Surviving the turbulent waters of the pandemic and economic chaos.
Today we're joined by a Business owner sharing experience of surviving 3 recessions in 25 years. This episode is about actionable advice.
Dave is the founder of Recapture, an abandoned cart and email marketing solution for Shopify, WooCommerce and Magento. He's also the co-host of Rogue Startups podcast talking about his entrepreneurial journey, and he runs Big Snow Tiny Conf West, a small web business mastermind-style conference with skiing.
Kurt Elster: Today, in this episode of The Unofficial Shopify Podcast, you are gonna hear from someone who has survived multiple recessions, because he has been a entrepreneur, he’s been self-employed since 1994. That’s quite a while. He’s been at this a while. And he’s gonna walk us through what steps you can take to survive turbulent waters ahead.
So, Dave, what do you want people to take away from this episode? Let’s get that out of the way right now.
Dave Rodenbaugh: So, yeah, we can take away two things. One, I’m really old. And two, I want people to have a sense of how you can survive a coming recession. At this point, I think we can look forward and say it’s not a question of if we’re having a recession, it’s a question of when, and I think it’s pretty soon. And it feels… Every one of them is a little bit different, but this one feels a lot like the ones we’ve had in the past that I’ve lived through, and had to work through, and deal with all of the stuff.
So, you know, I’d like to talk about some of the things that I’ve discovered that work really well for helping your business stay afloat during this turbulent, crazy, uncertain times.
Kurt Elster: And tell me why, so you said this feels like something I’ve seen before. What about it is familiar to you?
Dave Rodenbaugh: Well, the fear. The fear is familiar. The reason for the fear always changes. There’s always something very different. So, I’ve been aware of four different recessions. So, one of them happened like while I was in college, so it wasn’t really directly impacting me, but everybody talked about it all the time, and that’s at a time when I was more aware of those conversations, and I was reading the newspaper, and just sort of plugged into what was going on in business. And you know, when I graduated college in ’93, my mother was completely freaked out and was like, “Oh my God, we’re in a recession. You have to get a job. That’s your one… You have to get a job. You have to get employed as soon as possible.” That was the one thing that was freaking her out more than anything, and I think that’s a pretty common freak out for kids graduating from college.
But my mom was like 10 times more freaked out about it because of the whole recession thing, and there’s always this lingering sense of fear. First there’s a denial of what’s going on, like is this really bad? Are we really heading into a recession? Everything seems fine. And then all of a sudden there’s the fear, like, “Oh, crap.” This is huge. This is big. This is really scary. What’s going on? I don’t know what’s going on. I don’t understand the problems here. And then that fear lasts for a really long time, like two to three years. It always outlasts the recession itself, because there’s always a point at which the economists who are measuring the output and the GDP, whether it’s going positive or negative, and they say, “Okay, the recession’s over.” But the fear doesn’t go away when that happens, and so, there’s this cycle of denial, fear, and then ignoring the reality of what’s going on outside in the business world. And so, I feel like we’re hitting that first wave of this again. We hit the same thing back around 9/11 and the Dot-com crash. We did the same thing in 2008 with the Great Recession and the housing bubble. And here we are again with the coronavirus, and I’m feeling the same sorts of things happening again.
Kurt Elster: Are you afraid?
Dave Rodenbaugh: So, afraid sort of implies to me that I’m freaked out beyond all compare and I’m sort of paralyzed in action, so I wouldn’t say that I’m afraid. Am I concerned? Am I worried? Am I wanting to make sure that I can do everything in my control that I can to possibly keep my business, and my family, and my lifestyle, all of these things afloat? I’m definitely the latter, but probably not the former.
Kurt Elster: Would you call it worry mixed with cautious optimism?
Dave Rodenbaugh: I would say yes. I would say that there is some cautious optimism in there, because the other thing, and this is gonna sound a little weird, but having lived through three recessions as a businessperson, there are actually some good things about recessions. And I know that sound like… It sounds weird, and horrible, and kind of crazy, actually. But there are some good things that actually come out of recessions, so as a result of that, I think that there’s going to be businesses that can survive this are gonna end up being stronger on the other side.
