Don’t miss the boat: Staying Relevant in a Changing Marketplace – with Linda Popky

Pam Harper (00:01): As the business environment keeps changing faster than ever before, today's guest, Linda Popky, shares what you can do to keep your company relevant as your market changes. Join us for Episode 212 of Growth Igniters Radio with Pam Harper and Scott Harper.

Chris Curran (00:27): This episode is brought to you by Business Advancement Inc., enabling successful leaders and companies to accelerate to their next level of success. On the web at businessadvance.com, and now here's Pam and Scott.

Pam Harper (00:44): Thanks Chris, and welcome everyone. I'm Pam Harper, Founding Partner and CEO of Business Advancement Inc., and sitting right across from me as always is my business partner and husband, Scott Harper.

Scott Harper (00:58): Hi everybody. It's great to have you with us. And as always, our purpose here is to spark new insights, inspiration, and immediately useful ideas to help visionary leaders accelerate themselves and, of course, their companies to their next level of game-changing innovation, transformation, and growth. Pam, leading an established company to keep it relevant as the world keeps changing, it can be a tricky art. All we need to do to prove this is just look the news to see companies that used to be giants, used to be dominant in their industries, that have faded out. They're gone now. Or they're just a shadow of their former selves. We're not here to point fingers, but everybody can think of examples.

Pam Harper (01:44): Absolutely, and on the other hand, there are leadership teams of well-established companies, beloved brands that have transcended the challenges of staying relevant to their market. And the leaders are proactively transforming their companies, and they're creating game-changing value that has taken them to new heights of market success. It sounds very inspirational, and it is, and is also very profitable.

Scott Harper (02:11): It can be, and you don't have to be a startup to do this, but you have to be able to go with the flow and know that there's a lot at stake, so let's discuss what it takes to stay relevant in a changing marketplace.

Pam Harper (02:27): Well, that's why we're speaking today with award-winning, Silicon Valley-based marketing expert, Linda Popkey. Linda's the founder and president of Leverage2Market Associates. She helps organizations and individuals get heard above the noise by creating compelling content that matters. Her clients include startups, small businesses, mid-sized, companies and large Fortune 500 companies.

Pam Harper (02:54): Just a little bit more about Linda, because we want to get right to the conversation, Linda is the author of Marketing Above the Noise: Achieve Strategic Advantage with Marketing That Matters, and Top of Mind: 101 Insights to Transform Your Business. She also helps authors create more compelling self-published and commercially published books. A classically trained pianist, Linda recorded Night Songs, a CD of classical piano music. She and her family share their home in San Francisco Bay Area with a small pack of Siberian Huskies. Yeah.

Pam Harper (03:33): You can read much more about Linda's background by going to growthignitersradio.com/episode212, and scrolling down to her bio. Linda, welcome to Growth Igniters Radio.

Linda Popky (03:44): Well, thank you. Great to be here, Pam and Scott.

Pam Harper (03:47): Yes. It's been about time. I'm a follower of your blog, and of course we know each other as colleagues as well. I'm looking forward to this conversation, but before we really get into it, I'm curious, what was the major influence that led you to your business focus? You could have done Siberian Huskies. You could have been...

Scott Harper (04:10): A concert pianist?...

Linda Popky (04:13): Well, I could have been a concert pianist if I was a little better, but I knew I wasn't quite that quality. My dad said to me, "Look, you can study music, but you've got to find a way to support yourself, kid." I wound up in advertising, and interesting because we've heard a lot the last month or so about the 50th anniversary of Watergate, right? And that was pretty seminal for me, because I read All the President's Men, and I wanted to be Woodward and Bernstein. I got already to go to journalism school and got in.

Linda Popky (04:44): The first thing they do in Boston, in Boston University, is they send you to Boston City Council meetings, and then they send you to traffic court, and then they send you to write obituaries. Very quickly, I realized 99.9% of journalists are not Woodward and Bernstein, so I gave up on that one and said, "I'm creative. I like to write. Maybe I should do things that are more creating content and work that way," so I've worked on the agency side and PR agency side. I've worked on the corporate side, and for the last 19 years I've worked on my own as a consultant, which allows me to work with a lot of different companies in different stages of their business, and it's a lot of fun.

