Mark Kolier’s Blog

Archive for the ‘Living in the World Today’ Category

Thanksgiving is seen as the true start of the annual ‘Holiday season’. Certainly retailers both online and brick and mortar have been pushing the ‘buy now’ button since Halloween. As the Occupy Wall Street movement carries on into month number three, it would be easy to think that the 1% have so much to be thankful for, while the rest of us slog on in our mutual and collective despair. Well I am one of the 99%, and 2011 has been a very difficult year for me professionally, but despite that I still have much for which I can be thankful.

1) I am in good health. It is the single most important thing there can be as well as is the
overall health of the people closest to me. Remember that it could be worse folks – it could
always be worse. Being healthy (or mostly healthy) is the single most important thing isn’t
it?

2) I have people in my life that I care about and that care about me. Professional success is
uplifting but without having people around to share it with would feel hollow – agree or
disagree?

3) While the U.S. has its problems, our national spirit of innovation and can-do still make the
U.S. and its citizens a place and a people to look up to. We’re not done yet. Not by a long
shot.

4) Americans continue to use their right to complain and protest – peacefully for the most part,
that exemplifies what free speech and freedom in general are all about. This is not to be
undervalued.

5) Most Americans have flat screen TV, and iPod or digital music player and soon will also have a
smartphone. Before you laugh, keep in mind that citizens of many countries in the world cannot
say the same, but they wish they could. And in fact it’s the U.S. way of life that many people
around the world aspire to achieve.

Americans are disgruntled. Whether it is with the Wall Street folk, our political leaders, or an overall lack of good job opportunities, it seems to me that we’ve developed a culture of complaint – not complacency. As families come together this week of Thanksgiving, why don’t we think about the things for which we can be thankful instead of all the things we don’t have or wish we did?

If you can sit back after Thanksgiving dinner with a full belly and watch some meaningless football game, things could be a whole lot worse – couldn’t they?

It goes without saying that with more than 1/5th of the world’s population China will be at the top of many lists. As the world’s #2 economy it is just a matter of time (some say by 2025) before China has the world’s #1 economy. The Chinese are pushing forward all the time which is in concert with the way the people are moving from place to place.

I’ve spent nearly the past two weeks traveling around the Middle Kingdom. I have traveled to seven cities in eleven days. Whether it be planes, trains, buses, cars, (no boats this time but on other trips), if you want to get around in China it does one no good to be meek. This is was bit alarming at first as since I am a New Yorker born and bred and New Yorkers have quite the reputation for being rude. When it comes to traveling in China you had better be willing to push through – literally – or be left behind.

The Chinese do not appear to have a culture of deferral. People cut right in front of you, elbow past you if you hesitate, and are generally most interested in getting where they are going as quickly as possible. However on the few occasions when I looked lost or out of sorts there was always a Chinese person willing to help – sometimes going out of their way in a manner that would probably never occur in the U.S.

Driving is harrowing and being a passenger even more so. I assume there are some traffic laws in China but they appear to be suggestions more than laws. I’ve seen things, eye and hair-raising things from the passenger seat. There were a few instances in which I actually closed my eyes, but alas nothing untoward occurred. One cannot be a deferrer when operating a motor vehicle as you will be cut-off and immobilized. And the Chinese LOVE to use their car horns. Keep in mind that for many Chinese, cars were scarce ten years ago and they did not start driving until they were adults in their thirties or older. China is learning how to drive all at once.

If you are shaking your head and thinking you’d rather not experience China for yourself you could not be more wrong. China is an amazing place and getting more so all the time. The new Central government is soon to be in place and there is much trepidation on how the new Central Government will behave. Like the U.S. and other western countries China has its own problems and challenges to face in the near future. But the Chinese are positive about what they can do and be and pushing hard to make it happen.

I am eager to get back even though I haven’t quite left yet.

How about you? Have you been or are you interested in going to China?

As an American traveling through China for two weeks visiting five different cities plus Hong Kong the one overriding question I am asked is – ‘How are things in the U.S? It looks really bad.’ Think about being asked that question when you are 8,000 miles away from home and how you might answer.

While pondering an answer to the question of the decline in the U.S., in stark contrast is the increasing wealth in China. Inflation has begun to have a real impact in daily life China despite the Chinese Central Government efforts to hold inflation in check. The opportunities however remain substantial and a well-heeled upper class is emerging in China. I find that fascinating under the umbrella of living in a Socialist country.

As a marketing and business development agency the luxury market in China is exploding. The nouveau-riche in China demand goods that are authentic and are willing to pay for them – and at ‘bust-out’ retail prices. If you segment out 1% of China’s population as the top earners and holders of wealth, that represents more than 13,000,000 people. It’s safe to say that there are incredible opportunities to market to people within this segment. That’s a big reason western luxury goods companies are clamoring to gain a foothold in China.

