EP. 1: Marketing in an Economic Downturn

We haven’t even hit peak COVID-19 yet, but many SaaS companies are wondering: what in the heck do I do with go-to-market and marketing functions now that we’re in an economic downturn? Here’s how Asia Orangio of DemandMaven thinks we’ll shift.

Extra Resources

• Marketing and Growth for Uncertain Times on CXL.com
• Outlast the Recession with Amy’s Financial Survival Guide by Amy Hoy on Stacking the Bricks
• How to Survive in Extraordinary Times by Amy Hoy on Stacking the Bricks
• If You Have to Cut — 5+ Thoughts On Where by Jason Lemkin on SaaStr

TL;DR

1. Pause to regain ground, but don’t completely stop marketing or selling altogether.
   1. You will be tempted to stop marketing and selling altogether, but there’s way too much data that supports the opposite
   2. https://cxl.com/blog/marketing-growth-uncertain-times/
   3. Based on a few different studies — one from McKinsey and another from Harvard Business Review.
   4. Cutting costs didn’t necessarily mean outperforming others in the long-term; in fact, it was often detrimental
2. It’s time to start thinking long-term.
   1. Examples: organic search as an acquisition channel. Thought leadership. Partnership. Community. Content marketing. All of these are long-term strategies. The goal is for you to come out on top of all of this after it’s over.
3. Shift your mindset to providing value.
   1. What you produce over the coming months should be about providing value. Hard sells and short-term tactics are going to be harder to see results from for some of us. It’s not a hard and fast rule, but it’s a little more likely.
   2. Now more than ever, prospects will need to see and actually experience value. What are your customers currently going through that you can shed some light on? Where can you provide a beacon of light?
   3. And what are you doing today that doesn’t provide value to customers and prospects? This should be reflected in every aspect of the business — including onboarding, demand generation activities, and even sales conversations you have.
   4. How can you be of service?
4. Check your value props.
   1. The market has shifted, so have your value propositions, and your pitch likely need to change to. What’s changed for your customers? How has their perspective shifted?
   2. Check your website, onboarding emails, and pretty much any and all communication to ensure it reflects that shift in value prop.
   3. Example: I’ve got a client whose value prop was originally about ROI, but now it’s more about mitigating risk and gaining control now that the tables have turned.
5. Pay off your analytics debt.
   1. You might have heard of technical debt. The same concept applies to analytics. You waited too long or got too big before implementing analytics, and now you don’t know which way is up or can even tell how anything is actually performing.
   2. Data is going to allow you to see. And it’s going to help you capture the trends and respond appropriately.
   3. This includes subscription metrics
6. We re-enter the age of “brand”.
   1. It feels weird to actually be recommending this to early-stage startups and small businesses alike. Typically we finding the brand campaigns aren’t the ones that convert. But having a voice — especially a positive one, or one that can help buyers “see” are the ones that build trust.
   2. I’m already recommending this to a few of my clients, and we’re answering the call by taking a look at their mission statements and overall vision. If it fits, we sits. And we start thinking about how we can be a voice, and even more specifically, one that provides value.
   3. It doesn’t need to convert. It just needs to keep us top of mind and close enough for when the prospect is ready to buy.
   4. It’s going to be about building relationships moving forward. And every free trial sign-up, account created, demo requested, and incoming chat message is going to feel more like gold.
7. Build your resilience.
   1. I’m not going to tell you to stay positive. The reality is that you’re going to have dark moments. You’re going to want to quit. You’re going to worry. You’re going to question everything and everyone.
   2. That’s where I’d rather tell you to stay resilient. Professional athletes aren’t super humans. They actually recover faster. And they are trained to perform.
   3. So if you’re going to be down, be down. And be compassionate towards yourself while you’re down. But don’t forget to come back up. You’ll find that every time you’re hit again, you recover even faster the next time. We call that building muscle.

