Show notes
KEY TOPICS AND TIME STAMPS
Zero: REACTING TO LOCKDOWN
—Sharon says she wants to unpack “what’s been going on in these times, how we’re approaching it, what we’re thinking about” with Perry and John.
—John introduces himself as being “essentially in the adult learning industry” and says his company is “flourishing at the moment” and that the need for upskilling means “it’s a boon for adult education.”
—Perry says he’s “been working with business owners for close to 30 years now”, putting teams and systems in place. “We got whacked when [coronavirus lockdown] happened. Our business just went bang, like that.”
—He says he knew in late January or early February that lockdown was coming: “When it became real for me was when my clients in Italy, the UK, were being told to shut their businesses down … and my reaction at that point was to think strategically. I went and bought recessionbusters.com.au which I’m really glad I did.”
—Asked by Sharon how he managed the dialogue around “it’s the health we have to worry about and there was no parallel conversation occurring on the price we were going to have to pay”, Perry says, “I just feel we live in an incredibly unintelligent world. Unintelligent where it’s all about feelings and emotions. I was using the lesser of two evils arguments. Okay, you can go into lockdown and shut us down for health issues but the ramifications of that are obvious. You’re potentially going to have way more people in the Third World and maybe the Second as a result of shutting everything down to save people dying from COVID. I wasn’t saying I knew the best answer, just, ‘Can we have a dialogue about this? If you shut us down millions upons millions are going to die as a result of starvation. I was horrified by the lack of conversation and … was told I was a heartless human being.”
7.10: GOING PUBLIC WITH SOCIO-POLITICAL COMMENTARY
—Perry posted his views: “I had to decide what I wanted to stand up for. I know my first reactions to what is happening in the world will be based on my own history. Because of my childhood I don’t trust people. There’s a lot of inward looking before I might start communicating something because I want to be clear. I want to make sure I’m being smart and intelligent and not just emotionally reacting. I’m horrified by the world at the moment.”
—Sharon says Perry is brave going public: “Thinking through my logic in public doesn’t seem to be as warmly received as I’d like it to be.”
—John talks his coronavirus experience and how overseas events had to be cancelled. He says he was “a little bit naïve” and “definitely a latecomer” to it because “I didn’t know how fast governments would act” but lockdown “wasn’t a disaster because our actual marketing system is all pretty much online webinars.”
—John says “if you’re a politician you don’t have a good choice. People are going to die either way. And one thing I’ve kind of come back to at the end of this … human beings the last million years have had the right to look after their family and protect their family and go earn a living. And that as a fundamental right has kind of been taken away and there are very good reasons for that in terms of the overall welfare of society.”
14.33 BEGINNING OF THE TSUNAMI
—Sharon notes, “We haven’t come close to seeing how bad this is going to be economically. We’re at the beginning of the tsunami. It’s going to be so much worse. There are literally billions of refinancing loans sitting with banks.” People who have spent a lifetime working for what they have are “losing everything.”
—With her businesses, Sharon is prepared for at least two years of coronavirus-affected life, and “if you’re planning on the luck of a vaccine, you’re not planning for the right stuff. Why don’t you design your businesses so that if it stays this way you’re going to be okay? It’s never going back to the way it was. The economic tsunami is going to hit next year and the year after. We are years away from strip retail being back. It’s more of a bankrupt culture.”
—Sharon “hasn’t really spoken” about her pragmatism until now: “My concern with the health cost is with 103 deaths as of today, most years 1000 people die of the flu, more people die on the roads driving cars. We are reacting so incredibly strongly to something where the price we’re paying health wise is currently so small. The price we’re heading for in the next couple of years is going to be massive. There will be people who can never reclaim their lives, who literally will never be able to provide for their families again.”
—Perry: “The insanity that this was not addressed up front is amazing. And the other aspect of this is the level of denial I saw in people and see still in them. I still think most people aren’t aware of where we’re going, and that scares me.”
21.01: FLOWING WITH THE STREAM
—John: Believes what is vital now is “agility and being able to look the facts in the face.” In terms of how entrepreneurs or business owners can respond, he says it’s knowing “how you can look the future market place in the eyes, not how you wish it would be. How can you find a growth industry within that market? How do you pivot to find that growth market?”
—He says the “biggest thing” he’s learned in business “in maybe 20 years” is “you want to be flowing with the stream. I’ve tried to make businesses work where the market wasn’t wanting what I wanted to sell and you can spend years doing it and when you find something is going downstream with the flow of the market, it just feels easy to grow.”
—John: “I suppose the question is, “Where are those sectors of the economy, where can people be positioning themselves now to actually grow. You might need to go to an entirely different industry.”
—Sharon: “We said this is permanent. The government is going to dictate who can make money and who cannot. They’ve mandated it with what they’ve legislated.” She and her husband JP “completely re-engineered” TCI to take it 100 per cent online and “that means we have a lifestyle we want in terms of freedom, we get to serve our clients at another level and
our other importing and sourcing business “has been designed with our futures in mind.”
