How I survived the LAST economic collapse

as of today's date fall of 2024 we are heading into one of the most contentious times that we've seen since I believe 2007 going into 2008 now I hope I'm wrong but I may not be so today I'm going to help you guys I'm going to share with you guys what I did in 2008 that helped me prepare my company prepare my family prepare my job sites for what was coming down the pipeline and my success story from 2007 to 2008 I would wash rinse and repeat any day of the week so we got a lot planned for you in today's video I hope you guys stick around because the going is going to get good I promise you it's going to be good cuz I'm going to share with you knowledge bombs let's do it in 2007 the writing was on the wall and I felt the Winds of Change coming and I sat down with my crew and I had a lot of people working for me my company was growing astronomically because in 2007 it was all boom times it was grow as fast as you can grow get as much work done as you possibly can get done as quickly as you can get it done under any means possible does that sound like what's happening right now I think it is now growing in those times is not difficult it's not very tough you just got to pick up the phone and say yes I'll be there but in 2008 I seen that writing on the wall that there was a crash coming and the Crash hit hard I'm talking about companies that were doing 50 plus million dollar a year in business disappearing overnight they no longer existed and that wasn't just an isolated incident I'm talking about company after company after company disappearing in 2008 but what I did in 2007 is I sat down with my top Echelon of guys and I said next year we're cutting our business in half and they all looked at me like I was smoking something funny and I said listen this is what we're going to do we're going to eliminate every single person from our company that isn't performing at Peak Performance we're going to do the first thing is we are going to keep the best of the best guys on board and in 2008 that's what we did I cut before the crash came I had cut all of my extraneous labor that wasn't performing up to standards and eliminated them and then the second thing I did was I marketed like I was a hungry madman like I was a wolf I didn't slow down on my marketing because when time get tough and Market drops down marketing is the key to keeping your phone ringing so even though my plan was to intentionally cut the business by more than 50% I marketed like I was going to grow double basically what I did was I kept my marketing status quo okay so I was marketing like I was way up here my intentions were to have a company down here and what this allowed me to do was very strategically cherry pick I would go up out and find the best of the best the ripest fruit on the vine and those jobs and only those jobs were the ones that I took now I marketed like I'm way up here which gave me a wide choice of jobs where everybody else was cutting back cutting back cutting back you never cut back on your marketing unless you don't like your phone ringing and you don't like having job options cherry-picking your jobs is an absolutely critical element to keep your company flowing and in good profits not just gross revenue profits here's what happened in 2008 I intentionally cut my business back my profits in 2007 were right here in 2008 after I cut my business back my profits were right here my profits never changed I made absolutely as much money profit put in my pocket in 2008 as I did in 2007 and here's where that light bulb went off I pulled it off and I said wait a minute I just did 50% Less business and I got to keep the absolute same amount of money why have I not been doing this all along so in 2008 to 2009 when companies were starving people were going under times were tough I intentionally cut my company back even more I sat down with my top guys and I'm like where else can we cut without eliminating guys that we absolutely need what else can we do to refine our processes to make this thing flow even better to give us higher profit margins and in 2008 to 2009 I cut my business back again not as much as I did in 2007 and 2008 but I cut it back and as I cut my business back my profits actually Rose higher than they did at our peak in 2007 and I'm sitting here going I did it again I washed rinsed and repeated I did it again did it once I did it again can I do it a third time so what do you think I did I cut back again and again and again and again until I got my company where I was actually operating at a 50% profit margin and in construction a 50% profit margin is unre 10% is average 50% is UN heard of and that was my average year-to-date profit it wasn't on a oneoff job it wasn't on a great month it was the entire year I operated at a 50% profit margin and in fact you may have noticed it because that's about the time I started my company and I think I made a video saying why I had to go out and buy $330,000 worth of equipment in one year and this was in a down year this was in a bad year um so streamlining your company is absolutely critical if you think times could get tough and what I see happening in November is not going to be good for anybody in any way shape or form it doesn't matter if the red team wins or the blue team wins crap is going to hit the fan in one way shape or form or another and it's good to be prepared but there's a second thing you have to do to prepare just doing this oneoff thing is okay you'll get by you'll do good but there's a second thing you need to do and I'm actually going to bring in a special guest to talk us through this next phase coming up in just a few moments back in 2008 when things were starting to crash I was demolishing a farm and the contractor that I was demolishing the farm for completely disappeared before paying his bill now wasn't insurmountable it was like 12 to1 16,000 but then right after that I had started on a massive retail Ting wall project we're talking about it was just huge and the contractor on that job owed me around $1,000 but he didn't pay his bill I had ordered all the materials I had paid all of the guys I had completed the project I had ordered all the rock I had everything done and completed and this contractor instead of paying me decided the way he was going to get out of his bill was to suum me and that's actually a strategy that contractors sometimes use and we can talk about that in another video if you want to hear that um but what that did teach me was that money makes people funny and not in a good way but you've got to have emergency backup resources ready to go just in case something like that happens now the guy we're going to talk to in just a minute I was going to give him two maybe three minutes but I started to talk to him and I'm like oh heck yeah this is a much better resource than I ever had available back in the day when we needed money we were scrambling trying to set up lines of credit let's just get into it and do this interview to prepare my company for hard times I learned long ago that I needed to have a line of credit just