Week #17 Email Update: Don’t do this in a recession – from Brandon on July 30th
We’re headed into week 32 of 2022 like a panther in the Sierra chasing an elk.
Your weekly roundup email with things that will give you an edge to win in your business and your life.
Community shoutouts, new EDGE podcast episodes that will propel you and your business forward, a new survey from SBI on what CEO’s are doing to prepare for the recession, a business book I recommend, a show worth watching, and what I’m writing about in EDGE’s print newsletter.
If you enjoy this read, please feel free to forward it along to friends and colleagues that would enjoy it. Let’s go!
Community Shoutouts
Welcome the 71 new subscribers who joined since last week. Grateful to have you here!
Thank you to Cori Fry at Libsyn (EDGE’s podcast hosting company) for featuring us in their blog this past week. We appreciate you!
Thank you to Jeremy and James at Winning Strategies Playbook Podcast for having me on the show, talking about business plans, how to build them quickly and why you should be using them.
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Worth Listening on EDGE
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Best Apps for iPhone and Android Entrepreneurs with Danielle Jenkins of Domestic Divas Cleaning Co. | Ep. 345
We talk about the exact apps we use on our phones to run our businesses and life and why we love them.
Listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify
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401k Part 8: Double Dipping with your 401k Plan with Matt Ruttenberg | Ep. 347
We discuss what Double Dipping means and how you can use it to save more money in your company’s 401k plan for yourself as a business owner.
Listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify
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Creating Mindful Music with Joshua Sam Miller Founder of Embodied Sounds | Ep. 348
Joshua and I talk about his story from working the corporate grind to how a real estate investment freed him to follow his passion and create mindful music.
Listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify
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Landscaping Company to Building a Custom Maps App with Chelsey Roney Co-Founder of Proxi | Ep.349
Chelsey shares her unconventional path to founding Proxi.
Listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify
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Broke to Bootstrapping a $3 Million Business in Three Years w/ Danielle Jenkins Founder of Domestic Divas Cleaning Company | Ep. 350
Danielle’s story of how she went from being completely broke to bootstrapping $3 million in revenue in three years.
Listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify
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AI, Neural Networks, Bootstrapping and Start-ups with Ruslan Khamidullin Co-Founder of Filmustage | Ep. 353
Ruslan shares his story of how he and his co-founders started Filmustage and how they have been able to bootstrap it. We also talk about AI, neural networks and machine learning.
Listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify
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Sales Funnels with Patrick Shaw CEO of RapidFunnel | Ep. 354
Patrick and I talk about sales funnels, how to think about sales and he drops tons of sales tips from his decades working in sales organizations.
Listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify
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Building a Shoe Company with Billy Price Co-Founder of Billy Footwear | Ep. 358
Billy shares his story of how he and his Co-Founders bootstrapped Billy Footwear into a seven figure shoe company by patenting an innovative zip up design and creating cool shoe designs.
Listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify
Worth Sharing
Sales Benchmark Index (SBI) 2022 Sales Macro View Report
Don’t Create Confusion, Create Value
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SBI just released their 2022 CEO survey. Use the insights to help drive your business as we navigate the recession. Key take aways:
* CEOs are taking on far too many growth imperatives heading into a recession. Organizational focus – particularly across the commercial team – is a critical factor in maintaining growth through a recession or similar economic event. Getting clear on your value creation plan, and the precise growth initiatives related to that plan is key.
* CEOs are taking on the wrong growth imperatives based on their value creation plan. CEOs are prioritizing growth imperatives that have little bearing on their value creation plan. For instance, a vast number of CEOs who identify their value creation model as Accelerating Growth with the Same Operating Expense are prioritizing changing the revenue mix of their firms to improve the margin profile, where far more resources need to be directed at commercial productivity efforts almost exclusively.
* Most CEOs said they believe inflation and rising interest rates will eventually have a negative impact on their businesses. 46% anticipate a “somewhat negative impact” while another 9% expect “significant negative impact”. In anticipation, they are increasing near-term pricing to keep pace with higher labor and material costs, which is reflected in a six percent median price increase reported across the survey.
* Nearly two-thirds of CEOs have developed contingency plans (65% reported taking financially or budgetarily explicit actions to prepare for an economic recession in late ’22 or early ‘23) that are overly focused on cost reduction instead of defending growth bets or reallocating expenses to maintain growth in the face of recession.
Source: SBI 2022 CEO Survey
Worth Reading
Who Moved My Cheese? by Spencer Johnson
A book I keep on my shelf and re-read every few years because it’s a timeless business classic that uses a simple parable to reveal profound truths about dealing with change so that you can enjoy less stress and more success in your work and in your life.
I picked it out of my bookshelf to read on the plane and glad I did. It’s sold an incredible 28 million copies since Spencer wrote it.
Best price under $10 I found for the book or audio version is here >>>
Worth Watching
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Edge of the Earth on HBO Max
A four-part documentary series from HBO that follows four groups of elite action-adventure athletes embarking on never-before-accomplished missions.
Each installment of the series features a different team of adventurers journeying into the wild to take on incredible endeavors of physical prowess and mental fortitude.
I’ve watched the first two episodes so far and they’ve been great. Recommended.Watch on HBO Max
What I’m Writing About in EDGE’s Print Newsletter
Still hard at work on the keyboard writing my first book. I started in the evening on June 16, 2022. Here’s my progress:
Since the last newsletter I’ve been editing the Introduction which has resulted in making it longer. Now at work editing it down to capture the new thoughts while being more concise.
My goal is to make this book a quick, easy read so the reader can start putting the information to use right away. Here’s my total words by week:
Week 1: 8,000 (+8,000)
Week 2: 30,641 (+22,641)
Week 3: 33,368 (+2,727)
Week 4: 33,123 (-245)
Week 5: 33,798 (+675)
Week 6: 32,948 (-850)
Week 7: 33,496 (+548)
The Week Ahead at EDGE
* EDGE print newsletter package launch; It includes the How to Build a Business Plan and Pitch Deck in 13 Slides Course that I’ll be teaching live. I haven’t taught it live in two years and had requests, so we’ve put a package together along with some other things to help people. More on that this week.
* Three guest recording sessions for the EDGE podcast.
* Dropping episodes on the new EDGE YouTube channel where you can catch the video version of each episode.
Last Word
Thanks for reading and enjoy the rest of your weekend!
Brandon
P.S. Make sure to subscribe to the EDGE in your podcast player so you don’t miss any episodes >>>
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