Pam Harper (05:21): I definitely get that feel from reading your columns. You wrote a column that really struck me. You talked about HoJo, the familiar word for Howard Johnson. Some of the people who are listening will go, "I don't know what that is. Who's Howard Johnson," right?

Linda Popky (05:39): Yeah. It's funny. Growing up, I grew up in Northeastern Pennsylvania, and there was the Northeast extension of the turnpike, which got us to Philadelphia and beyond. Every so many miles, there was a Howard Johnson's, which we called HoJo, or as my little sister would say, Joward Hohnson's, right? Because she got it backwards. That was where you stopped, because that was where you got gas, but also where you got, I don't know, 20, 30 flavors of ice cream.

Linda Popky (06:01): They were all over the east coast, maybe in the Midwest too, I think. I'm not sure they got to California. That was where you went. They had the mind share, and everybody went to Howard Johnson's. Over a period of time, they kind of faded away, and what I learned right before I wrote the column is the last Howard Johnson's, which was up in, I think, Lake George, New York area, finally closed up and is becoming something else. It's the end of an era, and the question is, "Well, they were so good for so long. Why are they gone? What happened?"

Pam Harper (06:33): And it was funny too, because I started doing a little research when we decided that we would talk about this a little bit, and apparently at one point in time, they were it. I mean, they were the largest restaurant chain in the country.

Linda Popky (06:49): Absolutely. Before there was McDonald's, as a chain. Before there was Denny's and those other kind of casual, fast food restaurants. Where I lived, in New England, we had Friendly's ice cream, which was kind of, sort of the same, but Howard Johnson's was there long before all the others.

Scott Harper (07:07): The thing is though, it's not alone. There are lots of other really iconic companies, dominant companies. You know, the Sears tower, it's still in Chicago where we used to live, but Sears is gone. You said something very interesting in a conversation we had, that Howard Johnson's could have morphed maybe Sears. What kept Sears from becoming Amazon or Kmart from becoming Walmart? They didn't.

Linda Popky (07:34): It's interesting, because Sears was Amazon of the late 19th, early 20th century, because there was a Sears catalog in every home that was mailed to you. There was a Sears catalog store in every major outpost, whether it was a town, a farm community, or whatever. Before there was the internet, you bought things on Sears, and they came to you in the mail, just like Amazon before there was Amazon Prime, to the point where there are actually just interesting books, you can read about Sears houses. You could buy a house, pick out the plan.

Linda Popky (08:11): In a couple of weeks, a month, or two, out would come a package of wood, doors, and windows, and the carpenters from Sears that would come and put the whole thing together, and these houses still exist. They were there, but why did they not become Amazon? Why did Kmart not become Walmart, et cetera? I think part of it is a problem in Silicon Valley we call the installed base, which is you have customers and you want keep those customers, and therefore you don't want to do anything that might hurt your relationship with your existing customers, and therefore you miss the boat. It's sort of like continuing to sell buggy whips when we're all moved to automobile. You're so busy with the horse and buggies, that you miss the fact that automobiles are going to obsolete horse and buggies, and I think that's a big part of it.

Scott Harper (08:59): There are companies that have been around for a long, long time that haven't done that. They haven't gone out. GM, they were in trouble for a while, but they're coming back, and they've vowed to go all electric. Xerox went down. It's come back up, and it moves back and forth. There's something that changes, is different between Sears and GM.

Linda Popky (09:24): Well, the difference is GM went bankrupt first, before they had to hit the bottom before they'd bounce back up.

Scott Harper (09:33): But do you have to do that -- hit bottom first??

Linda Popky (09:34): At one point, Xerox was a verb. You Xeroxed something, right? You didn't photocopy it, and today I still talk about xeroxing something on my HP copier, right? It doesn't have the market presence that it had. That other company in Rochester, across the road, Kodak, owned the film market, and they couldn't see beyond photo film. Those are companies that had to go through kind of a metamorphosis to reinvent themselves.

