How Is Inflation Impacting Us?
With this week’s news abuzz about OPEC reducing output, I keep reading headlines about gas prices at the pump moving back up. Yes, BACK up! When did they ever go down, I wonder?
The past 30 to 45 days here on the Central Coast, gas prices have been anything but down. This photo I took yesterday pretty much sums it up. While my colleague in Maryland said today that gas is just under $3.84, here in California, we’re paying a whopping amount. I suppose this is for the privilege of living in California, where the power grid doesn’t work, but the sun always shines. Or maybe it’s because — if our governor has his way — we are about to be blessed with fast-food committees setting hourly rates. Yes, for all that nanny-state stuff, we get the benefit of paying more than ever.
So all this made me wonder what’s happening in our industry and how inflation is impacting us. Many leaders I spoke with over the past two weeks were planning 2023 budgets and wanted to know what assumptions others were making. We ran a quick poll about sales growth and expense assumptions, as well as planned salary and price increases, and the results show inflation is at work in our industry, too. Expenses, salary, and price increases are all on the rise, and top-line growth is still relatively ok as far out as our leaders can see. Some are seeing regional recessions — more softness in some parts of the world — but so far nothing catastrophic to report in terms of any market hitting the skids.
This is one great benefit of being a member of the Outsell Leadership Community; when hot topics are brewing, we have answers. And if we don’t, we can — and will! — get them easily enough. Within 24–26 hours, our leaders had hard data to support their 2023 planning and budget decisions with data they could cut by small-, medium-, or large-size data, information, and analytics peer-group companies. Whoo-hoo for that!
In a downturn, our clients need information, and so do our clients’ clients. That buffers our industry somewhat, as we tend to lag GDP on the downturn and lead on the upturn, making our cycles a bit less dramatic. Subscription models work to keep things more stable, too. That’s the Tortoise and the Hare nature of our industry and why investors often love it. Steady as she goes, we don’t tend to have a lot of drama in our industry. That’s the good news and the bad news: sometimes much doesn’t change. But we’ll take it.
We’ll have more to present on all this when we meet next week at the Outsell Signature Event co-produced with JEGI CLARITY. We have a great roster of execs convening to address the business of data, information, and analytics, and as I wrote last week, the 2023 Outlook is front and center. So much is so intertwined, and we have a format that rocks for discussing geopolitics, the economy, M&A, talent, supply chain, and oil and energy, which are all connected like never before.
What if inflation isn’t about the fed? What if oil and energy stay high because we are turning off the spigots before sustainable means are available? We need mining in dubious places to work seamlessly. We need power grids that actually stay on. What if climate change keeps an indelible dent in the food supply, and it’s not just war in Ukraine but hurricanes, drought, pests, and floods that keep our lettuce from growing, our goats and cattle and chickens from grazing, or our grain crops going fallow? I don’t know, but I don’t see pricing going down anytime soon.
See me next week and I’ll share more. Meanwhile, you can bet if gas prices are going back up, we will soon be paying $8 and $9 a gallon. But I think I predicted that a few months back in another blog post.