Nic’s blog
I write about building businesses, failing and building a life, not a legacy.
Think like a Founder - Important Habits You Should Adopt
If you are launching a new venture, starting a side hustle or thinking about making a big shift in your life then you are probably considering what it takes. What does it take to start something new? What does it mean to your life to commit to building something and succeeding?
I have been a founder many times over the past twenty years and I surround myself with the best founders, business builders and leaders out there. There are some things that business founders do that I think are imperative to your own success if you are starting something new. Here’s a breakdown of what I think founders do that other people should adopt when building something.
1. Obsess
There are problems everywhere. That means that there are solutions waiting to be turned into money everywhere. My favourite founders choose to work on problems that they are obsessed with.
Talented people can work on just about any problem and can likely make it a success of some kind. But it’s when founders obsess over the problem or the solution that they really turn up the heat.
It’s perfectly OK to obsess for one day a week or one hour a day. Your obsession can start out slowly and come up in a nagging sort of way. If you are obsessing then you want to work on the business or venture wholeheartedly. If you’re obsessed with food and eating the right kind of fuel, you’re likely to be a fit and healthy person. If you don’t really care too much about what you eat and how it affects your training then you’ll probably struggle to get into the best shape of your life.
The best founders obsess and that’s a good place for you to start: What are you obsessing over and is that what you are working on every day?
2. Focus
You can’t build multiple side hustles at once. You think you can. Other’s will tell you they did. You’ll really want to but you shouldn’t.
Saying “no” is an indication of obsessive focus. The more you say no to, the more you can focus on the thing you are obsessed with.
If you try to take on every opportunity then you’ll lose out on all of them instead of capitalise on the most lucrative or unique one.
Start saying NO more often, even if it feels like you might be losing out on something.
If you consistently feel like you’re losing out then maybe you’re working on the wrong thing and it’s time to rethink your obsession.
3. REVENUE
Early on in a startup or side hustle every action should lead to revenue. If it isn’t something that will take you a step close to earning money then it shouldn’t be your focus.
Sales and revenue matter more than just about anything else.
This means that if you need your product to improve to make a sale, then that’s a focus. If you need your YouTube channel to hit 100 000 subscribers before revenue, then that’s your focus. Figure out what your triggers are for revenue and then double-down and focus, obsess on hitting revenue.
4. Deliver
Don’t faff around trying to make whatever it is you’re working on perfect. PERFECT DOESN’T EXIST. You are never going to get to perfection and if you think you will, you’re in lalaland and need a hard reset in your thinking.
Stop. Assess what you have. Launch. The first thing you launch is never going to be the best version of your vision but at least it’ll be out there in the world. Deliver something to someone and listen to what they have to say. Put your work out into the world, it only counts when other people can use and critique it.
Many have said it before me: Ideas are fucking worthless, execution is everything.
5. Listen
It’s easy to start something new or make a change when it’s just you on your own. You essentially run your own little dictatorship of one. You decide what to build. You decide when to build it. You decide how it works, what it costs, where it lives and when you make changes.
Then you launch.
And then everyone has an opinion.
It’s difficult to take on every opinion you hear but the best founders listen and know how to curate who they listen to. You can’t take on everyone’s opinion but often when users are telling you something it wont just be one person with one opinion, it’ll be multiple users reporting the same feedback and that’s when you listen and then follow steps 5 and 6 below.
Build, launch, listen, iterate, adapt.
6. Iterate
The first version of whatever you’re selling is going to be good enough to get out there but not good enough to use forever.
Deliver the next feature. Add the next service. Upgrade the product. Listen to feedback (see point 6) from customers and implement the most relevant and practical suggestions.
The faster you can create a flywheel of iteration the better your product will be and the happier you’ll keep your customers.
Build something. Release it. Gain customers. Watch how they use your product. Listen to their feedback. Build the next version. Release it. Repeat.
That’s a simple flywheel that most founders I know use.