Linda Popky (10:02): Why were they able to do that? Well, they had to hit ground first, but then they had people who said, let's look beyond where we are. If you look at the management of GM today, they said, "We were big in internal combustion engines for 100-and so on years. That's not where the market's going. We're going to have to do something different," and that's what makes the difference, is someone who's really willing to be able to take that step and say, "I'm going to go beyond all those millions of people who own Chevys, Pontiacs, and whatever, and think about creating electric vehicles and where we need to be next."

Pam Harper (10:34): I would agree. And, of course, what we're talking about is the L word, leadership. It really starts with leadership in so many ways; being able to take in what's going on, but I want to come back before we talk about that. And we'll talk about more of this in the second segment, but it is tough when you have a beloved brand, and people don't want you to change, and so the forces that are up against any company that carries a beloved brand are formidable. What's one thing companies must do to stay relevant in the changing market, at the highest level?

Linda Popky (11:15): You need to blow up the status quo. Well, that's five words.

Pam Harper (11:19): We're going to take a quick break, and when we come back, we'll dig deeper with marketing expert, Linda Popky, author of Marketing Above the Noise, about what it takes to stay relevant as the world changes. Stay with us.

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Scott Harper (11:34): This is Growth Igniters Radio with Pam Harper and Scott Harper. We're brought to you by Business Advancement Inc., and we're on the web at businessadvance.com. As always, we focus on enabling visionary CEOs and C-suite leaders to accelerate the momentum it takes to create game changing innovation, transformation, and growth.

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Scott Harper (12:22): And to access our full catalog of over 200 podcast episodes, go to growithignitersradio.com, and to learn more about us, go to businessadvance.com/about-us.

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Pam Harper (12:43): Welcome back to Growth Igniters Radio with Pam Harper. That's me, and Scott Harper. Today, Scott and I are speaking with marketing expert, Linda Popky, author of Marketing Above the Noise, about what it takes to stay relevant as the world changes. Linda, tell us how people could find out more about you, your books, and your work.

Linda Popky (13:05): You can go to my website, which is leverage2market, so leverage2market.com. Also, you can reach me at marketingabove.com. You can check me out on LinkedIn, on Twitter, on Facebook, and happy to connect with anyone who has questions and hopefully answer any of your questions. You can also find a lot of resources on my website, so feel free to go there.

Pam Harper (13:29): And I might add, she also is co-host of Shrimp Tank Podcast.

Linda Popky (13:35): Seattle. Shrimp Tank Seattle, yes.

Pam Harper (13:37): So you could listen to Linda that way too, and you can find more information and links for this episode by going to growthignitersradio.com/episode212, and scroll down to resources. In the first segment, you gave us five words for what it takes to stay relevant in a changing world. Why don't you say those five words again?

Linda Popky (14:03): Blow up the status quo.

Pam Harper (14:06): Well, let's talk about that a little bit more. Tell us what you mean.

Linda Popky (14:10): It would be nice if we had all reached Nirvana, we could stay there, and everything was beautiful and wonderful, but were talking about a snapshot. Really, the world is a reel of video that keeps moving all the time and keeps changing, and so we live in a world of change. We've seen that to the max in the last couple of years with the pandemic and how everything has changed dramatically. Just because you are at a place now that looks great, you're maybe on the top of the mountain top for a second, but somebody's going there to try and move you off and push you over the edge, so how do you avoid that? You avoid that by looking and saying, "Where do I need to be next?", and blow up the status quo before your competitors do it to you.

Linda Popky (14:51): A competitor is not necessarily someone that sells a product just like yours. It is someone that has the mindset, the attention of your potential customers. It might be a totally different way of doing things, but if they're paying attention to that other alternative way of either spending money, spending time, getting somewhere that they need to be, refreshing themselves on the side of the road in terms of getting their ice cream cone, whatever it is, then they're not paying attention to you. What you need to do is to figure out, I think it was Wayne Gretzky that said, "Go where the puck will be, not where it is now," so look at where you think that the market is going and what your customers are going to need from you, and provide the solution, the help, and the support that they're going to need in the future, which may be very, very different than what they've needed from you before.

