In a recession or what is called “Social-distancing” period, a saying on Wall Street that goes “The trend is your friend” has a lot of value in terms of managing one’s business or career.
Generally speaking, our assumptions of that sun will rise tomorrow, and gravity is true on Earth, turn out to actually be true 99% of the time. However, it’s the 0.01% (a black swan event) of the time when something in the world has changed significantly where this kind of default thinking can get you into trouble.
To survive, and even thrive, in today’s environment, it’s vitally import to response quickly to major changes in trends. You may not like the changes in the trend, but to deny it is extremely costly.
Here are a few trend changes I have noticed:
- Dine-ins are out, food delivery is in
- Luxury goods are out, survival oriented goods are in
- Out-home crowd entertainment is out, in-home entertainment is in
My point in all this is to prompt you to think about what trends you see in your industry. What are your customers still buying and why? What problems they are facing in the new trend and how to resolve?
Have you made the trend your “friend”, not your enemy?
Here’s why at a starting point 🙂 :
Freebies
- All of the core GitHub features are now free for everyone. https://github.blog/2020-04-14-github-is-now-free-for-teams/
- https://episerver.litmos.com/online-courses Content management system Episerver’s eLearning courses for both business users and developers will be made available for free. (until end of June 2020)
- Free courses from Coursera https://www.coursera.org/search?query=free%20courses&&utm_source=gg&utm_medium=sem&utm_content=Sitelink-freecourses-searchquery&campaignid=8992841658&adgroupid=92223268473&device=c&keyword=ibm%20data%20science%20coursera&matchtype=b&network=g&devicemodel=&adpostion=&creativeid=412939145465&hide_mobile_promo&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIlfOCwoTs6AIVCovICh3lwANREAAYASABEgKM5fD_BwE
- Google Android Development Courses https://developer.android.com/courses/
- Amazon provides relatively free and easy understanding machine learning courses https://aws.amazon.com/training/learning-paths/machine-learning/
- There are many institute online free courses, e.g. from Harvard https://online-learning.harvard.edu/catalog
Something Else
- Check https://www.irs.gov/coronavirus/economic-impact-payments for IRS tax return status if you could get some cash back.
- An interesting YouTuber who shares her opinions about personal financial planning (in Chinese) https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5RtC9dKUJ9noJ4C6N4XnmQ/featured
- COVID-19 GIS mapping by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6
Something else else :), you would find many free indoor body training or yoga streaming services; just be mindful about the commercial part within them.
This is HWu 