Episode 3 –
Personal discipline kept me moving forward. “If you want to sell penicillin, create a fever.” Get to market ASAP with new products.
3 Strategies from Leaders that Thrived
1. Personal discipline kept me moving forward.
Perhaps there has never been a more trying period in modern times than the destructive government lockdown. Personal discipline and those that had it, made serious progress.
Sports seasons were cancelled, school officials grabbed power, local politicians invented new rules of life day by day…and it seemed everyone was just making it up.
Those that were able to continue operating based on sound principles, like personal discipline, saw through this catastrophe and kept on working. Well, those skills are still super important today and every day. Whatever your formula is for increasing your personal discipline, today is the day to begin.
When is the best time to plant a tree? 40 years ago, or today. So, “plant that tree” and double down on personal discipline like the successful leaders that thrived during the lockdown.
2. “If you sell Penicillin, create a fever.”
I got a pretty good laugh out of this one when this manufacturing business owner said it. Then I thought about it, and it seemed like it was plausible and there was someone out there wagging the dog.
Conspiracy theory or not, the amount of money made by big pharma during the lockdown is possibly the greatest situational profit event of the century. AI may rival this in the end, but that is a very different situation, a more natural market driven supply and demand.
We cannot go back in time and get a do-over, however, we certainly learn from this calamity. Think, think, think. When they are all yelling loudly and yelling the same thing, think, think, think. “Is this real?”
3. Get to market ASAP with new products!
At one point, years ago, in Wooster, Ohio, Rubbermaid home products was a new product machine. Rubbermaid was an household name and a new product engine. They launched a new product every day and had systems for doing it.
The speed and pace of change has increased. Access to design talent is greater than ever. The global market continues to grow and expand. Now is the time to launch the new product! Now is the time to expand the business!
It’s go time!
As a reminder, this is where these comments originated.
Lockdown 2020
Just as the lockdown occurred in 2020, I reached out to leaders in my network and asked them several strategic questions. I did this as a hedge against falling into the void for myself and possibly for them if it served that purpose.
The responses were obviously shaded with fear and concern, as well as toughmindedness that ended up enabling most of them to survive and even thrive during the lockdown.
How did you make it and thrive?
Then, when the dust seemed to settle in 2022, I went back to those same leaders and asked them how they survived the apocalypse. The responses are a treasure chest of business counsel that stands the test of time in good times or bad.
The following are a few comments from these leaders after the apocalypse…which didn’t really happen, especially the way the media portrayed it. The world did not end, but unfortunately there was plenty of collateral damage and lives lost.