UNCHARTED Jeff Bermant

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UNCHARTED: Decision Making Framework with Jeff Bermant

Facing uncertainty can be challenging – being a business owner facing uncertainty is tougher.

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Starting the conversation:

What am I going to do about it?
Use a framework for decision making to ask good questions to keep you present and able to focus on your current priorities.

Host: Jess Dewell

Guest: Jeff Bermant

Transcript

ANNOUNCER 00:09
This is Uncharted, a series of candid conversations about facing uncertainty. When we are called upon to be courageous, the strength of our leadership is tested. Red Direction has developed a library of resources to help you stay aligned, and in particular, to develop your True North. Now, here’s Jess..

Jess Dewell 00:33
Today, for Uncharted, we have Jeff Bermant here, and I have to tell you, when we met, we couldn’t stop talking. And we have just been talking and talking and I was like, hey, wait, I gotta press record so we can actually give people this program. It is so good. He is the CEO of Virtual World Computing. He is used to success in real estate development to invest in software development, many of the ideas That are implemented by Virtual World Computing have come from his enthusiasm for finding ways to solve complex problems with real world solutions. Jeff’s initial investment is Cocoon. It’s a project in the digital privacy and security sector. I’m really glad you’re here today, Jeff.

Jeff Bermant 01:17
Thank you Jess. Glad to be here as well.

Jess Dewell 01:21
I always tell people that they missed the best part. Because in this case, it’s true. It’s what happens before we hit record and it’s what happens when we after and you said something right before I was like, we have to hit record now. Disaster the disaster is really after this. I want you to just we’re gonna just jump in right there. And I want you to tell me what you mean by that. The disaster is really after this.

Jeff Bermant 01:45
Yeah. So it this is unparalleled times. I mean, few of us unless you were born in 1918. Went through anything which certainly I will say I’m not have gone through a pandemic. Or even understand it. And certainly, I would say majority of the world didn’t understand what was happening to them. And today we’re here we find ourselves in the middle of this, we’re isolated, we’re at home. Or you’re, you know, you’re somewhere you’re isolated. You might be working you might not be, and the things that are turning around in your head can be really scary. And what’s going on is, you know, you’re, you’re starting to think, what if, what if I can’t pay my bills? What if the government doesn’t come through with the money? What if I can’t get my job back because I lost my job. This is unchartered territory for me. 10 million people out of work. This is the calamity can come after. And I hate to say the loss of lives which in the United States, hopefully will be less than 100,000, which is still unacceptable.

Jeff Bermant 03:03
We weren’t prepared for this. And you know, you have to look at guys like Bill Gates and you have to go, I know why this guy has, you know, like, so smart hustle for money is because he saw this coming five years ago and said, You guys aren’t prepared, and we didn’t do anything about it. And so we spend our money on lots of other things, and we didn’t spend our money preparing for this. And I think we’ll get through it. Okay. But the aftermath is what could be very scary where, you know, it’s like the 1920s when people lost their jobs, and they jumped in, my grandfather told me about he, he saw people jumping out of off their roofs, because they had they were in such despair, they went from being fairly well off to poverty.

Jess Dewell 03:45
And there’s a big life change happening for everybody, socioeconomic ally, potentially geographically, and then you’re right, the, the and I say geographically I meant like city to city, but really also the physical distance between us, we are lucky to be in California and Colorado and still be able to have this conversation today. Because of all of the things aligning for that to happen, and you know, you’re alluding to mindset, and I know I’m a big fan of mindset, and self esteem, and they are actually closely related. And many of us recognize how our esteem is in good times. And it’s going to be in this time that we are really tested. Our leadership is tested, the way that we show up is tested. I mean, I was telling you in the greenroom, you were like how are you? And I was real, like I am a hot mess. And I’m like that those firecrackers that you like won and they just go pop, pop, pop, pop, pop pop pop for ever. That’s the hot mess that I am when I am in this right now. And it’s not because my emotions are crazy. It’s not because my situation is dire. I’m very blessed on both of those fronts, but it’s because It’s a stress that I am unused to. And, are you feeling stress that you’re unused to?

