so ladies and gentlemen I feel as though we should address the elephant in the room first things first I want to go ahead and say that I have demonetized this video it is more important to me that you watch this thing all the way through rather than me make a bit of money from it second I've gone ahead and linked in the description the advice pages for all of my audience and BC everything I referenced in this video I know this might sound patronizing but honestly you mean the world to me if you clicked on these links and just took a minute to educate yourself you might learn something that ultimately will help you and your family stay health in a very difficult time like this finally I just want to say this incredibly simple message please wash your hands the priority should be reducing the transmission of disease especially amongst the vulnerable and the elderly so wash your hands learn how to wash your hands correctly and do it as frequently as you can and no further ado let's get into this video so ladies I'm an s MMA in crisis here's what we're gonna cover today number one what's happening number two doing the right thing how you can actually help your clients how you can help yourself and how history repeats itself so what is happening now you know in today's presentation obviously we'll be talking a lot about the coronavirus but will also be diving a little deeper into the importance of doing the right thing doing the right thing for your clients for yourself for your agency's reputation and also putting this pandemic into historical context so you don't freak out you don't scare yourself and you have a very level-headed view of what's happening as I said how it's happened many a time in history and what the coming six months 12 months and 24 months will look like now many countries including the USA UK have imposed quarantine Zoar advising on social distancing and this is likely to have a huge impact on the hospitality industry as well as other industries such as events or pretty much anything that relies on international travel and trade furthermore Amazon and several ecommerce businesses have announced their intention to cut back on deliveries and focus on essential items regardless of their origin whilst previous stores were impacted by factory presence in China this indicates a wider impact on e-commerce as a whole now ten percent of the u. s. workforce works in the hospitality industry so what that means is as well as business owners being affected the employees of any impacted industry will also be affected and in the US as I said hospitality industry accounts for roughly 10% of the workforce millions of jobs are also guaranteed by travel and more by trade and as you can see right here some businesses have already gone to drastic measures in the UK virgin airlines have asked for staff to take weeks of unpaid leave so it's important to note that while specific businesses are undoubtedly affected these shockwaves of this ripple out to the wider economy again there will be a couple of points in this video where I might sound patronizing but right now I want to try and explain why it's more important than ever before to make sure that you are acting as ethically as humanly possible as an agency owner and going to the ends of the earth to provide as much value as possible we are all business owners something that's really beginning to piss me off to be quite frank is people seeing the corona virus as a money-making opportunity this is especially frustrating for agency owners you know nearly every agency owner I know started an agency to escape the nine-to-five and achieve true independence they've also relied heavily on local and small businesses to get their agency to where it is today I include myself in this category if I think back to some of my first few clients you know my old football club that was my first-ever client or or other local businesses that I worked with such as beau gravy or garage or some of my early gym clans for example you know who have three or four locations around London at the entity I will forever be grateful to those businesses for getting me to where I am today building that synergy together and while at the end of day I gave my all as a service provider and I provided them with an incredible service as an agency owner and then they in a lot of ways these local businesses and small ambitious entrepreneurs took risks on me and I will never ever ever take that for granted so I have all the love and respect on earth for anyone that runs a business for anyone who takes that leap of faith creates a product or service that adds value to marketplace and then they being entrepreneur isn't an easy path in life in my opinion times like these it once again shows that being an entrepreneur it's not an easy path and you were always that first line of responsibility and ultimately the person who I think gets hit the hardest so genuinely my heart bleeds for a lot of these local businesses and I want you to stick around for the rest of the video because I'm going to give you more context on that the thing is that your reputation as an agency owner in my is the most important asset that you have and I don't usually reference very granular specific examples of how I failed as an agency owner but I really want to share with you two stories right here that I hope make it clear that as an agency owner you need to maintain your reputation the first one is actually just over a year ago we worked with an e-commerce client a company called Avari the woman that owns the company is an incredible incredible business owner and human being they have so much respect