from having conversations with people anyway. And what you're looking for is for individuals to make commitments to help you. And then guess what just happened, you expanded the means you have at hand, because now they're committed to helping you. And so this opportunity allows you to actually grow your business refocus it with a very low commitment. We're not looking to make big commitments here, we're looking to have conversations, and to see what emerges from it. And the key to that process is, if you sit and plan by yourself, you're not going to have the same ideas that you will have through these conversations. Totally agree,

 

Brad Werner  17:44

john, if you can't get back to you, right?

 

Jeff York  17:47

Right, exactly. And so it's, again, just a little bit of reflection, and then letting new business opportunities and goals and directions you might go emerged from those stakeholder commitments, rather than sitting by yourself and trying to figure this out. And this research comes from interviewing expert entrepreneurs in what's called a think aloud protocol about how they think through situations, it's the way expert entrepreneurs think it's different. Some of you out there probably are recognizing this thing. Yeah, I'm never quite sure what I'm trying to do. But I just know, I'm gonna do something and I start talking to people, and it happens. And that's a lot of this process here.

 

Brad Werner  18:22

Right. And the other thing that I found actually through this, because everyone's doing business, and actually meetings, zoom online, that people are more accessible, right, you have access to experts, that will answer the phone now that you may have taken years to actually get their attention. So right now is an opportunity in personal communication to be able to reach out to people. You know, just, I think that there is this kind of, I don't know what I want, I don't want to say we're all in this together, because I hear that every day on the news. But but a sense is there is a sense of community, among business people, business leaders, and industry leaders willing to help and, and expand their networks as well, because I think a lot of people are doing this, I think that the information is, is more at your fingertips, I think that the average individual realizes,

 

Jeff York  19:10

yeah, and if you're interested in learning more about this, you can go to effectuation. org. Professor Sarah saraswathy, who created the theory is there and there's all sorts of tools and applications. This is a big part of my teaching. I'm trying to convince Brad it's a big part of his even though he does talk about it, I think I think it actually dovetails with a lot of his suggestions.

 

Brad Werner  19:30

And I would tell you, and I will tell everyone that's listening today that when Jeff first talked to me about effectuation, he could understand entrepreneurs, I actually call bullshit on that. I didn't believe it. But then he actually talked about the traits of entrepreneurs. And I think that when if you if you look inwardly and you say I have this sense or this feeling and that's why I've done these things that Jeff has actually and his team has found a way to put this into paper and identify actually, that it's not a feeling it's a system systematize a method of starting a business, it's a way to go. It's a way to take action under uncertainty. And actually, it works really nicely existing businesses to,

 

Jeff York  20:07

you know, it does not work, I can assure you when you work at a financial services company, and they tell you how to maximize penetration of a market, this is not the time for this logic, it will not go over well. Hey, what's the market? We've never been in that we might try? That's the time for this. Okay. So ya know, the different tools for different times, but I would, I would argue that the current times are very effectual, or at least can. Okay, I agree. So pivot, a lot of times, I know in my classes, and Brad actually facilitated a wonderful exercise I'm talking about in pivoting this last semester. But we have pivot question, Mark, I think I see for a lot of entrepreneurs I've been consulting with and students that are trying to start businesses, they've automatically tried to pivot their entire business to rotate around COVID. I think that's a mistake. You know, I think, you know, this too, shall pass. I know, that's easy to say, and hard to see. But it's the reality. And yes, of course, look at look at opportunities you can do with your current means. But I don't think this is the time to abandon your entire business model and try to move on to something else, because you're not going to be well positioned for the world that emerges when when things start to open up a lot more. I

 

Brad Werner  21:22

see one thing about that, though, Jeff, my thinking is, in COVID, the way that you act during this, and I'm talking about you as a business owner, extreme COVID COVID is going to define your business for the next 10 years at least. Meaning that if you are just all about the bottom line, you don't worry or care about your employees, that you blow off your stakeholders and you you're just you're a bad actor, all based on money, that that reputation is going to stay with you for a long time. And it actually I think, is a could be an Achilles heel in your business and could sink you as well. I'm even noticing on our small neighborhood chats and local businesses that people think are making mistakes. I'm seeing groups of people, boycotting businesses are piling up like cutting businesses when they reopen just on the way that they've treated their employees through this difficult time. Absolutely. So So what should you do? We suggest using that logic of having lots of conversations with all of your stakeholders, look for affordable tests don't make big commitments to things until they're proven out how do you know it's proven out customers are paying, that's that's,