Jeff Bermant 05:07
No. And then the reason why I say I’m not is because my background in business has always been stressful. I like to say the way I like to talk about my life has been, I’ve had a fever since I started being a real estate developer now in tech. I’ve had a fever and you get used to the fever you get used to the hotness of “Oh my god, this is here’s a disaster. Oh, I didn’t think of this disaster. I didn’t think of this pandemic. What am I going to deal with?” And one of the issues I have of being older is like okay, so they’re not going to have a cure. In my in my little cubby hole for the next year. I might very well be in my cubby hole. So I better figure out how I’m going to operate in my little cubby hole.

Jeff Bermant 05:49
Ah, right. Yeah.

Jess Dewell 05:54
So you’re a little bit of a planner. Is that what I’m hearing? Are you a quick adapter?

Jeff Bermant 05:59
I’m a quick adapter. And I’m so used to. So my background in real estate for instance, I came into a community we were talking about this earlier, you could go down to Dallas, you could build stuff you didn’t have permitting, you didn’t have people that were chasing you saying there’s no way you should do it in development. Santa Barbara, it’s all about No, no, we don’t want you to develop. And I was one of the good guys, I was one of the guys who tried to do good things when I when I developed properties and tried to take care of my tenants and so on and so forth. But still, the heat was always there. And so when you grow up with the heat and nothing’s you’re an entrepreneur, nothing’s ever settle. You don’t know where your next paycheck is. I’ve never gotten a paycheck from anybody. I don’t know what a paycheck is, like. All I know is I got to do this on my own all the time. I’m the captain. I got to figure this out all the time. You get used to doing that.

Jess Dewell 06:50
Who do you talk to? Because so for example, I’m talking to you. You are my therapy. Jeff, I’m going to tell you right now Uncharted is for everybody out there who’s like me have, I’ve had a fever. I know what it takes. But I still was in a groove. And I didn’t realize how much of a groove I was in until I was put in somebody else’s groove or a new groove that didn’t exist before. Right. So that’s so that’s kind of one of those things where I’m like, hmm, so who do you talk to? To like, make sure your heads on right, and that you are able to adapt quickly and recognize, oh, it’s not so far off from the heat have already experienced?

Jeff Bermant 07:30
Yeah, so I have a great wife she likes to she likes to hear. She doesn’t have much to say, she’ll just say, Oh, my God, you’re gonna still do this? And the answer is yes, I figured it out. But she’s my kind of my sounding board for me to really check myself. That’s one. And then I have people in my office that I I’ll talk to occasionally and say, you know, this is going on, what do you guys think? But really, the Self Checker is me. I’m the guy who in the end of the day, does the check. And says, you have the right path. You’re scaring me. What are you going to do? But when I say I’m scaring myself, it’s not that I give up, then it’s then I figure out, well, what am I going to do about that? And that’s what people need to recognize an unchartered times like this. It isn’t going to be Oh, my God, it’s going to be you know what, maybe the government will help me. Maybe my friends will help me. Today, we have the here’s the greatest part. We have the ability to get online and talk to each other and see each other in person. That’s right. Right. So you have a problem. I could call you up and go, God, I don’t know what to do about this problem. You know, I, I’m not sure we’re going to run out of money. And you can say to me, Well, you know, there’s a government loan that you could go get, why don’t you fill out the application, nothing else, you can feel a lot better that you even try,

Jess Dewell 08:47
Right? And see, and that’s why I asked who you were talking to, because we have to have that right now. Because otherwise, doesn’t matter how good we’re wired. Doesn’t matter how much we’ve done between our ears. After a while it will erode and having somebody to go “Oh, yeah, it’s not that crazy. Oh, yeah, there is a path forward.” It’s that. I don’t want to call it a lifeline that might be a little too. too dramatic, but it’s a way to focus on something else and to break whatever that pattern was. That..

Jeff Bermant 09:23
No, I don’t know if it’s, I wouldn’t say that it may not be dramatic, because, look, you and I are coming from a place where I have some security. Right? You have some security, but what about all those people and this is where I come in as a human being is I tried to I tried to put myself although you can’t in their place and say my golf, I don’t have to scary is they do sure somebody can take my house away. That would be really scary to me. But how about those people that are literally losing their jobs? Right? That’s scary. And, and I worry about those people that say 1929 stock market crash, I’m just going to jump off a roof. Right? It’s going to kill us. That’s what we what we’re not understanding is if we don’t take care of each other now, that’s what the result of this pandemic is going to be. It’s going to be about another 80,000 people took their own lives, because they didn’t know what to do next. There’s never been an uncharted water like that.

