Transcript

Episode: 4 Things I Wish I’d Known Before the Pandemic

Michael Hyatt: Hey guys, Michael Hyatt here. Last week, on Lead to Win, we aired a special episode that was a conversation about race. And based on your responses, I know that this was an important episode for you. And I want you to know that I’m committed to furthering this conversation around the question, what does this moment—this historical moment— require of me, as a leader? And as I mentioned, I’m taking some time to read, learn, and reflect on this issue, and I encourage you to do the same. So, for this week, we’re back to our previously scheduled lineup, but rest assured that we’ll pick up the conversation again soon. Thanks.

Michael Hyatt: Hi, I’m Michael Hyatt.

Megan Hyatt Miller: And I’m Megan Hyatt Miller.

Michael: And this is Lead to Win, our weekly podcast to help you win at work and succeed at life. Today we’re going to share the results of our latest after-action review here at Michael Hyatt & Company. What are we reviewing? The global pandemic of 2020.

Megan: This is probably the biggest after-action review we have ever done. Don’t you think, Dad?

Michael: I think that’s right.

Megan: Probably times about a hundred X. Can we all just admit that this crisis put us all into a little bit of a tailspin? We were coming out of such a strong economy leading up to this crisis, and many industries were booming like never before. It seemed like it was just going to be blue skies forever, and then, Pow! A lot of businesses got totally upended by this pandemic plus the economic fallout, which, in many ways, was even worse or is even worse.

I think that left a lot of really confident people shaken. Certainly, as we’ve talked about, there are many opportunities in this situation, and all of that, but if this didn’t shake your confidence at some level, you’re probably not breathing. But we’re asking, as we look back on this, “What just happened? And what if it happens again?”

Certainly, the likelihood that we’ll repeat this exact situation is, at least in our lifetime, probably unlikely, but there’s always some crisis that could come. We don’t want to waste these lessons, I guess is what I’m trying to say. This has been a great opportunity for gleaning wisdom and lessons we can apply later, so that’s really what we want to talk about today.

Michael: Just for the record, I thought the Great Recession was like a 100-year flood, that I’d never see anything like that again. Bam! Here we are. And this is probably not the last after-action review we’re going to do. This is more like a mid-action review, but still, I think it’s worth it to take stock. Today we want to give you guys a little calm, a little confidence. We’ve distilled some early lessons from this crisis, and if you could learn these, you could be better prepared for the next big thing, whatever that turns out to be, whether it’s local to your business or it’s something broader that’s happening in the economy. But before we progress further, let’s bring on Larry. Larry, are you there?

Larry Wilson: I am here. Hey, guys. How are you?

Megan: Hey, Larry.

Michael: We’re doing great.

Larry: You know, we talk a lot about the after-action review here at Michael Hyatt & Company. In fact, it’s built right into the Full Focus Planner. It’s something we encourage people to do every single week on their own productivity and on their company. I guess I never thought of applying this at such a big level. I mean, is there some limit to where this works? Could you do an after-action review on the last century?

Michael: Well, you can take any event or any period of time you want, but it’s more imperative the bigger the stakes are. There’s this famous quote by George Santayana that I love. It says, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Just imagine how the world might be different if world leaders had learned the lessons from World War I. Maybe we wouldn’t have had a World War II. If we’d learned the lessons from World War II, maybe we wouldn’t have had all of the skirmishes and all of the different police actions we’ve had throughout the world since that time. Personally, I find that my greatest lessons come from the greatest life events. The higher the stakes, the more you can learn.

Megan: In this case, we’re dealing with our business, not world affairs. Like you said, Larry, there are a lot of things that have not been going well out in the world, and we’re not going to do an after-action review on this entire crisis, but we are going to talk about what we’ve learned as we think about our business and, really, what we’ve been able to control and what we can’t, because that’s the only fruitful thing for us to focus on anyway. How the government did and what they’re going to do in the future, and all that, we really don’t have that much control over, so it’s much better to apply our energies internally on the things we have direct control over.

Some of the same principles of the after-action review apply here. For example, we want to look at what happened. We also want to ask what worked and what didn’t and then decide what we are going to keep, improve, start, or stop in our business as a result of this. As you’re listening to this and you’re thinking about your own business or maybe a division you’re leading or just the work you’re doing in the company where you’re serving, I think all of these questions are relevant to you, because certainly, this has been kind of a pressure cooker in ways that few things are, and hopefully you have some lessons of your own that you can add to what we’re about to share with you.

