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#i checked and including those 5 makes it just under 80 mins long so it would have still fit on a cd!!
bunnywand · 1 year
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the world if gorillaz' the singles collection 2001-2011 had come out the next year instead, and actually included All the singles from the first 3 phases of their career (so including 911, lil dub chefin, revolving doors / amarillo, doyathing) 😔
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The 12 Best Magnetic Letters And Numbers For Toddlers Accounts To Follow On Twitter
my kindergarten fantastic grandson was fairly switched off by needing to discover his alphabet. we've been dealing with him for a year as well but cars and trucks as well as outdoor always took him away. then i bore in mind that back in the old days elevating my brood of 5 they constantly enjoyed playing with the magnetic letter i had on the fridge for possibly 15 years. i never needed to really rest down and also teach the abc's. seemed just speaking with them while they played with those fridge letters worked. When my granddaughter called me in tears that her son is 'falling short' kindergarten i kept in mind the refrigerator letters. i select these refrigerator alphabet magnets and had them delivered to his home. cost didn't hurt my social protection budget plan either. i held off writing this evaluation up until i knew if they 'did their job'. i am enjoyed write that he enjoys them. when my granddaughter begins cooking she calls him in for a quick bite to tide him over till dinners ready as well as he remains to 'play' with his letters that came resolved to him in the mail. in simply a couple of days he has actually learned the alphabet. i assume due to the fact that not just is this a vivid high quality plaything they came to him and also he took ownership. i can 100 advise this for any type of youngster starting the finding out process. this company has a fantastic item. you might buy cheap ones at the dollar shop or your price cut shop but they are a better size and they came with the mail so when he opened the plan he took ownership. for us this collection of abc's responded to a prayer.
awesome wonderful size for all hands and also simply the ideal magnetism. they are sturdy yet wouldn't recommend for kids who are still greatly teething. i make sure that they might withstand a couple of chew sessions as well as drool but l wouldn't let teething little's "play" with these. i know the age recommendation is 3 yet if you supervise your little's to introduce their letters and shades after that immediately do away with you should have the ability to use this set for several years. luv all the various shades for punctuation and recognition. plus when you use a u n m as well as w they all are formed differently so terrific for convenience of letter acknowledgment for younger students. after a few mins of utilizing these with my 4yo he was spelling as well as articulating 4 and also 5 letter words on his own. we are just servicing 3 letter word family members view words with brief vowel noises. i was incredibly stunned. he was also utilizing his digraphs and dual vowels to make jobs. he was doing alright with dry erase board or just created words but hearing seeing claiming and doing it was the vital he intended to maintain selecting his view words and desired to mean other extra tough words on his own after institution practice was finished. will definitely advise and also will most definitely acquire again
magtimes magnetic letters as well as numbers for kids informing kid in enjoyable introducing baby's brain and also ingenious 80 pcs in a boxi such as this collection of letters as well as numbers since it consists of both top and reduced situation letters which will certainly aid child to recognize and find out both top and also reduced letters of the alphabet. the numbers the set includes two 2 each from 0 9 will certainly show him her ways to count from 0 to 998. the set also consists of signs the total number of pieces in this set is 80. the colors are dynamic as well as the set is made from long lasting plastic. there are magnets in the rear of each item which allows them to adhere to metal surface i am trying to find a magnetic board to make use of the collection of letters as well as numbers on to assist instruct child the alphabet spelling and also counting.the size of the pieces in this collection is fantastic from small hands makes it simple for them to grab as well as hold. i would not recommend this collection for kid under 3 years old without guidance. i would suggest this set of magnetic letters and numbers to anybody seeking a simple enjoyable way to teach kids the alphabet as well as checking.
i absolutely enjoy this item my double kids are 3 1 2 years old now so i'm frequently seeking toys that have educational value for them. they are at the age where they are excited about discovering so when they saw the letters numbers they instantly desired them out to have fun with i like that with these letters numbers there are even more compared to one of each magnet. this makes it so much less complicated to assist them with their letters acknowledging their names as well as with their checking. we invested an hour playing with them on the fridge the various other day. i put several various letters on the refrigerator then had the children practice determining different letters. then website i had them do the very same with the numbers. it was wonderful practice for them as well as they had a blast doing it. plus with them getting on the refrigerator they are frequently visible to the kids with assists significantly with their aesthetic memory.i woukd most definitely suggest this product if you have more youthful children in your home. it's an awesome discovering device
this got here very rapidly which is wonderful since my son was really excited about playing with them. you have the full alphabet both top as well as reduced situation along with some math symbols. my child is One Decade old and also homeschooled as well as these are an adorable little means to do something new. every time he mosts likely to the fridge i transform the math trouble and also he attempts to solve it before he opens the refrigerator. it's actually adorable to leave an 'i like you' on the door for my spouse to see in the morning when he gets ready for work. the magnets appear to be relatively strong none have actually been unintentionally ripped off like several of the cheap buck shop ones which is truly good since i obtained tired of sweeping them up lol and also i truly like that it has both the upper and reduced instance letters as well as the complete set of numbers as well as mathematics symbols. it will certainly likewise be helpful once my little girl gets a little older and start appearing out words
magnetic letters and also numbers for informing youngsters in fun educational alphabet refrigerator magnets 82 piecesi bought this set of magnetic letters as well as numbers for my grandson that is transforming 5. i was thrilled with the construction of the items when i opened them. in the olden days magnetic letters were plastic and also had small magnets inserted in the back. these magnets often tended to come out and also were a choking hazard. i was delighted to see that this collection is made of difficult eva letters and also the magnet is the entire back of the item. they are the perfect dimension for youngsters to adjust when discovering how to lead to new words. the magnets are solid sticking firmly to our fridge. while they do not consist of tiny magnets they are still not advised for small children who have the tendency to put whatever in their mouths.my grandson liked his letters and i sent them home with him to make use of as he learns and expands.
there appears to be a lot of confusion over whether these are plastic or foam. they're an extremely soft foam with a magnetic backing it's fully firmly affixed as well as covers the entire back side of each magnet. i got these for my child who gets on the autistic spectrum. he likes letters yet we needed to do away with our old sets because he chewed on them. currently that his chewing has actually diminished i prefer the foam for him since on the rare occasion they're flung no damage is done.that stated these are soft foam and in between 1 to 1 1 2 high. for older children they're best but they should not be gotten if there are more youthful kids in the residence or older youngsters that still chew on points. even if they don't choke you cannot clean up foam like you can plastic the bacteria remains in the pores.also you'll require more than one set if they prefer to lead to out greater than one or two words each time.
love these . my little girl is three and these are terrific to exercise determining letters numbers and having her method positioning letters together to produce her name. i strategy to make use of these to additionally have her practicing matching reduced case and also upper instance letters colors and so on she's simply starting to learn her numbers 1 20. these magnets are a fantastic dimension for little fingers as well as have strong magnets.we really did not have any type of issues making use of these on her magnetic blackboard as well as a cookie sheets. these likewise adhere to the refrigerator. i'm a teacher and keep collections of these at the office. there are lots of activities that you can utilize. just search magnet letter numbers activities for kids and you will get numerous activities to utilize. children who make use of practical materials are normally far more successful in learning. this is fantastic to have for young children via main qualities.
i got these letters for my two years of age child. he is autistic and also does not have any kind of principle of just what the forms are. He loves the intense colors as well as sticking them to the refrigerator to make shapes. the size is simply perfect for his kid hands. i like the truth that they huge enough that i do not need to bother with him swallowing the items because he actually wants to eat them or run about with them in his mouth. he actually enjoys lining them up or arranging them by color. i could inform you that these magnets are extremely really long lasting. my kid has actually eaten thrown as well as wrecked these letters over as well as over. he hasn't already been able to damage them or remove the magnets. when they obtain filthy i simply toss them in a mesh bag as well as pop them in the top rack in the dishwasher and also they cleanse up wonderful. i highly recommend these as well as would most definitely purchase once more.
constantly looking for child grant all the nieces and nephews. these looked good because they resembled a stiff foam vs the hard plastic ones i normally see. they are great top quality not to hard not also soft. the magnets are ideal those with dexterity issues to manage and move around since they are not incredibly strong. package shows 3 and i would concur that these are except little ones still packing every little thing in their mouth. hard to see but among the photos i have them stuck to a metal panel holding up package. it would certainly take several to attempt and also hold up an item of paper however that is not their purpose. an additional photo has actually a credit sized card to offer a size recommendation. great item as well as vendor. nbsp magnetic letters as well as numbers for educating kids in enjoyable instructional alphabet refrigerator magnets 82 items
i bought these for my nephew that likes to associate my sister rather than playing with his toys. these are excellent method to educate him alphabets and nubmers. everyday my sibling simply places a word on the fridge as well as while food preparation in cooking area she teaches him all these.magnet strength is great and also they stay with fridge also prior to getting rid of the plastic. the size of letters are not large so maintain that in mind. these are valuable for kids for very long time starting from where they begin finding out the numbers and also alphabet to the time they do enhancement subtration and also words formation.the price variety is sensible as well as these made terrific gifts for me. i have actually affixed pictures as well. to see the size and
they are everything that you require if you have toddlers in your home. they measure into 1.25 inches hence may not be great for infants or early young children. i liked the method they have the small case letters e.g the same quot i quot imitated precisely ... and for this reason the whole set is a terrific aesthetic reward to not simply recognition yet likewise word building.my youngster is 3 years 3 month old little in advance on these and also might take part in sight words as well as word building. he prepared them in order numerous variety of times. planning to do matching and also several other positive tasks with him. currently on my way for a diy magnetic board do not want the refrigerator to be his only location to learn.
i obtained these for my granddaughter who simply began preschool this year. she really loves them. they are so vibrant and also a wonderful dimension for little hands to order into. she spells words on the front of the refrigerator and utilizes them on her magnetic easel board too. she is discovering much quicker by having her very own letters and numbers in your home. what i like regarding them is that there are top situation letters along with lower case letters. i've never seen a set like that prior to. it's actually special. the high quality is remarkable also. i extremely suggest these for people who have a kid in their life that is just beginning in institution.
the items are jam-packed separately in three tiny plastic bags one for upper situation letters one for lower case letters and one for numbers and also icons. the product box is tiny and nicely loaded. no stench from the foam letters and also the magnetic back is made of high quality. i like also that they are neatly cut the foam and also magnets not like some foam products that are not well cut. magnets remain on refrigerator and magnetic board. shades are dynamic as well as layout is very cute. the photo excels yet it is method cuter personally. quickly shipping also. definitely pleased with the purchase and vendor. most definitely recommend it.
my children love these they are bright and colorful as well as very strong magnets. there are 82 magnetic letters as well as numbers as well as they are fantastic for instructing your kids to spell or include and they make it enjoyable for the children to find out. they have little hearts on each of the them as well as they are an excellent size they are not big or as well tiny they are a fantastic size for youngsters. they keep my youngsters captivated while i am food preparation and they could be near me and i do not have to stress over exactly what they are doing and also we could still hang out with each other while doing various things i definitely suggest it its a wonderful price for the number of you enter this bundle.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/search?q=alphabet magnets
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sandralmuller · 4 years
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10 tips to help you become a more productive, prolific and profitable writer
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I don’t know anyone who doesn’t want to be a more productive, prolific and profitable writer.
These tips work for me. I experiment a lot and love discovering how our brains work. I use this to my advantage. I like knowing the hows and whys behind our behaviour.
This list is what I do to improve the quality and quantity of my output. This isn’t about what you SHOULD do. I hate that word ‘should’. You need to find the things that will help you focus and become a more productive, prolific and profitable writer. Not all of these tips will apply and fit the way your brain works.
I can smash out blog posts and sales pages for my paying clients quite quickly. I can easily write 1000 quality words in about an hour. This is for tasks where I don’t have to worry about content design, ponder high-level concepts and how all the bits fit together. Those sorts of pages take a lot longer.
The quicker I can write, the more profitable I become.
So can you.
1. Decide yesterday
I decide each evening what to wear the next day, what my son will wear, what he needs to take to school, what I’ll eat for breakfast, what I’ll do if it’s pouring and I can’t go for my morning walk.
We all get crippled by decision fatigue as the day wears on, so any decisions I can make the night before leaves more space in my day for the more important decisions.
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2. Don’t look at your phone for the first hour of your day
Most days I don’t switch on my phone until after I’ve done the school drop off, and even then it’s just to listen to a podcast on my walk home.
The longer I leave it to check email, social media, notifications and other messages, the less hold those things have on me during the day. I feel less drawn to checking my phone during the day and less likely to feel the lure of Facebook as a distraction.
This has been like magic for me.
Give it a go for a week and see if you notice a difference, too.
3. Believe you’re a good writer
I’ve been doing this word herding thing for years.
I know I’m a good writer.
I don’t worry or fret about what my clients will think because I know I’m a good writer and whatever their feedback, I’ll be able to action it.
I don’t let that nagging doubt get in the way of smashing out the words. It’s rare that I miss. A tweak here or there and lately my first drafts have ended up online without a second look from me. The amount of fretting we do does not equate the outcome.
Why bother fretting about the words when I know my clients will be happy? Less fretting helps me become a profitable writer.
I don’t doubt myself. Neither should you.
In situations where I’m writing about an unfamiliar topic, I pay someone to run their eyes over it for me to give me that assurance.
4. Outline outline outline
I rarely, if ever, write a page without an outline.
It’s something I’ve built into my process.
Then when I sit down to write those posts, I can smash them out in about 1-1.5 hours. But my clients pay me for the outcome, not my time. This is one way I’m becoming more profitable.
In my outlines, I include:
headline
dot points for the introduction
heading 2s and 3s
bullet points of ideas under each heading
the wrap-up
the call to action (CTA)
Two things happen when I follow this process.
I fiddle with the structure the order of priority and while I’m doing that…
My subconscious mind writes the thing for me.
Sometimes I’ll share these outlines with clients before I write them to make sure I’m on the right track. This avoids wasting time and helps deliver the content my client wants.
5. Set time limits and be accountable
I run Pomodoro sessions, which are 25-minute work sprints, with my mastermind business buddies.
Apparently, 25 mins is the sweet spot for getting stuff done.
Pom sessions, as we fondly call them, are a great way to keep you and your business besties focused and accountable.
Plus they have the social benefit of being a virtual water cooler. A bit of banter, a problem solved, and we’re all back into it for another 25 minutes.
We meet face-to-face via a video chat tool like Google Meet, Whereby or Zoom. We turn the sound off, but leave the video on.
6. Avoid social media
Last year I tracked all my social media usage and found I was on it 20-25 hours per week. That’s like a solid part-time job.
Once I realised that, I dropped my usage back to something more reasonable, under 10 hours per week. That left me with more hours to create and invoice. Hello, profitability.
Avoiding my phone in the morning helped with that. When I’m super focused, I won’t even check socials until after hours.
But if I need to visit Facebook to check something or round up my business buddies for a pom session, I set an alarm. Facebook is designed to suck us into its vortex. That quick check is lost to 20 minutes of scrolling. Ooops.
7. Ditch the To Do list
Controversial, I know. I hear the intake of breath from here.
If it ain’t scheduled, I ain’t doing it.
Just like I don’t run a notebook for capturing ideas (because if it’s a good idea I’ll remember it – if it’s crap, I won’t nor should I), I don’t run a To Do list.
I used to have notebooks filled with To Do lists of all the ideas for each of my businesses listing all the things I would, could and ‘should’ do… one day.
I’ve killed that that stuff to lighten my mental admin load. And it feels great.
If it’s important, instead of writing it down as a task to tick off a list, I’ll schedule it in my calendar and actually do it.
There’s a massive mental load that comes with carrying infinite to do lists around with us. I’d rather give that energy to something that will make me more profitable.
If a task is important enough, I’ll remember to do it. But otherwise, there’s my calendar spreading out tasks over the week. I know at a glance how much capacity I have (or don’t have) to take on more work.
8. Write faster
I am forever grateful for learning to touch type on a rickety old typewriter in high school. And for my job as a media monitor during my last year of uni. I had to summarise news — radio and TV — for about 9 hours a day, 3 nights per week.
My typing speed jumped from a peckish 40 wpm to more like 100 wpm.
I probably do about 80 wpm these days and 100 wpm when I’m in the zone.
If you’re doubtful you could ever become a fast typist, experiment with dictation software like otter.ai and the dictation function in Google Docs. We speak faster than we type.
I’ll experiment with dictation software over the coming months to see if it improves my writing speed and overall productivity.
9. Junk in = junk out
Y’all are prolly gonna hate this one. No sweetie treats to fuel your day.
I also experimented and found that I work well when I’m a bit hungry. Not hand-shakingly fatigued hungry. But a little hungry.
So, I eat lightly for breakfast and lunch. I don’t snack at all in between meals.
I’ve been doing this for 6 weeks straight. It has improved my focus and output immensely.
On the weekend, I cook a big batch of soup or lentils and eat that for lunch every day. Again, it means less decision making. I don’t mind eating the same thing every day, so long as it’s yummy.
The same junk in= junk out theory applies for what you’re binge-watching or reading.
I haven’t watched commercial TV for years now when I come across it, it’s as irritating as a fly stuck in my ear.