Jess Dewell 10:25
That’s right. That’s right. And, and they may not feel like they have anybody to talk to, even though there’s a lot. They may not recognize that there’s an opportunity because, and I can think of a lot of reasons. There are some who through generation to generation or how they were raised is that they just don’t talk about this type of stuff. And they don’t show their feelings and they’re supposed to have all of the answers. Well, I wish that I wish for them that they had had a better role model. I had role models like them. You had to always be right Which is probably one of the reasons I’m a little more freaked out because this is the craziest it’s ever been. Usually, I fall back to these amazing skills that I have so that I can always move forward, I can reach out, I can talk to people, I can do all of these things. But every once in a while something happens that will shake me to my core, and then go back to this child wounding when I was supposed to have an answer, and I didn’t and I got reprimanded for it, or something bad happened and then I had to take the blame for it or I stepped up into the responsibility whether it was my or not at eight or nine years old. And when we go back that far, or it’s, we fall harder. And so um, it’s really interesting, this concept of taking care of each other because I know we are we sit out on our front porch and we’re making sure to talk to everybody that is walking by. And you know, when we’re out on walks, even though we are keeping our physical distance, I’m making eye contact and saying hello for the people who will. There are a lot of people who Just want to be invisible right now, even though they’re outside, and we should not feel bad for wanting to be outside. We want sunshine. I mean, you ride what you told you told me you ride like 20 miles every day on your lunch break. Yeah. And see. And I think that that’s really important. There’s so much benefit to having something that’s regular in our life that that rhythm and is that one of the ways that you’ve always been able to adapt fast is by having these things that you fall back on and know, what else do you do besides, you know, going out at lunch to have that routine?

Jeff Bermant 12:33
If you have a regular routine that you do in an unchartered water, you’re going to be far better off that you have a routine. And you should, even if you’re home, you should keep your routine as much as you possibly can. Because it’s going to anchor you into something you’re very familiar with. And if all of a sudden you’re you know, I would say if you’re I just had a conversation with a software developer, he says “I’m busier than ever.” And I’m like, that’s really good. Because if you’re not busy, you’re thinking about the future and maybe the disaster. If you’re thinking of just the day that you’re, you’re, you’re in, just the moment you’re in, and you’re doing something productively. You won’t feel the unchartered waters as much. You’ll you can look out there and go, Oh, my God, what’s going to happen in three months where my job is going to be. But if you get into that, that’s going to get you into a panic. And what you don’t want to do is get yourself into a panic. You want to stay chartered as much as you can, and uncharted waters.

Jess Dewell 13:37
I’m telling you, you know, and we’re all used to stress. And I would say, even in our cushiest times, we could probably find stress that resonates with us at a level from our most unstable times are the most, you know, the most dire times that we’ve ever experienced. I might be speaking out Turn and I’d might have just put words in your mouth. I’m just, I’m thinking that out loud a little. And that it’s only from the gamut of having both sides of those that we even have something to be afraid of. Is it not?

Jeff Bermant 14:13
Yeah, no, it’s Yeah, I would, I would think it is, as you say, you need to be you need to be stable, stable as you can. You need you need to be aware of what’s going on. And how do you help yourself remember, you’ve got to you can depend on your friends, you can ask them they can talk to you. But you’ve got to be revived, reliant on your own survival skills, and still being like cognizant of helping others. I mean, still, you can reach out to your friends. You know, I’ve told my friend Gee, if you need a little extra something, call me up, and I’ll do the best I can for you. Right, but a lot of us the uncomfortable part is we’re in unchartered waters and we don’t know how to react. So I’m lucky enough How to hell? Right? If you’re self resilient, like I am sort of, it’s a lot easier to be in these kind of moments. Sure I get panicked, I start thinking about, well, two months from now, you know, but you shouldn’t be doing that if you can help.