Transcript

What’s up founders? Welcome to the very first episode of this podcast. My name is Asia. I am the founder of DemandMaven and we work with early stage startups on reaching their very first growth milestones. We’re kind of in an interesting time right now. First of all, did I think I would be creating a podcast right now? No, absolutely not. Especially not in this climate, and this environment, in this current period that we’re all in. The second thing is most of us are what, four to five weeks now I think into either stay-at-home orders or quarantine. I think most of us are also about two to three months into just overall global pandemic.

I imagine most of you’re thinking about what can you do over the short-term to stay alive. What needs to happen financially for you, for your business to survive this incredibly challenging and trying period? Especially since the experts are predicting that we’re going to be dealing with this for at least the next six months, and likely the next 12 months, even up to 18, and potentially, even 2 years, 24 months. Which, personally, is kind of shocking. And also not, when you think about how pandemics actually work. But that said, some of you are also considering what we need to do to stay alive even in the short-term. From a financial perspective, already we’re seeing layoffs, we’re seeing small businesses consider loans, and we’re also seeing contract pauses, overall press the stop button on any go to market activity.

Then there are others who might be in a slightly different financial situation from a business perspective, but there are others who are considering, “Okay, even if everything does pause or even if we know that we’ve got at least the next six months, what do we do from a go-to market perspective? What do we do with marketing? What do we do with sales? What do we do with what we’ve got.”

This my friends is where, personally, I really feel like I can help. I’ve been going back and forth on what makes sense for me in order to provide value to everyone, and not just my clients. Because what I’ve been working with client-wise or at least what I’ve been helping my clients with, it’s been largely focused on exactly that. How do we navigate the next few months? Then beyond, what do we focus on? How does our perspective shift? How do our clients and customers and prospects, how do their perspectives shift? What do we need to do to meet halfway?

Granted, a lot of us are in a pause right now, which is why I think this is actually the perfect time to be thinking about this and to be preparing for it. Overall though, this is where I can at least help. Instead of keeping all of these thoughts to myself, at least, I wanted a way to quickly and easily share with you not only what I’ve been working with my clients on, and how we’ve been approaching this, but also research that I’ve found, studies that I found, and just other perspectives about how to navigate. Especially from a growth, and just overall go-to market perspective this incredibly challenging time.

This is my contribution, and I hate that this is my first episode. But at the same exact time, personally, this is helpful even for me to remind myself that these are the truths, or some of these at least are going to have an incredible impact for you and your businesses. At the same exact time, it’s also what I’m already seeing. I think telling these stories and making sure that you guys know this information as well, it brings me joy. A little bit of Marie Kondo there. It can stay.

Let’s get into the list. Before I get into what those things are, I’ve got seven, and I just want to throw out the disclaimer. Unfortunately, I do feel compelled to say this, but these aren’t necessarily going to be things that all of you should listen to. Please use your absolute best judgment because only you can really know what your situation is, and what you’re comfortable with, and what makes sense for you in your market. But I can say most of these, I’d say like 80% of these, are going to be pretty applicable. I think that they’re things that you can actively use. Whether you are a startup in early stage startup, late stage, series A, bootstrapped, or if you’re a consultant or a small business, it doesn’t really matter. Most if not all of these things are going to be pretty applicable to you. A lot of it, honestly, is really going back to basics.

Let’s dig in. We’re probably going to be here for a while, so apologies in advance, this is long. Again, I wanted to share this and there will be a written accompaniment to this episode, so there will actually be an article if you prefer to read. I know some of y’all are like that. You want to skim, you just want to fast forward. I hope that this provides value, and I’m excited to hear your feedback, your thoughts, and also your experiences.

Number one, you are going to be extremely tempted to stop marketing and selling altogether. Don’t get me wrong, pausing absolutely makes sense. Taking that pause to really see how your market reacts, I think absolutely makes sense. But one thing I would throw a massive caution to is pausing all of your go-to market activities too much for too long.