Pam Harper (15:42): That's really good advice. I'm wondering if you've seen some of the things that we've seen, which is we also, of course, work with companies that are moving forward; innovation, growth, and all of that, and one of the biggest challenges comes when a visionary leader or leadership team even says, "We're going to move in this direction," and you'll find investors or other stakeholders who say, "Oh no, you don't. We want you to go somewhere else or no," because they have interests as well. The question is, we have opinions, but we love getting opinions from our colleagues, what do you see as a way to deal with those various stakeholders, so even when the employees say, "Yeah, we're there"?

Linda Popky (16:33): Well, I think it's interesting, and the question is why are you going in that other direction? Are you going because you have a vision that came to you, and you just think the world is going to go that way, or can you justify that? Can you say, "Here's why this is going this way." People are going to be moving to electric vehicles if we're GM, because of A, B, C, D, and E. People are going to be doing something differently in terms of Uber and Airbnb came out of nowhere. Now there're things that have come out of the whole pandemic, supply chain disruptions.

Linda Popky (17:03): If you can show a good, logical train of thought that says, "Here's why we need to be here," and then the other thing I find really interesting is what happens if we don't go there? What if we stay where we are and we keep away, because we do have an install base. We have partners. We have an ecosystem and everything works, but what if it stops working? Then, what do we do? If you can show a loss sometimes, it's easier to show investors in particular how much they're going to lose out on and the downside of staying where you are, rather than the upside of possibly going somewhere else, because people react more strongly to, "Yikes, I'm going to lose something," than, "Oh. That might be a nice thing to do."

Scott Harper (17:43): What comes to mind? I used to use a Blackberry. Lots of people did. In 2007, the iPhone came out. Blackberry said, "Ah, nobody's going to want to give up that tactile keyboard," and yet the iPhone completely ate Blackberry's lunch, and they're now just a shadow of their former selves. It's because, my hypothesis, Blackberry didn't think about the emotional impact of that intuitive touch interface and so on, so what is it that people need that they don't even know they need?

Linda Popky (18:24): This is interesting, because it brings us to Steve Jobs, who was a visionary, incredible visionary, and he did not ask his customers what they wanted, because had he asked any of us, "Would you like this and this?", we would've gone, "What? Are you crazy? We can't do that."

Linda Popky (18:38): But he said, "What if we take the technology, and we do this and this, and we give people the ability to do what they couldn't do before?"

Linda Popky (18:44): I mean, and I've missed the Blackberry. I've missed that keyboard, whatever, but hey, I've gone on. The problem, I think, with Blackberry is they said, "People use this device in business to send email by typing text," and that was the way. That was the horse and buggy, because today email is not the biggest thing that people are doing on their phone. In fact, they're not even using their phones to make telephone calls. You talk to your kids and your grandkids. They're like, "Call on the phone? Why would I do that? I'll [inaudible 00:19:13] you. I'll send you a tweet, or I'll forward you a TikTok or something."

Scott Harper (19:18): Yeah. Chat. Yeah.

Pam Harper (19:18): Yeah.

Linda Popky (19:19): So, there were all different ways that people are using the technology where, again, Blackberry said, "We're really good at this, and we're going to keep being very good at this," and then everything went right by them. I guess they still exist, but I don't know anybody in the last 10 years that's used a Blackberry.

Pam Harper (19:36): Yeah. That's true. I think there's another point too, which is the leadership makes a certain decision about where they're going to go. If you have customers that insist that you're serving fried clamps, to go back to your HoJo example and taking us way back, there are people who said, "I don't want to change," and you have to decide which customers you're going to go with. We've seen now, of course, customer, companies rather, divesting and spinning off pieces of the company that you would think, "No. They're not going to do this," like Kellogg.

Scott Harper (20:10): Yeah, splitting up.

Linda Popky (20:11): Kellogg without corn flakes.

Scott Harper (20:12): Yeah.