When I lived in Korea, I didn’t watch any TV for about 3 years other than Game of Thrones and the odd series here and there.
I finally succumbed to Netflix earlier this year, and Disney and Amazon Prime, and my reading level dropped off from 1 to 2 books per week to zero per month. Ooops. But I choose my programs judiciously and I’ve since reduced my Netflix time and started reading again.
10. Schedule exercise
If I don’t exercise first thing in the morning, it doesn’t happen at all.
Taking a brisk 30 minute to 1 hour walk is the best thing for my focus and clarity.
I don’t think of it as taking time out of my day.
Even if you do none of the above tips, this trumps it all.
Exercising adds time to your day.
Blaze your own trail to becoming a profitable writer
This is definitely not a list of shoulds. And I don’t do all the things on this list all the time. But the more I do, the more productive and profitable I become.
If your goal is to become a more productive and profitable writer, then I recommend experimenting with what works best for you.
What are your best tips for improving your writing efficiency? Let me know in the comments below.
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10 tips to help you become a more productive, prolific and profitable writer was originally published on The Smarter Writer
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High Ticket Hijack Review Discount And Bonus
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Introducing High Ticket Hijack
Just how to Develop an Email Checklist with 74 List Building Strategies in 2019 (Part 5)
6. Show individuals a popup at the optimum time of scrolling down
Works well with: ... blogs or infinite scroll web pages.
You read a really fascinating write-up on a blog and also you are this near ending up reviewing it and carrying on with your job.
Something pops up under right-hand side of your screen. What is that?
Plot thickens.
It's a popup that goes off when truly, actually involved visitors check out.
This is what it appears like:
Practically, when somebody visits your page or blog post and scroll to the end of the post, they are involved.
So, what you do is reveal them a popup box right before they get to the conclusion of the article, at concerning 75-80% in the message.
This popup welcomes users to get in touch with the brand name or writer of the blog post by registering to receive updates from them.
Obviously, the 80% popup might show up to anybody who just randomly scrolled to all-time low of the post to see how much time it is. (What? That does that, Ine?).
Point taken.
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Conversely, they could be searching for info on a similar topic.
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Walk the additional mile for your High Ticket Hijack users!
Craft one-of-a-kind, original web content for your users or put together web content in books.
Share that material in either through popups or with your article (see below).
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Anything that your audience may locate intriguing.
What type of knowledge do they require access to?
Connect to them through a newsletter, a blog post, your Instagram tale or Facebook blog post as well as find out.
Produce that web content as well as present it in the best format:.
E-book
Ebooks are fantastic.
True, they take a great deal of energy and time to compose, and leave little area for errors.
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You need material that is the best of the best, la crème de la crème.
In either case, you wish to go through this procedure when, without having to review it every now and then.
As for the content, it is best to start from the fundamentals.
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entirebodyexercise · 5 years
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How to set and achieve fitness goals
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Vanity is not a bad point. When it's utilized appropriately, a little bit of vanity can be helpful for your health. As an example, a number of women have been motivated to stop cigarette smoking not due to the fact that it ruins them on the in, however since it creates wrinkles.
Some individuals take it as well far, like body builders that concentrate only on achieving what they view as a visual perfect, wellness and also physical performance be damned. So feel totally free to embrace a little bit of vanity. Simply don't go overboard.
Personally, this is where my health and fitness inspiration originates from:
One-third vanity focused (looking good)
One-third health focused (things like cholesterol, decreasing cancer cells danger, blood stress, etc.)
One-third physical efficiency focused (exactly how rapid I could run, just how much I can raise, just how much energy I have, etc.)
I assume this is a great technique, as well as the three motivations are equally inclusive. Although I (and also my wife) like having the ability to see my abs, I will not do something foolish like take ephedra to burn a couple of even more extra pounds off my midsection. I will cut back on scrap food and also beer to stay slim, and also this is useful to my health.
So consider what you intend to accomplish in terms of vanity, wellness, as well as physical efficiency. Obtain this suggestion in your mind. Write it down, even. This is your "result objective."
Set outcome goals Outcome objectives could be motivating. They maintain you getting to accomplishing something. Directly, I count on intending high, so that if you just achieve 80 percent of your objective you still seem like you've done something incredible. I likewise such as pressing result objectives. This means that if you attain them, after that don't merely concentrate on maintaining it, yet reach for a greater degree. The very best way to do something like maintain health and fitness is attempting to achieve a higher level of fitness.
But to attain the outcome, you need to concentrate on the procedure. In various other words, you need to ensure you achieve your procedure goals.
Set process goals Process goals are points like a regular exercise schedule. You could develop a list of workouts that you plan to attain this week. It could be 2 Pilates classes, a 10K run, and a hr of martial arts. If that's on your listing for this week, this is the procedure you go through to aid attain your utmost outcome. To achieve the end result, you must go through the procedure. You should check off these procedure goals as "done" each week, week after week, month after month.
And the procedure objectives should be progressive.
How incremental changes add up I'm a large follower in the power of increments. For instance, I spend a great deal of time exercising, and I go hard also. This was not constantly the situation. When I started running simply a few kilometres would certainly make me harm from the brows down, so I slowly pushed my distances in little increments over time to the place where I run regarding 50km a week in the winter months, and also 30km in the summer season (I run less in the summer season because I include great deals of biking once the snow is gone). I likewise invest bunches of time raising weights currently-- far more compared to what I did when I started. I likewise do it at a much higher strength that when I started.
It's all right to begin small and also sluggish, as long as you concentrate on incrementally pushing the following:
The length of time spent exercising
The frequency with which you exercise
The intensity at which you exercise
The problem level of the kinds of workouts you engage in
Just to give you a suggestion of the power of increments, consider this: If you start with just HALF AN HOUR of workout a week, and after that add only five mins of exercise weekly, in a year you will certainly be up to exercising virtually 5 hrs a week, which's incredible.
Put your fridge to work So, exactly how do you make certain you accomplish the procedure objectives? Well, there are a few inspirational ideas you can receive from this post I composed for the Los Angeles Times, but you can also make use of the power of the fridge.
Right now you may think, Just what the hell is he speaking about?
Allow me to inform you a short tale. I'm training to run a 10km race in under 40 mins and writing about it for the LA Times. It's visiting be a near point, and also the training is harsh. My instructor (who used to trainer the Canadian Forces cross-country group as well as once ran a 10km in 31:18), gave me an Excel spread sheet of a running routine and I winced when I saw it. Still, I knew I needed to follow it very closely to accomplish the under-40-minutes time (a result goal), so I printed that schedule of process objectives off and argued the refrigerator so I would certainly see it several times each day. And I made an oath that I would certainly tick off each of those set up runs.
My family obtained entailed as well. My young little girl would press me out the door so she could possibly tick off the procedure objectives on my running list.
In conclusion, determine exactly what your result is, then obtain a prepare for the process you require to comply with and also develop regular monthly schedules of activities that you adhere to the fridge. Enjoy in ticking each of the process objectives off, and also you'll hit that intended outcome.
James S. Fell, MBA, is a licensed toughness as well as conditioning specialist in Calgary, ABDOMINAL. He writes the column "In-Your-Face Physical fitness" for the Los Angeles Times as well as consults with clients on critical planning for fitness and wellness. Obtain a totally free metabolic process credit report at www.bodyforwife.com. Email James at [email protected].
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douglassmiith · 4 years
Text
Spanx Founder Sara Blakelys Guide to Surviving Anything
July 7, 2020 9 min read
This story appears in the July 2020 issue of Entrepreneur. Subscribe »
Maybe your article should be titled “What to Do When Your Panties Are on Fire. ha ha”  
That’s what Spanx founder Sara Blakely emailed me after we talked. It was March. The pandemic had just begun.
Blakely is famous for a few things: She’s a rare female billionaire, the defining personality in the estimated $1.8 billion global shapewear category, and just about every photo of her features a showstopping smile bright enough to reach the nosebleed section.
But she has fallen on that happy face more than once. 
“I believe a lot of really important, incredible innovation comes out of dark times,” she tells me. Spanx turns 20 this year, surviving September 11, the 2008 recession, and personal tragedy — and she expects no different now, despite closing her stores, watching sales slump, and losing a line of new product when a cargo ship caught fire. When we speak, she’s working from home, punting four kids under the age of 11 before they tackle her, and boldly reinventing herself and her company once again.
Related: Spanx Founder Sara Blakely Has 99 Pages of Business Ideas
“Actually,” she confesses, “I’m hiding in a closet.” Here’s what she’s learned about crisis management.
Crisis: Childhood trauma
Strategy: Train your mind
“When I was 16,” Blakely says, “my friend was run over and killed by a car in front of me, and my parents separated. I was in a very, very dark place.” Before her father left home, he handed her a cassette series called How to Be a No-Limit Person, by the self-help author Wayne Dyer. “I put the tapes in,” she says, “and they changed my life forever.” She practiced letting go of what other people thought and not worrying about being embarrassed; she embraced the idea that the only way to fail was not to try. She learned that times of despair contained hidden blessings. And this, she believes, is what set her up for success. 
First she got a job selling fax machines. It was brutal being kicked out of offices all day, every day. “I knew it wasn’t the right path,” she says. “After a really bad day, I wrote in my journal, ‘I’m going to invent a product I can sell to millions of people that will make them feel good.’ And through tears, I looked up at the ceiling and said, ‘OK, universe; give me the idea.’ ” The universe didn’t deliver quickly; two years passed, and her father suggested that she get a job at CNN or Coca-Cola in Atlanta, where she was living. She said no. “I actually made an intentional decision to stay in a dark place, because I felt that if I became content at a job, it would keep me from an opportunity to achieve something much greater.”  
Eventually, she did hit on a brilliant new idea. It was Spanx. 
Image Credit: Courtesy of Spanx
Crisis: September 11’s impact
Strategy: Stick with your strength
Blakely launched Spanx out of her apartment in October 2000, and its Footless Body-Shaping Pantyhose quickly caught the interest of Bloomingdale’s, Neiman Marcus, Saks Fifth Avenue, and Nordstrom. But she knew this wasn’t enough; consumers and salespeople might not understand the new product. So she went on the road, doing promotions for seven hours a day in fancy department stores.
Related: 3 Survival Traits for Any Leader
“I took pictures of my own butt in white pants with and without the product, went to Kinko’s, got it laminated, and stood there showing women what it could do,” she says. 
This gained her traction — but her enthusiasm would soon be tested. Blakely made a big decision to invest in an advertising insert, which would be sent out by Saks. And it arrived in mailboxes exactly five days after the attacks of September 11, when nobody wanted to think about shopping.
She wondered if she should stop her daily appearances. That fall, there weren’t many customers in the stores. But she did it anyway — and kept at it even after her best friend and roommate died in a horse riding accident a few months later. Emotionally drained as she was, she sensed it would pay off.
First there were the insights. Spanx was sold in the hosiery department—and because she was actually in the stores, she saw that almost nobody walked through there. So Blakely got busy. She stuffed envelopes with Spanx and placed them by cash registers throughout the stores. “I also realized I had to win over the sales associates,” she says. “So before my appearances, I would run around and ask everyone individually if they would come to a morning meeting, and I offered them free product.” Then she’d bait them with contests, like whoever sold the most Spanx that day would get $100.  
“I ended up building a sales force, not on my payroll,” she says. “Store associates would grab their customers and say, ‘I have to take you to the hosiery department. You have to buy this new thing.’ It was this really intense time of bonding, because everybody was hurting and vulnerable, and I made very deep connections, even down to the ladies in the gift wrap section. That ended up being an incredible boost to the business, because once people started going back into the stores, all these salespeople were selling for me and rooting for me.”
Image Credit: Courtesy of Spanx
Crisis: The 2008 recession
Strategy: Choose profitability over growth
Many of Spanx’s competitors follow a Silicon Valley–style playbook: They raise a lot of money and then spend it aggressively to gain new customers. Spanx did the opposite. Even as the company took off, Blakely ran it with the tight grip of its new Power Panties. “We spent what we could to grow,” she says. “But we’ve never put growth for the sake of growth over profitability and running the business in a way that we felt we could weather storms.” That strategy kept Spanx stable during the 2008 recession.
To this day, Blakely has never taken outside money, owns 100 percent of the company, maintains zero debt, and does all PR and marketing agency in-house. “One thing that has sustained Spanx through a lot of obstacles is that we have a zero-based budget plan internally,” she says. “Every manager starts at zero each year and has to make a case for how the money they’re asking for is going to have a return on investment. It doesn’t matter what last year’s budget was — you have to start again from scratch and build it up.”
Although Spanx won’t reveal revenue numbers, Blakely says it has been profitable since its first month in business.
Related: 4 Simple Techniques for Successfully Branding Your Business During a Crisis
Crisis: Mission drift at Spanx
Strategy: Check your internal culture 
In 2002, two years after founding Spanx, Blakely hired a CEO to run the business so she could travel as the face of the brand. That worked for a long time — but by 2016, she felt that the company was off track. So she took over as CEO again and looked for what needed to change.
First she tried on every product, both produced and in the pipeline, and tossed about 80 percent of them. “I thought, Let’s dive deep and focus on only the best of the best,” she says.
Then she addressed the culture, which had veered from the mission. “I wrote down the things that contributed to my ability to overcome odds and take risks,” Blakely says. The list wasn’t exactly out of a business school textbook. It included her stints in sales, public speaking, debate, and stand-up comedy, and once she had it in hand, she created the Be Bold Bootcamp. Now every employee, regardless of their job, gets coaching in those subjects. The goal is to help people think out of the box while also being quick to see the upside in down times. “We’ll rent a comedy club, and everybody stands on stage and works on how to frame things in a funny way,” she says. “We’ve also held debate-offs at Emory [University]. Debate is about listening and compassion and seeing the other person’s point of view. It isn’t about ‘I win; you lose.’ It’s trying to find that win-win scenario.”
Not only did the reboot avert disaster; it led to innovation. Spanx had defined shapewear but now needed to be more. So it aggressively pushed its new FaUX Leather Leggings. “That was an extremely pivotal moment because we truly became an apparel company,“ says Blakely.
Image Credit: Courtesy of Spanx
Crisis: Happening right now
Strategy: Stay nimble and optimistic
After a career of navigating (and gaining strength from) hard times, Blakely is eager to inspire a new generation to do the same. Most important to her is developing a strong personal mindset: “As an entrepreneur, that’s your greatest asset, and you should work on it daily,” she says. “I do.” One thing she has done is partner with 3DE, a national education nonprofit, on a module for high school students that teaches them to think for themselves and see opportunities. Currently it’s in 13 public schools and on track to grow. 
Related: 9 Inspiring Quotes From Self-Made Billionaire and Spanx Founder Sara Blakely
Now, in the face of COVID-19, she’s been counting on that same mindset. Since March, Blakely has cut costs, scaled back inventory orders, brainstormed new products, and donated $5 million to help other female founders. With all her past crises, she was prepared for this moment and continues to ready for what lies ahead. “I’m in survival mode, but I have faith that it’s going to change,” she says. “We’re already learning as a company, and I have no doubt I am going to have some amazing inspiration.”   
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laurelkrugerr · 4 years
Text
Spanx Founder Sara Blakely’s Guide to Surviving Anything
July 7, 2020 9 min read
This story appears in the July 2020 issue of Entrepreneur. Subscribe »
Maybe your article should be titled “What to Do When Your Panties Are on Fire. ha ha”  
That’s what Spanx founder Sara Blakely emailed me after we talked. It was March. The pandemic had just begun.
Blakely is famous for a few things: She’s a rare female billionaire, the defining personality in the estimated $1.8 billion global shapewear category, and just about every photo of her features a showstopping smile bright enough to reach the nosebleed section.
But she has fallen on that happy face more than once. 
“I believe a lot of really important, incredible innovation comes out of dark times,” she tells me. Spanx turns 20 this year, surviving September 11, the 2008 recession, and personal tragedy — and she expects no different now, despite closing her stores, watching sales slump, and losing a line of new product when a cargo ship caught fire. When we speak, she’s working from home, punting four kids under the age of 11 before they tackle her, and boldly reinventing herself and her company once again.
Related: Spanx Founder Sara Blakely Has 99 Pages of Business Ideas
“Actually,” she confesses, “I’m hiding in a closet.” Here’s what she’s learned about crisis management.
Crisis: Childhood trauma
Strategy: Train your mind
“When I was 16,” Blakely says, “my friend was run over and killed by a car in front of me, and my parents separated. I was in a very, very dark place.” Before her father left home, he handed her a cassette series called How to Be a No-Limit Person, by the self-help author Wayne Dyer. “I put the tapes in,” she says, “and they changed my life forever.” She practiced letting go of what other people thought and not worrying about being embarrassed; she embraced the idea that the only way to fail was not to try. She learned that times of despair contained hidden blessings. And this, she believes, is what set her up for success. 
First she got a job selling fax machines. It was brutal being kicked out of offices all day, every day. “I knew it wasn’t the right path,” she says. “After a really bad day, I wrote in my journal, ‘I’m going to invent a product I can sell to millions of people that will make them feel good.’ And through tears, I looked up at the ceiling and said, ‘OK, universe; give me the idea.’ ” The universe didn’t deliver quickly; two years passed, and her father suggested that she get a job at CNN or Coca-Cola in Atlanta, where she was living. She said no. “I actually made an intentional decision to stay in a dark place, because I felt that if I became content at a job, it would keep me from an opportunity to achieve something much greater.”  
