If you want to change your life, there is only one truth you must learn.
But before I share that truth, you must understand, in life, it is easy to sit by and do nothing. But doing that would not be wise.
Remember what happened to Blockbuster?
If you’re old enough, you would know that Blockbuster Video was a huge chain of stores where they rented out video games and movies on DVD. Back then, you had to leave your house and show your rental card to take a movie home, and then take the movie back before the due date or pay a fine.
At one point, Blockbuster actually had an opportunity to acquire Netflix for $50 million. Only $50 million! But, the CEO of Blockbuster lacked the vision, the ability to change, so he didn’t take action, and that led to their downfall. In 2010, Blockbuster went bankrupt when it lost $1.1 billion dollars.
Today, Netflix is worth a market cap of $150 billion dollars. “Netflix and chill,” has become a catch phrase, a verb, and a household brand. No one wants to leave the house to rent a movie for a few days anymore.
And of course the CEO and founder of Netflix is now a billionaire.
In order for things to change, the only thing that’s constant is change. This is especially true in business, where you must keep pace with the times to survive.
Watch this video about what you need to do to anticipate change.
Life Changes As Fast As Technology
Business practices change constantly, like a revolving door. Out with the old, and in with the new.
When I was in my early 20s, fax broadcasting was the trend. I was working with my first mentor Alan Jacques who had a successful company that marketed to businesses using fax broadcasting.
If you’re not sure what fax broadcasting is, then compare it to sending email. You were able to send a lot of faxes at one time to prospects to market your products and services. It was profitable because it was cheap. Later, they said we couldn’t spam people with faxes so we had to adapt.
We found out we could do outbound telemarketing so we switched to that instead. We did a lot of cold calling to bring in business and that was working well at one point. Then, like broadcast faxing, the government said we cannot do that. They said, you can’t call people to sell your offers on the phone anymore.
So we had to change how we connected with customers once again. How we did it next is not as important as the lesson we learned. To keep up with change, you need to ask yourself some important questions.
Anticipate Change and Be Ready to Change
In life, you need to think about some important questions to anticipate what changes could happen in your future. You need to ask yourself:
- What can go wrong next?
- What can I capitalize on next?
- What will happen if I [what your next move will be].
Consider what will happen if you lose your job or your investment tanks. What is your backup plan?
If you’re an entrepreneur, what will happen if you lose your most important client or account? How about if you lost your most important employee? Or your vendor goes out of business without warning? What would you do?
Being able to adapt to change is highly important. Before the 1900s, human knowledge was doubling every century. By the late 1940s, knowledge was doubling every 25 years. Today, human knowledge is doubling every 13 months. IBM predicts that by 2020, knowledge will double every 12 hours. Will you be able to keep up?
The speed of knowledge is increasing exponentially. To keep up with change, you need to be ready to change.
Making these changes to your life is about asking yourself what could go wrong. It also means having the right attitude. When times are good, you don’t want to be overly optimistic. But when times are bad, don’t be overly pessimistic.
Tough times don’t last but tough people do.
If you know your weaknesses, you will know what to change. The philosopher Confucius once said, “Real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance.”
What is one positive change you will make to your life this week? Comment below.
