Recently one of my pals was telling me about some of the bigger and more successful business owners he knows who are seriously worried about their lack of engagement, sales, new customer acquisition, low quality leads, and the list goes on this year.
A lot of them had been cleaning up for years.
Now?
They are losing ground – and fast – just pitiful numbers compared to what they’re used to seeing.
And it got me to thinking about what’ll surely be the paraphrase of the decade:
“Everyone’s a marketing guru during a bull market”
But now that things are tightening up across the board?
You’re going to see just how many of them goo-roos out there who have been pounding their chests on Facebook and Twitter and in masterminds for the past 10 years really know their stuff… or are just posers , or else who happened to have gotten in the right market, with the right offer, with the right people, at the right time, and don’t really know how to repeat it or adapt to what’s coming down the pike.
Those who been around the block have seen this cycle repeat itself.
It’s the exact same thing each time, and this time will be no different.
Except, in many ways, I think, it will be far more intense.
The reason:
I touched on this in detail in this past January’s tripe-sized 150th Email Players issue. And it’s because, I believe, the credit deflation is already starting to happen. You may not believe that because all you’re hearing on the news is about inflation. And despite what the lapdog media is insisting otherwise, the evidence of most peoples’ eyes and ears are showing inflation is not at-all the optimistic 3% they claim. Especially when you factor in things they leave out like, you know, food, gas, and things people actually need.
Why anyone believes a single word the corporate media says is beyond me.
Especially after the last few years alone.
But people much wiser than myself – and certainly wiser than the shills in the media, who can’t even give a weather report without inserting some obvious bias or propaganda into it anymore – about economics have been saying this whole time:
There is a LOT more credit/debt than there is cash in this debt-driven economy.
And eventually that debt can only either be repaid or written off.
And while everyone is (understandably) nattering on about inflation, there are many other stories talking about how younger people especially are not only not repaying debt, but literally can’t repay it. They can’t even keep up with their minimum payments even as they are borrowing more of it. And eventually, a whole lot of that debt will be written off because it ain’t gonna be repaid. Maybe the powers that be know this is inevitable. And maybe this is why they are trying to act like superheroes to court voters by forgiving student loan debt and, most recently, Kamala talking about forgiving medical debt – both of which are almost certainly inevitable anyway, as far as I can tell, at this trajectory.
Deserves got nothing to do with it, either.
But unless we go back to indentured servitude, debtors prisons, etc, who knows?
This is all speculation, obviously, so take it for what it is.
But, running with this speculation:
Perhaps a time is coming when you might be considered lucky if you have even a $1,000 limit on your credit card or can pull out more than $100 at a time from the ATM. Then all those expenses you just “slap” on a credit card now, without thinking about it, become a whole helluva lot harder to pay for without cold, hard cash in your pocket if you don’t get your act together now, while you still have some time, and start growing your email list, mailing it offers they want to buy, and selling those buyers something else — every day, day in, and day out, and, yes, starting today.
It’d probably almost be Faustian if that happened:
Everything on sale from the deflation, but not a lot of cash or credit for most to buy it.
That’s my admittedly non-expert advice.
But going by how wrong nearly ALL the so-called experts have been about just about everything the last few years, I’m probably more likely to be correct than they have been. Admittedly, I get my info from some people most consider “fringe” (but often correct on such things) and time will tell either way. I was also admittedly a couple years off on when the inflation kicking in would hit us to the degree it has. I expected it a year ago. I also expected what a lot of marketers are experiencing now to have happened not long after Jen Psaki was on TV telling the wine aunts to kick back and relax with a margarita because the inflation was merely “transitory.”
Anyway, end of speculation.
Whatever happens:
Focus on the fundamentals, do the work, and write like your life depends on it.
Because in many ways it does now.
As far as using email goes?
You can learn more about that in my paid Email Players newsletter here:
Ben Settle