7. Adapt
“Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.” Mike Tyson’s famous quote applies to the start of something too. If you think you know how people are going to use your product you are sorely mistaken. You have no idea what’s coming at you until you release your baby into the wild and see if it can survive as you planned or if you need to adap, change and rethink the plan.
This is why point 4 above is so important. You have to get over your need for perfection. You need to overcome your fear of what other people say. Founders don’t give a shit what their critics say. They build, deliver, release, listen and adapt.
If you are afraid of making small tweaks, tiny pivots and slight adjustments as you go then you’re likely going to cling on to a sinking ship and drown.
Obsessing is great but do not obsess over the perfection of your initial idea or product. Be prepared that whatever you are building or launching is going to change, even slightly, over time.
8. Be You
In a world of infinite information and personality-overload it’s very easy to find someone to copy. We see the success of the Kardishians of the reality TV stars of the people who do nothing, contribute nothing but have a personality and we think we can do what they did.
You can’t be a better version of Kim Kardashian than she can be. You can’t be a better version of Casey Neistat than Casey. You can’t beat Jordan Peele at his own game or take Trevor Noah on at being Trevor.
But you sure as shit can beat them with your own brand of insanity, skill, dedication, obsession and focus. You can beat anyone in the world at being the most version of yourself that you can be. Founders know this intimitaly and it’s a hidden super power. Everybody reads about Steve Jobs being an asshole and the founders I know who tried to be like Steve - even I did for a brief and devastating period in one of my businesses - suffered greatly because we’re just not built like Steve was.
You need to figure out who the fuck you are and want to be and then you need to be that person as much as you can be.
Be yourself, relentlessly. It will pay off.
START SOMETHING TODAY
You will never be younger than you are today. Now is the time to start something and this is the manifesto to help you find inspiration.
You will never be younger than you are today, right now, this very minute.
As far as we know this is the only life we get. So, If you are never going to be younger than right now and this is the only life you get... go out and start something.
Start something small, something big or something dreamy.
Start a company. Start a blog. Start a new Facebook group and meet some people.
Start a side hustle. Start to network better. Start a renewed commitment to your job if you love it and want more.
Start caring more about the people around you. Start showing your partner more affection. Start liking yourself a bit more every day. It’s OK to love yourself, it’ll make loving other people easier.
Start exercising today. Start walking every day. Start to breath more deeply and be aware of those breaths.
Start cutting out negative people and welcome in those who lift you up. Start finding your tribe, they’re more important than you can imagine.
Start giving yourself a break. Give others a break too, they’re all doing the best they can.
Start thinking about the family you want or start to let go of the need to have a family. Both of those choices are OK. Start to form a new family that you choose, that’s OK too.
Start reading more and start reading more widely. Start reading views that oppose your own and start to engage with people who are different from you.
Start surrounding yourself with the best people, with people you want to be like and people who only make you better, not worse.
Start being kinder because we could all use more kindness right now.
Start looking after yourself first, that’s self-care not selfish.
Start eating proper food, healthy food, food that makes you better. Start eating the food you love even if it’s occasionally unhealthy. Start to indulge but don’t make indulgence a default.
Start drinking more water. Start drinking that special bottle of bubbly that’s been waiting for the perfect occasion. Today is that special occasion. Start opening that bottle right now.
Start calling your friends more often even when you don’t feel like it. Start growing new friendships even if they may end up breaking down over time.
Start questioning your choices because they may need to change as the world changes around you.
Start thinking about the world, the universe, existence, religion, politics and all the things that seem too big and scary to understand.
Start taking care of your money and understanding your finances. If you don’t, no one else is going to make it easy for you.
Start defining what success means to you and what failure looks like.
Start finding happiness in the smallest of things and be present when you are victorious. Life is filled with small victories that we ignore.
Start ignoring other people and their futile opinions. They don’t matter nearly as much as you think they do.
Start by doing just one thing today that you have been putting off forever.
Start today because you will never be younger than you are right now and this is the only shot you get.
Advice from 30 year old me to 20 year old me
11 things that I wish I knew when I was 20.