 

Jeff York  22:29

there's no other evidence, fast results, so you can know if it's working or not, and abandon the effort if it's not working. And most of all, build it out what you have at hand now is not the time necessarily go and try to acquire all sorts of new resource and things like that. Think about what you can do out of what you have on hand. How do you work with that to provide value for your current customers and potential stakeholders?

 

Brad Werner  22:51

Yeah, and that's a really low risk kind of strategy too, which is great, right? Because you can start very small and test it. And so you're not risking your entire business, you're doing these small experiments, these small tests to see if they gain traction and out of those, then you could actually really tap into some big growth.

 

Jeff York  23:07

And it might be something that grows well beyond the pandemic as well. You know, we never know we try these things. And so this is sort of the the Lean Startup methodology, fast, quick. infatuation. We call it affordable boss, you know, but don't do anything until you've calculated how much are you willing to lose on it? And then you don't feel like you're taking risks? Or you've already said, I'm willing to lose this much if I do that, but don't do things that you were you're overestimating or committed? And how do you find those things? So we have this really interesting discussion. With Trent Williams. He's a professor at Indiana University, and arguably the the world's leading expert on entrepreneurship in the wake of disaster, he and his co author Dean Sheppard examined what happened in the in the trail of Australian bushfire devastation as well as earthquakes in Haiti. And I think two things we want to talk about here. The first one was looking around, and just seeing who can you help, right now, who needs help, particularly your customers, of course, but also people that are not normally your customers? What can you do to help them, there's gonna be two things that come out of this. Oh, and also thinking about what your needs are and what you wish somebody would offer. That's a really quick way to figure out how you can help people, two things are going to happen at one, you're going to get enormous psychological benefits. They found that folks that did this recovered much faster in the wake of disaster, psychologically felt better felt like they were doing things. Second, you might as we were just talking about reviewing new markets that you had no idea you ever even want to be in, or new products and services that you might want to offer, even, even if that's not the case, you're still gonna get the psychological benefit. And here's the other thing they talked about in the book, a centralized government response and these disasters was not the key to recovery. We need it. It's important it's critical in the wake of disaster. It's not going to solve all our problems. It turns out that entrepreneurs, many of you listening on this call, people with small medium enterprises or even large enterprises that understand how to get things done and help people the to the recovery, much faster than a centralized effort. In fact, a centralized effort often interferes with the ability for those recoveries to happen was one of the major learnings from this book.

 

Brad Werner  25:24

Yeah, I actually tried was amazing. And the parallels from what Trent described in Australia, and what we're going through now is great. And bottom line, as Trent was another call to action, the number one, you have to do something. And it starts by doing something small, maybe with your neighbor, maybe with your close customers, something like that something very small, can grow into some very big, make some very big changes. And the really interesting part, I think, is if you look at some of these disasters that we've had over the years, and what was it the 89 crash and the bubble of approximately 2000 and the 2008 to 2010, there has been some really amazing businesses that have come out of the rubble of those economic disasters.

 

Jeff York  26:07

Absolutely. Absolutely. And yeah, if you're interested, that's I think, what was it two episodes, we're getting so darn good at podcasting, Brad, I can't have this

 

26:15

flying by?

 

Jeff York  26:17

No. Anyway, that's, I think, two episodes a really great conversation with a very thoughtful guy, and I love about the professor's we've had on the show is, yeah, they're professors or researchers or world class researchers. But they really love the opportunity to come talk to Brad night about it was my research actually been for entrepreneurs? So that's been right. And Trent? Absolutely. There's a whole My favorite part of this book, by the way, in the last, because every time I tell Brad about visa research, his response is

 

Brad Werner  26:46

God not be you know what, though? The point is, I'm actually, I'm actually I'm actually learning though, that when I first came to the University, I thought I saw these researchers working on these problems, that really didn't mean it mean anything to people on the ground. And so my, my drive by my purpose is to help help spread the message of cutting edge thinking to help people right now that are dealing with severe issues. Absolutely.

