I have always said that once you get to be an outside cat it’s very difficult to go back to being an inside cat.
We hear that a lot of people are enjoying working from home. A lot have got lockdown dogs and bicycles. All that time and money saved by not commuting. Money saved not paying for dry cleaning and expensive sandwiches. And businesses can save on expensive office rent. No more find an office, sign a long lease, grow out of it, rinse and repeat. Flexibility will be paramount for office space from now on. Flexibility in general will be important for most businesses from now on. For business people, it used to cost about A$5,000 per employee per month just in rent and overheads. Just to give them a seat at a desk. It should cost you a lot less now.
Sure it has thrown up some logistical issues but everyone I know is dealing with it fine. Albeit a bit starved of human contact but we will learn to get that more from our communities and less from an office. You never know, lawyers might have relationships with people who are not also lawyers.
But let’s dig a little deeper. My mate Dave says that once businesses get comfortable getting work done by someone in suburban or rural Australia, it won’t be long till they take the next step and use people all over the world. Most of you are doing that now to some degree via platforms like Upwork. It’s hard to know how to think about it all, you can see as many opportunities for exploitation as you can for liberation. My view, for what it’s worth, is that the change is coming regardless. Individually we can either surf the changes and try to do good or drown in them. Sometimes we long for simpler times but simplicity is something we can still strive for, just in new ways.
You will always need to focus on two main things. 1) what, when, how, and where to sell, and 2) what, when, how, and where to deliver.
One thing most of my clients have in common is that they have very large clients. If you think this stuff gives you a headache imagine the grief it causes bigger companies. It usually takes you about the same amount of effort to sell to a larger company as it does to a smaller one and often smaller companies can be more cautious. So go big.
If you can see a way through all this change you will provide value.
Photo by Giuseppe Mondì on Unsplash