This article was originally published in 2014 and has been read by over a million people across the world!
11 things that I wish I knew when I was 20.
I recently turned 30. For some very odd reason, I’ve not warmed to the idea of it just yet. However, as I began to evaluate my 20s I realised how many mistakes I’ve made and things I’ve learned in a decade of life.
I took some time to write myself some advice.
1) Travel
You have very little responsibility so go and travel. When you get to 30, you’re going to want to travel slightly differently, spend a little more, do slightly more expensive things, eat at slightly better restaurants. So work for a year and save enough money to experience the world on the cheap.
How do you know what you want to do if you don’t know what’s out there to do?
Don’t just travel to the obvious places.
Travel to the tough places.
Travel to learn.
Travel to discover.
Travel to the places that will challenge who you think you want to be.
2) Build things
Don’t spend too much time working on other people’s visions or in other people’s meetings. Spend time figuring out what your own world view is (see point 1) and where you want to take your own life.
Meetings are where ideas go to die.
If you find yourself in a corporate job that you wish you could leave then do it. Leave. If you don’t have a corporate job yet see point 5.
3) Read
Read every day. Read everything you can. Don’t just read about things you know about. Read about people. Read people.
4) Stop Watching Television
Right now. Stop it. It’s not helping you get better at anything.
5) Career
Do not take that corporate job. Just don’t do it (see point 2).
6) Trust
Even if it kills your relationships. Even if it destroys your ideas. Even if you lose your friends. Even if it means you end up getting hurt.
Trust people until they give you a reason not to.
But don’t be naïve. Some people are out to fuck you.
7) People
People are the best and worst thing that will happen to you. Some will help you go further, faster. Others will pull you down to their level and help you lose. Most are OK. Many are average. Some are excellent.
A few people will change your life forever. Find them.
You don’t need a lot of friends or people around you. You need amazing people who do for you as you do for them.
It’s simple really, a lot of average friends will leave you feeling alone when you need to feel surrounded by people who care.
8) Value Time
Don’t waste time on people who you don’t trust. Don’t waste time with lovers who cheat on you. Don’t waste time with friends who don’t treat you the way you treat them (see point 7).
Do not be late.
Value other people’s time. That means that if you’re late, you don’t give a shit about them or their time and that you think you’re worth more and therefore can keep them waiting.
Some people will tell you that it’s OK to be late. It’s not. Some people will tell you that it’s just the way they are. Then you need to reevaluate them (see point 7 above).
9) Fail
Fail a lot. Fail often. Fail at love. Fail at sex. Fail at socialising. Fail at making friends. Fail at work. Fail at business. Fail with family. Fail with existing friends.
Fail. But do it quickly and learn a lesson.
If you don’t learn something every time you fail then all you’ve done is failed. If you learn something, then you’ve grown. Every time you grow and learn and fail, you get better at figuring out how the hell to succeed.
10) Success
There is no point at which you will have succeeded. Not in your twenties. Not ever.
Get over that fact and start building things (see point 2 and combine with point 9).
11) Patience
Be patient. Nothing worth doing is worth doing quickly. Nothing worth building is worth building in a rush. Nothing of value is formed in a minute.
Plan in decades. Think in years. Work in months. Live in days.
The Best Way to Sell Is to Tell a Great Story
A question I get asked a lot has to do with selling. People who are starting their own side hustle or business ofter aren’t comfortable selling. In the minds of most people selling is a hard, forceful act that involves being brave enough to sit in front of a complete stranger and sell them a product or service by talking about the product features, price and then closing the sale. That’s not how I sell. That’s not how I’ve ever sold anything because I don’t have the guts to do cold sales.
I am not a salesperson. I am a person who likes to solve problems and that’s where the story starts.
If you have a side hustle and you’re wondering how to sell your product or service without irritating your friends, family and the fools around you (what I call the “3 F’s”) then you need to get your story straight. Literally, you need to work on your story.
Selling is a form of storytelling.
