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Verbatim text
Lee:
Welcome to the Agency Trailblazer podcast. This is your host, Lee. And on today’s show, we’re doing something a little bit different, or maybe a little bit old-school, depending on how long you’ve listened to this show. You’ll have been used to me just sharing my views like a middle-aged grumpy old man for the last few months. But in a change to our usual programme, We have the young and the handsome Mr. Nev Harris in the studio. Nev, how are you today?
Nev:
I am doing fantastic. How are you doing?
Lee:
I’m doing really good. I am really happy to be talking to you today, mate, because this, I believe, is a conversation that people need to be having. Folks, if you don’t know who Nev Harris is, you can check him out over on nevharris. com. He is an agency owner, and importantly, he people to understand their money. He’s a bit of a geek when it comes to finances and to economies and to long words that I don’t understand. And he also has a really passionate heart to help people. And that’s why I really love Ned. And I want to let you know before we carry on that in the show notes will be a link to a completely free with no upsell course that Ned has put together in conjunction with Agency Trailblazer to help people understand their money and the situation that is COVID-19 and everything that’s going on around you. And that is just to give you hope as an agency owner and give you a strategy for focusing on the future. Right, that was quite a long introduction, but now, could you just give people a little bit of a flavour of who you are?
Lee:
Give us your favourite drink, your favourite colour, maybe whereabouts you’re from, so we can peg your accent and that stuff. And then we’ll dive into some really important questions.
Nev:
All right. My favourite drink would have to be… Kind of boring that way, Valken water, just because it’s simple.
Lee:
That’s beautiful.
Nev:
Yes, I used to drink Valken tonic till I figured out how much sugar was in tonic. The tonne is so bitter, you think there’s no sugar in it. Then somebody was saying it’s more than Pepsi. I was like, Oh. Then Balkan soda, but then Vodka soda. But then I got a Balkan Pepsi when too many times. American bartenders don’t know what they’re doing, apparently. So My favourite colour is blue, all the way blue.
Lee:
That’s a good colour. I like that. I like the thing. Is there any one thing that you can think of just on the spot that people may not know about you?
Nev:
Well, maybe what I look like because this is a podcast. Other than be lying my boyish good looks, as you referenced, I actually have an MBA in finance. When I got out of school and got a job in that field, I realised how utterly boring that field was. I got involved in more like something creative because I like to be creative.
Lee:
Which is why you are on the show for this exact reason. I recognise that you have a very deep understanding and you’re a very good communicator when it comes to the areas of finance. What I’m going to do is I’m going to share the story of how we because it’s funny. Yeah, I love it. And then we’ll go into some of the questions. So you’ll all be aware that this podcast has grown over the years and we get a lot of people asking either to be on the show or they want to ask me to share stuff and want to take advantage of the audience and really just sell people stuff. So I get a message off Neve, and I humbly apologise now, but I just automatically assumed that this was just someone else trying to spam me, trying to spam the community. And you’ll know I’m really protective of you lot being spammed, and I didn’t want that to happen. But Neve was like, Hey, I’ve made this video and I really want to help. And I’m like, Yeah, I’ve heard that one before. And I went ahead and watched this video anyway, because even though I’m a bit of a cynic, I do like to give people the benefit of the doubt.
Lee:
And I’m really glad I did because Ned had put together a video explaining when really big economical events happen, which are ridiculously scary, things always bounce back. It was such a simply done video and a friendly video that I didn’t think twice, and I instantly shared it in the Facebook group, that’s agencytrailblazer. Com/group, because me not being a clever finance guy, recognised the patterns and the stories that Ned was sharing in that video. I shared it instantly and I reached back out to Ned, sorry, not Ned. I was like, Dude, I got to admit, I thought you were just trying to pull a fast one, and I’m really sorry, but that was a great video and you were like, Well, let’s jump on a call. And Neve then said, I really want to just give content away for free. I’ve done well with my life. I’ve got all this financial experience, and I’ve got a heart for people who are worried about finance and who are scared right now. I want to just teach them. Money doesn’t need to be this big, scary thing. So we’ve now collaborated and you’ve put that course together, which is phenomenal, and that’s going to be available for free.
