A coupon, discount or request for survey information, are good ideas. Offer to share the results of your survey, and have it be valuable to the customers you are sending it to. Or do some original research and share it with your customers.

Bryan.

Thanks!
Sarah

Healthcare “reform” is it a benefit or an impairment to your small business.

On the global level, we shall have to see how it all shakes out. On the micro level where we actually do business, I think the goal, is to figure out ways to be neutral like a trader in the stock market. IE; make money on either side of an issue.

We can have our opinion on an issue, but the key goal is to figure out how just one person or company can react to the change to come out ahead. The thinking is, does the issue create a problem, then how can I solve that problem for people, and get paid for it. If the issue creates a benefit how can I leverage the benefit.

A specific issue, lets say all of your competitors have the same increased health care cost, well no real problem there. You have an equal playing field. But if you have competitors that do not have the new issue, ( I call it an impairment if it impairs your business in any way) then you have to react.

On a global level, a political level, I think we are in a stage where it is becoming a battle between public employees, their pay and benefits, and the public sector. As resources continue to be shifted from private to public, it continues to impair business, and continues the long term trend to outsourcing and manufacturing outside the area where the impairments exist.

I see the issue as part of a larger and long term trend that began when the US granted China Most favored nation trading status. I think the idea at the time was to throw some roadblocks into the business/Union ongoing battle, and allow some competition from outside the US in order to tame benefits, productivity and wage issues that the Unions were constantly pressing for. And hey, the Unions are Unions.. that is what they are supposed to do, represent their members. But we started a process, that by law allowed consumers to buy products that did not have the same impairments as Us manufacturers had to deal with, which would then by mathematical formula, be at a lower cost. The formula then says, if you are a company located outside the United States, I can manufacture and or sell products into the United States and not comply with their impairments, and my only cost to be concerned with is shipping. So we created laws which gave a big advantage to companies that manufacture outside the US. The result is, many companies just followed the formula and said ok, we cannot do business under this new scenario, so we have to change sides and go where the rules ( the formula )now say we have to go.

This trend continues, and It is hard to say if new innovation, which was supposed to make up for these lost jobs, will turn back the trend of job losses and lower wages. To reach equilibrium we have a long way to go.

In my opinion in order to change the trend we have to do something different. We need to decrease impairments here or add them there. I was sharing these ideas with a few friends and we came up with a unique idea that might work.

Lets take China for example. Now that we are very dependent on outside sources with cash to buy our Treasury Bills to pay for the “stimulus” which a majority of the money went to States to reduce the need for wage and benefit cuts.. for public union employees, OMG that would be unthinkable.. ( back to the primary subject ) sorry could not resist..

We should have as a condition for MFN status created product quality and content standards similar to the ones we enforce and continue to grow.. in the US. We did not so now we would have to impose those, and the Chinese would not react kindly to that. You can make a condition as part of an initial agreement, but its very hard to change conditions later.

We could however, do something now, like we are doing for automobile milleage standards, or big screen tv energy standards. Create product standards for all products that are to be imported by any country. The companies and governments would not be singled out, and manufacturing would be able to shift work back to the United States as the playing field became more level again. It is similar to ideas like carbon standards, which could be applied to products instead of manufacturing processes. If the US imposes carbon standards on US manufacturers, and China, India, Russia etc decide not to follow, then we have added substantial impairments to manufacturing in the US, while allowing imports from companies located in non complying countries. This will of course lead to lower wages less employment in the U.S.

We could actually create carbon manufacturing standards for products, and apply them to all products sold in the U.S. this creates a level playing field and perhaps an actual advantage to manufacturing in the U.S. because of technology potential and lower shipping costs.

As similar process could be used for all impairments that we now have, and then we just have to weigh the benefits of the impairments versus the cost to consumers for the products and make decisions.

I will be writing a blog and creating a full web site on this “Formula” concept, and the product standards idea, as a way to create public education to root issues, and move away from political emotion.

The goal is to move past emotion into a formula of micro decisions and solve for the outcome.

You heard it here first.