Eventually, she did hit on a brilliant new idea. It was Spanx. 
Image Credit: Courtesy of Spanx
Crisis: September 11’s impact
Strategy: Stick with your strength
Blakely launched Spanx out of her apartment in October 2000, and its Footless Body-Shaping Pantyhose quickly caught the interest of Bloomingdale’s, Neiman Marcus, Saks Fifth Avenue, and Nordstrom. But she knew this wasn’t enough; consumers and salespeople might not understand the new product. So she went on the road, doing promotions for seven hours a day in fancy department stores.
Related: 3 Survival Traits for Any Leader
“I took pictures of my own butt in white pants with and without the product, went to Kinko’s, got it laminated, and stood there showing women what it could do,” she says. 
This gained her traction — but her enthusiasm would soon be tested. Blakely made a big decision to invest in an advertising insert, which would be sent out by Saks. And it arrived in mailboxes exactly five days after the attacks of September 11, when nobody wanted to think about shopping.
She wondered if she should stop her daily appearances. That fall, there weren’t many customers in the stores. But she did it anyway — and kept at it even after her best friend and roommate died in a horse riding accident a few months later. Emotionally drained as she was, she sensed it would pay off.
First there were the insights. Spanx was sold in the hosiery department—and because she was actually in the stores, she saw that almost nobody walked through there. So Blakely got busy. She stuffed envelopes with Spanx and placed them by cash registers throughout the stores. “I also realized I had to win over the sales associates,” she says. “So before my appearances, I would run around and ask everyone individually if they would come to a morning meeting, and I offered them free product.” Then she’d bait them with contests, like whoever sold the most Spanx that day would get $100.  
“I ended up building a sales force, not on my payroll,” she says. “Store associates would grab their customers and say, ‘I have to take you to the hosiery department. You have to buy this new thing.’ It was this really intense time of bonding, because everybody was hurting and vulnerable, and I made very deep connections, even down to the ladies in the gift wrap section. That ended up being an incredible boost to the business, because once people started going back into the stores, all these salespeople were selling for me and rooting for me.”
Image Credit: Courtesy of Spanx
Crisis: The 2008 recession
Strategy: Choose profitability over growth
Many of Spanx’s competitors follow a Silicon Valley–style playbook: They raise a lot of money and then spend it aggressively to gain new customers. Spanx did the opposite. Even as the company took off, Blakely ran it with the tight grip of its new Power Panties. “We spent what we could to grow,” she says. “But we’ve never put growth for the sake of growth over profitability and running the business in a way that we felt we could weather storms.” That strategy kept Spanx stable during the 2008 recession.
To this day, Blakely has never taken outside money, owns 100 percent of the company, maintains zero debt, and does all PR and marketing agency in-house. “One thing that has sustained Spanx through a lot of obstacles is that we have a zero-based budget plan internally,” she says. “Every manager starts at zero each year and has to make a case for how the money they’re asking for is going to have a return on investment. It doesn’t matter what last year’s budget was — you have to start again from scratch and build it up.”
Although Spanx won’t reveal revenue numbers, Blakely says it has been profitable since its first month in business.
Related: 4 Simple Techniques for Successfully Branding Your Business During a Crisis
Crisis: Mission drift at Spanx
Strategy: Check your internal culture 
In 2002, two years after founding Spanx, Blakely hired a CEO to run the business so she could travel as the face of the brand. That worked for a long time — but by 2016, she felt that the company was off track. So she took over as CEO again and looked for what needed to change.
First she tried on every product, both produced and in the pipeline, and tossed about 80 percent of them. “I thought, Let’s dive deep and focus on only the best of the best,” she says.
Then she addressed the culture, which had veered from the mission. “I wrote down the things that contributed to my ability to overcome odds and take risks,” Blakely says. The list wasn’t exactly out of a business school textbook. It included her stints in sales, public speaking, debate, and stand-up comedy, and once she had it in hand, she created the Be Bold Bootcamp. Now every employee, regardless of their job, gets coaching in those subjects. The goal is to help people think out of the box while also being quick to see the upside in down times. “We’ll rent a comedy club, and everybody stands on stage and works on how to frame things in a funny way,” she says. “We’ve also held debate-offs at Emory [University]. Debate is about listening and compassion and seeing the other person’s point of view. It isn’t about ‘I win; you lose.’ It’s trying to find that win-win scenario.”
Not only did the reboot avert disaster; it led to innovation. Spanx had defined shapewear but now needed to be more. So it aggressively pushed its new FaUX Leather Leggings. “That was an extremely pivotal moment because we truly became an apparel company,“ says Blakely.
Image Credit: Courtesy of Spanx
Crisis: Happening right now
Strategy: Stay nimble and optimistic
After a career of navigating (and gaining strength from) hard times, Blakely is eager to inspire a new generation to do the same. Most important to her is developing a strong personal mindset: “As an entrepreneur, that’s your greatest asset, and you should work on it daily,” she says. “I do.” One thing she has done is partner with 3DE, a national education nonprofit, on a module for high school students that teaches them to think for themselves and see opportunities. Currently it’s in 13 public schools and on track to grow. 
Related: 9 Inspiring Quotes From Self-Made Billionaire and Spanx Founder Sara Blakely
Now, in the face of COVID-19, she’s been counting on that same mindset. Since March, Blakely has cut costs, scaled back inventory orders, brainstormed new products, and donated $5 million to help other female founders. With all her past crises, she was prepared for this moment and continues to ready for what lies ahead. “I’m in survival mode, but I have faith that it’s going to change,” she says. “We’re already learning as a company, and I have no doubt I am going to have some amazing inspiration.”   
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source http://www.scpie.org/spanx-founder-sara-blakelys-guide-to-surviving-anything/ source https://scpie1.blogspot.com/2020/07/spanx-founder-sara-blakelys-guide-to.html
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riichardwilson · 4 years
Text
Spanx Founder Sara Blakely’s Guide to Surviving Anything
July 7, 2020 9 min read
This story appears in the July 2020 issue of Entrepreneur. Subscribe »
Maybe your article should be titled “What to Do When Your Panties Are on Fire. ha ha”  
That’s what Spanx founder Sara Blakely emailed me after we talked. It was March. The pandemic had just begun.
Blakely is famous for a few things: She’s a rare female billionaire, the defining personality in the estimated $1.8 billion global shapewear category, and just about every photo of her features a showstopping smile bright enough to reach the nosebleed section.
But she has fallen on that happy face more than once. 
“I believe a lot of really important, incredible innovation comes out of dark times,” she tells me. Spanx turns 20 this year, surviving September 11, the 2008 recession, and personal tragedy — and she expects no different now, despite closing her stores, watching sales slump, and losing a line of new product when a cargo ship caught fire. When we speak, she’s working from home, punting four kids under the age of 11 before they tackle her, and boldly reinventing herself and her company once again.
Related: Spanx Founder Sara Blakely Has 99 Pages of Business Ideas
“Actually,” she confesses, “I’m hiding in a closet.” Here’s what she’s learned about crisis management.
Crisis: Childhood trauma
Strategy: Train your mind
“When I was 16,” Blakely says, “my friend was run over and killed by a car in front of me, and my parents separated. I was in a very, very dark place.” Before her father left home, he handed her a cassette series called How to Be a No-Limit Person, by the self-help author Wayne Dyer. “I put the tapes in,” she says, “and they changed my life forever.” She practiced letting go of what other people thought and not worrying about being embarrassed; she embraced the idea that the only way to fail was not to try. She learned that times of despair contained hidden blessings. And this, she believes, is what set her up for success. 
First she got a job selling fax machines. It was brutal being kicked out of offices all day, every day. “I knew it wasn’t the right path,” she says. “After a really bad day, I wrote in my journal, ‘I’m going to invent a product I can sell to millions of people that will make them feel good.’ And through tears, I looked up at the ceiling and said, ‘OK, universe; give me the idea.’ ” The universe didn’t deliver quickly; two years passed, and her father suggested that she get a job at CNN or Coca-Cola in Atlanta, where she was living. She said no. “I actually made an intentional decision to stay in a dark place, because I felt that if I became content at a job, it would keep me from an opportunity to achieve something much greater.”  
Eventually, she did hit on a brilliant new idea. It was Spanx. 
Image Credit: Courtesy of Spanx
Crisis: September 11’s impact
Strategy: Stick with your strength
Blakely launched Spanx out of her apartment in October 2000, and its Footless Body-Shaping Pantyhose quickly caught the interest of Bloomingdale’s, Neiman Marcus, Saks Fifth Avenue, and Nordstrom. But she knew this wasn’t enough; consumers and salespeople might not understand the new product. So she went on the road, doing promotions for seven hours a day in fancy department stores.
Related: 3 Survival Traits for Any Leader
“I took pictures of my own butt in white pants with and without the product, went to Kinko’s, got it laminated, and stood there showing women what it could do,” she says. 
This gained her traction — but her enthusiasm would soon be tested. Blakely made a big decision to invest in an advertising insert, which would be sent out by Saks. And it arrived in mailboxes exactly five days after the attacks of September 11, when nobody wanted to think about shopping.
She wondered if she should stop her daily appearances. That fall, there weren’t many customers in the stores. But she did it anyway — and kept at it even after her best friend and roommate died in a horse riding accident a few months later. Emotionally drained as she was, she sensed it would pay off.
First there were the insights. Spanx was sold in the hosiery department—and because she was actually in the stores, she saw that almost nobody walked through there. So Blakely got busy. She stuffed envelopes with Spanx and placed them by cash registers throughout the stores. “I also realized I had to win over the sales associates,” she says. “So before my appearances, I would run around and ask everyone individually if they would come to a morning meeting, and I offered them free product.” Then she’d bait them with contests, like whoever sold the most Spanx that day would get $100.  
“I ended up building a sales force, not on my payroll,” she says. “Store associates would grab their customers and say, ‘I have to take you to the hosiery department. You have to buy this new thing.’ It was this really intense time of bonding, because everybody was hurting and vulnerable, and I made very deep connections, even down to the ladies in the gift wrap section. That ended up being an incredible boost to the business, because once people started going back into the stores, all these salespeople were selling for me and rooting for me.”
Image Credit: Courtesy of Spanx
Crisis: The 2008 recession
Strategy: Choose profitability over growth
Many of Spanx’s competitors follow a Silicon Valley–style playbook: They raise a lot of money and then spend it aggressively to gain new customers. Spanx did the opposite. Even as the company took off, Blakely ran it with the tight grip of its new Power Panties. “We spent what we could to grow,” she says. “But we’ve never put growth for the sake of growth over profitability and running the business in a way that we felt we could weather storms.” That strategy kept Spanx stable during the 2008 recession.
To this day, Blakely has never taken outside money, owns 100 percent of the company, maintains zero debt, and does all PR and marketing agency in-house. “One thing that has sustained Spanx through a lot of obstacles is that we have a zero-based budget plan internally,” she says. “Every manager starts at zero each year and has to make a case for how the money they’re asking for is going to have a return on investment. It doesn’t matter what last year’s budget was — you have to start again from scratch and build it up.”
Although Spanx won’t reveal revenue numbers, Blakely says it has been profitable since its first month in business.
Related: 4 Simple Techniques for Successfully Branding Your Business During a Crisis
Crisis: Mission drift at Spanx
Strategy: Check your internal culture 
In 2002, two years after founding Spanx, Blakely hired a CEO to run the business so she could travel as the face of the brand. That worked for a long time — but by 2016, she felt that the company was off track. So she took over as CEO again and looked for what needed to change.
First she tried on every product, both produced and in the pipeline, and tossed about 80 percent of them. “I thought, Let’s dive deep and focus on only the best of the best,” she says.
Then she addressed the culture, which had veered from the mission. “I wrote down the things that contributed to my ability to overcome odds and take risks,” Blakely says. The list wasn’t exactly out of a business school textbook. It included her stints in sales, public speaking, debate, and stand-up comedy, and once she had it in hand, she created the Be Bold Bootcamp. Now every employee, regardless of their job, gets coaching in those subjects. The goal is to help people think out of the box while also being quick to see the upside in down times. “We’ll rent a comedy club, and everybody stands on stage and works on how to frame things in a funny way,” she says. “We’ve also held debate-offs at Emory [University]. Debate is about listening and compassion and seeing the other person’s point of view. It isn’t about ‘I win; you lose.’ It’s trying to find that win-win scenario.”
Not only did the reboot avert disaster; it led to innovation. Spanx had defined shapewear but now needed to be more. So it aggressively pushed its new FaUX Leather Leggings. “That was an extremely pivotal moment because we truly became an apparel company,“ says Blakely.
Image Credit: Courtesy of Spanx
Crisis: Happening right now
Strategy: Stay nimble and optimistic
After a career of navigating (and gaining strength from) hard times, Blakely is eager to inspire a new generation to do the same. Most important to her is developing a strong personal mindset: “As an entrepreneur, that’s your greatest asset, and you should work on it daily,” she says. “I do.” One thing she has done is partner with 3DE, a national education nonprofit, on a module for high school students that teaches them to think for themselves and see opportunities. Currently it’s in 13 public schools and on track to grow. 
Related: 9 Inspiring Quotes From Self-Made Billionaire and Spanx Founder Sara Blakely
Now, in the face of COVID-19, she’s been counting on that same mindset. Since March, Blakely has cut costs, scaled back inventory orders, brainstormed new products, and donated $5 million to help other female founders. With all her past crises, she was prepared for this moment and continues to ready for what lies ahead. “I’m in survival mode, but I have faith that it’s going to change,” she says. “We’re already learning as a company, and I have no doubt I am going to have some amazing inspiration.”   
loading…
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source http://www.scpie.org/spanx-founder-sara-blakelys-guide-to-surviving-anything/ source https://scpie.tumblr.com/post/623041042959269888
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scpie · 4 years
Text
Spanx Founder Sara Blakely’s Guide to Surviving Anything
July 7, 2020 9 min read
This story appears in the July 2020 issue of Entrepreneur. Subscribe »
Maybe your article should be titled “What to Do When Your Panties Are on Fire. ha ha”  
That’s what Spanx founder Sara Blakely emailed me after we talked. It was March. The pandemic had just begun.
Blakely is famous for a few things: She’s a rare female billionaire, the defining personality in the estimated $1.8 billion global shapewear category, and just about every photo of her features a showstopping smile bright enough to reach the nosebleed section.
But she has fallen on that happy face more than once. 
“I believe a lot of really important, incredible innovation comes out of dark times,” she tells me. Spanx turns 20 this year, surviving September 11, the 2008 recession, and personal tragedy — and she expects no different now, despite closing her stores, watching sales slump, and losing a line of new product when a cargo ship caught fire. When we speak, she’s working from home, punting four kids under the age of 11 before they tackle her, and boldly reinventing herself and her company once again.
Related: Spanx Founder Sara Blakely Has 99 Pages of Business Ideas
“Actually,” she confesses, “I’m hiding in a closet.” Here’s what she’s learned about crisis management.
Crisis: Childhood trauma
Strategy: Train your mind
“When I was 16,” Blakely says, “my friend was run over and killed by a car in front of me, and my parents separated. I was in a very, very dark place.” Before her father left home, he handed her a cassette series called How to Be a No-Limit Person, by the self-help author Wayne Dyer. “I put the tapes in,” she says, “and they changed my life forever.” She practiced letting go of what other people thought and not worrying about being embarrassed; she embraced the idea that the only way to fail was not to try. She learned that times of despair contained hidden blessings. And this, she believes, is what set her up for success. 
First she got a job selling fax machines. It was brutal being kicked out of offices all day, every day. “I knew it wasn’t the right path,” she says. “After a really bad day, I wrote in my journal, ‘I’m going to invent a product I can sell to millions of people that will make them feel good.’ And through tears, I looked up at the ceiling and said, ‘OK, universe; give me the idea.’ ” The universe didn’t deliver quickly; two years passed, and her father suggested that she get a job at CNN or Coca-Cola in Atlanta, where she was living. She said no. “I actually made an intentional decision to stay in a dark place, because I felt that if I became content at a job, it would keep me from an opportunity to achieve something much greater.”  
Eventually, she did hit on a brilliant new idea. It was Spanx. 
Image Credit: Courtesy of Spanx
Crisis: September 11’s impact
Strategy: Stick with your strength
Blakely launched Spanx out of her apartment in October 2000, and its Footless Body-Shaping Pantyhose quickly caught the interest of Bloomingdale’s, Neiman Marcus, Saks Fifth Avenue, and Nordstrom. But she knew this wasn’t enough; consumers and salespeople might not understand the new product. So she went on the road, doing promotions for seven hours a day in fancy department stores.
Related: 3 Survival Traits for Any Leader
“I took pictures of my own butt in white pants with and without the product, went to Kinko’s, got it laminated, and stood there showing women what it could do,” she says. 
This gained her traction — but her enthusiasm would soon be tested. Blakely made a big decision to invest in an advertising insert, which would be sent out by Saks. And it arrived in mailboxes exactly five days after the attacks of September 11, when nobody wanted to think about shopping.
