What Does Your Manual Look Like?
As creative entrepreneurs, we tend to pride ourselves on being able to ebb and flow. At any given moment, technology changes, client needs change, trends in our respective fields... they change. It's normal to have to figure out how to re-mold ourselves and our businesses into the "new" and reinvent ourselves on a damn near yearly basis.
During the start-up phase of Tower Press, I was constantly casting the net wide to see what would stick. Services that didn't work were tossed and procedures that took too long would be modified. None of us are strangers to researching tirelessly what our competitors are up to, or how we can land our dream clients. The Universe throws us problems and we do our best to solve them, quickly.
I always thought I was so adaptable. After two successful years of business and seeing the quarter-mill sales goal getting closer and closer.... everything. just.stopped. No one could have ever prepared any of us for the COVID-19 global pandemic (even WITH a heads up as some of our team is in Hong Kong), and I think that's what has been so difficult about accepting the current environment. I like a step-by-step guide sometimes: "Do A, B, and C and then D will happen and everything will be just like how it was before." I love a list!
And therein lies the true gag of all this, there is no list. There's not even really an alphabet anymore. Things are different, and they'll never be the same. There's no going back to "normal." We're making new normals now, every day.
And though the cycles have been strange (I truly have a hard time understanding what day of the week it is), and routines are changing, our mindset doesn't have to. There's no manual to consult right now, we're writing it as we speak. How powerful is that?
You are literally writing history right now, make it a good one.
