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Avoiding Business Disasters in an Abnormal Vovid-19 World

A discussion with disaster specialist Gleb Tsipursky

John DeBevoise:

Greetings everyone, and welcome to another serving of Business Soup Talk Radio. If it’s in business, it’s business soup. I’m your host, John Debevoise. 

When it comes to disasters, we all like to avoid them but so often they hit us, and we don’t know they’re coming. Dr. Gleb Tsipursky, who is the CEO of Disaster Avoidance Experts, is going to be sharing his tips, tools, and techniques on how to plan and execute on the forthcoming disasters. But, there’s also one that’s ongoing. How do you get through it? We’re going to be talking about the COVID disaster, how the small business audience can use his advice, and his book Resilient, on how to adapt and plan as well as execute on the disaster. So pull up a chair, sit on down, Dr. Gleb is going to be serving up on this serving of Business Soup, some disaster avoidance.  

Dr. Gleb, welcome to this serving of Business Soup.  

Dr. Gleb Tsipur…:Thank you so much for inviting me, John. It’s a pleasure.  

John Debevoise:My pleasure as well. You are an expert in disasters, in particular avoiding them. You have a company that’s known as Disaster Avoidance Experts. What does that mean to a small business owner? Am I planning for the Armageddon, the three horsemen, or the locusts? What is it that you help plan for, that makes you an expert?  

Dr. Gleb Tsipur…:What my business does is helps business owners of all sorts, small business, medium business, and large business, avoid business disasters, which means any significant negative impact to your bottom line. Which, in small businesses, very many things are significant negative impacts to your bottom line.  

When you look at disasters, where they come from, the root of disasters comes from our decisions. Really, that’s where disasters come from, however much or however little we might want to admit it. And there are two types of decisions that lead to disaster.  

The first type of decision is where we make an active decision. We make an active decision, or a series of decisions, that leads to disaster. For a small business, that’s often on the growth stage, let’s say when you’re going from one business, you’re opening up a second branch and you make a bad decision. Or, you’re hiring more employees, and you’re hiring a bad key employee because you don’t have too much experience in hiring folks so you make some bad decisions about who to hire, that can be one major decision. Or, a series of decisions, like a series of conflicts with your team members in the business that leads to conflicts. Or, if it’s a family owned business, having conflicts within the family is a very big one, I’ve seen that a lot. That’s a bad problem.  

John Debevoise:Well, let’s talk about the family business. You hit on one that, sometimes your worst decisions can be to hire grandma as the chief financial officer in the startup of the company. And that is a very common thing, where you hire your friends and family into a startup, because you have to fill out the form of incorporation and fill out those names. Often times, it doesn’t work. So you’re talking about how you can avoid the disaster where you’ve got to possibly fire grandma, or any other member of the family.  

Is this like an employee manual? Do you sit down and say, “All right, these are the disasters that you can plan on, if you don’t identify them in what format, before I fire grandma.”  

Dr. Gleb Tsipur…:It’s not an employee manual. An employee manual helps give guidance for how you employee people. My expertise is in process of how do you manage risks, have good business continuity, and see the kind of threats that many business owners just don’t see because they don’t have the experience with these sorts of threats. They’ve never experienced firing grandma, so they don’t know what to avoid. They don’t know the kind of risks that they’re facing.  

Let’s say with COVID-19, how many people realized the kind of major, major, major global disruption that would come from COVID-19? Now, I realized that early on, where I published a number of editorials in March of this year, saying that it’s going to be much worse than we think, and that everybody’s going to rush back to reopen, and that will cause a lot of businesses to lose a lot of money when they need to close down again. Because that’s what’s happening right now, they didn’t realize what’s going on.  

John Debevoise:Well, how did you come to this assessment, before it came out in public? 

Dr. Gleb Tsipur…:Easily.  

John Debevoise:Where do you get your numbers, or your thought process to say, “You know what’s going to happen here, it’s going to shut down, reopen, and then shut down again?” Where did you get this information, before you projected it out to, say, my audience or the audience previous to your appearance here on Business Soup?  

