
The Man Who Sold Hot Dogs - brk
http://blogs.zappos.com/blogs/coach
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unalone
Permanent link: <http://blogs.zappos.com/blogs/coach/2008/11/12/day-561>

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Shorel
The good thing about a recession is that it trims down the bad companies, the
ones that only survive because of inertia, and spares the good ones, the ones
that really deserve to grow.

In fact, several companies have made monopolies, virtual empires, precisely in
times of crysis. No crysis = too much worthless competition, too much
marketing noise.

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kenver
I really dont think there's anything good about a recession at all. When "bad
companies" go down people lose their jobs, the economy takes a hit, social
security costs rise and everyone hurts.

I don't really understand what worthless competition is either. "Worthless
competition" is surely a contradiction in terms. If they were bad/worthless
they wouldn't be competing.

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Retric
Think about the <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_window_fallacy> if
marketers get fired and become factory workers then the output of goods can
increase. If factory workers are fired and become marketers the output of
goods decrease. In total it matters what people are doing even if a person
cares less about what their job is than the fact they have a job.

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helveticaman
This is a cute story, but recessions are not self-fulfilling prophecies. When
people tighten their belts and adjust to economic reality, the economy as a
whole adapts to a recession and prepares to get back out of one.

I think.

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smanek
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_thrift>

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dgabriel
Interesting wikipedia article. Thanks for sharing. I have only a limited
exposure to economics.

From a mostly layperson's perspective, however, in a credit crisis, it makes
sense to increase loanable funds, therefore saving may be very good for the
economy in the long run.

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vaksel
yeah confidence is a huge deal and the second one person waivers, it all comes
crashing down like dominoes.

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sharkfish
I really hate over-simplified platitudes. They only comfort the stupid or
short-sighted. Kind of like reading a sound-bite on trickle-down economics and
applying it to your life.

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brk
I see your point... I really liked this story though. What I'm doing right now
is building the pre and post-sales engineering/support groups for a hardware-
based startup. We're bringing a new and interesting product to market, and
several of us are out in the streets everyday saying "Hey! Want to buy a hot
dog?". Tradeshows, marketing events, pretty much all the standard stuff. And,
like the hot dog man, we're doing very very well with it so far.

Every day, though, I must hear about how the industry we're in and the world
in general is cutting back spending, slowing down their purchases and so on.
It would be very easy to listen to this news, and scale back our efforts and
go off to cower somewhere. If we did this, we'd surely sell much less hotdogs
than we do now.

A big part of my job is keeping folks in the sales team motivated, focused and
ready to spot hot-dog selling opportunities. This story was deeply parallel to
things encountered at our startup every week. It was a bit inspiring to me,
and I thought it might also be a bit inspiring to people who are in the same
position.

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tdavis
Awesome.

I wish I had more than that.

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dawie
There was a man selling web based software on the Information Superhighway...

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dawie
This is a joke...

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yters
No one reads this story, so you shouldn't even check it out.

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unalone
And what was the point of your saying that? Were you trying to copy the
story's point in a comment?

Because if that's the case, only those of us who read the article got your
comment.

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yters
So, I guess what you are saying is that everyone who downvotes me is agreeing
with the comment they downvoted?

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yters
Doh, my cleverness has come back to bite me. Thanks a lot, brain.

