It is my pleasure to welcome you to the first BusinessEase eZine. This is being launched in conjunction with the creation of the new BusinessEase website. If you would like to check out the new website go to www.businessease.com.au. My thanks to Stuart and Brad at C2 Media who developed the website. I trust that this eZine will be the source of some sound business wisdom and the source of an odd laugh or two. If you don't want to receive this eZine, please click on the unsubscribe link below.

This is the proverbial question that is asked by children on a long car drive. We used to live in Adelaide, South Australia. We were driving from Adelaide to Melbourne, which is a distance of about 750 km (about 460 miles) and after about 20 minutes of driving one of my small children asked the dreaded question "Are we there yet?". To which I replied (obviously displaying years of parental wisdom) "We have a looooong way to go yet!"

 

In our current economic circumstances many business owners will be wondering when the bottom of the economic cycle has been reached. "Are we there yet?" is the question that many of us would like to know the answer to. In the last week the world leaders have returned from the conference/talk-fest arranged by President Bush to discuss the economic “crisis”. One radio report that I heard regarding this conference said that the world leaders were warning of dire consequences if urgent, coordinated action was not taken by the governments of the world. According to this radio program, we are definitely not there yet. Our newspapers and television programs are full of dire warnings about what might happen.

 

I have noticed over the years that I have been in business that markets and, particularly, the media, over-react to circumstances. Emotion overruns reason and when people are in a fearful state, this is doubly so. But, there is always another side to the story that the newspapers are reporting. The media makes its money by getting people to listen to, or read, the output of the media outlet. The fact is that our attention is drawn towards things that sounds fearful – and media operators know it. We don't want to be caught out by something that we didn't know. We don't want some dire consequence to happen to us because we didn't know about something. The problem is that the media, through its desire to scare us, rarely gives a balanced view of what is happening.

 

I must congratulate the Commonwealth Bank in a recent edition of their newsletter "Economic Insights" for pointing out that there are still many positive things about the Australian economy. For example, their bulletin for the week beginning 2 November 2008 states that:

 

I am not suggesting for a moment that we should blithely ignore the economic circumstances around us. But our challenge, as people in business, is to maintain a balanced and, as much as possible, unemotional view of what is going on in the economy.  In this way, we will more readily spot the opportunities that will arise. In times of severe economic downturn, there are always people who make a great deal of money from it.

A business owner tells her friend that she is desperately searching for an accountant.
Her friend asks, “Didn’t your company hire an accountant a short while ago?”
The business owner replies, “That’s the accountant I’ve been searching for.

“The Chinese use two brush strokes to write the word 'crisis'. One brush stroke stands for danger; the other for opportunity. In a crisis, be aware of the danger-but recognize the opportunity”.  John F. Kennedy

 

Thanks for reading. See you next time. If you would like to make a comment on what I have said above, please e-mail me at ease@businessease.com.au. Also, you might like to check out my Business Blog and Australian Tax Blog at www.businessease.com.au.

 

 

 

John Jeffreys

Managing Director