Dr. Gleb Tsipur…:So my information comes from research in cognitive neuroscience and behavioral economics. Basically, on brains. How brains work, and how we’re screwed up. That’s the problem with our brains, our brains are screwed up in a very many ways. Way too many business dollars rely on the fallacy of trusting their gut, following their intuition, going with their heart. Or, being primal as Tony Robbins tell us to do. “Be primal, be savage,” that’s one of his mottos.  

I mean, there’s a reason about half of all small businesses fail within the first five years of opening up, and three-quarters fail within the first 15 years, because they trust such salacious advice, they trust this horrible bad advice to go with their gut, follow their heart, do what’s comfortable for them, do what feels right. That is not how we should run our business.  

John Debevoise:Wait a minute. Trusting your gut, that’s one of the things that’s we’ve been taught throughout our life is that trusting your gut is another way of saying that this is from experience, this is from instinct, this is information that’s been handed down to me by my father, and my grandfather and such, on how to deal with situations like this, and that is the phrase trusting your gut. You’re saying that I shouldn’t trust my gut. Should your thought process be inclusive of this gut formula, or should I just circumvent what has been instinctive to me and my family over all these years?  

Dr. Gleb Tsipur…:You should never simply trust your gut, so I’m going to be very straight forward and very clear. You should trust your head over your gut because our traditional thought patterns are a terrible fit for the modern business world. I mean, was your dad around when the smart phone was invented? How importantly has the smart phone been for modern businesses? Was your dad around when social media was invented? Was his advice really great for the modern world?  

Let’s say, for all the changes that we’re living in. Your grandfather might have lived in a very small, very localized economy, where small networks of like minded people were very important. We’re living in a much more complex, global society that’s very much disrupted by events like COVID-19. I mean, who knew that a virus that originated in the middle of China, Wuhan, China, would get here and be so disruptive? Well, I saw it.  

Like I said, I wrote articles about it, public articles, already way back when because Wuhan, China, when you look at it actually, it’s a major metropolis. People never heard of it, they dismiss it. It’s actually a major metropolis, it has over 11 million people, it has over $22 billion of production, it’s called the Chicago of China. They have something like 500 international flights per day. With an average of 200 people, that’s 10,000 flights. It’s going to get out there, but people don’t think about it this way. They don’t think about hey, something’s that in the middle of China is going to impact me because of their traditional thought patterns, because of their gut reactions, which are not a good fit for the modern world.  

Our gut reactions are actually stemming from our instincts. What you’re talking about, these instincts, come from the Savannah environment. That’s what they’re evolved for, that’s what our intuitions are good for. So for example, one of the most prominent ones, we lived in small tribes of 15 people to 150 people, and we had to very much rely on the fight or flight response. That’s our main response to threats.  

John Debevoise:Yes.  

Dr. Gleb Tsipur…:In the Savannah environment, that was great. When you saw a saber-tooth tiger, that was great to have the fight or flight responses. It’s better to jump at 100 shadows than to ignore a saber-tooth tiger.  

But, in the modern business environment, if you’re going to be jumping at the shadow of every email, you’re going to get yourself way over-stressed, way unproductive, and making bad decisions. So let’s say you’re getting some constructive critical feedback from a customer, so an email with constructive critical feedback. What happens? Temptation is to have the flight response, that’s some people’s personality, which means to ignore the email, delete it, never deal with it, whatever. It never happened. That’s easy and comfortable, it feels good to flight. Or, the fight response, which means write back and say, “What are you talking about? You’re wrong, I’m right. I’m great, you’re a jerk.” That is the fight response. Neither of those responses is the right response, if you want to be successful as a small business owner.  

What you want to do is realize that the signal from your customer is likely a consequence of your systems and processes. And you want to look at what went wrong, in your internal systems and processes, underneath those, investigate that. And then, write back saying, “Hey, I figured out what went wrong, this is the issue. Here’s how I’m going to fix it, my apologies.” Then, you go ahead and fix it. That is a very complex response, not at all instinctive, not at all intuitive, but that’s what you need to do if you want to survive and thrive.  

