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Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last few weeks and months, you know by now that the world as we know it has come to a screeching halt. But do you know that in at least 10 States, the SBA is willing to lend up to $2 million worth of disaster relief loans? And that is good news for business. That means emergency cash so you can continue to operate. In today’s video, I’ll talk about that plus four other things you need to do today, not just to survive, but to thrive in today’s environment. Hey everybody, welcome to Scaling to 7 Figures & Beyond. I am your host, Leo Landaverde. I am a business coach, outsourced CFO, and author and I’m on a mission to help business owners with scaling to seven figures and beyond, create the systems and procedures to scale, and maximize value in your business. Let’s get to it. If you’re ready to grow your business to seven figures and beyond while creating the financial freedom and the lifestyle you want, then subscribe to this channel. And don’t forget to hit the bell so you’ll be notified time new content comes out.
Here are the five things. Number 1, first and foremost, you’ve got to change your mindset. You have a choice now, either you’re going to be a glass half full kind of person, or you’re going to be a glass half empty kind of person during this whole coronavirus situation. You’ve got to change your paradigm. You got to change what you focus on. Henry Ford once said that, “Whether you think you can or you can’t, you’re right.” And he’s right, right? You got to control your mindset. You got to control as a business owner what you think about every day from now on, and you’ve got to get your mind under control. You’ve got to get your mind to be trained. One of the things that I do is you got to start in the morning feeding yourself with good stuff. If first thing you do in the morning when you get up is go turn on the news and watch what CNN is saying, I guarantee you, you’re going to be depressed and frantic and really in a panic mode all day. Well, that energy feeds on other people.
If you’re hanging out with people that are panicky, you are going to be in turn, get panicky, and that’s really the whole principle of this mob mentality, right? If you see one person running, you’re going to start running and you don’t even know why. So I would say feed yourself good stuff. If you need to know what’s going on in the world, wait until the end of the day when you’re not really doing things that are critical for your business. Your employees, your vendors, and the public at large needs you to stay positive. You’re going to get somewhere. Number 2, be a force for good. Heroes are not born, they are made during times of adversity. And you’ve got to make a decision to be a hero today. Heroes are not made in times of peace, they’re made in times of war. We are fighting something we don’t fully understand yet, but you have to be a force for good. I love watching or reading. Watching on the news those great stories of people who are doing incredible things in the midst of what’s going on.
Now, if you’re a business owner and you have an opportunity to help others that are in a less fortunate situation, then do that. Be a force for good. Use the wealth of your business to impact for good and you watch what givers gain. What goes around comes around. There are many just sayings about that, but it really comes down to you will get what you want if you help enough people get what they want, and especially in times of disaster. So be a force for good. Number 3, don’t manage, lead. Managers, instruct and direct. Leaders, inspire. And what we need now are business owners who are going to inspire not just your employees … which you should be inspiring, your vendors, your clients, and the public at large. I guarantee you that months and years from now, we’re going to be looking back at those stories of those people, those business owners, those entrepreneurs who inspired us in the midst of tragedy. You want to be one of those. And don’t do it because of the notoriety, do it because it’s what we do. We are business leaders, we’re not business managers.
So if you made a decision to become an entrepreneur and start your own company and grow it, I’m hoping it’s not just for the money. It’s also more than that. I would say creating a legacy that will last for eternity. So you got to make that decision, “Am I going to manage? Am I going to lead?” And you’ll be so much better if you decide to lead your company. Number 4, educate. I tell you, there is so much misinformation out there. There are so many sources of information coming your way and you have to sort through it all and make sense of it. If you as a business owner don’t have an idea of what’s going on, how do you expect everybody else to know? So you got to educate yourself, then educate others on what to do and where to go. Become a resource for people, and this is how you rise up. You’ve been wanting for opportunities to be out there, this is where you’re out there educating.
I’m getting those emails from some of the vendors, the companies that I work with and telling me and educating me, “Do this and do that. This is how you handle this. This is how you handle that.” Those are the companies that are leading really. So you lead. So number 3 was you don’t manage, you lead. But this one is educate. One way to lead is to educate. So you got to know what’s going on, but not from a standpoint of to freak out with the information, but you got to know it so you can educate. And you want to know the best way to learn something? Try to teach it to somebody else. So if you’re educating vendors, you’re educating employees, and you educating the public just like come educated right now, you have to know this stuff. So educate is number four. Number 5, have enough cash. This one is critical and I left it at last so we can spend more time on it. There’s has never been a time in your business life where cash is more critical than today.
I’ve been on the phone with clients yesterday, the day before, all of last week where we’re discussing what are we going to do if all these scenarios happen. What if we run out of cash? What if we close the store? What if people start coming? If you’re in the restaurant industry, if you’re in retail, I’m sure that you are affected. So what are you going to do about cash? If you’re no longer generating sales, what are you going to do about cash? There’s only three ways to generate cash, that is through your organic. One is through your sales, your revenue. You got to be selling, you got to be generating cash through your business. Or B, you get loans. You get a loan to continue on. Or three, you get equity. Well, if the sales are not coming in through the front door, well, then you got to go to the next best thing. You’ve got to have cash because you still have responsibilities. You have to have cash. And here’s a cool thing, I was reading about this yesterday.
I got alerted about the SBA last week that there are now 10 States where you can now apply online for disaster relief money, short loans that are actually a very low interest rates. You can get up to $2 million at 4% interest rate spread over 30 years. So I did some math and a $2 million loan … which you only get it if you need it, it could be about $9,000 a month. Do you need that much cash? Probably not. But here are the 10 States right now where this is available, where you can apply today and it’s a quick application process. So California, Washington, Idaho, Oregon, Maine, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York and Rhode Island. This is as of March 17th, 2020 I’m sure there are going to be more that are coming out. These are specially designed for small businesses. So if you’re a small business, you are in good luck. And the truth is there’s 30 million small businesses in the U.S. So here are some quick things.
So the SBA can provide up to $2 million to help meet financial obligations and operating expenses that could have been met had the disaster not occurred. Now, so if you’ve been affected by what’s going on with coronavirus … and I believe everyone is, you may be eligible. The interest rates for this emergency disaster relief firms will not exceed 4% per year. The term of these loans will not exceed 30 years, so you may go full term. And you can get $200,000, you can get up to $2 million and it’s a quick application process. So if you’re thinking about it, then you probably should start to initiate the process of applying. Now, here’s the important thing that you need to know is you need to know how much cash you’re going to need. And the only way you’re going to know is if you’re actually projecting your cashflow ahead of time. So if you haven’t watched, last week I released a video called How to Create a Super Accurate Projected Cashflow Statement. That’s a 20 minute video. Click on the link below and it’ll take you there, or it’ll be at the end of this video.
But it’s very important that you know how to project cash for your business because if you don’t know how to project cash for your business, you are in big trouble. You will definitely not going to be able to scale. So hopefully this was helpful to you, thank you for watching. Please comment below and let me know if you’ve heard about these resources available right now to small businesses through the Small Business Administration. Please comment below and I’ll be happy to share the link. And all the information that I’m going to put at the bottom of this video so you can actually be educated and you can act quickly. Also, if you want to join a community of likeminded, successful entrepreneurs just like you, then join our Facebook group on the link below where I share tips, tactics, and strategies on how my clients are growing their businesses to seven figures and beyond.
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