Too long, debatable. None of this is something that I really do believe that it just really depends on your situation, where you’re at, overall, in the market and in your business. Some of you will likely not be able to afford certain services anymore. Some of you have already started thinking about tightening the belt. I think overall though, there’s too much research that shows that when you stop marketing and sales and go-to market activities during a recession or during any kind of economic downturn, you’re actually less likely to come out on top. So much so that at least a third of companies who do actually continue continued efforts and go-to marketing in, just marketing and sales in general, those who continue that and are as focused and prioritized and data-driven as possible. Those are usually the ones that actually come out on top.

To back this up, there’s actually an amazing article from, I believe his name is Derek Gleason. I could be totally wrong. I should’ve checked his name. He wrote an article on the CXL.com blog ConversionXL. It’s all about how to navigate during pretty dark times. How should you navigate marketing and sales? Actually, what this article was saying is a lot of what I’ve been saying, which I thought was awesome because it felt really good to be super aligned. But one thing that I believe Gleason found was he found a number of different research articles or research in general from pretty well known brands.

McKinsey and Harvard Business Review, both of them have analyzed how do businesses not only survive through recessions and economic downturns, but how do they thrive? The overwhelming evidence was that those businesses that didn’t just make cuts, they didn’t just cut, and then held it together. They might’ve made some cuts to some things, but overall, they still continued their go-to marketing efforts. They just got infinitely more focused. They used their data, and they also really focused on the market itself. Those who reacted to the market response, those were the ones who typically came out on top, but they didn’t necessarily stop marketing or stop sales or anything like that. They really just shifted their view. They pivoted how they were doing it. Their execution changed, their priorities changed, but they didn’t completely stop marketing and selling their businesses altogether.

What I’m going to say to you is, and this is where it gets kind of tricky because I don’t know your situation, but you know your situation, if you need to pause for a while on marketing and sales, go for it. If that ensures your survival in the short-term, do it. But if you pause and you get to a place, let’s say like in a month or two, eventually, people will, especially buyers. When I say people, I really mean buyers. Buyers will eventually get to a place to where we all adapt to a new normal.

As we move through crisis, there is light at the end of the tunnel. It will end. Where you want to be is on the other end of that light. You want to be there. As you start to approach the new normal, so do your prospects and your buyers and the rest of the world. Eventually, they’re going to go back into buyer mode and the world will no longer be as much on pause. I think that’s the important thing to remember. Just throwing caution to the wind and I promise I’m not saying all of this just because I’m a marketing consultant or a growth consultant. I’m telling you this because there’s research and there’s data that suggests actually the opposite. Take your time, think about it, but consider what your longer-term approach will need to be, which is a great segue into my second point.

This is something that I’ve actually been telling all of my clients. It’s time to start thinking long-term. Typically, whenever I start working with an early stage company, it’s all about the short-term. It’s all about the “What can we do and see results in the next month or two months or three months?” I would consider that pretty short term just because marketing and growth, in general, takes time, especially if it’s good. I think when it comes to what we’re experiencing now, the shift is going to be far much more focused on marketing and sales activities that stand the test of time. Some of those examples include, I’m just going to give you examples. Not saying that this is necessarily the answer, but these are examples. SEO, organic search, acquisition channels that are extremely low cost, which organic search, it doesn’t cost anything to search inside of Google, for example. The acquisition cost of that, apart from creating whatever the content is and publishing on the site there, you don’t pay for someone to have to search you, unless you’re doing paid search marketing, which is obviously a different story.

Organic search, that’s free, in theory. It’s free in theory, but it’s a long-term strategy. It’s always one of those things that a lot of founders wait to execute on. Now that we are entering into a slower time in life, this is the time to start thinking about what that SEO, organic search, content marketing strategy could and should be. Because it’s unlikely that we’re going to see quick turnaround times, at least on getting those closed deals extremely fast. We’re entering into a recession, it’s a downturn so people are going to be much more cautious and risk averse. It’s going to be harder to get paying customers. If that’s the case, then we need to be thinking long-term.