 

Jeff York  27:18

Well usually says, Oh, god, that's why I ask him to read it. Usually, so what? And yeah, well, chapter. So yeah, I wrote this whole chapter in the back of the book for people like Brad, anyway, good to check it out. great scholar. Really nice guy too. Okay. Last thing we want to talk about is persist. So this is a screenshot from an article I wrote for the conversation. The conversation is an open source, basically column syndicate for academics. And here's the thing COVID-19 offers us an opportunity to understand how entrepreneurship can address things well beyond creating profitable businesses. And what I mean by that I think we can all come up with dozens of examples, everything from Colorado distilleries moving into making hand sanitizer to the the I mean, to me, entrepreneurship also extends out to the recent positive test we've had on on vaccines. It's all entrepreneurial action, it's action under uncertainty. And the good news about COVID, I think, is that it is going to get solved. Now, there might be people out there to say, well, we won't get solved, we know vaccine. I don't know, man, I tend to think when you dedicate the entire world's resources to solving a problem, they get done pretty quickly. That's been my experience. Happy to discuss q&a, climate change, and other big scale, Grand Challenges are not going to be as easy to solve. And what the main message I want you to take from this is I study how entrepreneurs address climate change. And it turns out, if you look at the various interventions you can take to try to address it at a community level. You can put in place policies, you can try to get existing companies to do better things or less worse things. You can try to put consultants in place. If you look across the political spectrum, the only intervention that gets support from both people on the left and the right, is entrepreneurship, starting of new businesses that address climate change. And I think the same thing is happening with COVID. Unfortunately, it's become this politically divisive thing. And they're very similar situations where we have something that is just a natural phenomenon. It is not, you know, anything that anyone intends to happen or has control over. Yet we try to put politics on science, and that just doesn't work very well. But what the research shows us is entrepreneurs get the benefit of both sides and climate change. If folks are on the right, and they don't even believe it's a real problem, for whatever ideological reason, they still support renewable energy businesses, if they're on the left where they think it's the most horrible thing and business is all to blame. They still support people. They're just Trying to start for profit businesses address climate change, I would urge you to think about COVID. In the same way, as an entrepreneur, you get the benefit of the doubt from people all over the political spectrum. But you yourself have to maintain that, that middle ground of Look, I'm a person who's trying to create value for my customers and make a good living. Nobody will doubt your ability to do that or question that. And I think entrepreneurs are actually going to be a big focus coming of this and solutions for bigger problems.

 

Brad Werner  30:28

Right. So so my, my thinking process tonight, and I agree with what you said, is, first of all, we're all in the position to change the world to change the world for the better. It takes many, many small steps to that. So in a sense to me, what do you want the world to look like? When we come out of this? Right, we'd normally I don't think that it happens very often civilizations actually have a reset button to say, Hey, we don't we don't need to live by the old structure that we're in, what do you like something new to look like. So I think that that's a really good way to think about how your business may fit into that. The other thing is that I want to really let you know, is persist is really easy to say, and very difficult to do. So don't think that Jeff and I are up here, you know, kind of given these high level things, this is really difficult, but you have to keep at it. Because the alternative is, is you're going to fail. So you have to keep at it. So and then also keep your inner circle kind of informed of what you want to do. Once again, when we talked about the networking and those all those other types of things. I think that that actually allows kind of group grit, right, that together, we can actually build something stronger, right? So in a sense, I think as you expand your network, and you talk to people in your current network by doing this, it gives you kind of that strength persist. And it also gives your your peers that strength persists. So that connection is really, really important right now as well.

 

Jeff York  31:53

Absolutely. And we all need people to do this. You know, if it's, if it's not just for you and your business, for your community for everyone that relies on you. I mean, you got to push forward and keep going. And when you do new opportunities are going to emerge.

