Welcome to Radical Personal Finance, a show dedicated to providing you with the knowledge, skills, insight, and encouragement you need to live a rich and meaningful life now, while building a plan for financial freedom in 10 years or less. My name is Joshua. I am your host. And today I'm going to talk with you about the power of changing your goals in the face of adversity.

As I record this on Thursday, March 19, 2020, millions of us all around the world are facing the reality of complete and total financial destruction, complete and total devastation. Millions of us are finding out that we simply have no job to go to on Friday. Millions more tomorrow on Friday will find out that we have no job to go to on Monday.

Millions of us are contemplating the loss of value in our investment portfolios. We're contemplating the destruction of our businesses. We're sitting down and we're picturing the faces of the people that we're going to have to lay off tomorrow or Monday or next week or in a month. We're contemplating the various scenarios foisted upon us by this current global pandemic and wishing desperately that things were different, but acknowledging that things are bad.

I'm no exception to that. I've been considering it a lot over the last couple of days. I've been on the phone nonstop with clients working through adjustments to investments and working through adjustments to businesses and talking about how bad it's going to get and basically just giving my estimate on how long it's going to be until there's martial law and national guard troops in the streets or a police officer on the corner, and then how long this thing is going to go on.

And of course I don't know, and I desperately hope that I'm wrong, but at this point in time, it's not going to be long. The national guard troops will probably be on your street, I don't know, Monday, if not before. You're going to be locked down in the next few days and probably for longer than any of us think and any of us want.

And this event, although we're hoping desperately and there's some good news, there's news of potential treatments that might help people recover from the illness quicker. We're all hoping that this goes away quickly, but the reality is becoming increasingly sure that it's not going to be fast and it's not going to be easy.

And the financial and economic repercussions of this are things that are going to be felt in our lives for years, if not decades. I've, I think it's healthy to think about these things. I spent yesterday morning in the shower contemplating bankruptcy. What happens if I go bankrupt? I was contemplating the complete and total failure of my businesses.

What do I do if my businesses dissolve? Where do I go? What do I do next? What do I start next? What do I do if I lose all my money? What do I do if I make bad investments? What do I do if my money becomes worthless? And thinking through those scenarios.

And I think that's healthy. At the end of it, I reflected on how blessed I am, how grateful I am to have people who love me and to have people who depend on me and so many options. I'm incredibly blessed. And I feel that really deeply, even especially in hard times.

I'm well prepared for this storm. I've prepared for this storm for a very long time. I've tried to help thousands of other people get prepared. And yet still, the storm is bigger and rougher than I hoped it would be. But in the midst of that, I face the challenge of figuring out what do we do today?

And today I want to talk to you about the value of changing your goals rather than fighting the seas. This comes directly from a book that I was reading. I was on an airplane last week and I was reading this book. It's called Get Real, Get Gone. How to Become a Modern Sea Gypsy and Sail Away Forever.

The authors are Rick Page and Jasna Tutu. Again, Get Real, Get Gone. How to Become a Modern Sea Gypsy and Sail Away Forever. And it's a nice little book. The book is all about how you can actually achieve your dream of buying a sailboat and going to live the sailboat lifestyle, cruising around the world and anchoring in exotic locales and how really achievable it is.

And I love this kind of book written by somebody who's actually doing it. I gain so much. I study the techniques. I try to understand the principles at hand. But in the midst of this book on sailing, I came across some comments and some statements that I thought were ineffably profound, just really, really profound.

And I sat down and just pondered them for a little bit. And I was thinking about them in light of the madness that we're all facing today. And I want to share them with you because I really think they may help you. And then after I share the lessons from this book, I'm going to share with you some lessons that I've learned from other clients about other financial disasters and things that they have done to survive and weather and even thrive during those disasters.

This particular section of the book is talking about the safety of sailing. Obviously, many people are concerned about the safety of sailing. After all, the sea can humble you in an instant. You can realize how small you really are when you set out across the ocean in a small sailboat.

But in the context of answering some of those questions on safety, the author was talking about how we are the ones who actually cause many of the disasters that we face. And specifically, he was talking about the danger of having specific strict timelines and aggressive goals when you're sailing.