in case I was expecting someone to pay me and they didn't come through I still had to make payroll I still had to buy materials but now I've got Jake on here from a company called revenu and this is not a line of credit this is what I consider to be the next level up one thing better but what are you Jake yep so we're a flexible cash advance that comes with no fees so we're making the transaction very simple by just you we Finance you X you pay back y there's no black it's black and white there's no gray area in between and the real value of the product is that there's a ton of options to pay it off early at deep deep deep discounts okay so unlike a bank where you got to go in and you've got to apply and you got to bring in two years of statements uh and then you you waiting to to find out and you got to set this up ahead of time how do you guys actually establish this line of cash advance system for a contractor yeah so we streamline the whole thing so we have an easy application you go to revenu with a.com hit apply now fill out your business information link your bank and do a quick Bank verification so we can underwrite because what we underwrite unlike a bank where they want hair samples three years of tax returns we're looking at just a simple business information owner information we're doing a soft credit pull but we don't really care about FICO score unlike a bank um and we're really looking in underwriting on your cash flow so as long as you're doing $20,000 worth of sales um you know there's a good shop that you'll you'll be approved for the revenue product so what do you mean by your underwriting on cash flow I don't get that Jake can you break that down for me so we're yeah so we're looking and basically looking at a business unlike most traditional Banks where they'll look at the owner right and and the profitability we're looking at the consistency of the business what we want to see is that you keep good cash flow you have good ledgers Rel you you look to make sure that contractors have cash coming in consistently every month that's your main criteria it's just every month they've got money coming in that's it absolutely not not two years of credit nothing else just yeah you've got you've got money coming in May you got money coming in June you got money coming in July so we can give you money for August September or whatever you need absolutely how the product functions right so let's say we get you set up with a $100,000 flex line right you need $10,000 to complete a a job you can either draw directly from the Revenue website into your a into your business bank account that can function like cash or we have a Visa business card where you could swipe at Home Depot or any of your suppliers or or vendors so what we do is essentially when you swipe for Home Depot let's say you're a plumber doing a job um you know you need $10,000 for PVC pipes the toilets the whole works right swipe the revenue card they instantly get paid you check out you take the materials you do the job let's just say what you're agreeing to is essentially $10,000 now for us buying 122,500 of your future sales that gets paid PID back on a weekly basis now the real value prop comes in when you you finish the job you get paid net 30 and now you're ready to pay it off we're going to actually allow you to pay it off at the total cost of capital about two to four cents on the dollar so essentially for that job you paid $200 in cost of capital to complete the whole thing and you were able to access it immediately unlike a bank which has you know 2 to 3% draw fees they have origination fees to set up the the the line of credit so we're a much better suitable product for short-term Project based financing okay so when a contractor does need money he actually has a Visa card that he can spend wherever he needs to spend that or if he needs cash he can actually pull cash out as well using the same system exactly with no special Hoops to jump through no you could and in that same scenario let's just say the job cost 10,000 in materials and he swiped at Home Depot and 10,000 to cover payroll and and random miscellaneous things he can draw $10,000 into his bank account and use it for whatever he wants who what companies does this really work well for so we love all small businesses the real Focus for us is that we want to make sure it's a steady business right so again we talked earlier about consistent cash flow but we want to make sure the business is doing at least $20,000 a month in sales if we can if we can show that you have a really good opportunity that ultimately getting funded through us oh W okay so if guys want to find out more information where would they go Jake yep simple Revenue with a d at the end.com there's a big button that says apply now complete the the owner and business information hook up your bank account and you know we'll get right to it and unlike a bank that takes 60 to 90 days we should have this wrapped up between 20 for 48 hours oh wow okay guys I learned long ago that having a parachute a backup just in case that guy that's supposed to pay you doesn't come through in time and you still got to make payroll that week you have a means to an ends and that's what these guys are these guys are the backup with no fees nothing and fast easy withdrawal and a Visa card and cash I mean it just keeps getting better and better and better absolutely better than what I ever had back in the day that's for sure all right guys let's get back into our regularly scheduled video so when times get tough don't cut your marketing your marketing is your lifeline you actually need to keep your marketing at status quo or increase your marketing you need your phone to ring you want to be able to also cherry-pick those jobs so if you may want to even consider increasing your marketing during difficult times don't extend lines and credit out to your customers don't automatically assume that they'll pay you that they're that they will honor their debt because when times get tough sometimes customers some customers have absolutely no problem making their problem your problem problem meaning that if they aren't getting paid they're not going to even try to pay you they're going to leave you holding the bag and number three in case something like that happens have an emergency backup plan in Cas in place for money this is critical because you don't want to be one of those guys making your problem somebody else's problem put that plan in place beforehand you are a business owner that means you have to be proactive not reactive and proactive means you're planning ahead reactive means Something's Happened to you and you're just responding oh gez now what do I do oh okay those are the guys that don't last very long the guys that have a plan that can go hey if things get bad I'm going to do this this and this are the ones that survive and even sometimes Thrive when times get tough but I hope this video has helped you guys out that's it for this one God bless and go get him you guys and I hope no matter what happens your business thrives catch you at another one