Kurt Elster: I agree. I have seen… I started my business in the 2008 recession, so I lived through that. And at that time, read quite a few business and marketing books about recessions, and the one thing we know for certain is that the businesses who are lucky enough to be able to weather the storm, who can spend their way, even at a reduced rate, but still survive and spend their way through the recession, and maybe not cut back on marketing entirely, recover significantly faster than the businesses who hunkered down and survived, and certainly of course they’re all lucky to have survived. But it’s one of those scenarios where yeah, we know historically, empirically, if you can spend your way through it, you will recover faster is my point.
Dave Rodenbaugh: Yeah. Yeah. And you know, that sort of brings me to one of the top tips that I would say. If you’re gonna survive this recession, you gotta make sure you gotta have a cash cushion right now. So, that’s a combination of two things. If you have some savings right now, that’s great. You need those savings. If you don’t have some savings, okay. So, don’t panic. It’s not too late, because the recession doesn’t crater everything immediately. That’s not the way it works. Start now. Save what you can, because even if you get only a few months in the bank, that’s a few months that some of your competitors may not even have.
So, it’s totally worth doing immediately.
Kurt Elster: Okay, so I think for e-commerce merchants specifically, one thing you could do right now is run a promo, and go with either some exclusive offer, or a fairly aggressive sale offer. It depends on your margin, but 25 to 50% aggressive, and run a three-day flash sale while at this moment, and promote it heavily, because at this moment, Facebook ads are cheaper than ever, right? We have more eyeballs than ever on social media, and we have people cutting ad spend.
So, there are industries where this won’t work, and I’m sorry, like B2B, especially like let’s say you sell to high schools. All right, that’s gonna be a problem. Or you sell to restaurants and bars. Okay, I acknowledge that this advice will not work for everyone, and I apologize. For some people, though, there are necessary goods, and there are goods that make us feel normal, like I have my apparel brands. Especially the ones that had strong lifestyle brands are doing fine right now with the strategy I suggested. So, like do we necessarily need more clothes at the moment? No, but we still have to get dressed for those Zoom calls, and it’ll help us feel normal to be able to wear comfy clothes. I bought a few items that I’m just like, “All right, I’m ordering one size bigger.” Because for me, COVID-19 refers to the amount of weight I plan to gain from stress eating.
None of that’s a joke, by the way. I know I should work out and stay healthy, and I’m still working out a little bit, but I also just can’t avoid the stress eating. I’m sorry. But, all right, so the point there, to your point, is you can right now, if you are in one of those industries that can still sell, can still fulfill, turn that inventory into cash. And then you will feel more confident, you will breathe easier, and then you’re not necessarily gonna be operating from a place of panic and fear. When you have that cash cushion, and let’s say it’s three or six months, and you feel more comfortable, okay, now you can make saner, more rational decisions.
Dave Rodenbaugh: Absolutely, absolutely. And another example that… So, we have a couple of subscription-based services on Recapture, and one of them’s a coffee subscription service, and I know that they are right now trying to get people to prepay for some subscriptions over the next three to six months, so that they can have some extra cash to operate with, and then these people already have their stuff prepaid, they don’t have to worry about if they lose their job, so they’re still gonna get their awesome coffee showing up right now. That’s another perfect example of what you can do.
Kurt Elster: Okay. Any other strategies?
Dave Rodenbaugh: Yeah, so the other thing, you already alluded to one of them, and that is don’t cut your marketing expenses where your leads are being driven by that channel. So, if you’ve got a channel, and you know that it’s working, Facebook ads, AdWords, it doesn’t matter. If you’ve got LinkedIn working on e-commerce, for God’s sakes, double down on LinkedIn right now. The ad costs are dropping, because advertisers are pulling out left and right. If you cut that ad spend, you’re cutting your lifeline. So, if you’ve got a channel, you know it works, don’t quit spending. If you can increase spending, great, because that’s what’s gonna keep your customers coming in.
If you have channels that you were experimenting with, or you’re not really sure, or they’re kind of marginal, then that’s where you need to start cutting, right there. Take out the expenses that aren’t really driving your leads. Take out the expenses that aren’t pushing forward in your revenue. And other things that you want to look at, like if you have a bunch of things in your business, and they are absolutely essential, those are not expenses to cut right now. But if they’re things that are nice to haves, or things that are helpful, but you could do in a different way, maybe it’s time to start cutting those expenses early to cut your burn rate back.