And he was talking about how the vast majority of people who face shipwreck, who face danger, they often comes because they try to fight against the sea in some way, rather than simply going with the sea. Now, listen to this comment. The comment here when he talks about goal setting is how dangerous it can be to have sailing goals.

You may have a sailing goal to say, "I've got to reach this island by this date because we have an international flight booked," or "We've got to finish our circumnavigation by June 1st, and so we need to go. If we're going to be on schedule, we got to go." And how dangerous those goals are to actually your being safe in your pursuit of sailing.

And so here's what he talks about. And for me, this is particularly poignant because I am a goal setter. I'm a goal achiever. In fact, I do this weird little affirmation where one of the things that I tell myself every day is that I'm a goal achieving machine. I know how to set goals.

And not only that, I know how to achieve goals. And I have found that to be very useful in my life. I'm a structured goal setter, goal achiever, et cetera. But with every positive character trait, there can come a negative side to it. Not everything that you do or that you engage in is perfect without constraints.

And goal setting can have positive effects in your life, but it can also have negative effects in your life. Here's the excerpt. "Slow down, change direction. Later on in this book, we will see how the need for speed and recognition makes many racing sailors fairly poor sea captains. But for now, I'm referring to the common cultural habit of goal setting.

It has become so common in our culture to set goals and then try to achieve them that the ridiculousness of this self-imposed charade goes almost unnoticed. If you cannot shake this rather ingrained Western attitude, not only will the sea frustrate you, but so will most developing world cultures who are generally more fatalistic.

When I was in Kenya, I took an engine part to be fixed at a local workshop in Mombasa. I was told it would be ready, "Kesho." When I looked up "Kesho" in my Swahili dictionary, I discovered it means tomorrow. So feeling rather pleased with myself, I went back the following day and was told the same thing.

The next day I was also told, "Kesho," and the next. Finally, I erupted and shouted, "You can't keep saying Kesho and not meaning it." Whereupon a very smiley face patiently explained to me, "I'm truly sorry, sir, but white people not understand Kesho. Kesho does not mean tomorrow. Kesho mean not today." That tickled me so much that it led to further discussions about the language, which as it was of course trying to learn.

And it turns out that this guy, his name was Jenga, like the game with wooden blocks, was a fellow musician. And we ended up playing together a bit and I became good friends with his whole family, who loved nothing better than to teach me Swahili and hear me mispronounce things.

I abandoned my goal of leaving Mombasa in the quickest time possible and changed my goal to what was actually happening in my life. In effect, I made my goal, meet great people, learn Swahili, and wait for my part to be fixed. I was able to achieve this goal very enjoyably, not because it was easier or less desirable than my previous one, but because it was what was actually happening in my life rather than what I hoped was happening in my life.

I'm not suggesting that you lie down and allow yourself to be kicked around by the vagaries of chance. If we find ourselves in a rotten situation, then we must fight our way out of it. But as is so often true, the source of our unease is not usually the quality of any particular situation that we are in, but our fixation upon the idea that it should be otherwise, or that we should be somewhere else.

Gotta cover those miles and achieve my goals. So, when faced with two choices of fairly equal merit, take the one that is actually happening, not the one that you have fixated upon for no other reason than that is what you have fixated upon. This is a good skill to develop because the "C" is totally indifferent to your wishes, and whether you like it or not, she will often have very different ideas of where she would like you to go.

Change course. Go there. Do not fixate on your "goals." Goals are inventions of the human mind, and unlike sea conditions or other geographical realities, can be changed in an instant. Wind not blowing from where you want it to? Why not change course and go somewhere else? I discovered the wonderful Percy Islands this way.

Or go back the way you came and enjoy that place for a while longer. You can't possibly know what the results of your actions will be, so stop fixating on your goals as if they were fueled by anything more than the conceit that you know what the future holds.

You don't. But if you think you do, you will push your boat and yourself into dangerous situations just to get there, which in reality does not hold any more promise than anywhere else. Some of the best experiences are unplanned, and this becomes quite common once you set off on the largely unpredictable path of a watery wanderer.

The trick of course is to try and be aware of it at the time rather than becoming frustrated that the experience you are having is not the same as the one you imagined you would be having when you set your goals. I cannot list in this book the amount of great experiences I have had by adopting this attitude.

