Mike's Minute: It's not as bad in business as you think

Here's a small myth-busting exercise for you – things aren't as bad as you might think.  Business sales from small and medium businesses are up and by quite a lot. They're up 21% in fact.  Why would you buy a business at a time like this?  You know why. Because life goes on and people have dreams and those dreams don’t get buffeted about by fiscal uncertainty.  There were 27,000 confidentiality agreements signed in the past year. That's a lot of agreements.  For an average of $800,000 you can buy your dream. Values are up, listings are up, demand is up (it's up more than listings), so prices are holding and the returns, multiple, is up.  So a lot of people are doing fine, thank you very much.  This is a nation of small businesses and all these numbers show is nothing changes that. Not a war, not petrol, not an election, and not the weather.  If you ran a poll and asked, "is it a good time to buy a business", like they ask, "is it a good time to buy a major household item", you know what the answer would be.  And yet life goes on.  Now, for all the New Zealand First supporters about to text me and say it's all Indians, save your 20 cents.  It isn't.  It's another myth busted. 9.7% are Indians, 15% are Asian (so that will be Chinese and Koreans, maybe Filipinos), which leaves 67% identifying as European.  So the idea this is all about migrants buying jobs is not the tsunami you thought it might be.  I think these stats are a microcosm, or a small example of the disconnect between studies, surveys, polls, politics, news headlines, and what is really going on.  The rhythm of New Zealand life gets buffeted about by issues of the day; the petrol price, the war, the spend. And why wouldn’t it?  But if you believed the polls and the stats and the national conversation, as driven by the headlines, you'd think we were at home huddled in a corner waiting for the end.  Yet we are not. We are buying businesses, planning the future, taking the risks and, God forbid, having a good time.  What a shock. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.