She wondered if she should stop her daily appearances. That fall, there weren’t many customers in the stores. But she did it anyway — and kept at it even after her best friend and roommate died in a horse riding accident a few months later. Emotionally drained as she was, she sensed it would pay off.
First there were the insights. Spanx was sold in the hosiery department—and because she was actually in the stores, she saw that almost nobody walked through there. So Blakely got busy. She stuffed envelopes with Spanx and placed them by cash registers throughout the stores. “I also realized I had to win over the sales associates,” she says. “So before my appearances, I would run around and ask everyone individually if they would come to a morning meeting, and I offered them free product.” Then she’d bait them with contests, like whoever sold the most Spanx that day would get $100.  
“I ended up building a sales force, not on my payroll,” she says. “Store associates would grab their customers and say, ‘I have to take you to the hosiery department. You have to buy this new thing.’ It was this really intense time of bonding, because everybody was hurting and vulnerable, and I made very deep connections, even down to the ladies in the gift wrap section. That ended up being an incredible boost to the business, because once people started going back into the stores, all these salespeople were selling for me and rooting for me.”
Image Credit: Courtesy of Spanx
Crisis: The 2008 recession
Strategy: Choose profitability over growth
Many of Spanx’s competitors follow a Silicon Valley–style playbook: They raise a lot of money and then spend it aggressively to gain new customers. Spanx did the opposite. Even as the company took off, Blakely ran it with the tight grip of its new Power Panties. “We spent what we could to grow,” she says. “But we’ve never put growth for the sake of growth over profitability and running the business in a way that we felt we could weather storms.” That strategy kept Spanx stable during the 2008 recession.
To this day, Blakely has never taken outside money, owns 100 percent of the company, maintains zero debt, and does all PR and marketing agency in-house. “One thing that has sustained Spanx through a lot of obstacles is that we have a zero-based budget plan internally,” she says. “Every manager starts at zero each year and has to make a case for how the money they’re asking for is going to have a return on investment. It doesn’t matter what last year’s budget was — you have to start again from scratch and build it up.”
Although Spanx won’t reveal revenue numbers, Blakely says it has been profitable since its first month in business.
Related: 4 Simple Techniques for Successfully Branding Your Business During a Crisis
Crisis: Mission drift at Spanx
Strategy: Check your internal culture 
In 2002, two years after founding Spanx, Blakely hired a CEO to run the business so she could travel as the face of the brand. That worked for a long time — but by 2016, she felt that the company was off track. So she took over as CEO again and looked for what needed to change.
First she tried on every product, both produced and in the pipeline, and tossed about 80 percent of them. “I thought, Let’s dive deep and focus on only the best of the best,” she says.
Then she addressed the culture, which had veered from the mission. “I wrote down the things that contributed to my ability to overcome odds and take risks,” Blakely says. The list wasn’t exactly out of a business school textbook. It included her stints in sales, public speaking, debate, and stand-up comedy, and once she had it in hand, she created the Be Bold Bootcamp. Now every employee, regardless of their job, gets coaching in those subjects. The goal is to help people think out of the box while also being quick to see the upside in down times. “We’ll rent a comedy club, and everybody stands on stage and works on how to frame things in a funny way,” she says. “We’ve also held debate-offs at Emory [University]. Debate is about listening and compassion and seeing the other person’s point of view. It isn’t about ‘I win; you lose.’ It’s trying to find that win-win scenario.”
Not only did the reboot avert disaster; it led to innovation. Spanx had defined shapewear but now needed to be more. So it aggressively pushed its new FaUX Leather Leggings. “That was an extremely pivotal moment because we truly became an apparel company,“ says Blakely.
Image Credit: Courtesy of Spanx
Crisis: Happening right now
Strategy: Stay nimble and optimistic
After a career of navigating (and gaining strength from) hard times, Blakely is eager to inspire a new generation to do the same. Most important to her is developing a strong personal mindset: “As an entrepreneur, that’s your greatest asset, and you should work on it daily,” she says. “I do.” One thing she has done is partner with 3DE, a national education nonprofit, on a module for high school students that teaches them to think for themselves and see opportunities. Currently it’s in 13 public schools and on track to grow. 
Related: 9 Inspiring Quotes From Self-Made Billionaire and Spanx Founder Sara Blakely
Now, in the face of COVID-19, she’s been counting on that same mindset. Since March, Blakely has cut costs, scaled back inventory orders, brainstormed new products, and donated $5 million to help other female founders. With all her past crises, she was prepared for this moment and continues to ready for what lies ahead. “I’m in survival mode, but I have faith that it’s going to change,” she says. “We’re already learning as a company, and I have no doubt I am going to have some amazing inspiration.”   
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howellrichard · 4 years
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How to Make Easy, Healthy Snacks When You Can’t Get to the Store
Hiya Gorgeous!
Today I’m sharing some recipes for easy, healthy snacks that I think you’re gonna love. I chose them because, in times like these, we need simple foods that aren’t just tasty, but also full of fabulous nutrients. And I’m focusing on snacks because I’ve noticed that when it comes to recipe sharing, they often get left behind! Since you’re probably getting lots of healthy breakfast, lunch and dinner ideas from your favorite bloggers right now, I’m hoping I can help fill that hole.
Now, to be clear, I’m not suggesting that you overhaul or get strict about your diet right now (unless you REALLY want to—I’m not here to tell you what to do!). There’s a lot of stressful stuff happening in our world, so I encourage you to make caring for yourself and others the number one focus for the time being. If you find yourself reaching for your favorite comfort foods, it’s ok. You’re doing the best you can under the circumstances, and beating yourself up definitely isn’t gonna help!
But I do know that many of you are looking for healthy recipes that you can make with limited ingredients. Maybe your kids are home, so it’s harder to find time for your normal grocery store run (not to mention that snacks may be disappearing from your home at a much quicker rate!). And while social distancing doesn’t restrict us from going out for essentials, you might prefer to play it safe (especially if you’re over 60 or have a chronic health challenge). Plus, even if you can get to the store, you might find that the shelves are bare and you’re not able to get your go-to ingredients.
The best part about these recipes is that they’re all really flexible. You can easily make adjustments based on your preferences and the ingredients you do/don’t have right now. I’ve included substitution ideas throughout the article, but I don’t know exactly what you have access to, so let your pantry, fridge and freezer be your guide! A general rule of thumb for substitutions is to use ingredients that are similar in flavor and texture to whatever you’re subbing out.
Ok, toots, whaddya say we go raid your pantry together?!
Easy, Healthy Snacks to Make When You Can’t Get to the Store
Satisfying Smoothies
Would any list of mine be complete without a shout out to green drinks? I think not! Smoothies are one of my favorite easy, healthy snacks because I can blend in advance and store them in airtight mason jars (they usually last up to 12 hours in the fridge and a month in the freezer!). Plus, unlike many recipes, the ingredients are usually flexible. If you don’t have a certain ingredient on hand, just sub in something similar or leave it out—voila, your very own creation! For more green smoothie tips, check out this post and this post from my blog archives.
My Body Builder smoothie is great for those times you’re feeling especially peckish because it includes protein-packed peanut butter (or any nut/seed butter you like). And the Raspberry Revitalizer smoothie is a perfect afternoon pick-me-up. You can use any frozen berries in place of the raspberries, and the coconut butter/oil is optional. (Psst… all of these recipes are from Crazy Sexy Juice!)
Delightful Dips and Dippers
Veggies and hummus or apples with almond butter are my go-to plant-based snacks when I’m short on groceries. No recipe needed! When I don’t have fresh produce available, I opt for pantry staples like whole grain crackers or dried fruit with no added sugar.
If you want to make your own dip, this Smoky Southwestern Hummus from my Test Kitchen Tuesday series is a total crowd pleaser (though you might not want to share!). No worries if you don’t have the spices it calls for—feel free to experiment and try different spice combos, or keep it simple with a little salt, pepper and garlic. If you don’t have chickpeas on hand, check out this yummy recipe for Sweet Potato Hummus.
Have a hankering for fries that aren’t deep fried? You only need four ingredients to make these delightfully crispy Oil-Free Rosemary French Fries. Dip them in ketchup for a classic snack, or get a little wild and pair them with your homemade hummus!
Need more snack ideas? Grab this free downloadable cheat sheet to learn about my top 10 recipe-boosting ingredients and how to use them (includes 3 more recipes for you to try!).
Energy Balls, Bars and Bites
What’s better than a bite-sized treat that packs a serious nutritional punch? Nada! I fill my bites with lots of plant-based protein and complex carbs so they fill me up and give me sustainable energy ‘til my next meal. I suggest whipping up a big batch of these easy vegan snacks ahead of time so you have plenty on hand for your busier days.
I love these No-Bake Cherry Vanilla Protein Bars because they’re quick to make and more affordable (and eco-friendly!) than buying individually wrapped bars at the store. Most of the ingredients are easy to swap out for whatever you have in your pantry, so have fun with it! For example, any dried berries could sub in for the cherries—cranberries would be especially good because they’re tart, too!
Have some matcha hanging around in your cabinet? These Matcha Pistachio Bliss Balls are also on regular rotation in my kitchen. They’re perfectly sweet and have a cookie dough-like consistency, YUM! Or if you’re in the mood for chocolate, try these Raw Brownie Bites. And no worries if you don’t have dates on hand—try this recipe for Raw Protein Energy Balls!
Crazy Sexy Trail Mix
One snack you’ll always find in my pantry is the trail mix from Crazy Sexy You, my 21-day total wellness program—and today I’m sharing the recipe publicly for the very first time! It’s chock-full of nutritious goodies, like selenium from the Brazil nuts and vitamin A from the goji berries.
But the best thing about this recipe is that there’s no one right way to make it. If you don’t have some of the ingredients, just sub in whatever nuts, seeds and dried fruit you can find in your kitchen. I can’t wait to hear what combos you come up with! Crazy Sexy Trail Mix
Serves 6 (about 1/3 cup or 80 ml per serving) | Prep time: 5 min
1/2 cup (67 g) Brazil nuts 1/2 cup (62 g) raw walnuts 1/3 cup (40 g) raw cashews 1/3 cup (48 g) raisins 1/3 cup (25 g) dried goji berries 2 Tbsp flaked or shredded unsweetened coconut (optional) 1 tsp ground cinnamon (optional)
1. In a large bowl, mix all ingredients together.
2. Transfer to wide-mouth mason jars or to a large glass storage container.
Storage tip: Store in a cool, dark place for up to 1 month.
Make it nut-free: Replace Brazil nuts, walnuts and cashews with 2/3 cup (80 g) raw, shelled pumpkin seeds and 2/3 cup (46 g) raw, shelled sunflower seeds.
Happy snacking, sweet friend!
I hope that these recipes bring you some comfort (and of course, nourishment!) during these challenging times. Preparing food for yourself, no matter how basic it is, is a healing act of self-care that goes a long way. And remember: Above all else, keep it simple. Fruits and veggies baby, that’s where it’s at!
One more thing before you go. I love sharing tips and recipes with you because it’s my mission to help you take care of yourself—body, mind and soul. But it’s especially important to me now because, as we navigate the coronavirus crisis, I recognize that it’s more important than ever for us to share and connect with each other. Just know that I’m so, so grateful for you.
Your turn: What are your favorite easy, healthy snacks? Can’t wait to hear about your plant-based picks!
Peace & scrumptious snacks,
The post How to Make Easy, Healthy Snacks When You Can’t Get to the Store appeared first on KrisCarr.com.
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thebestintoronto · 5 years
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15 Awesome Things To Do This Family Day Weekend in Toronto
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With Toronto grade school kids having as several as three day of rests this week (two strike-related and one a PD day) ahead of the Family members Day vacation, you may be scrambling to find means to keep your children active and on your own sane.
Thankfully, there are tons of tasks happening this upcoming weekend-- including free ones-- that will attract kids of any ages and interests. Listed below we assemble 15 of those events that have actually caught our eyes. And simply a reminder that Kidapalooza has actually been cancelled so don't head up to the Markham Fairgrounds this weekend break.
ART GALLERY OF ONTARIO'S FAMILY MEMBERS DAY WEEKEND
ago.ca February 14-17, Art Gallery of Ontario, 317 Dundas W.
" Togetherness" is the motif of this year's AGO Household Day weekend parties. The gallery's artist-in-residence takes over Walker Court with interactive experiences that will certainly have your family producing art together. You'll additionally have the possibility to take a family-friendly tour of the museum, build an "invention of goodness" and plant a seed. Access to all Family Day programs is consisted of with your ticket to the AGO, which is free for every person 25 as well as under.
ICY 2 TESTING
eventbrite.ca February 14-16, Resort X, 111 Princes' Blvd
. Have your youngsters yet to see Icy 2? Or possibly they can not get enough of this blockbuster follow up? Take them to this unique screening happening inside Resort X's exclusive, 250-seat theatre space. This is likewise a great reason to visit among Toronto's most recent, high-end hotels. Tickets are $5 each for youngsters and also $10 each for grownups, and 4 various screenings are offered to pick from.
LABYRINTH TESTING
eventbrite.ca February 15, Performance Cinema, 400 Roncesvalles Ave.
While it was a bit of a flop when it was first released, Labyrinth is currently taken into consideration a timeless '80 flick. Introduce your youngsters to this dark adventure film, which stars David Bowie as the Goblin King as well as a variety of Jim Henson puppets, during a special Family Day weekend break testing at the historic Revue Cinema. Labyrinth does have a couple of frightening moments (it has to do with an abducted infant besides!) as well as is ranked PG so this outing is much better fit to school-age kids. Tickets, which can be bought beforehand or at the theater, begin are $11 for youngsters and Performance members, as well as $14 for adults.
NICK JR. LIVE: MOVE TO THE MUSIC
nickjrlive.com February 15-16, Meridian Hall, 1 Front St E.
The Bubble Guppies, Glimmer as well as Shine as well as even the participants of the Paw Patrol are simply a few of the anime personalities who star in this live-action performance. Loaded with action and also songs, this event will have your children dancing in their seats and you might even find yourself humming along. 5 programs are scheduled over the weekend break, with efficiencies set for the early morning, afternoon as well as Saturday night. Tickets begin at $25 and also VIP bundles, which include costs seating and also an after-show meet and greet, are additionally available.
IMPROVE SHOWDOWN
secondcity.com February 15-17, Secondly City, 51 Mercer St.
Two excellent enhance groups face off against each other in this family-friendly comedy face-off. Each group will take out all the stops to win, including pulling in target market members to help out (so be advised!). Note that while all of the humour is PG in nature, the program is 60 mins in length, without any intermission, making it a far better fit for school-aged youngsters. Ticket prices start at $18.
JUNGLE BOOK
youngpeoplestheatre.org February 15-17, Youngster's Theater, 165 Front St. E.
A fresh spin is put on Rudyard Kipling's traditional tale regarding a young child who grows up in the Indian jungle. Targeted at children aged 5 and also up, this play, "tests the conventions of the original tale, exploring the repercussions of colonialism as well as the continuing human dominance of the animal world." 5 performances are set up over the long weekend as well as each program is about 70 mins in size. While many tickets are in the $20-$ 30 range, the Sunday morning manufacturing provides an unique, pay-what-you-can option.
CHILDREN FEST TORONTO
kidsfestto.com February 15-17, Hall 6, International Centre, 6900 Airport Terminal Rd.
Mississauga In spite of the name, this occasion in fact happens in Mississauga yet we'll let that slide given that it features over 30 blow up trips as well as tourist attractions. Spread across 80,000 square feet, this totally interior festival likewise features magic and also scientific research shows, circus efficiencies and a gallery zone. There's additionally an unique location for the kid collection. Consisting of all taxes and also charges, basic admission is $10.08 while a Children Unlimited Flight Pass is $30.26.
YOU And I.
youngpeoplestheatre.org. February 15-17, Youth's Theatre, 165 Front St. E.
Have a "walking baby" in your life? After that visit this special experience created just for youngsters ages 12-30 months. Referred to as a "multi-sensory, playfully interactive experience," this program uses colour, motion and also feeling to engage your child. Five efficiencies are scheduled for the Family members Day long weekend, with outsets at 11 am and 2:30 pm. To maintain points toddler-friendly, the overall runtime for this occasion is 45 mins. Tickets for young children are just over $5 while grown-up tickets set you back simply over $26.
CITY OF TORONTO ENTERTAINMENT As Well As COMMUNITY CENTRES.
toronto.ca. February 17, across Toronto.
Looking for close-to-home fun on February 17? After that check what your regional, city-run recreation/community centre has actually prepared for Monday. Scheduled activities consist of crafts, parlor game, cookie and also cupcake designing and also a selection of various sports, consisting of interior football, yoga exercise and also table tennis. Programs differs by location as well as not all centres are participating so make certain to examine this checklist before you head out. After that for even more particular information, including any prices, speak to the recreation or area centre that your household wishes to have a look at.
FAM DAY WAFFLE FAM JAM AT HENDERSON BREWERY.
facebook.com/events. February 17, Henderson Brewery, 128A Sterling Rd
. Nothing claims Household Day brunch rather like tasty, newly made waffles. On Monday, Grandmama's Waffles takes over prominent indie brewery Henderson for a mouth watering mid-day focused on family members. In addition to waffles, there will certainly be parlor game as well as an unwinded ambience. As well as yes, there will likewise be a vast choice of beer readily available at hand.
