The I Love CVille Show With Jerry Miller! - Gabby Gammon Joined Michael Urpí & Xavier Urpí On "Today y Mañana" On The I Love CVille Network!

Episode Date: April 17, 2025

Gabby Gammon, Owner of Merriment Digital Marketing, joined Michael Urpí & Xavier Urpí On “Today y Mañana!” “Today y Mañana” airs every Thursday at 10:15 am on The I Love CVille Network! “Today y Mañana” is presented by Emergent Financial Services, LLC, Charlottesville Opera and Matthias John Realty, with Forward Adelante.

Good morning everyone and welcome to Today and Manana. I'm Michael, happy to be joined by Xavier here on a beautiful spring day afternoon. In case you missed earlier, Xavier was giving gardening tips, so if you missed it, it's a little too late. Too late. Too late, yeah. Quick, Xavier gardening tips, a new segment on today. On today, we're going to get gardening tips from Xavier. But we're happy to be here on a beautiful day. We're going to be joined shortly by Gabby Gammon from Merriment Digital Marketing. As always, we are happy to be sponsored

by Emergent Financial Services and partnering with Maticio Realty, Charlottesville Opera, and Faba, the premier Latino networking business group here in Charlottesville. Xavier, happy to be here with you. Absolutely. It's been some time since we've been together. Of course, now it'd be over the week, so it feels longer sometimes.

Probably, yeah, but it has been a while because I think last time it was you and Alex. Yeah, last time it was Alex and I, that's correct. I mean, you caught me, but I tell you, when you watch the beginning of the show, it feels long to me, but when I'm sitting here, it just seems to fly. I mean, I was here just kind of looking at my phone, and there was somebody here talking.

I said, already? You got the three, two, one, go. I know. Watching you feels long for me, too. I'm not going to lie. I'm talking about watching the introduction. The introduction, young man. Oh, this is going to be a long one hour.

I can just see that. It's going to be a good one hour, because we've got a great guest coming up. So I don't know about you. Are you ready to jump in? Oh, no, absolutely. It'd be great to find out a little bit from Gabby, all about her business and how she started and all that.

Yeah, OK. And also, what is digital marketing? I always love to hear what other people think. I know, because you're old-fashioned. Well, no, because I get that on the email. Oh, digital marketing here, digital marketing there. I'm saying, for me, marketing is I pick up the phone, I make a phone call, and I talk to people.

Exactly, because you were marketing in the 80s and 90s, not the 2000s, so things changed a little bit. Just a little. Just a little, I heard. But we are very happy to be joined by our fantastic guest, Gabby Gamer from Merriment Digital Marketing. Gabby, thank you for coming on. Good morning.

Yeah, thank you so much for having me. No, it's a pleasure. Is she right in this morning, right? Yeah. Yeah, I had to bring that up. Just calm down. I mean, listen, we know, I grew up in New York, right? So it's like, you know, traffic is just part of the norm.

And here every once in a while, you just get, you know, the little, all of a sudden, the little and here every once in a while you just get you know the little all of a sudden a little accident here and there it's like I know yeah like yes they just get out of the the parking lot it was like unbelievable I couldn't I couldn't get out I mean it was accident like on the 250 yeah and that whole old Ivy Road was just backed up and nobody let me out finally just kind of snuck in I said, I guess you got that kind of face. No one wants to let you in on the highway. But anyway, enough traffic. So Gabby, tell us a little bit about yourself and kind of how you started Merriman Digital Marketing. Yeah. So I grew up in Lynchburg, Virginia, about an hour away and I moved here two years

ago. I was doing marketing for a couple different businesses and I've always wanted to start my own marketing business. I've been working in the digital marketing space for about nine years now. And I found the CIC program through a friend of mine and initially started it with a friend who ended up not finishing the class. And through that, I ended up finishing the class.

And it kind of evolved into me thinking about starting my own business seriously, which really hadn't been something I had considered before taking that class. But CIC was great. They walked me through pretty much everything I felt like I needed to start my business and took a lot of the stress and anxiety out of, you know, really things that I thought were really daunting like accounting or bookkeeping and that type of thing. So that's how I got started. Like I said, I had always kind of wanted to, but I was nervous about starting my own business.

And the reason I started Merriment Digital was because I have mostly worked with small businesses throughout my marketing career, and I felt like the options for small businesses in the marketing space are fairly limited. If you're a small business, often it's really dynamic, you're growing quickly, you're having structure changes, and you're learning how to market your business and how to talk about it.

And also, your budget isn't that of a large corporation where you can outsource everything to a large company. And I think the small business space needs a company that is willing to kind of match that dynamic space and be willing to adapt with you. So yeah, that's why I started it. I really have a passion for working with small businesses and helping them grow and kind of find their voice and find, yeah, their marketing strategy.

