When I heard that Qantas announced they were standing down over 20,000 workers from the airline without pay, the first thing I thought was the fear that most of them would have felt.
What has happened to them is something beyond their control. The sense of having no control over a situation such as this creates fear among most of us. To gain a sense of control, what do we do? One of the things I noticed (as everyone else did) is people stocking up on essentials. We seek control wherever we can get it.
This is what I’ve been doing since the start of the year because it wasn’t the greatest start I’ve had (even before this pandemic hit us all). Out of habit, I asked the question: What could I do to turn this around? And I did these:
- Looking after my long time & existing clients
- Reviewing my marketing message – was it working for the audience I’m aiming to serve? It turned out it didn’t as well as it could, so I’ve been actively re-writing it.
- Re-building my website – this was a monumental task due to the sheer size and the volume of content that I have accumulated over a decade and it’s finally live.
- Reading – I started a book “Guns, Germs and Steel”. I’m not recommending this book to you just yet. I’ll know, once I finish, whether to encourage you to pick it up. It’s a hefty tome that I would not have picked up during a ‘normal’ period.
A couple of things I recommend doing to take control of this situation:
1. If you’re a parent with young kids, follow Jules from Stories of Play. She is my client and she will help you get through this challenging time – you have to engage and ‘entertain’ your children with very little or NO external help. She could be the answer to your prayers. I’m not mentioning her to ‘promote’ her business. She doesn’t need my help and you’ll find out why if you check out her Instagram account.
2. If you don’t mind reading (as I don’t assume everyone would prefer books over people like me), you can pick up ‘The Laws of Human Nature’ or ‘The Personal MBA’. I went through both those books a few times. And they helped me to be a better coach and business person for my clients.
3. Techy stuff – I know some of you find this difficult. This would be a good time to tackle it so that in a few months you’re truly ready to take your business to the next level. Since you’d be stuck at home, why not take advantage of the situation? Learn to do what you’ve been avoiding/struggling to do. You’ll find that almost all the answers you seek are available for you on YouTube. (Is that the case with just about everything?)
I’m doing all those (well except for the entertaining kids part since I don’t have kids). Is this leading by example? I don’t know – I’m just doing my thing :) but I hope you’ll be inspired to do some or all of the above.
We hope all the pandemic stuff will pass in a few months or so. It’s what you do NOW that will determine the kind of results you’re going to experience when those few months are up.
Let me know what you’re doing to gain control and move the needle forward as this too shall pass.
