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TRANSCRIPTION WITH SPEAKERS
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[00:00] SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Canada's Podcast.
[00:05] SPEAKER_00: Hello, I'm Mario Toneguzi, managing editor of Canada's Podcast.
[00:09] SPEAKER_00: Today on Calgary's Podcast is my guest, Odd Hersh, who is a keynote speaker, economist
[00:16] SPEAKER_00: and author.
[00:18] SPEAKER_00: Thanks for joining us today, Todd.
[00:20] SPEAKER_00: Great to be here, Mario.
[00:21] SPEAKER_00: All right.
[00:22] SPEAKER_00: You know what?
[00:23] SPEAKER_00: I'm always curious.
[00:24] SPEAKER_00: How does one become an economist?
[00:27] SPEAKER_00: I imagine growing up as a little boy, you wouldn't have dreams of being an economist.
[00:35] SPEAKER_00: How did that all come about?
[00:37] SPEAKER_02: Well, it was actually kind of an accident, truth be knowing.
[00:41] SPEAKER_02: I started university at the University of Alberta way back in the 80s.
[00:46] SPEAKER_02: And like a lot of students, I was a math major only because math was my best grade in
[00:52] SPEAKER_02: high school.
[00:53] SPEAKER_02: I had no idea what you're going to do.
[00:56] SPEAKER_02: So I enrolled in the Faculty of Science.
[00:59] SPEAKER_02: That was a math major.
[01:00] SPEAKER_02: Long story short, math ended up not really being my passion or my great interest, but I
[01:06] SPEAKER_02: was also taking these courses called economics.
[01:09] SPEAKER_02: And I really did seem to connect with those.
[01:12] SPEAKER_02: Long story short, I ended up switching my major to economics, ended up doing a master's
[01:18] SPEAKER_02: degree at the University of Calgary and 30 years later here I am.
[01:23] SPEAKER_00: So what was it that attracted you to this whole economic field?
[01:31] SPEAKER_02: Yeah, well, when I was going back when I was in the Faculty of Math, the Faculty of Science,
[01:37] SPEAKER_02: as a math major, I couldn't really understand where is this all leading, but in economics,
[01:43] SPEAKER_02: now the math comes back to haunt you in the economics.
[01:46] SPEAKER_02: But I felt in economics, this was going somewhere.
[01:49] SPEAKER_02: We were now doing math for a reason.
[01:52] SPEAKER_02: We're trying to solve some problems, very important problems that affect people's lives,
[01:57] SPEAKER_02: around jobs, around employment, around a strong economy, giving people stability, giving
[02:04] SPEAKER_02: people income.
[02:05] SPEAKER_02: So that's what attracted me to it.
[02:07] SPEAKER_02: It was more of the social science aspect of economics rather than the pure science of
[02:13] SPEAKER_02: mathematics.
[02:14] SPEAKER_00: Now, Todd, you and I go back a number of years and I was always amazed at how I don't
[02:22] SPEAKER_00: want to say dumbing it down, but how you able to simplify things to an audience and talk
[02:31] SPEAKER_00: about economic concepts.
[02:33] SPEAKER_00: How important is that, especially today?
[02:37] SPEAKER_02: It's really important, maybe now more than ever because obviously the economy is top
[02:42] SPEAKER_02: of mind for people.
[02:44] SPEAKER_02: And I've always felt as an economist, as a professional speaker, as someone who shows up in media, if
[02:51] SPEAKER_02: what I'm saying cannot be understood by an ordinary person, and it doesn't mean they're
[02:57] SPEAKER_02: dumb.
[02:57] SPEAKER_02: I like that you hesitated around that dumbing it down because I always cringe when people
[03:02] SPEAKER_02: say you're good at dumbing it down because people aren't dumb.
[03:06] SPEAKER_02: They just need to be spoken to in a language that they understand.
[03:11] SPEAKER_02: And economists, like a lot of other professional speakers, they can be notoriously bad at just speaking
[03:19] SPEAKER_02: in a language that people don't understand.
