Tis the Season…
December 3rd, 2008 // 10:42 am @ Scott Manning
If you read the article on the back page of the Marketing To The Affluent Letter Dan wrote last month, it was titled, “Where Were You When The DOW Dropped 800 points” or something like that. You know there was a country song by, I think Alan Jackson, “Where Were You When The World Stopped Turning” and this related to the attacks on Sept. 11th, this, of course, is far more serious than the silly DOW.
Anyhow, my point, to echo Dan’s headline “Where Were You The Day After Thanksgiving” – BLACK FRIDAY 2008…
I’ll tell you where I was in just a minute. But first, let me tell you what I heard about and noticed…
One of my offices is right next to a large Shopping Mall and has a Toys R Us right next door – lines were wrapped around the building at, drum roll please…4:30am! I know some people who partake of this ritual of Black Friday Shopping, I’m not one of them.
But I was several hours from Indiana and there at nearly all the stores, the parking lot was jammed and streets backed up, 20-30 minutes just to park…security guards all around…and in some stores, at 10:00am, shelves were already empty, sales already gone, stuff sold out.
Plus, what about New York, you know, the “Wal-Mart incident” – very tragic and sad what happened, but none the less, that Wal-Mart (and nearly all others) had lines out the door waiting to get in and…
L O O K A R O U N D – B R O W S E – S E E W H A T T H E S A L E S W E R E – M A K E T H E I R L I S T S!
Ha – They weren’t doing any of that…they were lined up for one reason and one reason only…
TO BUY STUFF! SPEND MONEY! FUEL THE ECONOMY!
Now to be fair, I did notice airports less busy, and Saturday and Sunday seemed slower than normal.
None the less, Tis The Season, and ain’t no Recession going to stand in the way of the Holidays J
So where were you?
I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving and enjoyed your family and had some time to relax.
I jumped on a plane Wednesday night headed down to Charleston for some relaxing stay at the Pet Friendly Penthouse at the Residence Inn (some time I will tell you some “behind the scenes” stuff about Marriott, truly a remarkable company and very successful) – I stay at Marriott almost exclusively now…
Anyhow, I finished up some work Wednesday night and enjoyed a day long Thanksgiving visit with some extended Family on Thursday. Went for a long walk, listened to old war stories, played with the dogs, and just had some time to – do nothing – come on, it was just one day…got to make the most of it.
Then Friday after jumping a few curbs and sneaking down the security lot of the Shopping Mall to avoid the long traffic lines (I did a little recon work the night before, just for fun, because my Hotel was back behind the mall, I knew the short cuts) I just wanted to see if the predictions were correct, if everyone would stay home on Friday – opposite occurred.
They all might have been spending less money than the year before, but they were still spending.
I got back on the plane Friday and enjoyed very relaxing, and ON-TIME flights because of the slow Travel day after Thanksgiving…it was a fast 36 hours, but geez you can’t vacation away your life…
Actually I needed to return early to take care of some stuff over the weekend, but 2 other things I will tell you – first, when my family drove home on Sunday, it took nearly 5 hours longer than it normally does, not because of any accidents or road work, because EVERYBODY else was driving home too…people were traveling, mainly by car, I guess. Except that even when I tried to extend my stay and come home Saturday morning, I couldn’t because EVERY single flight other than the 2 I was on, had no seats available. Sold Out.
Let me get to my point. I had a nice time, I did it my way, fast and to the point, quality time, nothing taken for granted, but no time wasted either. It still amazes me that in our World you can basically do whatever you want… We are all in control.
I talked about this last Chapter Meeting. And it was an analogy from Dan about Football…and it relates directly to our Economy. 2 big lessons.
ONE – Just like in football, there are always GOOD TEAMS and BAD TEAMS, same game, basically same game plan, and if you match up any two players, with only few exceptions, they’re about equal, but when it all gets put together, it’s the composite of the team and the small little slight edges each player can provide that together make up a WIN – it’s just about a FEW things going right – not EVERYTHING – a FEW THINGS!
Lesson – someone will always WIN someone will always LOSE, someone will always SUCCEED someone will always FAIL, someone will always MAKE MONEY someone will always GO BROKE
There isn’t a whole bunch of differences between the 2 possible outcomes…there are just a FEW REALLY IMPORTANT differences, a FEW!
TWO – The fact is You can’t have it all. It’s impossible. Because of Opportunity Cost, when you choose to do one thing, you choose to not do another thing.
Lesson – It isn’t often the things we choose to do that dictate our results and lifestyle, it’s normally the things we choose not to do…the costs of opportunities not taken.
It’s impossible to stop the flow of money and the capitalistic phenomenon of our Country, just as BLACK FRIDAY illustrated. And while we may be down a few percentage points from last year, we’re still far ahead where we once were, a successful situation by any commonsense standard.
You can choose your lifestyle as an Entrepreneur.
You can choose your level of success in Business.
You can choose your outcomes for 2009.
Category : Blog