Michael: Absolutely. You can’t predict the future, but you can prepare for it, and in the wake of this crisis, we want to move from reactive to proactive. Yes, you can be better prepared for the next crisis by applying the lessons from this one. I’ve found that having gone through the Great Recession was phenomenal preparation for this one. Every crisis is a little bit different, but the lessons you learn do help you prepare. We want you guys to feel relief and confidence because you’re doing all you can to put your business and yourself in a strong position.

Larry: Well, today we’re saying you can be better prepared for the next crisis, whatever that may turn out to be, by learning the lessons from the current one, and we have four lessons to share with you. The first one is: maintain strong cash reserves.

Michael: There’s a reason this is number one. Right, Meg?

Megan: Yeah.

Michael: Nothing is more important than cash in a crisis, because you may not get it all figured out the first time around. You may stumble out of the gate, but if you have enough cash, you have enough air to breathe that you can continue to pivot, continue to be resilient, and continue to fight off whatever you’re dealing with. You always want to deal with any problem from a position of strength, so in some ways, the best crisis preparation is to create a strong business.

Obviously, you can still be blindsided. We had no idea which businesses were going to profit from this crisis and which ones would be totally capsized by this crisis, but if you have to run a marathon, it’s easier when you’re well rested. If you’re going into a crisis, it’s easier to navigate from financial strength. Now, granted, there are a lot of other aspects to business health, but cash is one, perhaps the most critical.

Megan: Absolutely. I think the problem is if you don’t have cash, you don’t get to find out what the other aspects are of critical business health, because like you said, you just kind of run out of oxygen. The thing about cash that’s so important is that it gives you options. It really enables you to have a buffer for decision-making, and it literally buys you time. This is important, because when you’re in a crisis, the biggest temptation is just to be reactive.

Sometimes in a crisis you have to make decisions, because you may not have the cash reserves you need, that are not strategic. You would never make those decisions in more ordinary times, and as a result, they cost you a lot later. You kind of have to clean up the mess after it’s over. When you have the cash reserves you need, you’re able to step back a little bit and make strategic decisions that are also prudent in the short term.

Michael: The key word here is options. If you have to launch a new product, you have the capital to do it. We had to do that in the first week of the crisis. We had to pivot and ask ourselves the questions, “What do our customers need, and what can we create that would really help them?” And we did that. We did that through our Leading Through Crisis course, but that required some capital investment to pull that off. If you have to refit your facility… Think of gyms and restaurants and all that has to be done there just to open back up. Well, if you have enough cash, you have the means to do so. If you need to change your marketing strategy, that’s something else. If you have the cash, you can do that.

Larry: Michael, you mentioned launching a new product, which we did right away early on, but over the last two months, how else did having some cash reserves wind up helping Michael Hyatt & Company?

Michael: One of the things it did was it enabled us to avoid making layoffs right away. In fact, we haven’t up until this point. We don’t envision that we will, but there are a lot of companies, probably a lot of you listening, that have been affected by furloughs or layoffs. No shame there. This caught everybody kind of unprepared, but thankfully, we had enough cash reserves that that was never an issue for us.

We were also able to pivot on the delivery of our signature coaching program. That typically is something we deliver in person here in Franklin, Tennessee, where we reside, but we couldn’t do that with COVID-19, so we had to pivot and create a virtual experience, which we did. We were also able to launch, as I mentioned a moment ago, a new product, a video course. We did that in a week, which is crazy to think about.

If it hadn’t been for our reserves, I’m not confident we could have made it through. Maybe we would have survived, but it probably would have forced us to make some decisions we would otherwise not want to make. I really, really value our team, and the last thing I wanted to do was to do layoffs. That’s something we had to do when I was leading Thomas Nelson in the Great Recession, and it was so unbelievably painful that I was just glad we were in a position not to have to do that this time around.

Megan: Another thing the cash reserves helped us do was to have time to plan for various scenarios. While we were also able to delay decisions or not have to do certain things, because we had the time we were able to run various scenarios and make really good decisions about what was going to be needed. We had some products that were doing better than others, better than they would have even in normal times. We had other things that were impacted by the crisis, at least initially. Being able to run various scenarios helped us know where to put our attention, where to put our time.

One of the things we always prioritize at Michael Hyatt & Company is planning our cash flow forecasting. That enables you to see problems that are coming down the road instead of, all of a sudden, your cash balance is low in your bank account. You can see those problems coming and make decisions in advance. I would say as a part of this point: really careful cash flow forecasting is critical to the cash flow management part of going through any crisis.

