Revolution 2.0
In this pandemic the businesses are going out, particularly the live events, wedding events and many more. but the digital and everything related to the internet is getting more and more engagement.
In this pandemic the companies need a digital shift not just the companies but even the individuals the jobs offerings are changing with this shift.
People have gone through this pandemic both on a personal level and maybe a macro kind of like a business level because this pandemic has created a lot of you know, winners and a lot of losers. It's been varied all over the world.
These are the things we need to apply in this digital shift with the business and on the individual level because it’s not the strongest or the fastest that survive but the most adoptable, adoptable to the new environment.
I: How is your business World? That is the question for everybody today and there are winners and losers but personally we need adjustment just like Gary Vee is to live a world in a digital way. Just like him every day we need to communicate to companies and now need to gone through this incredible transition to what I call the
We all need to go through this transition and need to tell a story online and you know one of the best benefit we going to get through this transition is shift of direct-to-consumer sales and going to become very proficient at Logistics and have been able to just take away what they lost from retail sales and sold it direct to customers. So in this crazy outcome that we could have never foreseen eighty percent of the portfolio, even though revenues are down, we are going to actually ahead of free cash flow forecasts. because these businesses have gone from just doing 10% direct-to-consumer to doing 40 to 50% direct-to-consumer at almost a hundred percent gross margin and they saved the companies.
Now the ones in travel, the ones in entertainment, the movie theater business are the wedding events and the live event stuff, I'm sorry, they're going to zero and that's 20%. But 80% that's fantastic. They're going to make it.
We never in our lives have the opportunity to have such a captive customer. They are sitting at home just like you and I are. They are looking to be entertained and communicated with. They are willing and able to purchase products and services, but they want it done conveniently and delivered directly to them.
This is the digitization of the world in a very fast way and what I learned and this is really binary. I used to have this joke, I used to tell people what career should you have? And I'd say well there's three careers if you're going to go to college and invest in yourself Engineering, Engineering and Engineering but now you know to whom companies and recruiters are hiring story writers, videographers, photographers and editors. Recruiters have to compete all around the world in hiring some people in Israel and Italy and France to cut video because all of the companies are telling stories on their websites. And so now they are going to empowered a whole new generation of artists and that CEO’s would have never guessed storytelling, Direct Communications with your customer compelling them to watch that 19, 20, 13, 9 and 49 second videos that communicates what your product or Services is what the successful companies are doing and they are going to spend millions of dollars in this digital pivot.
Obviously because people have a personal brand and they need to talk and listen the same is doing the Legend Gary Vaynerchuk from the last 11 years building a Communications Death Star to do everything we just talked about because he basically believed that the internet was going to squeeze the middle.
“Everything was going to be direct to consumers whether that's OTT or e-commerce and that the ability to storytelling run the Arbitrage of the distributions” Gary Vee.
2: To build a personal brand you need to pick a platform whether it’s a TikTok or linkedIn where you sit personally right now with social or content creation and Gary Vee is the role model for the guy like these. People need to hire a team of producers, editors and storytellers to work and to build a personal brand.
3: What I learned and this is the Paramount and this is big, you cannot bullshit people. You can't lie to them. You have to be totally transparent whether that's good, bad or ugly. You got to tell the truth. That is where a personal brand is built. The same thing they are teaching now virtually in Boston and to graduates of MIT and Harvard in Entrepreneurship. It's like dating, you know, when you fall in love and you meet somebody in your just empowered by that magic moment and I draw this analogy all the time. You just it's so wonderful and everybody should fall in love with whoever it's going to be but then as time passes the things change and maybe a year or two later. You're thinking about cheating. Okay, and you do. Now you have a decision to make after you've done that: do tell the truth to your significant other or do you keep it a secret? And here's why I bring it up for business. You're going to get caught 100% of the time when you cheat you're going to get caught because you didn't tell the truth your significant other can never look at you the same again. You've lost 50 percent of the equity in that relationship forever. It may not break up, it may go on but it will never ever be the same. Yeah, you can do business the first time you lie to your customers, your constituencies, your shareholders, you lose 50% of the equity forever better to tell the truth and take the head and the ownership and transparency and intent around the I'm sorry. In addition to that there is a half pregnant sorry and the real sorry. Keep in mind that the standards in which people want from companies is completely, completely impossible for most companies. They may be good at the environment but they're bad at wages. Companies are convoluted animals just like people and this thought that you don't understand how to say sorry when you're trying to fix something people would rather dance instead of owning it and to my point is that lack of apology creates more damage sometimes than even the event itself. Yes that’s it, do not lie to the customers, don't lie to your employees. Don't lie to me, don't lie to anybody or shareholders, even take the pain, take the hit, admit the mistake you made and you will build a relationship particularly with customers. What we're learning online is if you have a direct relationship with a customer and you're honest with them and tell them I either products are going to be delayed or sorry you got a bad product or replaceable give your money back whatever it is.
That communication ends up being very very valuable over time. Those customers stay loyal. We've learned that a hundred fold in our companies now, and now we need to run across the portfolio. Businesses are going to almost customer directive revenue that's magic, that's freaking magic because that's a hundred percent gross margin business.
One of the fun topics in the chess game of what I am talking about is channel Conflict for the people that still rely on. A lot of business from retail as we feel watching them go around them and that is going to be interesting battles in the next decade of businesses.
P.S. Don't lie to your significant others because may be a year or two later when the conditions change you gonna caught up and then you gonna loose the 50% of the credibility forever. You can't recover this damage, you just created the mistrust.