FAMILY DAY AT THE AGA KHAN GALLERY.
agakhanmuseum.org. February 17, Aga Khan Museum, 77 Wynford Dr.
This beautiful museum is providing family-oriented trips that include storytelling and hands-on tasks to involve youngsters age 5 via 12. Its existing visiting display, "Caravans of Gold, Fragments in Time: Art, Culture, And Exchange Across Medieval Saharan Africa," will specifically appeal to youngsters who have a love of exploration as well as experience. Your youngsters will certainly additionally have the possibility to build a take-home treasure of their own over in the Aga Khan's Education Centre. All Household Day tasks are complimentary with your museum admission, which begins at $10 for youngsters.
FAMILY DAY AT THE RANCH.
blackcreekfarm.ca. February 17, Black Creek Neighborhood Ranch, 4929 Jane St.
Need to obtain the children outside over the Household Day vacation? After that take into consideration taking a browse through to the Black Creek Community Ranch for an afternoon of fresh air fun. Arranged tasks consist of a forest stroll, games for all ages and also a preservation workshop. This event is arranged to run despite the weather conditions and also because it may be a bit freezing, there will certainly also be a fire pit and hot apple cider to maintain your family cozy. It's also completely complimentary to participate in and also there's no demand to RSVP ahead of time.
HOUSEHOLD DAY AT FT YORK As Well As THE BENTWAY.
fortyork.ca|thebentway.ca. February 17, 250 Ft York Blvd
. 2 terrific Toronto sites-- Ft York and The Bentway-- have collaborated to provide a day loaded with complimentary fun. Over at one of Toronto's oldest landmarks, your family can take pleasure in hot delicious chocolate, baked products and also a history lesson that we assure will certainly additionally be entertaining. The Ft York Site visitor Centre will additionally be hosting crafts, an interactive "covering fort" that your children can aid to develop as well as drag storytime with the legendary Fluffy and also Faye. Then head over to the surrounding Bentway, which will certainly be screening Paw Patrol and is additionally throwing "an all-day Pyjama-Rama skate event." Yes, you can skate in your PJs! Keep in mind that this will certainly also be the last day to skate The Bentway's figure-eight route so if you've been implying to cross this item off your family's winter months pail checklist, make sure to head to this special urban park.
FREE FAMILY DAY SPORTS FUN.
tpasc.ca. February 17, Toronto Pan Am Sports Centre, 875 Morningside Ave.
Back for its sixth year, this year is the best means to obtain your youngsters to burn off any type of pent-up power. Both routine and also special Household Day programming will certainly be used consisting of Zumba courses, flooring hockey and also a family members gym, total with lively castles. The beautiful pool will certainly additionally be offered for recreation swim. This event is completely cost-free however does call for that you RSVP in advance.
WINTERROUGE.
pc.gc.ca. February 17, Rouge National Urban Park, 1749 Meadowvale Ave.
" Inspired by all points winter in Ontario," this one-day festival is packed with great activities consisting of horse-drawn sleigh rides, ice sculpting presentations and a snowman selfie terminal. There will certainly additionally be the possibility to meet real, online predators and take part in the Great Yard Bird Matter assisted stroll. Participants are suggested ahead starving as there will be tastings of warm delicious chocolate and also warm apple treats as well as a build-your-own s' even more station. All the enjoyable is totally free as well as takes place at the Zoo Road Invite Location.
The post “
15 Awesome Things To Do This Family Day Weekend in Toronto “ was first appeared on Savvy Mom by Lindsay Kneteman
Toronto Naturopathic Doctor - Dr. Amauri Caversan, ND
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theinjectlikes2 · 5 years
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12 Steps to Lightning Page Speed
Posted by WallStreetOasis.com
At Wall Street Oasis, we’ve noticed that every time we focus on improving our page speed, Google sends us more organic traffic. In 2018, our company's website reached over 80 percent of our traffic from organic search. That’s 24.5 million visits. Needless to say, we are very tuned in to how we can continue to improve our user experience and keep Google happy.
We thought this article would be a great way to highlight the specific steps we take to keep our page speed lightning fast and organic traffic healthy. While this article is somewhat technical (page speed is an important and complex subject) we hope it provides website owners and developers with a framework on how to try and improve their page speed.
Quick technical background: Our website is built on top of the Drupal CMS and we are running on a server with a LAMP stack (plus Varnish and memcache). If you are not using MySQL, however, the steps and principles in this article are still relevant for other databases or a reverse proxy.
Ready? Let’s dig in.
5 Steps to speed up the backend
Before we jump into specific steps that can help you speed up your backend, it might help to review what we mean by “backend”. You can think of the backend of everything that goes into storing data, including the database itself and the servers -- basically anything that helps make the website function that you don’t visually interact with. For more information on the difference between the backend vs. frontend, you read this article
Step 1: Make sure you have a Reverse Proxy configured
This is an important first step. For Wall Street Oasis (WSO), we use a reverse proxy called Varnish. It is by far the most critical and fastest layer of cache and serves the majority of the anonymous traffic (visitors logged out). Varnish caches the whole page in memory, so returning it to the visitor is lightning fast.
Step 2: Extend the TTL of that cache
If you have a large database of content (specifically in the 10,000+ URL range) that doesn’t change very frequently, to drive the hit-rate higher on the Varnish caching layer, you can extend the time to live (TTL basically means how long before you flush the object out of the cache).
For WSO, we went all the way up to two weeks (since we were over 300,000 discussions). At any given time, only a few thousand of those forum URLs are active, so it makes sense to heavily cache the other pages. The downside to this is that when you make any sitewide, template or design changes, you have to wait two weeks for it to arrive across all URLs.
Step 3: Warm up the cache
In order to keep our cache “warm," we have a specific process that hits all the URLs in our sitemap. This increases the likelihood of a page being in the cache when a user or Google bot visits those same pages (i.e. our hit rate improves). It also keeps Varnish full of more objects, ready to be accessed quickly.
As you can see from the chart below, the ratio of “cache hits” (green) to total hits (blue+green) is over 93 percent.
Step 4: Tune your database and focus on the slowest queries
On WSO, we use a MySQL database. Make sure you enable the slow queries report and check it at least every quarter. Check the slowest queries using EXPLAIN. Add indexes where needed and rewrite queries that can be optimized.
On WSO, we use a MySQL database. To tune MySQL, you can use the following scripts: https://github.com/major/MySQLTuner-perl and https://github.com/mattiabasone/tuning-primer
Step 5: HTTP headers
Use HTTP2 server push to send resources to the page before they are requested. Just make sure you test which ones should be pushed, first. JavaScript was a good option for us. You can read more about it here.
Here is an example of server push from our Investment Banking Interview Questions URL:
</files/advagg_js/js__rh8tGyQUC6fPazMoP4YI4X0Fze99Pspus1iL4Am3Nr4__k2v047sfief4SoufV5rlyaT9V0CevRW-VsgHZa2KUGc__TDoTqiqOgPXBrBhVJKZ4CapJRLlJ1LTahU_1ivB9XtQ.js>; rel=preload; as=script,</files/advagg_js/js__TLh0q7OGWS6tv88FccFskwgFrZI9p53uJYwc6wv-a3o__kueGth7dEBcGqUVEib_yvaCzx99rTtEVqb1UaLaylA4__TDoTqiqOgPXBrBhVJKZ4CapJRLlJ1LTahU_1ivB9XtQ.js>; rel=preload; as=script,</files/advagg_js/js__sMVR1us69-sSXhuhQWNXRyjueOEy4FQRK7nr6zzAswY__O9Dxl50YCBWD3WksvdK42k5GXABvKifJooNDTlCQgDw__TDoTqiqOgPXBrBhVJKZ4CapJRLlJ1LTahU_1ivB9XtQ.js>; rel=preload; as=script,
Be sure you're using the correct format. If it is a script: <url>; rel=preload; as=script,
If it is a CSS file: <url>; rel=preload; as=style,
7 Steps to speed up the frontend
The following steps are to help speed up your frontend application. The front-end is the part of a website or application that the user directly interacts with. For example, this includes fonts, drop-down menus, buttons, transitions, sliders, forms, etc.
Step 1: Modify the placement of your JavaScript
Modifying the placement of your JavaScript is probably one of the hardest changes because you will need to continually test to make sure it doesn’t break the functionality of your site. 
I’ve noticed that every time I remove JavaScript, I see page speed improve. I suggest removing as much Javascript as you can. You can minify the necessary JavaScript you do need. You can also combine your JavaScript files but use multiple bundles.
Always try to move JavaScript to the bottom of the page or inline. You can also defer or use the async attribute where possible to guarantee you are not rendering blocking. You can read more about moving JavaScript here.
Step 2: Optimize your images
Use WebP for images when possible (Cloudflare, a CDN, does this for you automatically — I’ll touch more on Cloudflare below). It's an image formatting that uses both Lossy compression and lossless compression.
Always use images with the correct size. For example, if you have an image that is displayed in a 2” x 2 ” square on your site, don’t use a large 10” x 10” image. If you have an image that is bigger than is needed, you are transferring more data through the network and the browser has to resize the image for you
Use lazy load to avoid/delay downloading images that are further down the page and not on the visible part of the screen.
Step 3: Optimize your CSS
You want to make sure your CSS is inline. Online tools like this one can help you find the critical CSS to be inlined and will solve the render blocking. Bonus: you'll keep the cache benefit of having separate files.
Make sure to minify your CSS files (we use AdVagg since we are on the Drupal CMS, but there are many options for this depending on your site).  
Try using less CSS. For instance, if you have certain CSS classes that are only used on your homepage, don't include them on other pages. 
Always combine the CSS files but use multiple bundles. You can read more about this step here.
Move your media queries to specific files so the browser doesn't have to load them before rendering the page. For example: <link href="frontpage-sm.css" rel="stylesheet" media="(min-width: 767px)">
If you’d like more info on how to optimize your CSS, check out Patrick Sexton’s interesting post.
Step 4: Lighten your web fonts (they can be HEAVY)
This is where your developers may get in an argument with your designers if you’re not careful. Everyone wants to look at a beautifully designed website, but if you’re not careful about how you bring this design live, it can cause major unintended speed issues. Here are some tips on how to put your fonts on a diet:
Use inline svg for icon fonts (like font awesome). This way you'll reduce the critical chain path and will avoid empty content when the page is first loaded.
Use fontello to generate the font files. This way, you can include only the glyphs you actually use which leads to smaller files and faster page speed.
If you are going to use web fonts, check if you need all the glyphs defined in the font file. If you don’t need Japanese or Arabic characters, for example, see if there is a version with only the characters you need.
Use Unicode range to select the glyphs you need.
Use woff2 when possible as it is already compressed.
This article is a great resource on web font optimization.
Here is the difference we measured when using optimized fonts:
After reducing our font files from 131kb to 41kb and removing one external resource (useproof), the fully loaded time on our test page dropped all the way from 5.1 to 2.8 seconds. That’s a 44 percent improvement and is sure to make Google smile (see below).
Here’s the 44 percent improvement.
Step 5: Move external resources
When possible, move external resources to your server so you can control expire headers (this will instruct the browsers to cache the resource for longer). For example, we moved our Facebook Pixel to our server and cached it for 14 days. This means you’ll be responsible to check updates from time to time, but it can improve your page speed score.
For example, on our Private Equity Interview Questions page it is possible to see how the fbevents.js file is being loaded from our server and the cache control http header is set to 14 days (1209600 seconds)
cache-control: public, max-age=1209600
Step 6: Use a content delivery network (CDN)
What’s a CDN? Click here to learn more.
I recommend using Cloudflare as it makes a lot of tasks much easier and faster than if you were to try and do them on your own server. Here is what we specifically did on Cloudflare's configuration:
Speed
Auto-minify, check all
Under Polish
Enable Brotoli
Enable Mirage
Choose Lossy
Check WebP
Network
Enable HTTP/2 – You can read more about this topic here
No browsers currently support HTTP/2 over an unencrypted connection. For practical purposes, this means that your website must be served over HTTPS to take advantage of HTTP/2. Cloudflare has a free and easy way to enable HTTPS. Check it out here.
Crypto
Under SSL
Choose Flexible
Under TLS 1.3
Choose Enable+0RTT – More about this topic here.
Step 7: Use service workers
Service workers give the site owner and developers some interesting options (like push notifications), but in terms of performance, we’re most excited about how these workers can help us build a smarter caching system.
To learn how to to get service workers up and running on your site, visit this page.
With resources (images, CSS, javascript, fonts, etc) being cached by a service worker, returning visitors will often be served much faster than if there was no worker at all.
Testing, tools, and takeaways
For each change you make to try and improve speed, you can use the following tools to monitor the impact of the change and make sure you are on the right path:
https://www.webpagetest.org
https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights
Google Page Speed Insights was updated on November 2018 (Details here). It gives you an incredible number of suggestions on how to improve the page performance for mobile and desktop based on Light House.
We know there is a lot to digest and a lot of resources linked above, but if you are tight on time, you can just start with Step 1 from both the Backend and Front-End sections. These 2 steps alone can make a major difference on their own.
Good luck and let me know if you have any questions in the comments. I’ll make sure João Guilherme, my Head of Technology, is on to answer any questions for the community at least once a day for the first week this is published.
Happy Tuning!
Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!
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12 Steps to Lightning Page Speed
Posted by WallStreetOasis.com
At Wall Street Oasis, we’ve noticed that every time we focus on improving our page speed, Google sends us more organic traffic. In 2018, our company's website reached over 80 percent of our traffic from organic search. That’s 24.5 million visits. Needless to say, we are very tuned in to how we can continue to improve our user experience and keep Google happy.
We thought this article would be a great way to highlight the specific steps we take to keep our page speed lightning fast and organic traffic healthy. While this article is somewhat technical (page speed is an important and complex subject) we hope it provides website owners and developers with a framework on how to try and improve their page speed.
Quick technical background: Our website is built on top of the Drupal CMS and we are running on a server with a LAMP stack (plus Varnish and memcache). If you are not using MySQL, however, the steps and principles in this article are still relevant for other databases or a reverse proxy.
Ready? Let’s dig in.
5 Steps to speed up the backend
Before we jump into specific steps that can help you speed up your backend, it might help to review what we mean by “backend”. You can think of the backend of everything that goes into storing data, including the database itself and the servers -- basically anything that helps make the website function that you don’t visually interact with. For more information on the difference between the backend vs. frontend, you read this article
Step 1: Make sure you have a Reverse Proxy configured
This is an important first step. For Wall Street Oasis (WSO), we use a reverse proxy called Varnish. It is by far the most critical and fastest layer of cache and serves the majority of the anonymous traffic (visitors logged out). Varnish caches the whole page in memory, so returning it to the visitor is lightning fast.
Step 2: Extend the TTL of that cache
If you have a large database of content (specifically in the 10,000+ URL range) that doesn’t change very frequently, to drive the hit-rate higher on the Varnish caching layer, you can extend the time to live (TTL basically means how long before you flush the object out of the cache).
For WSO, we went all the way up to two weeks (since we were over 300,000 discussions). At any given time, only a few thousand of those forum URLs are active, so it makes sense to heavily cache the other pages. The downside to this is that when you make any sitewide, template or design changes, you have to wait two weeks for it to arrive across all URLs.
Step 3: Warm up the cache
In order to keep our cache “warm," we have a specific process that hits all the URLs in our sitemap. This increases the likelihood of a page being in the cache when a user or Google bot visits those same pages (i.e. our hit rate improves). It also keeps Varnish full of more objects, ready to be accessed quickly.
As you can see from the chart below, the ratio of “cache hits” (green) to total hits (blue+green) is over 93 percent.
Step 4: Tune your database and focus on the slowest queries
On WSO, we use a MySQL database. Make sure you enable the slow queries report and check it at least every quarter. Check the slowest queries using EXPLAIN. Add indexes where needed and rewrite queries that can be optimized.
On WSO, we use a MySQL database. To tune MySQL, you can use the following scripts: https://github.com/major/MySQLTuner-perl and https://github.com/mattiabasone/tuning-primer
Step 5: HTTP headers
Use HTTP2 server push to send resources to the page before they are requested. Just make sure you test which ones should be pushed, first. JavaScript was a good option for us. You can read more about it here.
Here is an example of server push from our Investment Banking Interview Questions URL:
</files/advagg_js/js__rh8tGyQUC6fPazMoP4YI4X0Fze99Pspus1iL4Am3Nr4__k2v047sfief4SoufV5rlyaT9V0CevRW-VsgHZa2KUGc__TDoTqiqOgPXBrBhVJKZ4CapJRLlJ1LTahU_1ivB9XtQ.js>; rel=preload; as=script,</files/advagg_js/js__TLh0q7OGWS6tv88FccFskwgFrZI9p53uJYwc6wv-a3o__kueGth7dEBcGqUVEib_yvaCzx99rTtEVqb1UaLaylA4__TDoTqiqOgPXBrBhVJKZ4CapJRLlJ1LTahU_1ivB9XtQ.js>; rel=preload; as=script,</files/advagg_js/js__sMVR1us69-sSXhuhQWNXRyjueOEy4FQRK7nr6zzAswY__O9Dxl50YCBWD3WksvdK42k5GXABvKifJooNDTlCQgDw__TDoTqiqOgPXBrBhVJKZ4CapJRLlJ1LTahU_1ivB9XtQ.js>; rel=preload; as=script,
Be sure you're using the correct format. If it is a script: <url>; rel=preload; as=script,
If it is a CSS file: <url>; rel=preload; as=style,
7 Steps to speed up the frontend
The following steps are to help speed up your frontend application. The front-end is the part of a website or application that the user directly interacts with. For example, this includes fonts, drop-down menus, buttons, transitions, sliders, forms, etc.
