Discussing How to Face Market Downturns with Gigworker’s Brett Helling

Welcome to the Marketing Growth Podcast. I’m your host, Shane Barker, and we have Brett Helling, the founder of GigWorker again, to talk about his entrepreneurship journey and the kind of market downturns he has witnessed over the years. I want to talk about your entrepreneurship journey and what kind of market downturns you’ve faced. You’re buying these businesses, and obviously, you’re putting yourself at risk when you buy a business, right?

You’re buying this coffee business. You put 100, 150,000, and whatever your number is, you’ve got this, and now coffee’s not going anywhere. It’s like alcohol. Last time I checked, I drink more coffee than alcohol, but I can’t fully give you my numbers there. But what was it for any kind of market downturns that you faced? Talk to me about your journey there.

Yeah, no, I hear you, man. I think it’s funny, and I always would laugh about this: being an entrepreneur and the people I’ve talked to when I was younger, and even now sometimes, where people say, ‘Yeah, I really want to be an entrepreneur.’ You make money, you own the thing. It’s all yours. And I’m like, ‘You do own it, and you do get the money when it’s great.’ And guess what, when you get punched in the face. Guess who gets punched in the face? It’s not an employee. It’s you. And guess what, when COVID hits—this thing called COVID that nobody knew about, when this thing called Coronavirus, which used to be a beer and now it’s something you can get and die from—a lot of things change. And then, guess who’s holding the bag? That’s you, right? And you don’t realize how that’s going to affect your business. I think that’s what people don’t realize: being an entrepreneur is a journey—I’m using my finger up and down it. There’s no way to know which way it’s going to go. And I think having a downturn, especially when sites are doing good, sitting on some money, you buy some other websites because you’re like, ‘Shoot, I don’t know if this site’s ever going to come back. I’m down to zero. I’ve got to invest in some other stuff.’ Obviously, you did, and now that’s starting to come back. Business is coming back, and you’ve got some other assets that you’re going to grow. I think that’s awesome, but that’s when you know you’re an entrepreneur: when your money goes down to zero—your monthly money—and you take the rest of the money that you have and invest in more entrepreneurial stuff. A lot of people say, ‘I’m out. I’m gonna go get a job. I’m gonna work for somebody.’ This is too scary, and those sleepless nights will challenge you. I’ve been there many times. There have been many times where I just thought, ‘Man, how do I get out of this? How did I get into it? And then how do I get out? What is that process? What do we need to do?’ So I love that, man. I don’t love the fact that your site went down to zero. I love the fact that you were able to pivot and get out of there and say, ‘Hey, listen, I’m gonna double, triple down on this thing. I’m gonna go ahead and buy some other stuff and get it going.’ And so the only downside is that one takes a year to three years to build, which is fine—time, resources, and money—and I’m sure you’re getting some of that back, and you’ll build those up. I can’t wait to hear more about those sites as you continue to grow them. So, what are some of the early signs that a particular industry can look at? I mean, how can an industry know—COVID, we didn’t know COVID was literally left field. It hit the world and left us wondering, ‘What the hell just happened?’ Are there any early signs that businesses or particular industries can look at when they start to feel that there’s going to be a downturn?

And that’s honestly why you had money stashed away. I mean, we always wish we had more, right? That’s always the point. We would always love to have more. But the thing is, that’s the reason why you had that stashed away. I think that was probably something I was gonna ask you next: how do you prepare for a potential downturn? I mean, obviously having a shoebox of money is always helpful. What other things can you do to prepare for something like that? I mean, COVID is an anomaly—we can’t even put it in the conversation because you can’t. But anything, let’s say, if we are preparing for a COVID-type situation or a downturn, what have you learned other than cash? Is there anything else you can recommend to the audience?

No, no, I have. There have definitely been times in my career where things are going good. For me, I feel very fortunate. I’ve always felt fortunate with my journey because of the amount of different things—from owning a bar to having one of my companies build 25 million in two years—which was a crazy journey.

Of course, you touched on something earlier that resonated with me: just making sure you’re working out and doing things. I was 30 pounds overweight. I was drinking energy drinks and doing anything to stay up an extra two hours. I was working 20 hours a day, and I was a beast, but I was literally making my bed to lie in it, to die. I was literally heading in that direction.

