The BizDoc offers the best advice and growth lessons from some of the world’s most popular (and sometimes LEAST popular) companies. In this week’s episode, Tom discusses leadership lessons at CNN, Americans making a comeback from financial debt, home prices falling, the U.S. Transportation landscape and more!
Leadership lessons at CNN
Since deciding to hold a Town Hall meeting with Trump, CNN has been struggling these last couple of weeks. In hopes of getting some views and ratings under their belt again, their mission backfired and in pure Trump fashion, he took full advantage of the opportunity. The result? Reporter Kaitlin Collins now gets her own primetime show.
- You can get away with either bad ratings or a rolling morale crisis at a television network but the combination is often fatal.
- The question: Where does Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav, (Chris Licht’s boss) stand in all of this?
- If Zaslav is playing a main role in key questions — casting talent, giving Trump a platform to speak — it’ll be hard for him to blame Licht for the end results.
- Licht is trying to do some damage control, himself.
- Over the past several days, he has called media reporters to privately push back against what he sees as unfair coverage of the network.
The Lesson: If morale is low and your Google or Yelp reviews and ratings are poor, you need to take action NOW. Do not just call Google and Yelp for assistance, fix the issue.
Americans making a comeback from debt
- Americans are once again not able to pay their credit cards back.
- Over 36% of U.S. adults owe more money in credit card debt than they have saved.
- Many Americans are turning to their credit cards to pay their mortgages.
- One does not need to have a PhD to understand that this is not going well.
- Monthly sales have dipped in 14 out of the last 15 months.
- On a year-by-year basis, sales are down 23%
- Prices have shown a decline in the past 20 months.
- Meanwhile, the median price of those homes fell by the most in 11 years.
- Prices declined at 1.7% in April.
The Lesson: Consumer debt — driven by mortgages — is bad, but there’s more. Also, if your business is connected to housing — get creative. Customers may use credit cards more than HELOCs.
Keep on Trucking
Trucking offers a gauge of the broader economy, as it represents nearly two-thirds of tonnage carried by all domestic freight transportation, the American Trucking Association said. And a so-called freight recession could signal a downturn.
- A downbeat economy has left truck drivers facing a slowdown that could possibly be worse than 2008.
- The sluggish U.S. economy is weighing on trucking, and the sector faces a slowdown that could get worse than it did in 2008. Freight demand has deteriorated over the last year, and per-mile rates for drivers have plunged since the pandemic boom in 2021.
- Inflation, higher operating and maintenance costs, and the declining demand of goods all combined, paint a bleak picture.
- For example, drivers are at per-mile rates as low as $1.49 per mile, per FreightWaves. Two years ago, those rates hovered at $3.01 – worse than levels seen in 2019.
- After adjusting for inflation, Bloomberg noted that the current National Truckload Index rate of $1.49 per mile is actually closer to $1.19.
- As capital becomes more expensive, trucking companies have been forced to pay more than usual to finance their vehicles.
- The grim data comes as Shelly Simpson, the president of trucking giant JB Hunt, said in an earnings call that the current market is “reminding us of 2009.”
The Lesson: If you are in the transportation and freight business, take care of your best employees. This storm is predicted to remain for the next 12 months.
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