You probably sit on Facebook all day telling small stories. Moaning about something or someone. Talking about your children and their experience at school (pre-lockdown) or some other tiny little gem you feel the world of Facebook needs to know.
Let’s translate that storytelling skill into a sale.
Here’s the basic structure of any good story sell:
Present your problem statement
Love your product or service (people can tell when you do)
Truly believe in your solution (people can tell when you don’t)
Talk about your solution
If you’re struggling to sell, just tell a story about the problem and why you believe in your solution so much.
That’s really what I have been doing for the last 19 years in each business I’ve ever built. I find a problem that I want to solve, I tell the world why the problem needs to be solved, I solve the problem and then I tell the world about the solution.
Many years back I realised that there was massive interest from Western businesses to work on the African continent. The key markets were Kenya, Ghana, Nigeria and South Africa. The problem was none of the Western businesses wanted to send their staff to work in the continent without having any experience. The solution was to use an intermediary, my company called Forefront Africa, to engage in an initial tour of the city and introduce the business representative to the local market.
The story was simple:
Problem statement: You don’t know Nigeria (Kenya/Ghana/South Africa) but want to do business there.
I love travelling on the continent and doing business in Africa.
I believe I am best positioned to take your businesses into key markets through my network and experience.
Solution: Talk through the incredible countries, businesses and people that Forefront Africa can introduce to the company.
If you can't break your sale into these four simple steps then you don't have your story right and won’t be able to sell anyways.
The middle two steps seem like the most obvious but are often the ones that trip most people up.
If you do not love and believe in your solution then your story is going to lack the enthusiasm and authenticity required to make this method of selling really work. You can’t fake authenticity, people can tell. If they don’t notice upfront they will notice as soon as they scratch below the surface and realise how little you care for the problem and the solution.
So if you’re struggling to start selling your side hustle just use the template above and work on your problem statement, your belief in your product and the solution you present.
Happy Side Hustlin’!
Your Career is No Longer Safe
I have never managed to keep a job for longer than 18 months at a large corporate. I’m unemployable in those environments. But many, many people believe that they are safe, secure and indispensable at their large corporate job.
I have never managed to keep a job for longer than 18 months at a large corporate. I’m unemployable in those environments. But many, many people believe that they are safe, secure and indispensable at their large corporate job.
The global pandemic has rocked these careers and shaken our perspective of what’s safe and secure.
In the video below I discuss why your career is no longer safe and how you can start to make yourself an asset in the new world order.
What You Do vs What You CAN Do
When we become good at something we start to define ourselves by our ability to do that thing well. This becomes an entrenched belief and a self-identifier. I am a mechanic. I am a sales person. I am a teacher. These are things that we do.
But what happens when we can’t do these things? Do we redefine ourselves? Do we identify in another way? Or do we simply stop?
I am seeing a lot of people who have been stopped in their tracks under quarantine and/or lockdown. They are crippled by an inability to do the thing that makes them feel like they exist. They have been prevented from earning an income and it’s breaking them and their spirits as well as their bank balances.
In this scenario it is not “I think, therefore I am” it has become, “I Ido, therefore I am”. And when you can’t do the thing you do, you’re stuck.
It’s time to become unstuck.
We need to start preparing for what we can do, not what we have done.
In your business you have skills and a team and a preconceived idea of what you do. But what can you do right now? If you have a businesses filled with a skillset that was used in a specific way, can that skillset be repurposed? Can your team be retooled to do something else in the short term? Can you earn new income in a different way using the same people in new and interesting ways? I bet you can. It’s possible that you can’t, sure, but have you tried a new way of doing?
In your personal life, have you always thought of yourself as an organised person? Can you generate income from that? Are interested in public speaking? Do you have a knack for drawing or design? Do you learn languages really quickly? How do you take what you do every day and turn it into something that you can do to make money in the short or long term?
This is the way I am trying to see the world now. An entire space and time to redefine the skills I have and turn them into something that I can do in the world going forward.