So tell us a little bit about digital marketing. I mean, tell me, probably everybody else can't notice, but tell me a little bit about digital marketing. I mean, tell me, probably everybody else can notice, but tell me a little bit how, you know, what that is and how that works and how it evolves because, you know, if I'm wrong, I know that digital marketing can mean, like for example, let's say through LinkedIn, maybe, you kind of advertise or send information through that, but that seems to, there's so many avenues today as to how you can do that. And I'm trying to figure out what's the best way or it depends on the business,

what it is that you're trying to market, et cetera. Yeah, I think, so for me, digital marketing, what I focus on is mainly social media and search visibility. So I do a lot of website work, website updates, including what I focus on is mainly social media and search visibility. So I do a lot of website work, website updates, making sure that websites are present and the algorithm and also that social media is active. I think that gets overlooked a lot in the marketing space.

A lot of people think that their clients aren't on social media maybe or they think, oh, I'm not on social media, so there probably aren't that many other people on social media. But what I like to tell people is even if none of your clients are on social media, having that social media presence helps your overall visibility as a business. So anything that you have out there on the Internet that's promoting your brand, that's consistent with your brand voice is going to help your visibility as a business owner. So that I think is what I talk about the most in the digital marketing space. I also think it's a really dynamic industry where we have AI bringing in a lot of new services and

Search algorithms are always evolving. So it's definitely a very It's an ever-changing space to work in. Okay. So what would be the process for someone? Let's say they called you up and say hey, I want to talk to you about digital marketing What would be your process like how do you go step-by-step? For a new potential client or small business like how do you go step by step for a new potential client or small business? So what I typically do is I have a free initial consultation to walk through what you're already doing. Do you have a website in place? Do you have a Google profile in place?

Are you promoting reviews? Do you have social media? Just kind of walking through that sense of what's already out there. And then from there we can move forward into what needs to be updated or be created. A lot of what I do also is coaching and consulting. If someone can't afford to outsource their services that they need, I can come into the business and train an employee on that that maybe they're wanting to pass off social media to or blog writing or something like that. Okay so basically the goal here is to find as many social media outlets as possible right and so and and correct me

if I'm wrong but things like you know like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and I know there are now others right and have you know if you are writing like you said blogs so if I'm writing something about finance having access to those so that people can then say okay you know you know emergency financial services they just put something out there so is that how it works in a way? Yeah so blog posts mostly help your website presence. So the more keywords that you're adding to your website for your industry, Google is going to say,

for the Google algorithm, Google is going to pick up on that and boost your website higher in the algorithm because of it. But also, kind of like you said for existing clients as well, it is really helpful to have that information and know that you're an educational resource. That's something I always promote that people do. If you can kind of position yourselves as that place that people go to learn about industry standards

and you position yourself as an expert in your field, then that's always really helpful to potential and existing clients. Is there a point where you maybe do too much marketing? Or, I mean, is there a balance between, hey, you know, you're out there on social media, but at the same time, you're not overwhelming where it's like, yeah, I've seen this before, just scroll through it. Yeah, so you definitely don't want to be repetitive.

And so I tell people, and I think for small business owners too, you don't necessarily, it can feel really overwhelming to learn the digital marketing space. So I tell people to start with, get your website well-written, do a keyword search, make sure everything's up to date, then get Facebook and Instagram in place. I think those are kind of the core components of a digital marketing presence and also a Google review

profile so that people can leave you local reviews. After that, most of the time, extra stuff you can do is a good thing, but it definitely can get too repetitive. Like if you have old web pages that aren't being used anymore, or maybe old social media pages, I see that a lot, where people have like multiple social media pages that aren't in use, that can be a problem. But for the most part, as long as you're updating things and keeping them relevant,

I would say the more the better. That helps your business. Yeah, so I have a question, because I'm curious, in your marketing experience, how young people view the viability of a business, is it when they go like an Instagram profile, do they focus, okay, how many posts does this profile have, or do they first think, look, how how many followers or how many likes do these posts

get? Do these things kind of enter the atmosphere of like, if you're promoting a business, yeah, I want you to have a lot of posts, or try to focus on posts that have a lot of likes, or try to get more followers? I'm curious how you kind of approach that. Yeah. So I mainly focus on engagement. So especially with Instagram and Facebook in the earlier days,

it was all about just getting as many followers as you can and promoting your likes. Now people can't really necessarily see your likes on Instagram anymore. And I don't think followers matter as much as engagement. So what I try to focus on is just keeping people's attention, posting engaging reels, bright graphics, things that grab people's attention right away. Reels were the most effective form of sales on social media in, or short form videos were rather.

