What the media and economy tell you would suggest we have periods when people spend money and periods when people hoard their money.  When our society is prospering, it would appear people spend much more money than in “rough times” but this isn’t necessarily true.

As a business owner and consultant to many businessmen, I see a different trend.  When our society is “prospering” people tend to make large purchases.  They will buy houses, get new cars, and start investment funds.  Then, the construction worker who built the house will buy a wedding ring for the love of his life, the salesman who sold the car will take his family out to his favorite restaurant, and the investor will go on a trip to Vegas to celebrate his best month ever.  This is a trickle in money that everyone sees, this is nothing new.  What isn’t common knowledge, though, is that these same people never stop spending money. 

As soon as our economy has the facade of tanking, our society instead spends smaller amounts of money.  The man who was going to buy a new house now instead decides he can get a new sofa set.  The man who was going to buy a new car will opt for a new stereo system instead of an entire vehicle.  And the money keeps getting spent, just in smaller amounts. Shoes, purses, movie tickets, and ice cream sales soar during economic downfalls.  To me, this isn’t a sign of economic downfall but or economical personality.  This trend can be seen in the roaring 20’s as real estate sold like crazy and many stocks rose drastically from large companies.  Then, we can’t forget the depression when everyone seemed out of employment, but movie sales were highest ever.  This same trend is seen recently from 2000 up until mid 2008.  The economy soared and real estate was bought up quickly & turned over.  Then, just as quickly the stocks fell in late 2008 and stores selling smaller items like H&M and Forever 21 are picking up the slack.

Business owners and investors can take advantage of this knowledge and don’t need to lose business.  Every business should have two distinct products to sell.  One when the economy is doing well and one when we aren’t on the high horse.  This is what I call the power of pennies.  When my fitness company does well, we sell a lot of personal training.  People are happy with their life and they care about their future.  Thus, they see it justifiable to spend a few thousand dollars on hiring a personal trainer. 

When the economy isn’t doing so well, you just lost your job, or you see your company continue to downsize – this is a hard time for ANYONE to think about the future.  Instead, we worry more about making ourselves happy in the moment and nice weekend movie that is cheap entertainment or shopping at the discount mall makes saves more cents.  In the world of fitness, this is a time when our monthly memberships go up and our weekend running races have more runners than ever.  People are very much interested in a quick fix to their problems and businesses should pay attention!  Make sure to offer both venues to your customers and see how you can serve them in both types of economies.