Jess Dewell 15:16
Right? So there is an element to where, um, you know, this concept of a routine, this concept of being able to help yourself and relying on your own survival skills. So, if you were asked, Okay, I’m gonna just ask you, not if you were asked, I’m just gonna let me just let me just change that up right now. Because I am going to ask you, what are the elements of a Sir, I’m going to use the word survival strategy. Maybe it’s a fallback strategy. Maybe it’s a resilient strategy. What are the things that you have cultivated over time that you’re relying on now in uncharted waters because I’m betting other people out there going, I don’t know what to do. They’re gonna hear your answer. And they’re gonna be like, Oh, I got skills too.

Jeff Bermant 16:05
First of all, believe in yourself. Yeah, first thing you’ve done. If you’ve been believing in yourself, and you have, you know, totally believe in yourself, but you know you’ve done well, you’re and I don’t mean you’ve done well, money wise, I mean, you’ve done well with your work your family, you believe in yourself, believe that you can continue to do this, that it’s not because there’s a hard time because just like in the stock market, let me give you a perspective. Okay. So people panic in stock markets, and see this these huge losses. If all those people didn’t panic, they just stayed where they were, they stayed steady, they’d be fine. Because it ebbs and flows. And that’s how life is it ebbs and flows and so you have to be willing to stabilize yourself during a hard time and not panic,

Jess Dewell 16:56
Not panic, not that doesn’t mean not be emotional, right. I said I was a hot mess. I am not panicked even though I’m a hot mess, right?

Jeff Bermant 17:04
Right. I’m a hot mess this morning when I’m trying to find out about my software. The guys told me they can’t finish something. I’m like, Oh my god, what are you guys talking about? right?

Jess Dewell 17:14
Exactly. Right. hot mess. And yeah, so and that means then so is that next part of so we’re relying on the skills you’ve always used to get to where you are today.

Jeff Bermant 17:26
You know, and then part of it is your ability to reach out to others. So you’re not gonna have all the answers. That’s not possible. There was a lot of possibilities. And this is where a lot of people get stuck. They live in their own little world and they’re only used to their own little politics, their own little possibilities. And an entrepreneur doesn’t think like that. They think outside the box, which is I don’t know what the next possibility is, but I’m gonna go think of something and then go find that Possibly and figure out if it worked for me. Yeah. Yeah. Same set here, which is, oh my God, I’ve lost all my savings. What am I gonna do? Well, let’s start with a government. You know, I’ll say the government helping, that’s one thing you can do is go apply for that right now or they’re gonna send you a check and if you have a small business that apply for even if you don’t think I may not qualify, go apply for it.

Jess Dewell 18:25
Might as well.

Jeff Bermant 18:26
Right, they may give you that check. They may say to you, you know what, we understand, here’s your $10,000 okay? But don’t sit there and wallow in it and just say, you know, we filled out those forms immediately with the government. I mean, it was like two minutes I was like, we need help. Right? So take those take your you have an anchor, then start thinking positive start asking your friends start asking business associates How do I solve this problem? What am I going to do? You know, what other job can I get Meanwhile, can I can I do something online or for whatever it is, but don’t wallow in this. And that’s why, you know, you need to be anchored. The family, friends.

Jess Dewell 19:11
I love when I make notes like this, look at this. This is how my brain works. So it’s even color coded. I know what each one means. And what we’ve been talking about so far, we’ve started about the disaster that’s coming after. So we’re in uncharted waters, even when this becomes more known. We’re going to it’s almost like an aftershock of an earthquake. Would that be fair, we don’t necessarily know when it’s gonna come, but it’s coming period. And so we have a framework that you have shared with us. The first part of the framework is that we’ve got to believe in ourselves, we have to understand what our mindset is the skills we actually bring to the table and the network. Not like a network that we go networking and ask for money and share each other and have referrals. I’m talking about That personal safety net network, who is a friend, I can call like, you were talking about people that you’ve been working with for many, many, many years, the your wife, and I’ve got the same I have close friends, I have actual I call them my colleagues, even though we’re not in the same business because they’re the people I will bare my soul to, and be like, I think I’m in trouble. And I don’t know what to do. Or I think I have a problem. And I’m not quite sure what the problem is yet, and get that outside help. And then the second part of that was because once we’ve got those things, we have an anchor, because now we have something, whether it’s combined with our routine or not, that we can be present in the moment and recognize the actions to prioritize now, so that we can answer the question which you also said earlier was, what am I going to do about it now? Did I did I capture your framework? Oh, yeah.