So I, yeah, I tend to focus on reels and making sure that there's a good balance of follower to non follower percentage of who's viewing those reels. Because you don't wanna just reach your followers, you wanna try and reach the community around you. And by reels you mean kinda like short videos? Yeah, sorry, I should have clarified. So reels are the short form videos on Instagram. But yeah, short form videos

in general were the most effective form of sales on social media in the last year. Those reels have to be like three seconds, one minute, what's kind of the best as far as time that people are willing to look at a reel? I try to grab people's attention in the first two seconds. I think that's about what you have. But I've noticed that people tend to drop off even on a really interesting reel around like 10 to 15 seconds. So and not everybody but around 40 to 50% do in my experience. So yeah, I try to they do have to be under 90 seconds for Instagram

and Facebook. TikTok can be longer, but I try and keep, as a general rule, my videos around like 30 seconds to a minute at longest. So in order to do that kind of marketing, do you then have to have like an account with you know Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, all these people? So yes, but also what I tell people is TikTok really changed the game in digital marketing. So reels and short form videos are way more common and they can also be posted across all platforms.

So you don't necessarily have to have like specific posts for Facebook, specific posts for Instagram and TikTok and YouTube. It will vary a little bit because of trends, but if you film a short video for Instagram, you can post that on TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, everywhere, and it will still hopefully get similar amounts of engagement across those platforms. You do have to have accounts, but Facebook and Instagram are linked together so you can post them through Meta at the same time. And then YouTube is linked to Google,

so if you have a Google review profile, chances are you probably have a YouTube account and you don't know about it or haven't set it up. So yeah, it's not too difficult to get those platforms set up. What about personal brands? Sometimes people say you are your brand. Do you also would encourage people to basically be like, well, if you have your own business, also try to create your own Instagram or Facebook profile and try to also promote your business through there, or do you think it's better just to have one singular focus?

You can definitely promote your business through your personal profile, but your business page should never be one and the same as your personal page. So you do need to have a business page. I do also tell especially small business owners that you are the face of your business. So if you're willing to be on camera and kind of get used to that and being in front of your customers on social media That's definitely I think really helpful to an online presence Got it and quick question about your name what inspired the name merriment I? Actually my sister-in-law came up with it. We were just brainstorming names, and I wanted something that Kind of inspired joy and fun. And she was like, well, what about merriment? And I thought that was a perfect word.

So, yeah, that's what I went with. Very cool. And how is it like being your own entrepreneur? Cause you know, we're always kind of curious about like, what's it like, you know, that jump to going from like starting your own business, how does it kind of like, how does it feel being your own boss? It's great.

It's definitely a challenge. You have to hold yourself accountable and I've learned a lot about time management and yeah, just setting deadlines for myself. But I think it's a lot of fun and it's always changing so I love it. Yeah. It's a a challenge I mean I know the CIC program um because my other son is is uh on the board on the board and um it's incredible how many people we we meet right that have gone through that program and how good that program really is and and I guess it's because our guest um two weeks ago Viva La Nosh oh Oh yeah, that's right. Yes. Yes, she was on that too. Yes.

Exactly. And I think- Yeah, she was actually in my class. Oh, yeah. Oh, how do you like that? Yeah, she's great. So and part of it is, when I think about it, is because most people have a passion for whatever

it is that they'd like to do. And it's doing that that they like to do. And it's doing that that they enjoy. What they don't realize is when you start your own business, there's other things that you have to be part of. Like for you, marketing is probably not difficult because that's what you're selling, right? But the idea of keeping the books, the accounting, taxes, et cetera, all that is like, wow, now you also have to do that and keep the book straight.

So they said the nice thing about CIC is that it brings up to the forefront and you can now try to figure out, okay, what are the things that I need to do? And sometimes, you look at it and say, yeah, this is not as bad as I thought, right? Absolutely. It sounds silly, but I think for years

that was something that held me back from starting my own business was just because I was terrified of doing accounting and bookkeeping. I'm bad at math. That is not my strength. It seemed really daunting. Like you said, when I went through CIC and I actually learned about it, I was like, this isn't actually that bad.

I work with spreadsheets and data all the time in marketing, so it's not as difficult as I thought. Yeah. So basically, when we think of digital marketing, would you say that the most important thing of all is, for example, if you write blogs, is to have those blogs up to date and don't let them get stale.

And the other thing I noticed is I see a lot of people in our business, what they do is they'll see an article out there and they'll take that article and post it to their blog. Is that a good idea or a bad idea or is the idea just to always have something new, whether it's your article or not? I would definitely add your own take to an article

and not just take someone else's. Like I said, if nothing else, just for the sake of positioning yourself as an expert in your field, in your community, I think it is important to keep your website in general from getting stale. So I try to run for my clients like regular keyword updates, see what's trending in the industry, and keep that relevant because with search algorithms as well, it does take them a few weeks to learn changes that you make to the website.

