Deconstructing the market

The deep market includes the sum of all of the primary 19 industry categories ranging from information to construction to wholesale trade.

The market also includes resources such as ideas, capital, people, suppliers, and partners. Let’s start to address each of these in turn.

Ideas come from everywhere. You may solve a coding or marketing program while reading a book about the athleticism of grasshoppers or decide to hire a new employee not because you need a new engineer but simply because you happened to meet a talented person whom you didn’t want to let get away. Other organizations, whether inside or outside your industry, thinkers, artists, retirees all can be great sources of ideas. Ideas often come in bunches and they are easy to forget so write them down and keep track of them, lest you forget.

While the world we occupy provides greater access to capital than in any time in our past, we seemed to forget how to handle this freedom this past decade. Hopefully, we are learning an important lesson, that strategically managing our capital and access to it is a critical business success factor. It is critical to know, at every given moment, how much liquid capital we have, what our cash-flows are, how much of an inventory pad we have, the size and rates effecting our lines of credit, and our outstanding debt—both short and long term. Further, it’s sometimes wise to take investors willing to offer attractive financing terms, but often business loans provide, for the long-term, far more desirable terms.

Next time, we’ll address people, suppliers, and partners as we continue to deconstruct the market. Until then, I encourage you to enjoy life.