Last week, I was going to whine about unfair the world has been to me but I decided not to. I chose not to write.
I’m glad I didn’t. This week is so much worse.
To say I had a bad month was an evolving understatement. Who would have thought that a little bug could do as much damage as a full blown war?
I’ve had time to think about it. And now I’m ready to do my part.
Powerless
This month was painful for me. Before everything was quarantined, my assets at work got cut in half. Hard to explain in detail but all it showed is how much control I don’t have. It made me feel powerless when it happened.
Then Expo West canceled the week before I was so excited to go. I was so prepared to meet all of my friends and taste my products and even though I saw the warning signs, I would have never thought they would straight up cancel. It made me feel powerless.
Of course, SXSW was next week. People said it wouldn’t cancel but it did. I had two really exciting events planned that would put what I was building on the map but that was extinguished. It was a slow but memorable burn. Like a literal playbook, I saw the big companies pulling out, the number of voices increasing, asking SXSW to cancel, and then inevitably, it canceled a week before launch. I should have felt so powerless but at that point, I felt nothing.
My calendar was full of so many fun events this week, but they’re all gone.
The repercussions of both Expo West and SXSW canceling is having a severe effect on the industries they are serving. I can’t even imagine the ripple effect other conferences are having in their industries.
Of course, the worst-case scenario is happening now. The stock market is tanking, businesses are forced to close, people are acting like the world is ending by stocking up on toilet paper, and everything is closed. The streets are empty.
But it could be worse for me, I could have lost my job, or worse, gotten sick and spread it to others.
So for the majority of the week, I’ve been stewing at home, but I needed it. It was refreshing.
Culling the Herd
A very interesting podcast by Scott Galloway discusses this event as a “culling of the herd” most big companies, who actually have cash whether through investments or that they’re actually good at saving cash will not only survive, but they will possibly grow bigger.
If an innovative fledgling startup runs out of money, they can either die or get bought out. A company like Google or Amazon can buy it very quickly.
Unfortunately, food companies are a tad different. Most who are just starting out don’t hold much IP (branding or R+D equity) and will die. There are ways to mitigate and survive, which I hope to give you some strategies here.
Unless you’re a CPG that has experienced a burst of sales (some do if they have a great eCommerce system or are a company that luckily has a product people think they need eg toilet paper), you need to cut back on overhead. It’s also to note that you should take time to stand there and observe what’s going on including what your competitors and friends are doing.
I also suggest focusing the flavors of your products to be less innovative and more comforting.
In a recession, people are much more sensitive to risk, even to buying new and exciting flavors. Most will choose safe and nourishing like chocolate and vanilla, or mac and cheese. Focusing on a comforting flavor might be a way to save a brand.
What’s good about food is that people need to eat or they die and optimizing that first principle might have you hold the fort at this time. In the depression, people would hustle selling apples. Yea they wouldn’t be rich, but it was sustainable enough to hunker down, observe and build.
Every food product is unfortunately different but most brands are the same. Can your perishable food be innovated to be non-perishable and last longer? Apples to apple sauce? Protein drinks to protein powders? It might be worth considering.
As I gather more information about the situation, I hope to give more opinions (not advice, because I’m not an expert in this specifically).
How I’m going to get this information, however, is getting me really fired up.
The Light In The Darkness
Sequoia Capital dubbed this phenomenon the Black Swan of 2020. For those that don’t know the term, it was coined by Nassim Nicholas Taleb in his book, Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable.
9/11 and the Recession are instances of a black swan. Nobody expected it but it kind of did the same thing it always did. The annoying issue with black swans is that once it happens, people will theorize why it happens even though the probability of it being catastrophic again is low. If you were right that coronavirus was going to do this much damage, congratulations, here’s your medal.
The idea of Taleb’s book isn’t how black swans occur, but what can we do about it? This pairs well with another book of his, Anti-Fragile, the ability to adapt when you break. And people are breaking right now.
One of my favorite things to do is to get up faster than everyone else and adapt. Right now is the perfect time to think differently and solve problems. Right now, we have a lot of problems.
Where I work, WeWork’s whole thesis is bringing people to one space and now that’s pretty hard to do. So how can we give value and make people feel the same way digitally? That’s what I want to figure out. It’s a puzzle with many keys, but I haven’t been this interested in a long time.
Not only that, but I’m fortunate that I’ve been doing podcasting and that I can use my platform to bring people together and share their stories to the world. If my podcast can make people more informed or make people smile, then it’s worth it and I want to do more of it.
Having a reputation that’s good enough to ask smart people for help is what I hope to not only make people feel a bit better, but it’s also a way of gathering data to make more confident solutions to pressing problems. You’ll see a lot more posts from me soon.
The world might be going dark, but there are some silver linings. People can see the stars because there’s less pollution, animals can frolic in the cities, I can play Dungeons and Dragons with friends I haven’t seen in a long time. There’s a lining, perhaps even light.
So what seems to be dark, there’s a light. It’s not at the end of the tunnel. It’s right in front of you.
I’m glad I waited a week to start writing again.