Jeff Bermant 20:56
Exactly right on and right on target

ANNOUNCER 21:04
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Jeff Bermant 21:15
Right now. During this Uncharted water, you need to be anchored. You need to be reliant on your friends and your family not necessarily for money, but if necessary. Don’t be ashamed to ask. And if you the government’s there, yeah. So use all your resources you can now’s your time that you know, if you didn’t know how to make a fire when I was a boy scout, I didn’t know how to make a fire. I learned how to do that. So now it’s time you have to be a little resilient for yourself. And, and you hear these stories. I mean, I remember my grandfather telling me how guys that were poppers during 1929, none of us lift or something like that, where the stock market totally crashed. We had the recession, so it was bad enough, but people jumping out of you know, off windows and buildings, all this terrible stuff. And so you had to be resilient and you have to, first of all, you got it. You can count on your friends and your family, but you have to be anchored. Mm hmm. That’s how you get through these things. It’s like having that temperature in the real estate business. is having that temperature all the time. You have to be just get used to and go. I’m going to make my way through this.

Jess Dewell 22:05
Yep, that’s absolutely right. And it’s and it’s one hot mess after the other. That’s my word for the day apparently.

Jeff Bermant 22:12
I like that hot mess thing.

Jess Dewell 22:16
You can try that on?

Jeff Bermant 22:18
I had a hot mess today. You’re right, I had one on the call. When I finally filtered through all the software jib jab going on, I finally realized I got a problem. We got a hot mess here. How?

Jess Dewell 22:31
And oh, and how do I solve that we’ve got the problem, you were able to sift through and find the problem. So that’s actually one of your strengths is being able to find the problem and being able to go Hey, is that really the problem and is it complex or not? Is what I heard you say in a little bit of other things.

Jeff Bermant 22:51
I mean, if it is complex, you take you take it apart, you take it out a piece like stand back and say to yourself, okay, Sure, but let’s go to the 30,000 foot level. So the 30,000 foot view, I’m trying to solve this problem right? Now you get down into here in the weeds. Well, we got this problem, we have that problem, we have this, we have that it’s got all and you go, oh my god, it’s a mess. It’s truly a mess. But you have to step back into what’s my final goal and then start taking test steps to solving that Rubik’s cube. So that in the end, it might take an extra meal take an extra two weeks of delay, but in the end, we’ve solved the problem. Right when I heard that maybe Android would not accept my, my, my new browser. I was a hot mess. a hot mess. And then I then what I did was I listened to what he said my software developer what he said, and I came to conclusion, wait, you gave me another hint. Let me call up the guy who’s gonna who’s going to process this for me? Let me ask him a couple of questions. did exactly that fix the phone I called the guy. I said, this is important. Call me back 20 minutes from now I need to talk to you. And what did I do? And we created more of a mass, but I was able to solve the real fear that I had. I was able to solve saying, well, it’s going to take me two more weeks to resolve this. But I’ve solved the real fear, which is won’t my app be accepted or not accepted? Ah,

Jess Dewell 24:24
I like that you said that. I solved the real fear. And it was by sticking with it and digging in and figuring out who to talk to.

Jeff Bermant 24:33
Absolutely, you know, the first thing on my hands is throw my hands and say, Oh, my God, this is way too much trouble. And then I realized, no, no, you’re on a mission. That mission is to be successful with this thing. help other people do the right thing. And so it was like, Okay, let me hear because all I could hear with the bad bad news. And I was like, wait, you just said something, the curl. You know, you pick up these hurdles? I just heard you say, What if you did it this way? And I was like, Well, why don’t we call the guy We go, that’s not possible. No, no, I could possibly let me call the guy up and ask. Yeah, right. And sure, for sure that’s possible. But you’re gonna have to do this, this and this to make it work. But these are all things that you can do.

Jess Dewell 25:12
Ah, and then you have the choice of whether or not to do them, but you have an answer and a path. And so are we, and that then goes back to Okay, how much do we want it? What does this actually look like here? Is this is and then and then can I put this set of problems and these steps that we might have to change? Can I? Or how many problems down in the weeds that I saw? Will that will doing this actually solve? See, right I mean, that’s one of those things where we thump our noses to spite our faces a lot of the time don’t me I got that wrong, but you know what I mean, in terms of, we stay down in the weeds and be like, nope, this is what we’ve got to prioritize no other way is going to work until we under See what all this is.