Lee:
Remember, folks, you can go into the show notes and there will be a link for you to sign up for when it arrives. It’ll be out in just a couple of weeks time from now. But now what I’d really like you to do, first of all, is just to share with us your thoughts, a little short version of that video where you explain we’ve been led to believe that COVID-19 and lockdown and all of this will likely lead to a recession, and many businesses may already be experiencing a dip in or a dip in the amount of money that is coming into their business. Could you share with us that pattern of what does happen during these big events and what the hope is that we can hold on to during this time?
Nev:
Okay, yes, definitely. Well, let’s talk about what a recession is in very simple terms. A recession is a little bit… It’s at first blowing off the excess steam where the economy, business gets It’s a little bit too hot and things get overvalued, so we have to blow off some steam. All right? And then what happens when we start blowing off steam, people get a little bit of panic. And so we start blowing off way too much steam, so we ever react to it because there’s so much doom and gloom that we start thinking that it just perpetuates itself. So that’s what happens there. And then because everybody thinks this is going to be it, this is going to be the end. And when you look at a recession, But your average recession doesn’t even last a year, last 11 months. Your shortest recessions have lasted four or five months. Your longest one on history has lasted 19. So it’s not quite the end of the world that people think. But what the recession does do, it’s like a forest fire. At first you look at a forest fire and it’s devastating. But then you look at a forest fire and it created all this fertile soil for all these great new ideas to pop out of.
Nev:
I think that’s what’s going to happen here. I think we’re going to create a lot of massive opportunity from what’s happened during this time here with COVID.
Lee:
Absolutely. You were saying as well that in the video itself, you were saying how these would happen. I think I called them blips. I’m not sure if you called them. I think you called them dips, maybe. I think we’re seeing that right now, aren’t we, in the In the news, we’re seeing these dips that things are crashing and they’re saying, The Nasdaq finished today, a negative something or other. I have no idea what that means. Is the Nasdaq still around? Did I just make that up? Is it called the Nasdaq? I don’t know. That thing Anyway, where they’re always talking about it’s finished, it’s closed negative, it’s closed down this, that, and the other. But this will be a momentary blip, and we do see that constant pattern of there will be the blip, there will be the dip, as it were on the chart, but then things can and always will get better. It’s that classic old song, isn’t it? Things can only get better. But you back that up. What I’ll do is in the show notes, folks, is I’m going to link to this particular video that I’m referencing. But he shows…
Lee:
Neve shows the actual charts of each and every recession that has happened and how it has been a blip, but things have always got better. It’s that fear, isn’t it, where people are scared and they react. So you’ll see on the classic videos, weren’t you? Tv movies where they’re like, sell, sell, sell, and everyone’s all panicking and stuff like that. That’s the initial panic. But then as things calm down, everything starts to build back up. What do you believe then as a business owner, as an agency owner, where we might be feeling fearful right now of the future of our business. We may be seeing a dip in our income. We may be concerned for our clients that we currently serve. What sorts of activities do you think we should be engaging in? We first recognise that, yes, there may be a recession about to hit if it already isn’t, and that this may be tough for a while, but we can have hope based on the previous patterns. Therefore, what can we be doing in this season to prepare ourselves for when things do start to get better?
Nev:
Well, I think what we could be doing right now is twofold. One is we could be preparing content, and we could be working on what we could be doing with our business right now that can position us in a place to take advantage of the opportunity this is going to create. And that’s more of a long… Because right now, because we’re always so busy working in our business, we don’t have the time to work on it because we’re so busy trying to make money. And now, let’s use this opportunity to position ourselves for the future. The other thing we could be doing, and this is what I think is super important right now, was getting a grip on our cash flow. All right. Knowing, and here’s a simple exercise you could do. Write, take a column and write all your recurring revenue coming in. All right. And take another column and write all your expenses out and really go through because a lot of times you leave out expenses and write all your expenses and see how much recurring revenue you have versus is how much expenses you have. And that will tell you, a lot of times you’re going to have more recurring revenue than you have expenses.
Nev:
So if you don’t get any more business in, you’re still, which you will get more business in, you’re still able to keep things afloat. Or if you have so much cash and you have less recurring revenue than you have cash flow, you’ll know how long that… Then you have expenses, you’ll know how long that you could go without needing to bring in a new business. And I think that just gives people, like you talk about the fear. That puts some facts to it. You’re still going to be afraid because it’s natural to be afraid. But at least you understand that it’s not this unknown because it’s the unknown that’s really scared. And you gave a great strategy before you were talking about it. And I think you mentioned it in your other podcast, about having conversations. So I love that idea.
