I was in the Washington Regan National airport the other day and one of the weekly news magazines carried the headline “What Now?” under their photo of President-elect Obama. Other headlines on the newsstand covered Citibank’s makeover, Bank of America’s $20 billion capital shortage, and preparations for the inauguration, including 4,000 portable toilets for 2-3 million pilgrims. I’ll spare you the metaphors, but, as Paul Harvey would say, “the rest of the story” is that no one did the math.

On December 31st, I was sitting in the JayHawk’s section of ASU stadium in Tempe, wearing my Golden Gophers Maroon and Gold, watching the KU band in their blue-billed caps bobbing forward and backward like pecking chickens (or hawks, I suppose), when, in my game program, I noticed the statistics on Insight Bowl attendance since its inception in the early 90’s. From the mid-teen K’s to last year’s capacity crowd of 45K, the trend line was up. That day, one-third of the seats were empty.

Like the “Mentalist,” if you pay attention, the signals are obvious; the number of flights, the traffic in the mall, the discounts in the paper and the ads during football games. If the ads I saw during the Cardinals sweet victory over the Eagles is a precursor, I’ll be spending the Super Bowl breaks out of the room instead of glued to the tube. How ‘bout this doozey; “If you lose your job, you can bring it back”; Hyundai. Uplifting. Makes me want to go right out and buy one of these Korean gems. Their “Mad Men” ad agents need a refresher course in psychology while they’re brushing up on their math.

So, what now? I believe the best advice for all of us as we enter the most challenging period of our lives is, “Do the math”. Do it for everything, and especially do it for the sum of hours in your day and the division of those hours. A visit to a major bank with one of our Catalyst Venture clients a couple of weeks ago gave me the little ah-ha that has taken me down this path this morning. It illustrates the point. We were reviewing our proposal for a white label solution when the banker said something like this;

“When I hear ‘white label’ I see work. Your proposal is like an ice berg to me. On the surface, it is beautiful and appealing. Yet, there is this mass of work in branding and integrating and certifying and risk-assessing and sales training that white label requires. As much as we would like to own this solution in the eyes of our customers, right now we just want to refer our customers to you and be paid a fair royalty. We simply don’t have enough hours in the day to add new products while we tend to our other priorities.”

He had done the math. Emerging payments companies with plug-and-play solutions will win the few prizes to be won this year. If the math shows more revenue than expense with minimal staff investment, the banks will listen and buy. If not, plot a course for 2011.

So, what now? Do the math.