 

Brad Werner  32:08

Yep, I echo that sentiment 100%.

 

Jeff York  32:12

So quick review. What are you not going to do? That's the planning the financial trails we talked about next? Start with simply Who am I? And I think that relates definitely to Brad's last point, what do you want the world look like? What do you care about? Who do you know whom do you know? Who can you talk to? What can you do? Rather than thinking about pivot, maybe think about quick, low commitment tests that may encourage a pivot later on, if you have no idea where to pivot to or what you could try to think about? Who can you actually help right now? And then as far as persisting? Yeah, you just got to keep going. And also think about what these learnings mean for the broader world, as well as your business coming out of this.

 

Brad Werner  32:50

Right? I totally agree. I'm thinking in that pivot stage. Jeff. One thing I'd like to say is we've gotten Jeff and I both gotten many, many questions about business models. This is a very high level, right? This is not specific to one business that we're talking about. And the question that we've gotten though, is my business model sustainable? And the answer is maybe, right? It just depends on what business you're in. But I would say everyone needs to actually go back and look back at their business model, understand what there's a sustainable competitive advantage was before COVID. And what is it going to be after COVID. And I think this is a really great time right now to do a full audit of what that actually means for each specific business. And then you'll decide individually, based on that type of research and talking to your customers in your network on whether a pivot, changing the business model is appropriate for your business today. Right, right. And

 

Jeff York  33:43

those are those low cost affordable boss experiments. That's key, you know, don't don't don't bet the house on you know, trying something new, make quick experiments. Don't be afraid to like say, well, that's not working and just leave them behind.

 

Brad Werner  33:58

Oh, yeah. If it's not working, man, stop.

 

Jeff York  34:01

Yeah, the there's a stereotype I know, you encountered Brad of the hard headed entrepreneur who keeps going against all the odds that Mark Zuckerberg who nobody knows, like, No, that's not what expert speakers do. Right? I totally, totally agree. At least not for very long because. Okay, that's it from us. Thank you. If you're interested in CO venture for me, we offer consulting. It's not just Brad and I, it's dozens of experts from around the SEO community. The URL is right there. But if you type in COVID, or Ford, you'll find it creative distillation or podcast. You can find that just by typing creative distillation into Google. If that doesn't come up and just type them in Starcraft distillation, it definitely will. Or you can find it through us. Jeffrey, York, Colorado, did you? I tweeted at your Jeffrey and then Brad's emails right there. Walter Warner at Colorado ddu. He tweets it at W Bradley work and we would welcome We would love to have your feedback on this on the podcast, any questions you have about cu, entrepreneurship, whatever we can do to help. So with that, let's roll over into the q&a. Unless you have anything else you wanted to say, Brett?

 

Brad Werner  35:12

No, I think that that was a great wrap up. And I hoping that Amanda has some questions for us, we can help some people directly on this call.

 

Jeff York  35:19

Probably people are still out there.

 

35:22

There are definitely still attendees on the webinar. So please, as a reminder, feel free to submit your questions through the q&a feature. And we will ask Jeff and Brad, let's start with a question here from David. Do to COVID-19 besides video chat forums, what ancillary or new services? are businesses considering adding to their platforms?

 

Jeff York  35:41

You want to take that first bread? Sure. Well,

 

Brad Werner  35:43

yeah. So can you repeat the question one more time, please, Amanda, I want to make sure that I get this right.

 

35:50

So besides video chat forums, what ancillary or new services? are businesses considering adding to their platforms?

 

Brad Werner  35:57

Okay, so So the bottom line is, it's all about connecting with your customers. So I would say that there, there are things that I don't even know of the people are using the touch, but I would, first of all, I would say, last week was the first time that I ever did went to curbside delivery, it was so impressive to me, that I pulled up to this place. It was in my car within 30 seconds, and I was gone. And in the old days, I would have walked into the store, look through the aisles a little bit taken a 10 minute transaction? And if so the whole process takes a half hour. So it's very, very hard to answer this question directly unless I know the specific business. But the bottom line is, talk or understand what's going on within your competitors. Talk to your customers, and ask your customers how they expect to have your product or service delivered to them. And I think by understanding what your customers needs, that will take you to the answer of your your question, our video chat forums appropriate for them. I have no idea. But I think that my thinking is the collective intelligence of all of your customers is much greater than the intelligence of Jeff and I on this call. So the more you talk to your customers, I think they'll lead you the way and how to deliver correctly.