Lee:
Oh, I’ve talked about that a a few times. Well, first of all, folks, if you are thinking of your personal or your business finances, there are two episodes that will help. Episode number 261 was on managing your personal finances. And remember that your personal finances and bad decisions in your personal finances will affect your business as well because you’re having to draw stuff down from your business based on the decisions you’re making personally. And also then number 255 is managing your agency finances. And we deep dive into that. I think what you were referring to there, buddy, was when I had a conversation on your show and we were talking about having conversations with our clients. So one of the important things we can do right now is call all of our clients and also people that we know in our network, et cetera, to see how they’re doing, to reach out to them, to find out what they’re struggling with, et cetera, because we don’t need to sell them anything necessarily. That conversation could lead to some amazing ideas of how you could help them right now and add value right now, potentially for free or for paid.
Lee:
It doesn’t really matter. But you are going to be remembered when When all of this is over and done with as the person who cared enough to call, and therefore you’re more likely to get business from people in the future. And I’m pretty sure I talk about that strategy in episode number 258, Surviving a Recession, where I shared how we survived the last recession. Holy moly, I didn’t know I’d done all this content, mate.
Nev:
See, that’s what’s all about content right now. It’s king.
Lee:
So I’m an example of looking after your content. Make sure you do your content, guys, right this second. Now, I’m aware, mate, of how the media and of how the news is scaring me and overwhelming. What advice would you give for us as agency owners to responsibly consume the information that is available to us, but to still allow ourselves to make informed decisions, not based on fear, but based on rationale? Does that question make sense?
Nev:
Yes.
Lee:
Talk to us.
Nev:
There’s two things that go in this. One, bad news sells more than good news. So the news is always going to hype up what’s bad because it creates more ratings than what’s good. Second, Second, there’s so much noise out there when we have these 24-hour news cycles, especially in the finance world, especially when it comes to money, that they’re talking about stuff that is just noise. It’s maybe not even going to happen. So I would, I think, limit the amount you expose yourself to that. And especially social media. There’s a lot of great things about social media. Like your group is a positive, helpful place, but there’s a lot There are places, YouTube and Facebook, that just give anybody with a stupid opinion a mic. So that could scare the hell out of you. And you think because they have an audience and a mic, they’re adding value when they’re not. I’ve seen It’s like with so many videos out there that I’m just scratching my head. This is just horrible advice. And I’ll say this to you, see if you… So with all, were you talking about the Nasdaq and maybe the Dow and all these other-Yeah, I have no clue what I’m talking about.
Lee:
Stock markets.
Nev:
Going down. But here’s what people don’t realise, because they made a big deal about these going down. But a lot of this stuff, and it almost doesn’t make sense right now, and this is why it’s so much noise that a lot of this stuff has gone way up in the last couple of weeks. So where we had, where we lost about 30 %, we’re only about 10 % down for the year. And so it’s crazy. So if you watch all these ups and these dailies up and downs with the markets and everything like that, you’re just going to drive yourself nuts because these people have such a short term perspective. We have a much longer term perspective.
Lee:
I remember you explaining that in one of your videos, actually, where you’ve explained that people who are investing in stock market sector are often playing a much longer game. Can you unpack that a little bit? Because when we’re seeing on the news this massive drop, that sounds like it must be terrible news. But I assume and understand that people who are, wrong word, but playing the game of the stock market are actually playing a completely different rule sheet than we might be led to believe by the media.
Nev:
Yeah. Yes. It’s like they have… The goalposts are different. I use a different analogy, but I’ll use a shorter one here. It’s like, how would you run a sprint versus a marathon? On. You’re going to have a different strategy because the length is different. So when most of the people that move the market and trade on the market, they’re sprinting. They care about how much money were we able to make today, how much money this month, how much money this quarter. Honestly, with our business, with our investments, with our retirement savings, with anything like that, We’re long term. We’re like 10, 20 years. And what happens with our money in the next three months doesn’t really affect us in the long term because it’s going to go up and down. And that one chart I was showing you, if you look at it, it’s a straight line with some of these little blips. It’s a straight line up. But these blips are huge events at the time they happen. So yeah, it’s definitely They’re playing with a whole different set of, I don’t want to say roles, and I like the word playing because that’s what they’re doing.
