Eric Blue of Nevly On 5 Things You Need To Succeed In The Modern World Of Finance & Fintech
An Interview With Jason Hartman
Find your support group and invest in it. Be as good a listener as you are a speaker and make yourself emotionally available. You can’t do this work alone. Find the people who create a safe space for you to be vulnerable, and once you find it, treasure it like it’s precious; because it is.
As part of my series about the “How to Navigate and Succeed in the Modern World of Finance”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Eric Blue.
Eric Blue is the Founder and CEO of Nevly, a financial health startup headquartered in Washington, D.C. Before starting Nevly, Eric co-founded a private equity buyout shop that focused on making control and non-control investments into privately held and thinly traded public companies. Earlier in his career, he held investment banking roles at Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers and held associate roles in the M&A and Public Securities groups at two international law firms. Eric is a native of New Orleans, where he attended Xavier University and graduated with a BS in mathematics. Eric later studied law at The University of Texas, specializing in corporate law and tax structuring.
Thank you so much for your time! I know that you are a very busy person. Our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you got started?
Born and raised in New Orleans, I stayed in Louisiana until I graduated from Xavier University with a B.A. in mathematics, before attending The University of Texas School of Law. After finishing up school, I spent five years between two international law firms where I focused on capital markets. As you can tell, I’ve always had an interest in numbers and how they impact people. At the core, that is what inspired me to launch Nevly in 2021, which launched its first product, Nevly Money, in 2023 — the passion to utilize emerging technologies to improve the lives and financial health of individuals nationwide.
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lessons or ‘take aways’ you learned from that?
There is definitely no shortage of these; the challenge is picking one. I was working on a debt restructuring transaction early in my career, and in order to close a transaction, the company (whom my firm represented) required that notice of the transaction appear in a newspaper. As the youngest member of the team I was responsible for ensuring that the notice was placed in the proper newspaper on time. The week of closing, I began working on publishing the notice — only to find that the papers had no space. Rather than tell my boss, immediately I decided to try and figure it out. After days of haggling, I managed to get a spot in a paper that met the requirements and ensured that the notice got published. On the day before closing, my boss asked for evidence of notice publication and I sent him an email with a link to the cartoon section of the paper where the notice was located. He walked into my office 2 minutes later. -___-
Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?
Nevly Money, our recently launched subscription product, leverages dramatic advances in financial technology to deliver a personalized, data-driven alternative to traditional credit repair for the millions of Americans who need to improve their credit score in a fast and cost-effective way. We are super excited and believe that this product has the potential to completely upend the legacy credit repair space.
Having recently launched the product and established that it provides a superior approach to traditional credit repair, we are now in the phase of scaling up our marketing efforts. We want to put the product in front of more people who are in desperate need of improving their credit scores and ultimately their overall financial health. If I am right, Nevly Money is going to help a lot of people repair their credit and create stability for themselves moving forward — especially those in underserved communities.
Thank you for that. Let’s now shift to the central focus of our discussion. Extensive research suggests that “purpose driven businesses” are more successful in many areas. When your company started what was its WHY, its purpose?
This company was founded and remains guided by one enduring principle: We believe that technology can be leveraged to help money-marginalized people get more out of their money.
I did not have an ideal upbringing, but no matter how difficult some of my early experiences were, they managed to imprint something in my spirit that would form the ethos of Nevly. Experiencing financial instability — being evicted 26 times when I was in high school and not knowing when I’d next have a home — helped me understand what so many Americans experience for much of their lives.
These experiences shaped me in ways I sometimes cannot articulate. No matter how successful I became, personally, on the inside I constantly felt like something was missing, and that feeling grew more pronounced everyday until nothing else mattered (not the money, not the fancy offices, nothing)… I had to find my purpose. I found it in founding Nevly. In some real ways, this work has saved my life, and I am forever grateful.
Do you have a “number one principle” that guides you through the ups and downs of running a business?
Don’t be discouraged if things don’t work the first, second or even third time — creating and running a successful business takes time, patience and trial and error. You are going to fail more than you succeed, and you have to be okay with that, because that’s the process. I saw a meme several years ago that I think sums up this approach: “When life knocks you down, get up look it right in the face and tell it ‘you hit like a #$%*^.’” :)
If a fellow business leader would ask you for advice about whether to bootstrap or to look for VC capital, how would you help them weigh the pros and cons of that decision?