[03:22] SPEAKER_02: Every time I speak, I always in the back of my mind, I always think, would my 85 year old
[03:27] SPEAKER_02: mother be able to understand what I'm saying?
[03:30] SPEAKER_02: She is not a dumb woman at all, but she's not an economist.
[03:34] SPEAKER_02: And if I'm not speaking in a language that she can understand, then I don't want to
[03:38] SPEAKER_02: say it.
[03:39] SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
[03:40] SPEAKER_00: So you spent a number of years with a financial institution as an economist.
[03:47] SPEAKER_00: Now you're on your own and tell me just a little bit about your business and what you
[03:55] SPEAKER_00: do.
[03:56] SPEAKER_02: Right.
[03:57] SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
[03:58] SPEAKER_02: So as you know, and maybe some of the listeners know I spent the better part of 20 years as
[04:04] SPEAKER_02: a professional economist, both with a bank at Canada and also with a not-for-profit research
[04:10] SPEAKER_02: group, and then most recently, 16 years with a bank based here in Alberta.
[04:16] SPEAKER_02: And then at age 55, I decided it was just at the end of COVID and I decided to make that
[04:23] SPEAKER_02: proverbial pivot in life.
[04:25] SPEAKER_02: And I decided it was time to leave my sort of corporate job in banking as a cheap economist
[04:32] SPEAKER_02: and strike out on my own.
[04:35] SPEAKER_02: I'm glad, you know, I'll be honest.
[04:36] SPEAKER_02: I'm glad I didn't decide to do that before COVID because COVID was a rough ride.
[04:42] SPEAKER_02: I know for a lot of professional speakers.
[04:44] Speaker UNKNOWN:
[04:45] SPEAKER_02: But in 2022, I sort of launched out on my own, hung a shingle, and now work sort of independently
[04:52] SPEAKER_02: as a professional speaker.
[04:55] SPEAKER_02: And I'm going to tell you, it has been a learning curve.
[04:58] SPEAKER_02: I've never had to market myself before.
[05:01] SPEAKER_02: I've never had to pay attention to branding myself.
[05:05] SPEAKER_02: All of those things that now as a self-employed entrepreneur, I've got a hustle and learn how
[05:11] SPEAKER_02: to do this.
[05:12] SPEAKER_02: So it's been exciting.
[05:13] SPEAKER_02: It's been fun.
[05:14] SPEAKER_02: What was the spark for you to pivot?
[05:18] SPEAKER_02: To pivot.
[05:19] SPEAKER_02: I guess it was, you know, when I had spent 16 years as a bank chief economist.
[05:25] SPEAKER_02: And I guess like a lot of people during COVID, I had that long conversation with myself thinking,
[05:31] SPEAKER_02: what does the next 15 years look like?
[05:34] SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
[05:34] SPEAKER_02: And I loved my job as a chief economist, as a bank economist.
[05:40] SPEAKER_02: But I don't know if I loved the idea of spending 15 more years doing the very same thing.
[05:47] SPEAKER_02: And it's no disrespect to my employer, but I had sort of talked out.
[05:52] SPEAKER_02: There was nowhere else for me to go within the bank, within that organization.
[05:56] SPEAKER_02: So I just decided, you know, to be brave, you hear a lot of people doing this, saying,
[06:02] SPEAKER_02: I'm going to, you know, take a bold step and branch out and do something different.
[06:09] SPEAKER_02: So I guess that's what it was for me is the opportunity to look at the next 15 years
[06:15] SPEAKER_02: and to build something.
[06:18] SPEAKER_00: Now, as a keynote speaker, Todd, like, who do you talk to?
[06:24] SPEAKER_02: I would say 80% of my clients for conferences would be industry associations.
[06:32] SPEAKER_02: So, you know, every industry has their industry association.
[06:36] SPEAKER_02: And most of them have conferences where everyone comes together.
[06:39] SPEAKER_02: That would be 80% of what my traditional clients look like.