Pam Harper (20:13): They were all about cereal. Now, I think it used to be, I think on some level you say, "Well, a customer wants this." Well, now you say, "Well, which customers do you want? Who or what are we even about anymore?"

Linda Popky (20:26): Now, and that's a really important point, because there's sometimes a feeling that any customer is a good customer. "We'll take your money. We'll give you a product. We'll move on." That's not true. I mean, there are metrics like lifetime value of a customer, where you can see how much a customer is going to get you versus what it's going to cost for you to support them.

Linda Popky (20:44): But even beyond that, there are customers that are just going to be a lot of work to maintain, and they may not be where you want to be. They may be stuck in the old paradigm, and maybe you want to move somewhere else, and they're not going to go with you. Do you want your customers to be the ones that are on the leaning edge? Are they innovative. Are they willing to go forward with new technology? Do you want the people who need security? So, understanding who your customers are, what motivates them, and where you want your customer base to be is absolutely critical.

Scott Harper (21:15): And yet there's a lot of value in brands, and especially established brands. One of the things we've discussed off and on is this issue of staying flexible and forward looking, but still maintaining that strong bond to the brand that people know and love. What's one or two keys that leaders can think about when they want to do that?

Linda Popky (21:40): I think you're absolutely right. I'm always preaching about the power of brands, and I think what you need to do is to make sure that you understand what it is people really love about your brand. In some cases, it's the product, but in some cases it's not. It's about the experience, right? I mean, we've all seen Apple has a new introduction of a phone, an iPod, a computer, or something. People line up around the block to be the first ones to get there. At least they did before COVID. I don't know if they still do that, but why are they doing that? Is it because it's that particular Apple product?

Linda Popky (22:16): Not necessarily, because some of these people, you ask them, "What is it that makes this specific device so interesting?"

Linda Popky (22:21): "I don't know. It's just Apple's newest product."

Linda Popky (22:24): But the experience, what Apple gives them, and the feeling they get of working with Apple, and then Apple goes off in another direction, so that the point when Apple takes away the microphone jack, or they do something else, "Darn. That's a pain, but I'm going to get in line with the next Apple product anyway, because it's not about the product. It's not about the technology. It's about the whole brand experience." And what's also important is that you go to an apple store, and everybody from the person who greets you at the door, to the geniuses, to the people who stock the shelves, they know what the Apple brand is, and they know what that experience is, and they are there to be part of that experience for customers.

Pam Harper (23:03): So, we are more than customers. We are people who are experiencing the company.

Scott Harper (23:09): As a person who went to Sears store shortly before they closed, because I love Sears tools, that experience got worse and worse and worse, and they just circled the drain.

Pam Harper (23:21): It's sad.

Scott Harper (23:22): It's sad. It's very sad.

Linda Popky (23:23): It was very sad. I mean, I see HoJo's go. I see all kinds of stores that were good, that I enjoyed going to for years, decades, and whatever, and they go away because either they can't keep up in today's environment, or they just have lost that experience, and it's just not to say I go to a Macy's today. It's not the way it was 10 years ago, unfortunately.

Pam Harper (23:46): Absolutely. We have to stay in touch with what it is that customers want. We have to know what kind of customer we even want to have. There's a lot to take in, and right now we're going to take in a quick break. When we come back, we'll dig deeper with marketing expert, Linda Popky, author of Marketing Above the Noise, and what it takes to say relevant as the world changes. Stay with us.

Scott Harper (24:12): You are listening to Growth Igniters Radio with Pam Harper and Scott Harper, brought to you by Business Advancement Inc., where we focus on enabling visionary leaders to dramatically increase the momentum it takes to achieve game changing results. We're on the web at businessadvance.com.

Pam Harper (24:30): Have you ever wondered if so many CEOs think it's important to lead for business transformation and long-term growth in a rapidly changing world, why can it be so challenging to break the orbit of the status quo? As an author and advisor to visionary CEOs who often face mysterious pushback to their big ideas, that was the question that sent me on a long search for answers. What's the secret of the great leaders, the successful visionary leaders I call Growth Igniters? The ones who are able to ignite game changing business growth over and over again, what's their secret? They're able to embrace the leadership paradoxes that can naturally emerge in uncharted territory. How do they do this? That's what I share in my keynote, How Growth Igniters Lead for Tomorrow, Starting Today.

