31. High and Low economy or only another roller coaster

High and Low economy or only another roller coaster 31.

How will a high and low economy and a recession affect you and your business? Is that a disaster or only a kind of roller coaster effect going down and then up again? Maybe you are one of those who think that if the market dives it will soon resurface again, it’s just a matter of holding on. In one way you are right. It will go up again. But remember, the transformation roller coaster economics never comes up again where it went down! You might stay there for ages and wonder where and when it will come back up. The truth is that the market goes down and up but it will take new directions from the bottom of the economy curve (the recession). And all this with new demands and digital technologies that disrupt a lot of old and analog steps in this process, providing new possibilities that will drive an economy like a roller-coaster.

There is one big difference between economy curves and a roller coaster. The curves have no end and no start station; it’s an endless process. After a number of ups and downs in the economy curves they always enter a new chapter, a fact called a paradigm-shift (Thomas Kuhn, Germany). Remember that our teenagers today (Generation Z) are the last of our character. After that, we’ll have the next paradigm-shift, as we will call the 4th industrial revolution. Each full economy curve normally takes around 8-10 years. However, the last high economy that ended in October 2007 was the second longest we’ve had for the last hundred years. It also took the biggest dive of recession since the Kreuger-crash 1929 (named after the Swedish Match King and industrialist Ivar Kreuger) and is one of the Standard & Poor’s 500 “Four Bad Bear Markets”.

As I mentioned earlier the market doesn’t resurface where it dives. Therefore, there is plenty of work to do, both for you and your customers when business stops growing and starts diving. Every moment you can spend must be used to prepare for a new change. Learn by communicating with your customer about how their consumer-demands change, talk about where and how the upcoming turns will have an effect. Discuss where, why and how you all can benefit from the new needs of your customers. Be ready for change when the market falls in the economy roller-coaster-ride and even more importantly – where it will turn up. After the plunge, statistics show that it will take an average of four years before we’ll see the effect of all the work that’s been done by the whole market to change and go upwards again. The difference this time is that you can be more prepared! This time you can add a lot of things to yourself, a lot of new knowledge, new tools so you can climb and add value to you and your business. You can prepare and enter a new and more up-to-date business model that changes toward new digital values, using new tools for responding better to your customer’s demand and need as a competitive advantage for your company in the next high economy. You can invest and upgrade the whole relationship with your customer.

Act proactive to your customer, be prepared when they start to slip and present a new value proposition when they need it the most. In hard times, you can add new products to your customer, offering up-to-date tools that uses the future disrupted way of production (digital). Time to market is today maybe the biggest bottleneck to you and your customers. With knowledge and communication in place on the way down into the low economy, you can implement and execute to be able to scale your new business model as you climb up in the next high economy. There are no shortcuts in this process. It’s painful, I’m sorry but that is a fact. Everyone that has been through the process will testify to that. Two companies (Nordvalls Etikett and StrongPoint Labels) that already have done this transformation share their stories in two cases earlier in this book, check out their testimonies.

When is the right time for me? How can I see the signs? What shall I look for? Already when these questions enter your mind it’s a big warning signal, let me explain. Most of us don’t like change. We don’t embrace the risk that comes with changing. And leading and commanding through change is even worse, even if you know that the actions are necessary. You start to think that it might not include you and it is hard thinking about leaving your comfort zone. You’re facing to fall down at the same time that you need to invest. The fear for this happening to you is already there when the question comes to mind.

I’ve many times been quoted in the media as one who “likes the low economy”. People often ask me: how can you do that? Well, they will understand if they read my books. The great feeling and the kick it provides in seeing my customers succeed is worth all the money and time spent on this. When you see the whole circle and then prepare step-by-step, bringing you forward to new and more profitable levels. In the end, it’s my passion in life. I hope you will find that as well, that there has to be pain and both personal and real investments, before it will pay off. Remember: “if something is easy, everyone can do it and if everyone can do it, there will be NO money in it”. And (this is important to me and how I use it myself) we grow only through the success of our customers. If we add value to our customers and they grow with their customers, we all will grow together. So far it has been successful for all of us having done that through the whole transformation, and not only added a digital printing machine. It’s happening by communication and cooperation throughout the whole value chain when all markets get digitalized. In the words of Benny Landa, founder of the Indigo technology and also today the founder behind “Nanography” and the Landa corporation in Israel: “Everything that can be digital will be digital and printing is no exception”.