[06:44] SPEAKER_02: The other 20% might be individual companies.
[06:47] SPEAKER_02: It might be a board of directors doing an off-site retreat, maybe something around strategy.
[06:55] SPEAKER_02: And they want to bring in an economist to help them sort of sort of out in their conversation.
[07:01] SPEAKER_02: Not only where the economy is going, but more importantly is how can they react to economic uncertainty?
[07:08] SPEAKER_02: Because that's really what we're looking at right now.
[07:11] SPEAKER_02: So most of my clients, those industry associations and then also some individual companies
[07:16] SPEAKER_02: or maybe a knock for profit.
[07:19] SPEAKER_01: Stay ahead of the game with our expert tips and strategies that will help your business thrive in a digital era.
[07:25] SPEAKER_01: Canada's podcast.com subscribe now.
[07:28] SPEAKER_00: Now, just going on what you just said, you know, I know on your website,
[07:35] SPEAKER_00: I've got just one line on your website, stop predicting, start preparing.
[07:40] SPEAKER_00: Can you talk a little bit about that and what that means?
[07:44] SPEAKER_02: Well, I'm really glad actually that is the line you noticed because that is intentional.
[07:50] SPEAKER_02: You know, as part of the branding and marketing exercise, I'm trying to brand myself.
[07:56] SPEAKER_02: And I have to stand out as an economist.
[07:59] SPEAKER_02: There's a lot of economists out there and a lot of really great speakers as economists.
[08:03] SPEAKER_02: So I have to differentiate myself.
[08:05] SPEAKER_02: And the way I've chosen to do that is to sort of back away from the traditional economic forecast
[08:13] SPEAKER_02: that I spent 30 years in my professional career preparing.
[08:18] SPEAKER_02: And you and I, we go back a long way.
[08:20] SPEAKER_02: You know that every quarter I had and here's my forecast for what's going to happen.
[08:25] SPEAKER_02: And now I don't know if this is a stage of life or a stage of career,
[08:29] SPEAKER_02: but I've kind of come to the conclusion that forecasting the economy is kind of a waste of time.
[08:34] SPEAKER_02: Because we're going to get it wrong.
[08:37] SPEAKER_02: And it's not because we're bad at doing the math.
[08:39] SPEAKER_02: It's not because we're sloppy economists.
[08:42] SPEAKER_02: It's just that the world in 2025 moves so quickly and there are so many disruptions.
[08:49] SPEAKER_02: And there are so many unforeseeable events that are going to throw the forecast off.
[08:56] SPEAKER_02: So now rather than predicting and forecasting,
[08:59] SPEAKER_02: I'm trying to get audiences to engage in more preparing for anything that can come our way.
[09:06] Speaker UNKNOWN:
[09:06] SPEAKER_02: So that is kind of my little tagline.
[09:08] SPEAKER_02: Stop predicting and start preparing.
[09:11] SPEAKER_00: Well, you know, I'm curious upon you know, as an economist yet, you know,
[09:18] SPEAKER_00: a lot of people are writing on you, right?
[09:21] SPEAKER_00: You talked about the quarterly forecast coming out, right?
[09:25] SPEAKER_00: There are a lot of people like, you know, looking at this,
[09:29] SPEAKER_00: maybe they're making a lot of decisions based on what you're saying and what you're predicting.
[09:35] SPEAKER_00: Did you ever like feel the pressure of that?
[09:38] SPEAKER_00: I think my gosh, like, oh, I feel terrible pressure.
[09:43] SPEAKER_02: I mean, in fact, I'll be honest, it's one of the reasons why I needed to step back
[09:48] SPEAKER_02: from being a bank economist because there was so much pressure.
[09:52] SPEAKER_02: I remember this one particular situation at the very beginning of COVID.
[09:58] SPEAKER_02: So this would have been, you know, late March of 2020.
[10:01] SPEAKER_02: Everyone remembers that time period.