If your burn rate is lower, that means you’re not gonna burn through your savings, and if your revenue shrinks, you’re going to have a longer runway to run with. So, those are ways that you can actually survive here in the short term, and if you wait to cut, it’s gonna be harder, because you’re gonna start burning through things earlier. So, I would suggest that you want to do that early and not wait.
Kurt Elster: Right. And I think when looking, when reviewing those expenses, and making those tough decisions, I think you gotta classify things either as expense or investment. Some expenses have a demonstrable return on investment, and that’s the first thing you want to keep. The stuff that has a more subjective return on investment, say things that make you feel secure, things that are good for your mental health and well being, all right, we’ll put those in that category, as well. Stuff that is like, feels like pure expense, and there is no way to justify it, those are the things I would cut first.
Dave Rodenbaugh: Yes. Yes.
Kurt Elster: Can you think of any examples? In each category. One of each.
Dave Rodenbaugh: Something that you probably don’t wanna cut, something that you wanna make sure you’re keeping on is stuff like e-mail marketing, abandoned cart recovery, anything that’s basically directly driving revenue right now. If you can go back and say, “I’m sending X emails and I’m making Y dollars.” That’s something that you want to keep. Right?
Stuff that is probably a little more… that’s flashier, and doesn’t necessarily have a direct ROI, like FOMO. If you have a FOMO plugin right now, and you have that, that pops up on your website and says, “Hey, so-and-so just bought X.” You know, I think that things like that don’t have the same impact, and it’s gonna be harder for you to directly attribute sales from how that thing is working your site to what kind of orders show up later on. And if you already know that, great. But if you don’t know that right now, that’s a great example of something to kill.
What would you suggest, Kurt?
Kurt Elster: All right, so for in my own business, things I’m keeping, I looked at our ad spend. It’s positive. I’m keeping it. Anything related to content marketing, I’m absolutely keeping that and doubling down, because A, I think it’s a public service for our community, and B, it’s always been the thing that has served and driven our business. So, why would I not double down on that? And there are expenses related to producing that content and these shows that I’m 100% committed to keeping, whereas the first thing I did was go through our SaaS businesses, or our SaaS subscriptions, and there’s some stuff that existed like purely as a convenience, just in case I needed it. And that’s the stuff where I’m like, “All right, well, I can always re-subscribe later. We’ll just kill that now.”
And I do that actually annually anyway, I just happened to do it in March as opposed to October, when I normally do it.
Dave Rodenbaugh: What’s a specific example of that, that you would give to the merchants out there?
Kurt Elster: Sure, so I was paying a monthly fee to be able to license music for videos whenever I needed it. I really don’t use that particularly often, or monthly, and there are other ways to license stuff one off, as opposed to just having the convenience of this subscription, so I ditched that. Whereas like yeah, my ad spend to promote my apps, that I’m keeping, because A, it’s monthly recurring revenue for those app subscriptions, and the apps generally help people sell more, so I always want to be providing value both ways, so like that will stay.
Dave Rodenbaugh: And there’s another thing that I would say that when you’re in a recession, or you’re in this fear phase right now, this is the one time to listen to this one thing more than you would ever listen to it any other time. It’s true all the time, but it’s like three times as true now. And that is you really need to retain the customers you have. You have to fight really hard to keep them at this point. We all know that getting new ones is more expensive than this. There’s statistics out there that say it’s five times more as expensive to acquire a new customer as it is to keep an existing one. The existing ones are more likely to buy from you, and the existing ones you already have a relationship with them.
So, now is the time that you really want to make sure that whatever you’re doing, you’re not losing those existing customers, or you’re not throwing them away to other competitors by making them angry at this point, okay? So, don’t send out the crazy email saying, “Hey, we’ve got this discount. Hey, we’ve got this… Here’s our COVID plan, and oh, hey, here’s our flash sale for today.” Customers are gonna get annoyed. They don’t want to be badgered like that. So, you have to treat them like human beings, but at this point, you really have to be very, very careful and ginger with that relationship, because those customers are your lifeline through the recession.