Is China’s bubble possibly going to burst? The central government will continue to try to do everything it can to stop that from happening – or to at least minimize the impact. But for now the aura of positivity in China (and Hong Kong for that matter) continues to energize, intrigue, and impress me.

The Chinese people (and Hong Kong people too) often remark about the consistent stream of negative news from the United States. I have been in China nearly a week and have not been reading the U.S. newspapers as usual. Consequently I am missing my daily dose of what has been bad news on top of bad news. It’s making me think about cutting back on reading the depressing dailies. I have learned that I am not missing as much as I thought and I have a much more overall positive attitude being in China.

So back to the question – is it really that bad in the U.S.? Well things are not going well but if you were to view the U.S.’s situation from overseas by reading the news you would probably begin to feel sorry for the Americans. And since when did the United States become a county to pity?

I am not suggesting Americans act as if everything is fine and dandy. But I am coming to believe that we Americans are becoming prisoners of our own media’s desire to highlight what is going wrong with the country. Do all the ‘experts’ that forecast the likelihood of a ‘double-dip’ recession hope that it actually happens so they can boast that they called it right?

We all have the power to change the dialog and attitude. Why don’t we start by focusing on making things better instead of complaining about how bad things are?

On Wednesday the USPS announced that as of January 1 the price of a first class stamp will be $0.45 (up from $0.44 for those of you that might not be familiar with the cost of mailing a letter in the United States). There has been much written about the declining fortunes of the United States Postal Service (USPS) and coincidentally (or not) an article in yesterday’s Chicago Tribune entitled ‘Can the postal service be saved’ http://trib.in/nf7FMK , caught my attention.

My first thought was, should the postal service be saved? Callous I know, but an organization that has changed not nearly enough in over 200 years will no doubt be difficult if not impossible to ‘fix’.
My subsequent thought was – what would be the reasons it would even be worth trying to save the postal service? Here are the few I came up with.

1) Experience. The postal service has the most experience in delivering to nearly all Americans where people and businesses are as well as the optimal routes to get there.

2) Costs and Service. The postal service delivers for Fedex and other third parties. Without the USPS, pricing for those third party services would no doubt increase and likely their service would be impacted negatively.

3) Avoid increasing U.S. unemployment. With 9.1% reported unemployment putting the remaining (as the USPS has shed more than 200,000 jobs over the past several years) 500,000+ employees on the street at this time would be devastating. The USPS is the second largest civilian employer in the country (after Wal-Mart). However the impact would be much more substantial than that as there are an additional 3.1 million people indirectly employed in jobs affected by direct mail marketing http://bit.ly/ptSGuA.

4) Trust. The postal service is a trusted institution. Americans by and large trust the postal service to deliver mail accurately and efficiently. That cannot be said of many U.S. institutions recently. When you compare mail delivery in the U.S. to that of other countries, the USPS fares quite favorably.

5) Opportunity. Although it may not always be apparent there are opportunities for the local post office to offer additional services – driver’s licenses, car registrations, passports – are just a few of the adjunct services that could be added.

Why do I say blow it up first? It is written a bit in jest but a bit seriously as well. I could have as easily written a post offering 5 reasons the postal service should be shut down. Like an archaic model built 200 years ago that has too many vestiges operating today. Or the fact that the postal service has been used as a civil service pasture for veterans and others but they’ve not been given the training to compete in today’s and tomorrow’s economy. I could go on. But at the very least a complete overhaul needs to occur in order for change to truly take hold.

Postmaster General Pat Donahue is saying some very right things – but will the postal service survive long enough to implement them?

People that travel a great deal are keenly aware of always bringing their requisite power cords for their various portable technology devices. I can tell you that at any given time in our kitchen we have numerous power cords plugged into various devices like mobile phones, iPods, eReaders, and Bluetooth devices. Fortunately our laptops are not kept in the kitchen.

For several years now there have been ‘Universal’ battery rechargers available on the market. Universal might be overstating the case. Many of them do not work across platforms such as Apple to PC devices, so at the least there needs to be two Universes.

There are solutions on the market such as myGrid from Duracell (of course there is one for PC based devices and one for Apple devices) which offer the opportunity to charge multiple devices at one time. I have yet to try one but am quite ready to give something like myGrid a try in the interest of tearing down what I call spaghetti city when it comes to all our power cords gathered together. I wish they were a little less expensive as $ 75.00 is a pretty steep price to pay.

When I did a recent search on rechargeable battery pads I was surprised at the lack of choices in the category. It’s difficult for me to believe that my frustration with all the power cords I have to carry with me when I travel is not…universal.

Batteries that only last 8 hours or less are also really annoying. That is no doubt universal. And it does not matter whether you are an iPhone, Droid or Blackberry fan. It’s mind-boggling and aggravating that during a day of what one would consider ‘normal’ daily use battery life remains an issue. I realize it is somewhat difficult to keep weight down in portable devices unless the battery is kept to a smaller size but we’ve been waiting too long for that particular problem to be solved.

How do you deal with the power cord madness and does it bother you?