S6E3: The Impact of Trump Policies on Modern Business Operations

Disclaimer: The information in this video should not be viewed and is not intended as tax/financial advice. Consult with an expert before making any decisions regarding your finances. 

Navigating rapid policy shifts, economic swings, and global changes takes agility—just like a shortstop in softball. Learn how to stay proactive, protect your cash, and turn uncertainty into opportunity. Your next move matters—make it count.

Transcript

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And then you have to make a very quick decision about how far to go, how fast. And that's what we need to do right now. So we need to learn a little bit, kind of from every message that comes out and decide, is that something I should move for now, or should I wait and let the outfielders get that? Because it might come back the other way more quickly than I can move. So here's the thing with a shortstop, right? We're agile, we're on our tiptoes. We're ready to move either way. But once we push off to the right, it takes a long time to stand back up and push back to the left. So we only want to push off to the right if we're sure that's the way the ball's going to go. So here are some of the things that are coming up that we really don't know what the impact is going to be on our businesses. Welcome back to Cash Flow. Hey. We're going to keep the topic very relevant and build on what we talked about last week, because it's very relevant to today's world. So I get a ton of questions about what do I need to do about the Trump policies? Like, this is totally apolitical, and we will delete any political comments that show up in the feeds, wherever you're watching this. But I care about business people, and I care about business people understanding how both both domestic and global policy will affect them in their businesses, because none of us exist in a vacuum. So right now, we exist in a world where there are new policies with a new administration. And so people say to me, hey, Pam, how do I react to that? And I'm like, you know what? The reality is, you don't know how to react to that right now. And here's why things are going really fast. Okay, so first of all, you know, let's take an example. Trump pops into office, and first thing out of his mouth, we're going to do tariffs. We're going to do 25% tariffs here, 50% tariffs there, 100% tariffs here. So all of a sudden, kind of everybody pitches over this way and goes, okay, let me prepare my business for tariffs. And then, you know, a couple days later, it's like, well, we might not do the tariffs. We learned that it's actually part of some negotiating spiel. And it's like, okay, so I don't have to deal with the tariffs. Let me shift over here. So one of the things I talked about last week was the benefit of some of these Policy comments coming up is it's bringing up things that we should be doing in our businesses anyway, potentially. So check out last week's episode because we talk about the fact that tariffs are kind of irrelevant. Single source of anything for your business is dangerous. So be sure and pop back and listen to that episode because that's an important thing to elaborate on. But what I really want to talk about here is how do we deal with the fact that things are moving so quickly and it's almost whiplash, like. And the analogy I've come up with is because I used to play softball and I used to play shortstop. So I want to talk about that for a minute with a little example. Okay? So for sports people, and if you're not sports people, I apologize, but I really want to explain this using a softball analogy because I used to play shortstop. So in prior administrations. Ha. Prior administration. Did you catch that there? Anyway, sorry, in previous administrations, if our. If we could think of our businesses as out here in the outfield. And this is not any dis against outfielders, so no comments on that either. But hang on here, let me get the pen working. But in the outfield, and we have usually three outfielders in softball, for women, sometimes there's four, but let's just pretend there are three. If you think about this, they're pretty far away from the batter. So this is your batter here. We'll give him a bat. Oh, that looks very bad. We won't give him that. Okay, so let me erase that. Yikes. Okay, so the batter's down back here, and there's a nice long way between the batter and the outfielder, so he or she has some time to adjust and figure out which way to go. And they can move, you know, sort of slowly to make sure they're completely under the ball and catch it, because if it gets past them in the outfield, frankly, that's the last line of defense. So what we do as business people when we're. When the economy or the environment is like this is we're able to move a little more slowly, but we're much more certain that we're going to stop the ball, that we're going to stop it and make sure it doesn't get out there. There's a lot of responsibility for these folks in the outfield. What we're dealing with now is a much shorter distance, because if you're the shortstop here, and if you know a little bit about baseball, you know, the shortstop's basically covering everything between the second baseman and the third baseman. So they've got all of this territory to cover. They are much closer to the batter, so the ball is coming at them much more quickly. So what happened when the whole tariff conversation came up? First we heard, okay, there are going to be tariffs. So the ball, like, came over here and we jumped over and we grabbed it. And then we heard, whoa, whoa, there aren't going to be tariffs. So we went swinging back over here really fast. And what happened was, it's coming so fast that we have to be exactly what a shortstop needs to be. And I want to talk about that for a minute. Now you kind of see the concept of what I'm getting at. We're much closer to the ball, and it's coming much faster. How do we as business people react to that? So I'm going to take the shortstop analogy a little bit further right now. The shortstop, us, as business people, have to be on our tiptoes. Not all the tiptoes, but we have to be standing there ready to go either way. And if you've ever played a sport in this kind of position, you know that really you have the muscles in your calves ready