Originally posted – Sep 12, 2013
“Time is a dressmaker specializing in alterations.”
– Faith Baldwin, U.S. author and novelist
We are living in a time when the rate of change is like none other in history. Today, the slow path is reserved for those on a fast track to obsolescence.
And, to build a healthy laundry business, you need to leap into action with the aggressiveness of a caged tiger. Being complacent in business is so totally last decade.
Yet, change makes many people very uncomfortable. In fact, on a psychological level, things that make people reorganize their view of the world often causes hostility and inaction.
Since I write this monthly column, I’m always looking for ways to improve my fund of knowledge and to remain “with it.” So, I subscribe to today’s “cool” business magazines, like Fast Company and Wired – not just the traditional, old-school periodicals, such as Forbes, Businessweek and Fortune. Hey, I gotta be cool, too.
I have to admit that these new types of business magazines make me somewhat nervous. They’re formatted and written for the 30s and 40s crowd, of which I am no longer a member. The language is different. For example, I use the word “money,” where the typical 30- or 40-year-old might use the term “metrics.”
Even the subjects written about are vastly different.
These new-style “biz mags” talk about things like how to create a modern office – using the latest computer or smartphone technology – anywhere you happen to be. (Heck, my office has always had a permanent address and a landlord who expects a monthly rent check.) I recently read an article about how the next wave of technology will be applied directly to our bodies. And there was another article about headphones that sense your mood, a scooter in a suitcase and a recliner that gives you a workout.
I also just read about the phenomenon of “longlining,” which it seems is the latest “phishing” exploit where mass emails are automatically customized to evade corporate firewalls. Huh? I’m not even clear on what phishing actually means. I thought it had something to do with seafood.
As I said, the degree of change makes me (and you, I suspect) nervous. The ever-popular saying in show business used to be, “Acts don’t change, audiences do.” Not anymore. Today both acts and audiences change. It’s a fast-tract world and getting faster – and laundry owners have to keep up and change their advertising and marketing and management and financial acts accordingly. You can’t adapt to the future by clinging to the past.
No technology or marketing methods are permanent. Everything has a beginning and an end. The person who invented the ship also inadvertently invented the ship wreck.
Dioscorides, the first century Greek surgeon and professor of medicine, taught his medical students to diagnose infection using only four simple criteria: Rubor (is it red?), Tumor (is it swollen?), Calor (is it warm?) and Dolor (is it painful?). Today, we of course use highly technical and specific medical tests to diagnose different types of infections. As I said, acts do change.
The changes – like them or not – directly affecting your laundry business are incredible. Here are just eight of the most important ones (there are many more, of course) you need to know about, because the present is always changing and business truths change with it. Philosophically, all future events eventually pass into the past.
Demographic and Cultural Diversity Changes
The population of the United States has changed dramatically. It now consists of people with a diversity of cultural backgrounds. They must be marketed to as individual market segments, using high-tech methods. This affects your internal signage and advertising messages.
Age Diversity Changes
People are living longer and are much more active as senior citizens than ever before. This means you need to make a place for them in your advertising because they are viable customers. In fact, they are a definite unique market segment.
Work Habit Changes
Employees view their jobs differently than in years past. It’s not always the most important of their life events. So, when hiring and training (and coexisting with your attendants), keep this in mind.
Work Hours Changes
The work world is a different place. Not everyone wants a full-time job. Some want two or three different jobs, and they may consider being an attendant at your self-service laundry just one of them. You need to accept this change, plan for it and build it into your management style.
Work Clothing Changes
I’m sure you’ve noticed that most people no longer don’t dress up to go to work… or nearly anywhere, for that matter. That changes the nature of their clothing inventory, and that definitely affects their laundering habits and needs – and, hence, your laundry business. Also, a lot of people now work out of their homes, so their clothing needs have changed dramatically.
Media Changes
People used to call one another on their home phones. Or, they actually wrote letters to one another. Not anymore. It’s all about cell phones, texting and social media. The news magazine and newspaper industries are in big trouble because, for the most part, those media outlets are no longer the most popular ways in which people find out what’s going on in the world. Using my iPhone 5, I can verbally and visually communicate with anyone in the world in an instant. Does this affect your advertising methods? You bet it does, and you need to adapt.
The Internet
The internet changed absolutely everything –no ifs, ands or buts. Information on any subject is available to everyone on this planet on the ‘net instantly. For example, reviews of your laundry (good, bad and otherwise) can appear on the internet and totally affect your business.
Neuromarketing Advances
This is the new one that must not be ignored. Neuromarketing will affect your advertising methods big time, and the sooner you learn about it the better for your business.
The technical name for this is actually “neuro-linguistic sales programming.” It provides many new dimensions in observing and communicating with customers and prospective customers.
Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) is a relatively recent development by John Grinder, a linguistics professor, and Richard Bandler, a psychologist and physicist, at the University of California.
It provides information on such things as how eye movements can reveal thought patterns; how people interpret what they hear (which applies to radio ads); and kinesthetic data, meaning how bodily movements can be interpreted in response to your advertising and your laundry appearance. In short, it offers valuable information on how to sell to neurologically different people by knowing how they are programmed to process information and make purchasing choices.
Today’s savvy laundry marketers need to adopt and adapt to these changes and understand that there are many more on the horizon. The wise traveler always prepares properly for the journey, knowing that this will make the path that lies ahead more predictable and comfortable.
Nobel prize-winning poet T.S. Eliot once observed that “human kind cannot bear too much reality.” And change is perhaps the most uncomfortable reality. Do you really want to adapt to major changes?
Of course, you don’t.
However, maybe I can make it easier for you with a few actionable ideas. Try this:
Don’t put so much emotional baggage on each thing you need to adapt to. Just keep adapting slowly but surely. Grasp the thought that your business life is no longer an unbroken avenue of green lights.
Understand that everything really important has multiple causes. Come to terms with the idea that you don’t need to simplify everything. Get intellectually curious. Stretch your mind and it will never return to its previous size.
Also, know that feeling anxious when dealing with change is completely normal. Sometimes you will be so anxious that your concerns will cause you to lose sleep. And sometimes you will just be so happy that you can’t sleep.
Let go of your world view that conventional wisdom wins the game. It’s OK and necessary to do so because the definition of conventional wisdom has changed.
A poignant example of this is the central theme of playwright Arthur Miller’s classic 1949 Broadway production “Death of a Salesman,” about a once-successful but now failing salesman named Willie Loman.
The reason for Loman’s sales decline and depression was that he clung to the invalid notion he needed nothing more than to be well liked to get orders, because it always worked in the past. Loman lost his way, his identity and his sense of reality because he refused to accept and adapt to change in a changing sales world.
As the former tennis coach at Michigan State University often used to tell his players (and I know because I was the team’s student manager): “Don’t think. It hurts the team. Just watch the ball and hit it.” What he meant was just immediately adapt to each unique situation. Smart coach.
I recently saw a cartoon depicting a caricature of a nervous individual, and the caption was: “Of course you pivot, that’s what being alive means.”
It’s about keeping your mind open to pivoting. Adapting to business life today is about accepting that the past is history – totally rearview mirror stuff.
There is an ancient Greek gesture of symbolically leaving your past behind by throwing a rock over one shoulder.
I suggest you find yourself a rock.
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