What are some of the things that do that from a marketing perspective? Again, SEO, organic search, people searching. Either searching for solutions or searching for answers. Hopefully, you’re providing things that they find and you can build trust and rapport with those people.

The other thing that I think about when I think about long-term and I’m just going to throw out a few, but partnerships come to mind. Co-marketing is going to be pretty interesting I think moving forward because those are relationships that you build with other brands and other people and other marketers and other founders. You can leverage those to really both of your advantages over the long-term.

Community, this is also something that comes to mind when thinking long-term. Community is not one of those activities or practices or strategies that happens overnight. Building an audience does not happen overnight. What I predict, at least what we’re going to see a pretty big shift in just go to Market Wise. For many companies, it’s going to be a new emphasis on community building, audience building, and thought leadership. Those are the kinds of things that, again, might not turn around a customer immediately, but you are going to be so glad you did it six months from now.

Do you need to do all those things? No, but there’s likely a few in there that are going to be good fits for you. There are even some that I did not cover that I would consider a very long-term. They’re not necessarily going to generate a bunch of leads in a couple of weeks. Or even generate buying customers in a short amount of time. As we enter into, again, a much more risk averse market, and as we enter into this new phase and this new way of being, the way that you get customers to close is by building trust and building rapport. That was always the case, but now that’s going to be even more so the focus.

What are some of the marketing and sales activities that you can do that encourage that longer-term focus? Content marketing, content creation, in general. When I think about organic search and SEO, those are usually the ones that come to mind.

Number three, shift your mindset to providing value. What you produce over the coming months should be almost exclusively about providing value. It’s weird to say this because from marketing and overall growth perspective, that’s always the case. We’re always thinking about what kind of value we’re providing. Hard sells, and again, the short-term tactics, I think that those are going to just become a lot harder. Everyone is slamming on the brakes right now. People are far more cautious about where they’re putting their dollars and where they’re putting their overall spend. I don’t think it’s necessarily a hard and fast rule, but I do believe that this is going to be far more common. We’re going to see just so much hesitation overall. How we work with that energy, if you will, is by focusing on how do we build trust and provide value in sales conversations, in your onboarding emails. Even when people start a free trial or visit your website, how can you position yourself, your brand, your business in a way that it just has tons of value at every single turn.

This is more than just “We’re offering free content.” This is every single part or step of the customer-buyer journey. Now, this should always be true, but again, I think this is going to be even more emphasized over time. I think that the businesses that are more flexible, that really want to work with customers and really work within their means, I think that those are going to be the brands that ultimately win.

On top of that, the brands that create value and produce content and produce things that provide that value and it is truly experienced by the customer, those are going to be the brands who build trust faster, they build rapport faster. They’re, ultimately, going to be able to bring their deals over the finish line. I think that’s going to be something that I look out for every single one of my accounts. But then also when I would encourage everyone to start thinking about.

Asia:
So a couple of questions for you here. What are your customers currently going through? What are they going through that you can shed some light on? Where can you be a beacon of light? It sounds fluffy, but that’s the real of it. If you can speak to your prospect, to your customer in that way, that’s truly shifting your mindset to be focusing more on how you can provide value. Your customers, your prospects, they’re experiencing something right now. If you can help them in any kind of way, whether that’s providing industry research or reports or insight or guiding strategies or best practices for what to do now, those are going to be the kinds of things that ultimately help people.

Asia:
Then do you need to extend your free trial? Do you need to work hand in hand with customers from now on, on getting everything set up. Going above and beyond, it’s going to just move mountains for you. That is going to be always true in every scenario, but I think especially now.

Asia:
Number four, check your value props. Some of your value props aren’t going to shift at all, but the market is going to shift. They are going to see you, your product, your business in a different light. Some much different than others. For a lot of you, not at all. Identifying what those shifts are is really going to be task number one. Task number two is really understanding where do you need to also shift those value propositions in your messaging. This could be on your website, through your onboarding emails, in your sales conversations. It needs to be reflected everywhere, but really the first step is understanding how has it shifted. Once you’ve identified that, see how it matches up against your existing value propositions.