for her now to be honest myself and my team has worked so hard on our agency to get it to a point where nine times out of ten we knock it out the park this was an example of that one out of ten now obviously we had a three-month minimum contract two months in it became very apparent to me that we just were not going to be able to get the results that we were hoping for a lot of agencies in that position what would they have done they would have written out the contract for three months and then hey if the client wants to stay home they would have just kept him going but morally that doesn't sit right with me so I refund in the second month and I actually gave her the third month for free as well you know we really enjoyed working with her and her clothing line we created some amazing adverts with some very nuanced targeting and as I said on our side we did everything that we could but I still take blame for what happened and as I said it was one of those situations where I could think short term or I could think long term as I said contractually I wasn't obliged to whatsoever but I knew that it would pay dividends in the future I actually want to share another story this is actually a client that worked with us for seven months then decided to bring it in-house for I think around seven months and actually came back to us to work with us again once again obviously was a three month minimum and then from there ruling month by month and this person I could genuinely call a friend and that's kind of the thing that happens a lot with our agency is our clients end up becoming our friends now he had to stop working with us for a few different reasons and once again although contractually it was a three-month minimum and you have to honor that not only did I rip up the contract and let him get out of the contractor and then for the second month I actually refunded the money and not only that I then went ahead and got Kieran who works for the agency to write 18 follow-up emails for his new webinar that he was launching that is a service that we charged seven and a half thousand pounds for ten thousand dollars for entirely free why did I do it because I knew that one day he will come to our agency and he will remember that we were there when he needed us so right now you should not only be wanting to do the right thing but you should remember as a long-term play when you help someone in a dire time in a time of need that will be reciprocated and that will come back round to you and look these clients that I have always morally and ethically done right by they still send me referrals and if you want to talk about being a long-term thinking business owner referrals will always be the lifeblood of a service-based business and if you build enough goodwill I'm telling you that your agency can live fruitfully for five plus years just off of that goodwill look call me crazy but I genuine karma and I believe that anyone who tries to profit or take advantage of this global pandemic will find themselves facing swift karma and this is actually one of my favorite stories of two brothers who actually went on a thirteen hundred mile road trip to purchase as many bottles of hand sanitizers as they could to resell them online and within days they're listing had actually been removed by Amazon and eBay and they were left houses of dollars of inventory and basically nowhere to sell it now one thing that I do want to say and you know to be fair to them they have actually donated their stock but this very neatly illustrates that karma will come back and bite you now here is how you can help your client first things first communication is key in a time like this be proactive go above and beyond all for your expertise and be you know a metaphorical hand tool I mean if you want to be a physical one to actually know don't be a physical one especially in this time I don't know if that joke was slightly misplaced considering the severity of this video but look you get my point here which is B of shoulder to lean on be a rock for your clients at a time like this okay something that's generally important to remember is that a global pandemics are a once-in-a-lifetime event and that almost no business owner has any sort of contingency plan for working through this that's why it's super important for you to be there as an agency owner and really just an expert in in your respective field for many business owners who really just have no choice but to close down temporarily this will mean that you are nothing but a shoulder to cry on but for those business owners that can ride the wave you need to make yourself as available as possible and actually be proactive in your suggestions as you can see right here delivery to offer no contact delivery during coronavirus pandemic and the this is actually a email that I got a letter from Leon's I think is co-founder yeah but you know in this specific example of restaurants many are still able to operate through takeaways and that's kind of how the industry is pivoted however they face an issue in informing customers that they're still open right and they may be using new measures such as no contact delivery okay they're trying to get this message out and and make this clear okay so this is where you should be proactive in suggesting messaging to promote the service and even suggesting in the first place okay if you're working with restaurants and they're having to take these precautions hold their hand through that process okay this is an opportunity for you to go above and beyond for your clients even if you don't normally offer email marketing you know but you have the