Wednesday Words
To Go Where Your VisionPoints, a few inspiration points for you and your business.
People want economy, and they’ll pay any price to get it.
—Lee Iacocca
Iacocca’s wise statement, dear reader, is going to be the theme for business this year. He wrote it years ago, as a man who’d seen our economy churn many times, taking businesses who missed this principle with it.
If your products or services can deliver on this basic desire for “economy” in 2010, while things *are* getting better but no one yet *feels* much better, I predict you will have a winner.
Grow and be well,
Kelly Erickson
P.S. Just for fun, a couple of my old predictions posts:
This one, where I got the length of ouch! pretty close to right but didn’t realize that we’d be wooshing back on a macro scale way before we felt better on a personal level: Put a Lion in Your Pocket;
and You Are the Canary in a Coalmine, written just three months before the market began its historic surge.
If you enjoyed this post, please Subscribe (it's free!) 
Comment 
Share
Trackback 
20 January 2010, 1:20 pm
Agreed.
And my take on “the downturn”. So as you know, I work in the nuclear industry.
India commissioned two new nuclear power plants in December, and will be commissioning another in February.
South Korea just beat out France on a $20B US deal to build four reactors for the UAE, *and* they’ll be building a small research reactor for Jordan (Canada sold SK the original design).
China are building reactors like gangbusters…
Argentina (yes, Argentina) will be building reactors throughout South America.
What downturn?
The US, Canada, the UK, France, and so on – we grew complacent. We grew greedy. We screwed up big time.
Or rather, our politicians and financial “experts” did.
You and I, on the other hand, we are agile.
I expect to be doing business some time during my career in India, China, Argentina, Brazil… because those countries are willing to pay any price.
20 January 2010, 1:31 pm
what do you exactly mean a desire for economy?
20 January 2010, 3:16 pm
Brett,
‘Zactly. And your work *will* be economical to them, because you can pack a career’s worth of value into it without any overhead or masses of red tape.
Todd,
Ever buy a gorgeous pair of Kenneth Coles, or Ralph Lauren Purple Label, etc. that you totally couldn’t afford, because they were 15% off and you might never see a price like that again?
That’s economy at any price.
Or to look at it from Iacocca’s point of view, the way people will buy a fancy schmancy car that claims the very latest fuel efficiency blah-blahs to save pennies every week at the gas tank, without realizing that they’ve paid so much more for it than Joe down the street for a slightly less efficient model… and they’ll have to own their car twelve years more than Joe to actually save money. But seeing fewer pence at the pump reminds them of their “smarts” every week.
Perceived costs (I want something that saves me money!) versus Real costs (pay anything to get it).
Regards,
Kelly
20 January 2010, 4:15 pm
Thanks Kelly. I get what you mean now. If people feel smart about the deal they are getting, they may well pay a lot for it.