So it's important to stay on top of those trends and yeah, make sure you're staying relevant. Got it. Okay, so thank you so much, Gabby, for coming on. If someone's interested in getting into contact with you, how can they do that? It's the best way to reach you. Probably my email address. So that's gabby, G-A-B-B-Y, at merrimentdigital.com.

And then my Instagram handle is at merrimentcevo. So anybody can reach me there as well. Awesome. And you said first consultation is free? Yes. Awesome. Okay. So people should check that out. Absolutely. Thanks.

It's great. We're going to find out everything you're doing wrong. I'm sure this stuff you're doing wrong. Cool. Yeah, Gabby, it's been a pleasure. Thank you so much for coming out. Thank you so much. I appreciate it.

Thank you guys so much. I appreciate it. It's our pleasure. Our pleasure. So now we rotate. Yeah, what was that, Pops? I said that was good. You know, I'm always amazed.

You know, I mean, this stuff to me is like Chinese. Greek. It's Greek. Chinese, whatever you want to call it. It's Greek to me. Greek to me. That's right. That's the word.

But it's, you realize how important this is in today's world, right? Because in the old days, you'd send mailings and you'd follow up with phone calls, whatever. Sure, you did newspaper ads. Newspaper ads, et cetera. Exactly. But in today's world, your website obviously is a key component because you want traffic to go there. I mean, I would assume that's the...

The most important thing for us is how you know, how do we get traffic to our website so they can then learn a little bit more about ourselves? So, you know, obviously that's the key component, and I would assume that, you know, that's what digital marketing tries to do is try to get your name to the forefront of everything so that when somebody's looking for an advisor in Virginia, you're up there on the top as opposed to like, you know, at the bottom of the list. And let's just talk about Jerry before,

everything now too in our world is digital. I mean, everything you want to do is digital. It's just so in the end, if you have no digital presence or you're not getting a good digital presence, you're behind other people who in the end, you could have a better product or better service, but they have a better digital presence and that matters. No.

In today's world. So, you know, you kind of have to be on top of that, you know. And it's tough because, especially for people in your generation, I'm barely on the cusp of this too, but it's like we didn't grow up in a digital world. No. You know, I mean, you technically have a Facebook. When's the last time you had one on your Facebook? You probably don't even know how to use it. I've tried. I log in. You log in, you probably don't even know your password.

It's probably automatic. I don't know my password. I mean, to be fair, that's a lot of people. But still, I mean, it's an important part of people's businesses now. So it's something that you have to keep an eye on. And you have to keep updating and kind of put some effort into it, because that's how people are going to find you.

And then if they like you, they're not going to basically, I bet you in today's age, too, it's not like, oh, I mean, people probably tell each other verbally that they like someone. But like Gabby was saying, Google reviews or Instagram comments, maybe someone's like, oh, this person makes a great croissant. People are like, oh, wow, this person says that this person makes a great croissant.

I mean, listen, sometimes you go on Amazon. I know mama does when you want to buy something. They're like, oh, look, it's got like five stars, so you should buy. In a way, that's not like digital marketing. If someone's getting good Google reviews, like, well, look, this person said this Chinese restaurant's excellent. Exactly. And also, that may prompt you to go there.

No, I mean, listen, I recognize that's how it works. To a certain respect, that's why you need somebody to help you with that. Because what is it I love to do? I mean, obviously, I enjoy research. You enjoy the dancing TikTok videos. I love that. I do that on the side when I'm home.

OK, that's a private handoff. That's a private thing, yeah. You enjoy the dancing TikTok videos. I love that. I do that on the side when I'm home. Oh, okay. That's a private handoff. Yeah, that's a private thing. Yeah. But at work, you know, I'm not going to spend my time, you know, trying to figure out digitally how do we, you know, grow emergent. I'm like, I'm doing some research.

This thing is, this thing is down, that thing is up. And you've been doing research, haven't you? Because things have been pretty crazy. It's been surf waves in the market race. That's right. Exactly. It's amazing. We always say that.

And some people probably say, yeah, that's probably overblown. But chaos creates opportunities. And really, in the last two weeks, it's just been amazing what's happened in the marketplace and how many opportunities we have seen, where it's just been amazing what's happened in the marketplace and how many opportunities we have seen where it's like, man, that ETF or mutual fund, whatever, you do the research, you look at the underlying securities, you go, man, I think it's cheap, right? So you find where can we do a swap?