Kurt Elster: So, 100%, don’t abuse it. Be empathetic more than ever, and now more than ever, it’s super cool to be human. Be a person in your marketing and your emails. I think people will appreciate it. Like I have found engagement on social media is higher than ever, and so I have turned to that as almost like a therapeutic place for myself, being able to post and see people reply to, “Oh, thanks. This was so helpful.” That kind of thing. I mean that, it goes both ways. That’s been helpful for me to stay sane. And I think in email marketing, man, I don’t think anyone wants to get another personal email, direct from the CEO of whatever the hell, about their COVID-19 response. But what we do want is to see people-
Dave Rodenbaugh: No.
Kurt Elster: … be human, and go, “Yeah, it’s okay to be freaked out right now.” And like, “Here’s something we’re doing to help, and we think maybe it’ll help you, or ignore it. It’s entirely up to you. No hard sell here.”
Dave Rodenbaugh: Yeah. COVID-19 has turned out to be the new GDPR, right? I got so many emails from brands that I’m like, “I haven’t done business with you for like three years, and now you’re telling me how you’re handling the COVID-19 crisis.” It’s like you can’t be tone deaf on your marketing right now. You really have to be human, and empathetic, and anything else is just making you sound like an idiot, and your customers are way too smart for that.
Kurt Elster: Yeah, because we’re all getting those same emails from everybody. Lean on personal branding and empathy more than ever. Any other strategies before I switch gears here?
Dave Rodenbaugh: Yeah, so I would say that this is really a great opportunity right now for you to know your customers better than anyone else. If you haven’t taken the time to really understand who your customers are, what their concerns are, what their needs, what their likes, and wants, and hopes, and dreams, and aspirations, and all of these things, by actually having real conversations with them, I am 100% positive that given that everybody in United States, and Europe, and many other places in the world are all stuck at home right now, you probably have an unprecedented opportunity to have some one-on-one conversations. If you’ve struggled to have those conversations with people, now would be a great time to start initiating them.
If you have never done that, you absolutely need to do that, because you cannot serve in your business someone you don’t understand well.
Kurt Elster: Oh, for sure.
Dave Rodenbaugh: And right now is a perfect time to find a way that you can be of service that isn’t about you pitching your product or your service. Being kind is free, and customer service is a competitive advantage, so the fact that you can reach out as a human being, be empathetic, offer yourself in service to somebody else, that’s not going to be forgotten. When you are compassionate now, in other times, that stuff turns into word of mouth.
Kurt Elster: Oh, yes. So, yeah, I think right now is an opportunity to be a leader in your community and space, where you can step up, and we’re gonna see like, all right, who stepped up and said, “Hey, this is what we’re doing to help you, to help our employees, to help our community.” I saw an email from Chubbies, this is weird for a brand that relies on irreverent humor, how do you navigate those waters? And what I saw them do was go a little bit… They acknowledged it, number one. I think you can’t ignore it. You gotta acknowledge it. Number two, they were still funny. They still had the right tone without being obnoxious in any way. And then they also, they did the promo and said, “Hey, we’re doing this big promo, and we’re gonna donate 10% to Meals on Wheels.”
So, okay, great, they hit all the right buttons in your strategy, I think.
Dave Rodenbaugh: Yeah. Yeah. I think so, and so I saw, and I can’t remember what the name of the company was, and I’m not gonna shame them publicly, but it was somebody that was selling like home gym equipment, and they basically had a kettlebell special that they were trying to promote, and they had the coupon code CORONATIME. And I was just like, “You know, that’s not doing it for me, man.”
Kurt Elster: Yeah, they’re gonna get a lot of unsubscribes with that. I imagine some angry emails. There’s gonna be… Like if you do that, your unsubscribe rate’s gonna be a little wild.
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Yeah. All right, any other strategies you advise?
Dave Rodenbaugh: Well, we talked about being human, and empathetic, and knowing your customer. The one other thing that I could say right now is if you are in a niche that is something that would be considered luxury, something that would not be considered essential, you better be prepared to weather a storm here, and either you’re gonna have to pivot a little bit and serve a niche that is stable or critical, or something that people consider more essential, or just change your stream altogether and serve a different niche. That’s gonna be something that will help you survive this.