Jeff Bermant 26:01
So I must have repeated in my phone conversation with these people, maybe three times. Okay, so tell me, After exploring all the different avenues of solving the problem, turn this on, turn that off the blah, blah, blah. Then I got down to Okay, give me the three or four easy steps to solve my problem now. So they were able to lay that out and somebody said, Well, I won’t be able to get till next week. No, that’s not acceptable. We need tomorrow, right? Is it okay, well, I can do it tomorrow. I just got him to do tomorrow because I said I needed tomorrow.

Jess Dewell 26:36
And you said, You spoke up. A lot of people don’t speak up when they don’t like the answer. They’re like, man, I love and here’s the thing. It’s because they don’t like being asked or challenged about their own schedules. And I would say, Come on, we got to quit being two faced here. Especially right now. We have to treat other people the way we want to be treated and we let’s cut through the BS. Let’s just get to the real I’m going to ask for what I want. I need To tomorrow, and it really can’t happen, what’s gonna happen? They’re gonna say, I really can’t do that for the actual soonest.

Jeff Bermant 27:07
But I gotta say, Sure, you know what, I guess I could do that for you. And I could lay that out for you tomorrow so that you so that my developers can start working now, I have to worry. Now my next word is okay, I have to get the money for this. Right. Right. So that’s my next challenge is to go home and figure out okay, I’m gonna have to give this up. Yeah, because I really want that over there to happen.

Jess Dewell 27:31
Yes. So prioritizing,

Jeff Bermant 27:34
But you first got to solve the problem, you first have to have enough confidence in yourself that you’re going to solve that and the weirdest part for me, Jessica, is I solve these problems at the weirdest times. And this just you? Oh, my wife looks at me. She goes, Well, Jeff is off in his own little world. Right now. He’s solving a problem because you can see that I’m not present.

Jess Dewell 27:59
That’s see Wait when I’m doing other things, and I’m like, Oh, I just got it.

Jeff Bermant 28:05
Yeah, no, that’s exactly right. It’s the weirdest period of times that you can solve something. If you stop, if you just racking your brains out, baffles me all the time you’re racking your brains over. I can’t think of it, get it. And then all of a sudden, you know, you’re taking a shower. You’re walking around, and all of a sudden, hey, wait, I know.

Jess Dewell 28:23
That’s right. Oh, why didn’t I get that before? How come How? This is something we’ve done before even I love those. Oh, well.

Jeff Bermant 28:32
Yeah, many times. These are things that and this is where the entrepreneurship comes in people. I didn’t think of that. Well, I have news for you most of the world. You haven’t thought of that. Right. You just don’t know. I mean, you told me about what was I reading the other day? I was like, No, I have no idea. Right? It was great. It was great to learn that so what you have to learn. I learned this early on. Business is that you’re sitting in a little triangle, and you have all these possibilities that you know about. Yeah. What about those peas that are outside that triangle that you live?

Jess Dewell 29:10
Right? So your bike rides. For some people, it’s the shower, for other for me, it’s doing a puzzle, or taking a walk. That goes back to that routine, because then there’s built in time of using our brain differently, which means everything that we’ve been mulling over has a chance to bubble up. And for us to pull from and maybe not, maybe we do get to sit. I mean, some people I am not good at sitting and thinking I have to do other stuff to think some people are really good at sounds like you are you sit to think. And you think,

Jeff Bermant 29:42
Oh, I do both. I like I think a lot and then I kind of give out to go and I can’t think of this and then it will pop into me like, well, what Wait, why don’t we just did this and people were like, why don’t you know that’s so simple, but no one thought of it?

Jess Dewell 29:58
And so you have to let go.

Jeff Bermant 30:02
Try and be logical as well, too, because emotions will send you into a spin. Yeah, you have to be sure you’re going to be afraid. But continue to be logical and think through things as much as you possibly can. Because your emotions will drag you down into, you know, the darkest corners.

Jess Dewell 30:23
Yeah, I embrace them. They come along with me. There you go. I got a posse. Who’s your posse today? fear, anger, excitement.

Jeff Bermant 30:34
We’re living through. I mean, I could have never imagined in my 60 years, I could have never imagined that we’d have a pandemic know, Bill Gates realized it, but I didn’t think about it.

