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Crises are short-term accidents that happen along the way and that affect our short-term planning. While we cope with them, however, we must not forget our original project.
Elon Musk founded Space X in the month of May 2002 and Tesla in 2003. Certainly the crisis of 2008-2009 has slightly messed up his plans, but he has never turned away from his purpose which was to bring man to Mars or to make an electric car available to everyone.
Mark Zuckerberg founded Facebook in 2004. In the month of June 2008, he finally managed to close, by paying, the lawsuit with the Winklevoss who claimed to be entitled to the shares of the social network and, here he was, he was hit by the recession of 2008-09. However, this did not distract him from his plan to connect humanity through a social network. Indeed, in early 2009 Facebook launches the Like button that makes the company take off definitively.
During the year 2008, Google lost shares of almost 70% of their value, going from $700 to $240 at the end of the year. This did not distract Larry Page and Sergei Brin from pursuing their project which was not tied to one year's economic results, but to building the largest and most excellent search engine in the world. Indeed, just in the month of September 2008, Google launched Android and entered the mobile market, to then launch an infinite number of applications and solutions for the business. Today his actions are worth seven times as much.
You started your company a few years before 2020. In the year 2020 your company or your project was disrupted by Coronavirus and you had to make changes, in some cases, like Zuckerberg, you had just got off of it by paying a lot of money cause, or you had just made a big investment that paved the way for you and you saw a beautiful descent ahead of you. Then suddenly Coronavirus...
Now I will tell you your story of the future: you will not give up and you will continue to pursue your great project even more than before. And, even if you do not become Musk, Zuckerberg or Page, you will still build a good company that will help many people and provide you with great personal and economic satisfaction.
If
If
If you do not get defeated by fear, do not forget, just like they did, your original project!
Although having the total guarantee that you will NEVER be discovered, benefiting economically by violating ethics will ultimately cost you more than not giving up on the advantage unethically obtained.
If despite having provided a poor service to a customer, I still manage to get paid 5,000 euros, in the end those 5,000 euros will end up costing me much more than 5000 euros.
If I find 2,500 euros on the street and I don't try to trace it back to its rightful owner, having withheld that money will cost me more than 2,500 euros.
If having to share cash with a partner, he accidentally gave me 500 euros more, not returning them, even if he never noticed, it would cost me much more than 500 euros.
What you have gained by not respecting ethics is not yours. The universe will come back to take it.
If you really want to own things you need to be able to do your best without them. Nothing is truly yours if you can't afford to lose it. In that case, you got it.
Not being able to afford to lose something is the first step towards the end: not being able to afford to lose something means that you are saying to yourself that you don't feel like you are able to rebuild it. From that moment on, the material world will possess you.
It applies to collaborators, customers, loves, companies, things.
Pay attention to one important thing: if you continue to lose money to create a happy customer, you should re-set your business architecture. There is nothing that has so much value for the economic success of any business like a customer who is really happy with what you have given to him.
The counter-intuitive principles of business are those principles which, at first glance, go against logic and which are followed by a small minority of people who clearly inherit all economic success.
Trying to decode the principles that led to business success, about 9-10 years ago I began to realize that the principles that had the power to make your company grow, almost all of them had one thing in common: they were counter-intuitive, that is at first sight contrary to logic. I became more and more passionate about the subject and, as my companies grew, I began to fill in longer and longer lists.
I understood that the present business scenario is like a puzzle that, if you play with the rules followed by everyone, you always end up losing or, after having done great laps and even imagining that you have almost won, in the end you always find yourself at the starting point: caged, insecure, at the mercy of circumstances. Practicing and researching the counter-intuitive principles of business ultimately led me to a further great discovery, which was also the discovery of my life: everything in life has a spiritual origin, but this is another more advanced discourse, for another series.
The first counter-intuitive principle that I discovered was the following: the decision to improve oneself by carrying out a practical action in that direction, has an effect on the individual which is often equally beneficial compared to the actual actions that he will put in place to do it. Your life doesn't start to improve when you read the book, your life starts to change and improve the moment you buy it. Thought (or, in this case, decision) often creates more important effects than action. Each of us, if we really want to build successful business, should become a student of all counter-intuitive practices and principles.
From the day I read that book, I learned to admire the leaders and managers who knew best how to manage and make these paradoxes coexist within their companies. It was from there that I eventually came to the conclusion that many of the principles that lead to business success are counter-intuitive.
I am writing this to you because today all leaders and entrepreneurs are once again called to live with one of these paradoxes. The economy will be affected and that's a certainty. As I have already explained several times, companies-except those that have benefited from this Coronavirus evolution: e-commerce, sanitization, pharmacies, etc.-must expect to survive from here to the end of the year, making 40% of turnover from May to August, 50% more or less in September and then, from there to December we are expected to return to normal. These are actually bad data and if someone had been convinced for a moment that things would have gone better, surely seeing how this government has managed the economy and it is still managing it, he will surely come to change his mind.
But this strong negativity must coexist, in my opinion, with a GREAT POSITIVITY of the leader. I understand that money, market shares are being lost and it is a difficult moment, but we will be able to overcome it only if we face it with a great positive emotional energy.