So, one of the recessions that I survived, I ended up figuring out that I was a consultant, a software consultant at the time, [inaudible 0:23:13.5], and it happened to be one of the major insurance companies in the United States, and it turns out that during recessions, people still need insurance. So, my business was totally unaffected. In fact, if anything, it expanded a little bit during that time, when everybody else was contracting. It was because they were actually taking that time to invest in their business, and their needs, at a time when the costs were lower, because it was actually cheaper to get consultants, and they went and expanded things as a result of that.
So, if you can find a way to pivot your business into that, that is coming. That is coming.
Kurt Elster: You’re right, and so if you’re looking at your business and going, “Well, how am I gonna survive this? What happens if I fail?” And that’s how it feels when you’re in a moment like this. Remember, it is not a failure if you pivot. I have pivoted my business what I felt fairly radically two or three times now, and never regretted it. Benefitted from it. So, being willing to be nimble, being willing to let go of an idea, knowing that you can return to it later, if it means keeping the lights on, then absolutely do it. Don’t feel like you’ve got… you’re giving anything up by changing gears.
Dave Rodenbaugh: Right. It’s okay to let go of an idea that’s not working, or something that’s not serving you. One thing I think as entrepreneurs, we kind of wrap ourselves into the business, and therefore if the business fails, I’m a failure.
Kurt Elster: 100%.
Dave Rodenbaugh: And that’s not true. It’s really never been true, but we think it’s true, and you have to separate those two. You have to be prepared to say, “Business isn’t working, but I can do this. I can do something that’s different. I’m capable of that.”
Kurt Elster: I think you’ve touched on it a little bit, but what are some of the biggest mistakes people are gonna make as they pull back? And how can they avoid it?
Dave Rodenbaugh: Well, so we talked about one of the biggest mistakes already. Because people are like freaking out about spending, and a lack of revenue, you’re gonna pull back expenses across the board. And so, pulling back expenses on critical things is gonna kill you, and pulling back expenses on stuff that’s bringing in new customers will also kill you. There is definitely that fear that will make you want to stop all spending and the thing you have to remember is recessions aren’t about the economy grinding to a halt. Spending slows down, but it doesn’t come to a stop. It never stops. There are always things that people need to spend money on, and the closer you are to the right critical services, the more likely people are gonna continue spending on you.
And even when I say critical services, what I really mean to say is it’s not just about like food, and shelter, clothing, and all of this sort of stuff. It’s like you alluded to this earlier, Kurt. It’s things that make you feel human. It might be something like luxury soap. It might be something that is a hobby that keeps you sane when you’re locked up in your house because of the coronavirus. It might be… There’s a wide variety of things it could possibly be, but you have to make sure that you are not in something that is just… Louis Vuitton handbags might still be considered essential to the right niche of people, but if you’re trying to market that broadly to all consumers, that strategy is gonna fail now.
Kurt Elster: Yes. And I’m so, so grateful that we are in e-commerce, which is gonna be a lifeline for a lot of people now. I am so grateful that we are evangelists, championing entrepreneurship, because I suspect… I started my business in a recession, because I was underemployed. I suspect that will be the case for a lot of people going forward, where this becomes a side hustle or a lifeline to supplement income.
Dave Rodenbaugh: Yeah, and hear, hear on all of that. The truth is e-commerce is, in general, closer to the money, because now with everybody stuck in their houses, I see that we’re gonna watch a major growth in e-commerce. I don’t remember what the projections were. I look at these numbers every year, but they kind of jumble after a while, and they were talking about how much the e-commerce sector was expanding from 2018 to 2019, and what it was gonna do in 2020. I think the coronavirus is going to accelerate that considerably, and we’re gonna see surprise numbers here later in the year.
Kurt Elster: Yeah, like if you’re in e-commerce now, and you’re terrified, imagine how you would feel if you were a restaurant owner right now, where you’re like, “All right, I now have to make this business work entirely on delivery and curbside pick up.” That’s true terror. If you’re in e-commerce, you’re one of… Yes, we’re affected, but less so than other industries, and if you’re in a space where maybe you’re lucky and you have high margin, or you do wholesale, where you’re selling, moving huge quantities through.
