Archive for June, 2012
Meaning of life
Posted by: | CommentsI saw Margin Call last night, stunning movie you should go and see. It was about Morgan Brothers implosion that started the GFC.
Jeremy Irons had some outstanding quotes in it. My favourite was:
“It’s just money, it’s nothing. It’s little pieces of paper with a face printed on it we use so we don’t have to kill each other to buy food”.
And that was his way of dealing with the ethics of what he did in his business. I guess we all rationalise certain things don’t we without even thinking about it.
Very few if any of us have the luxury of living in a world where our character and beliefs will never be tested or challenged. And so many times there is just no right answer. To take a current example look at the furore over the school legislation recently.
Everybody is patting themselves on the back over makeing the minister do an about face. But as she said at the time it just means we have to cut something somewhere else. So what appears to be a “moral” victory could create pain elsewhere that is worse than what was a considered and planned strategy.
Or when your accountant asks you do you want to put that trip down as business because you did have 2 meetings while you were away. It’s victimless right? It’s hard to say whether it’s right or wrong, right? What you do will be filtered through your own philosophy. Now to broaden that out as society continues to decline as it appears to be doing the bar of what is generally right and wrong gets lowered and we see more violence, more breakdowns and more corruption.
And history would tell us that nothing will stop it. Societies develop, flourish, then decline often into oblivion.
I do believe however that if you and I live our lives on sound principles and refuse to slide into grey we can make a difference. The question is do we really care and can we be bothered?
This says we should:
If your vision doesn’t make you laugh, cry AND change, then it’s nothing ~ Dean
Dean Letfus, Dean Leftus
Hey there friend, err dude, hmmm mate?
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Somewhat random but 2 funny things this week happened over email greetings.
I have 2 main phrases I use with people who are more than acquaintances. Male friends who I know sort of well I often call “man”. And people I consider that I know well as real friends I usually refer to as “son”. Both are terms of endearment and I use them a lot.
So this week I had one complaint about “man” and another about “son”. Apparently it “annoys the ^$#!&$^#(!$^” out of him.
So I can only assume that in their vocab son is demeaning in some way as is man. Where as I find both to be hallmarks of a closer relationship.
So my problem now is what new words can I use that won’t elicit a negative response??
All suggestions gratefully received 
If your vision doesn’t make you laugh, cry AND change, then it’s nothing ~ Dean
Dean Letfus, Dean Leftus
Global Business Influences
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When I was travelling a lot internationally I couldn’t believe how dishonest most businesses were. We got lied to and stolen from constantly from supposed friends, partners and suppliers.
I realised over time that this was simply how businesses operated in Asia and I wasn’t going to change it. Culturally it was very shocking because NZ simply isn’t like that. Even in Australia every joint venture I did ended up with us being ripped off so NZ truly has a uniquely “naive” honesty about it politically and economically.
Or should I say used to. I have watched with some dismay as the recession has put pressure on people and combined with more and more immigration our business culture seems to be changing. I have seen local suppliers and busines partners do things that I literally couldn;t believe and have no conscience about it.
Now I understand the need to survive, but to take a position of profit at any cost is both immoral and terribly scary to me.
Basically it would seem you have to read every bit of fine print and expect to be lied to with almost any body you deal with.
A recent example:
Vodafone bill arrives for one of my friends and on it there is a charge of several minutes for her best mate. She calls Vodafone who tell her that she removed that person as her best mate and so she is now paying for the calls. Friend advises that she never cancelled her best mate and is told she must have so tough luck!
Refusing to take no for an answer eventually gets kicked up the tree to discover from someone more senior that Vodafone have decided to discontinue best mates so have cancelled thousands of them, even though they are mid contract, and decided to say nothing to their clients but instead lie to them and say that the client must have cancelled their best mate. As a result of this we have had to ring and get any of our best mates reinstated by telling Vodafone that we know what they are up to and it is illegal.
Amazing and sad that NZ companies now behave like this. I wonder how much of it is influence form international CEO’s etc. who now run most of our larger companies.
What do you think? Have you seen a decline in business values in recent times or am I just showing my age??
If your vision doesn’t make you laugh, cry AND change, then it’s nothing ~ Dean
Dean Letfus, Dean Leftus
How’s your hattitiude?
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I had a pommy boss years ago who talked about hattitude.
It was funny at the time but in a warped way he was quite right. Our attitude quite literally sits on top of us affecting everything we see and do. Rather like a large hat.
All of us suffer circumstances that we don’t like or wish we could avoid. Goodness I have had my fair share of those in the last 4 years.
But ones hattitude determines what happens next. At my lowest ebbs I had choices:
1. Kill myself
2. Drink myself to oblivion
3. Get angry and attack those who were causing the problems
4. Find some dishonest means of solving the situation
5. Have a nervous breakdown
And all of those would come to hover over me looking for a place to land. But instead I decided to look for the good in the bad, learn all I could and find a way to rebuild again better, smarter and much wiser.
That hat stuck because I had enough years of deciding that was who I would be before the pressure came on. It’s often the hardest road but it bears the most fruit and creates the head space to enable you to keep going.