Nev:
They’re playing the market. They’re not investing. They’re not trying to grow money. They’re trying to play the market to create short term returns. And it’s just we shouldn’t be in it. All that will do is freak us out if we pay attention to that, because if you look at it within a year, like I looked at, do you know the market right now is higher than it was a year ago.
Lee:
No, because the news has not told me that. I assumed we are in dire straits.
Nev:
Yeah. Even at its worst point, even at its worst point, you would look at this year, it still was almost as high as it was at the beginning of 2019.
Lee:
Amazing.
Nev:
But we don’t- But that’s not news.
Lee:
Yeah. And it should be because I would feel a hell of a lot better if I had known that.
Nev:
But that doesn’t get you tied to your TV watching to see what the latest thing going to happen, tied to setting alerts. All these news services are like, Set COVID alerts. You know why? So I could just be more depressed about shit that’s not even established yet. It’s like so much speculation out there.
Lee:
In fact, you’ve done a module on why the stock market is misleading. And I think the as a result of the stock market being misleading, how you’ve just highlighted the fact that we’re actually 10% up from last year despite the media.
Nev:
We’re not 10% up from last year.
Lee:
Not up, but we’re- 10% down from last year, was it?
Nev:
Yeah, 10% down from the high of that right now.
Lee:
Down from last year, yeah. But it’s not as bad as they would lead us to believe, that Ie, this terrible, terrible crash. At the same time, therefore, we would consume that, and that would fill us with that fear. Then we are now led instead by our emotions. And one of the things I found for myself, if I consume too much of this information that I don’t really understand anyway, and I’m glad I’ve got someone like you who’s been able to open my eyes to what all of this means. But with that fear, et cetera, I found that I’m practically unable to do anything. I’m unable, therefore, to pick up the phone to a client and have a conversation with them because I actually feel really anxious and nervous, and I’m unable to create content because I just feel stressed and I feel overwhelmed. So it’s been really It’s helpful to build up our friendship, Neve, and have you teach me a lot of these things. I’ve really, really appreciated it. And the fact that you’re giving all of this away as well on the Agency Transformation Academy to help people understand, Hey, this is really what it all means, and, Hey, there is hope.
Lee:
And, Hey, here is what we can do. Your emotions are probably going to screw you up for a while. That’s natural. Here’s why. But here’s some things that you can do. Here’s the bright side that we can look forward to. Here are some activities that we can engage with right now during these times when we do have space. The whole world is on a break right now. We’re all on an enforced sabbatical. So how can we use this to the best of our advantage to give us that bright future? It’s actually a wonderfully happy, exciting, positive spin on something that I believe has just been so negatively portrayed online. Of course, the COVID and the deaths are just… It’s a horrible situation, but the actual economical side, I think, has been blown up out of proportion to the extent where I think a lot of people feel very, very scared and probably shouldn’t and should actually feel hopeful and energised to find ways that they can create opportunities and actually help businesses in the future. I highly recommend, folks, that you listen to NEV podcast when it comes out. You’re just going through the Apple process, aren’t you, over the next couple of weeks?
Lee:
So what I’ll do, folks, in a couple of weeks, I’ll update the show notes of this episode and you can go and listen to Neve’s podcast because he’ll be putting a lot of content out like this on this thing, having conversations with other industry leaders, et cetera. We also deep dive into this, don’t we, Neve, in the interview with me? Yeah, we have a fun time. Where we talk about… Yeah, it was great. I thought we talked for 40 odd minutes, but We talk about this exact thing. What can we be doing right now? How can we reach out? How can we build relationships in the perceived bad times and be there for people as everything shifts over?
Nev:
There’s one thing that It was a question I got yesterday or maybe a couple of days ago, I was on something and somebody asked this question. Sorry, I don’t have a lot of details on that. But anyways, the question is what matters here. They said, But everything Everything’s going to be slow to open up and everything like that, and it’s going to drag the economy down for a while. The only thing, now, nobody knows for certain, but I could point out what happened in America because people put on rose-colored glasses and they look back in things, they look back at the highlight reels instead of the security footage. And the highlight reels makes everything look pretty. In our minds, what we do is we put on rose-colored glasses in a way that we remember events to be less bad than they were. Less bad is even the correct English for that. Anyway, so the point is, and they asked that, and I said, Well, let’s look back at 9/11. I said, Now, everybody remembers in America, everybody remembers the patriotism. Everybody remembers doing their part and gone out there and where they were and everything like that.