John Debevoise:Well, I’m feeling like I’m getting indigestion from my gut telling me what to do.  

Dr. Gleb Tsipur…:You are, I’m sorry.  

John Debevoise:In your latest book that you just published this year, Resilience, and adapting for the new abnormal of the COVID, or the Coronavirus pandemic, you’re saying the new abnormal. What does that mean to the small business environment, and how do we plan for that?  

Dr. Gleb Tsipur…:We need to realize that the current situation that we’re dealing with is going to be around for a very long time. Like I said, I already said back in March, what we’ll be dealing with is repeating waves. Where we’ll have loosening restrictions, as we saw a number of states … Starting in May, a number of states had loosening restrictions, and then increasing cases. That’s exactly what happened, exactly what I predicted, because I said they would reopen too early because of human nature and our thought patterns.  

John Debevoise:And their gut reactions.  

Dr. Gleb Tsipur…:And their gut reactions, that’s what human nature is. Gut reaction is human nature, instincts, these are all the same things. These are all terms for what we feel comfortable with, what drives us, the emotions that we feel. Our emotions determine 80 to 90 percent of our behaviors and our decisions, when we let them just go forward naturally and intuitively. And that’s what happened across very many states, starting in May. They opened up too early, they had an increase in cases, and then they had to go shut back down again. And then, they had a decrease in cases, that’s what happened. A number of other states are on the track to have that happen, including right here where I live, in Columbus, Ohio. Go Bucks!  

We shut down early. We didn’t open up quite as early as Texas, or Florida, or Arizona, we opened up somewhat past them. But, we also had a spike in cases, and also had to shutting down right now, more and more. This is what’s happening, and it’s going to keep happening. We’ll have these waves of restrictions, followed by a decrease of cases, loosenings, followed by increase in cases.  

What’s happening is the business owners, when there’s a loosening, or when there’s an opening up, an overwhelming amount of small business owners are rushing back to open up. They’re not realizing that they will come crashing into the restrictions. It costs so much money, so much money to open back up and then close back down. Open back up, and close back down. It’s incredibly expensive. Hiring people, firing people, hiring people, “furloughing people,” right? 

John Debevoise:Yes. 

Dr. Gleb Tsipur…:Those furloughs are mostly turning into permanent job losses, let’s be real. So, that’s costing business owners a lot of money that they don’t have to be wasting. When they need to realize is that this is what will happen until we have a vaccine, these waves of restrictions and loosenings, especially with some of the political leadership pushing for top down too early opening. This is a problem because they’re not realizing the consequences of too early opening will have a lot of economic harm in the long run. 

This is a political year, this is an election year, this is a bad time to really go against top advice and economic sense. A lot of economic experts are saying, “Don’t open up too early, you will lose a lot of money when you do that.” But, so many people are doing it. You’ve got to realize that’s the world we live in, and it’s very dangerous for business owners to not anticipate the consequences.  

John Debevoise:As President Trump famously said that he “didn’t want the cure to be worse than the ailment and the loss of an economy.” Where is that balancing act? What are you going to do for my audience to help them plan for this COVID-19?  

Dr. Gleb Tsipur…:First of all, there are two questions there. One is about the broader economy, and one’s about the small business owner. I’ll handle the broader economy first.  

John Debevoise:Okay.  

Dr. Gleb Tsipur…:So many economies out there, ranging from Germany, to South Korea … South Korea’s a good example. COVID-19 was discovered on the same day in South Korea and the United States. By now, South Korea as 300 deaths, US has over 160,000 deaths. South Korean economy has taken a very small hit from COVID-19, US had the loss of GDP of 32% in the second quarter. This is an example of how the South Korean government institutions have handled COVID-19 much better.  

They have, instead of ignoring it for two months, which is what the US did, what they did was institute a very quick contact tracing protocol, where anyone who was found to have testing … produced extensive amounts of tests, and then traced the contacts of those who had COVID-19, and they were able to contain the outbreak. The US did not do that. That’s not what the US did, the leadership ignored COVID-19, said, “Well, we need to keep the economy, we don’t need all this testing because the more we test, the worse our numbers appear,” and didn’t do anything realistic in contact tracing, and this is where we are.  