I am strongly negative for the country's economy. Instead, I am strongly positive for the opportunities. Which–to be honest-are not zoom, virtual courses (things that incidentally are sad for a traveler and a lover of people like me). We are reinventing the opportunities, giving GREAT value to relationships, demonstrating enthusiasm, helping others, finding new ways to grow.
The real challenge, ultimately, is not economic, but human: will you know how to live with the paradox or will you be overwhelmed by it?
There are in fact people with whom, ANY business you can start, will be fine. At the same time, there are people with whom ANY business idea that you can try, they will be able to convince you that it has no market.
This crisis will influence many of our habits and, in some cases, what we will deal with. Instead, the rule below will not change: if you do business with the wrong “WHOS”, well crisis or abundance, nothing changes: however, you will not go far.
I see many entrepreneurs worried, rightly, about the liquidity of their businesses. Me too. But if you have not arrived to this crisis in oxygen reserve, maybe it's because you didn't work with the right people in the first place. And if you do not fix it, you will also waste the additional injection of liquidity that the State could give to your company (and on which, even if I continue to ask for it, I tell you I don't believe it).
Who are the right and the wrong “WHOS”?
In my opinion, the right “WHOS” are those who become enthusiast easily. They are the ones that go on, sometimes even stupidly, but that to every business idea that you submit tend to answer you "damn cool!!!" They are not yes men because, in case, the next week they come back to you and candidly and with a smile they say "but look at that idea there, I thought about it a bit and for me it's bullshit, it doesn't work. Let's change it!". But they light up! They charge up, things are possible for them!
The wrong “WHOS” are first and foremost those who don't turn on. Some people are so empty of vital energy that they see nothing beautiful, great, fantastic, only the smallness of their vitality.
Secondly, the wrong “WHOS” are the critics.
In ten years we have conducted aptitude analyzes on about 1% of the Italian population. They are large numbers because we are talking about 500.000 people, perhaps one of the largest studies ever conducted in our country. We have noticed that about 60.76% of the Italian population, six out of ten people, tend to be overly critical and to notice in the ideas and communications of others much more easily what does not work rather than what works. If you showed a gold nugget to these people, they would say that "it is dirty" or "it is chipped". If they speak with great talent they notice that he has dirty shoes or the wrong dialectal inflection, rather than his charge or enthusiasm. These people (and there are many because they are six out of ten) are also the ones you see on the walls of others who make judgments and make people moral. Making a company with this type of people in my experience is a "pain in the ass" because they will continue to show you what does not work rather than what works and, if like me, you are a company opener, you know what I mean.
So: live and face this crisis with great enthusiasm. It will be tough, we will have to be careful and put many things under control. But remember that MUCH more important than what you do, it will be WHO you will do it with.
That, more than anything else or external intervention, will determine your chances of success.
- In Beijing and Shanghai, where factories have been back to work for over one month, car traffic has returned to normal levels during the week while not at weekends. It means that after the reopening (after Easter? Early May?) people will have some difficulty and reticence to leave the house, go to restaurants, go shopping, etc. We will have to attract them.
- As proof of this, H&M China has reopened all its stores since the beginning of March, but reports that sales are still down 60% compared to the previous year.
- Americans estimate that the recovery in China will really happen in the last quarter, therefore October, November and December.
- All countries in the world will fear foreigners and keep their borders closed just to avoid returning infections after having fought so long to eradicate the virus. It means that international tourism as well as business travel will be significantly affected.
- The updated estimate for the drop in Italian GDP in 2020 is -12%, with a recovery of 8% in 2021. It is estimated that 30% of restaurants can close and not reopen.
- Covid actually constitutes an acceleration of processes that have ALREADY been in place before the virus appeared. Companies that were strong before the crisis, in general, will tend to become even stronger, while companies in distress will tend to miss further blows. If you think about it, thanks to Covid, Amazon has strengthened its leadership compared to retailers, Facebook has further increased its market share compared to traditional media. The home delivery which was a growing trend in catering, thanks to Covid has become even stronger. Companies like Macy's that were already going badly previously, will lose further ground. In the USA it is estimated that there will be a great loss of restaurants not affiliated with chains (they are unable to deal with real estate owners, they do not have the marketing strength, the guarantees of the parent company, etc.) and that their locations will soon be occupied by chain-affiliated premises. The big franchise chains will take advantage of the small one.
In general therefore: even if initially affected THE STRONG WILL BECOME EVEN STRONGER while the weak will have to play force to join the strong or re-set his strategy.
- Another interesting detail comes from the USA where the procedures for the dismissal of staff are much more immediate: the greatest loss of jobs occurred between non-graduate or non-highly specialized people which is like saying: those who have very strong competence also manages to retrain in the course of a crisis, but those who do not have it or who had very limited competence see their jobs at risk.
There are several voices who begin to describe 2020 as a year in which we will have to hibernate and be able to operate at a minimum, until the moment in which, having definitively defeated the virus, we can return to life.
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