Step 1: Modify the placement of your JavaScript
Modifying the placement of your JavaScript is probably one of the hardest changes because you will need to continually test to make sure it doesn’t break the functionality of your site. 
I’ve noticed that every time I remove JavaScript, I see page speed improve. I suggest removing as much Javascript as you can. You can minify the necessary JavaScript you do need. You can also combine your JavaScript files but use multiple bundles.
Always try to move JavaScript to the bottom of the page or inline. You can also defer or use the async attribute where possible to guarantee you are not rendering blocking. You can read more about moving JavaScript here.
Step 2: Optimize your images
Use WebP for images when possible (Cloudflare, a CDN, does this for you automatically — I’ll touch more on Cloudflare below). It's an image formatting that uses both Lossy compression and lossless compression.
Always use images with the correct size. For example, if you have an image that is displayed in a 2” x 2 ” square on your site, don’t use a large 10” x 10” image. If you have an image that is bigger than is needed, you are transferring more data through the network and the browser has to resize the image for you
Use lazy load to avoid/delay downloading images that are further down the page and not on the visible part of the screen.
Step 3: Optimize your CSS
You want to make sure your CSS is inline. Online tools like this one can help you find the critical CSS to be inlined and will solve the render blocking. Bonus: you'll keep the cache benefit of having separate files.
Make sure to minify your CSS files (we use AdVagg since we are on the Drupal CMS, but there are many options for this depending on your site).  
Try using less CSS. For instance, if you have certain CSS classes that are only used on your homepage, don't include them on other pages. 
Always combine the CSS files but use multiple bundles. You can read more about this step here.
Move your media queries to specific files so the browser doesn't have to load them before rendering the page. For example: <link href="frontpage-sm.css" rel="stylesheet" media="(min-width: 767px)">
If you’d like more info on how to optimize your CSS, check out Patrick Sexton’s interesting post.
Step 4: Lighten your web fonts (they can be HEAVY)
This is where your developers may get in an argument with your designers if you’re not careful. Everyone wants to look at a beautifully designed website, but if you’re not careful about how you bring this design live, it can cause major unintended speed issues. Here are some tips on how to put your fonts on a diet:
Use inline svg for icon fonts (like font awesome). This way you'll reduce the critical chain path and will avoid empty content when the page is first loaded.
Use fontello to generate the font files. This way, you can include only the glyphs you actually use which leads to smaller files and faster page speed.
If you are going to use web fonts, check if you need all the glyphs defined in the font file. If you don’t need Japanese or Arabic characters, for example, see if there is a version with only the characters you need.
Use Unicode range to select the glyphs you need.
Use woff2 when possible as it is already compressed.
This article is a great resource on web font optimization.
Here is the difference we measured when using optimized fonts:
After reducing our font files from 131kb to 41kb and removing one external resource (useproof), the fully loaded time on our test page dropped all the way from 5.1 to 2.8 seconds. That’s a 44 percent improvement and is sure to make Google smile (see below).
Here’s the 44 percent improvement.
Step 5: Move external resources
When possible, move external resources to your server so you can control expire headers (this will instruct the browsers to cache the resource for longer). For example, we moved our Facebook Pixel to our server and cached it for 14 days. This means you’ll be responsible to check updates from time to time, but it can improve your page speed score.
For example, on our Private Equity Interview Questions page it is possible to see how the fbevents.js file is being loaded from our server and the cache control http header is set to 14 days (1209600 seconds)
cache-control: public, max-age=1209600
Step 6: Use a content delivery network (CDN)
What’s a CDN? Click here to learn more.
I recommend using Cloudflare as it makes a lot of tasks much easier and faster than if you were to try and do them on your own server. Here is what we specifically did on Cloudflare's configuration:
Speed
Auto-minify, check all
Under Polish
Enable Brotoli
Enable Mirage
Choose Lossy
Check WebP
Network
Enable HTTP/2 – You can read more about this topic here
No browsers currently support HTTP/2 over an unencrypted connection. For practical purposes, this means that your website must be served over HTTPS to take advantage of HTTP/2. Cloudflare has a free and easy way to enable HTTPS. Check it out here.
Crypto
Under SSL
Choose Flexible
Under TLS 1.3
Choose Enable+0RTT – More about this topic here.
Step 7: Use service workers
Service workers give the site owner and developers some interesting options (like push notifications), but in terms of performance, we’re most excited about how these workers can help us build a smarter caching system.
To learn how to to get service workers up and running on your site, visit this page.
With resources (images, CSS, javascript, fonts, etc) being cached by a service worker, returning visitors will often be served much faster than if there was no worker at all.
Testing, tools, and takeaways
For each change you make to try and improve speed, you can use the following tools to monitor the impact of the change and make sure you are on the right path:
https://www.webpagetest.org
https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights
Google Page Speed Insights was updated on November 2018 (Details here). It gives you an incredible number of suggestions on how to improve the page performance for mobile and desktop based on Light House.
We know there is a lot to digest and a lot of resources linked above, but if you are tight on time, you can just start with Step 1 from both the Backend and Front-End sections. These 2 steps alone can make a major difference on their own.
Good luck and let me know if you have any questions in the comments. I’ll make sure João Guilherme, my Head of Technology, is on to answer any questions for the community at least once a day for the first week this is published.
Happy Tuning!
Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!
from The Moz Blog http://tracking.feedpress.it/link/9375/11258921
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douglassmiith · 4 years
Text
Paul Krugman Warns of Fiscal Time Bomb If Relief Is Insufficient
The Nobel Prize-winning economist says we will likely need a stimulus bill as large as $4 or $5 trillion.
April 2, 2020 15+ min read
This story originally appeared on Business Insider
Paul Krugman is a Nobel Prize-winning economist and the author of many books including the recently published “Arguing with Zombies: Economics, Politics, and the Fight for a Better Future.” Krugman spoke with the Business Insider editor-at-large Sara Silverstein to discuss why this recession was different from any we had ever dealt with. Following is a transcript of the video.
Sara Silverstein: Paul, your newest book is about zombie ideas, which are basically things that we know are false. We can prove they’re false, but people still believe and they still impact our policies and our economy. How does this idea of zombie ideas apply to the coronavirus crisis?
Paul Krugman: This is new. No one was — I mean, it’s not true that no one saw this, but there wasn’t — virus denial wasn’t an industry before this hit. But the reactions to this, to the whole handling — the coronavirus has been like global warming, but at about a hundred times speed. Right? The same thing. “The scientists are in a conspiracy against President Trump and trying to bring socialism with false warnings.” All of that is what sort of laid the groundwork. You basically carried over the whole set of attitudes that came from climate denial, which is one of the most important zombies out there, straight into the coronavirus until like two days ago.
Silverstein: How does that affect how we’re reacting to the crisis?
Krugman: We’ve been far behind the curve. It was already obvious in January that this was extremely high risk and we should have been doing massive ramping up of testing. We should’ve been doing social distancing. We should’ve been doing all these things that help to contain it. We really didn’t get serious or Washington didn’t get serious, again, until just a few days ago about any of this.
Even now, we’re not doing what you always do when you have an emergency, which is you federalize the production of essential equipment. We still haven’t done that. We still have this wild uncoordinated scrambled for ventilators and all of that.
The denial, virus denial, which is basically the same as climate denial, has been critical. I mean tens of thousands of people will die unnecessarily in this country because of it.
Silverstein: If you were responsible for writing the response, and we could talk about the policy response, what we’re calling the $2 trillion stimulus package, what would it look like?
Krugman: There’s first of all, there’s the epidemiological response, which is — the one thing I know about epidemiology is I’m not an expert.
The economics thing, I’m kind of annoyed that people keep calling this a stimulus bill because it mostly is. We want GDP to decline. We want lots of people to stay home and not work while we get this thing under control. The goal is not so much to sustain the economy per se as it is to give this thing time to work and to alleviate hardship. This is mostly a disaster-relief bill.
The things that are really important are unemployment benefits, cash to families, loans to small business that allow the most affected people to get through this with the minimum of financial hardship. It also provides some stimulus. There are parts of the economy that are still alive. We don’t want them collapsing because nobody has money to spend. There is some stimulus in there too, but this is mainly a giant disaster-relief bill, which unfortunately despite its size is probably not big enough.
Silverstein: How big do you think it’s going to need to be, and how should we finance it?
Krugman: Well, something like … We’re still groping here, but something like 20, 25% of the economy is going to be shut down for an extended period and you really want to think of aid that’s on the scale of that shutdown. We’re basically trying to replace the incomes of those people, and we don’t do total replacement, but mostly. We’ve got a $20-trillion-a-year economy, so it’s not hard to make the case this might end up being $4 trillion or $5 trillion that we really should be doing it. The answer is borrow the money.
The private sector is not investing. Mortgage applications have collapsed. Business, who’s going to be building office parks and all of that in the middle of a plague? Private saving for sure has gone way, way up. Maybe people are spending some of the money they’re not spending at restaurants on other things, but a lot of it is just being saved. We have this huge surplus in the private sector of all of this excess money looking for someplace to go. They’re offering it to the government for free. Real interest rates are negative. So, borrow it.
Silverstein: The unemployment insurance provision, you said makes sense. What do you think about the way that they’re spending the rest of the 2 trillion?
Krugman: Well, there’s different pieces. The small-business side looks like it’s pretty well designed. It’s loans that turn into grants for small businesses to maintain the payroll. So, that’s good.
Just a flat-out check of $1,200, that’s good. They’re making it more difficult. It should be going automatically to people whether or not they filed tax returns as long as they’re in the record someplace. So they’re making it harder to get.
The big-business lending has an inspector-general provision to prevent corruption, which Trump has already said he’s going to disregard. I’m worried about that — as are we all — so there could be a lot of corruption at that end.
I’d say this is about 80% a reasonable bill and then 20% of … we don’t know, but they’re missing pieces. State and local governments really need a lot of help, and there’s not remotely enough money in there. In a way, I think this crisis is going to be prolonged even once the pandemic subsides by the fact that we’re going to have state and local governments that are in desperate financial constraints.
Silverstein: I was just going to ask you about the longer-term implications of some of these. Can you talk more about how that will impact ordinary people, the state and local governments’ financial hardships?
Krugman: Sure. State governments, local governments, unlike the federal government have to balance their budgets each year. All of the … They’re losing tax revenue. They’re having extra expenses. They’re going to have to make that up in the near future, which means that they’re going to be laying off … It’s going to be a lot like what happened after the 2008 crisis when layoffs of school teachers, layoffs of government employees were a big factor in holding back recovery and we’re going to be … Yeah, just as the pandemic starts to fade, we hope, we’re going to be seeing state and local governments cutting back severely.
Also, by the way, the extra unemployment benefits are only for the next four months. A lot of the financial support that we’re going to be providing now is going to be going away just when we’re hoping the economy will bounce back. I’m really worried that the economic fallout may last much, much longer than people are thinking.
Silverstein: As we start to bounce back, I don’t know how deep unemployment will get during the pandemic, but once jobs start coming back, where is going to be the new normal? Are we going to come back to full employment?
Krugman: Well, eventually, yes. Nothing about this has changed. Workers haven’t lost their skills. People haven’t lost their taste for all of the things that they want. But it is true that we had an economy that was … the economy’s weaker than we like to think even though we had full employment just the other day. We probably lost more jobs already than we did in the whole of the Great Recession. But just before that we were at full employment, but we are at full employment only with very, very low interest rates. To the extent that there’s been a lot of financial damage that comes out of this to balance sheets of companies and households have been really savaged by it, which they will have been by the time this comes to an end.
Getting enough demand to restore full employment may be a challenge. We may really … the White House has been talking about for the 17th time, they’re talking about infrastructure, but maybe after this we really should talk about how the economy really needs a big infrastructure push. Partly because we need the infrastructure, but also to ensure full employment.
Silverstein: You shared a chart showing that during the 1919 influenza pandemic, the stock market actually rose. What’s the difference between what happened then and what’s happening now?
Krugman: I’m not sure. It may be that there was actually less social distancing then, people just died. There was a fair bit, but it may have depressed the economy less that time. Also, we came into this with stocks basically priced for perfection. This may have just served as a warning that we don’t actually have perfection. This could be different, but I wouldn’t be surprised if eventually stocks do well because interest rates are very low. Stock market is a really poor guide and in general to the state of the real economy.
Silverstein: So few Americans are actually represented in the stock market and benefit or are hurt by changes in the stock market directly. Is there any reason that individuals should be worried about other people’s balance sheets and what the stock market is doing?
Krugman: Well, sure. A lot of people, most stocks are owned by … A great majority of stocks are owned by a small fraction of the population, but those people do account for a disproportionate share of consumer spending. They’re feeling poorer now, so that’s another reason that we’re going to be seeing some economic difficulties heading forward. People who were feeling rich and laying out on vacations and expensive restaurant meals may not be quite willing to do that even once the restaurants reopen and once the airlines are back up and running again.
Silverstein: You say that interest rates make it look like the — sorry, that’s my cat — interest rates make it look like investors are expecting a long-term recession. Can you unpack that a little bit for us?
Krugman: Well, I wouldn’t quite … Interest rates have been extremely low for a long time now. The market seems to have bought into this jargon phrase, secular stagnation, which doesn’t really mean that the economy stagnates, but it means that the economy has a persistent shortage —  there just isn’t enough investment demand to use all the savings that people want it to make. The markets seem to have capitulated even before the coronavirus hit. The markets basically capitulated to the view that that’s where we were.
And they’re not so much signaling the necessarily that we’re in a recession for years, but we’re, they’re signaling that we’re going to have an economy that is always on the edge of a recession for the foreseeable future. That’s really, I think, one way to think about what secular stagnation means. The markets could be wrong, but it is clearly quite remarkable. A year and a half ago, markets were starting to act as if maybe the old days were coming back and normal levels of interest rates, and nobody seems to believe that now.
Silverstein: Can you walk us through your model for the coronavirus recession where nonessential employees versus essential employees and how the savings on one side and where everybody’s going to sort of fall out?
Krugman: Yeah, so I like to think of the economy, it’s stylized, too simple. But think of it as just two parts of the economy. There’s nonessentials, which means either stuff that really isn’t essential or stuff which we shouldn’t be doing because it spreads the disease. We can do without it. Then there’s essentials, or at least harmless. I’m not sure that Amazon orders aren’t essential but, delivery services we can keep going.
We are basically deliberately and appropriately shutting down the nonessential stuff. We’re doing, I would say it’s like a medically induced coma where you shut down major parts of the brain basically to give it a chance to heal from damage, and which is appropriate. It’s good. We need to do that if we don’t want lots of lots of people to die, but the trouble is, first of all, all those people who are left unemployed because of this, what are they going to live on? All the businesses that are not able to operate, how are they going to survive? Which is why we need a big aid package, which is basically relief. That’s the important part.
Now there’s a secondary consequence, which is if you don’t provide enough relief, all of those people whose businesses have been shut down can’t buy other stuff, and so you’ve got a sort of a conventional recession laid on top of that and that’s what we’re trying to prevent in addition. It’s mostly disaster relief, but there’s also stimulus to try and head off that conventional recession on top of the coma.
I think that’s the way to think about it. If you’re thinking that this is just a replay of 2008, you’re missing probably the bigger part of the story, but there are pieces. Part of this is like a replay of 2008, and that’s what we need. That part should be avoidable if we act forcefully enough, which we haven’t so far.
Silverstein: We haven’t so far acted forcefully enough in terms of relief?
Krugman: Yeah. There’s not enough money. The unemployment benefits, that’s a big deal. The small-business lending, that’s a pretty big deal. There’s not remotely enough aid to state and local governments. We’re making it too hard for people to get those checks.
Financial markets, thank God for the Fed, which at least is one bastion of competence that remains out there, and so they have been doing a yeoman work and getting the financial markets stabilized, although even there it takes time.
Silverstein: I was just going to ask, what do you think about the Fed’s response? Can you elaborate on what the Fed is doing right?
Krugman: Well, the Fed is basically stepping in. Financial markets were starting to shut down the same way they did in 2008 because so many balance-sheet losses because of the virus that investors were afraid of anything that wasn’t risk-free and highly liquid. You were watching corporate — even as interest rates on federal debt were plunging, corporate borrowing costs were soaring. Commercial paper rates were soaring. Basically money wasn’t available for keeping the business going.