—Sharon: She and her husband have three guiding principles: be proud of who you were during the crisis, humanity before profits and re-engineer based on the new world being permanent.
26.50: PIVOT, PIVOT, PIVOT
—Perry says “my take now is that business people have to be aware of trends, this means you have to be more aware of the world than you’ve ever been.” He says you have to be “awake” and “aware” and that “the crisis of COVID” knocks over other weak systems.
—Future business: Perry says “there’s more money to be made in these emerging markets than you’ve probably made before. If you’re first in, if you see and understand them there’s really good money to be made, it’s just being awake to those trends.”
—John: “To do something new feels risky and scary but it could be the riskiest thing in the world to stay where you are.” Says what is required now is not just pivoting “but knowing where to pivot, which data points are you using to get new trends and then upskilling, otherwise you’re going to get eaten alive by other people who are pivoting as well but they’re better at it.”
—Perry: Notes that as an entrepreneur he’s lived his life in uncertainty and has taken risks, but those who haven’t are being “really thrown.” Admits to an “emotional reaction” about two and a half months into lockdown: “I had a moment of falling flat on my face, emotionally, that lasted about a week, two weeks.”
—Why? “I think I just hadn’t processed it fully yet. I’m quite excited in dramatic scenarios and I was having to work with my clients, that was game time for me, then I had some beautiful times with my wife but there was a full realisation of how the world was going to change, a sense of semi depression. I’m not a depressed character but I was just flat.”
—John says what we’re seeing is the “almost decapitation of the economy, particularly in America, and you don’t have any control over it. Millions of businesses, millions of jobs are going under but as individuals … you only have control to be an economic stimulator in your own sphere.”
34.30: THE GLOBAL VIEW
—Sharon discusses the dismantling of the Queensland tourism industry and small business owners whose legacy and financial future will be obliterated: “If I let myself go there I feel such grief for what people are going to lose during this time and they have nothing they can do about it. It’s devastating.”
—Asked by Perry how she feels about governments making decisions and leaving citizens “powerless” to do anything, Sharon says “my first thought goes to my concern about how easily people have fallen into line and how so few people are questioning it. I feel tremendous sadness that the conversation can’t be had easily without being judged. My imagination cannot cope with what these decisions are going to cost us in the next few years.”
—Talks about how “my silence has made me complicit” in this, “and I have a real wrestle with it constantly. I wrestle with my conscience around how I have stayed quiet around it because I make a point of not being political publicly” because of flak, “but I’m complicit in it with my silence and that really concerns me. I feel real loss about what I’ve given up.”
—Sharon talks wealth eaters and wealth creators. “No one will talk about the fact that if the people who create the wealth pay the tax and everyone’s who living off the tax thinks it’s great, do you realise one day we run out of the ability to pay the fucking tax? Then what will you all be saying? “We should have opened sooner” but by then it will be too late.”
—Perry agrees: “I feel if people don’t stand up and communicate most days we’re complicit.” Says journalism is “disgusting” and “truth matters but we live in a world that’s more interested in agenda driven journalism rather than the agenda of truth. It frightens me.”
—All discuss there being “no upside to virtue signalling” on social media. Sharon is “really tentative with how public I will be with my views because I won’t have the best intentions assumed for me often. People won’t be that curious to seek to understand, they’re more interested in stopping the dialogue than engaging the dialogue.”
—John says people are judged for things they said online ten years ago: “That’s just bananas, and that’s why I would 100 per cent fuck up everything if I got online and said exactly what I thought as I said it. I’d ruin my life in days. There’s zero upside.”
—He asks “where do you even effect change anyway? How do you pull the levers? I’m generally progressive on pretty much every issue but then I look at the heads of states in Australia … I would love to be up at Noosa spending money, making the economy flourish.
—John says the de-industrialisation of America led to the opiod epidemic, the de-industrialisation of Scotland led to massive drug abuse, now 40 million or so unemployed in America: “Do you think that’s not going to create a new wave of epidemics?”
46.30: POLITICS, SCREENS AND SMOKE SCREENS
—Perry thinks “we’ve lost the art of being able to discuss all different sides of an argument. I’ve been the ultimate explorer of human consciousness, I want to know what everybody thinks and what they’re up to.” Loves talking to capitalist and leftie friends, “but we now live in a world where those types of conversations aren’t allowed to happen.”
—Sharon: “I have to cull out the best of the left and the right and come up with a name for it. That’s where I’m finding I’m sitting more these days.”
—She is concerned moving forward that as we’re staying home more and are on social media, “it means we’re literally raising the next generation … all they will know is silos. They’re encouraged to distance themselves. We are literally endorsing and encouraging behaviour which creates poor mental health. We are creating the next level of silos around the planet.”
—Sharon: “I’m meeting a lot of people who are not putting in this effort. They’re living in their silo and they barely know it’s a silo.”