 

Jeff York  37:09

That's absolutely right. And and especially when you talk to them, and they read a pay for something. That's that's the place to dig in and go for because then you really focus on all the research shows that people will tell you all sorts of things they'll pay for and buy and would love to do that. But yeah, that doesn't tend to work out. It's when people are willing to pay. That's right. But yeah, I totally agree. I think I think customer expectation is going to change after this. Oh, yeah, we're, you know, there's some people that like to go to the grocery store, but I'm gonna be a lot less of them after this. So I think thinking about those delivery services, those curbside services out there dying, people's norms are going to change.

 

Brad Werner  37:55

Yeah, I agree. And and, and the other thing is, is, we're never going to go back to normal, or whatever you think that normal was, and tell people feel safe. And so it's all about safe. And so how can you allow people to feel safe in doing a transaction with your business?

 

Jeff York  38:11

Yeah, I mean, I saw you know, we, I mean, if you know anything about viruses, you know, you cannot actually contract the virus from drinking alcohol. It's literally impossible. But I've seen to a local brewery that posted something about all of their safety and cleaning and everything else. And, you know, it's like, that worked for me, even though I know, it really makes no difference whatsoever.

 

Brad Werner  38:31

So you told me that that's why I don't have the virus had is because my bourbon habit

 

Jeff York  38:34

is the as long as we keep recording creative distillation, Brad will be fine. We don't have Okay, perfect. Oh, it's just good old whiskey and beer will keep us going.

 

Brad Werner  38:45

Okay, well, I hope that that answered your question. Amanda, do you have another one?

 

38:50

Absolutely. We have quite a few questions. Next is from Seth. If you're currently fundraising for a startup, how do you show potential investors your ability to pivot, even if there might not be a reason to pivot yet?

 

Jeff York  39:03

I could start with that one. But Brad says. So I think actually, from what I've seen, and talking to investors, I think by not pivoting quite so hard. I think a lot of times investors are pretty turned off by pitches they're like, and we're all about COVID-19. Because investors take a much more long term horizon, then, you know, the next 12 months, I mean, most people are not making investment expecting to get out in 12 months, especially in the startup phase. So I think, talking about saying, you know, this is how we were moving forward, how we continue our business for but focusing on the fundamentals. What is your business model is the opportunity you're going after? I think that's the key.

 

Brad Werner  39:42

Right? It's so I took this, the person that asked this question, I've been on both sides of that transaction. I've actually funded many companies. I've actually been involved in fundraising. It's very difficult right now. However, if you show a really strong value proposition and you actually To show that there's a path for you to grow and succeed, investment money's there for you Even today, you just have to, you have to understand, and you can't just whitewash this new reality. You have to address it. I'm not saying you have to pivot to it or anything. But if it's the elephant in the room or your growth, you do have to address it. And if you address it, honestly, I would say, and you have a very, very strong business idea that's been vetted, all, you know, operations, everything else that you want to do. I still think the fundraising, you'll get get the money you need. Once again, the money is on the sidelines, looking for good places. But I will say that the to the marginal companies that were fundraising before going to have much more difficult time.

 

Jeff York  40:41

Yeah, not not so many blockchain companies, right.

 

Brad Werner  40:45

No, I'm not that for this moment.

 

Jeff York  40:47

I guess that was last year. Yeah. And I think the other thing I would say, just to try to specifically answer your question, I think thinking through the questions you really don't want the investors to ask, and then having backup slides prepared on how you would address that situation shows your ability to at least think about the the hard questions, and so that I've always seen that be pretty successful in pitches where it's like, you know, somebody has this like, killer question like, Oh, I was hoping someone else acts, we've thought through it. And we're This is our thoughts. I mean, I think just showing you have the foresight to think about is really helped, right?