Most of the great experiences of life happen when we let go. Sure, some things will stink. Into every life a little rain must fall. I don't think any attitude can totally eliminate that. But doesn't the success of any lifestyle lie in the ability to tilt the suck-fun ratio heavily in your favor?

This is made a whole bunch easier if you can abandon the desire to achieve your arbitrary goals when wind and weather are against you. 99.9% of the time you will enjoy your new destination as much as, if not more than, the original plan. Some places will still suck, as would be the case if you doggedly stuck to your original itinerary.

But at the very least, you will have arrived somewhere sucky, having had a good sail to get there with your body, nerves, and boat in one piece and still on speaking terms with the rest of your crew. Agendas and Schedules Again, this is in the context of sailing, but still relevant to our lives.

I think you can already guess what I'm going to say about those. But rather than bore you with more ersatz eastern philosophies, I want you to conduct a little experiment. Every time you read of a yachting accident in the press, look for the "scheduling error." It is always there, largely overlooked, and is usually the root of all subsequent problems.

Quite conveniently, it can normally be found at the beginning of the article. "The weather looked ominous, but I had to be at work on Monday, so we slipped our lines at 0800 and or we left Hamilton Island for the mainland despite the rudder problems as Freddie had a flight to catch or we wanted to overtake the yacht ahead, so we were flying full sails and 30 knots." The story then goes on to list the terrible events that unfolded, often with serious injury, loss of life, or boat, or all three.

Quite often, the cause of the accident is given as heavy weather or rudder failure or some other engineering or technical culprit, when the root cause of the accident should be listed as "attitude problem." As I've said already, the sea is totally indifferent to your plans. She does not care that Claudia has a bikini wax appointment or Mark's karate class is graduating on Thursday and you have promised to go out for wontons.

Put your agenda ahead of the sea, go up against it, and see who wins. I know this goes against the macho image of "man alone against the mighty sea," but that is all it is, an image. Getting real is about seeing things as they really are, not how we would like them to be or how they are portrayed in the media.

The best way to do that without constant disappointment is to learn to appreciate what is actually happening around us, rather than constantly attempt to manipulate reality to fit our desires or satisfy our own image of ourselves. We have become so accustomed to getting what we want right now that immediate gratification often seems the norm.

This is not just wishful thinking, but is also a dangerous attitude to take to sea. Sometimes you get pinned in an anchorage for two weeks due to bad weather. Enjoy it. Read a good book. Make love with your partner. Learn to speak Spanish. Wishing it were otherwise will do no good, nor will convincing yourself that it will be all right to leave, when clearly it is not, in order to self-justify your wish to catch the Kentucky Derby on ESPN.

Chapter ends there. I hope that you can see the power and the applicability of those comments to our current scenario. Goals matter, but you can change your goals in an instant. Goals are entirely in our heads, and it's much easier to change our goals than it is to change the sea.

It's much easier to change your goals than it is to change the economy. Couldn't resist. Goals are inventions of the human mind, and unlike sea conditions or economic fairings or monetary policy or fiscal policy or the success of your local business or the lockdown that you may or may not be living under, goals are inventions of the human mind.

And unlike those things, goals can be changed in an instant. Are the economic winds not blowing where you want them to? Why not change course and go somewhere else? It's hard for me to imagine any of us who will be able to achieve our goals as previously defined. Perhaps you, like me, sat down in December and charted out your year, charted out your 2020.

I've got my travel planned. I've got my lifestyle planned. I've got my achievements planned. And I'm sitting here in quarantine at my house with my family, going nowhere, doing nothing. And I have no idea how long I will be right here. But is that necessarily a bad thing? If I change my goals and I stop to look around and understand what is actually here, understand what's actually right around me, there are so many wonderful things at hand.

My children are begging me to come and read to them. I have more time. I'm not leaving the house, going to all my obligations, going and doing all my things. I can go and I can spend time reading to my children. There are lots of things that I can do right now.

And so whether the sea itself has you stuck in a harbor or in an anchorage for two weeks unexpectedly, or whether COVID-19 has you stuck in your house for two to four to six to 20 weeks unexpectedly, there are lots of things that you can do in the middle of it.

