Recession?

Over the last week there have been a number of economic indicators that have flown in the face of all the doom and gloom that has been suffocating us of late.

Unemployment had been expected to soar last month. What happened? It dropped in almost every state of Australia. We have been running at a trade surplus for February and March.

Housing approvals are up. Retail sales are up.
Economists are calling the results “rogue figures.” In English that simply means the outcomes are different to their opinions and so must be wrong in some way.

Last week we looked at perception and reality. In the case above, the estimates of the ‘economists’ are perceptions and the outcomes are reality.

When you have a recession you expect housing demand to drop, unemployment to soar, overseas trade to run at a deficit and retail spending to plunge.

In Forbes magazine, one of the most respected financial publications in the US, there was an article this week with the headline “The Recession is over.”

As in Australia, they pointed to a number of economic indicators that had ‘turned around’ and signs of the beginnings of a return of confidence and economic activity were evident.

That is not to say there will not be difficult times ahead and that we can now relax and we will see a return of the ‘good old days.”

What it does mean is that we are picking ourselves up, in spite of the doomsday predictors and the future is looking more positive than for some time.

Perception is a powerful force and we can put it to work for us all. How do we do that?

Let me tell you something interesting. The more agreement there is in terms of perception the greater chance it will become reality.

Therefore, what we can do is see all the positives in the services we offer and gain client’s agreement on those positives.

Did you know that every dollar that is spent in the economy can mean up to twenty dollars of wealth creation?

It’s called the accelerator effect. Here’s how it works.
You buy something for ten dollars
The seller makes one dollar profit
The nine dollars goes into wages, inventory costs etc
The worker buys food with his share of the nine dollars, say five dollars
The company buys more stock, say three dollars
The government gets one dollar in tax

Each of the recipients of money then spends it with similar outcomes. In our restricted example ten dollars becomes twenty dollars and that’s just the start of the process.

So, the confidence to spend one dollar is where it all starts. How a recession comes about is simply the unwillingness to spend, which shrinks the level of economic activity and so it goes.

The single most important driver of economic activity is CONFIDENCE.

Another way of saying confidence is certainty. Certainty comes from what you perceive; in other words, PERCEPTION.

Get enough people agreeing on something and it becomes REALITY.

Reality is a solid, concrete outcome.

So,

BE POSITIVE

GAIN AGREEMENT ON POSITIVES

INCREASE YOU CLIENT’S CERTAINTY BY BEING CERTAIN YOURSELF.

Remember, you get what you focus on.

Focus on avoiding failure and you will create failure.

Focus on finding ways to increase the positives in your life and you will prosper.