Let’s face it. If you call the Promotional Marketing industry home AND if you’ve sat out selling PPE, times are pretty bleak.
Many of my friends’ lives have been turned completely upside-down. Many of our friends in the Supplier salespeople ranks have been tossed overboard like deck chairs from a sinking Titanic. It’s not wrong for businesses to do what they need to do to survive, and I have no complaint with the ways leaders are facing the challenge at this moment. I have the ultimate respect and understanding of the need to keep a business viable in the face of a seemingly endlessly shifting set of circumstances. No-one should get a permanent black eye for their approach to solving what seems to be an unsolvable problem right now.
None of that changes the fact that many people have had their careers thrown off the rails. Theirs are real fears and concerns about the possibility of being rehired to do what they have done for their entire careers. Many have reached the career stage where we’re not yet ready or willing to retire, but daunted by the idea of making a significant career change. It’s forcing people to undergo some pretty uncomfortable metamorphosis.
If that’s where you find yourself at the moment, know this.
Some of those forced metamorphosis’ I’ve been witness to have been done with a healthy eye toward people choosing to do things that make them happy to wake up in the morning. Folks who may otherwise have had a somewhat easy road to retirement age are making choices to do the things they’d always wanted to do but were too comfortable to try. It’s as if I’ve heard these words in their actions; “If I’ve gotta be broke, I might as well be broke doing trying something I like doing.”
I CAN RELATE.
When we started Social Good Promotions back in January 2019 (that’s like five years IRL, am I right?) we did so with a blank canvas;
ZERO existing clients
ZERO email prospects
ZERO brand equity
We’ve earned our way to building relationships via a relentless focus on delivering value to people for the long haul, as opposed to looking at businesses merely as a transactional means to an end.
Leave it to a global pandemic to accelerate the pace of change.
After two months of excellent sales growth and a decent March to start 2020, our revenue line took a beating in April and May. Those meager results forced us to look at our infant business and consider her viability.
After much consideration and a look at the business from a purely financial perspective, we realized we would be ok getting by for a reasonable amount of time, plus, all of our pre-COVID_19 commitments we’d gotten from clients are still good.
What we needed to do to survive was to focus our efforts and attention on building trust.
We were making an educated guess. Should we find success in elevating our trust status with others during this time of crisis, they’d be more inclined to invest in our company. Giving us money to help them with their businesses once they regain the confidence to start spending again has been the reward we’ve reaped as a result of our efforts.
So, as Dickens reminds us, there are moments of tremendous transformation going on all around us. While there’s an enormous amount of sadness, so are there also a litany of creatively refashioned careers rising like the Phoenix, emerging borne anew from the ashes of a crashed economy.
Don’t let the fear of the unknown stand in the way of you finally taking the steps necessary to awaken tomorrow, resolute that you’re now on the path to doing what it is you should have always been doing.
Roger has spent 20+ years making complex concepts more understandable for both buyers and sellers alike, and has devoted the majority of his recent career to injecting purpose via philanthropy to his sales and marketing efforts. He’s intent on making the world a better place and his nirvana exists at the intersection of Mission, Passion, Profession and Vocation. He loves the outdoors and seeks memorable experiences whenever possible. Contact Roger at roger@socialgoodpromotions.com or 810-986-5369.