How has this epidemic changed you?
What are you doing more of in this crisis?
How has your business changed?
Where is it going now?
Share in the Instagram comments here.
Before we get into this.
I need to point out these words are by a healthy white man living in London with enough money to make it through the week.
Do I need to point it out?
Yes.
We know people who are going through all manner of health, family and economic hardships.
It would be crappy to let you read on thinking this is all milk and honey.
You will hear people proclaiming 'never waste a good crisis!'
And while I agree with this, it needs to have a responsibility in the framing.
Cashing in on a crisis is horrific.
As I write, I'm thinking of a few people I've seen on twitter who should know better.
They are posting lame polls with the #COVID type hashtags and tagging their mates.
It is an attention-seeking and tasteless use of twitter.
One of them DM'd me to share his poll, and it broke my heart.
He is very experienced in life, the universe and everything, he does not need to be ambulance-chasing.
Get well together
In contrast, I saw Brene Brown write something like 'we can all get well together, or we can all stay sick together.'
This worked for me at an intimate level, and at the community level, she was talking about.
View this post on InstagramThere are so many who must work in exposed environments. There are adults and children who are not safe at home. The complete disregard for others shown by people who are actually safe and ABLE to stay at home but choosing to ignore or scoff at the guidelines is NOT “rugged American individualism” - it is entitlement, ignorance, and/or cruelty. We are successfully flattening the curve in many areas around the world. We can rise strong if we can stick together and STAY STRONG. Please check the link in profile for an important article that takes us inside hospitals for a real look at the sacrifices being made. We thank the people risking their lives for us by respecting the science and their requests to stay home if you can.
A post shared by
(@brenebrown) on Apr 11, 2020 at 12:56pm PDT
(I know, EVERYTHING Brene says works for me.)
Focus on your good habits
Another early Co-vid epidemic boost for me was Jonothan Stark writing this,
'If you find that your routine is suddenly out of whack, you might want to step back and take inventory of your good habits.'
(Click here for the full post.)
I've been stalling in sending this email for a few weeks because the emails I wrote were not helpful.
They were screaming tombs of uncertainty and terror, I mean I want to be honest, but it has to help you.
New hope in this crisis?
As time went on a new starting point revealed itself.
All my workshops in London and at the camps at coworking conferences I attend were dead in the water.
This meant finding something else, I knew what to do, but I realised I did not know how to do it.
Do you find people say things like this a lot?
'Why don't you just...?'
I say something like that more than I'd care to admit.
We mean no harm, and often these dumb words come from a place of good intention.
For example:
When you are struggling mentally, think you are a loser, and your depression is inducing thoughts of suicide.
People ask 'do you know what is making you depressed?'
We'll if I knew that I would not be £ucking depressed, would I? Dumb Ass!
The next direction
In this case, I thought I'll put all my workshops and talks online!
And that is what I set about to do.
If you have been reading here a while you'll remember our Trello course, it flopped.
Offline it rocked, but we went about selling it online in the wrong way, I'm ok with this.
The whole thing turned out to be an epic learning curve, mainly about how to accurately help other people.
And most of that accuracy is asking the right questions upfront - check out the books 'A More Beautiful Question' and 'The Mum Test' to help with this.
So I grabbed my trusted 12 Week Book and Marketing Made Simple and set about making a plan.
That ended up with a visit to AppSumo for MailPoet and Soundwise.
BTW if you have a Wordpress website and send an email or Woo-Commerce grab Mailpoet.
There is lifetime access for $49 - it is 1000% easier to use than Mailchimp - which I've tried to learn for a decade now!
Get lifetime access to MailPoet here.
The future is audio
So everything I do going online in audio format, I don't know why I did not get to this before.
I have the gift of the gab - Jon Buscall told me so it must be true.
This is heading in the direction of a membership site when the time is right, but it has to pass 'The Mum Test' first.'
That is after the next 12 weeks, I don't know what it looks like, but there is something there!
I've wanted a 100% online existence since I joined twitter and meet up in 2008.
I allowed myself to get distracted and sidetracked, now I'm forced to take focused action.
I posted a few thoughts on Instagram about it here, I'd welcome your comments here.
Share in the comments and let me know what has changed for you in the last few weeks because of the crisis?
What are you doing more of, how has your business changed, and where is it going now? The comments are here.