My family—let’s put it this way—when things ended in that business, my mom came to me and said, ‘I’m actually glad that you’re no longer doing that business, because I thought you were going to die.’ I mean, that’s how hard I was. I would grind hard, and I said, ‘Listen, I go hard in the paint.’ My only thing was, ‘I’m going to make this thing, I’m going to blow this thing up.’ And I did, but it was also a crazy industry, and it’s a whole nother. I don’t have enough time to tell that story.

But what’s interesting to me is I just think the fact of appreciating what you have and understanding that we’re very blessed in the positions we are, and it’s the good things and the bad things that make us who we are today. And so I think when we start with the Midas touch, all of a sudden nothing can go wrong.

Then I think Mike Tyson is the one who said, ‘We all have a plan until we get punched in the face.’ Yeah. And it’s my favorite quote because it really is. It’s like, ‘Man, this is great. Everything’s awesome. Wait, I just got punched in the face. Where am I? What’s going on? What just happened?’ It’s a weird deal.

And I love the fact that we all have these humbling moments that ground us and take us back to, ‘Oh, we gotta be humble again. Not everything I touch turns to gold.’ Google, thanks for the update. That was super awesome, and now I’m back down to zero. This is, nobody has ever said that. But after it, it’s like, ‘Well, now I gotta figure out how I can pivot, how I can do something different.’

So I do think those things happen in our lives for certain reasons at certain times, because we start to think we’re untouchable, and then something happens, and you go, ‘Whoop, alright, time to go back to Humble Ville and eat a little bit of pie,’ and then I gotta go back up and start building some other things and make it happen.

But that’s what makes us entrepreneurs, right? That makes us strong because I think my failures in business have been the foundation for what I am today better than my successes. My successes, there’s definitely things there, but there have been some failures where I was like, ‘Damn, that’s a big lesson.’ I gotta really take that one in because that was big—maybe we had investors, or maybe whatever it was—and in each one of those, I learned something that made it so today I feel that I’ve got a good base and a lot of different things and a good knowledge base.

And once again, I’m very humble, very appreciative, and also very healthy, making sure that I take care of myself on that side too. I don’t want to die, because you can’t take your money with you when you die. From what I’ve learned from the research I’ve done.

I love that, man. It’s perspective. That’s really what it comes down to. We get really tied up, and there’ll be something I’ll be stressed about. I’ll tell my wife or somebody, and in my head I’m thinking, ‘That is such a first world problem.’ Your problem is what? You’re worried about traffic or you’re worried about, ‘Oh my gosh, I can’t do this.’ And then my Amazon order didn’t get delivered—what am I going to do? And it’s like, what? It’s deodorant, bro. You’re going to be fine. You’re inside. Nobody’s going to see you anyway. If you smell like a dog, who cares? That’s a terrible example, but you get my point. It is very humbling. I think it’s important to really think about how lucky we are, for the successes we’ve had, the failures, and what we’ve been able to build. I think that’s awesome. For me, my big thing now is being able to give back—doing the SBA stuff, helping businesses. Not that I don’t need money, but it’s not my number one play anymore. It used to be my number one thing. Now it’s, ‘What can I do to not necessarily leave a legacy, but to give back? What can I do to take my superpowers—my knowledge—and help people?’ I like that, man. You and I have a very similar journey because I was a runner as well. For a long time, my old website talked about me being a runner. Now, I did train for the half marathon. So I’m a little envious of the fact that you didn’t train. People told me I had to train. So I didn’t know—did you make it? Did you run the whole 13.1 or what?

Okay, that’s what I thought. I just want to make sure, because people were like…

Because I was like, What? What do you mean? I guess just woke up and done it. I probably would have finished too, but I probably would have been bleeding from internally and externally, and I probably would have been close to dying, but I would have made it, and it and it would have been great podcast story. My last question for you before we jump into the fun section of the podcast. Do you think are there any industries that you can think of that have little or no, no, no, market, dirt town downturn? If I can say that, right, like, I’m just trying to obviously get, like, alcohol. I mean, there’s some things like, is there anything you can think of? I’m just of? I’m just curious, because your mind works very different of like that has have, like, little or no downturn.

