I WARNED YOU! (this happens next)

Last week I predicted that we would be going into a short term recession in the United States somewhere in the next six to 18 months. I outlined why I thought that as well as what you should be doing in your small business to ensure that you thrive during a time of recession. Now in the past I have made some other predictions and I'm going to outline two of them today. What happened in those predictions as well as now, looking forward, what you should be doing in your small business. So in October, November and December of 2021, I had many videos that I created specifically stating that there was a short period of window of time that you need to raise your prices in your small business because consumers had become numb to price increases as inflation was beginning to take off. Now that was before we saw oil prices go up to five dollar six a gallon. That was before the war in Ukraine and before the cost of energy spiked. But what I told you back in October, November and December, as well as in January at our conference, Landscape Summit, they said you need to raise your prices now because this is not going to happen forever where customers are going to be basically immune to leaving and finding another provider when you raise their prices. And sure enough, after we saw this spike in the Russian Ukraine war and what happened with oil prices going up so quickly, that's exactly what's happened. We, we are now seeing a more price sensitive customer, not back to years ago, but a whole lot more price conscious than they were just a few months ago. And so these short windows and periods of time when I make a prediction, it's not because I'm like, oh, like I think this, like it's truly based upon the fact that there's small windows of time in the economy where you can make a move and get really good returns if you're paying attention to what's happening in the macroeconomic landscape. The second prediction that I had was that in January at Landscape Summit 2022, I predicted that we would have a short window of four to six weeks to hire employees that would be easy to hire people. And I was making that prediction based upon the fact that Omicron wiped out a whole bunch of jobs in a very acute small period of time for December and January and said, hey look, if you're looking to hire people, you need to hire them now and you need to over hire for the next four to six weeks because this is not going to be happening again anytime soon. You're going to have a short window time to hire people and it's going to go right back to being where no one shows up to interviews, no one can find employees, et cetera. And that's happened too. And so we hired a whole bunch of people and now it's like twice as hard. We're spending twice as much money to find people. And it's right back to where it was last fall. Very difficult to find individuals, very difficult to get people to show up to interviews, et cetera. So now my prediction is about this recession and that is that sometimes sometime in the next six to 18 months, we're going to see a brief window of time when we go into recessionary period. Now, just yesterday, the inversion of the yield curve happened and you might have heard a bunch of people talk about that. Let me explain why. It's actually what it actually means for you and your small business. And I'm going to dumb it down a little bit. So don't get in the weeds on me on this one. I'm just trying to make this useful. What this basically means is the bond that the percentage of the yield that is given to you as the bondholder goes up if risk is prevalent, meaning the government, the United States is seen as a very, very stable government. And therefore that's why they get so much debt and it's relatively cheap in terms of the percentage of the interest that they pay on that bond. Now if the bond price is really, really high, it means that no one wants to buy it. So basically what this means is the government has to raise the interest rate in order to be able to attract people. But if everyone wants a bond, if everyone wants to loan the government money, then they can lower the interest rates. So if the two year bond has a higher interest rate than the 10 year bond, what this typically means is that in the short term, investors are expecting the fact that we are going to have either recession and financial issues or the fact that interest rates are going up. Historically, every single time the two year bond has a higher interest rate than the 10 year bond, we go into some sort of recession. Almost every single time over the past 40, 50 years this has happened. What this essentially means is that investors believe that in the next two years there's more risk to that bond than in the next 10 years. So I don't believe that we're going to this massive 10, 15, 20 year downturn. It's going to be a short abbreviated period of time. And then I also look at the three month bond, the 90 day bond, that is not inverted. And so this is what's really, really interesting to me is I Believe next three to six months we're going to have just fine economics. Assuming that Ukraine and the Russian war goes away, I feel like we're going to be just fine. But. But if you see what's happening right now in our economy, I feel like we're setting ourselves up for failure at the end of 2022 and the beginning of 2023. Why do I say this? Because we're taking a bunch of short term actions. We're kicking the can down the field when it comes to raising the interest rates. And at the end of the day, the thing with the oil, the whole oil crisis right now and prices of gas being $5, $6 a gallon. Here's what's crazy is last week the Biden administration released massive amounts of oil from our reserves that we have in the United States. And we are doing this when? Over the next few months, until the midterm elections. Like it just so happened that when midterms elections are happening, that's when we're going to stop using the oil reserves. Now these oil reserves for the country are supposed to be used for natural disasters or when there's in times of war, hurricanes, etc. But yet we're going to use it for political this just to be honest, for politics up until the midterm elections to try to keep down the price of oil. Because if gas prices are high, traditionally not super good when it comes to balloting and for the elections. Another reason why this could potentially lead to big issues with our economy towards the end of 2022 and the beginning of 2023 is because the Fed continues to just kind of kick the can down the field when it comes to raising interest rates. At the end of the day, no one wants to take responsibility for putting massive brakes on an economy that's way overheated right now with inflation. So no one wants to be the person guilty of raising interest rates. Again, kind of a political move in my opinion. However, by doing that, it's going to allow the economy to continue to run hot in the short term, but eventually it will catch up with us. And that's why I keep looking towards a recession. I do not believe it's going to be long or extended, but I am preparing myself for it because I do believe in the time when inflation is super high and a time when interest rates are going up and at a time when the treasury bonds for the two year are higher than the 10 year, it kind of says a lot about what we're at in a. So only time will tell If I'm actually correct on this anticipation for a recession and whether or not I'm correct, like I was when it came to the window of time for labor as well as raising prices, but this one I'm actually the least confident in. The reason is because politicians, politicians have a good way of somehow just kicking the can down the field and letting someone else take care of their problems. But at the end of the day, eventually, whether it's in the six to 18 month window, I believe it will be in, or if it's in five years from now because we keep constantly taking on more debt, it's eventually it will catch up with us. Inflation running out of control, interest rates going up, and our mounting national debt is an absolute. We are on a crash course, a collision course. And eventually those things have to be reckoned with. Now, if you want my advice in terms of what you should be doing right now in your small business and what you should be focused on, watch this video here. It explains what my opinions are, what the three things you should be doing in your small business to prepare for this recession, and whether or not it's in six to 18 months or in five years, it's going to be the things that you need to do in your business to make sure you protected it for that recessionary time.