Is there an opportunity to take advantage of that? So to me, that's the fun part, right? Because it's like you find this kind of diamond in the rough, is what I call it, and say, how do I position my clients so they can take advantage of this and then kind of ride that wave up, right? Because when markets are this crazy, especially crazy in the sense that there's down markets. Well, not just down markets, I mean volatile markets. I mean, there is a sense that day in and day out,

you really don't know what's going to happen because, you know, hey, a new tariff just pops up and the market goes down like 10 percent and then the next day it's like, now the tariffs lifted and now it goes back up 10 percent. I'm like, I don't know what's going to happen today. Well, in the end, it's always uncertainty is what causes issues, right?

But I thought what's really has been amazing in this particular year, right, if you take a look at this year, right, all the way through March 31st, right, the stock market was down. In reality, the sectors that were down were almost expected in the sense of, irregardless of the towers and everything that's going on, you know, tech, discretionary. And to be fair, not to toot your own horn, but I remember we did a show in December and we were saying that those top 10 companies, S&P 500, were overvalued. Exactly. Or something like that.

What their market price was was far beyond was a price to earnings ratio was. Something along those lines. Not only that, but their value. Ten companies, when you looked at over 3,000 securities in the stock market, they represented over 30% of the entire stock market. And tech had reached such a high point that there was going to be some sort of correction. Exactly. And yes, we took it, we obviously did something about that. We didn't know, we told our clients, is it going to happen this year? Next year, we don't know. But

historically, this cannot continue and therefore we're restructuring portfolios really to begin to, you know, mitigate some of that risk. Boy, oh boy, I mean, nothing just, I mean, tech is down like 17% this year, right? So consumer discretionary is down about 16%. So coming into this year, we saw challenges, you know, we said, listen, credit card debt is through the roof, right? So where's the consumer going to go? Where's he gonna borrow, right?

I mean, the consumer is not like the US government when they just print more money, right? They can't do that, right? So sooner or later they say, I can no longer pay my credit card debt, and so I need to stop borrowing, and I can't borrow to pay off debt because that's just a circular getting worse,

go down the rabbit hole there. And two, tech was just unbelievable the kind of last two years they've had. So we felt like those two areas were challenges coming into 2025 and maybe 2026. We didn't know exactly when. Well, Well, hold and behold, those two sectors are the worst two sectors really and through yesterday, right? But the interesting is that it's really the first three months of those two sectors just got crushed, right?

It's really April has been quite interesting to me, right? Because in April, you had a few things going on. One is you had long-term interest rates rise. So I mean, interest rates of the five-year security out to the 30-year, interest rates went up, especially in the 30-year. They're up about, I think, about 20 basis points, right? 20 or 30 basis points.

Same thing with the 10-year, right? So you had, at the beginning of the year, rates come down, the bond market was positive, stocks were negative, you had a balance there. We always say it's nice balance, the stock market's down but the bond market's up, so your portfolio as a whole isn't getting crushed. All of a sudden, April comes, stock market continues to go down, not just tech, I mean, energy, you know, energy prices because the fact that oil is, you know, oil is down, oil went from 72 to 63, so energy is down.

Those two sectors continue to get, you know, hammered, right? And bonds are now down. Spreads of credit and things like high like high yield spreads, corporate spreads, they've waned out, meaning that they've become cheaper. So in 15 days in April, what has happened those 15 days is incredible from the perspective of how the markets have reacted to, yes, what the tariffs may do to our economy.

In other words, and you know, we heard our lovely, you know, Fed Chairman yesterday talk about inflation and possible slowdown in the economy, right? So we sit here and everybody is talking about the same thing. Boy, oh boy, these tariffs are going to cause inflation. So if we're going to have inflation, two things are going to happen, right? Long-term interest rates are going to go up, short-term interest rates may come down because

the Fed's going to have to think about if we go also into an economic slowdown, does the Fed lower rates, right? So the market is such in chaos and saying, well, yeah, if the economy starts to go down, we got to cut short-term interest rates. But there's inflation. Well, how's the Fed going to cut short-term interest rates? Because we got to cut short term interest rates. But there's inflation, well, how's the Fed going to cut short term interest rates? Because we got inflation, right? So all that has just entered into the space of the market, creating, you know, obviously a very negative environment.

But in doing that, right, you again, you take a look at everything that's out there, and there are a number of funds that you just look at these funds and you again, you take a look at everything that's out there. And there are a number of funds that you just look at these funds and you go. And these things are like being priced, extremely attractive in the sense that they're they're priced to the worst already. You know, at least in my opinion, and you sit there, you know, that's just, you know, even if that happens and I'm making 13, 14 percent, right. Just on interest. I'm willing to take that risk because even if the market goes down another 7 percent, I still got 7 percent in my pocket, right? So situations like that is what I say is

it creates opportunities. It creates the ability for you to look at your portfolio and say, how do I restructure my portfolio to take advantage of some of these opportunities. Again, we're not talking about selling everything and buying these. We're talking about opportunistic situations where you say, I can take some funds and invest in these particular sectors because we think that they're overdone. Again, the markets are, in a way, they're very myopic. And it's like, what is happening today?