The economy will not improve when people are afraid. There was a survey done of people who go to conferences, of CEOs and other execs who go to conferences. The conference business is one of the many areas where small businesses have lost a lot of money.  

John Debevoise:Oh, yes. 

Dr. Gleb Tsipur…:There’s a lot of money lost in conferences, right? So when you look at conferences, it’s not about simply the states shutting down, the Federal government saying no gatherings. If you look at conferences, and people’s willingness to go back to conferences, that’s what the survey was about, it showed that over 90% of people who typically go to conferences, executives from small and medium sized businesses, will not go back to conferences until there’s a vaccine. Over 90% of them will not go back to conferences. This is about the clients, this is about the customers, that’s what’s driving the situation.  

Closing down too small, closing down in the wrong way, in such a way as to not have sufficient tests and then contact tracing, increases the size of the outbreaks, which is happening across the United States right now. The main thing is it causes people to be afraid. People who are afraid don’t spend. Fear just leads to economic loss, fear leads to conservation, so they conserve money, they don’t spend money. That’s what destroys the economy, fear. Fear destroys the economy, not public health actions.  

The right public health actions have saved the economy in South Korea, in Germany, and a number of other countries. Germany has much better finance outcomes and health outcomes than the United States, South Korea does as well, a number of other countries do as well. Because they focused on addressing health, and therefore addressing fear, and now their constituents, their consumers, are going out, spending money, reopening everything from tourism to conferences. That’s great, and I really wish that that’s exactly what was happening here in the US. Without good public health response, it’s not and that is the biggest problem.  

John Debevoise:All right. We have a disaster in hand, at this moment.  

Dr. Gleb Tsipur…:That’s right.  

John Debevoise:And as you’re saying, that it has not been handled well. If the US was to call you up and say, “We have a disaster. What can you do to tell us how to flatten the curve?” Whatever strategy or word usage you want to use. What would you tell them to do, right now?  

Dr. Gleb Tsipur…:What I would tell them to do right now is to, instead of saying to states and localities, “Take care of your own testing, take care of your own contact tracing,” this is ridiculous. Right now, 50 states are competing against each other to buy testing equipment. That is causing prices to be … I mean, imagine 50 small businesses, 50 franchises … 

If you have a business, and it has 50 franchises, and all of them are bidding against each other to get supplies for the business, to get their local supplies, as opposed to them pooling their money together and then using the power of a glomeration of this money together to purchase the supplies that they need. That is what we’re running into, exactly here. Instead of 50 states pooling all of their money with the Federal government saying, “Hey, we will be the one voice that deals with suppliers of tests, that deals with suppliers of personal protective equipment, that deals with suppliers of ventilators,” the 50 states are competing against each other, which raises their price and really is a ridiculous strategy.  

What you need to do is centralize the response. This is what all the countries that have handled COVID-19 competently, from Germany, to South Korea, to many, many others, Australia, New Zealand, have done. It’s a centralized response they have with one voice, with one power. And of course, if you have a lot of money [inaudible] centralized response, you can bid down the price instead of being bid up. So you want to buy tests, you want to buy all this personal protective equipment that you need, and what you want to do is have regulations that govern the use of testing, and so on. Let’s standardize across the country, not 50 different localities.  

John Debevoise:So far, you’ve said that the Federal government, it sounds like, should step in as the one source to secure the testing equipment, and then distribute that to each of the 50 states that require them, or are asking for them, in a cohesive effort, so that everybody gets to test equally throughout the country, depending upon population and such. You’re saying that, first of all, centralize the control of the testing equipment, distribute it, then what?  

Dr. Gleb Tsipur…:Part of that, you want to have the same regulations on testing across the country, as opposed to 50 different regulations across 50 different states, which makes it much more complex to test, so that’s a good part of it.  