Asia:
A great example of this… It’s actually a client of mine. There is a client that I have who’s value prop, originally, pre-pandemic, we focused mostly on ROI. The ROI that you get out of this particular product is 10 times that of what you’d see of the competing alternative. Now, in the conversations that we’re having from a sales perspective, now it’s far more about mitigating risk and regaining control, which is a very different shift than focusing exclusively on ROI. Of course, everything that we do needs to shift towards that. The messaging on the website needs to shift. All of our nurture emails need to shift a little bit more to focus less on the ROI and a lot more on the mitigating risk and regaining control.

Asia:
Sales decks are changing. Pretty much every single touch point that we have with a customer, especially through the conversion process or the sales process, needs to be updated and evaluated. And just making sure that we’re not focusing on the wrong value prop at the wrong time, and that we bring them in only after we’ve drilled down into the main ones.

Asia:
Number five. It is time to pay off your analytics debt because a lot of you have it. Right about now, you might be wishing that you didn’t. You might’ve heard of technical debt and think we’ve all, especially if you’re a technical founder, you might have heard of technical debt, just like in the SaaS world in general. It’s pretty much instead of rebuilding a particular part of the code base, you instead continue to build on top of it. Over time that code base becomes weakened because there’s better, more efficient ways to serve up that same exact code. Instead of taking the time to rewrite it, you instead incur technical debt.

Asia:
The same concept applies to analytics, however. With analytics though, it’s really more about you’ve gone for way too long and you’ve grown way too much without proper analytics. This includes subscription metrics. This includes website analytics. This includes really strong overall sales, CRM marketing data as well. What ends up happening to businesses is you go so long with analytics debt and you carry that around with you for however long. Years, sometimes even longer, which is kind of shocking, but it exists and happens. You get to a place to where you really need to make decisions based off of data but you don’t have it. Or if you do have it, it’s not in any easily accessible way.

Asia:
There’s no place for you to go to answer questions. And to look at your crystal ball and see, “Okay, what does the future hold?” This is the perfect time to tackle that. Part of that is because since everyone’s on pause, the best thing that you can do is go to your existing data and go to your database, go to your CRM, go to wherever you go, your subscription metrics. Take a second to really dig deep into what the trends are, what you can likely expect. From there, you can actually make decisions based off of go-to market. Whether you should pause some things and continue to expand others because they’re really well converting.

Asia:
It’s also going to be really important for you to keep your ear to the ground on the pulse of the business. What is actually happening from a go-to market perspective. The reality is a lot of dashboards, a lot of analytics platforms, and tools out there, a lot of it is, actually, really similar to what we’re experiencing in the pandemic mow. There are lagging indicators, meaning they only tell us what happened a few days ago. It doesn’t necessarily tell us what’s happening right now. That latency is always going to be something that you come up against. There are, of course, leading indicators, things that can highlight what the future holds, but if we’re not able to analyze the past, it’s going to be really, really, really hard to understand our present and then, of course, our future.

Asia:
So if you’ve got analytics debt, meaning you’re one of the ones who isn’t using subscription metrics. Or proactively taking a look at their marketing analytics or sales analytics or sales data, or even taking the time to pull that together to ask the right questions to get information to understand, this is the time. You might be worried about what does the future hold from a short-term perspective anyway. But if you have the bandwidth, I would say go ahead and take care of it now because moving forward, you’re going to want that data. You’re going to want to be able to look at something and know if it’s giving you the ROI that you’re expecting and if it’s worth the investment. That is going to be something that I imagine is going to be a pretty big trend over the next three months, six months, probably even longer than that.