Scott Harper (25:21): Go to pamharperspeaks.com today to find out more about Pam's keynote and her availability to speak at your next leadership event.

Pam Harper (25:41): Welcome back to Growth Igniters Radio with Pam Harper and Scott Harper. Over the last two segments, Scott and I have been speaking with marketing expert, Linda Popky, author of Marketing Above the Noise, about keeping your company relevant in this rapidly changing world, not missing the boat. Linda, tell us how people can find out more about you, your books, and your work.

Linda Popky (26:05): You can find out more about me by going to my website, which is leverage2market, so leverage2market.com, or you can find more directly about the book by going to marketingabove.com. Feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn, on Facebook, on Twitter, and there's lots of great resources, free resources, on my website, so hope to hear from you.

Pam Harper (26:27): And you can find out more information and links for this episode by going to growthignitersradio.com/ episode212, and scroll down to resources. We are now at the part of our episode where we talk about immediately useful ideas. In this case, it's immediately useful ideas for staying relevant, for not missing the boat. The world keeps changing, so let's talk about them one at a time so we can digest them. What's the first immediately useful idea, Linda?

Linda Popky (27:04): I think first you've got to get out of your own way. You've built a box around yourself and put yourself in a box. It might be a lovely box, but you need to break out of that box, break away from your existing thinking. Think about, "What if? What if we did something different? What if we did something totally crazy," so allow yourself to think innovatively, to think about things that didn't exist before, and to try things differently.

Scott Harper (27:28): Oh. That's a nice concept, Linda, but how do you do that? All of us are so darn busy, and we have to make things happen. How do you make space for that?

Linda Popky (27:37): You've got to take time. I work with a client who's into innovation, and she says, "We talk about brainstorming, which is diverging, and then when you converge, it takes twice as much time to evaluate all the ideas, but we don't spend enough time with that." So, you need to come up with ideas, and then you need to take the time to research them and say which one might have some validity. And again, if you don't take the time, you wind up with that empty orange roof building, so question is, are you going to take the time now, or are you going to have plenty of time when you're out of business later?

Pam Harper (28:07): I think that's a really important way to look at it. In other words, we only have so many hours in a day. It's true, but if we don't look out ahead and understand what the implications are of staying in that orbit, then it's a decaying orbit of the status quo, as we talk about.

Scott Harper (28:26): Well, absolutely right. You have to jog your brain in new ways. When I worked in innovation back before I joined Pam, one of the things we would ask ourselves sometimes is, "What could we do with our product that we would never actually do because it would be too weird?"

Scott Harper (28:43): And that would make people go, "Oh. Well, that's a weird idea, but what about this?"

Linda Popky (28:48): And that gets me to my second suggestion, which is how do we take the assets we have, kind of throw them up in the air, put them back together, and do something differently? Think about, you've got all your assets, come as Legos. They come together, and you've built something. Smash those Legos, and now you've still got red, blue, yellow, green Legos of different shapes and sizes. What else can you build with them? Here's an example. In the US, we have post offices in every single town, and what do they do? They deliver the mail. They take your mail and packages.

Linda Popky (29:19): In some cases you can buy stamps or boxes. You might even be able to get your passport renewed. That's it. If you go to New Zealand, they've got post office in each town that they said, "Hey, we've got this resource. It's a store. You can buy office supplies. You can get all of your government activities done, whether you need the equivalent of social security or you needed to see another government agency. They said, "Here's an asset that we have. How can we use it more effectively?" So, there's an idea. As our federal government, why were we not using these big, empty buildings that are basically warehouses for mail? Why aren't we using them more effectively? Because we have those assets and we can, but we haven't thought outside the box to do that.

Pam Harper (30:00): You know, I'm seeing more and more articles coming out about companies that are starting to do that, especially here in the New York metro area, where we've got all this unused office space. It makes so much sense to be thinking, essentially what you're talking about is repurposing.