Larry: That all sounds great, but saving money on a personal level is really hard to do, and I’m sure it is hard in a business too, because you have a lot of demands and a lot of opportunities. If we found ourselves flat-footed, as listeners, on the cash side, how could we get ourselves in a better position moving forward?

Michael: I think you have to develop a discipline around saving for a rainy day. Certainly, some of our listeners have read the book Profit First, and I would say, “Saving second.” You know, not eating all your seed corn, as it were, but setting some aside for a time when you’re going to need it. That’s something you may not be able to do immediately, but with a little intention, you might be able to do it. Certainly, it’s something that when I’ve tried to do various savings plans… In fact, Megan, you and I were talking about this the other day with regard to my personal savings plan.

Several years ago, when my financial advisor said, “I really want you to set aside X amount for investing,” I said to him, “There’s just no way.” He said, “Yeah, there’s a way. I think you could do this.” He said, “Just test it. Try it as an experiment.” Well, I haven’t looked back. I mean, that was six years ago. I thought it was impossible, but it’s amazing how you adapt. If you don’t ever really take that money into the business and use it for other cash flow items but set it aside, then it becomes much easier. Again, you can start small and then build up.

Megan: You want to be working toward a three- to six-month reserve of your expenses. Just imagine if you didn’t have the benefit of that going through this crisis. Imagine what that would have been like. You know, not waiting for that PPP funding, though certainly, that was nice to have, I’m sure, but just to know that you were already in a position to be your own PPP funding. I think that’s really what we want to see here.

Just like in your personal life… This is just conventional wisdom in people’s personal lives. You have to resist the temptation to get overextended. When the economy is booming and it feels like there’s never going to be an end to it and you see all of your results going up and to the right indefinitely, you can tell yourself that debt is not really a big deal, that it’s just fine, it’s not a problem, but if you imagine your revenue constricting, all of a sudden, too much debt is likely to sink your boat.

I think those of us who had little to no debt when we entered this crisis felt like that was an even better decision than we realized it was at the beginning as we went through this, because it was just one less thing to worry about. It was one more opportunity to be lean and focus on investing where there was a big ROI.

So maintaining a safe debt ratio is really important, where your total debt to assets is 0.4 or less. That’s important for you to be thinking of, because if this gets wonky, you can get in trouble fast, just like your personal life. I think all of us at one point in our progression with our personal finances have had the experience of having too much debt, and the stakes are even higher in your business.

Michael: This is why, generally, I agree with Dave Ramsey’s advice. The ideal debt ratio is 0.0. Have no debt. It looks like you can service it when times are good, but you get into trouble, and it becomes very difficult. Those represent expenditures you’ve already made. I mean, you’re not even getting any value. The value you got out of that debt was some time in the past.

Larry: So, the first lesson from the current crisis, especially looking back on the early days: maintain strong cash reserves. Let’s move to the second lesson, which is: communicate proactively.

Megan: I think we all know communication is always important, but if you’re a leader in any capacity, when you enter a crisis it becomes your top job. Larry, you and I were talking about this the other day. I feel like I’ve spent more time creating communications in the last two months than I have for years before that. It has really been the most important thing. The reason for that is because uncertainty is kind of in the air we’re breathing.

All of the things you normally don’t even have to communicate about because they’re just fixed…nobody even thinks about it…are suddenly up in the air, and when people feel that kind of uncertainty, they become fearful, and when they become fearful, anything can happen. It becomes really difficult to keep people aligned. It becomes really difficult to drive execution, because focus is hard. When you’re fearful, it’s tough to be focused.

It’s the job of the leader to get used to communicating a lot, to step into that space and lead, and mostly, that looks like being at the front and sharing what we’re doing and why it’s happening and where we go from here and just keeping everybody together, moving in the same direction.

Michael: That’s right. One of the effects of a crisis is that it makes people very leader-centric. Generally, your communications are going to be decentralized. The CEO doesn’t hold every team meeting or employee town hall. Certainly, I don’t during regular times. Other people are empowered to make decisions and communicate them, but all that changes in a crisis. Everybody’s eyes turn to the leader. So communication and staying in communication with people is not something you can delegate, at least not initially.

People want to know what’s happening, and they want to hear from you. I want to say, too, it’s not just the words you’re saying. People pick up on your demeanor, your attitude, whether you’re calm, whether you’re confident, or whether your hair is on fire. They’re going to pick up their cues from you. Just getting that reassurance from your presence, giving them calm, clear information… Sometimes even, when you don’t have information, just having you show up and say that is reassuring.

