Herman School of Business
New World Order...
For about five years I saw the bust coming and people didn’t listen. It frustrated me because it seemed so obvious. How can your household spend way more than you earn year in and year out and then wonder why you have to close up shop and find a new cheaper household? How could a business say a certain kind of debt was good…because it let them expand their customer base and the margin of profit could cover the cost of the money borrowed…and then not think about the possibility that those customers might stop coming and the debt would still be there?
Enough already.
The New World Order has arrived. It’s called pay-as-you-go. It worked for the first two hundred years of our countries existence and within today’s USA you can make it work for you again. But you must pay attention to the old world rules even in the new world messed up economy. Stop jumping into the bubble products and the bubble fads. Take a look at your purchases over the last twenty-four months. Look at all that wasted spending. At home and at your business.
You want some advice on how to survive. People have gone from “What, me worry” to “OK I am broke, now what do I do.” Business owners have double dipped on this great debt era…they spent more than the business made and then spent more at home than what they took home. The company is sinking into the abyss and you have way more debt on your house and car than they are worth.
I have no worry about owing more on my car than it is worth. My car is seven years old and I don’t owe anything on it. I didn’t hock my house past my eyeballs so it went up in value on paper and then came down in value on paper and nothing happened to me. I still owe what I did when it was even lower than today’s values.
Now, how does this help you…since you paid no attention to the practical rules of finance and you are having trouble breathing. Most people don’t want to move unless they really have to…but you could unload that car and buy something five years old and still drive from here to there. Stop traditional advertising in your company for awhile and save since marketing isn’t working right now anyway. Your customer who is buying would buy with or without the costly ad…probably because he has to buy somewhere…so hold back on the ads please.
Why not stop some useless meetings where everyone flies in and stays in a hotel and babbles about how bad things are. Hire someone like me to do a Webinar and save the event expense. Take one-third of what you would have spent to have the in-person meeting and give that amount in a bonus spread out amongst your workers and they will be happier than if they went to the airport, schlepped their bags to a hotel, fake smiled to each other for three days…and ran up the cost by watching in-room movies until three in the morning.
You want help…come and get it. But my help comes with the cold slap in the face of reality. If you want an easy way out…there isn’t one. You, or your company has been hit by a truck…filled with debt…and the road to recovery is painful…but worth it if you want to live again.
- Posted: 20 August 2008
- Comments: 0
- Category: Business failure
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