Linda Popky (30:21): Absolutely.

Scott Harper (30:23): It's like I've got chicken, potatoes, and carrots.

Pam Harper (30:31): Oh. Scott's interested in cooking. That's his thing.

Scott Harper (30:31): And here are six ingredients, and I can use them in thousands of different ways. That's kind of the same thing.

Pam Harper (30:38): So, let's go to the third idea.

Linda Popky (30:41): Okay, so here's what I want you to do. I want you to look at the situation in the world today, and think about how you can use where we are today to make the world a better place. That doesn't mean that we are taking advantage of someone else's misfortune, but look at what's come out of the COVID pandemic in terms of new services and new ways to doing things. There are supply chain disruptions, so there are people creating different ways to get products to market. We've got this horrible situation in Ukraine, but there are opportunities to help.

Linda Popky (31:14): How do we get grain from one part of the world to the other so people aren't starving? We've got inflation. What does that mean? How do we help people? We've got a whole gun violence crisis. How do we figure out how to do things better? Again, I'm not suggesting that you try to build on anybody's pain, sorrow, or suffering, but you say, "Given that this is what's going on today, how do we, with our knowledge, our assets, our intelligence, and the resources we have, how do we help make the world a better place by doing something in today's world? By not waiting for the old world, which isn't coming back. Not waiting for the new world, which is never going to get here, but today?"

Scott Harper (31:51): Yeah. Pam constantly is reminding me, when I get down, that in every challenge there's an opportunity. In fact, I think that was a quote by Einstein you saw years ago, right?

Pam Harper (32:03): Yes. It's in the middle of a difficulty lies opportunity. We saw it on a chalkboard on a sidewalk. It was in New Zealand in Auckland, and it was crowded and that was the sign, and I think it really lends itself to these times. I think we need to think very creatively. Here we are. We're at the end of our episode, and we don't want to let you go without sharing a final thought about this, not missing the boat and staying relevant in this world.

Linda Popky (32:39): I think it, playing off the line Scott said earlier, which is, "How do we see beyond where we are?", we're so busy doing our everyday lives. Sometimes you need to look outside the box by having someone else help you do that. The metaphor I like is that there is no selfie stick long enough that lets you take your picture and see the entire environment. You just cannot have an arm long enough to do that.

Linda Popky (33:00): You need someone else to take that picture and say, "Here's what I see next to you, and here's what I see in proportion," so have someone else come in, move back, give you an outside perspective, give you some ideas. There are lots of resources. People like you do that. People like I do it. People who are experts in specific technology do that, but do it because you don't know what's going to change, but I can guarantee you something is going to change. That's the world we live in. The only constant about change is that it will keep happening, and things are going to be different, so get some help. Don't try to do this all yourself. Don't try to be a hero. Get the people who can help you see that bigger picture.

Pam Harper (33:39): Absolutely. Linda, thanks for being our guest on Growth Igniters Radio.

Linda Popky (33:44): Oh. My pleasure. It's been fun.

Scott Harper (33:45): And thanks to all of you out there for listening to Growth Igniters Radio with Pam Harper and Scott Harper. To contact us, get show notes, and resource links for this week's episode, go to growthignitersradio.com. Select episode 212.

Pam Harper (34:00): Until next time. This is Pam Harper.

Scott Harper (34:02): And Scott Harper.

Pam Harper (34:03): Wishing you continued success and leaving you with this question to consider and discuss with your team.

Scott Harper (34:09): What is one thing, just one thing, we can start doing differently to build on the trust that our company has already earned and tune into the future, so we can stay relevant as the world keeps changing?

Chris Curran (34:25): Growth Igniters and Growth Igniters Radio with Pam Harper and Scott Harper are registered service marks of Business Advancement Inc. All Growth Igniters Radio episodes are copyrighted productions of Business Advancement Inc. intended for the private use of our audience. Except as otherwise provided by copyright law, all other uses, including copying, editing, redistribution, and publication without prior written consent of Business Advancement Inc. are prohibited. All rights reserved.