Larry: Interestingly, guys, there’s some research on this. Even when not in a crisis, 84 percent of employees think their organizations don’t do enough to create transparency. I have to imagine that has to be in the high 90s during a crisis. Another study showed that organizations that are more transparent have higher productivity, innovation, and retention than those that don’t.

Michael: It’s easy to see why. In the absence of transparency and an abundance of information, people spend a lot of unproductive time trying to figure out what is going on…creating a narrative, projecting worst-case scenarios, imagining the worst possible situation. So, when you provide information and do so in a calm, confident manner, it helps people relax and stay focused on the stuff that really does matter instead of being distracted by rumors and gossip and all the stuff that doesn’t help anybody.

Megan: I think sometimes, Dad, the reason that happens is because leaders misunderstand or underestimate the urgency of communication. If you’re the leader, you already know the answers to all of the questions, so it can be easy to underestimate the anxiety other people feel in the absence of those answers. What happens in a crisis is people have all of these immediate questions. Most importantly, “Am I going to have a job? What does this crisis mean for me?”

If leaders don’t start communicating right away, then those narratives start forming, and then they start joining with other narratives, and you get that whole rumor thing happening. Suddenly, you hear there’s a rumor about all of these layoffs or shutting down product lines or something like that. So, even if you don’t have all of the answers (and sometimes that’s the case; I mean, this was a really fast-moving crisis that, as leaders, we were trying to digest in real time just like our people were), you still have to step up and communicate immediately with your people so there’s not this vacuum of information. You want to step into that space.

In our case, we announced our transition to work from home the day after that address the president made on March 11 that was the real turning point in that crisis, when we all knew, “This is really, really serious.” After that, we gave regular updates to our team. We were meeting at least once a week initially. Our first few announcements were in writing, because at that early point (this was at the end of February), it didn’t seem that serious, but very quickly, it seemed very serious, and we were intentional about doing those… They weren’t face-to-face in person, but they were face-to-face over Zoom, because like you said earlier, the nonverbals are really important.

Michael: Again, I kind of said this a moment ago, but the leader has to be empathetic. He has to understand what the people on the front lines, the people who are working different jobs are feeling. You have to be transparent, and you have to be hopeful. That’s where that Stockdale Paradox can be particularly helpful. We’ve talked about that before, so I won’t repeat it here, but the idea is that on the one hand, you have to be brutally honest with the current reality you’re facing but, on the other hand, hopeful that you’re going to make it through this and your company is going to make it through it.

When people are nervous, they’re looking for a voice to trust, and they want to hear from someone who understands and feels their pain. I can remember back in the 1990s, President Clinton had that famous, kind of cliché line that really worked: “I feel your pain.” People want to know that you feel their pain. They want someone who tells the truth, no sugarcoating. They want solutions or the hope of solutions, not doomsday. It’s a really fine line to balance, but you must walk that fine line.

Megan: Well, a few points, just to make this really practical for you as you’re thinking about the next crisis you may be in or the next situation where you need to think intentionally about your communications. Say what you know. Say what you don’t know. This is not a time to kind of BS your way through it. People really need you to be direct.

Say what you’re doing. How are you reacting? How are you solving this problem you’re facing now? Say what you’re not doing. For example, we said, “We’re not laying anybody off, and you don’t need to worry about it right now.” We kept saying that week after week for people, because we knew that was the number-one question on their minds.

This is not the place to have any kind of weasel words or waffling or spinning. You just have to be simple and direct and unambiguous in your communication for it to resonate with people, because those are the things that enable your team or those externally to trust you. If it feels like you’re trying to cover yourself or hide something, immediately people will sense that, and they’ll sniff it out. This is one of those times when there’s very little tolerance for anything but simple and direct communication.

Larry: So, that’s the second lesson for leading your business through crisis: communicate proactively. Third lesson: protect your well-being and that of your team.

Michael: At the beginning of the crisis, we went immediately into action. We felt like we needed to pivot. We wanted to create a course. We felt like the thing we had to offer was how to lead through a crisis. I mean, it was all hands on deck. We were working 12 hours a day. We worked through a couple of weekends, and we got that course out, and we got it launched.

But it didn’t take too long before we realized we were in a marathon, not a sprint, and burnout was going to be a huge risk. It can happen quickly with all the emotion, with all the uncertainty, with all the just general anxiety that’s in the air. People are having to live with greater pressure and greater anxiety than probably most of them have known in their adult life. So self-care has to be a big, big priority.