capabilities to do so offer a draft message to their email list or even create a simple graphic they can put across all their social platforms because you can go in canva it takes five minutes but it will mean the world to a struggling business owner okay you can also take this opportunity become more acquainted with your niche and perform genuine to market research do a deep dive into the how the market is responding to your specific needs and make recommendation to your clients I know for a fact one of the reasons that our clients feel so safe and secure with us is and I'm saying even outside of the scope of this whole situation going on globally is when our clients have a question because we're such experts in our field we have clients coming to us asking how can we recover more fail pays how can we streamline our customer support how can we do email marketing for our business anything in the realm of being better operationally as a business number one that and number two anything in the realm of building a YouTube channel getting their email marketing sorted hiring and managing sales reps in you know with specific clients of ours in the info prog space obviously I have the unique perspective of running her agency comms so for our info prog business owners I'm speaking from personal experience but let's say with our e-commerce owners you know it's only recently that I opened up my my clothing lab my e-commerce clothing line gadget prior to that we did a painstaking amount of research to figure out things like what can we suggest to our clients so that they have less abandoned checkouts what can we do to help optimize landing page speeds what can we do so they can improve their lifetime value of their customer by selling more sting clients because you know obviously when a customer purchase from an e-commerce site that goes straight inside our CRM database and a lot of these businesses aren't actually doing anything with those leads so my point is something that I've really started to realize in the past I'd save 12 to 14 months is your clients should feel so safe and secure with you and the way that you do that is you take the initiative and you be that okay you be the rock for your clients now if it comes to it you need to remember that sometimes the right thing to do even if it hurts your business the short term is to offer a break in a contract or at least some sort of subsidized fee okay some sort of subsidized rate for your service now it said this could really make the difference between your client losing or keeping an employee okay and good like this will always come back in kind in my opinion at least now it's time to pivot slightly and just talk about how you can help yourself again you know I really want to make it clear this video is not a guide on how you can make money from the pandemic but it's also important to note that guys business continues as normal you pivot you adapt okay you can't waste time feeling sorry for other businesses or stop operating because some areas that economy are declining that's why it's important to continue to serve your clients as best as you can so switch up your outreach okay failing to reference the pandemic especially when the niche is affected will make you seem massively out of touch with the market next thing is guys go further afield you should be able to service clients all across the world you know the reason that I've constantly affirm this to you guys that we live in a global economy you should be signing clients remotely from anywhere in the world the entire global economy should be your pool of potential clients the other thing that you need to understand is there are certain countries where the peak has been reached okay so there are certain countries that are gonna recover exponentially quicker than some other harder-hitting countries so to be very blunt and I guess no one really knows where this will go but as I said in certain countries they've reached their peak so it's looking like within 30 60 90 120 days business will basically go back to normal or at least the economy will recover local businesses will open up once more and when that happens it is especially advantageous for them to advertise but here's just a funny example right here this is actually a restaurant in Antarctica you guys go further afield as I said you should be able to his clients all around the world now with your existing clients and those unaffected by coronavirus now it's time to double down and actually increase ad spend what you need to understand and obviously I'm in a fortunate position where you know 70 80 % of my clients are in the info product space so to be very blunt it doesn't affect my agency in the slightest and the clients that we do have in the e-commerce space none of fected there is to be very honest and transparent with you guys there was one client that I was actually about to sign it was a skin care company and actually you know I referenced a Virgin Atlantic earlier one of their physical locations is in the Virgin Atlantic clubhouse which is basic for the people flying upper-class baby sea stock and supply the Virgin clubhouses all around the world but yeah that was a client that I was a hundred percent that said certain that we were about to sign and they even said that yes we were gonna come on board but in a time of fear and uncertainty like this we need to ride this out a little longer and see how this has an effect on our business and once again I'm totally empathetic and respectful to that so look you need to ask yourself and I say this with a lot of hesitation to be honest and said I don't want to be insensitive