Now the Fed has stepped in to basically do the lending that the private sector won’t. It’s been buying longer-term bonds. It has said it’s willing to buy corporate bonds if it needs to. They’re going to be doing commercial paper. There’s a commercial paper facility that they had back in the financial crisis, which I had a relative working for that, so I was pretty familiar with its operations and there are restarting it, but although that apparently won’t be up and running until next week.
The Fed is kind of … they’ve seen this movie and they’re making an effort to make sure that they get it under control. They’ve been doing a pretty good job. They went big aggressively. They realized that the risks of doing too little vastly outweigh the risk of doing too much and they’ve made the right call.
Silverstein: Should the Fed be buying municipals and corporate bonds or should they even go further and be able to buy stock?
Krugman: Well, I would say munis for sure because the state and local is a big issue. Corporate bonds, I think they certainly need to do, but they don’t, which is to say we are willing to do it. It may not be necessary actually to do it. There’s a lot of those of us who follow European affairs or, you know, this is our whatever-it-takes moment like that moment when Mario Draghi said he was willing to buy the bonds of distressed countries. It turns out he never actually had to do it. Just saying it was enough to stabilize the markets. Maybe that’s it, but you need to be willing to do it.
Stocks possibly, we haven’t reached that point yet, but that’s a possibility. There are limits to what the Fed much as some of my liberal friends say, “Why can’t the Fed just send to everybody money?” And unfortunately, that’s not within their legal remit, but they should be willing to buy again, whatever it takes, any kind of assets that they need to.
Silverstein: Should the Fed have been raising rates in retrospect when the economy was growing?
Krugman: No, no. It was clear that they overstated the recovery. They shouldn’t have raised rates as much as they did. They overshot. They should have … Yeah, some of us were saying, “Wait until you see the whites of inflation’s eyes.” And that really looks like good advice now. I’m not sure how much harm it did, but this is not why we’re in the mess we’re in now. Those rate hikes were premature, but they didn’t cause the virus.
But no, I mean the Fed maybe will come out of this with an understanding that whatever you thought was normal, based on the way the world looked 15 years ago is not normal in this world.
Silverstein: If you look at the US response from a health and an economic perspective versus other countries around the world, how do you think we fared? Is there anything to learn from other places?
Krugman: Yeah, don’t be like America. We screwed up on multiple levels. We totally failed. The other people can tell you more about the health response, but clearly we totally fell down on testing. We’ve totally fell down on medical equipment. We waited far too long on social distancing. All of that.
Other countries are doing … the economic response is better than ours. Ours was better than I feared it was going to be. There was a point where it looked like Republicans were going to say tax cuts are the answer to everything. But look at Denmark, which is corporations that keep their workers on payroll. The government is picking up 75% of the tab. That’s the kind of thing that really would be great. Unfortunately, I don’t think America is politically in that universe, but we’re in some ways having the weakest economic response of certainly of the G7 countries.
Silverstein: Finally, just to make you do my job. Where do you think the media is really missing the point? Is there anything that you would complain you wish that people would ask you?
Krugman: I think, well, I think the media had really, I mean other people can talk and take on the health-affairs stuff, but the media I think really still have missed the extent to which this is not a normal recession. We’re still hearing it discussed in terms of stimulus. We’re still hearing it as if this were the usual kinds of problems, and there’s some of that, but, I don’t think the fact that the essential thing is limiting hardship has really made it.
Every time I see stimulus in a headline about the tax bill, I get mad because that’s missing the point. I actually have seen almost nobody talking about what happens four or five months from now when hopefully the pandemic has subsided, but then you have financial crises at the state level and the unemployment benefits have expired. We have a huge fiscal time bomb, which we can see is being … the timer has been set on it as we speak, and I’ve seen almost no coverage of that.
Silverstein: What happens then? Let me ask you, Paul.
Krugman: Well, what happens is that just as the economy is ready to recover, mass layoffs of school teachers, mass cutoff of unemployment benefits undermine the nation’s recovery. This could end up being in a way, a little bit like what happened in 2008-2009 when we had a pretty effective response to the crisis, but then went to fiscal austerity, which meant that the recovery was very, very slow.
Even though this is a very different kind of crisis, we could have the same kind of story. I think at the moment, unless there’s another major round of legislation that is going to be the story.
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laurelkrugerr · 4 years
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Paul Krugman Warns of Fiscal Time Bomb If Relief Is Insufficient
The Nobel Prize-winning economist says we will likely need a stimulus bill as large as $4 or $5 trillion.
April 2, 2020 15+ min read
This story originally appeared on Business Insider
Paul Krugman is a Nobel Prize-winning economist and the author of many books including the recently published “Arguing with Zombies: Economics, Politics, and the Fight for a Better Future.” Krugman spoke with the Business Insider editor-at-large Sara Silverstein to discuss why this recession was different from any we had ever dealt with. Following is a transcript of the video.
Sara Silverstein: Paul, your newest book is about zombie ideas, which are basically things that we know are false. We can prove they’re false, but people still believe and they still impact our policies and our economy. How does this idea of zombie ideas apply to the coronavirus crisis?
Paul Krugman: This is new. No one was — I mean, it’s not true that no one saw this, but there wasn’t — virus denial wasn’t an industry before this hit. But the reactions to this, to the whole handling — the coronavirus has been like global warming, but at about a hundred times speed. Right? The same thing. “The scientists are in a conspiracy against President Trump and trying to bring socialism with false warnings.” All of that is what sort of laid the groundwork. You basically carried over the whole set of attitudes that came from climate denial, which is one of the most important zombies out there, straight into the coronavirus until like two days ago.
Silverstein: How does that affect how we’re reacting to the crisis?
Krugman: We’ve been far behind the curve. It was already obvious in January that this was extremely high risk and we should have been doing massive ramping up of testing. We should’ve been doing social distancing. We should’ve been doing all these things that help to contain it. We really didn’t get serious or Washington didn’t get serious, again, until just a few days ago about any of this.
Even now, we’re not doing what you always do when you have an emergency, which is you federalize the production of essential equipment. We still haven’t done that. We still have this wild uncoordinated scrambled for ventilators and all of that.
The denial, virus denial, which is basically the same as climate denial, has been critical. I mean tens of thousands of people will die unnecessarily in this country because of it.
Silverstein: If you were responsible for writing the response, and we could talk about the policy response, what we’re calling the $2 trillion stimulus package, what would it look like?
Krugman: There’s first of all, there’s the epidemiological response, which is — the one thing I know about epidemiology is I’m not an expert.
The economics thing, I’m kind of annoyed that people keep calling this a stimulus bill because it mostly is. We want GDP to decline. We want lots of people to stay home and not work while we get this thing under control. The goal is not so much to sustain the economy per se as it is to give this thing time to work and to alleviate hardship. This is mostly a disaster-relief bill.
The things that are really important are unemployment benefits, cash to families, loans to small business that allow the most affected people to get through this with the minimum of financial hardship. It also provides some stimulus. There are parts of the economy that are still alive. We don’t want them collapsing because nobody has money to spend. There is some stimulus in there too, but this is mainly a giant disaster-relief bill, which unfortunately despite its size is probably not big enough.
Silverstein: How big do you think it’s going to need to be, and how should we finance it?
Krugman: Well, something like … We’re still groping here, but something like 20, 25% of the economy is going to be shut down for an extended period and you really want to think of aid that’s on the scale of that shutdown. We’re basically trying to replace the incomes of those people, and we don’t do total replacement, but mostly. We’ve got a $20-trillion-a-year economy, so it’s not hard to make the case this might end up being $4 trillion or $5 trillion that we really should be doing it. The answer is borrow the money.
The private sector is not investing. Mortgage applications have collapsed. Business, who’s going to be building office parks and all of that in the middle of a plague? Private saving for sure has gone way, way up. Maybe people are spending some of the money they’re not spending at restaurants on other things, but a lot of it is just being saved. We have this huge surplus in the private sector of all of this excess money looking for someplace to go. They’re offering it to the government for free. Real interest rates are negative. So, borrow it.
Silverstein: The unemployment insurance provision, you said makes sense. What do you think about the way that they’re spending the rest of the 2 trillion?
Krugman: Well, there’s different pieces. The small-business side looks like it’s pretty well designed. It’s loans that turn into grants for small businesses to maintain the payroll. So, that’s good.
Just a flat-out check of $1,200, that’s good. They’re making it more difficult. It should be going automatically to people whether or not they filed tax returns as long as they’re in the record someplace. So they’re making it harder to get.
The big-business lending has an inspector-general provision to prevent corruption, which Trump has already said he’s going to disregard. I’m worried about that — as are we all — so there could be a lot of corruption at that end.
I’d say this is about 80% a reasonable bill and then 20% of … we don’t know, but they’re missing pieces. State and local governments really need a lot of help, and there’s not remotely enough money in there. In a way, I think this crisis is going to be prolonged even once the pandemic subsides by the fact that we’re going to have state and local governments that are in desperate financial constraints.
Silverstein: I was just going to ask you about the longer-term implications of some of these. Can you talk more about how that will impact ordinary people, the state and local governments’ financial hardships?
Krugman: Sure. State governments, local governments, unlike the federal government have to balance their budgets each year. All of the … They’re losing tax revenue. They’re having extra expenses. They’re going to have to make that up in the near future, which means that they’re going to be laying off … It’s going to be a lot like what happened after the 2008 crisis when layoffs of school teachers, layoffs of government employees were a big factor in holding back recovery and we’re going to be … Yeah, just as the pandemic starts to fade, we hope, we’re going to be seeing state and local governments cutting back severely.
Also, by the way, the extra unemployment benefits are only for the next four months. A lot of the financial support that we’re going to be providing now is going to be going away just when we’re hoping the economy will bounce back. I’m really worried that the economic fallout may last much, much longer than people are thinking.
Silverstein: As we start to bounce back, I don’t know how deep unemployment will get during the pandemic, but once jobs start coming back, where is going to be the new normal? Are we going to come back to full employment?
Krugman: Well, eventually, yes. Nothing about this has changed. Workers haven’t lost their skills. People haven’t lost their taste for all of the things that they want. But it is true that we had an economy that was … the economy’s weaker than we like to think even though we had full employment just the other day. We probably lost more jobs already than we did in the whole of the Great Recession. But just before that we were at full employment, but we are at full employment only with very, very low interest rates. To the extent that there’s been a lot of financial damage that comes out of this to balance sheets of companies and households have been really savaged by it, which they will have been by the time this comes to an end.
Getting enough demand to restore full employment may be a challenge. We may really … the White House has been talking about for the 17th time, they’re talking about infrastructure, but maybe after this we really should talk about how the economy really needs a big infrastructure push. Partly because we need the infrastructure, but also to ensure full employment.
Silverstein: You shared a chart showing that during the 1919 influenza pandemic, the stock market actually rose. What’s the difference between what happened then and what’s happening now?
Krugman: I’m not sure. It may be that there was actually less social distancing then, people just died. There was a fair bit, but it may have depressed the economy less that time. Also, we came into this with stocks basically priced for perfection. This may have just served as a warning that we don’t actually have perfection. This could be different, but I wouldn’t be surprised if eventually stocks do well because interest rates are very low. Stock market is a really poor guide and in general to the state of the real economy.
Silverstein: So few Americans are actually represented in the stock market and benefit or are hurt by changes in the stock market directly. Is there any reason that individuals should be worried about other people’s balance sheets and what the stock market is doing?
Krugman: Well, sure. A lot of people, most stocks are owned by … A great majority of stocks are owned by a small fraction of the population, but those people do account for a disproportionate share of consumer spending. They’re feeling poorer now, so that’s another reason that we’re going to be seeing some economic difficulties heading forward. People who were feeling rich and laying out on vacations and expensive restaurant meals may not be quite willing to do that even once the restaurants reopen and once the airlines are back up and running again.
Silverstein: You say that interest rates make it look like the — sorry, that’s my cat — interest rates make it look like investors are expecting a long-term recession. Can you unpack that a little bit for us?
Krugman: Well, I wouldn’t quite … Interest rates have been extremely low for a long time now. The market seems to have bought into this jargon phrase, secular stagnation, which doesn’t really mean that the economy stagnates, but it means that the economy has a persistent shortage —  there just isn’t enough investment demand to use all the savings that people want it to make. The markets seem to have capitulated even before the coronavirus hit. The markets basically capitulated to the view that that’s where we were.
And they’re not so much signaling the necessarily that we’re in a recession for years, but we’re, they’re signaling that we’re going to have an economy that is always on the edge of a recession for the foreseeable future. That’s really, I think, one way to think about what secular stagnation means. The markets could be wrong, but it is clearly quite remarkable. A year and a half ago, markets were starting to act as if maybe the old days were coming back and normal levels of interest rates, and nobody seems to believe that now.
Silverstein: Can you walk us through your model for the coronavirus recession where nonessential employees versus essential employees and how the savings on one side and where everybody’s going to sort of fall out?
Krugman: Yeah, so I like to think of the economy, it’s stylized, too simple. But think of it as just two parts of the economy. There’s nonessentials, which means either stuff that really isn’t essential or stuff which we shouldn’t be doing because it spreads the disease. We can do without it. Then there’s essentials, or at least harmless. I’m not sure that Amazon orders aren’t essential but, delivery services we can keep going.
We are basically deliberately and appropriately shutting down the nonessential stuff. We’re doing, I would say it’s like a medically induced coma where you shut down major parts of the brain basically to give it a chance to heal from damage, and which is appropriate. It’s good. We need to do that if we don’t want lots of lots of people to die, but the trouble is, first of all, all those people who are left unemployed because of this, what are they going to live on? All the businesses that are not able to operate, how are they going to survive? Which is why we need a big aid package, which is basically relief. That’s the important part.
Now there’s a secondary consequence, which is if you don’t provide enough relief, all of those people whose businesses have been shut down can’t buy other stuff, and so you’ve got a sort of a conventional recession laid on top of that and that’s what we’re trying to prevent in addition. It’s mostly disaster relief, but there’s also stimulus to try and head off that conventional recession on top of the coma.
I think that’s the way to think about it. If you’re thinking that this is just a replay of 2008, you’re missing probably the bigger part of the story, but there are pieces. Part of this is like a replay of 2008, and that’s what we need. That part should be avoidable if we act forcefully enough, which we haven’t so far.
Silverstein: We haven’t so far acted forcefully enough in terms of relief?
Krugman: Yeah. There’s not enough money. The unemployment benefits, that’s a big deal. The small-business lending, that’s a pretty big deal. There’s not remotely enough aid to state and local governments. We’re making it too hard for people to get those checks.
Financial markets, thank God for the Fed, which at least is one bastion of competence that remains out there, and so they have been doing a yeoman work and getting the financial markets stabilized, although even there it takes time.
Silverstein: I was just going to ask, what do you think about the Fed’s response? Can you elaborate on what the Fed is doing right?
Krugman: Well, the Fed is basically stepping in. Financial markets were starting to shut down the same way they did in 2008 because so many balance-sheet losses because of the virus that investors were afraid of anything that wasn’t risk-free and highly liquid. You were watching corporate — even as interest rates on federal debt were plunging, corporate borrowing costs were soaring. Commercial paper rates were soaring. Basically money wasn’t available for keeping the business going.
Now the Fed has stepped in to basically do the lending that the private sector won’t. It’s been buying longer-term bonds. It has said it’s willing to buy corporate bonds if it needs to. They’re going to be doing commercial paper. There’s a commercial paper facility that they had back in the financial crisis, which I had a relative working for that, so I was pretty familiar with its operations and there are restarting it, but although that apparently won’t be up and running until next week.
The Fed is kind of … they’ve seen this movie and they’re making an effort to make sure that they get it under control. They’ve been doing a pretty good job. They went big aggressively. They realized that the risks of doing too little vastly outweigh the risk of doing too much and they’ve made the right call.
Silverstein: Should the Fed be buying municipals and corporate bonds or should they even go further and be able to buy stock?
Krugman: Well, I would say munis for sure because the state and local is a big issue. Corporate bonds, I think they certainly need to do, but they don’t, which is to say we are willing to do it. It may not be necessary actually to do it. There’s a lot of those of us who follow European affairs or, you know, this is our whatever-it-takes moment like that moment when Mario Draghi said he was willing to buy the bonds of distressed countries. It turns out he never actually had to do it. Just saying it was enough to stabilize the markets. Maybe that’s it, but you need to be willing to do it.
Stocks possibly, we haven’t reached that point yet, but that’s a possibility. There are limits to what the Fed much as some of my liberal friends say, “Why can’t the Fed just send to everybody money?” And unfortunately, that’s not within their legal remit, but they should be willing to buy again, whatever it takes, any kind of assets that they need to.
Silverstein: Should the Fed have been raising rates in retrospect when the economy was growing?
Krugman: No, no. It was clear that they overstated the recovery. They shouldn’t have raised rates as much as they did. They overshot. They should have … Yeah, some of us were saying, “Wait until you see the whites of inflation’s eyes.” And that really looks like good advice now. I’m not sure how much harm it did, but this is not why we’re in the mess we’re in now. Those rate hikes were premature, but they didn’t cause the virus.
But no, I mean the Fed maybe will come out of this with an understanding that whatever you thought was normal, based on the way the world looked 15 years ago is not normal in this world.
Silverstein: If you look at the US response from a health and an economic perspective versus other countries around the world, how do you think we fared? Is there anything to learn from other places?