For me, the professional services part of our business, I am so grateful that for us, eight clients is a really busy time. And that’s true for most agencies, is like eight to 12 is kind of how they run. And I’m saying this, I know a lot of agency owners, and my agency friends listen to this. I’m saying this for their benefit. But if you’re in a business where it’s like you don’t need hundreds and thousands of customers, you need a dozen, I promise you can probably still find them.
Dave Rodenbaugh: Yeah. Yeah. People are going to be doing investment in their businesses. The ones that actually have the money, the ones that have that cash cushion I talked about earlier, they’re going to use this time as things slow down to do some investment in their business, that are going to accelerate them as things start to improve again. And if you’re in that professional services niche, and you’re able to serve that need, you’re going to benefit from that right now. Absolutely.
Kurt Elster: I wonder if e-commerce merchants can turn to professional services as a way to supplement income. Like if you run a successful e-commerce business, okay, automatically you are an authority and could be a consultant. Or maybe it’s just like, “Hey, you want to lend a hand and pitch in.” Not even… Just to volunteer your time to benefit people. Volunteer and help stores set up just a quickie online store to sell gift cards, or to be able to deliver to their community, or to use Shopify point of sale to manage deliveries and in-store pickup. That’s something you could do to help right now if you’re going, “Well, I’m not that worried.”
If you’re like, “I’ll survive this. I’m in a good position.” Maybe you’re like, you sell doomsday prepper gear. Those people are probably doing all right right now.
Dave Rodenbaugh: And then some, yes.
Kurt Elster: Any other mistakes?
Dave Rodenbaugh: I don’t want to say the worst, but you have to prepare and think ahead long enough to see all right, what happens if my business contracts 20%? 30%? 40%? 50%? Do I have the ability to survive that? So, if you’re not a spreadsheet head like I am, you might want to invest a little bit of time and try to actually do some forward-looking projections and say, “All right, well, what does my revenue look like in six months if I cut 50%? Can I survive that? Is there a point at which my business starts to die?”
And if you’re not doing those things right now, you really ought to get on top of that at the moment. So, ignoring that, thinking that it’ll be fine, thinking that it will just recover on its own, those are definitely huge mistakes. I’d say you want to know what is my drop-dead date, you know? That was something that we always talked about when I was in a couple of different startups, the drop-dead date kind of motivates you. Helps keeps you focused to say, “If we don’t get this out, if we don’t get customers, if we don’t make the sales that we say we’re gonna make, if we don’t get more funding,” whatever it is, that date means we’re out of a job. So, you should look and have a drop-dead date and know what that looks like. And keep on top of revising that.
Maybe you have a good month. Well, that changes your drop-dead date. Okay, update that and stay focused on it, right?
Kurt Elster: And in our industry, regardless of whether you’re an agency, a merchant, et cetera, that number tends to be around 30 days. Plus or minus five days, depending, like for an agency specifically, it’s 33 days, and for someone who manufactures their own goods versus has to purchase inventory, it’s actually a little shorter. So, yeah, it’s a good number to know. I’ve also heard from a lot of friends, and check in on your people, man. Like my wife literally has it as this is… This time, Monday morning is when I go through and I check with everyone, like everybody gets a weekly check in, and then depending on who needs it, gets more frequent check ins. She is systematizing checking in on people.
So, all right, I’ve been checking in on my people, and last week a lot of people were saying, “Hey, I don’t need it, and I hope I don’t need it, but I secured a line of credit just in case, because I want to be able to keep… I want to be able to weather the storm and keep paying my people.”
Dave Rodenbaugh: And that’s a great idea, but if you do get a line of credit, here’s a tip for that: Know exactly how deep of a whole you’re willing to dig for yourself that you can fill in on the other side. Because you don’t want to get so deep into debt and keep doubling down on a business that isn’t working, that it basically screws you personally.
Kurt Elster: Also a good point.
Dave Rodenbaugh: But having a line of credit is a great, great cushion, because it’s one of those things, if you’re running a business and you run out of cash, your business dies, even if you’ve got more business on the horizon. You’ve got to have enough to be able to pay suppliers, pay your staff, feed yourself. All of those things happen because you’ve got cashflow, so credit can help extend your cashflow, just be very careful with it is my advice.