Jess Dewell 30:45
Right. And it just goes to show our scope and where our scope is. And by the way, if we didn’t have different scopes, we would not be as successful or complete or have the skills or the experiences that we did. We would all have the we would all be the Same. And so that’s something that I’m honoring in this conversation is your view and your scope is different than my view and my scope. And it’s being it’s enriching me right now, just to have them

Jeff Bermant 31:11
Likewise yours to me. So I’m understanding how you sort of see this. And for me, it’s because I’ve lived in this. I’ve lived all my life. So I’ve only had one job and my whole life, and everything else was my own entrepreneurship. Yeah. So I’m pretty stable with the fact that look, I figured this out before. I can figure it out. And most everybody, if even if you work for big companies realize that you bring your skill set, even if you’re the janitor. That’s right. Your skill set, you have a good skill set. I look at everybody my company is we all have our own skill sets. Right? And I honor everyone’s skill set down to the janitor. I mean, he had been talking about helping people, so he possibly had the Coronavirus and they asked me what he’s going to do because he was I said, but I’m inquiring cheat and pain. Yep. Right in the check, I’ll figure out how to get the money to pay him. You write in the check. So he is he is not worried about his family. He’s not worried about his job. Because I don’t want any mighty I would. I would go put my house up and mortgage before I’m gonna let my team to down. I’m not letting people go.

Jess Dewell 32:24
Yeah. And I thank you for saying that and doing what it takes and the willingness to be resourceful and recognizing, man we are in a different place. I can still be resourceful in this new place. I don’t know the rules.

Jeff Bermant 32:36
You know, just it’s a it’s a it’s a time and place. It’s like this is the weird part about this is three years we’re going to go Oh, yeah. Yeah, it was a little difficult. Now some people it’s going to be a long time. And that’s the people I’m worried about is they need to anchor saying I can get through this right whether they’re talking to their minister talking to someone getting help from rest of us. Right? I think many of us are willing to help other people. I’m the guy who says I’m the guy who hands out a $20 bill when I see somebody out, I hate to admit that, but I do it all the time. Because I hate seeing people down. And I’m conservative, but I still, you know, I still feel like we got to help people.

Jess Dewell 33:23
Well, we all live on this planet together. And we’re all in the same community. And that’s the thing, I think, is the most enlightening. We’ve been talking about how global Our world is. I think this is the first experience that any of us have ever had that actually shows. We are global on the good and we are global on the less than good. And it is going to be in how we treat people and hearing you share what you’re doing and how you’re doing things and being like, well, we’ll figure it out. But this is what we’ve got to do. We’ll figure it out.

Jeff Bermant 34:02
You’re gonna figure it out and you have to be as I said at the time of crisis like this and uncharted waters you have to be as stable as you can unemotional as you can keep being resourceful as you can, right? And count on your friends and family and, you know, my wife is scared to death about them. And we have to we have parents that are in their 80s and I have I have a lung ailment that could take me down I know I could be dead and the answer is, you know what, I’m gonna do everything I possibly can. And then I’ll be a little lucky. Right to do everything I possibly can to be right. So wash your hands. Be really careful. Stay away from people, all the things are telling you to do. Sure I’m at my office but my strategy was to get to my office without touching anything without being near anybody. My doors closed. There are nobody coming in to see me in the office if they want to talk to me intercom only, or calling.me, right?

Jess Dewell 35:03
We all have to take those precautions. Jeff, I’m really glad you were here today to share this conversation and just really being candid, we covered a lot of ground. And we went really deep. And in this particular conversation, there is a framework that we can all fall back on. Yours may look different than mine may look different than our listeners. But we all have one. And I think that is the I think that is the thing to take away and to chew on. What is the framework, we can fall back on? How do we anchor ourselves? And where are we going to find our true north so that we can from where we are anchored, take stock and then prioritize the actions to get us to where we’re going. And that could be tomorrow. And that could be through this and through the next. All right until

Jeff Bermant 35:52
Jessica? Thanks. Thanks for chatting with me. I so enjoyed it. You’re one smart lady. Thank you.

Jess Dewell 35:59
I appreciate it. Thank you, Jeff.

ANNOUNCER 36:02
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