Krugman: Yeah, don’t be like America. We screwed up on multiple levels. We totally failed. The other people can tell you more about the health response, but clearly we totally fell down on testing. We’ve totally fell down on medical equipment. We waited far too long on social distancing. All of that.
Other countries are doing … the economic response is better than ours. Ours was better than I feared it was going to be. There was a point where it looked like Republicans were going to say tax cuts are the answer to everything. But look at Denmark, which is corporations that keep their workers on payroll. The government is picking up 75% of the tab. That’s the kind of thing that really would be great. Unfortunately, I don’t think America is politically in that universe, but we’re in some ways having the weakest economic response of certainly of the G7 countries.
Silverstein: Finally, just to make you do my job. Where do you think the media is really missing the point? Is there anything that you would complain you wish that people would ask you?
Krugman: I think, well, I think the media had really, I mean other people can talk and take on the health-affairs stuff, but the media I think really still have missed the extent to which this is not a normal recession. We’re still hearing it discussed in terms of stimulus. We’re still hearing it as if this were the usual kinds of problems, and there’s some of that, but, I don’t think the fact that the essential thing is limiting hardship has really made it.
Every time I see stimulus in a headline about the tax bill, I get mad because that’s missing the point. I actually have seen almost nobody talking about what happens four or five months from now when hopefully the pandemic has subsided, but then you have financial crises at the state level and the unemployment benefits have expired. We have a huge fiscal time bomb, which we can see is being … the timer has been set on it as we speak, and I’ve seen almost no coverage of that.
Silverstein: What happens then? Let me ask you, Paul.
Krugman: Well, what happens is that just as the economy is ready to recover, mass layoffs of school teachers, mass cutoff of unemployment benefits undermine the nation’s recovery. This could end up being in a way, a little bit like what happened in 2008-2009 when we had a pretty effective response to the crisis, but then went to fiscal austerity, which meant that the recovery was very, very slow.
Even though this is a very different kind of crisis, we could have the same kind of story. I think at the moment, unless there’s another major round of legislation that is going to be the story.
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riichardwilson · 4 years
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Paul Krugman Warns of Fiscal Time Bomb If Relief Is Insufficient
The Nobel Prize-winning economist says we will likely need a stimulus bill as large as $4 or $5 trillion.
April 2, 2020 15+ min read
This story originally appeared on Business Insider
Paul Krugman is a Nobel Prize-winning economist and the author of many books including the recently published “Arguing with Zombies: Economics, Politics, and the Fight for a Better Future.” Krugman spoke with the Business Insider editor-at-large Sara Silverstein to discuss why this recession was different from any we had ever dealt with. Following is a transcript of the video.
Sara Silverstein: Paul, your newest book is about zombie ideas, which are basically things that we know are false. We can prove they’re false, but people still believe and they still impact our policies and our economy. How does this idea of zombie ideas apply to the coronavirus crisis?
Paul Krugman: This is new. No one was — I mean, it’s not true that no one saw this, but there wasn’t — virus denial wasn’t an industry before this hit. But the reactions to this, to the whole handling — the coronavirus has been like global warming, but at about a hundred times speed. Right? The same thing. “The scientists are in a conspiracy against President Trump and trying to bring socialism with false warnings.” All of that is what sort of laid the groundwork. You basically carried over the whole set of attitudes that came from climate denial, which is one of the most important zombies out there, straight into the coronavirus until like two days ago.
Silverstein: How does that affect how we’re reacting to the crisis?
Krugman: We’ve been far behind the curve. It was already obvious in January that this was extremely high risk and we should have been doing massive ramping up of testing. We should’ve been doing social distancing. We should’ve been doing all these things that help to contain it. We really didn’t get serious or Washington didn’t get serious, again, until just a few days ago about any of this.
Even now, we’re not doing what you always do when you have an emergency, which is you federalize the production of essential equipment. We still haven’t done that. We still have this wild uncoordinated scrambled for ventilators and all of that.
The denial, virus denial, which is basically the same as climate denial, has been critical. I mean tens of thousands of people will die unnecessarily in this country because of it.
Silverstein: If you were responsible for writing the response, and we could talk about the policy response, what we’re calling the $2 trillion stimulus package, what would it look like?
Krugman: There’s first of all, there’s the epidemiological response, which is — the one thing I know about epidemiology is I’m not an expert.
The economics thing, I’m kind of annoyed that people keep calling this a stimulus bill because it mostly is. We want GDP to decline. We want lots of people to stay home and not work while we get this thing under control. The goal is not so much to sustain the economy per se as it is to give this thing time to work and to alleviate hardship. This is mostly a disaster-relief bill.
The things that are really important are unemployment benefits, cash to families, loans to small business that allow the most affected people to get through this with the minimum of financial hardship. It also provides some stimulus. There are parts of the economy that are still alive. We don’t want them collapsing because nobody has money to spend. There is some stimulus in there too, but this is mainly a giant disaster-relief bill, which unfortunately despite its size is probably not big enough.
Silverstein: How big do you think it’s going to need to be, and how should we finance it?
Krugman: Well, something like … We’re still groping here, but something like 20, 25% of the economy is going to be shut down for an extended period and you really want to think of aid that’s on the scale of that shutdown. We’re basically trying to replace the incomes of those people, and we don’t do total replacement, but mostly. We’ve got a $20-trillion-a-year economy, so it’s not hard to make the case this might end up being $4 trillion or $5 trillion that we really should be doing it. The answer is borrow the money.
The private sector is not investing. Mortgage applications have collapsed. Business, who’s going to be building office parks and all of that in the middle of a plague? Private saving for sure has gone way, way up. Maybe people are spending some of the money they’re not spending at restaurants on other things, but a lot of it is just being saved. We have this huge surplus in the private sector of all of this excess money looking for someplace to go. They’re offering it to the government for free. Real interest rates are negative. So, borrow it.
Silverstein: The unemployment insurance provision, you said makes sense. What do you think about the way that they’re spending the rest of the 2 trillion?
Krugman: Well, there’s different pieces. The small-business side looks like it’s pretty well designed. It’s loans that turn into grants for small businesses to maintain the payroll. So, that’s good.
Just a flat-out check of $1,200, that’s good. They’re making it more difficult. It should be going automatically to people whether or not they filed tax returns as long as they’re in the record someplace. So they’re making it harder to get.
The big-business lending has an inspector-general provision to prevent corruption, which Trump has already said he’s going to disregard. I’m worried about that — as are we all — so there could be a lot of corruption at that end.
I’d say this is about 80% a reasonable bill and then 20% of … we don’t know, but they’re missing pieces. State and local governments really need a lot of help, and there’s not remotely enough money in there. In a way, I think this crisis is going to be prolonged even once the pandemic subsides by the fact that we’re going to have state and local governments that are in desperate financial constraints.
Silverstein: I was just going to ask you about the longer-term implications of some of these. Can you talk more about how that will impact ordinary people, the state and local governments’ financial hardships?
Krugman: Sure. State governments, local governments, unlike the federal government have to balance their budgets each year. All of the … They’re losing tax revenue. They’re having extra expenses. They’re going to have to make that up in the near future, which means that they’re going to be laying off … It’s going to be a lot like what happened after the 2008 crisis when layoffs of school teachers, layoffs of government employees were a big factor in holding back recovery and we’re going to be … Yeah, just as the pandemic starts to fade, we hope, we’re going to be seeing state and local governments cutting back severely.
Also, by the way, the extra unemployment benefits are only for the next four months. A lot of the financial support that we’re going to be providing now is going to be going away just when we’re hoping the economy will bounce back. I’m really worried that the economic fallout may last much, much longer than people are thinking.
Silverstein: As we start to bounce back, I don’t know how deep unemployment will get during the pandemic, but once jobs start coming back, where is going to be the new normal? Are we going to come back to full employment?
Krugman: Well, eventually, yes. Nothing about this has changed. Workers haven’t lost their skills. People haven’t lost their taste for all of the things that they want. But it is true that we had an economy that was … the economy’s weaker than we like to think even though we had full employment just the other day. We probably lost more jobs already than we did in the whole of the Great Recession. But just before that we were at full employment, but we are at full employment only with very, very low interest rates. To the extent that there’s been a lot of financial damage that comes out of this to balance sheets of companies and households have been really savaged by it, which they will have been by the time this comes to an end.
Getting enough demand to restore full employment may be a challenge. We may really … the White House has been talking about for the 17th time, they’re talking about infrastructure, but maybe after this we really should talk about how the economy really needs a big infrastructure push. Partly because we need the infrastructure, but also to ensure full employment.
Silverstein: You shared a chart showing that during the 1919 influenza pandemic, the stock market actually rose. What’s the difference between what happened then and what’s happening now?
Krugman: I’m not sure. It may be that there was actually less social distancing then, people just died. There was a fair bit, but it may have depressed the economy less that time. Also, we came into this with stocks basically priced for perfection. This may have just served as a warning that we don’t actually have perfection. This could be different, but I wouldn’t be surprised if eventually stocks do well because interest rates are very low. Stock market is a really poor guide and in general to the state of the real economy.
Silverstein: So few Americans are actually represented in the stock market and benefit or are hurt by changes in the stock market directly. Is there any reason that individuals should be worried about other people’s balance sheets and what the stock market is doing?
Krugman: Well, sure. A lot of people, most stocks are owned by … A great majority of stocks are owned by a small fraction of the population, but those people do account for a disproportionate share of consumer spending. They’re feeling poorer now, so that’s another reason that we’re going to be seeing some economic difficulties heading forward. People who were feeling rich and laying out on vacations and expensive restaurant meals may not be quite willing to do that even once the restaurants reopen and once the airlines are back up and running again.
Silverstein: You say that interest rates make it look like the — sorry, that’s my cat — interest rates make it look like investors are expecting a long-term recession. Can you unpack that a little bit for us?
Krugman: Well, I wouldn’t quite … Interest rates have been extremely low for a long time now. The market seems to have bought into this jargon phrase, secular stagnation, which doesn’t really mean that the economy stagnates, but it means that the economy has a persistent shortage —  there just isn’t enough investment demand to use all the savings that people want it to make. The markets seem to have capitulated even before the coronavirus hit. The markets basically capitulated to the view that that’s where we were.
And they’re not so much signaling the necessarily that we’re in a recession for years, but we’re, they’re signaling that we’re going to have an economy that is always on the edge of a recession for the foreseeable future. That’s really, I think, one way to think about what secular stagnation means. The markets could be wrong, but it is clearly quite remarkable. A year and a half ago, markets were starting to act as if maybe the old days were coming back and normal levels of interest rates, and nobody seems to believe that now.
Silverstein: Can you walk us through your model for the coronavirus recession where nonessential employees versus essential employees and how the savings on one side and where everybody’s going to sort of fall out?
Krugman: Yeah, so I like to think of the economy, it’s stylized, too simple. But think of it as just two parts of the economy. There’s nonessentials, which means either stuff that really isn’t essential or stuff which we shouldn’t be doing because it spreads the disease. We can do without it. Then there’s essentials, or at least harmless. I’m not sure that Amazon orders aren’t essential but, delivery services we can keep going.
We are basically deliberately and appropriately shutting down the nonessential stuff. We’re doing, I would say it’s like a medically induced coma where you shut down major parts of the brain basically to give it a chance to heal from damage, and which is appropriate. It’s good. We need to do that if we don’t want lots of lots of people to die, but the trouble is, first of all, all those people who are left unemployed because of this, what are they going to live on? All the businesses that are not able to operate, how are they going to survive? Which is why we need a big aid package, which is basically relief. That’s the important part.
Now there’s a secondary consequence, which is if you don’t provide enough relief, all of those people whose businesses have been shut down can’t buy other stuff, and so you’ve got a sort of a conventional recession laid on top of that and that’s what we’re trying to prevent in addition. It’s mostly disaster relief, but there’s also stimulus to try and head off that conventional recession on top of the coma.
I think that’s the way to think about it. If you’re thinking that this is just a replay of 2008, you’re missing probably the bigger part of the story, but there are pieces. Part of this is like a replay of 2008, and that’s what we need. That part should be avoidable if we act forcefully enough, which we haven’t so far.
Silverstein: We haven’t so far acted forcefully enough in terms of relief?
Krugman: Yeah. There’s not enough money. The unemployment benefits, that’s a big deal. The small-business lending, that’s a pretty big deal. There’s not remotely enough aid to state and local governments. We’re making it too hard for people to get those checks.
Financial markets, thank God for the Fed, which at least is one bastion of competence that remains out there, and so they have been doing a yeoman work and getting the financial markets stabilized, although even there it takes time.
Silverstein: I was just going to ask, what do you think about the Fed’s response? Can you elaborate on what the Fed is doing right?
Krugman: Well, the Fed is basically stepping in. Financial markets were starting to shut down the same way they did in 2008 because so many balance-sheet losses because of the virus that investors were afraid of anything that wasn’t risk-free and highly liquid. You were watching corporate — even as interest rates on federal debt were plunging, corporate borrowing costs were soaring. Commercial paper rates were soaring. Basically money wasn’t available for keeping the business going.
Now the Fed has stepped in to basically do the lending that the private sector won’t. It’s been buying longer-term bonds. It has said it’s willing to buy corporate bonds if it needs to. They’re going to be doing commercial paper. There’s a commercial paper facility that they had back in the financial crisis, which I had a relative working for that, so I was pretty familiar with its operations and there are restarting it, but although that apparently won’t be up and running until next week.
The Fed is kind of … they’ve seen this movie and they’re making an effort to make sure that they get it under control. They’ve been doing a pretty good job. They went big aggressively. They realized that the risks of doing too little vastly outweigh the risk of doing too much and they’ve made the right call.
Silverstein: Should the Fed be buying municipals and corporate bonds or should they even go further and be able to buy stock?
Krugman: Well, I would say munis for sure because the state and local is a big issue. Corporate bonds, I think they certainly need to do, but they don’t, which is to say we are willing to do it. It may not be necessary actually to do it. There’s a lot of those of us who follow European affairs or, you know, this is our whatever-it-takes moment like that moment when Mario Draghi said he was willing to buy the bonds of distressed countries. It turns out he never actually had to do it. Just saying it was enough to stabilize the markets. Maybe that’s it, but you need to be willing to do it.
Stocks possibly, we haven’t reached that point yet, but that’s a possibility. There are limits to what the Fed much as some of my liberal friends say, “Why can’t the Fed just send to everybody money?” And unfortunately, that’s not within their legal remit, but they should be willing to buy again, whatever it takes, any kind of assets that they need to.
Silverstein: Should the Fed have been raising rates in retrospect when the economy was growing?
Krugman: No, no. It was clear that they overstated the recovery. They shouldn’t have raised rates as much as they did. They overshot. They should have … Yeah, some of us were saying, “Wait until you see the whites of inflation’s eyes.” And that really looks like good advice now. I’m not sure how much harm it did, but this is not why we’re in the mess we’re in now. Those rate hikes were premature, but they didn’t cause the virus.
But no, I mean the Fed maybe will come out of this with an understanding that whatever you thought was normal, based on the way the world looked 15 years ago is not normal in this world.
Silverstein: If you look at the US response from a health and an economic perspective versus other countries around the world, how do you think we fared? Is there anything to learn from other places?
Krugman: Yeah, don’t be like America. We screwed up on multiple levels. We totally failed. The other people can tell you more about the health response, but clearly we totally fell down on testing. We’ve totally fell down on medical equipment. We waited far too long on social distancing. All of that.
Other countries are doing … the economic response is better than ours. Ours was better than I feared it was going to be. There was a point where it looked like Republicans were going to say tax cuts are the answer to everything. But look at Denmark, which is corporations that keep their workers on payroll. The government is picking up 75% of the tab. That’s the kind of thing that really would be great. Unfortunately, I don’t think America is politically in that universe, but we’re in some ways having the weakest economic response of certainly of the G7 countries.
Silverstein: Finally, just to make you do my job. Where do you think the media is really missing the point? Is there anything that you would complain you wish that people would ask you?
Krugman: I think, well, I think the media had really, I mean other people can talk and take on the health-affairs stuff, but the media I think really still have missed the extent to which this is not a normal recession. We’re still hearing it discussed in terms of stimulus. We’re still hearing it as if this were the usual kinds of problems, and there’s some of that, but, I don’t think the fact that the essential thing is limiting hardship has really made it.
Every time I see stimulus in a headline about the tax bill, I get mad because that’s missing the point. I actually have seen almost nobody talking about what happens four or five months from now when hopefully the pandemic has subsided, but then you have financial crises at the state level and the unemployment benefits have expired. We have a huge fiscal time bomb, which we can see is being … the timer has been set on it as we speak, and I’ve seen almost no coverage of that.
Silverstein: What happens then? Let me ask you, Paul.
Krugman: Well, what happens is that just as the economy is ready to recover, mass layoffs of school teachers, mass cutoff of unemployment benefits undermine the nation’s recovery. This could end up being in a way, a little bit like what happened in 2008-2009 when we had a pretty effective response to the crisis, but then went to fiscal austerity, which meant that the recovery was very, very slow.
Even though this is a very different kind of crisis, we could have the same kind of story. I think at the moment, unless there’s another major round of legislation that is going to be the story.
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