I find that context, that concept, that goals can be changed in an instant to be incredibly empowering. Share with you a story. In 2008, I became a financial advisor. And at the time, I was 23 years old. And I had a little bit of experience, a little bit of book knowledge, but I didn't have a lot of practical experience.

And as I was out all over town, and I started in the middle of the recession, I remember when I first got one of my insurance license, I remember driving up, the insurance class was in Miami, and I was driving up from Miami, back up north of Miami. And I was driving there, listening to NPR, listening to the conversation about the votes on the TARP legislation, Troubled Asset Relief Program.

That was when I started work as a financial advisor. And all during the beginning years of my business, I was working in the middle of a recession, which showed me that first of all, you can still make money in a recession. I will record an episode, probably the next one of this podcast, that will seem like the exact contradiction of today's show.

Title will be How to Ignore the Coming Recession. And basically something like that, how to ignore the coming recession. Because I think a lot of times you can ignore things that are going on, but not everybody, and not all the time. And I think it would be incredibly, at the very least tone deaf, but incredibly foolish of me to say something so silly as ignore the coming recession.

You might have that opportunity, but you might not. Depends on your business, depends on your career. We don't get to choose how these things affect us. I'm going to do my best to ignore the recession. At the end of the day, I can't I don't get to choose which way the winds blow.

I don't get to choose what the sea is doing. I don't get to choose what happens. All I get to choose is how I set my sails in the midst of it. And sometimes you set your sails and you go with the wind. Sometimes you drop your sails and you you sit at anchorage.

I beat that sailing metaphor to death. But I remember distinctly meeting this guy, kind of an older guy, mid-60s, and he'd run a very successful construction company. And the first thing that was weird about the meeting when I first got referred to him, because the way I did my business was I would meet everybody based on referrals.

And so when I got referred to him and I called him, he said, "Jer, come on out and see me." And I tried to set an appointment. He's like, "Whatever, any day." And so I nailed him down. "Okay, I'll be there at two o'clock on Tuesday." So I show up at two o'clock on Tuesday.

And it was weird because his office was in the backside of this old, I can't remember if it was abandoned or just kind of rundown looking gas station. Kind of poked my head in the door and I'd been told he was a pretty successful guy. And yet this is rundown, beat up office in a weird spot.

There was no gleaming office tower. There was no beautiful sign. It was just a weird door on the back of a gas station building. And I sit down and start talking with him. And along the way, as I'm getting to know him, he says, "Joshua," he says something like, "This is my third recession." He said, "Let me explain to you what I'm doing." He said, "This recession has destroyed my business." He said, "I went from X number of dollars, big numbers to nothing." He said, "We got nothing, no business whatsoever." He said, "So I've laid off all my staff." He said, "I've tried hard over the years to make most of them contractors instead of employees, because that's given me some more leeway to trim staff when I've needed to.

But I laid off all my staff. We parked all our trucks. We dropped all the insurance. They're just sitting out there in the parking lot." Now, and I realized, okay, look, there's a line of company vehicles out there. He said, "I come into the office a couple of days a week.

I said, we look around, see if there's anything we can do. And if not, I go fishing." And he tells me he bought a boat. And one of his buddies was going broke. One of his buddies had gotten big. And I don't remember the exact numbers, but he bought a $85,000 boat.

And this guy had bought them out for $32,000, bailed them out. And he had a nice, fancy fishing boat. He said, "We go fishing four days a week, five days a week, whatever it was." He said, "Because there's nothing I can do. There's just no business. It doesn't matter how good I am or how hard I try.

There isn't any business right now. And so I'm not going to sit around and worry about it." He said, "I'm going fishing." Now, in his case, he shared with me that it was his third recession. He said the first recession ate him alive. He was stressed all the time and he promised himself, he said, "I'm not going to run my business that way in the future." So he never borrowed money.

He had no debt. He had a bunch of money in savings and he was spending money that he had in savings. He knew he'd need to get his business going again, but he wasn't fighting day after day. He wasn't scrambling. He wasn't freaking out. Now, later on, he, through the recession, as things started to come back, he started to scramble for more business again and things picked up and construction came back and he was back in business.