My experience has been that by being as transparent as possible and refusing to go to the negative my friends and clients have stayed with me and supported me and in turn I have been able to stand up again, serve them again and actually end up better, stronger and more in love with God, my wife, kids and life.
And that is 150% about what hat I put on and nothing to do with what was going on.
The choice is always yours!
If your vision doesn’t make you laugh, cry AND change, then it’s nothing ~ Dean
Dean Letfus, Dean Leftus
Recovery smoke and mirrors
Posted by: | CommentsI am fascinated by the media and commentators frequent use of the term “than when we were in recession”.
For example, “these numbers are even worse than when we were in recession”. Or “prices have still not recovered from when we were in recession”.
I was thinking of this yesterday at church when I was talking to a friend recently returned to New Zealand who generally mixes with a high net worth crowd. He commented that upon returning to New Zealand everybody he knew was either bankrupt, going bankrupt or at the very least in a bad financial position. And nearly all of them saw things worsening in their businesses and the general economy.
This of course mirrors my observation of western economies that we are still getting to the bad stuff in this recession. To say we are out of it is just churlish rhetoric.
If things are the same or worse than when things were labelled as bad then perhaps the label still is valid. As you know I am no doom merchant, quite the opposite, however we have to take a stab at reality right now. Having had a few positive signs in specific areas for property we are now deciding things are coming good in the sector. We ignore the artificial numbers created by the CHCH earthquake and the slowdown in our migration to OZ as their economy starts to join the recession.
So what do we do then I hear you ask? Well basically be careful, very careful right now. I have friends buying sh*t boxes in Otara for example right now patting themselves on the back for buying such high yield. But having owned lots of property there myself I think they are setting themselves up for lots and lots of maintenance, loss of rent and regret. The time to buy that sort of stock is when we are really entering the next boom, not when we have a slight reprieve from a major bust that isn’t over yet.
Now is a good time to be buying middle class homes or upgrading your own home for sure, but avoid the small pockets where things are manic. Anything in double grammar zone is selling for stupid money for example. 2 streets over the same house sits unwanted. There is some smart buying to be had there.
As most of you know we have an unprecedented wealth shift occurring in the USA right now. Unbelievable opportunity to invest in high cash flow and capital growth in that market is a smart use of funds right now.
If you are in Australian or Asian realestate get out if you can before things get worse and put the money into NZ or the US.
Do your homework, run hard numbers and………..
If your vision doesn’t make you laugh, cry AND change, then it’s nothing ~ Dean
Boomers in America.
Posted by: | CommentsA bit technical today but fascinating info for those of us watching global economic trends.
In the USA Wall Street has trained everybody to invest in shares rather than real estate. Americans have a compulsory superannuation system similar to Australia and those “IRA” accounts are heavily invested in shares.
One of the rules of those IRA accounts could trigger the biggest stock market collapse in history however, let me explain.
The Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) was enacted in 1974 to address concerns that private pension plan funds were being mismanaged and abused. The responsibility for retirement savings was transferred at that time from the businesses that employed workers to the workers themselves. This act created what is known today as IRAs.
One of the provisions of the ERISA law dictates that, when IRA holders reach the age of 70, they must begin taking mandatory distributions from their IRAs. This is based on a life-expectancy table that had the goal of having the average retiree deplete their retirement savings completely by the time they die.
Every year almost 4 million Baby Boomers are moving closer to the mandatory distribution age of 70. This population is the largest segment of the American population. As those Baby Boomers reach 70 and are forced to begin drawing from their retirement funds, more and more money will be leaving the stock market. Many fear that this is what could trigger the biggest crash in history.
From 2016 millions of boomers will be forced to cash up their IRA’s.
Smart financial advisors are now starting to turn clients away form shares, which could see massive losses, to real estate and other asset classes.
So for investors in the US we could see more and more demand for housing with the resultant price increases.
But watch in the next 4 to 5 years for Wall Street to collapse again as we see the lack of births by Gen X and Gen Y forever change our economic landscape in ways our fathers would never have dreamed possible.
If your vision doesn’t make you laugh, cry AND change, then it’s nothing ~ Dean
Dean Letfus, Dean Leftus
Power shifts
Posted by: | CommentsIt is a fascinating time we live in. Every time I use an ipad I am reminded of the power that Apple had to not support flash on that device. End result is the industry is largely rewriting their websites in html 5 to make sure they get seen on an ipad. I mean that is totally incredible and ridiculous really. It’s equivalent to one provider of school text books suddenly only supplying them in swahili and every school in the country making the kids learn swahili instead of changing suppliers. Like it just would never happen right?
Apple ditching Google Maps
So it was interesting to see today that Apple are now ditching google maps and going to TomTom to provide their map technology in the next upgrade of their OS.
Just as Facebook is already becoming passe could it be that Apple can start to break Googles most unhealthy stronghold on the internet?
Having read Jobs biography he was a sad, unpleasant man in many ways but you cannot deny that he is one of the most influential men to walk this planet in the last 100 years. And the power base he created looks set to continue for a while yet.
So don’t underestimate what you can do with a dream, passion and planning.
If your vision doesn’t make you laugh, cry AND change, then it’s nothing ~ Dean
Dean Letfus, Dean Leftus