And the word inflation and recession are words that are being thrown out by every other economist out there. And so it gets very nervous, right? But you take a step back and you say to yourself, if you're going to negotiate anything, and in this case, we're talking about tariffs with countries, but if you're going to negotiate anything, it's not as simple where, you know, you say, I want this price and the other guy says, no, I want that price, and then it's like, okay, let's meet in the middle.

It's not as simple as that because we're talking about countries where there are multiple products, right? And so whatever country comes to our table and say, listen, we want to negotiate the tariffs. It's not as simple saying, okay, you said 40 percent, we want only 20 percent. Okay, done. It doesn't work that way, right? Because we're sitting there saying, well, it's not just that, but you don't allow us to sell even this product, right, because this is what you do, and you don't allow us to sell that product because basically you then say, well, you feed your cows corn and we don't eat cows that eat corn at the last minute, therefore we don't want to buy those cows, right?

So the negotiations that we have to do with each one of these countries is long-term. And I think what's happened is you throw the shock out there and saying, this is what we're going to do. We're just going to tariff you to the point where it's like, wow, this can't happen because if this happens, this country is going under. So we need to sit down with you and negotiate. So I think the whole process is going to take some time. But I think the markets don't like that.

Markets would like to be able to say- The markets, I think sometimes, Nick always talks about this too, they don't react on reality, they react on the news. And it's very possible that what happened was the markets took such a hit because their worst case scenario was, oh my gosh, you know, they're going to be TFS on every country, on everything, so hence the market crashes. Well, the reality is probably that's not going to be the case. So your hope is that eventually because they prepared for the worst now as the reality sets in, we get a better picture of what's actually going to happen. The markets might begin to start slowly correcting. So I was like, okay, you know, we, we, we sold

out, we thought the worst was going to happen. And it's not quite like that. And I remember you, you know, you had to talk some clients off the ledge because they were like the market went down a couple days. They're like, oh my gosh, should I sell everything? Should I go straight to cash? And it was just like, I don't think that's a good idea, you know? But you know, it's kind of tricky just I think navigating. And my only question to you is, okay, so let's say you say these are, there are opportunities

to buy. If someone says, well, my portfolio is down right now How do I figure out how to? Use this opportunity to buy like how do I figure out because you don't want to say at least sell on the low end Of something just to buy into it, so how would you navigate that? You know it's it's hard It's hard to give that kind of advice only because you know you need to know exactly what's in somebody's portfolio somebody says yeah I have I have the S&P 500 in my portfolio,

and then I got another ETF. I got two ETFs, and they're both down. Yeah, the opportunities. You've reduced the option in your portfolio because you only have two things, right? Second of all, are we talking about a retirement account, or are we talking about an individual account? If it's an individual account, are you still carrying gains from those particular positions?

Are you now carrying losses? There's a lot that goes on into that decision. In a retirement account, yes, you can say, listen, okay, you got the S&P 500, this is what's happened. Is there another way to diversify that portfolio so you now take advantage of other things out there? But when you have a portfolio that's already diversified and you've got anywhere between 10 and 15 funds out there, that's where the opportunities come because you look at a fund

into, I mean, this is what I meant. We had a fund the other day that's like, I realize that fund is up like 4% this year. I looked at, why is it up 4%, I realized why it was up 4%, but this is good. But the chances of that continuing, it's possible, right? But the probability is low, right? So I need to swap out of that. What do I do in order to buy something that I think is now going to provide upturn? And is it going to happen this year or next year?

I don't know exactly, but I look at it saying over the long run, this is going to be an opportunity. So little things like that is what you're working with, right? So that's what's always, you know, for me that's the fun part is when, you know, when things are just kind of moving along and nothing's happening, it's just blah. So people have you to blame because people probably like when things are blonde, they think it's like I need some action. Some people like when the ocean is nice and calm and they get the little board and they get sort of things.

They was like I want the natural waves. Well, that's true. I like the waves. I like to go in there and do something. Not that you go in there and you walk a mile and it's like, okay, what's going to happen now? But yeah, but it's just, you know, we're in that timeframe right now where there's just, again, the uncertainties are incredible.

We will get out of it, right, like everything else. I mean, listen, in 2022, we had bonds down with 14%, the stocks were down 22%, we had inflation through the roof. And listen, I mean- The funds we used were stock market-wise, they were fantastic. Exactly. So sometimes you have to ride the downturns also. Again, make sure that you've got a situation where you're not over-leveraged.