Yeah, well, people are realizing that after COVID, because you’re like, I think I’m kind of exempt. You’re like, well, not fully exempt, because, guess what, we got this thing that could come up and smack you in your face and make you kind of wake you up a little bit. Trucking, yeah, that’s, that’s, that’s awesome. And I, you know, trucking, obviously, is something that’s, that’s always going to be needed, because we got to move things from point A to point B. From point A to point B, especially now with the supply chain and COVID and all that kind of stuff, like just lumber and everything is just insane right now, like just the cost of of commodities, a lot of commodities are in through the roof, kind of crazy. So all right, so we’ve made it to what we call the fun section. I always hate calling it the fun section. I say this almost every time because I’d like to think that we have think that we had some fun before this. I mean, I’m not, we’re not. This isn’t like, yeah. I mean, this isn’t like, you know, Disneyland or anything. But I feel like, you know, we’re moving in that direction, right? We got some, some blood flowing. We found out that you have to make sure that you’re going to train for marathons or you won’t walk for a few days after that, right? I mean, just little, little things, little snippets of knowledge that you’re bringing the table. So my questions are usually the same for every podcast guest, because I’m always intrigued about people. If you could travel to one place in the world for free, where would that be? And once again, I’m fitting the bill, my friend. I’ve got my little MasterCard out, or visa, or, God knows, whatever one that I have the least amount of money on. I’m going to throw that down on you. And what are we going to do? Where are we going?

And go find Santa Claus?

Yeah, thanks, right. And now I feel even closer to you because I was going to move to Omaha and come say hi, and now I’m gonna pay for you to go see Santa Claus. That’s awesome. I’m not opposed to that, man. If Groupon does a two-for-one deal, I’ll join you. How about that? We’ll just go together. Call you up—yeah, go find Santa. That’d be awesome. Now you’re all about the heavy work. You want to put in some work, huh? You don’t want to go to Hawaii and lounge on the beach. You’re like, ‘No, I want to go and have to wear heavy equipment and potentially die.’ I like that.

Yeah. But no, I’d rather put on a suit and be where it’s minus 38 degrees every night or something, where people die on a daily basis. I love it, man. You’re an adventurer. I love that about you. I mean, that’s exactly—probably cold but exhilarating as well. So if you had any choice of a superpower, what would your superpower be?

That would be huge. Well, and do you remember that? What was the one with Mel Gibson, where what a girl likes, what a girl wants, something, where he was reading?

Yeah, something like that—reading all the girls’ minds. My wife loves that because I watch it; I don’t even know how often. It was a poor guy, man—you got to hear everything. He was a jerk, just all kinds of Mel Gibson, but I get you. I think reading people’s minds, especially in negotiations, would be super helpful. You’d know what you’re going to say next because you know what they’re thinking, and it would be super easy. It would have to be conditional on selectivity. I don’t want to hear what people are thinking of me all the time—I would have to turn it on and off, like a little button, because Mel couldn’t do that. He had to go electrocute himself, which is kind of interesting. I can’t say whether that would work or not, but I do like that off switch, or mild reading, or heavy reading—no reading. You want to take the day off and not hear what people are thinking. I like that. So, what about any favorite books or podcasts that shaped your career, your personality? Anything good there? What do we got?

No, no, no. You know what’s funny is that you and I are on the same journey, and I’ve hit it a few times—like, what am I really looking for? Is it more money? Not really. Is it legacy? Not really. What do I really want to do? I look at my time. What I used to do—working 20-hour days—was just about keeping going because I couldn’t make enough money. There’s no stop, no boundaries. And now I look at things totally opposite. I ask, ‘How do I want to spend my time?’ So now I really protect my hours, my day, by scheduling blocks and stuff like that. But there are times when I’ll go on spurts and work long hours—maybe eight, sometimes nine—but I’ve really protected my private time, my personal time, or whatever I want to do. It’s massages, it’s this, it’s that, it’s camping—it’s difficult to do when you have a mindset like we do, of ‘gotta keep going, gotta buy more, gotta do more.’ There comes a point, and that’s why when you said, ‘Hey, I’ve got these 11 websites,’ I was like, ‘That’s awesome.’ But then in the back of my head, I thought, ‘Man, that’s a lot of work.’ I’m not saying you can’t do it because I think if anybody can do it, you can. I just know that for me, once again, it’s like—I am. We’re going to talk outside of the podcast, because you and I have too many parallels, which is really interesting. And I think that, as you talked about iron sharpens iron, or steel strips, or whatever the term is, there could be something interesting there. But before we jump off, I want to know: if anybody wants to get in contact with you or reach out, how can they get in contact with you?

Thanks, Brett for joining us. It’s been a pleasure to have you. If you’re listening to this podcast and you like what you hear, make sure you subscribe. It’s one of the top marketing and business podcasts on iTunes. Thank you, listeners. I’ll be back with another interesting conversation on the marketing growth podcast next week. So stay tuned.