Whoa

Spending a week remarkably focused on the agenda has really left me in the dark about the apocalypse of capitalism that is going on outside my atomic tangerine walls:

Circuit City, after 60 years in business, is going out of business shutting all 567 stores and leaving 34,000 people to find a new job. Retail figures for December, which were expected to be terrible, were twice as bad as expected. Tradeshows are either dead or dying. Even Google, where dreams are made, is killing projects.

Oh my.

So here is some good news:

I spent close to an hour recording the first OWN Talk Show. Not sure yet what it’s going to be called but I can tell you that it will be available for our partners to download on Monday. Mark Crall, Stuart Selbst and I talked about the stuff that happened last week. Windows 7 impact on Small Business, Google Apps Reseller Program, Cloud Services, Kaseya NOC, Autotask and then some. While I do some business with these guys, they are friends first. And the show is all about just that, chatting with friends about our industry (and will be featuring my other buddies, Erick Simpson, Karl Palachuk, Dave Sobel) in a Friday mashup of the threads we bounce back and forth as they come up throughout the week.

Ok, so what?

Well, the bigger and more diverse my business becomes the less I am in tune with every single thing and every single interaction that business has. I need friends that I know aren’t going to blow smoke up my butt and since I don’t have the luxury of researching and considering every single development from every possible angle it’s nice to know I can talk to folks that do.

We all talk to a lot of people. But have you ever noticed how few people are into podcasting, blogging, etc? It’s like learning is treasure hunting and whoever dies with the biggest pile wins?

Which brings me back to the apocalypse. How many of the retail segment employees saw the writing on the wall and changed their jobs. Circuit City has been under Chapter 11 bankruptcy for a while, how many of their “associates” took the benefits to earn a certification or start training/volunteering for a new gig?

How many of those retail personnel who are still employed are right now thinking about where their income will come from 12 months down the road? Or would you bet that they are out on the town, partying, thinking everything will be alright? Maybe they are just not going to participate in the down economy, eh?

Point is, change is happening.

You can ignore it, you can question it, you can resist it…… but you will be affected by it.

The only question remaining is if you’ll be the one to spot and take advantage of the opportunities that are presenting themselves when everyone else slows down, or if you succumb to fear and ignorance until you run out of clients/employment.