Kurt Elster: No, absolutely. Yes. Yeah. Let’s not be flippant about debt. In your wisdom, your experience, what’s different about this downturn than others, Dave?
Dave Rodenbaugh: We’ve never seen anything that basically has ground the economy to… I don’t want to say a halt, because it’s not exactly at a halt, but we’ve never seen this much slowing, this quickly, across so many different industries, in such a short period of time. Past recessions, 9/11, which at the time was… is still unprecedented, right? People still needed to buy stuff during that time, and it wasn’t like specific industries were just killed overnight.
Like the restaurant business here has been killed by executive order in Colorado overnight, to where they’re just delivery at this point. That has never happened! The closest analogy I think we have is like World War I, World War II.
Kurt Elster: Nothing like this has ever happened in our lifetimes. I pray it never happens again. But if it does, I hope we’re ready for it, having learned from this. But yeah, that’s… It’s tough to make predictions when we’ve never seen anything like this. And one difference is typically a recession is one country, and then it affects other countries. In this case, it’s the entire globe all experiencing the same thing at nearly the same time. It’s very strange.
Dave Rodenbaugh: Yeah. That’s the part that’s odd. It impacts everybody equally without reservation, without prejudice, without hesitation. And that’s something that all past experiences of recessions that I’ve had has not been like this. It’s been isolated to one country, it’s been huge, but it usually spreads out as a secondary effect, and here we have a primary effect everywhere. And that’s something that I have no idea what that looks like three, six, 12 months from now.
Kurt Elster: No one does. And that’s, I think it’s important to recognize, as humans, the one thing our brains crave is stasis, stability, and we always want to be going back to that. No matter what your situation is, like even if you’re in a bad situation, when you try to change it your brain will be like, “You should go back to what you were doing.” And that uncertainty, then, for 99% of the population, breeds anxiety. That anxiety creates fear, and worry, and those are the places where you don’t want to make business decisions.
But people will make decisions in that, in a dark place, and I’m hoping that we have the mental awareness to recognize it and avoid unnecessarily bad decisions.
Dave Rodenbaugh: Yeah, and you know, really to help with that, I don’t want to get all wishy washy here, but you have to take care of yourself. You are the one that runs the business, you know? If you’re running an agency, if you’re running an e-commerce brand, if you’re an entrepreneur of any kind, there is a huge amount of pressure on you at any given moment, even when things are going well. You feel personally responsible for everything. And you have to take care of yourself, because if you don’t, nobody else will. And if you can’t make good decisions from a place of solid mental footing, you’re gonna stumble, you’re gonna fall, you’re gonna make panic decisions, and it’s just not gonna work well.
Kurt Elster: So, what are you doing in terms of self care to stay sane? Have you had these dark moments where you’re like, “Wait, I need to put the pause on decision making at the moment?” Because I know for me, it’s coming in waves, like I’ll have anxiety, it gets bad, I recognize it, I talk my way out of it, and then I could be productive and normal for 90 minutes, and then I’ll make the mistake of like reading CNN, and go right back, or check my brokerage account and then go right back into that spiral, and then talk myself out of it 90 minutes later again. It’s just like an endless cycle. Each day gets a little easier. I’m no longer taking fully clothed showers in a fetal position, but-
Dave Rodenbaugh: That’s good, Kurt. That’s good.
Kurt Elster: Yeah, so you know, it’s progress, and I forgive myself for those fully clothed showers.
Dave Rodenbaugh: Yeah, it’s the baby steps. All right, so step one, don’t take fully clothed showers in the fetal position. Second, I would say that I have made a conscious effort to get outside and take a walk in the sunshine every day-
Kurt Elster: Lucky you.
Dave Rodenbaugh: And my wife has been really good about this, like saying, “It’s time to go for a walk.” You know?
Kurt Elster: It’s been just endlessly gray in Chicago, and like perpetually 33 degrees. And yet, the walks still help, but certainly if you live in a place with sunshine, this would be easier. If you’re in the Midwest, and for me I have seasonal affective disorder that gets its peak around late February, early March, so super good times for me.