Then, you want to do the same thing for contact tracing. You want contact tracers who are going to be, in a centralized fashion, hired by the Federal government. That is going to give them much better training, much better coordination, and supplying them according to the needs of each state. So states that have worse situation with COVID-19 have more contact tracing there, and so on. 

So have contact tracing, personal protective equipment, and shipments of various supplies like Remdesivir, done in that way, by the Federal government. That will enable you to have a lot more control, especially with interstate travel and so on. The Federal government can do a lot more of an effective job in having the testing, and then contact tracing. If we don’t have good testing, then good contact tracing will be put in a pretty terrible place, so that’s part of the situation.  

The other thing that needs to be done is really focusing on the effective science of where you spread COVID-19. The Federal government is not doing that, it’s not really looking at the science. One of the things that the science suggests is that COVID-19 spreads most in indoor venues, where people talk because it spreads through the air. So you want to, as much as possible, prevent people from going to these venues, indoor venues where people talk.  

Unfortunately for the owners of restaurants, this is a much better idea to have only outdoor dining. It’s not as lucrative, but from the sake of saving the US economy, outdoor dining, and the same thing in bars. Outdoor dining needs to be the future, outdoor dining and outdoor drinking needs to be the future. So I’m transitioning to what businesses need to do, the kind of regulations and the kind of steps that businesses need to do.  

They want to very much thinking about what the research shows. Unfortunately, there are a number of businesses who are not very serious about following masking and social distancing guidelines. I’ve seen this with my own eyes, where you walk into a business and some of the employees are wearing masks, and some of the employees are not wearing masks, indoors. I’ve walked right out of that business, I can guarantee that to you, because that’s a business where people get COVID-19. It’s breathing that causes it, it’s talking especially that causes it. So you want to be very, very cautious, you want to have strict guidelines and strict policies on indoor people who are talking, breathing, coughing, preventing that. So making sure that everyone indoors wears masks, that’s going to be incredibly important.  

If you don’t have that, that will really not enable us to open up the economy when we should. So if you are a small business owner, what you have to do is, if you have an indoor business, you want to very much … Again, if you’re a restaurant, no indoor dining. If you’re a bar, no indoor dining. If you own an entertainment venue where people talk to each other, no indoor activities of this sort because it’s going to cause your business to be a super spreader event, at some point or other.  

John Debevoise:According to you, what you’re saying here, who would have thought that drive-in theater would come back into fashion? 

Dr. Gleb Tsipur…:Yeah.  

John Debevoise:Although I don’t know of too many around. From my youth, we used to do that all the time, but now they’re not so much. Who knew?  

Dr. Gleb Tsipur…:I know. Who knew that this will be a new thing? But, that’s what’s happening. Restaurants with outdoor patios are definitely going to win out. So restaurants that currently don’t have outdoor patios, I strongly encourage small business owners to invest serious money into outdoor patios, bars into outdoor patios, because that’s the way that you’re going to make money.  

If you don’t have that capacity, for bars, and restaurants, and various venues that really require people to not have their masks, I would very strongly encourage you to get out of business. This is something I tell my clients, I do have some clients in the restaurant industry. This is not a good business to be in, if you don’t have a realistic outdoor patio opportunity, and if you don’t have realistic carry-out opportunity.  

John Debevoise:Well, that’s kind of harsh. 

Dr. Gleb Tsipur…:I’m a direct person.  

John Debevoise:Wow. 

Dr. Gleb Tsipur…:People don’t hire me to lie to them, they don’t hire me to smooth things over, and hand them rose colored glasses.  

John Debevoise:All right. So you’re in the business of, as your book talks about in your business, talking about avoiding disasters like this. How do you come up with the disasters that are, perhaps, in the future? Do you look at history and say, “Well, this will come back?” You must have some pretty deep conversations at the dinner table.  

Dr. Gleb Tsipur…:Thank you, I appreciate that. What I do is I look at specific patterns of human thinking that cause us to make bad decisions, so that’s the cognitive neuroscience and the behavioral economics. Cognitive neuroscience is the study of how our brain works, t structure of our brain, and how we behavior and make decisions as a result. And behavioral economies is, of course, how we behavior in economic situations, in particular.  