[10:04] SPEAKER_02: And one of my, I guess, one of my bosses at the bank said,
[10:10] SPEAKER_02: we need you to come in and talk to this organization.
[10:14] SPEAKER_02: They want you to tell them what's going to happen.
[10:17] SPEAKER_02: And I remember, you know, and it's, I remember feeling this enormous anxiety
[10:23] SPEAKER_02: because I think everyone in the world was feeling anxious.
[10:26] SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
[10:26] SPEAKER_02: But I thought, what am I going to tell this group, you know, 300 people on a Zoom call?
[10:31] SPEAKER_02: And they want me to now tell them what this all means and what's going to happen.
[10:37] SPEAKER_02: And I thought, there's no possible way I can, I have no idea what's going to happen.
[10:42] SPEAKER_02: And I really did feel this anxiety about what am I supposed to say?
[10:47] SPEAKER_02: What am I supposed to tell these people?
[10:49] SPEAKER_02: I also remember having that exact same sensation around October of 2008.
[10:56] SPEAKER_02: A lot of listeners will also remember.
[10:58] SPEAKER_02: I distinctly remember driving out in my car.
[11:01] SPEAKER_02: I was speaking to a bank client event in Sherwood Park, Alberta.
[11:06] SPEAKER_02: And it was an evening event.
[11:08] SPEAKER_02: And as I was driving from downtown Edmonton out to Sherwood Park,
[11:11] SPEAKER_02: it was about five o'clock.
[11:13] SPEAKER_02: I was listening to the news.
[11:15] SPEAKER_02: And the Dow Jones was now down 20%.
[11:19] SPEAKER_02: President Bush had gathered the heads of all of the banks, the secretary of the Treasury.
[11:26] SPEAKER_02: Lehman Brothers had just collapsed.
[11:28] SPEAKER_02: It felt like capitalism was ending.
[11:32] SPEAKER_02: And now, I am expected to show up at a little wine and cheese event in Sherwood Park
[11:37] SPEAKER_02: until all these wealth management clients, what's going to happen to their money?
[11:45] SPEAKER_02: So, yeah, there are these moments where I can feel very anxious about what's happening.
[11:50] SPEAKER_02: And fast forward to today, now we've got an incoming president who is saying all kinds of wild things about economic pressure on Canada and tariffs.
[12:02] SPEAKER_02: I don't know what's going to happen.
[12:04] SPEAKER_02: No one really does.
[12:05] SPEAKER_02: The incoming president doesn't even really know what's going to happen.
[12:09] SPEAKER_02: But yeah, there are a lot of those situations.
[12:11] SPEAKER_02: And I think they are becoming more common and more frequent, where it is just impossible to predict what's going to happen in the economy next.
[12:21] SPEAKER_02: The only thing we can do is prepare for anything.
[12:24] SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and you know, and I'm just curious that you know you're talking about the president.
[12:28] SPEAKER_00: And you know, we've got, you know, up here, we've got political instability actually just recently spoke with Dan Kelly of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business who talked about political uncertainty and instability impacts small business owners in Canada.
[12:48] SPEAKER_00: So, you know, we've got a, you know, when the political situation right now is really up in the air, you know, until liberals decide on a new leader who knows when the next election is the whole political thing.
[13:06] SPEAKER_00: How much of an impact does that have on the economy will be especially?
[13:12] SPEAKER_02: Yeah, a significant, I mean, politics and economics, they're not the same, but they are adjacent absolutely.
[13:20] SPEAKER_02: And what happens politically tends to have a lot of influence on what goes on in the economy, not entirely.
[13:28] SPEAKER_02: I mean, there are economic drivers that go far behind just whoever is the prime minister or the president.
[13:34] SPEAKER_02: But what happens in politics can influence tremendously what happens in the economy.
[13:40] SPEAKER_02: And it's not great when we are in limbo like this, especially when we are seeing these pronouncements from the incoming president of the United States and we're kind of, you know, rudderless and Ottawa and no one knows what's going to happen.