to what's going on for our clients this is a time of great prosperity to be to be very blunt because you need to understand with a lot of the measures with quarantine around the world you need to understand that there are more eyeballs on screens okay so the supply has gone up drastically now even if the demand stayed the same just if such a surplus in supply means that CPMs are gonna lower and then that has bleed through to every single other KPI within your advertising campaign but not only has supply shot up demand has shot down as I said a lot of business owners out there that to be very blunt don't know how to weather a storm like this and are getting antsy or retracting advertising so if you have a client that is not affected by this and that potentially might mean that hey you have an e-commerce business you have an info progress that you're working with you have a real estate agent in a country where kind of businesses obviously people are aware of coronavirus but kind of business continues as normal and by the way guys there's a lot of countries out there where business is just kind of continuing as normal I'm recording this in Cape Town I think in all of South Africa there's around 60 cases and to be honest like you know I still go to the gym I still go to restaurants it's not as prevalent here and I think that's why I've also been I apologize this is why I've been slow to make a video on this because I guess being here in this bubble like literally I think two weeks ago was the first case of Crona bias in all of South Africa so I guess I've been a little ignorant to what's going on in the world but really that brings it back to my point which is this is a time where you're gonna need to pivot if you are running ads for local restaurants you can still do that but you might have to start looking at different countries around the world where as I said you know business kind of continues as normal I don't think there's anywhere in the world where that applies but as I said here you can still go to gym you can still go to restaurants it's an underlying awareness I think here but it's not you know there's no severe measures that have been taken and as I said there's a lot of countries that have already peaked okay so things are literally only about to get better over the next two weeks four weeks six weeks you know two three months so you just need to have enough self awareness about who are you servicing and geographically where you're servicing these clients and you might need to start looking further afield as I said that's number one and number two you might even need to pivot in terms of who your agency is servicing in order to adapt to the current situation as I said if you absolutely need to pivot Nicias okay defensive industries unaffected by economy are a better bet in difficult times so guys this is also an opportunity for you to take stock and reflect on yourself as a business owner to be very honest I'm not a huge fan of like Star Wars and Marvel films and this like it's not really my thing I'm more a documentary kind of guy but I you know have always appreciated this scene from Phantom Menace where he takes every break in the battle as an opportunity to just meditate okay during this time you should be stacking skills and investing in your education like this is right now in this period the time to sharpen your saw this is the time where at the end a and we're gonna get onto this history repeats itself it is not gonna be too long until business goes back to normal obviously there'll be an underlying tension but as I said business will go back to normal probably a lot quicker than you realize so this is your time to sharpen us all this is time to invest in your education invest in yourself and guys like this isn't a shameless plug for you know agency incubator like guys buy a book okay get a Kindle buy a book take this time to really build up the habit of meditation it's time to kind of just be alone with yourself in a lot of senses and reevaluate if you're an existing agency owner and you've already had success with your agency what can you do better as an agency owner okay I think it's such an incredible opportunity to almost it's almost forced introspection obviously with everything that's going on I think this is your opportunity as I said to invest in yourself and invest in your education sharpen your saw and be not only a better agency owner but be a better business owner and a better person in general so history repeats itself so we have two sources of information to review the current pandemic you know we have previous depressions and recessions and we also have major pandemics now the important thing to remember about recessions is that they tend to have an underlying financial cause take the most recent global recession it was triggered by the subprime loan crisis and uncovered religous of massive fault in the global financial system of toxic debt a market correction was necessary to fix that issue now pandemics and epidemics are different and the thing is obviously this has come at a time where we've been in a in a in a bull market for a long long time it's been 12 years since the last recession okay but you need to understand that pandemics and epidemics are different whilst they made trigger recessions they do not point an underlying problem with the market and so do not require such aggressive correction in fact since 1980 the global stock market has increased by an average of 0.
4 percent in the month directly after an epidemic in the next three and six months 3. 1 percent and then 8. 5% and in the following three months it goes up to 3.
