We Watched One Industry Trend and It Told Us When to Exit

Oct 2

6 min read

The market never sends you a memo before it changes, so the owners who come out ahead are the ones who were already paying attention.

In March 2020, the last cruise ship we owned was tied up at a dock with no passengers, no crew schedule, and no revenue coming in, and it sat there for two years. We'd spent a decade building that business, buying five small ships out of bankruptcy at a steep discount, refurbishing them and leasing them to a cruise operator who ran them in Alaska, Mexico, and on the Columbia River. It was lucrative, and it barely took any of our time, and we'd been selling the ships back to the operator one by one until only that last one was left.

Then COVID shut down cruising all over the world, and nobody saw it coming. Not us, not the cruise lines, not anybody.

But over a decade earlier, we were in a very different spot, because we saw the change coming years before anyone announced it, and it made all the difference in how we exited.

Our scheduled charter airline, Hawaiian Vacations, was built on the Alaska-to-Hawaii nonstop air route, and we started noticing that Alaska Airlines was quietly preparing to enter that same market. There was no press release, no big announcement, just a pattern, if you were paying attention. And we knew exactly what it meant, because a fare war against an airline that size was not a fight we were going to win.

So instead of waiting to see what they'd do, we hired an investment banking firm and went to Alaska Airlines with a proposal; in 2008 we sold our company to them. We made that decision years before they announced their entry into the market, and if we hadn't been watching, we might have been too late to structure a sale at all. It was a calculated risk, the kind I wrote about in When to Take the Risk: Check the Data and Listen to Your Inner Compass, and the data is what gave us the confidence to move.

The best time to exit is while you still have the leverage to choose how.

What is happening in your industry right now that nobody has announced yet?

COVID was the opposite experience. We knew the cruise industry would take a long time to recover from the restrictions, so we sold that last ship at a lower price than we had targeted, and we pivoted again. If we'd seen it coming, we might have done better on that sale. It’s comforting to know we weren't the only ones caught by surprise. It sure changed the world in a lot of ways, didn't it?

Here's what I took from it. You can't predict everything, but you can build the habit of looking outward so that when something does hit, you're making a decision instead of just reacting. That's really what building resilience by anticipating change comes down to.

You won't catch every storm, but you can stop being the last one to look at the sky.

When was the last time something outside your business caught you completely off guard?

Most of us spend our days looking at what's happening inside the company, the team, the customers, the numbers, and that matters. But external factors can change your business and your life without asking your permission, and I keep coming back to the same five: economics, politics, technology, societal trends, and global markets.

So ask yourself which data points in your industry or your community would actually give you the big picture. Interest rates, population and employment in your area, demographics and psychographics, socio-economic trends, even what's happening globally. Find the newsletters, publications, and news sites that report on those numbers and make reading them part of your routine, the same way you'd review your own dashboard.

Your numbers tell you how you're doing. The world's numbers tell you what's coming.

Which of those five are you ignoring right now?

After the ships, we studied markets all over the world and did our best to figure out what normal would look like after COVID. Real estate had historically been a good hedge against inflation, and with construction costs rising, owning a home was getting out of reach for many would-be buyers, which meant more renters. So we found a company that could teach us multifamily investing, and we jumped in. Over three years, we invested in 23 properties representing over 6,000 doors in five states across the southern US.

What we didn't predict was how fast interest rates would rise starting in 2022. Add an oversupply of apartment units in certain markets and a dramatic jump in insurance and property tax costs, and the whole dynamic of that asset class shifted. Many of those investments didn't turn out the way we anticipated. We still have a lot of faith in real estate and in the long-term value of holding real assets, and the reason we feel that way is that we study the statistics and the trends - the same discipline behind using data to drive growth decisions. We're continually analyzing the situation to see if it's time to pivot again.

A pivot isn't a finish line. It's a new place to start watching from.

Are you still checking the assumptions behind the last big decision you made?

We've owned vacation rental condos on Maui for almost 30 years. COVID hit that revenue for a while, but it bounced back fairly well, much better than the cruise industry did. Then, in August 2023, Maui suffered a devastating fire, and even though our condos weren't impacted at all, the message from the state of Hawaii was, "Don't go to Maui.” The visitor industry there is still trying to recover.

And now the County of Maui is trying to restrict the use of vacation rentals altogether. That's politics and economics landing right on our doorstep, so we're keeping our eyes and ears open, and it may be time for another pivot soon. Watching for that is part of long-term planning and preparing for the future, not something separate from it.

The same goes for whatever the next big trend turns out to be. Energy is one we're watching, with all the debate around clean energy versus oil and gas and the way policy changes after an election can steer those markets, so we're educating ourselves and staying informed before we make our next move in business or investing.

The rules of your market can change with one vote you didn't know was happening.

Do you know which decisions being made in your city, state or industry right now could change your business?

This Week’s Exercise

Write the five lenses down (economics, politics, technology, societal trends, global markets) and next to each one, name one change that could affect your business in the next two to three years.
Pick two or three outside data points that matter most to your market, like local interest rates, employment, population growth, or a regulation under review, and decide where you'll check each one.
Choose one newsletter, publication, or news site that covers your industry and put a recurring 20-minute block on your calendar to read it every week.
Look at your last major business decision and list the assumptions it was built on. Mark any that have changed since you made it.

Podcast Spotlight

Are you running your business, or is your business running you?

I joined Amy Evans on the Women in Sales Leadership podcast to share how intentional company culture, open-book management, and empowering your team can transform your business—and give you the freedom to live the life you want.

We discuss how to stop micromanaging, build a team that takes ownership, and create a business that thrives without depending on you for every decision.

🎧 Listen here: Stop Being a Slave to Your Business

Final Thoughts

That ship sitting at the dock in 2020 taught us something the Alaska Airlines sale had already shown us from the other side. When you see a change coming, you get to choose your exit and negotiate from strength, and when you don't, you take what the market gives you.

You can't control the economy, politics, technology, or the next global surprise, but you can keep watching so you can decide when to pivot. So this week, pick one outside trend that could affect your business and spend 20 minutes finding out where it's headed.

To your success,

Ral West

Livin’ the Dream