Multi-Unit Franchisee Magazine Issue I, 2012 | Page 70

InvestmentInsights
By Carol Schleif

Structurally Sound
A timeless approach for the 21st century

I

s anybody else as fed up as I am with hearing about
how bad things are? Let’s get on with it already and start
focusing on what we can do to survive—and thrive—in
the new reality.
Periods of meltdown and renewal are not at all unusual for
the United States. Read John Steele Gordon’s book An Empire
of Wealth for numerous examples of American ingenuity and
stick-to-it-ness pulling us back from the brink of financial meltdown. This is the time when we need to pull ourselves up by the
proverbial bootstraps, dust ourselves off, and figure out how we
are going to push forward. At the risk of stating what should be
painfully obvious, here are my thoughts on some of the things
we can try to get “unstuck” and help us move forward:
• Retool. It’s time to stop pining for what we’ve lost and start
embracing the fact that the ground rules have changed. In financial services, for example, while mortgage underwriting is down,
workout specialists and credit counselors are in demand. Given
the current run rate of just over 500,000 new homes per year, we
are probably not going back to developing 2 million new homes
per year any time soon—if ever. This means there are loads of
folks in the construction business and in ancillary businesses from
appliance and carpet manufacturers to mortgage and insurance
underwriters who need to seriously consider retraining for other
careers. All sorts of industries (auto, apparel, railroad, etc.) have
had to recreate themselves over the decades as progress marched
on. Ask all the middle managers displaced in the late 1980s and
early 1990s as the conglomerates of the 1970s were unwound.
The initial period was heart-rending, but the long-term result
yielded new, vital industries creating careers unimagined just a
few years before.
I’ve heard that welders and over-the-road truckers are in
short supply. Maybe it’s tim