I mean, there are people that leverage their portfolios. If you want to do that, that's fine, but that's where the risk comes in because you'll leverage on the way up, you'll also leverage on the way down, right? That's true. So that's the thing you have to worry about. But otherwise, make sure that your portfolio is doing what you want it to do and it's being protected in such a way that when the markets go down, you're not over there saying, oh my Lord, my portfolio is now down 30% and what do I do? Right? That's a terrible thing. Yeah. So there was something that you brought to my attention that you wanted me to talk about was an interesting stat that says in 2024, retail closures reached

their highest level since the pandemic, according to Core Site research with a total of 7,325 locations shuttering. I guess shuttering down. Yeah. Shutting down. No, and that's, so, and you know, when I started, when I started before, right, I talked a little bit about, you know, the fact that, you know, the two sectors that were down was technology and discretionary, right? Consumer discretionary. And that's exactly an example. In other words, before the year came in, we looked at the economy and we said, this economy is kind of wavering on

fumes, to a certain respect, right? It's kind of running on fumes here. And that's kind of proof of the fact that there were a number of small companies that just couldn't make it last year, right? And it's kind of, I think, since the COVID era, right? And so you sit there and you say, we see that, we began to see that happening, right? And we had a lot of money from the government come in

and bail out a lot of people. A lot of people just had money that they didn't know what to do with. So some put it in the market, others just spend it. They wanted to continue to spend, they borrowed and borrowed more. And now they're sitting there going, oops, right, I can no longer borrow, right? So I think that's the consumer side. Same thing with businesses, right? The consumer starts stop spending, small businesses are the first ones to get hit.

So I think we began to see that last year. And our feeling was that there's a probability that that was going to run through 2025, right? So coming into this year, we were nervous about the stock market. We were nervous about the economy. And obviously, the tariffs have thrown another little monkey wrench into that, in a sense, because, again, tariffs are in the short run, a challenging for, you know, the consumer if it truly goes through. And I mean, you know, what's sad is that, you know, these tariffs haven't been in

effect yet and everybody's complaining about them. Well, you know, nobody, they haven't been in effect yet and everybody's complaining about them. Well, they put them in April 4th and then they postponed them. We haven't really done anything yet other than China. We haven't charged anybody anything. The idea that inflation is ready to kick in here, how and when? My only hope about the China thing, some of the goods that we do get from China, and people have always made these complaints, because this is sometimes one of the

few uniparty issues, is that, you know, we buy things from China, because they're cheaper when in reality, a lot of small businesses have the same things that we buy from Chinese products. Yes, they may be slightly higher, technically in price, but it would be better just to kind of shop locally, because a lot of the stuff you end up buying, you know, maybe at a dollar store, Walmart, that's from China, you know, you can buy from a small business, especially like for example, you have a lot of small business that you can buy some of those products and whatever accessories from a small business that yes, it may be, you know, a little more expensive, but at least now you know who you're giving the money to. It's made here, you're giving it to a

local person, you're helping your local community. That's the only positive I can at least now you know who you're giving the money to it's made here. You're giving it to a local person You're helping your local community. That's the only positive I can at least see it's like, you know Make people wake up to the fact that it's like, you know, you can be buying a better product Yes slightly more expensive but a better product that's made locally like right here and help in your local community rather than just kind of buying the Cheap China good that's come from this sweatshop Exactly. Exactly. And listen, I know of course companies like, you know, obviously Walmart is one of those companies that buys an enormous amount from China, right? You go there and every time you look, it's like, you know, you're looking to find something

that says main USA and you can't, right? So eventually what happens is if those products then became as expensive as the ones made here, Walmart no longer needs to go to China to buy that, they can go here. So now you go to Walmart, it's like, yeah, okay, so instead of buying one of those kitchen things that cost you, scissors, whatever, instead of buying one that costs you two bucks, right, which, crap anyway, but it costs you two bucks, now you're paying one that costs you $4, it's probably better made. Yeah. All right. Yeah, it's a hundred percent increase, but it's only two dollars, right? I mean, it's not the end of the world. You're not going to, you know, and instead

of buying two, you only buy one because maybe you only need one, right? So that kind of thing. I think the mentality of the consumer will change to the point where it's like, do I really need that or do I need two of that? or can I do it one, right? So I think that's what's going to happen over time is that the consumer is going to hopefully become more educated and say, and more sophisticated to the point to say, do I just buy because it's cheap and I can buy more or do I sit back and say, wait a minute, I want to make sure that I get some quality and if I'm getting quality, then I know that I got to be looking for made in the USA.