So for example, with COVID-19, one of the biggest, biggest dangerous judgment errors, and that’s called cognitive biases … So folks heard the term cognitive biases, this is what it’s about. One of the biggest cognitive biases here is called the normalcy bias. The normalcy bias refers to the fact that, when we think about ourselves, our business organizations, we tend to judge the future by the past. And that was great in the Savannah environment, because the only changes in the Savannah environment was going to changes of the season. Winter, spring, summer, fall, that‘s what that was about. Our modern world, that doesn’t work. 

Now, think about yourself five years in the future. You probably think of yourself as a slightly older, wiser version of yourself, maybe hopefully slightly richer. But if you think back to yourself five years ago, you’ll probably realize that you were probably a very different person in many ways than you are right now. But, we don’t think that in five years, we’ll be just as different as we were five years ago. That’s a typical example of how we greatly underestimate the kind of transformation that happens in the modern world. 

What happens with, let’s say, smart phones, that really changed how we interact with the world. Social media. What about the fiscal crisis of 2008, 2009? Major disruptor, major change. People greatly underestimated it, who were living through it. Same thing for COVID-19. This is a major global disruptor, life will never be the same after COVID-19, we’ll never go back to January 2020. This is a harsh statement, and it’s harsh for me to realize it. Its painful information for me to realize, [inaudible] understand myself and share, but this is just the reality of the situation.  

The sooner we accept it, the better of we’ll be because what’s happening right now is so many people want to get back to normal, they’re falling into normalcy bias right and left. They’re rushing to reopen, they’re rushing to go back to normal, and they’re not realizing that they need to adapt to this new abnormal which is why I called the book Resilience: Adapt and Plan to the New Abnormal of the COVID-19 Coronavirus Pandemic.  

We need to not fall into normalcy bias. The most optimistic case for a vaccine being widely available, and most people being vaccinated, is in 2022. Did you know that? 2022, that’s the most optimistic scenario by when we can have a widely available vaccine, with much of the population vaccinated. That’s very optimistic, that’s very unlikely to happen just because all the ducks have to be lined up and everything has to go perfectly. More realistically, we’re pushing into ’23 or ’24, by the time we have an effective vaccine that’s, let’s say, over 90% effective, widely available, and most people vaccinated. This is not a short term emergency. 

I’ve been contacted by one oil and gas company that wanted me to facilitate a strategic planning retreat, and I asked them about how are you treating COVID-19, as part of the strategic planning retreat. They told me, “Well, we’re just handling it as a day-to-day situation.” I very strongly pushed back and say, “No, this is a strategic issue. You need to incorporate this into your strategic plan because this will be around at least until 2022, most likely ’23, ’24. While you might hope for the best, which is 2022, you need to plan for the worst.” And that’s a basic principle of effective planning and risk management. That’s what I would tell small business owners.  

John Debevoise:How does this pandemic differ from others in history? From the small pox to the plague, why do you have this longterm … It almost sounds like doom and gloom, from what you’re saying here. How does this current one, how does that differ from those of the past?  

Dr. Gleb Tsipur…:Well, given that the plague swept away about one-third of Europe’s population, I would say it’s not that different. Let’s be honest, COVID-19 will not sweep away one-third of the population. The death rate has been estimated, at various estimates, from 0.5 to one percent, that’s the estimate, so one-third of the population won’t be swept away. 

John Debevoise:But aren’t those that I’ve been reading about, and hearing from other experts, that are in the highest category, the ones that have, I think, comorbidity … 

Dr. Gleb Tsipur…:Those are the people who need to be careful. People younger than 50 who have various medical conditions, and people who are older than 50, which is itself a medical condition, unfortunately, with COVID-19. It’s not a magical cutoff point, but basically the older you are, the more risks you face. I think that around 50 is where you start to face the range of 0.5 to one percent, and then in the 60s you go into one to two percent. The older you are, I think 80 and older, you get something like 15% of all people die, so it depends on your age. Basically, being over 50, you‘re getting into the 0.5 to one percent.  