This is a personal decision for each and every founder. The greatest advice I would give other founders is to find a way to get into the mental and emotional space where you can make this decision on your own without a ton of outside influences. For me, I didn’t have a choice in the matter, honestly.
Raising money for pre-revenue and pre-product startups is hard… Doing so as a first-time founder is doubly hard, and there was a unique reason why bootstrapping worked for me. It really gave me the space to design products based on what customers were telling me they wanted as opposed to what investors might want or what I, as a founder, might decide to build. I was forced to put my ear to the concrete and listen to what it was telling me.
The con of it all is obviously that you have significantly less resources, and you will struggle. I ended up selling everything I had to my name to get a version of Nevly Money built. There were days that would extend into weeks where I would pay for some expenses for the business and wouldn’t have money to buy myself food. But through it all, I wouldn’t change it for anything in the world. It locked me into my purpose and linked that purpose arm-in-arm with the people we aim to help. It’s been magical!
What measure do you use to determine the value of a company? What advice would you give to other leaders about how to get an optimal evaluation of their business?
So this is a tricky question because there is how a founder / leader should evaluate their company, and how the market will value an early stage company. I’ll begin with the latter. At the end of the day, the market is evaluating three factors for early stage companies: (i) are you solving a problem worth solving (large enough addressable market); (ii) do you have an approach to solving it in a way that is novel and defensible; and (iii) can you actually do it?
With the exception of item one, the other two items are best proven out by getting the product built and getting it into the hands of your target customer as quickly as possible. From a founder’s perspective (and disclaimer is that this line of thinking may not be the norm), I measure the value of the business by asking myself this question: Are we building something that matters and are we doing it for the right reason? If we are right, does the world look different after we are done? This is what drives me, and it’s how I determine how much value we are creating inside of the business.
What would you advise to a founder who initially went through years of successive growth, but has now reached a standstill. From your experience do you have any general advice about how to boost growth and “restart their engines”?
As cliche as it sounds, get back to first principles. Go back to the first set of assumptions that led to the initial periods of growth and start testing which if any of those assumptions have changed. As you go through this exercise and find assumptions that are no longer true, ask yourself how you would approach going to market in light of this assumption no longer being valid, and test it iteratively. Keep meticulous records and when possible, never test more than one variable at a time. This will allow a founder to take the business completely apart and put it back together brick by brick, identifying what has become the weakest link or links in their customer factory (reference to Ash Maurya’s Running Lean).
What are the most common finance mistakes you have seen other businesses make? What should one keep in mind to avoid that?
There are probably two I see often. First, being too optimistic and hiring or burning cash too far out in front of your revenue. By nature, many founders are optimists, and it’s common to underestimate how long it takes for the revenue to show up. Some founders will hire for what the business will need as the revenue shows up, and if the revenue is delayed or later than expected, the business is not cost-heavy.
The second mistake is a natural result of a decade-plus global monetary policy that effectively made capital free. This resulted in startups being able to raise capital at ever-increasing valuations based on marginal developments in the maturity of the business model. What resulted has been a focus on developing products, as opposed to sustainable and scalable business models. The result has been an entire generation of startups and early stage businesses with business models that are unsustainable without constant infusions of additional capital. I think this waters down the innovative ecosystem and hampers capital flowing to more efficient uses.
OK, here is the main question of our discussion. Based on your experience and success, what are the five most important things one should know in order to succeed in the modern finance industry? Please share a story or an example for each.
I would offer the following pieces of advice as for as the most important things I believe are critical to success in finance.
First, you have to be a master of your craft, which requires you to put time in. I believe this is probably the most important piece of advice as we live through an era when society has convinced us that we can become an expert at something simply by watching YouTube or TikTok videos. But that is not enough. When I was a first-year analyst at an international investment bank, my mentor at the time gave me two books — Security Analysis and Intelligent Investor by Ben Graham. These books contain 1000+ pages of technical analysis on how to analyze and value securities and entire companies. I would work 12–15 hours per day, 6 days a week and spend a couple of hours each night digging into the books. Like anything in life…if you want it bad enough you’ll put the work in.