Don't Write off Offices Just yet - the World Isn’t Going to Change as Quickly as You Think.
There seem to be two camps in Quarantino (that’s what I’m calling the world we’re in right now); Those who think everything will change once lockdowns and quarantines are over and those who don’t know what’s going to happen.
I find it odd that no one believes things are going to go back to the way they were.
I don’t think thing are going to change as much as we might think once we’re allowed back into the world.
Before the whole world moves to remote work and burns their offices down, we need to get rid of the boss who likes to see human (not pixel) bums in seats before giving out bonuses.
Before we see citizen journalism overrun traditional media we will need to meet humans who care enough about the truth to fact check their bias.
Before we see real-world sporting events replaced by esports we will need to see the hundreds of millions of fans who attended physical games buy into the concept of pixels kicking balls and racing fake cars becoming more enticing than blood, sweat and actual tears.
Before we see colleges disintegrate in the face of MOOCs we’ll have to break down the highly regarded (yet mostly irrelevant) institutions that so many young people are conditioned to believe will give them a leg up and a better future.
Before handshakes and hugs are replaced with head nods and winks we will need to break down centuries-old habits of human connection and interaction.
The past is not left behind in an instant. The future is not created in a single epidemic.
We all wish it were that simple but it isn’t. Humans like what they like and those things don’t change overnight. We like going to bars. We like casual sex after meeting at a dirty nightclub. We like handshakes and hugs. We like meeting in person (and there’s value in it too). We like offices and we like getting away from our homes. This lockdown life isn’t for everyone. Let’s not mistake what’s big right now in our lives for what we think the entire working world wants.
Just because you want things to be different tomorrow doesn’t make it so.
We are going to go back to the normal we know before we redefine normal of our future.
IT’S ALIVE! The Curious Cult Show Podcast Launches
For a long time, I have enjoyed talking to smart people about interesting things. My background, aside from building businesses, is actually journalism and I love interviewing people to extract their genius for others to hear.
This year I decided that I was going to start writing my next book. The topic of the book is curiosity and more specifically how curiosity leads to innovation in the workplace.
So I set out to interview some of the most interesting people I could find.
I’m really excited about The Curious Cult Podcast. Each episode features a person that I wanted to speak to and each episode also serves as research for the book which is coming out in February 2021.
In the first episode, I talk to the founder of Electronic Arts, Trip Hawkins about his curiosity and how it led the creation of one of the largest gaming empires in the world.
Head over to my podcast page and subscribe using your favourite platform.
The show is available on all the major platforms and I’ll be launching a new episode every week for the foreseeable future.
A shameless punt: if you listen to and like the episodes that are available, please leave a rating and review on iTunes, Spotify or anywhere else you can!
Celebrate Your Victories Like A Football Team Celebrates A Goal
Photo by Jeffrey F Lin on Unsplash
There are two very specific things that football teams set out to achieve in a football match:
Score as many goals as possible
Do not let the other team score any goals
This is literally the point in every football match. Yet in every football match that I’ve ever had to sit through, I have witnessed the manager and players go absolutely apeshit when they score a goal. Any goal. Not only the great goals. Literally, any time they get the little white ball to cross the little white line into the back of the net, they go nuts.
These people celebrate as if they are playing the first football match in the history of football and their team has just scored the first-ever goal in the history of the sport. It is something to behold. Football celebrations became so intense that there are now rules about how players can celebrate and players can actually receive a yellow card for celebrating too much. FIFA Law 12 penalizes excessive, time-wasting, and choreographed goal celebrations. Incredible!
While at the gym this morning I caught a glimpse of a very average football match being shown on the screens that are plastered all over the place. The skills on display were average, the players were average, the entire experience was average. Even the fans knew it was all pretty average. But then someone scored a (pretty average) goal and everyone lost their minds. The goalkeeper, the manager, the coaching staff, the players, everyone just lost it, running onto the field, then to the corner flag, then back to the team seating area where the reserve players were sitting. It was the best performance of the game thus far.