But it made a profound impact on me because there I was, a young, scared, 23-year-old financial advisor trying to figure out what to do. And I thought, "This is the way to handle a recession." At the time, it was the exact opposite of anything that I could imagine, because I was this goal-setting guy.

I'm going to make it no matter what. I'm going to keep on fighting. And I thought, "Why fight the economic wins? Why not just go with them?" Why not take advantage of the rising tides in your business so that you're making more money during those times? Why do you always have to fight it and say, "No matter what, I'm going to grow." Why not just grow and shrink with the economy?

It just seems like an easier way to do it. Now, in order to actually do that, you've got to have some prior planning. Got to have some money. Got to have some margin. You got to have some flexibility. And no matter how well-prepared you are, it's not without cost.

It was a heavy burden on this guy to lay off all his workers. They had families too, and they probably weren't as well-prepared as he was. But that particular lesson went deep with me. I'll share it with you now in case it's helpful. Now, a lot of us are going to be fighting in the coming months against the sea because of the people that depend on us.

I don't know a business owner that doesn't go to sleep at night not thinking about the responsibility that he has for his staff, for his employees, for the families. It's brutal to lay off staff. It's brutal. And we're in the middle of it. You can't always fight it, but lots of people will go to the end fighting to do the best for their team.

I intend to work hard in the coming recession. I intend to give it my all. And I'm doing that because I feel a sense of service. I want to serve people and to help people because it's scary. Being out in a big storm on a little sailboat is scary, even for the most experienced people, but especially for people who aren't accustomed to it.

And being in the middle of a big financial storm in a very little sailboat with a very little savings account is scary. And so, I want to help people in the middle of it. But along the way, I'm going to constantly remind myself that I can change my goals in an instant.

Goals are all in your head. They're all right there in your head. And because they're in your head, they can be changed in an instant. So today, as you sit down and you think about your goals, and tomorrow when you sit down and write out your goals, set some goals that relate to the reality of where you are right now.

If you're going to be at your house, quarantine for the next two, three, four weeks, whatever, set some goals for what you can do while you're there. Maybe your piano is dusty in the corner. YouTube is your friend. You have a chance to be with your children. It's incredible.

The opportunity that we have just to spend time with our children. Your children are out of school, they're home. Do some cool stuff. Change your goals. And change your goals from making millions to just surviving. See, throughout human history, survival has not always been quite so easy as we have it today.

Throughout human history, survival has been the goal. And there are hundreds of millions of people around the world today for whom survival is their goal. You and I are incredibly fortunate that we don't think much about our survival. It's only in these times when all of a sudden the cut walls or the shelves are bare that we start to wonder, well, where's the food going to come from?

And what happens if the trucks stop flowing? And what happens if all the power workers are sick or don't go to work and I can't get my hot water? That's pretty sobering for a lot of us. Probably a good reminder to appreciate how comfortable our lives usually are. But set some goals that you can achieve.

This may not be the year to have your best biggest year ever. This may not be the year that you make a million bucks. May not be the year that you make 42% on your investments. Maybe the year that one of your properties goes into foreclosure. Maybe the year that your whole portfolio goes into foreclosure.

Maybe the year that your whole portfolio goes down 50%. Maybe the year you lose your job. Maybe the year you declare bankruptcy. Stinks. That's the reality that a lot of us are in. So in the midst of this year though, set some goals that you can achieve. For example, this may be the year that you lose 50% in the market value of your investments.

But can you learn some lessons in the middle of it? Can you learn some lessons about the investment markets? Can you learn some lessons about yourself? Can you study your portfolio? Can you really become engaged with it? Can you understand why it's happening so that you can be better prepared for next time?

This may be the year that your property goes into foreclosure or your whole portfolio goes into foreclosure. But can you study why you're facing these issues so that you can be better prepared next time? Can you think about what went right? What went wrong? This may be the year that you go into bankruptcy, but can you seek to go into it honorably?

Can you seek to be communicative? Can you fight all the way through, communicate with your creditors and then settle your accounts honorably? This may be the year that your business shuts down, but can you treat your employees the way that you would want to be treated? Can you treat your creditors the way that you would want to be treated as a creditor?

We all know that there are legion of examples of people who have made their start in the middle of disaster. Probably in the finance space, the best example would be Dave Ramsey. Dave Ramsey went totally broke, bankrupt, and made an entire fortune and massive empire upon what he learned through that experience.

