Thursday, May 6, 2010

Because of the Arizona immigration law, I will lose money

Arizona is one crazy state, when I was there a few weeks ago, myself and my co-workers went out to dinner at a sports bar with this sign on its door: "NO Firearms allowed on the premises" Something you would never see here in the Golden State.

Illegal immigration is a tough and complex issue, and I want to point out something that happened to me today at work. For those of you that don't know, my job involves traveling around the San Fernando Valley and surrounding areas going into dental and vet offices. I've got some diverse areas, from the affluent Pasadena, Studio City, Sherman Oaks, etc. To the not so affluent: Palmdale, Lancaster, Panorama City, Van Nuys. About 15% of all my visits are to primarily hispanic practices. One of the best if not the best performing spanish speaking practice is in Reseda and the reason it is doing so well is because Ricardo the OM (office manager) is someone who knows how to sell dentistry and package it with financing to give the patient every chance to say "Yes". But no matter how good you are if you don't have patients then you are in big trouble. So today Ricardo and I are talking about things in general, our kids, schools, the craziness of the DOW today...how he is going to UCLA to take some more classes so he can get certified in some restoration procedures and so on. Then he told me something interesting...he said that the past two weeks has been extraordinarily difficult because people are not coming in. I asked why and he said "Because of what is happening in Arizona, people are scared" I didn't engage in a political discussion because I never do on any sales calls...but basically it comes down to this: Elective procedures that cost money are some of the first things to be put off when people are scared about a life altering event. They retreat, they do not spend....

So here is how that will effect me: for Q1 this year I finished at 105.5 % since I finished at over 105% I will get 105% of my bonus....because of this it is very likely that I will finish below 105% for Q2 and get 100% of my bonus...therefore causing me to lose money...and it will be a direct result of the Arizona immigration law.

2 comments:

Brett said...

That's weird.... my portfolio went south over the last two days because Greece is bankrupt. What should we do?

Jason, as himself said...

The ripple effect...I wonder what will happen when there's nobody to do all the menial labor that nobody else wants to do?