 

Brad Werner  41:21

And so when you're pitching and fundraising, you you have to identify the elephant in the room, and it takes it off the plate of the question and answer, and I think it actually builds credibility for you. So it's really a good play.

 

41:34

Great. Next, we have a question from gallon. wondering, can you share more about your philosophy around the short term need to generate revenue without compromising the company's original revenue

 

Brad Werner  41:46

model? Like a first red shirt? Well, well, first of all,

 

41:51

you,

 

Brad Werner  41:51

if you're, I actually know a gala. And so I don't know if this is the same person. If it is, I'd like to say hello. But a couple things about that, you need to revisit your revenue model, and make sure it's appropriate for moving forward. Okay, so if it's based, if it's based on assumptions that don't work throughout this, this kind of normal that we're living in here for a moment, you're not going to go anywhere. So you need to first of all adjust to this reality. And like I said, without a specific example, I can't tell you if adjusting your business model is right or wrong. I would say though, don't hold on to it with both hands. If you're if people around you, your customers are telling you that it doesn't work. And once again, it's going back to your customers, I hate to repeat this, but it's all about your customers, right? So you have to go back to your customers understand their needs. And hopefully, that original model that you built was solving problems for them, right? In a sense, you everyone in business now needs to be solving problems for their customers. And if you could, if you're known as this problem solver, you will then continue into business in a really fine way. I think you have a great outlook in front of you. However, if you're not solving problems for your customers, whether it was working three months ago, three months ago or not, it's not going to work moving forward. So it's once again, just you need to talk to your customers. And they'll tell you if the business models, right.

 

Jeff York  43:11

Yeah, I wholeheartedly agree. I mean, I think having that conversation is really important, not just assuming you know what your customers need, but rather having a conversation is our is what we're offering our most orders down, you know, what can you do? What other problems are you experiencing? Where can we help you? I mean, nobody got upset when somebody asked how they could help them. So it's

 

Brad Werner  43:30

right, it's so it's like dealing with that you have to be empathetic towards your customers and sense that. And if once that comes across, and that's actually kind of like the soul of your business, that your business becomes known for something like that, that's really going to help you.

 

Jeff York  43:42

Yeah, well beyond whatever product you have. It's the the ability to understand your customers and help them.

 

Brad Werner  43:48

Yes, sir.

 

43:50

Thank you both for that. We have a question from Karen, do you have any recommendations of indicators or information to keep an eye on to get early warning signs about changing business conditions? Hmm,

 

Jeff York  44:05

Brad, you're way more dialed into that than I

 

Brad Werner  44:07

well. So I actually, I used to wait until this happened. Kind of the overall health of the stock market was my number one. indicator, I look at the stock market now. And it seems to me disjointed from reality. So I guess in a sense, my my old way of doing things may not be appropriate. Now. I would say though, what I would do for me and what I'm looking for is the virus or the vaccine race. Pardon me. When there's a vaccine and people are feel healthy, or feel safe, then I think you're good to go. So for me, judging the healthy economy is actually now based in science and how are we on this path two, are there viable treatments, or is there a viable vaccine, and so that's actually what I'm keying off of, in understanding when the recovery is going to come and when we're going to Atticus,

 

Jeff York  45:01

I yeah. And just in my own realm, I think oil prices and solar prices and things like that. I mean, energy is a huge part of our economy and understand the trends. There are huge indicators. A lot of people are talking about not Peak Oil anymore, but peak oil demand. What do you do when you have trillions and assets stranded in the ground because Solar's price plummets below oil and natural gas? I won't go too deep into that. But I want you markets very carefully, because I think they're a bellwether. Also, auto sales are another bellwether that you can kind of tell different classes of autos, there's just a lot of things I pay attention to.

 

45:38

Great, thank you. Thanks, Gary, question from an anonymous attendee, it's been asked a couple of times. If you have an idea, how do you find partners that will not take your idea and run and do it without you?

