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GE K To Create or not to Create: Why you should Create Content During a Crisis Creating content during a crisis can feel like hammering a nail into a rock day after day. People walk by and think you’ve gone mad. You wake up each morning wondering if you’re actually doing the right thing. There’s a little bit of dust, and a few tiny chips of rock have flown off, but for the most part, the rock looks no different. One day though, you’re finally rewarded: With one final blow, the rock splits into two pieces. But you realize that it wasn’t that single final blow that got you here—it was the 620 blows to the rock that came before.
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By Ross Simmonds
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Hammering a nail into a rock can feel unfulfilling.
Creating content during a crisis can feel the same way—or even worse. Insensitive. Foolish. Wasteful. At the end of 2019, a worldwide crisis began to emerge, and grew rapidly. The exponential growth of COVID-19 created a global pandemic, causing social, mental, physical and economic upheaval that will influence the world for decades to come. In the midst of the chaos, we’ve seen both the beauty and the fragility of humanity and society as a whole. For many makers and entrepreneurs, the crisis has been a complete disaster, wiping out revenue, tanking investments and causing verbal agreements to be canned in the final hour. Much of this fallout can be attributed to people staying at home for the foreseeable future as a
BLACK to BUSINESS
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Summer 2020
way to flatten the curve. Entire countries are enforcing lockdowns. Governments have shut down schools, restaurants, barber shops and museums. Massive events have been forced to cancel. And international air travel is on hold. The result: More people at home. More remote work. More education at home. More screen time. The disruption is real. But to keep food on the table and to meet stakeholder expectations, many companies and entrepreneurs must continue to move forward even during a global crisis. Businesses trying to operate in this landscape have tons of questions: What do we do next? How do we pivot? How do we continue to tell our story? Where do we cut expenses? What should we do with our marketing budget and resources moving forward? My advice: Create.