to push you either way no matter what. And then you have to make a very quick decision about how far to go, how fast. And that's what we need to do right now. So we need to learn a little bit kind of from every message that comes out and decide, is that something I should move for now or should I wait and let the outfielders get that? Because it might come back the other way more quickly than I can move. So here's the thing with a shortstop, right? We're agile. We're on our tiptoes. We're ready to move either way. But once we push off to the right, it takes a long time to stand back up and push back to the left. So we only want to push off to the right if we're sure that's the way the ball's going to go. So here are some of the things that are coming up that we really don't know what the impact is going to be on our businesses as it relates to immigration. Are we going to lose some of the workforce? Is that going to affect us as a business? Is that going to affect our providers as a business? Do either us or. Or our providers or our customers rely on immigrant labor for the businesses? So we just need to be aware of that. And the reason I like this story is because it brings up that being aware of our workforce, being aware of our suppliers and our Customers is a message I want to drill home. And quite frankly, I'm using Trump and his back and forth to make this point. We need to be ready for any eventuality. Everything moves faster now. Internet moves faster. We can communicate faster. Technology moves mind numbingly fast. One of the big topics we're going to talk about here on our podcast, in fact, in the next couple of episodes, is how AI can actually replace your cfo. And I think it's important for us to always be on our tiptoes like a shortstop now, because I think the days of being in the outfield and being able to be the last line of defense and take the time to decide what, which way to go may be passed globally, not just in the US So that's kind of my message. Be aware if there are three things that I would tell you to do here. No, there are three things are I'm going to tell you to do here is, number one, know your customers and what they rely on for their business. People, supplies, money, cash flow. Know your vendors or anybody you're purchasing things from. If you're a coach, know your contractors, know your employees and know what influences them as it applies to immigration tariffs, their cost of living, inflation, interest rates. There's almost any of these stories you're hearing on the Internet or on news. I hear them on the Internet. I don't watch news anymore. I just watch a couple of business channels and get the news that way. But whatever you're hearing is something that you can always go, oh, okay, how would that affect my business if it happens? And that's not Trump centric. That's something we should be doing anyway. And I think we've had the luxury of maybe being able to avoid that in the past. But I keep now sort of a list of, you know, what are the different things that could happen economically and what would I do about each one of them? How does it affect my clients? How does it affect each of my, my bookkeepers or my contractors? And that way I'm ready for whichever way it goes. So that's thing number one, be know this stuff anyway because it's all about. That's all about owning and really managing your business strategically. That's what strategy really means. How am I going to adapt to my opportunities and how am I going to deal with kind of the bumps that are going to come inevitably in the road? So that's kind of where I would go with that. The second thing I would say is right now, to the extent that you can, is a time to Pile up some cash. Now, I'm not saying go crazy or anything, but all of the indicators are pointing to the fact that we're going to have some inflation, we're going to have a pullback in the market. This is not financial advice. This is just me talking about my opinion. We actually are having a pullback in the digital currency market with Bitcoin and Ethereum. And that could actually, in a very odd way that I won't go into because it's pretty complicated and long and I'd lose you because I'd lose myself in the conversation is that's possibly an indicator that we're going to pull back from this bubble that we have in the Internet in the regular stock world. So be aware that that's kind of coming and it's going to lead to needing some cash on hand. That's really the big message with my second point here. If you can conserve cash without sacrificing your. Your business at this point, conserve some cash. I can't tell you where to put it right now. I can't tell you if it's gold or it's digital currency. Well, I can't tell you anyway because this isn't financial advice. But we don't know where it's going to go yet. So right now it's like, just hang on to that cash for a minute. Let's see what inflation does, let's see what interest rates do, and then we can decide what to do with it. But the person who has liquid cash can get to that cash quickly when the market goes back down or when interest rates skyrocket are going to be the ones that are ready to do the lending and make that interest as opposed to the borrowing and have to pay that interest. So I'm really just trying to tie into your thoughts about your business a little more than just bookkeeping and accounting right now, really, to say, hey, we're in an environment where managing a business is hard, harder and harder and harder because everything's moving fast, including Trump, and we need to be agile, we need to be ready to jump. And the third thing, the third thing, we need to own the fact that we as business owners are not victims of anything. The minute you think you're a victim of some policy or the minute you think that you're a victim of some environmental issue, all of a sudden you've put control 100% in somebody else's hands. And as a business owner, I just don't want you to do that. You control how you react to anything and the more prepared you are to react, the better off you're going to be. So I really hope this was helpful. Stay agile. Always be looking at these things in your business. It's not just Trump related, but right now it is ratcheted up a bit and I'm really pulling for you to be ready for whatever comes. You have a great week and I'll see you on the next cash flow.