If I go broke and bankrupt, I will make an entire fortune and empire off of what I learned through that experience. I don't intend to. I tried really hard to be prepared for it, tried to be really conservative, really prudent, but at the end of the day, don't get to control it all sometimes.

I always think of Dan Sullivan. Dan Sullivan went bankrupt and was divorced. He's a business coach, if you're not familiar with a strategic coach. He was bankrupt and divorced on the same day. I think he said he got divorced in the morning, then he went to lunch, put it on a credit card, and went bankrupt in the afternoon, same day.

That was his lesson, that what he was doing was not working. He went on to build an empire based upon the life changes that he made in the wake of it. Now, I'm going to be here with you fighting. I'm going to be here to fight with you. I'm going to be sharing with you ideas, tactics, strategies.

I'm very good at fighting, and I'm very good at helping people fight. I know a lot of little tricks. I know a lot of little strategies. I know a lot of things you can do to fight. I'm a fighter. I want you to be a fighter too, because if you fight, at the very least, if you go down fighting, you're going to be proud of yourself.

If you go down because you gave up, it's hard to look yourself in the mirror, but if you can go down fighting, it's what we tell our children, right? It's okay to lose. I'm not going to tell my kids they got to win. It's okay to lose, but you better lose giving it your all.

With finances, if you're in the middle of it, if you got laid off this week, if you're getting laid off next week, it's time to fight, and I'm going to work with you. But I want you to start by recognizing that in the middle of the fight, you can change your goals, and you can change them in an instant.

So perhaps it's time, instead of setting goals around how much money you're going to make this year, set goals about how you're going to behave this year, the kind of honor that you're going to show in your affairs, the kind of person you're going to be, the kind of neighbor you're going to be, the kind of father you're going to be.

Set those kinds of goals. Don't fight against the sea. Don't fight against the economic winds. We have no idea what's coming next week, but focus on the things that you can adjust and set goals that are going to make a long-term difference in your life. If you are in the worst situation of anyone else in the world, and you set a goal of saying, "I am doomed, but I'm going to learn from this situation.

I'm going to share those lessons with others." I promise you that could be the foundation of your next empire. Bankruptcy is bad. It's not that bad. We're blessed to live in a modern society with bankruptcy relief. We're blessed to have the ability to discharge debts. We're blessed to have friends who love us, neighbors who care about us, parents who support us.

We're blessed to have the ability to work. We're blessed to have so many things. Count your blessings in the middle of it, and I promise you it'll help you change your attitude. I hope this has been helpful for you. I hope it's been a useful bit of positivity, but realistic positivity.

I don't care for the optimistic mumbo jumbo myself. I want realistic. Realistically, if you're going to be in a tough spot, 2020 is the best time in human history to be in that tough spot. I mean that. Thank you for listening to today's show. If you need help, I'm here to help.

I have been this week nonstop working with individuals. I have a number of consulting clients that I work with on an ongoing basis. I don't talk much about that publicly simply because I'm not interested in it. It's high level stuff, and it's hard to... If you have to ask, it's the kind of thing where I don't really publish it because it's not a big part of my business.

My major business is creating products and courses, but I do a little bit of high level consulting. If that's interesting for you, feel free to reach out to me, joshua@radicalpersonalfinance.com. I also do some hourly consulting. I'm running a March Madness sale on that. Usually my hourly consulting is $400 an hour.

I've discounted that for the month of March to $250 an hour. I have not yet had a dissatisfied client, ever. So if you'd like to talk to me personally about your situation privately, reach out to me. Send me an email joshua@radicalpersonalfinance.com. I'd be glad to reach out to you and give you the details on that.

Do it and make sure you reference March Madness, and I'll give you a discount from $400 an hour to $250 an hour. Unconditional money back guaranteed. Guaranteed. If you don't think you got value, if you didn't think I helped you, then don't pay me. It's as simple as that.

I've helped a number of people for free even. Please don't reach out to me. Best thing, if you need free advice or if you need inexpensive advice, you need to reach me, join the Patreon program. Go to patreon.com/radicalpersonalfinance and join me for a Friday Q&A call. We're going to be doing a lot of these Q&A calls, be doing a lot of live shows, answering your questions.

