Fish Mongers vs. Fear Mongers

"The Pike Place Fish Market, founded in 1930, is an open air fish market located in Seattle, Washington's Pike Place Market, at the corner of Pike Street and Pike Place. It is known for their tradition of fishmongers throwing fish that customers have purchased, before they are wrapped. After nearing bankruptcy in 1986, the fish market owner and employees decided to become "world famous", changing their way of doing business by introducing their flying fish, games, and customer performances. Four years later, they were featured repeatedly in the national media and television shows. The store is now a popular tourist destination in Seattle, attracting up to 10,000 daily visitors, and is often billed as world-famous." - Wikipedia

Such is the power of a can-do attitude, backed by the work necessary to make things happen.

This weekend's 11th annual Palouse Empire Home & Garden EXPO was a breath of fresh air for me, as the show's producer, as it was for the eighty or so exhibitors that decided to show up and do some business instead of staying home and talking about how terrible things are. I expected good traffic on Saturday and was not disappointed.

One of my clients, a successful HVAC contractor, talked non-stop to prospects interested in his residential wind generators, for four-and-a-half hours straight, before his wife finally intervened and urged him to take a break and get a drink of water. (Later this week - if I can pin him down - I hope to post a short interview with him about his success at the EXPO and consumer response to his new radio commercial. Stay tuned.)

If you're not subscribing to Roy Williams' free Monday Morning Memo, you really ought to. This morning's edition contained this timely observation from the Wizard:

...a frightened person frightens other people. And these newly frightened people will frighten still more people until finally no one is spending any money. Fear is the fuel of recession. I understand perfectly what’s happening in the world. I simply choose not to be afraid.

You can choose, too...

Warren Buffett agrees with this outlook.

“Fear is very contagious. You can get fearful in 5 minutes, but you don’t get confident in 5 minutes.” - Warren Buffett on CNBC, Monday, March 9, 2009

CNBC: “We’ve been getting thousands and thousands of emails from our viewers. Warren, we’d like to start with one that echoes a theme we heard again and again. This one comes from Terry in San Antonio, Texas, who asks, ‘Will everything be all right?’”

BUFFETT: “Everything will be all right. We do have the greatest economic machine that man has ever created. We started with 4 million people back in 1790 and look where we’ve come. And it wasn’t because we were smarter than other people. It wasn’t because our land was more fertile or we had more minerals or our climate was more favorable. We had a system that worked. It unleashed the human potential. It didn’t work every year. We had 6 ‘panics’ in the 19th century. In the 20th century we had the Great Depression, World Wars, all kinds of things. But we have a system – largely free market, rule of law, equality of opportunity – all of those things that cause the potential of humans to get unleashed. And we’re far from done. Your kids will live better than mine. Your grandchildren will live better than your kids. There’s no question about that. But the machine gets gummed up from time to time. If you take the bulk of those centuries, probably 15 years were bad years. But we go forward.”

Did you notice the quote the twitchy news people of America lifted from Buffett’s very upbeat, 3-hour interview? They filtered out all kinds of affirming, positive statements (such as the one above) to create the headline, “Warren Buffett Says ‘The Economy Fell Off a Cliff.”

Slippery Wall-Streeters triggered this recession but the twitchy news media seems committed to making sure it progresses.

On February 5th I posted a link to a Paul McDonnold piece in the Christian Science Monitor, in which the writer asked, "Is the media reporting the recession - or worsening it?"

We can't stop the news media from being themselves (though Roy's suggestion to slap 'em and tell 'em to stop is tempting) - but we can choose how we'll respond to any adversity we face.

I prefer the approach of the fish monger to that of the fear monger.

How about you?

How Do You Respond to a Bully?

Last year American icon Anheuser-Busch was assimilated into Belgium-based beer borg, InBev.

According to recent stories in Ad Age and elsewhere, it appears the Clydesdales are preparing to run roughshod over their media and advertising services vendors.

I know of at least a few associates in media who are likely to take a pass on becoming de facto lenders to corporate bullies, and will simply sell their available inventory to other advertisers.

Did you read Aesop when you were a kid? Remember this story...?

The Wind and the Sun were disputing which was the stronger. Suddenly they saw a traveler coming down the road, and the Sun said: “I see a way to decide our dispute. Whichever of us can cause that traveler to take off his cloak shall be regarded as the stronger You begin.” So the Sun retired behind a cloud, and the Wind began to blow as hard as it could upon the traveler. But the harder he blew the more closely did the traveler wrap his cloak round him, till at last the Wind had to give up in despair. Then the Sun came out and shone in all his glory upon the traveler, who soon found it too hot to walk with his cloak on.
“KINDNESS EFFECTS MORE THAN SEVERITY.”

Or better still, the words of Jesus that many of us learned to call The Golden Rule, paraphrased thus: Do Unto Others as You Would Have Others Do Unto You.

Now, there's another so-called "golden rule" that a sales trainer of my acquaintance once coined to frame relationships in a free market economy. In his Okie vernacular, he said, "Them that's got the gold makes the rules."

That's true, too. But it cuts both ways.

So, let's say you're a media company or advertising services provider.

You want to be a bank, also? Fine, that's your choice.

Are you going to treat your other accounts with the same courtesy?

Or are you going to discriminate on the basis of a double standard, i.e., those who can intimidate and bully you into submission will get more favorable terms?

Personally, I don't like bullies. Never have.

I don't have to drink their beer. I don't have to buy their cars.

And I certainly don't need their business badly enough that I'm willing to agree to wait four to six months (or more) to be paid for services I render in good faith, in a timely and conscientious manner.

But that's just me. What's your take?

What Are YOU Spreading Around?

Jay Mitchell's Radio Rants: Spreading the News

My friend and publisher of the Small Market Radio Newsletter cautions us against stepping across the line that separates factual reporting from hype, and buying into that negative mindset that so many in the news media seem to love. The article he cites (from yesterday's Christian Science Monitor) is worth a read. Let's not make this thing any worse than it has to be. In fact, let's do everything we can as individuals in our own communities to make things better!