And that helps everybody, including the US American worker, the US economy. Taxes are going to go up in the sense of people are getting bigger salary. They're paying their income tax. So overall, it's good for the country. So I mean it's, you know, they're interesting times, they're challenging times. As you said, you know, you anytime, you know, when the markets going up nobody calls. Yeah. Nobody ever

calls and say, oh is my portfolio okay? Because the markets going up, right? Nobody ever calls. But when markets going down, yes, you're going to get the phone calls and it's expected. And the important thing is to explain to people, you know, and your clients and say, here's your portfolio, here's where we're invested, this is our goal, this is what we're trying to do. And in the end, it works out because if you did what you planned to do for them in the first place, right? And you were clear as to what your goals were and they understood those goals for them. Most of the time when you come back to them

and say, oh yes, that's right. I remember earlier, yeah, yeah, this is what I wanted. And that's what's good. So, but yeah, it's, you know, that's what happens. I think as time goes on, you know, answers will reveal themselves, I guess. Yeah. But it's like I said, this, I've been living long enough that I've seen lots of market crashes.

We survived. I've survived. I've seen one too. That's right. That's right. You have. Yeah. So, you know, it's, I think in the long run, you know, whether it's this administration or the next administration or some other administration, sooner or later we have to take a step back and say, we can

no longer continue as a country whereby we don't make our medicines here, we no longer make steel here. There's so many products we don't make in this country, which we can make in this country. And I think it's time that we say, hey, we have to be able to make certain amount of products in this country whereby if something goes wrong somewhere, right, we're not depending on another country because I don't care who your friends are, you know, and especially with medicines. If you need a medicine and they need a medicine, they're not going to be sending it to you. They're going to use it for their own citizens, which I understand. I'm not saying it's wrong. I'm just saying

I understand. So you just got to make sure that everything you need for your own citizens, you are able to make in this country. And the longer we wait, the more difficult it's going to be. I agree. Well, thanks for sharing your thoughts. You're welcome. Thoughts that you've never heard, right? Exactly. Hey, listen, maybe there was someone watching the show who was panicking and then they're like,

wow, I have to hear an Xavier talk. I feel bad. Why is he happy that everything keeps going up and down? I love this. I like the mundane. But anyway, yeah, so a lot to think about and ponder. But yeah, I think it'll be interesting to see what the next couple of months bring, you know. It's spring now, so you have to be hopeful.

That's right. Everything's blooming. That's right. Stock market is eternal. Yeah, I know that. It's true. This is a good time of year to, time to sit back. Like I always say, you know what? Time to start planting your garden. Yeah, listen. Whether that's metaphorical or literal. The reason you have financial advisors is you let them have sleepless nights and you stay home and relax and know that they're doing the best for you, right?

That's the way it works, right? That's the way it should be, right? But yeah, go out there and take care of your garden and make sure everything grows properly and be with nature and let us do the work. Maybe the next Today Manana show we'll start with a gardening segment. Xavier will bring his little pot.

See this one? See this one needs a little more water. See, oh, this one's got nice roots. Yeah, you know, I started all from seed this year. So we'll see how it goes. I know. I got a lot of them that have come up. You look like an expert.

He's even got like the warming pad. Yeah, the little mat to make them grow. Exactly. Right, because the first time I did it, I didn't have no mat, no nothing. It's like they grew and then they flopped. You know what I'm saying? It looks easy when you see other people. So you start doing the

research and it's like, all right, here we go. Yeah, that cheating. You got these mats, you got the lights. It's like those cooking shows where they put it in the oven, but they already got a one already made that came out perfect. Because that one in the oven, how do you know that one's going to come out perfect? It might come out bad. Maybe the one that they pulled out before it tries to get perfect. Exactly. Look at this. It's perfect. It might come out bad. Maybe the one that they pulled out for tries to get perfect. Look at this. It's perfect. That was the one thing, you know, the one thing I used to love about the first shows

of Julia Child was it was live and sometimes didn't come out right. And it was good because she said, well, you know, that happens sometimes. And it's true. you on, Pops. Same here. It was great having our guest, Gabby Gammon, joining us. Next week or two weeks from now, we might have Charlottesville Opera. We might not. We're kind of still in flux in negotiations, so you have to check the show. Negotiations?

Uh-oh. But you have to check the show. Negotiations, uh-oh. But you have to check the show to see if they're on or not. Or we might have another mystery guest. But as always, we are happy to be presented by Emergent Financial Services, powered by our wonderful sponsors, Matisse and Realty, Schaltzville Opera. Always a big thank you to the I Love Sivo Studio

for having us, for Judah behind the camera to making us look good. Thanks to Xavier. And of course, thank you to the I Love Sivo studio for having us, for Judah behind the camera, for making us look good. Thanks to Xavier and of course thank you to all our viewers. I know I didn't get a chance when Xavier and I were on, we don't have the digital presence we need to work on, but thank you to anyone who commented, liked and shared or subscribed. Like, share, subscribe. There you go, you got it in. You forgot this morning, but you just got it in now. But always a big thank you to our viewers for making this possible. We wouldn't be here without them.

We look forward to seeing everyone next time, but until then, hasta mañana. you