John Debevoise:But then again, those that are under 50, the young, healthy ones, they might get it and then they bring it home to mom and dad, or to grandpa.  

Dr. Gleb Tsipur…:That’s right, don’t kill grandma, don’t bring it to her.  

John Debevoise:Firing her is hard enough.  

Dr. Gleb Tsipur…:That’s right, that’s right. This is not something you want to do, this is not a tragedy you want to see happen. We’ve seen that.  

For example, the outbreak in Florida that has happened. The early outbreak has occurred mainly, after the reopening in May and June, it occurred mainly among people under 35. People who went to bars and indoor restaurants, and they partied, and they had a good time. And, they got COVID-19, naturally. It’s just the consequence of being indoors in large crowds. 

John Debevoise:Right.  

Dr. Gleb Tsipur…:Especially indoors, sometimes outdoors in large crowds. But, mainly indoors in large crowds, talking to each other. And then, in June and July you had the transition, where the age went much higher because they brought it home to grandma, and grandpa, and their parents. 

John Debevoise:Sure. 

Dr. Gleb Tsipur…:Those are the people who died, so you don’t want to do that. This is very harmful, this is very dangerous, and this will cause a lot of fear.  

So as a business owner, in addition to the health consequences, you’ve got to think about the fear consequences. Fear will cause people … Again, if you are a small business owner, you’re a salesperson, that’s fundamental. I’m a small business owner, I run Disaster Avoidance Experts, as John mentioned, consulting, training, coaching companies in these areas, six people. I am a small business owner.  

John Debevoise:Sure. 

Dr. Gleb Tsipur…:And I know, as the CEO of the company I’m in sales. That’s one of my primary functions, is to be in sales. If you’re a small business owner, you know that sales is your primary function. How can you sell effectively to someone who is in fear? Unless you’re selling them a solution to the fear, which most of you are not. You’re not selling a solution to COVID-19 unless you’re a cleaning company. Unless you’re a cleaning company, which you’re doing well and you don’t need my advice, you are not selling a solution to COVID-19. You’ve got to address the fear, you’ve got to address the causes of that fear. 

John Debevoise:In your book, you talk about “seizing the unexpected opportunities.” Since we’re talking about the doom and gloom of the COVID-19, what are you seeing as the unexpected opportunities out there, say for the small business?  

Dr. Gleb Tsipur…:Sure. So we’ll talk a little bit about various opportunities.  

Restaurants, the ones that get into virtual communication effectively, so social media and so on, rather than hoping for people who are passing by to go in, and talking about various carryout, so ordering food, they will be much better off. Second, if they show a responsible attitude to the pandemic, and talk about this, help their customers address fear, and show how their food is going to be really hygienic and so on, the kind of steps they’re taking to make sure that they address people’s fears, that’s what you want to do. You want to address people’s fears. That’s going to be really important, and virtual communication, social media, that’s where a lot of people are right now and they’re spending their time, so you want to spend time with them. If you want to survive this in carryout orders, and people coming to eat on your patio, you don’t want indoor dining.  

I, right now, as a principle, not going to any restaurant that has indoor dining, even if they have patio dining, because they’re clearly not operating in a safe manner. They’re not operating in a manner that will be conducive to safety. So you want to do that, you want to model yourself as a responsible citizen, corporate citizen, and that will help ensure that you may be able to survive through the pandemic. So that’s one consideration, and that’s a way you can seize market share from those restaurants that are not doing that. There are a number of restaurants that are irresponsibly behaving during this pandemic, not really caring about social distancing, masking, indoor dining issues, and they’re not talking about how they’re taking steps to address fears in the pandemic, so that’s a big concern. You don’t want to do that, you want to seize market share from those folks.  

John Debevoise:All right. So if you can prove to your audience, your potential customers, overcoming the fear … Fear is one of the greatest motivators in human nature, and overcoming that fear is, in the case of this part of the conversation, of recognizing and capitalizing on opportunity. So if you can convince your audience through social media and your presentation that you are observing, to the highest degree, the health standards that have been put forth out there, and that you are providing them with the best possible service and product, and the healthiest environment, then you’re going to be able to capitalize on that opportunity. Or, as you put it, “seizing the unexpected opportunities” in a fear based economy right now.  

