Turning Lemons into Lemonade!
Turning the bad news into good news for your business.
The news is terrible! Everyday I am reading about gas prices going up, breaking $4 a gallon!
(My Canadian friends are smiling because they have been paying those prices for years.)
But the predictions that follow – the worst recession in decades, lay offs, high prices (except for housing which is dropping like a stone), and the list goes on and on. I even saw a story about a woman who stopped eating breakfast in order to afford to put gas in her car. It doesn’t take much of this horrible news to make you want to stay in bed and pull the covers up over your head. Because if you missed hearing it, just go out and talk to a few people and they will tell you everything that they heard.
It’s bad and getting worse!
Or is it? If you have read, seen or listened to the Secret, you know that what you focus on grows. So the more you find yourself focusing on lack, on troubles, on the no’s in life – is it surprising that you get more and more of them?
So let’s look in a different way about all the bad news you are hearing and let’s do it from the perspective of your Direct Sales business (although it could be from other perspectives as well).
Let’s take gas prices first. What does it mean that gas is costing more? Well the average family is now spending double or about $400 per month to fill up their tanks.Here’s the good news for us:
- They need to make extra money.
- They would likely be interested in doing something that doesn’t require much driving i.e. a home based business
- They probably would be interested to hear how they could save $200 – $600 a month on their taxes and at the very least make some of those expensive trips tax deductible.
Lay offs. United is planning to lay off 1,000 pilots (and then thousands of support people to those pilots).
Here’s the good news for us:
- They need to find another way to make money. Note, I did not say a “job” as it is unlikely in a shrinking economy that they can find a comparable job in their same field.
- They are use to making good money so they will be looking for businesses that pay well.
- They are professional people who know professional people.
Home prices are dropping, affecting the construction industry and all the support systems to the construction and real estate industry.
Here’s the good news for us:
- There are a lot of businesses (and real estate is just one) that will be temporarily affected by the recession. Why do I say “temporarily affected”? Because I’ve been through at least 4 of these recessions, and housing always bounces back. So many companies are looking for ways to just stay in the game. Offering a realtor a way to “tide them over” this recession could be very attractive to them. They can stay in the business but market something that adds value to their prospects (buyers as well as sellers) and puts cash in their pockets.
- Many business owners are looking to diversify or add an additional profit center. i.e. chiropractors can add nutritional products, salon owners can add beauty products, accountants can add legal service plans, etc Some of them will do so temporarily, some permanently.
These are just a few examples of turning what appear to be negatives into positives. Let me throw out just one more. In every recession (and even during the great Depression) many people lost money, jobs and hope. But during that same time, other people made a fortune (can you say IBM?). What was the difference? We could argue that it was a lot of different things, but the most important, I believe, was the attitude of the people involved.
When stocks go down some people see it as bad thing, others think of it as stocks going on sale. When housing prices go down, some people see it as a bad thing, others see it as an opportunity to buy at lower prices. The rich (who are usually looking at things contrary to the poor) are the ones who take advantage and not just because they have money, but because they have a different attitude.
I encourage you to check your thoughts and your attitude. Are you worried and concerned about what is happening or are you looking for the opportunities that are out there? Are you reading the front page of the paper and getting depressed or are you studying the financial section for ideas of how to grow your business? Are you talking doom and gloom or are you speaking with optimism and excitement about what is happening?
Your attitude, your perspective, your thoughts will attract to you exactly what you are focused on.
When we speak next, I hope that you will tell me how you took off your dark glasses to really look for the opportunities that surround you. That you blessed a lot of people by showing them opportunities that they did not realize even existed and that you changes your life and the lives of others by really believing in the future and what can happen for all of us when we look at the world with gratitude and optimism rather than fear and trepidation.
To a bright and rewarding future for all of you, no matter what the news is saying!
