I came across another great post from brand guru Craig Postons recently, where he talked in part about the rapidly evolving success of Amazon.

With the holiday season just past, the message really hit home, as you couldn’t pass a Canada Post outlet (or the front porches of many homes) in December without seeing stacks of the Amazon-branded boxes with the smiley arrow ready for Amazon online purchasers to open. You can read the full blog here.

Postons’ point is a simple one: Amazon’s success isn’t based on what will change in the future, it’s on what won’t change in the future. Rather than try to predict future needs and attempt to meet them, Amazon looked at existing needs that won’t change and tried to meet those needs better than anyone else.

What were those unchanging needs? Amazon knows that its customers will always want low prices, a vast selection and fast delivery. With advancements like Amazon Prime, they blew it out of the water in terms of meeting those needs and enjoying record sales:

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/12/26/amazon-celebrates-biggest-holiday-as-prime-members-surge.html.

Are we too focussed on the future?

In our own financial and estate planning, it’s fun to think ahead to some of the exciting things that will change (southern retirement homes, grandchildren, freedom). But we also need to think about some of the less exciting things that won’t change, such as declining health as we grow older, death, and paying taxes on investment gains. You can take things a step further to include the needs of your adult children that will likely always be there (help with their first down payment, or ongoing support if they are disabled).

We all love the new shiny baubles in our lives, but when it comes to successful planning, it’s important to factor in those less exciting unchanging truths of life too.

Thank you for reading,
Ian Hull