An open letter to my LinkedIn tribe. And maybe entrepreneurs everywhere.
There are hours in some days when it feels like the sky is falling, I know. Revenue is scary challenged. Everybody is worried and hurting. There are layoffs, budget cuts, and the market is threatened with massive shifts in every category. People are worried about their livelihoods and very physical health.
During those hours, when you close your eyes, it feels like a nightmare: like someone pushed you off the top of a huge mountain or out of a plane. It’s dark out, you’re free falling. Oh, and your parachute is not opening.
And this also feels like the worst possible time to do anything big. But for us at Imagine If, this is when we were supposed to launch a new promise to our current and future clients. We’ve been in business successfully for six years, and we waited for a global disaster to do a really big thing. Shit is an appropriate response here.
Since October of last year, my team has taken on the challenge of bringing a new set of services that challenge the data, research and insights industry. Our aim is to deliver impact better than our clients can even expect.
We hired for it.
We beefed up our capabilities.
We developed entire new services.
We took on our entire brand identity. And built a brand new website.
Then the COVID-19 pandemic hit. It hit ALL of us.
As a human, my reaction was to hide. The warm Cali King comforter I have not put away since December was perfect for layering, cocooning, sleeping in for hours. Who knows, maybe until the parachute opened.
As a leader of a small, talented and dedicated team of amazing human beings and professionals, I did what I could – my best.
Like many other entrepreneurs I had to pull it together, put on make up and lead. During that first week of complete shock, we huddled, we put out our most courageous selves, and decided to hold off on our big brand refresh announcement. Talk about anticlimactic. A marketer’s worst nightmare.
No one would care about us or our new promise to the world now.
We decided instead to take care of each other. Immediate family. Closest friends. Ourselves.
I did a fat-face video outreach to our LI tribe. We offered anyone who was in need of mental health support to reach out so we could gladly gift them with a meditation or a wellbeing app.
Then we went into helping mode and pivoted with some of our services and offerings. Here is what we have for you, our tribe, our community, our clients, and future clients.
- Lots of love. Good old human-to-human compassion, empathy and love.
- A promise to be there for you and to guarantee positive impact for you– with anything that we can do for you.
- A new service called Virtual Success– led by our organizational impact leader, Raffi Arslanian, aimed at helping you become the most effective you can be in virtual mode, starting with virtual meetings. (No, it’s not about how to use Zoom.)
- A Consumer Sentiment Survey that tracks key metrics that decision makers care about – and results will be shared for free on an upcoming LinkedIn Live.
- A heart-to-heart Consumer Communitycalled YourStory that understands the human stories behind the quantified key metrics – coming your way every two weeks. Because, the numbers are not enough now.
- A series of interviews with professional parents on strategies for managing the new reality of WFH parents.
- Apodcast aimed at bringing inspiring and impactful stories of survival and hope through adversity and tough times – from interesting people and professionals who have not only survived adversity but also thrived to help others in return.
- Free content on our brand spanking new website for how to start thinking about the new normal, how to think about virtual meetings, and lots more content packed with articles, ideas, and insights on how to navigate professional, business and personal challenges we’re all facing now.
- Masks made at home(well, more like Milan-trained designer-made) by our creative lead, MongQ Tran – tune in on Friday, 4/10 for more on that.
And lastly, more love. More hope. More boldness to find the right balance of hard business reality and eternal human optimism. Somewhere between your heart and mind.