Nev:
What they don’t remember is in that first month or two, when air travel stopped, when they actually… And COVID never stopped air travel. 9/11 stopped air travel. No plane was allowed to take off. And businesses, nobody wanted to leave their house because nobody wanted to go to sporting events. Nobody wanted to do this in the beginning because they were afraid that they’d be another target. Any big gathering would be a target for terrorist attacks. Well, what happened? After a couple of months when people got over their fear, and businesses were hurting because of this, the market dropped huge. When they went out, people went out and they spent money. They spent a lot of money. Instead of being afraid and sitting at home, they went out and supported business. They went out and did things. And that’s what really propelled the economy back. And I think that could be the same thing that happens with COVID. Once we get over this, remember, we’re still right in the beginning. It still punched us in the face, and we’re not so sure we could see clearly right now. So once we get our footing back and our view back, I think we’re going to come back, and I think we’re going to snap back.
Nev:
And the other thing I think, too, is everything has happened so quickly. Normally, these things play out over a lot longer time that I really think that we could snap back as quickly as everything went down. I think this could be one of the shortest recessions in history.
Lee:
That is really encouraging to hear. We’re going to snap back, folks. We believe it.
Nev:
Eventually, we’ll snap back.
Lee:
You heard it here first. You heard it here first.
Nev:
Yep. All right.
Lee:
No, that’s really encouraging. The purpose of this episode, really, was just to be a short episode where we can share some of those fundamentals of Things are not what they seem. If you can take away from this, things are not always what they seem. The news and the media, obviously, will paint a picture based on now to get people to get eyeballs on screens, et cetera. So things are not necessarily what they seem. They’re not showing you the bigger picture. And we do have many, many life-changing events that have happened over the last few years that will allow us to look at the patterns. And the patterns are that we always bounce back, that there is always hope. And they’ve shared that during this time we can focus on content, we can focus on the basics of our finances, we can remove some of that fear by understanding what we have coming in right now and or how long that’s all going to last. So to help remove some of that fear and also to give us that avenue for understanding what we have and what activities we can engage in right now to help continue to bring in money.
Lee:
Also, we shared how we can start to build up conversations with people in our industry, with our clients, et cetera, and we can be there for them in their hour of need. They won’t forget us when things do start to bounce back. So these are, as far as I’m concerned, real exciting messages of hope. Neve has put together this fantastic course. It’s something that me and him have been reviewing together. And like I said, it’s going to launch in about a week to a week and a half. It’s called the COVID Economy Course. It is completely free. There At no point will you be asked for money. At no point will there be any upsell. Neve is doing this as a passion project because he recognises that there is a lot of fear right now. There is a lot of negative press, and he wants to put out something that to help build hope. You’ll be able to find that over in the show notes, and that will live inside of the Agency Transformation Academy, and you’ll be able to register for that for free. So please go to the show notes on agencytrailblazer.com and sign up for the list, and you’ll be notified as soon as you are allowed access to that.
Lee:
So thank you, Nev, so much for your time. What’s the best place for people to connect with you? And then we will say goodbye.
Nev:
So my website is nevharris.com and has links for all my social channels. I’m basically the Nev Harris on everything, except, I think, on Pinterest, I’m Nev Harris. But yeah, and if you have any questions or anything like that, I do answer my direct messages. So feel free to DM me on any platform and I will get back to you. I hate typing, so I might just drop you a loom video, though. So you have to stare at my only face.
Lee:
I’m a voice bubble guy. I like that. I just hit the record and I talk for a bit and then I let go and off the message goes.
Nev:
Yeah, I think. Because, yeah, it takes me an hour to type a two-paragraph email, and then I get so pissed off at myself. I’m like, What did I just spend the last hour?
Lee:
It’s like three sentences. Mate, that’s awesome. Well, thanks so much for your time. You’re a legend, mate, and we will speak real soon. All right.
Nev:
Thanks, Lee.