Asia:
Number six, we are going to reenter the age of brand. I cannot believe I am saying this because as a demand gen marketer, my background, at least in demand gen, it feels very weird to say, “Yes, be thinking about brand.” The reason why is because, traditionally and very stereotypically, brand campaigns are not big converters. However, again, we’re in a paradigm shift right now. The top priorities that I would say for founders and leaders out there right now is to build trust, to build rapport. Building an audience now has never been more important. Building trust and rapport even more so. That’s because, again, you want to be out on top at the end of all of this. You want to have gained the support, the trust, the reverence of your prospects and your customers. To not means, one your competitors likely well, and two easily forgotten. I think that those are places where we don’t want to be.

Asia:
Building this trust and building this rapport and building an audience, it’s not purely for gain. Again, we need to be of a service mindset. We need to be of a value mindset. How can we provide value? We need our customers, and hopefully, you love your customers. I think from a building an audience and building that rapport, at the end of the day it comes down to building trust. One of the ways that we do that is through thinking about brand. Something that I recommended to one of my clients who was thinking about responding to the pandemic and they wanted to respond to it in a meaningful way, not just like a “Hey, we’ve got a free trial, use our product for free.” Which don’t get me wrong, would actually be beneficial. They’re in the right market, they’re in the right category to do that and it be perceived as valuable.

Asia:
They wanted to go a step further, and they wanted to do more. One thing I asked them was, “What’s your mission statement? What’s your vision statement? How do you see your company existing as a brand, and how do you embody that in every single way?” Now I know some of those answers, but I wanted the founder to tell me because that kind of vision, it might be tough right now. When your mission and the actions that you take, when they match your mission, and when your customers understand and know that, that is brand. That is a customer experiencing a brand. Is that the entire story of brand and branding and all of that other fun stuff? No. In fact, I would say, “I am definitely not a brand marketer.” So if there are any out there who are listening to this, please correct me on that.

Asia:
When a customer really experiences your mission statement and that’s gold, that’s butter right there. This might actually be a perfect time to be thinking and shifting that mindset towards brand. What does your company ultimately stand for at the end of the day?

Asia:
I think the other thing too that is painfully obvious, even now and also very bittersweet, but I think it’s very obvious that customers are reacting to brands that are really standing up for what they believe in, and ones in which they really feel the support from. And not like in the. “Hey, sign up for my free trial because I’m extending it for an extra 15 days,” kind of way.” But in a “Oh my gosh, you’re donating to this particular fund.” Or “Oh my gosh, you helped this particular hospital acquire these masks.” There’s just so many ways to give back and if it matches and aligns with your mission statement, that just strengthens the brand.

Asia:
Other ways that you, of course, can think about brand campaigns or just brand in general, I come back to thought leadership quite a lot. But at the end of the day, people, especially during this incredibly challenging time, they’re looking for answers, and they’re looking for hope. I think it’s really easy to get lost in the doom and gloom. In fact, I think most of our brains are wired for it. Of course, we want the negative, but I also think that so many of us want the positive as well. If you can be that beacon of light, and if it matches your mission statement, perfect. If it doesn’t, maybe it’s time to start thinking about your brand and what you ultimately stand for, what your vision is, and what your stake is and the ground on this incredibly challenging time. How you can be that beacon of hope and light for your customers.

Asia:
Like begets like, your vibe attracts your tribe. If your vibe is, “Hey, we really want to help, you are going to attract people who are probably going to be prospects and customers one day.” You’re going to attract those people. I think that’s the beauty and the magic of brand.

Asia:
I completely forgot to mention voice. Voice is also a part of brand. As you go through this exercise of thinking about what your business is and what does it stand for, that mission statement and how you want to react and how you want to respond and how you want to of course be the beacon of light. It also comes down to voice. One brand, in particular, that comes to mind is Gymshark. This is a fitness brand. I believe they’re B to C, they offer fitness apparel. My favorite example of them using their voice was actually something they did recently. They changed their name from Gymshark to Homeshark temporarily. This is an example of them playing with brand, using their voice as a way to inspire, but also remind people that, “Hey, we’re in this together and we’re going to get out of this together.”