 

Jeff York  45:52

So Jeff, let me go on this one first. And I'm hope I'm not going to offend anonymous, or anyone else that's asking this, but I asked this at one of my professors, and she said, what that you had an idea that was good enough for someone to want to steal. So that kind of gave me a little bit of humility. I think a lot of times entrepreneurs worry about this, it's a very rare occurrence. And here's the one thing I'll say is, if you don't talk to people about your idea, nothing will happen, you don't really have a choice. If you have an actual patentable process, sure, you can file a provisional patent and do those things. But you have to talk to other people. And the only other thing I'll say is another like life was or wasn't, we're all just extras in the movie of someone else's life. People are not waiting for you to come tell them about an idea and steal it. There are some evil people out there in the world, bad actors. But most of us, especially now, we're just trying to get through day to day, they're not looking to lift your idea, more than likely they won't even buy it or believe it's interesting. That's the that's the problem. Entrepreneurs face much, much more often.

 

Brad Werner  46:56

And so my advice to an animus is, I'm actually I'm a co founder of a company that has almost 50 granted patents. And this was something that we struggled with. But I do think that there are ways to articulate your idea without spilling the secret sauce. So if you really do have something novel there, you don't have to tell people what makes it go, what makes it work, you just have to show how you're solving your your customers problems. Because most people don't give a shit about what's in the guts, right? They don't they want they how do you help me? Right? Can you make my product better? Whatever your add on is. So I would say figure out a way to articulate your messaging without giving your secret sauce away. And look for a great patent attorney. If you'd like a really good patent attorney, I have one for you. If you want to email me afterwards, I can help you with that, and get your your ideas protected. The other thing is, though, be very careful about patent protection, too, it is not the silver bullet that you may think it is. Because when you start to patent an idea, it becomes public information. So now you've wanted to keep it close to the vest, and it's out for the world to see. So be very careful about that. But So bottom line is let your customers know, or your investors know the problem you're solving without actually telling them what's in the guts of your solution.

 

Jeff York  48:09

Yeah, and if they're trying to dig into the guts and that interesting other part, that's probably not someone you want to be partnering with, anyway.

 

Brad Werner  48:15

Yeah, right. Use common sense.

 

48:18

Great, thank you. This next question is directed to Jeff it is from Luther. He said given your study around climate change, how can entrepreneurial approaches prepare market actors for response to Coronavirus and the climate credit crisis at the same time?

 

Jeff York  48:35

Yeah, so, a huge part of that is resiliency of systems. The the climate crisis is going to lead to similar breakdowns that we have seen during the pandemic supply chains, problems of flooding dislocation populations, not to be too much of a bummer. But you know, this is a These are things are going to happen. And so I think building and resiliency and processes and systems, a lot of that will mean energy independence, local energy grids, redundancy and backup for battery storage, those things are actually going to let us adopt renewables are far larger scale as well. Also reducing the load demand of buildings and as well as building in local agriculture, so that local communities can actually subsist on agriculture. And that's, that's tough to do in Colorado, unless you really like beets, but, but there's times to doing it. And I think, I think the overall message is entrepreneurs, are the people that bring ideas and and and and potential solutions into action. And so I think a lot of what we're learning during COVID-19 is indeed, to steal my own headline from that column. I wrote a dress rehearsal for what's going to happen with climate change. I think businesses are able to deal with covid 19 and able to persevere are going to be very well positioned to think about The coming challenges of the climate crisis.

 

Brad Werner  50:03

Right now, I'm just gonna add in another citizen addressed to me. But in a sense, it's recognizing your stakeholders once again, and doing good by them. And I think that that's really going to help you in whatever business you're in.

 

Jeff York  50:13

And also, the last thing I'll say is, there's something counterintuitive that comes out our research I talked about that call is that environmental entrepreneurs, people addressing climate change are not necessarily best off going into a highly environmentally sensitive geography. Because those places tend not to be particularly pro business. They're actually better off in places Well, basically college towns that have a strong economic system, not the town around Humbert, like Boulder, where people care about the environment, but they also care about economic prosperity and building businesses and entrepreneurship. Those are the best places to build your environmentally relevant business. I'm happy to provide references for that people are interested. Well, counterintuitive, but uh, but that's where the biggest competitive advantage lies.

