LID RADIO: stronger together

Can you name your brutal moment? 

Mine was at a kitchen table, wrestling with an unforgiving proposal, knowing my sons would wake soon and the day would start all over again.  It was a moment when all I had assumed and built seemed in jeopardy.  Later, writing The Entrepreneurial Myth, I met founders who opened their hands and offered similar stories of doubt and loneliness.      

In many ways, this pandemic is a shared brutal moment.  We are impacted differently depending on our business and lifestyle, our wealth and health.  But we still share a global grief. We can sense the pain behind those mortality stats.  Our businesses are undermined by the same market volatility.  We’ve all lost those breezy carefree human connections now we can’t meet in person.   

We must match the scale of disruption by starting over and thinking again. 

Make time, take time.  First things first: to make time, focus on cash.  Start with a blank piece of paper and work from your bottom line up.  Accept government support and return to budgetary basics.  Once you’ve bought as much time as you can, take time to use it wisely.  Pause.  Stop the clock.  Take a deep breath.  It’s essential we silence the competitive self-help chatter.  It is tempting to rush to the solution with untested strategies and invent new Covid-19 projects.  We rush to shut down feelings of vulnerability and uncertainty.  But by rushing, we also shut down possibility and opportunity. 

Entrepreneurship is ultimately the ability to handle uncertainty. 

If you think of entrepreneurship as a system, every aspect of the system is moving: the market, access to money, your competitors’ businesses, your customers’ needs, the team dynamics, your vision and your ability to meet it.  Every element is in flux and profoundly uncertain. At times like these, it is important to sit still and feel the loss and vulnerability.  It is important to let the shock of this strange new world roll over us.  We must prioritise our health and our families.  We must let things settle, adjust our breath, let our brains stretch. 

Schedule this adjustment in your diary.  Take a week or two, whatever you need, before plotting and pivoting.  While our reality is twisting away from when we expected, what we planned and budgeted for, we must think clearly.  We mustn’t spin this virus with entrepreneurial bravado.  We can’t hustle our way out.  Measured reflection and a contemplative approach to business will refine the decisions you’re going to have to make.  Just you and a piece of paper, seeking clarity as you prepare to save the day. 

So, buy time by managing your cash position where you can.  Then, take time to absorb, feel, reflect.    

Entrepreneurs are known for courage - so have the courage to ask the big questions. 

Small adjustments to your 2020 plan won’t cut it.  You can’t just tweak your forecasts.  Match the scale of disruption by thinking big.  Consider where you are – even who you are – in your business.  Consider your motivation and purpose – what are you doing this for?  Who are you doing this for?  Ask your customers - an old boss of mine used to call it the spice girl question – ask customers what they really, really want?  This is the time to check your motivation, check external expectations, check what you do and how you do it.  Understand your assets and resources. 

Now design for distancing - not despite distancing. 

Assume the current restrictions will last.  What new product or service, or channel, or price, even customer, do you need in this new locked-down, shut-in economy?  No one really knows whether this radical disruption to our world is a momentary interruption, or whether our world has changed for good.  Either way, your business can change for your good.

Reach out. It is impossible to develop answers in a vacuum.  The term herd immunity peppers the news at the moment.  It reminds us of our basic nature.  We must belong to groups.  Groups grant us recognition, comfort and safety.  Science proves that, after food, we choose connection over almost any other variable. There is a deep irony that while numerous entrepreneurial businesses successfully harness the power of community in their products and services – think of Uber, Airbnb, eBay – the same powerful processes aren’t applied to entrepreneurship itself. Imagine if we used these strange days to change that.  Imagine if the solo entrepreneurial hero was banished for once and all.  The principles of collaborative culture are the three Cs of cooperatives, collectives and communality; these principles might shore up business models under the immense pressure from global recession. At first, you might think there is a queasy clash with entrepreneurship’s free market economic principles.  Perhaps the new structures and services of collective entrepreneurial thinking threaten hard-won freedoms of individuality and autonomy.  I don’t think so. 

Entrepreneurship has always been a collective exercise. 

The Entrepreneurial Myth spins the lie that entrepreneurship is for lone wolves, heroically defeating markets and pulling success from their guts.  In reality, business is a group grind, demanding a range of talents and characters.  Real business needs partners, curators, operators.  Collective intelligence and teamwork trumps individualism. And there is more at stake now. Use the community of talents around you.  Ironically as we all retreat inside, and online, our customer pool got larger, our talent pool got larger. The world opens up.  Time to get in touch.

Take heart.  All entrepreneurs share the creation of opportunity; opportunity sparks hope and we’ll chase hope wherever it leads.  There isn’t a secret formula; there isn’t a magic sauce.  You have the time you need to adjust, ask the big questions and work this out.  We really are all in this together.