Dr. Gleb Tsipur…:That’s right, and that’s for restaurants. And there are a lot of opportunities that are not provided by people like restaurants.  

For example, let’s think about lawyers, or any other professional service providers. Accountants, let’s say, or something like that. One of the biggest challenges for these folks, and I’m a professional service provider so I know what I’m talking about, is cultivating trust. We provide a professional service that they can’t see, you’re essentially selling something that’s invisible, and you’re providing something that’s invisible, so they have to trust you, that you have expertise. And that trust is built by face-to-face connections, conversations, collaboration, shaking hands, and so on. That’s not really available right now, you’re not really going to shake hands. At most, you’re going to bump elbows, right? Ideally, you’re not going to see people in person. I mean, I’m not doing anything in person with any of my service providers, from accountants to lawyers, and to so on.  

So what you need to do, the opportunity that you can seize right now is get professional development in how to cultivate trust in virtual settings. A lot of lawyers don’t know how to do so, a lot of accountants don’t know how to do so, consultants, they don’t know how to do so. They don’t realize that what they need to do is transition their business to virtual, as much virtual as possible. 

Or, let’s say financial managers. I have my financial manager wanting to come to my house and I’m like, “No. We’ll do this over Zoom. You can share your screen there, and so on.” They don’t even know these techniques, they don’t know how to share their screen on Zoom. This is something that you need to learn how to do, and invest into very much learning because this will … Again, in the most optimistic scenario, this will be around until 2022, most likely ’23, ’24, even further. I mean, we still don’t have an effective vaccine for the flu, we have a vaccine that’s only 50% effective. Anthony Fauci’s saying that the new COVID-19 vaccine might be only 50% effective. That’s not great, so this might still continue and last for a very long time.  

You’ve got to be prepared for that, and you’ve got to change your professional development, you’ve got to change the way that you approach customers. How do you search for prospects in virtual settings? There’s professional development for that. How do you do effective virtual presentations, and have effective virtual meetings? There’s professional development on that. If you do this right now, you will not simply retain your existing clients, but you will be able to gain market share because you will have a lot of lawyers who are, unfortunately, not listening to this interview right now, not savvy enough to be listening to Business Soup, and who are not realizing that this is a change they need to be making. Accountants, financial managers, and so on, they’re not realizing that this is something that they need to be doing so they’re not taking the steps that they need to, to adapt themselves to this new environment.  

Whereas, if you go to a prospect who’s currently working with somebody else and say, “Hey, Mr Prospect, or Ms Prospect, I’ve done steps A through F to be pandemic proof, and here are the things I’ve done. My business is protected, I’m doing everything virtually, and so on, I’m trained to do virtually.” They will keep you in mind when their current service provider stumbles, which they inevitably will with the situation being what it is. So you want to take advantage of this, and plan for the longterm of preparing yourself. It will take some investment right now, some investment of your time and your money, to invest in professional development, and a lot of folks are spending that money on trying to reopen foolishly. This is something we want to, instead, invest into transitioning to virtual as much as possible, learning that for yourself, getting your whole team invested into virtual. And then, looking to seize market share in the future.  

John Debevoise:Dr. Gleb Tsipursky, he is the CEO of the Disaster Avoidance Experts. And perhaps the most famous statement that I’ve heard about Coronavirus and reopening was from the Mayor of Las Vegas, who said, “We’re going to open and let the chips fall where they may.” I’m going, “Oh, that one’s going to come back to haunt her.”  

You’d put a different perspective on COVID, and in your recent book Resilience: How To Adapt and Plan For the New Abnormal of the COVID-19 Coronavirus Pandemic … that is a mouthful in of itself, of a book title. It’ll help organizations as well as individuals navigate through the disruption that COVID-19 has brought upon us. And Dr., thank you so much for joining us on this serving of Business Soup.  

Dr. Gleb Tsipur…:You’re very welcome.