Do you remember what it was like back on March 11th? It was Wednesday and all was pretty normal in the Hudson,Ink world. I was bound for St. Louis that weekend to speak at the ACCA convention and was making final preparations for my flight. And that’s when all Hades seemed to start breaking loose. The conference got cancelled. March Madness got cancelled. Pretty much everything got cancelled, and we were all forced into living life and doing business in a brand new way.
That was only two months back, but in many ways it seems like an eternity ago doesn’t it? What I wouldn’t give for things to go back to normal… the blissful ignorance of not being a nation of masked germophobes spraying their curbside picked-up groceries with Lysol before returning home to quarantine. But in reality, I’m not sure things will ever return completely to normal – or if they should.
Take a second to think. What have we learned from this process? Technology is a blessing and it’s not 100% necessary for everyone to commute to work every day. Not all good deals must be sealed with a handshake. There are safer, cleaner, and even more efficient ways of doing many things and considering the safety of others as well as our own protects us in the long run, too. I think we’ve learned that we never truly know what tomorrow holds and we can make all the plans we want, yet life will still throw us curveballs that put Nolan Ryan to shame.
But most importantly this pandemic has forced change on everyone at some level, and some have dealt with it better than others. No offense, but contractors are not exactly known for their fluidity and progressiveness. On the whole, our industry is largely traditional and set in their ways, which can be frustrating to say the least. Some of you have been forced kicking and screaming into a situation that makes you as comfortable as a 90-year-old staring at a new iPhone 72 (or whatever number they’re on now). Remember, I said “no offense” so you can’t get mad at me. But deep down many of you know it’s true, right?
Many of you went scrambling to remember who even manages your website to get a COVID policy message up. Or you didn’t bother. Many of you couldn’t send out an effective email blast because your list hadn’t been touched in far too long. When this broke loose, did your mind immediately go to the checklist of how you’d effectively get word out to your area informing them how you could continue to safely serve them? Or was your first thought closer to “duck and cover until all this is over?”
We’re all resistant to change to an extent, but what I want you to stop and consider is this. The last two months have been trying to teach us all a very valuable lesson. Change comes for us whether we like it or not, and those who resist, refusing to adapt and overcome, will be left behind.
I want to propose some options to you. Google and Facebook ad costs are lower right now than they have been in years. Never has it been more important for your public image to be perceived as professional, clean, and trustworthy. Ninety percent of small businesses (including your competitors) have paused all spending and have gone into a shell. So marketing companies like us are offering discounts and relief strategies to try to help. In my years of doing this I have never seen it as cost efficient to get effective marketing messages out. Does it sound like there is opportunity right now?
Your doors are open. You’re deemed an essential business, but what I want to ask is a little more soul searching. Has this situation opened your eyes to your business’ glaring NEED to change for the better? I’ve repeated this over and over through my writings and podcasts over the last few weeks and I stand behind it as much as ever. There will be a ton of market-share won and lost during this time of uncertainty.
Are you open to having a very important conversation about what your business can do BETTER moving forward? Are you open to being more prepared for the next curveball inevitably coming our way? Are you open to being bold and brave when everyone else is being scared? There’s risk, sure, but the potential payoff could be game changing.
We will never get normal old March 11, 2020 back again. And while some wish things would go back to status quo, other contractors will look back and see how a bad situation gave them the opportunities to grow by leaps and bounds.
No one likes this, but that doesn’t mean you can’t be open to making the best of it.