Trends in the News: Growth of Podcasts and Immigration and the Fall of Inflation

The Business Trendsetter Podcast

The founder of Squarespace is now worth ~$3B. He saw the long-term trend in media away from controlled, edited content and toward democratization. So he invested his small sums in podcasting, and now those small investments are measured in billions. This long-term trend has continued, and now we all have access to enormous amounts of free content for entertainment and education. Are you using this environment to grow your business, as a consumer of content or creator? If not, why not?

We spend too much time looking at headlines and reacting to short-term events, and insufficient time studying long-term trends to guide our decision making. Due to demographic shifts, the lack of workers will change hiring of older workers. And it will change immigration policies, and recruiting of immigrants. Build on that trend and you can gain advantage, bet against it and you'll suffer the consequences.

Mass media can't create enough headlines about the short-term quarterly, and even monthly, rate of inflation vs ONE year ago. But that does not reflect the long-term trend which will soon have inflation back under 3%. We can use the trends in monetary policy as well as fiscal policy to build scenarios guiding our long-term planning.

Thinking points:

• What plans do you have to utilize blogs and podcasts to grow your revenue?
• Have you adapted your hiring and retention policies to reflect the aging demographics?
• Are you evaluating your supply chain and pricing programs for a future of low inflation, or high inflation? Or are you ignoring inflation altogether?