I'll help you walk through the disaster that we're walking into here. Joshua@radicalpersonalfinance.com if you want to get in touch with me. If you only have a few bucks, again, join Patreon. Patreon.com/radicalpersonalfinance. That's the best way to get my attention. Remember also that I have some courses available at radicalpersonalfinance.com/store including a course that's been out for a couple of years called How to Survive and Thrive During the Coming Economic Crisis.

All those strategies work. Running a 20% off sale right now, coupon code coronavirus. That's also valid till the end of March. 20% off on all of my courses, including my basic prepping course at radicalpreparedness.com. Again, use coupon code coronavirus to get 20% off. That was 29 bucks. Super great deal.

We're doing a lot on physical preparedness. If you are not prepared, I understand that you say, "Well, it's been rough last week." As far as I can tell, there's a good chance that it gets tougher. Right now, what you need to be working on is security. If there's anything you can do to increase the security of your home, to increase the security of your business, to increase the security of your person, you need to be thinking about that.

Simple, literally, as things like if you're out in the street, this is not a time to go out in the street wearing expensive equipment. This is not the time to go out wearing expensive jewelry. This is the time to be thinking carefully about the security for your home, for your estate, for your business.

You can expect as economic turmoil continues to increase, you can expect that the next stage is that crime is going to continue to increase. That's where we're going next. Now, some of that will be allayed based upon the curfews that are now being established all around the United States and probably increasingly in the rest of the world as well.

Curfews are coming. The lockdown itself will temporarily at least increase security, but right now you have public announcements by many police departments that they are intentionally not prosecuting and not arresting people for certain crimes, what they consider to be the less serious crimes. There are even calls for the release of prisoners right now.

Now, that's an issue that's complicated. I personally think the United States has insane amount of prisoners, which is, it's not morally right, but if that starts to happen, it's happening in other places, in Iran, where they've been very hard hit. They released, I think, 80,000 prisoners on temporary release, and the same thing can happen in the United States as well.

I've seen calls for that from the ACLU. We'll see what happens in the coming days. The point is that when in times of economic desperation, crime goes up. So, think carefully about how you're going to interact with your neighbors. Think about how you're going to establish security. If you don't know your neighbors, this is a good time to get to know them.

There are tools available. I don't like it, but a lot of people use the tool Nextdoor. I think it's an insanely invasive tool, and I'm not going to participate in Nextdoor, but if you are participating in Nextdoor, start talking with your neighbors about security. You could simply start talking to your neighbors and set up something as simple as a local WhatsApp group or a private Facebook group or some version of that, a signal group or whatever you want to do, just a text messaging.

Just start to talk to your neighbors so that you can keep an eye out for crime. This is a really important time, practically speaking. If you go on your local police website, they probably have information on how to start a neighborhood watch. This is an important time for you to start doing that.

You can start a neighborhood watch. You can do this and start to really help and support one another. That would be a good thing for you to do. If your property is not well lit. Here I am doing a whole episode on security. If your property is not well lit, this is a good time to change that.

You can still do Amazon orders for motion detecting floodlights. Things like that are important. If your home is not well locked, order some door bracing hardware and increase the stability of your home so that your door is harder to kick in. Or at the very least, install deadbolts. Think through your security plans in terms of a multi-phase approach so that you have multiple layers to stop people.

If you have unkempt bushes around your home that limit the sight lines of your neighbors for your neighbor's ability to see your home, trim the bushes. Get out there and make sure that there's no place for a criminal to hide. If you're not in the habit of closing your blinds, close your binds.

If you're not in the habit of making sure that your house always appears occupied, make sure that your house always appears occupied. There are lots and lots and lots of things that you can do. Just think through security plans for your home and security plans for your person. This is not a good time to go to stupid places with stupid people to do stupid things.

Obviously, most of those things are shut down right now due to the social distancing and the laws, which is good. But be very prudent. Be very cautious. That's going to be the next phase. So as long as things are still going, it's going to be fine. But if shortages continue to increase, you're going to see increased criminal activity.

So to be forewarned is to be forearmed. And I hope that you will take action on some of those suggestions. Thank you for listening to today's show. I'll be back with you very soon.