As I continued to do my thing on the elliptical machine I found myself berating the team for celebrating so hard. I was actually irritated that they were celebrating when they were clearly a sub-par team.
Then it hit me: We don’t celebrate enough as entrepreneurs and startup founders. We should all celebrate like a football team when they score a goal.
We should be celebrating the small things more consistently. These players are galvanized in their fight to score a goal and prevent the other team from scoring. So when they do actually score a goal, they should celebrate their achievement, no matter how good or bad the goal was. They achieved the one thing they need to do to win the game.
Watching the team that conceded the goal was interesting too. As the celebrations took place, they look dejected and defeated. The celebrations reinforce the goal and the leverage that had been gained. Mentally, one team had the upper hand and the other team needed to fight back to just break even.
Celebrations matter. Ambitious startup founders often only want to celebrate the massive achievements; The billion-dollar exit, the huge fundraising, the insanely profitable annual performance. We should be celebrating when we sign a new client, a new team member joins, a new revenue milestone is reached or a new feature or product goes live.
There is, of course, a limit to how much you should celebrate. For example, I don’t believe that every child should receive a participation trophy at the end of a football match. That’s just crazy, it’s not an achievement to participate, it’s life.
When I sold my first company I didn’t celebrate at all. I was young, the exit was difficult and there was some conflict in the team. When I received the sale agreement, I hunched over my coffee table and signed the agreement, tossed it across the table and lay back on the couch and watched TV. That was it and I regret that moment immensely.
Your team thrives on success and despises failure as much as you do. So when there is something real to celebrate just take a few minutes and celebrate like you all just scored the first goal in the history of football.
The Three Questions Every Business Owner Needs to Answer Right Now
Photo by Jason Wong on Unsplash
There is a lot of panic out in the world right now and rightly so. It’s a new world. It’s a strange and uncomfortable world. It’s a world that no business owners could have prepared for but all of us wish we had.
Now that this world is upon us it’s time to jump to action and begin planning for the next 12 months of your businesses and lives. Whether you want to admit it or not it’s a bad time to be a small business in almost every industry or vertical. People are holding on to their cash and waiting to see what happens in the world.
One thing is for certain, we will emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic. To make it through to the other side, I believe that businesses of all sizes need to be thinking solely on the following three things:
How deep is the damage to your business?
How long will the bleeding last?
What does the recovery curve look like?
This seems simpler than it is for most businesses.
Let’s work through these three questions slowly and clearly.
How Deep is the Damage To Your Business?
Is your business or business model dead?
Have you lost 30%, 60% or 90% of your revenue and customers?
Can you operate at all for the next 6 weeks, 3 months, 6 months?
Will your staff stay if you pay them half salaries for a few months?
Can you start again in 2 months if your staff don’t stay with you?
Will your debtors give you a break on what you owe them and if so, for how long?
Will your landlords give you a break on your rent for a while?
Right now, every business owner and entrepreneur should be doing triage on their businesses. If you’re not, it’s time to get serious and get started. Even if your business is booming in this crisis you should still be thinking about what the world and your business will look like over the next 12 months.
The above questions are just the high-level, light touch questions to get you thinking. What you really need to be doing right now is assessing every expense, every income source, every employee, their skillsets and making copious notes on each item to allow you to make informed decisions in the coming two phases of your planning.
This is how you assess the damage and begin to retool your business for the new world. It’s unlikely that you can expect your team to continue to do the same jobs for the next few weeks or months. If they’re great people then you need to start to find them new things to do in your new business.
Once you have the information you need you can then start to think about how long the bleeding will last. But if you can’t find the wounds then you can’t stop the bleeding so dig deep and map it all out. Every inch of your business needs to be carefully analysed. Leave no stone unturned and no spreadsheet empty.
How Long Will the Bleeding Last?
This point in the process requires you to step back and take a macro view of your business and the world.
Is your industry under fire or is it going to kick back into action as soon as the lockdown ends and COVID-19 is under control? Is it going to kick back in immediately or over a period of weeks, months or years? Be honest and ask colleagues or even competitors for their views.