Megan: Yeah. I think this is another thing that’s easy to underestimate. Frankly, it’s something we are still working through, trying to find the right balance, because unlike a lot of crises that might be internal or in your industry or something, this is very holistic. People’s entire lives are affected by this crisis. At the time when we’re recording this, states are starting to open up. People are feeling really weary of being stuck at home, stuck at home with their kids. Maybe they’re feeling the weariness of fear, all that stuff, and that impacts work.

The capacity emotionally and psychologically that your team has when they’re going through a crisis like this is diminished and, therefore, diminishes their work capacity in your business or your organization. We realized that early on and said, “Okay. We’re going to shorten our workday.” We’ve talked about that before. At this time, we’re working a 9:00 to 3:00 workday, the majority of the company, but that’s challenging. It has not been perfect, for sure, as we’ve tried to navigate that, while you’re also trying to pivot and do things under tight timelines and all that.

I think the takeaway and the lesson here is just that you have to make self-care a priority, and you have to really think about your team from a holistic point of view. If you don’t play the long game around this and you only play the short game of trying to survive financially or trying to hit your financial goals, what will happen is your team is going to burn out, and they’re not going to be there on the other side of the crisis. Maybe their body is there, but their spirit may be so burned out they don’t really have anything significant to contribute anymore. The challenge for us, as leaders, is to win the short game and the long game simultaneously, and that’s easier said than done.

Larry: Can either of you talk about how your own self-care practices had to be altered or to step up or step back a little bit during the crisis? What changed for you in terms of taking care of yourself over the last eight weeks?

Michael: Well, for me, sleep has always been my biggest self-care practice. If you get enough rest, a lot of other problems take care of themselves. Before the crisis, I was regularly exercising five days a week. I loved that part of my day, going to the gym and using that as an opportunity to listen to podcasts and whatever. I hate to admit it, but literally until last week, I was totally out of sync on my exercise. I was doing it, but it was hit or miss, because I didn’t have the same kind of props I did previously. I didn’t have a gym to go to.

I was trying to walk, trying to do some workouts at home which my trainer had given me, but for whatever reason, I was having a difficult time mustering the motivation to do it. But now I’m back in the rhythm, and I’m really glad I am. I think you can’t be surprised if when you move the structural parts of your life around that things are going to change, and it may be a while for you to get your groove back, and that’s okay. I do think protecting that morning ritual as much as you can is critical, because in a crisis, your company needs and demands that best version.

Megan: It was similar for me. Sleep has been something that always feels important to me, but occasionally I’ll cheat it. Interestingly, in the first couple of weeks, I found it very hard to sleep. I was consuming the news all throughout the day. It sort of felt like a free fall in terms of what was happening. So that was really hard, but about the third week, I found my equilibrium again on that, and sleep became my absolute top priority. I have to get in bed on time. For me, that’s where that battle gets won or lost: getting to bed on time.

The other thing Joel and I ended up doing was walking every day in our neighborhood. About 4:00, after we finished up work and got the kids settled, or whatever, we would go on a walk as a family. That was so great just to get outside, breathe fresh air, move. I mean, not very complicated. It certainly wasn’t like a gym workout routine, but we actually ended up walking way more steps each day than we normally would, because frankly, we didn’t really have anything else to do, and it was very restorative.

What we now know about some of the research is that moving is so helpful for processing trauma and anxiety, that when we get our body engaged we sort of defuse those emotions. That’s a big takeaway for me in the future. Instead of kind of letting those things totally fall by the wayside, giving my body time to rebuild at night, and then also just having a physical outlet for the emotions we were all experiencing was very helpful.

Larry: So, the third lesson: protect your well-being and that of your team. That will bring us to our fourth and final lesson for this program: act aggressively but thoughtfully.

Michael: This is another one of those things that it’s challenging to try to find the balance, because in a crisis, you often have to act quickly. Here’s a rule of thumb: crisis accelerates decision-making, and time is often your enemy, not your friend. Crisis may cause you to do things now that you might have done later. Sometimes that’s a good thing, frankly, because one of the things we see in a crisis is that it helps us to decisions we probably should have made before, but because we had the luxury of time, because maybe we had the luxury of additional margin, we were able to postpone those things.

Sometimes the acceleration is good. I mean, maybe you launch a product that might have sat in development. That’s good. Or you kill a product that can’t really pull its weight or you make staffing changes you probably should have made long before now. Acting quickly can be the difference between winning and losing. One example is that restaurants that thrived were those that could immediately pivot to curbside. There were some restaurants that were better prepared to do that than others, for sure.

