Covid has been wicked to a lot of people. It’s been a business boom for some. It’s changed everybody’s life in some way. And we’ve learned from it. We’ve learned there might not be as much travel for business “check-in meetings” given Zoom, Teams, WebEx, etc., that remote work is possible for some, that people do need the comradery you can’t get online, and people are creative.
We’ve recognized remote learning, especially for younger kids, is an unmitigated disaster. But a hybrid of remote learning may be the wave of the future for older students. Just imagine the best lecturer at a school doing the lectures for all the students and other teachers do the hands-on work.
This last point is something I’m working on for our Rotary projects in Antigua. Every project has budget constraints that limit the number of teachers we can train. With a hybrid model of online, in-person, and peer groups we figure we can triple the number of teachers we train every year. This is huge and a win for the teachers and especially the students.
When it comes to business, we’ve had to become more forward thinking given there have been no events like our Getting the Deal Done Breakfast Conference, association meetings, lunch and learns, etc. Even one-on-one networking meetings are scarce. Jessica and I did a lot of walking meetings during the nice weather but those are way down in the winter.
I’ll share our new marketing activities and ask you to think about what you’ve changed in the last year. Besides things like this Weekly Memo, we have:
- Started a podcast channel featuring conversations with business owners and other professionals (we just got approved for Apple Podcasts and are now on Apple and Spotify).
- Make sure we have something on social media at least twice a day.
- Published a new book, Getting the Deal Done, with chapters from 11 other deal pros.
We did some short term things like our Zoom Happy Hours and YouTube interviews about business during Covid, that were very well received. I expect the above to be long-lasting. Sometimes it takes a slap in the face to do something new. It shouldn’t, but it does.
“What would life be without coffee? Bt, then, what is life even with coffee?” King Louis XV of France
“Start every day off with a smile and get it over with.” W.C. Fields
