Thank you 2020. You taught me well.

That 2020 was a challenging year would be stating the obvious. Instead, I’d like to focus on what this difficult year taught us and would love to hear of your learnings in the comments section below:

1.Sudden crises are like a ‘stress test’ for the team and your business: They help check the resilience, strength and quality of your team, your business model and your backers and investors. Happy to report that we’ve been lucky and blessed to have an awesome team and investors who stood by us through this roller-coaster of an year !

2. Remote working can foster ‘trust’ among team members. Teams built on trust, win! You need to trust people to do their job when they’re not working together under the same roof with you. This trust needs to be earned by delivering outcomes even while working remotely. Teams built on trust always outperform. Ours did consistently and for that I am grateful!

3.Your health is your biggest asset: Investing in keeping your body and mind in top shape will yield good returns, especially in periods such as the one we’re in right now.

4. Cutting out the noise and narrowing your focus, helps you make progress: When cash is scarce, the future is uncertain and sales plummet to zero overnight, sharply focussing on your core strengths can help you claw your way back up. For us that’s making innovative products that tie-in with our mission of making beauty inclusive, transparent and wholesome. Our biggest launch of 2020- our herb-enriched lipsticks- were launched in the middle of a pandemic!

5. Simple pleasures are refreshing and energising: Skills, hobbies and spending time with family were the only reminders of normalcy and sanity during this turbulent year! We take our near and dear ones for granted so often when we have so much to be thankful to them for.

What other 2020 learnings can you share ?