[13:55] SPEAKER_02: I think, I mean, at this point, all we can really do is, is hunker down and hope for the best.
[14:02] SPEAKER_02: I don't know if that's the best strategy, but it's about the only thing we can do.
[14:07] SPEAKER_02: There are so many things that are out of our control right now politically.
[14:11] SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so I'm hopeful that in Ottawa, we're able to, you know, pull things together, find some leadership.
[14:17] SPEAKER_02: If that means going into an earlier election or not, I'll leave that to the political pundits to comment on it.
[14:25] SPEAKER_02: But economically, yeah, a lot does really depend on getting our political situation in order and some certainty around the leadership there.
[14:35] SPEAKER_00: Yeah, now besides speaking, Todd, you're also an author and your book, Spiders in Space.
[14:45] SPEAKER_00: I'm curious about that. Tell our viewers and listeners here, you know, what first of all, the meaning behind that title and what that book is all about.
[14:55] SPEAKER_02: Yeah, the Spiders in Space books successfully adapting to unwanted change.
[15:01] SPEAKER_02: That book came out in 2017 and then there was a sequel in 2021 called Spiders in COVID Space.
[15:08] SPEAKER_02: The Spiders metaphor, it all comes from experiments that NASA has been conducting with Spiders in zero gravity.
[15:17] SPEAKER_02: These experiments go all the way back to 1974.
[15:20] SPEAKER_02: And the basic, just of the research was, you know, the scientists wouldn't understand what what a spider do without gravity.
[15:30] SPEAKER_02: Because here on earth, the way spiders build their webs and we've all watched this, they lower themselves down on their threads using gravity, using their bodies weight to develop tension in their threads and thereby build their web.
[15:45] SPEAKER_02: But the scientists at NASA were interested, what would they do with out gravity?
[15:49] SPEAKER_02: So they took spiders up to the International Space Station and without gravity, I'll sort of make the story a little shorter.
[15:59] SPEAKER_02: Spiders were able to come up with totally new designs of building web.
[16:04] SPEAKER_02: Their old earth techniques of lowering themselves down was not working.
[16:09] SPEAKER_02: They developed new techniques and new structures of web.
[16:14] SPEAKER_02: And I found this fascinating as a metaphor for what do we, as entrepreneurs, as business owners, as ordinary citizens, what do we do when everything we thought we knew about our situation suddenly changes?
[16:29] SPEAKER_02: Well, that was the impetus around the book, this experiment of NASA and spiders.
[16:35] SPEAKER_02: And then what we did, I had a co-author on it.
[16:38] SPEAKER_02: We interviewed dozens of companies, entrepreneurs, individuals, not-for-profits, all of which shared a similar story.
[16:46] SPEAKER_02: And that is they were side-swiped by sudden unwanted change of some sort.
[16:51] SPEAKER_02: And then of course during COVID, COVID being the most remarkable example of sudden unwanted change.
[17:01] SPEAKER_02: But all of these businesses and entrepreneurs, they were able to reinvent themselves and pivot in a very creative way.
[17:09] SPEAKER_02: And we wanted to understand what is involved in that process.
[17:13] SPEAKER_02: In the, probably 2000 hours of taped interview we did with these companies, we distilled down to try to figure out what are the common traits and characteristics that were present in each one of these successful adapters, or as we started to call them successful spiders.
[17:33] SPEAKER_02: We compiled a list of these traits and characteristics, and then we wrote these two books around those traits, saying that every one of us, at some point, if it's as a business owner, as an individual, at some point we are going to get a phone call, we are going to get a text or an email, we're going to have a conversation where everything we thought we knew suddenly has changed.
[17:57] SPEAKER_02: And if we can put some of these traits into place beforehand, we'll be better prepared to navigate that change.
[18:05] SPEAKER_02: We don't make the change go away, and in some ways it doesn't make it any easier, but it will give us some sort of guidance and some, some north stars, sort of speak, and how do we navigate our way through that change?
