The Mount Bonnell Mindset

Mount Bonnell has been picking up a lot of new clients and many of them are United Kingdom based.

Perhaps this is not so surprising as just yesterday the UK had some bad news on the jobs front.

The UK’s Office for National Statistics revealed the biggest fall in employment since 2009 – a drop of 220,000 people in work. Add to that the fact that there has also been a 116.8 per cent increase in the number of people eligible for unemployment benefit and you get the picture of a gathering gloom in the UK jobs market.

Another maybe even more ominous sign is the numbers still on furlough.  Around 7.5 million people were temporarily away from paid work in June (with more than three million away from work for three months or longer). That’s a lot of people who are being paid to do nothing at the taxpayers’ expense. Lets be honest, for many of these workers temporary absence from work is likely to turn permanent once the furlough scheme closes. The question then will be whether there are any new jobs available for them to go to?

In short, mass long-term unemployment across Britain looks likely. That outcome will determine not just the economic outlook of the nation but also, among other things, the result of the next election.

This bad news on the jobs front has been followed by signs of the first UK recession since 2009. This recession may prove to be the worst contraction on record and also one of the worst in Europe. The figures speak for themselves. UK GDP fell 20.4 per cent in the second quarter of this year. When in March 2020, Prime Minister Boris Johnson decided to put the nation under lockdown it sent the economy into free fall, and it is still falling. No part of the economy has been spared from this, with the services sector faring particularly badly, falling by 20 per cent, and predictably the worst hit being to accommodation and food services.

The UK could be in the unenviable position of having the worst Covid-19 related deaths figures in Europe and the worst economic contraction. This begs questions about the UK government’s response both to the public health emergency and in its economic management during this time of crisis.

Looking at these figures and the depressing sight of so many masked figures on the streets of London and elsewhere I’m not surprised that British entrepreneurs are opting for the United States.

Everyday these UK businessmen and women talk to me just as they did six months ago before any of us had heard of Covid-19. Today they still want the challenge of doing business in the States; they want access to that huge market; already successful in Europe they are thrilled at the prospect of once more being a start up with the odds stacked against them. That’s because they are entrepreneurs at heart.

But here’s the thing, even though America has its problems, these Europeans still see it as one of the most stable places on earth to do business. They also see it as free of many restrictive bureaucratic practices that dominate the UK and the rest of Europe.

Just this week the US jobs figures told a different story to that of Europe. The number of Americans who filed new claims for unemployment benefits last week fell below 1 million for the first time in 21 weeks. The latest figures from the US labor department  told of 963,000 people filing claims, that is after 20 weeks of claims above 1m. Not withstanding this latest dip these welfare claims remain historically high. Before the pandemic, claims were averaging about 200,000 a week.

In contrast to the latest UK figures the US jobs market has started to recover in the last two months. In July, the US added 1.8m jobs and the unemployment rate fell to 10.2% from 11.1%. These gains were largely in restaurants, bars and the leisure sector. No doubt many of these gains were simply furloughed staff returning to their former jobs.

Not for a moment am I saying that all is great Stateside and all dismal in Europe – far from it. But the evidence for and a belief in a US recovery is there among the individuals coming to Mount Bonnell looking to set up business in America.

At times like these you can bury yourself in your newsfeed while hoping things blow over soon, hope your business is still standing in six months; hope national governments get their collective acts together.

Or you can strike out for new lands, new business opportunities with new customers. This is the Mount Bonnell mind-set.  It is this mindset and its link to entrepreneurial opportunity in the US that attracts those who possess a like mind and it shapes that mind-set to look to that great nation as a business opportunity like no other.

Remember at the end of the day any proposed business relocation to the United States is as much about a mind set as it is about a business plan – maybe more so.

In the coming weeks many in Europe and especially in the UK are going to be looking for a fresh mind-set, needing it, desiring training to enter into it. That’s where we come in.

Forget the gloomy statistics out there. Free your mind, enter into the Mount Bonnell mind-set and by so doing create your economy and with it your own success.

This all begins by booking a consultation today – what have you got to lose, and what have you got to gain?