Well, hey, everybody. It’s Bob. And in this episode of Real Retail TV, we are going to talk tariffs.
So before we begin to talk tariffs, I would like to invite you to and encourage you to attend, Put Me In Coach. It’s happening February nineteenth from twelve to three eastern, and it is three hours filled with information you can use to build a tremendous culture in your business. Right? A customer focused, service driven sales culture in your business.
It’s gonna be absolutely amazing, and I really want to encourage you to be there live so you can answer, ask questions, and, you know, just be part of it. We’re gonna be giving away stuff. It’s gonna be a lot of fun. There’s a link down below, so register, put it on your calendar, and I hope to see you at put me in coach.
So now let’s talk about tariffs.
And let’s look at tariffs through the lens of three p’s. And the three p’s that we’re going to use to look at tariffs right now are presence, patience, and proactive.
So let’s start with presence because your mindset, how you deal with the uncertainty around tariffs is going to have a huge impact on what you do and the results that you get. So when I talk about presence, I’m referring to this idea of being aware of how you’re feeling, being aware of what you’re thinking, and catching yourself and doing something about any negative thoughts or any negative feelings that you might have. You know, Mark Twain has a great quote. He says, I have had lots of worries in my life. Most of them have not come true.
So we don’t know what’s gonna happen with tariffs. We don’t know how it’s going to affect your business.
But what we do know is that every unit of energy that you spend worrying is a unit of energy that could be used to do something positive and proactive in your business.
And so be very, very aware. You know, build the habit of paying attention. When you catch yourself being stressed out, when you catch yourself being overwhelmed, just stop. You don’t don’t deny how you’re feeling, but just see it.
Wow. I’m stressed out. Just acknowledging how you feel after you’ve caught it will go a long ways towards alleviating the stress. So be present.
Pay attention to how you’re feeling and what you’re thinking so that you can react appropriately, which leads to the second p. The second p is patience.
You know, you don’t know what’s gonna happen. I don’t know what’s gonna happen. I don’t think president Trump knows what’s gonna happen.
It’s all up in the air right now. And so then rather than getting freaked out, getting stressed out, experiencing all of this anxiousness, be patient.
Sit back. This is where presence come in comes in. Right? Being aware of how you’re feeling.
Be patient and and pay attention to what’s going on, but don’t be overwhelmed by it. Part of being patient is understanding what’s going on, Being aware of what’s going on, but not being caught up in what’s going on. So what I mean by that is, yes, you want to follow the news. Yes, you want to understand what is happening in the world so you can anticipate, potential problems.
But that is way, way different.
Being patient and being and being aware is a lot different than being stressed out and being anxious about what could happen. Because when you’re patient and aware, you get the opportunity to do the third thing, which is to be proactive.
So there’s two ways to look at this idea of being proactive.
One is emotionally, and the other is tactically in your business. Let’s talk about emotionally first because as I’ve been talking about this whole time, how you handle what’s up here is going to have a huge impact on the quality of your life for the next six months or four years and on what will happen in your business. So going back to presence, when you catch yourself becoming anxious, overwhelmed, stressed, do something. Be proactive.
Always respond to stress with action. It could be as simple as taking a deep breath and saying, I got this. Right? This that have a proactive response to when you feel stress. You could absolutely go for a walk, a five minute walk to clear your head is a proactive way of dealing with the anxiety that you may be feeling around tariffs.
Turn off the TV. Right? Doom scrolling through your favorite news channel is not a way to protect your mental health when you are feeling anxious and uncertain.
Yes. We talked about being proactive, paying attention to what’s going on so you can make intelligent choices. But there is a difference between paying attention to the appropriate and the the correct news and doom scrolling and watching all the headlines go by you. So turn off the TV, really, really limit your consumption of the news and social media, and limit it and be very, very strategic about what you do read, what you do learn about, what you do with that information.
But now let’s talk about getting tactical because, yes, managing your mindset is so important in uncertain times, in times when things get stressful. But part of this whole idea of responding to stress with action is to really start to proactively think about what you might have to do. So rather than again, this is not a stress reaction. This is a being proactive reaction is, you know, sit down with a piece of paper and think about what do you need?
What are your best sellers? What categories are critical to your store? And then ask yourself, what do I need? What don’t I need? What is nice to have? What do I need to have? And then ask yourselves, again, writing it down, putting it on a spreadsheet, putting on a a simple piece of paper, then ask yourself, who sells these things?
And if they don’t have those things, who else sells similar goods that I can go to? And then on the third column, ask yourself, what else can I carry? Right? Ask yourself, you know, think about it. If then.
If this person runs out of this, then I am going to do that. If the prices go up on this, then I am going to do that.
Recognize that every problem points to an opportunity.
This may be the opportunity you have to really take a look at your assortment and to trim those lines that aren’t selling, to trim those categories that may not be performing the way that you need to, to really go deep into the categories you know are going to sell. So this is an opportunity for you to really, really take a good hard look at your merchandise mix. This is a really good opportunity for you to look at your buying.
Where are you overstocked?
What can you sell down to free up cash to buy into the goods that you know you’re going to need?
This is an opportunity for you to get laser laser laser focused customer focused, service culture that sells. This is why I’m really encouraging you to come to put me in coach. You’re gonna learn exactly what you need need to do to create that culture.
But at the end of the day, when we talk about being proactive, hard times make for good retailers. Right?
If it was easy, everybody would do it.
Hard times force you to get better. Hard times force you to think differently.
Hard times force you to grow. And it’s never fun. It’s never comfortable.
But if you approach it the right way, you always come out of it better than before.
Presence, patience, proactive.
So I hope that you found this helpful. I would love to hear what you have to say. Put it in the comments below.
And, again, February nineteenth, twelve to three eastern. Put me in, coach. I’ll see you there.