Because of my relationship with Glazer Kennedy Insiders Circle and the Information Marketing Association, I am thrilled to bring you an interview with Dan Kennedy. As it is quite lengthy, I will begin the interview below and then provide a link to a PDF download of the entire interview. Trust me; this is most definitely worth printing and reading in its entirety.
How to Bite Back at the ‘Recession’
by Dan Kennedy
For those who don’t know, Dan Kennedy is a multi-millionaire serial entrepreneur; author of 11 bestselling business books, a popular speaker who has often appeared on programs with a wide variety of legendary entrepreneurs including Donald Trump, Jim McCann (1-800-Flowers), Debbi Fields (Mrs. Fields Cookies) and even Gene Simmons (KISS) as well as leading business speakers Zig Ziglar, Brian Tracy and Tom Hopkins; and, through his newsletters and networks of consultants and coaches, directly influences over 1-million business owners a year.
Jim: Let’s start right out with the so-called elephant in the room, the economy, and the dreaded ‘R’ word. Economists have been arguing over technicalities. The news media has had us deep in a recession for months. People do seem affected by gas and grocery prices. What’s your take on it all?
DAN: First, you always have to temper what people say with objective reality. For example, if you listened to all the weeping and wailing about gas prices, you’d presume everybody had their cars up on blocks, huddled in their homes as if in caves. But the recent Memorial Day weekend had only a 1% reduction in people driving 50 miles or farther from home according to AAA. There is no doubt that there are segments of the population severely affected….others slightly affected….some unaffected by this very specific inflation of gas and groceries. In big-ticket spending, the inevitable hitting of the wall with using appreciating home equity as an ATM has whacked big, dumb, slow to adapt companies like Home Depot and Lowes. Cities and businesses dependent on summer vacation dollars may be hurt this year. However, it’s also important to look at all this in full context. Fo r example, as recently as May, we were in the 4th straight week with declines in jobless claims – less people each week filing for unemployment. In early June, a number of retailers’ quarterly sales and profit reports beat Wall Street expectations. The stock market still reflects a fairly optimistic analysis of the overall economy. Real estate is not, as media reports, in an across the board collapse. In the Cleveland area, where I have one of my homes, foreclosure numbers are roughly 25% to 30% higher than normal, putting the area in the top 5 markets in the U.S. for foreclosure problems, but luxury home sales are healthy, and even more telling, commercial real estate transactions were up in 2007 vs. 2006 and are apace to grow again in 2008, and there’s more new investment in significant development in and around the city than anytime in the past 7 years. In short, saying “recession” is a big, fat, over-broad, over-sim plified generalization. There are plenty of consumers, plenty of investors and plenty of business owners spending plenty of money – and that’s one of the things I want to talk about, related to one of my new books. Further, there’s no profit in buying into this concept of a giant black cloud of doom descending over the entire land – and every business owner must constantly be asking himself ‘where’s the PROFIT in that ?’ – with regard to his own thinking, his own analysis and his own actions.
Jim: Before we get to the practical cures, if you will, let’s talk a little more about this thought process. How should businesspeople manage their own thinking about the economy?
To read the rest of this amazing interview, please click here.