If the bleeding is going to last longer than your cash on hand can maintain then you have a serious problem and some tough decisions to make urgently.
I don’t think that the lockdown is going to be over in a matter of weeks, we’re looking at many months (if not many years) before anything begins to approach normalcy again on a global scale. India has put 1.3bn people on lockdown. No country recovers from this level of action in weeks.
It’s imperative that you form realistic scenarios that you can plan for. Hope for the best, plan for the worst. The next step requires you to start laying out the different scenarios you’re facing.
What Does the Recovery Curve Look Like?
If you think that your business is going to start back up at 100% when the lockdown ends then you are sorely mistaken.
Your business is under siege, the global economy is under pressure like our generation has never seen and it’s going to take time to rebuild.
The Recovery Curve is a way for you to estimate how dramatically your business can recover in the months after economies open back up. Is it a sharp curve from 20% back up to 100% in a matter of days? If so, you’re lucky. Unfortunately, it’s more likely a slow curve fraught with sharp rises and steep cliffs over a two year period. Yes, I’m serious, the global pandemic has more than likely taken your business back two years. Get your mind around this and start planning on ways to change the curve or patiently brace for the long Winter ahead.
Be honest and think about when the lockdown ends, can your business can operate at full speed immediately? What do you think your revenue will be in month one post-COVID? 50% of normal? 40%? 20%?
Plan out three scenarios; The best, the likely and the worst scenarios.
The Best Scenario
If you look at the world with optimistic eyes and all of your plans and preparations work out perfectly, what does your revenue look like in 6 months? Will you be up to 60% of where you were pre-COVID? Then, two months post-COVID are you up another 10% to 70%?
Now that you’re at 70% of your pre-COVID revenue, what does your team look like and how do you plan to bring them back on board? Will they come back? Will they feel safe and trust you?
The Likely Scenario
You have made plans, you are cautiously optimistic but you are still planning for difficult times and very slow growth back to normalcy. You’ll likely have to lay off half of your staff and cut the size of your business by at least half over the next short while. Your suppliers will suffer but you’ll survive and grow new revenue streams once you have made it through the worst times.
Do not be overly optimistic with the likely scenario. Try to pull in people who know your business and industry for some perspective here.
The Worst Scenario
This is the easiest scenario to conceptualise because humans can easily rush to the worst case. The worst-case scenario looks something like this:
The COVID-19 pandemic takes at least 12 months for humanity to contain. In this time your business is unable to operate, the world is in and out of lockdown constantly and your team struggles to make ends meet. The government subsidies are slow to move and only delay the inevitable.
How do you begin to retool your business and your team today? What do you do change the perspective of the world about your business? What will it take to either shut it all down or pivot what you have? Which is more intense, brutal and harsh on you and your team?
This might be the easiest scenario to imagine but is definitely the most intensely difficult to execute on. Lives will be impacted across the board. Suppliers will shut down, staff will lose their homes and you will lose sleep, hair, money and time that you will never get back. It’s tough out there but it could just be your Phoenix moment.
One of the ten Nicisms that I live by is: Sometimes you have to burn it all down and start again.
Once you have your scenario planning complete you need to communicate these scenarios to your team, your customers and your suppliers. Let them know what you are thinking and how you are planning.
By involving your team you give them a sense of ownership over the outcome and you help them plan their own lives accordingly. Bringing your suppliers in shows them a level of respect and trust that most businesses don’t offer in times of distress. They’ll thank you and if they don’t, keep in mind that they are fighting for their own survival, so give them a break.
Nothing about this is meant to be fun. Nothing about this is going to be easy. However, this is the new world that we find ourselves in and unfortunately there is a lot of waiting that needs to be done. There are decisions that will be made in the next three weeks that you have no control over and will directly impact your next move.
Plan out your scenarios and have your next moves mapped and ready for the next big shift in the landscape. Trust me, there is a lot of change afoot and this is the new normal.