Let’s say we were sitting in your strategic planning meeting this time last year, and we were planning out your strategy for 2020.

Now imagine that I stood up in that meeting and said,

2020 is going to be a unique year! There will be a global crisis so severe that the government is going to loan you money to support your payroll. Then we’re going to see marches and demonstrations in the streets across the country. We’ll have unemployment in the double digits with major sectors of the economy totally shut down…

How would you have set your goals for 2020? What would your budget for 2020 have been like?

If we had set our goals with those expectations, I bet many of you would be feeling pretty good right now!

2020 was a good reminder that we’re not invincible. I know good people wh0se businesses have shrunk to a shadow of what they were, others whose business is gone completely. But many more of us are feeling…kinda, OK, maybe even good!

How do survivors feel?

But there’s a weird bravado that comes from testing fate and surviving, right? It reminds me of a scene from The World According to Garp where a family is shopping for a house when an airplane crashes into it! Garp, played by Robin Williams, immediately turns to the realtor and says, “We’ll take it!”

When his wife tries to object, he replies, “Do you know what the odds are of TWO airplanes crashing into this house? It’s pre-disastered!”

How does living through 2020 make you think differently about your business? How does it make you think differently about 2021? Are you more cautious or willing to take more risks?

Are you waiting for the other shoe to drop, or are you emboldened that you made it through so much already?

I’m in the season where I’m helping clients with their budgeting and planning for 2021 – if that’s something you’d want to engage in, hit reply and let me know.