Business Insight Zone

In case it escaped your attention, Iceland’s economy has teetered on the brink of collapse this week. (Stories: BBC, Time, Agence France Presse, Bloomberg, MarketWatch, Reuters. The “big chill” and “meltdown” headline puns are killing me.)

But just as the little plant in the picture above survives out on Iceland’s volcanic landscape, many gritty Icelanders are carrying on with their business. Case in point: Hjörtur Smárason of Marketing Safari, who lives in Reykjavik with his wife and five children. My friend James Governor pointed me to Hjörtur’s entry on how he is choosing to cope with Iceland’s woes:

Never Lose Your Spirit

. . . Lots of people have their loans in foreign currency, but income in Icelandic Krona. Those people are in immediate trouble since the loans are much higher now than the house or car they used it to buy – and the payments have doubled. The rest [are] going to be hit with inflation and increasing unemployment. Things are getting tough. Tough like I’ve never seen before. “So what you gonna do Charlie? – SMILE!”

I could crawl under a blanket and cry. I could lay on my back and die. But that’s boring stuff. That’s not inspirational or constructive for my 5 children. I believe that no matter what happens – never lose your spirit! Always remember what it is in life that really matters. Last night I realized that I had probably lost half of my live savings – and you know what surprised me? How little of a shock it was to me. After all, it was only money. My family is healthy. I’ve got a beautiful wife and five adorable children that mean the world to me, more than I ever imagined possible. That tells me I’ve got my priorities straight.

Hjörtur goes on to detail the opportunities he sees among the challenges, not missing the chance to promote his own ventures. (Who can blame him? Guy’s got mouths to feed.) But even better, he’s EXPANDING the reach of his ventures, plus focusing on assignments for foreign employers who can pay him in pounds, euros, or dollars instead of the devalued Icelandic Krona.

I especially like the way he closes his post:

It’s important to realize that there are always opportunities. People aren’t going to stop living though the economy goes down the drain. People just have to live differently. Figure out how and adjust. Those who do are the ones that survive. . . .

What ever you do, don’t let it be your desperation you consult when making decisions. Oh, and SMILE!

To this I would add that good livings — and even huge fortunes — have been made in virtually every era of modern economic history, in many different corners of the world, across many fields of enterprise.

Even better, we’re living in an age of untold promise, as I was reminded when I read this Energy Outlook piece yesterday:

Perhaps our challenges look as big as they do because our faith in the tools available for tackling them is so limited. . . . Ten years from now, we won’t all be driving electric cars recharged by wind and solar power — if anything, a recession will slow that transition — yet the ongoing shifts in our patterns of energy consumption and production will accumulate. Our energy diet will begin to look quite different from today’s, and it will emit less CO2, per unit of economic output and in aggregate. The ultimate outcome might be less dramatic than we sense at this pre-election moment that feels like the Hinge of Fate, but we will get there, and I have a hunch that new fortunes will be made along the way.

Someone, right now, is laying the groundwork for one of those new fortunes. Someone, somewhere, is looking ahead to a CO2-constrained future — or a debt-constrained future, or a Social Security-constrained future — and figuring out how to satisfy future customers in some previously undreamed way.

What if that someone is YOU?

If it is going to be you, get moving NOW. I’ll close with one more tip from James Governor, which he shared on Twitter earlier today:

Amen. Get moving. (Oh, and if Hoover’s can help, let me know. We’re doing well, thank you — but we’ve got mouths to feed, too.)

~

(Photo by my pal Mark Larson, used under a CC-Share Alike license.)

Category: Economics, Innovation & Entrepreneurship