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Patrick Schwerdtfeger is a motivational speaker who can cover risk and reward (or business growth versus volatility) at your next business event. Contact us to check availability. The full transcript of the above video is included below.
 

 

Full Video Transcript:

 
Hi and welcome to another edition of Strategic Business Insights. Today we’re going to talk about growth and volatility. So you’ll see behind me, this is a map that I had created with some of the research that I’ve done in terms of demographic growth around the world, and there’s incredible variation between different countries and the demographic growth, in other words, their population growing or not growing or in fact even shrinking around the world. You get countries like Japan and Germany where their populations are actually shrinking, and so the economy’s not going to be growing that much because the actual population is getting smaller. So consumer spending is smaller and everything gets smaller as a result. And then you get a number of countries that are basically staying flat in terms of their population where you talk about countries like the UK – the United Kingdom; France is very stable. Meanwhile, America’s growing a little bit. Believe it or not, China, their population is growing [00:00:59] five to 10 years but then it tops out and starts going down.

But where is the most dynamic growth? Well, the most dynamic growth by far is in South Asia and Africa and a little bit in Southeast Asia. So what am I talking about in particular? Well, Southeast Asia, we’re talking about countries like Indonesia and the Philippines. The Philippines is exploding in terms of growth. Their population is growing. India, their population’s growing very quickly. Even though China, their population’s topping out and it’s going to be going down, the Indian population is going to continue to grow. And then you have all these countries in Africa like Egypt and the Sub-Saharan Africa like Kenya and Nigeria and Sudan and all these different places. Even Iraq, which is not of course in Africa, but Iraq, their population is growing very quickly because they have a high birth rate.

Now, that growth is going to translate into economic growth as well. All those people have to eat food and they have to wear clothing. They have to have shelter. A lot of them are going to want transportation like cars or motorcycles or bicycles. That’s all consumer spending. So there’s going to be a lot of growth in those countries, but it’s also going to be volatile like crazy. Like if you go and try and grow your business in Africa, it’s chaotic. You go to Nigeria, you go to Lagos, you go to Kenya, these places are very chaotic and there’s corruption and there’s poverty on the streets and there’s all sorts of crazy things. If you’ve gone to these places, you know what I’m talking about. Even to a lesser extent, you go to India and it’s chaotic. There’s people everywhere and there’s garbage and trash and animals and people and rich people and poor people and all kinds all mixed together. It’s chaotic. It’s volatile. It’s not easy to capitalize on that growth, but it’s the people who embrace it in that chaotic stage that have the greatest opportunity for growth in the long run.

Who was the one who set up a business right at the beginning when it was still chaotic, when it was still a mess, when it was still volatile? If you want to grow your business or if you want to take advantage of the dynamic growth that’s taking place in some of these countries, primarily in Africa but also places like the Philippines and places like India, you have to be willing to go into that chaos and leverage the situation, find a way to make it work, and it’s going to be scrappy and it’s going to be messy. But if you find a way to get things to work in this chaotic stage, you’ll have a footprint which will grow as the growth in those economies materializes. We already know it’s coming. The population is coming. The children have already been born. We just have to wait for them to grow up and become adults themselves to see that economy grow, and it’s going to be volatile and it’s going to be messy but that’s where the growth opportunity is. So, true growth and volatility in many cases is synonymous. You have to embrace that volatility to leverage that growth.

Thanks so much for watching this video. My name is Patrick, reminding you as always to think bigger about your business, think bigger about your life.
 


 
Patrick Schwerdtfeger is a keynote speaker who has spoken at business conferences in North America, South America, Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Asia.