[18:21] SPEAKER_01: Join our thriving community of like-minded individuals who share a passion for success and innovation.
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[18:30] SPEAKER_00: Did you look at your book on a personal level, considering what you decided to do in pivot in your career?
[18:39] SPEAKER_02: That's a good question. I didn't, I mean, we wrote both of these books before I made that plunge in before I decided to leave my economist, my bank job.
[18:50] SPEAKER_02: But I think there are a lot of those similarities. Now, the big difference is I made the decision to leave.
[18:57] Speaker UNKNOWN: Yeah, yeah.
[18:57] SPEAKER_02: So it's a little bit different than maybe being laid off. I've been laid off at two different points earlier in my career.
[19:04] SPEAKER_02: Those are great examples, and some of the profiles in the book, we did look at a couple of very prominent individuals who were, you know, pulled into a boardroom, and now you don't work here anymore.
[19:20] SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
[19:20] SPEAKER_02: And how did they reinvent themselves?
[19:22] SPEAKER_02: So at a personal level, it wasn't quite my situation where I was hit with unwanted change. I made that decision.
[19:32] SPEAKER_02: But there has been a lot of adjustment learning how to be a self-employed person.
[19:39] SPEAKER_02: A lot of change involved in that, and a lot of the traits that we wrote about in the book are relevant for sure.
[19:46] SPEAKER_00: Wonderful. So Todd, you were born in Alberta, right?
[19:52] SPEAKER_00: I was Edmonton.
[19:54] SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
[19:54] SPEAKER_00: Okay. So just being in this province and being a business owner or an entrepreneur or involved in business, like what do you see as the advantages of being here as opposed to another province maybe?
[20:13] SPEAKER_02: That's a great question.
[20:16] SPEAKER_02: I mean, maybe having lived my entire life in Alberta, I'm a little bit biased to Alberta. I mean, I love living here.
[20:24] SPEAKER_02: And I can't say. I mean, I don't have the experience of having lived in other provinces, so I don't have first-hand knowledge if it's actually easier setting up a business in Alberta or not.
[20:35] SPEAKER_02: I know a lot of business owners, they struggle with a lot of red tape. And that exists here in Alberta. It exists everywhere.
[20:43] SPEAKER_02: But I do think something that is very real in Alberta is that spirit of entrepreneurialism.
[20:53] SPEAKER_02: We used to joke, what do you call an unemployed calgaryen? And the answer is a consultant.
[20:59] SPEAKER_02: It tends to happen. And you know, this is a very typical model.
[21:04] SPEAKER_02: People use their job in the oil patch. And well, then they set up their own shop even if it's temporarily. And they consult.
[21:13] SPEAKER_02: And they don't do nothing. They actively look for work that they can pick up here in there.
[21:20] SPEAKER_02: So there is, I think, really that true spirit of entrepreneurialism. And I don't want to say that it's maybe here in Alberta more than other provinces.
[21:31] SPEAKER_02: But my experience is, especially here in Calgary, I've been here 36 years. And I always joke that I've been trapped with opportunity in this city.
[21:41] SPEAKER_02: I've been laid off twice. There have been at least five major recessions in this city in the last 36 years. Probably more if I looked at it.
[21:52] SPEAKER_02: But every time, you know, even in a layoff every time, even during a major recession, what I've always believed about this city and this province is that if you are willing to get involved in work hard and put yourself out there, opportunities always open up.
[22:09] SPEAKER_02: I had to take some pay cuts, you know, you lose a job. But there's always something that comes up if you are willing to work hard and to be an optimistic person.
[22:21] SPEAKER_00: Yeah, excellent. Well, thanks so much, Todd, for joining us today.
[22:25] SPEAKER_00: It's been wonderful to talk to you, Mario. Thanks for having me.
[22:28] SPEAKER_00: All right, that was Todd Hirsch, a keynote speaker, economist and author based in Calgary. I'm Mario Toneguzi, Managing Editor of Canada's podcast. Thanks for joining us today.