Megan: That’s really true. You also need to be aggressive in pursuing opportunities, because crisis certainly creates new possibilities. Think about videoconferencing, video content, product delivery, products like masks, you know, new product creation. Another general rule is: get there first with the most. You want to seize opportunities, and you may have to act quickly to do that. In fact, you probably will have to act quickly to do that, because the window can close as quickly as it opens. However, your action also has to be thoughtful.

Dad, this is kind of like what you were saying at the beginning. This is where the balance comes in. It’s not a precise science. You’re just going to have to feel your way through this. You don’t want to react based on fear or panic, and that’s a temptation always. For example, you could cut too many people on your staff. You could make a decision that you thought, “Gosh! I think our revenue is going to contract, and I’d better just cut 50 percent of my staff,” and then it only contracts 10 or 20 percent and you’re way understaffed.

Well, now you’ve created a way bigger problem to solve than the one that was naturally going to occur anyway. That’s an example of how you have to be thoughtful. You want to consider the long-term implications of any choice and ask yourself, “How does this line up with our company vision?” Even the decisions you make during a crisis should still be in alignment with your vision. You don’t want to compromise your vision.

How about your strategy? Is it different than your original strategy or at least are these decisions strategic? In other words, you would make them because they help you get to your vision even if by a different route than you would have otherwise gone. What you don’t want to make, if you can help it, are tactical decisions that ultimately compromise your vision that then you have to do a whole lot of work to get back on the path to your vision when it’s over or compromise your vision in a way that’s beyond repair. You can easily get pulled into a strategy you just don’t want to be in long term.

I think our goal is to come out of this crisis with our business in better shape than we went in, even if there are certainly innovations and changes that got made that we wouldn’t have made otherwise. That’s fine, but hopefully, we’re still moving toward our vision, not away from it.

Michael: It probably goes without saying, but you should also delay unnecessary decisions. You can’t get so caught up in everything that you keep making all of the same old decisions about the things that, frankly, right now aren’t a priority or at least, if you were to make those decisions, could jeopardize your future. For example, back in February, we decided we were going to push the “pause” button and not hire the new staff we had built into our plan for this year. It was like 10 or 12 people we were interviewing.

We said, “We’re just going to pause that and see where we’re at.” Then eventually we got to the point where we said, “You know what? Let’s not hire any new people for 2020, because it’s just foggy. We don’t have clarity about what’s going to happen, and the last thing we want to do is have more people we’re responsible for, because we take our teammates’ livelihoods very seriously.” Now we’re revisiting that again, but the point is: delay unnecessary decisions. You can decide later when you have more clarity. A lot of decisions don’t have to be made right now.

Larry: Today we’ve learned that every leader can prepare for the next crisis by learning the lessons from this one. Those include these four:

  1. Maintain strong cash reserves.
  2. Communicate proactively.
  3. Protect your well-being and that of your team.
  4. Act aggressively but thoughtfully.

What final thoughts do you have for us today?

Megan: Well, Larry, I think it’ll be interesting for all of us to continue to do these after-action reviews and glean the lessons from this crisis, because certainly, it’s not over yet and its effects are not over yet. The biggest thing I think of as I reflect on what we’ve already learned is that these lessons are hard won. We have all been up to our elbows in this crisis, working hard to find the best way forward for ourselves, for our teams, for the people we serve, and those lessons should not be wasted. We do not want to forget what we’re learning now.

Dad, when I think about what you went through in the 2008-2009 financial crisis, it’s the lessons you learned in that crisis that are enabling us now at Michael Hyatt & Company to successfully navigate the crisis we’re in today, and I think that’s going to be true for whatever comes next in the future. So, it’s worth digging in and gleaning these lessons, because we’re going to need them later.

Michael: The thing I’ve been struck by with this crisis is how much these always give us a chance to stress-test our character and give us the opportunity to grow. The older I get, most of life is not about what you accomplish or how you survive this or survive that, but it’s really about what you’re becoming. The great thing about a pressure-filled stress test like this is you find out where you still have some work to do and where you need to polish not only your business but your own character. So don’t waste this crisis, either for your business or for yourself. Use it as an opportunity to improve.

Larry: Thank you both not only for these lessons but for your great leadership by example over the past couple of months. Here’s hoping we never have to put these lessons to the test.

Michael: Thanks, Larry. Thank you, Megan. And thank you guys for joining us today. We’ll see you right here next week, but until then, lead to win.