Asia:
They changed the name of their brand from Gymshark to Homeshark because, for them at least, they felt that they need that people needed to be reminded that it’s stay at home time. In order to get through this, we’ve got to stay at home. To me, that was an example of not just “Does this align with our mission statement?” But also using their voice. No, they didn’t change everything to home shark, but still, I just thought that it was a great example of we’re continuing this conversation with our voice and here’s how we’re doing it.

Asia:
I think the biggest thing, and this is the thing I think that hurts even for me to say because so much of the work that I do is driven by “How many free trials can we generate? How many leads can we convert? How many demos can we close?” Don’t get me wrong, that’s the kind of mentality and mindset that a growth marketer should have. That’s definitely the kind of mindset that I have anytime I’m working with a new account or a client. I think that the whole point of a brand campaign or anything to do with brand really is that it doesn’t need to convert. It just needs to build rapport and build trust because when we all do come out on the other end of this, the brands that are remembered are going to be the ones who did that. That’s just exactly why I encourage it for you.

Asia:
The last one that I’m going to leave you with is all about building your resilience. Every single free trial, sign up, account created, demo requested, in-coming chat message, each of those are going to feel more and more like gold. Every time you don’t get them, it is going to likely tank your mindset. It’s going to hurt. MRR, whatever that thing is that gives you that rush, you might not see it as often or as frequent. That’s something that I think a lot of us were just mentally and emotionally preparing for. We’re not always going to see the results as quickly as maybe we did once.

Asia:
Then, of course, there’s the other side of this. Not just from a growth perspective, but from an experience perspective and a financial perspective and a security perspective and a personal perspective. It seems like we’re all kind of getting hit from all sides on this. Overall though, I’m not going to tell you to be positive actually. I’m not going to tell you to stay positive. The reason why is because you are getting hit from all different sides and angles. I think that the reality is that you’re going to have dark moments. You’re going to have moments where you want to quit. You’re going to worry, you’re going to have sleepless nights. I know I have absolutely already experienced that. You’re going to have moments where you do break down and where you do panic. I only wish that you give yourself space, time, and compassion to yourself for experiencing those emotions because they are natural, they are human. I also hope that you give others that, give others the same exact space and time and compassion.

Asia:
I think above all, I don’t know if telling you to stay positive is the best response. I actually think that telling you to stay resilient, be resilient, be thinking about ways that you can bounce back, not anytime, but every time. Cannot remember where I heard this from, but there is this really great example, or metaphor if you will, about resilience. It was about professional athletes and how many people think that professional athletes are superhuman, which don’t get me wrong, they kind of are, but the secret in their super humanness is actually in their recovery. They recover just infinitely faster than the average person, than the average exercise junkie or whatever. Professional athletes recover fast. The secret is in their recovery. That is what I hope that you start thinking about as well. How can you recover as fast as possible under stress? How can you still perform? It only comes with taking care of yourself, taking care of your body, and nourishing yourself wherever you need to.

Asia:
I know that sounds fluffy. I’m sorry. Maybe I’m not sorry, actually. I’m not going to apologize. It is fluffy, but it works. That’s the kind of stuff that leaders actually do. If you’re going to be down, be down and be compassionate towards yourself while you’re down. But do not forget to come back up. Don’t forget to be resilient, you’ll that every time you’re hit again and again and again, you’ll recover even faster the next time. That’s what we call building muscle. Just to make that exercise and fitness metaphor really sink in.

Asia:
To close this out, I want to leave you with a quote from one of Dylan Thomas’s most famous poems. “Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” I hope you rage with me, especially since skies seem pretty great at the moment. But my question to you is how are you preparing yourself and your business during this extraordinary time? It’s definitely pretty interesting. Thank you so much for spending this time with me. I really wish you the best. Let me know what you think. Until next time, bye guys.

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