Dave Rodenbaugh: Yeah, I know, and I’m in the same boat, Kurt. I have seasonal affective disorder, too. And you know, I have light therapy that sits on my desk, and I take St. John’s wort, but the exercise is like a drug, so just getting out, doing that walk, even if it’s in the gray, just some fresh air, and getting out of your house will help a lot. So, that’s like the number one on my list.
If you’re into it, and you’ve tried this before, or you’re open to it, I would say try something like meditation, where you can use just watching your breath to help calm you down, even if you’re only doing it for five minutes to start, which may feel like an unbelievably long period of time, but just taking that time to watch your breath, and slow it down, and control it, and take long, slow, deep breaths, can have an amazing calming effect on you. That’s a huge thing.
Kurt Elster: For sure. I have not been meditating recently, but like five, six years ago, I used to use it a lot. I really went through some dark times, and struggled with a lot of anxiety, and man, that meditation truly helped. I need to get back into it. And what’s funny is like I’m talking about like, “Oh, I’m so anxious now, and this it tough.” This actually, I’m not as anxious as I was five or six years ago dealing with personal problems, interpersonal issues, we’ll say, but I don’t have a good resource for meditation. What are you using?
Dave Rodenbaugh: Yeah, mine is gonna be a tough one to describe, so I used to be a member of a Buddhist community, and so I learned a lot from the four or five years that I spent in the community, and so there’s a lot of stuff that I have to draw from on that. I know that there’s a lot of apps out there. I’ve used exactly none of them, because the skills that I learned all predate these apps, and so I have a lot of notes that I can refer back to, some books that I’ve read and things like that, but if you’re looking to get started, and you’re not really sure, some really great, accessible resources that are not deeply religious, or would be like completely out of line with any other religion you might be practicing at this point, one of them is Thich Nhat Hanh, and the other one is Pema Chodron, so they have tons and tons of books, podcasts, they used to have a bunch of audiobooks that you could do. I presume that they’ve been updated to Kindle and other, like because I have a bunch of old stuff on CD, because again, I’m old.
So, those are great places to get started on all of that, but the apps, like Headspace I’ve heard a lot of people using. Anything that you could do, that you want to try out, if it works for you, great. But I’m not gonna say that there’s one that’s better than the others, because different things work for different people.
Kurt Elster: For sure. Mr. Dave, where can people go to learn more about you?
Dave Rodenbaugh: Well, if you are looking for some pithy advice and or snarky sarcasm, you can find me on Twitter @daverodenbaugh, and that’ll be in the show notes below. If you’re looking for something a little more useful, like email marketing, abandoned cart recovery on your store, you can check out my service that is available at Recapture.io, and for listeners of the podcast here, we are happily offering a free 60-day trial of our service, so sign up, contact me, let me know that you heard this here on the podcast, and we’ll totally extend that from 14 days to 60 days, to help merchants get started right now.
Kurt Elster: Awesome. This is fabulous. I appreciate it. Great. Thank you, Dave. I feel better having talked it through. I have found in my darkest moments just FaceTiming with somebody, talking with somebody really helps. I mean, one interesting thing, both as a human and a marketer right now, is we know what is top of mind for basically the entire planet. And it’s the worry and the uncertainty about what’s going on around it.
So, be cognizant of that, and that when you’re talking, when you’re marketing, and number one, that you can reach out to just about anybody right now, and ask, “Hey, how you doing?” And I think it’s appreciated.
Dave Rodenbaugh: And that’s actually one of the coolest things that I think has come out of this pandemic is the fact that all of a sudden it doesn’t matter whether you’re one mile away or one continent away, you basically have the same ability to reach out to people, anywhere, at any time. We did a virtual happy hour with a bunch of people that are in a kind of a mastermind group of ours, and we haven’t normally done this. We see each other a couple of times a year, but we just got together, pulled out some beers, and picked up a time on Zoom, and connected in a very warm and real personal way, and I would suggest that if you are feeling isolated or lonely right now, reach out to some friends. Have a Zoom call. They have free services. You can talk to somebody on there right now for an unlimited period of time, and reconnect with them, and this is a perfect time to do that.
Kurt Elster: Oh, beautiful. All right, Dave. I appreciate it. Thank you, sir.
Dave Rodenbaugh: Thank you for having me on, Kurt, and take care and stay safe.
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