Second, you have to define your path and your journey. Please avoid chasing fads, trends or money. If you do this the right way, you are going to spend a greater percentage of your life working or thinking about work than any other thing. If it is not truly for you you will grow to hate it, and in the mental and emotional battle of man versus the job/career you hate, the job/career will always win. I struggled with this early in my career. I chose career paths because they paid extremely well or because I wanted to convince people that I shouldn’t have cared about what they thought was important. It got to a point where I was well paid but extremely unhappy. When I launched Nevly, I vowed I would live with purpose and my work would be purpose-driven and mission-focused, and I haven’t looked back once.
Third, if you want to do this at a high level, you have to prioritize your entire self — mental, physical, spiritual and emotional. What does this mean? Find something physical that you can commit to doing consistently and do it. Find a therapist, and if you don’t believe in therapy, find two therapists. Figure out what you believe in from an existential standpoint and spend time learning and immersing yourself in it. This is hard work and you need a strong, well-rounded spirit to do it consistently at a high level.
Fourth, find your support group and invest in it. Be as good a listener as you are a speaker and make yourself emotionally available. You can’t do this work alone. Find the people who create a safe space for you to be vulnerable, and once you find it, treasure it like it’s precious; because it is.
Lastly, have fun.
Which tips would you recommend to your colleagues in your industry to help them to thrive and not “burn out”?
Focus on something you really care about and you won’t burn out easily. For me, financial health is personal — as a kid, I experienced the hardships of financial instability firsthand, and I’ve seen how destructive it can be. That motivates me every day to help others improve their own financial health, including by making the Nevly brand synonymous with consumer financial wellness. If you can connect your personal goals and interests to your work, it’s much easier to avoid burning out.
You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)
Honestly, it would be the movement that I am creating with Nevly. Here is a look into the Nevly mindset and mission:
We believe the future of humanity lies in society’s ability to strengthen the most vulnerable and we believe that financial health is ground zero. We believe financial stability can positively impact everything from food and housing stability to crime prevention in urban communities.
We envision a future where the products we develop become the tools of choice for consumers and institutions alike focused on strengthening global communities one household at a time.
In addition to strengthening financial health using real-time data, we will deliver an ecosystem of tools that allow consumers to use their money the way they want to without excessive fees and restrictions.
We will launch and service consumer friendly lending products and put them into the hands of consumers using our FHA Scoring System. Many of these lending products will be designed internally to provide consumers with better alternatives to existing predatory products.
We will partner with other mission aligned institutions to deliver a new era of banking, credit and investment products that are tailored to the unique needs of individual consumers as well as the global communities within which they live.
The future is now.
Nevly
Reshaping Tomorrow Today
How can our readers further follow your work online?
You can keep up with Nevly Money on our website and connect with me on LinkedIn. All important business updates and interviews I participate in will be reflected in one of these two places.
This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for joining us!
About The Interviewer: Jason Hartman is the Founder and CEO of Empowered Investor. Jason has been involved in several thousand real estate transactions and has owned income properties in 11 states and 17 cities. Empowered Investor helps people achieve The American Dream of financial freedom by purchasing income property in prudent markets nationwide. Jason’s Complete Solution for Real Estate Investors™ is a comprehensive system providing real estate investors with education, research, resources and technology to deal with all areas of their income property investment needs. Through Jason’s podcasts, educational events, referrals, mentoring and software to track your investments, investors can easily locate, finance and purchase properties in these exceptional markets with confidence and peace of mind.
Starting with very little, Jason, while still in college at the age of 19, embarked on a career in real estate. While brokering properties for clients, he was investing in his own portfolio along the way. Through creativity, persistence and hard work, he earned a number of prestigious industry awards and became a young multi-millionaire. Jason purchased a California real estate brokerage firm that was later acquired by Coldwell Banker. He combined his dedication and business talents to become a successful entrepreneur, public speaker, author, and media personality. Over the years he developed his Complete Solution for Real Estate Investors™ where his innovative firm educates and assists investors in acquiring prudent investments nationwide for their portfolio. Jason’s sought after educational events, speaking engagements, and his popular “Creating Wealth Podcast” inspire and empower hundreds of thousands of people in 189 countries worldwide.
While running his successful real estate and media businesses, Jason also believes that giving back to the community plays an important role in building strong personal relationships. He established The Jason Hartman Foundation in 2005 to provide financial literacy education to young adults providing the all-important real world skills not taught in school which are the key to the financial stability and success of future generations. We’re in a global monetary crisis caused by decades of misguided policies and the cycle of financial dependence has to be broken, literacy and self-reliance are a good start. Visit JasonHartman.com for free materials and resources.