 

50:59

That's really cool.

 

Jeff York  51:02

And based on that,

 

51:06

we're going to move into our final two to three questions here. Our next question is from Megan, do you see any specific industries emerging are gaining significant strength in the near term?

 

51:17

Right?

 

Brad Werner  51:18

Well, I would say healthcare is a no brainer on that one. I think that our healthcare infrastructure, as we've seen, is probably not up to what people's expectations were. So I would say healthcare is a good play. I also think sustain animals like Jeff was talking about before. But yeah, I guess I guess that general industry is very, very hard. So we could pick a couple general industries, right, you know, that Walmart and Amazon and the big online retailers, their industries have been booming. I think it would be sad to end up with only three or four retailers those two and a target. And maybe Lowe's and Home Depot is the only place to shop. But but there is strength in actually doing business on the web right now. So the focus is, and if you look at the s&p, and the makeup of the tech companies that are taking it up to where it is, it is all the high tech area. So it's high tech healthcare, I would say would be the big two.

 

Jeff York  52:15

Yeah. And I would say also, I would say healthcare both specifically focus on retirement, I think the way people are going to think about health care for the elderly is going to change massively in this way. I mean, honestly, Who among us would want to put our parent or loved one in a care facility after those tickets turned out? There's going to be there's going to be massive changes that industry, there are things as I think platforms that allow patronage of local businesses, but in a high tech way, are going to be amazingly important. Similar, like Patreon has seen a massive uptick. I don't know if you're familiar with that platform. But it's a way to pay local creators and content creators. They skyrocketed during the pandemic.

 

53:03

Thank you. Great. And then we will move on to a question from Neil here. He said, I'm in a position to offer value to society with a new business that I'm launching, generally, what are the best ways to market and create awareness during these interesting times?

 

Brad Werner  53:18

Oh, boy, that's a tough question

 

Jeff York  53:21

is a tough one without knowing the business. I honestly believe it is through network effects. And starting with who you know, and the businesses, you know, and partnerships you can create. That's that's a very general answer. But pretty general questions tough to be too much more.

 

Brad Werner  53:39

And I would say that I did you say Arthur's asked us that his customers will be his best salespeople, right? So if he's delivering value to his customers, that's where he'll get

 

Jeff York  53:50

traction, figuring out who those initial customers are and how you're going to create absolute delight for them, I think is critical focusing on the customers you have. And then and then growing from there.

 

54:01

Yep, totally agree. Great,

 

54:03

great piece of advice there. Well, in our final question, and we've touched on this a little bit, but I think it's a great place to end. Danielle asks, How important is it to use this pandemic experience to create a business that can survive an unforeseen event?

 

Brad Werner  54:18

Jeff, you want to jump? Sure.

 

Jeff York  54:20

I mean, that's, that's tough. Because, you know, as I talked about earlier, we're talking about uncertainty. And by definition, that's not predictable. So designing for that, it's not really possible. What is possible is to embrace that entrepreneurial way of thinking that is focused in the means we have and creating new unforeseen value out of that, and making low risk bets in order to keep your business moving forward. So I think it's more about the sustainability of you as an entrepreneur than it is about the sustainability of your business and unfortunately,

 

Brad Werner  55:01

And it's my answer to Daniela be, you're adding value add value to your customers. And the only way unforeseen events are, by definition unforeseen, right? So you don't know what's coming. So maybe it's maybe best practices are though keep more money in the bank, right? If you had a month's payroll, keep six months payroll plan for the worst and hope for the best. So there there are some internal things you can do to protect yourself against cash crunches and really good relationship with suppliers and those types of things. I think networking within your industry, all those go into making a really solid business, but I do think that maybe this cash portion of having a greater cash on hand than you're used to will also provide some protection. But bottom line is there's no way to protect from everything. Right there is just there is inherent risk in life and in business, and you protect yourself the best you can, but there be some things that none of us will be able to plan for.

 

56:01

Great. Well, thank you so much to everyone for joining us for today's presentation and a special thank you again to Jeff and grab this great information. Have a great rest of your day and go boss