Is it just me or is business getting tougher? Look around gas prices are rising and all the manufacturing jobs are going elsewhere? What should we do? The only thing certain about our economy today, is that it will look different tomorrow. How computers changed the economies of the 80's and 90's, today we deal with cheap foreign labor.

The North American economy used to have an advantage in that we were well educated and technologically advanced. This allowed us to charge more, produce quicker and raise our standard of living. Margins were high which allowed more disposable income, grew our middle class and led us to more millionaires than ever before. While this had it's positives, it also had it's negatives.

We have become complacent in our jobs and standards of living. This left a great opportunity to those who could use a cheap labor force to under cut the pricing on our products. This coupled with lifting trade barriers and duties has led to the tremendous growth of imports. Slashing prices at Walmart has been the result of buying more from the Orient. It is prohibitive for most industries to produce their product in North America. This has been a boom for importers and a disaster for manufacturers. Layoffs at huge companies like Kodak, GM, Ford, as well as a host of others has started the trickle down effect. This is not a positive thing. When an assembly worker gets laid off, this job will not be refilled. This person will have trouble meeting their house payments, their car payments, and every other expense. Usually these employees are in their 40,s, 50's and 60's. The chance of them finding another well paying job is minimal. Take this one layoff and multiply it exponentially and see where the economy goes. Next add the tremendous trade deficits of the United States and the debt caused by its participation in the wars, a recent chill in the housing market and a tremendous increase in our transportation costs and we have the beginnings of a recession.

What do we do now? Do we stick our heads in the sand? There will always be smart people making money. It will take more thought and effort to reap your expected returns. We have to either develop new industries or find ways to make it a level play ground. Competing with workers earning 30 cents an hour, working 90 hour work weeks and having no life outside of their job is not in the cards for most of us. We are moving into a service economy. Paying particular attention to detail will be vital. Analyzing every marketing expense will be critical. The use of direct marketing and databases of information on your customers will be essential. If you need help in deciding how to best spend your next marketing dollar, drop me an email at steve@solutionsink4u.com.