I was talking to an old friend of mine who owns a restaurant in Northern Georgia yesterday. Seeing what’s next. Seeing how he’s doing. Towards the end of our call I said something I’ve been thinking about on the daily since this shut down began. “I’ve lost everything before, if it happens again, I can come back from that.”
Being an “entrepreneur” or whatever you call what I do has a lot of unknowns. It teaches you survival beyond the everyday. Things are always in a state of stress and unrest so after the initial shock of shutting down my stores wore off, my brain moved on to the fixing. To the “what’s next.”
Don’t get me wrong. Things can and likely will get worse. Right now though, I can’t do anything about that. So I juggle doing some of the things I can and prepare to be ready for what’s next.
Being ready, in this instance; is all I really can do, because with out a start date or any way of knowing what business will be like, all I can do is be prepared to plan the next stage. Some days that’s east. Some days crippling. But each day you do it. You can too.
Something will come. An opportunity. I’m not sure what, but it will. It always does. The cool thing about sitting where I sit is that the past 20 years of saying yes to a ton of things has left with enormous options. I’ll come out the other side of this giving hugs and high fives, regardless of what the CDC recommends and likely with a eurotrash Mohawk mullet combo that would fit in at any 1985 U2 concert. Win win.
For the first two weeks of this fiasco I struggled with not “doing anything”. I don’t mean that in just the “staying at home” part. I mean, I felt like I was supposed to be out hustling, adapting, overcoming and reinventing. Somewhere along the way I realized that was time ill spent. My days of chasing the unknown, while not over, are at the least tempered. Again, now I hover around readiness. Keeping my eyes and mind open to what’s next. It may be the same things I was doing and it may be a new direction. Whatever the case, I know I’ll bounce back.
You will too. Right now is the time to calm to center. Maybe your world is the same, but just altered. Maybe it’s a complete shit show. Regardless, you can’t likely control a lot of that But you can be ready. Define what matters. Define why and how you want things to be. That’s a start. Get up and take a shower. Put on some pants for chrissakes and think about what’s next
A lot of folks have this opportunity right now. Forced by an unknown hand, you have the opportunity to evaluate how to best come back. Every day, more and more people are flung further into the unknown. Just yesterday the oil industry cratered and a new batch of people got to feel what the retail industry felt 3 weeks ago. “How could this happen?” “What will I do?” I’m sure it won’t be the last industry for this to happen to. The impacts of everything, a cruel re-teaching of Newton’s Third Law (every action, has an equal and opposite reaction.)
But know this. The fools, the risk takers, those who have bet on themselves and won and lost before, will be up for the challenge, because like my friend said “Once you’ve been kicked in the nuts once, you’re not as fearful of the pain.”
#hugsandhi5s