Coping in a new world

As we move forward in this new confined world we live we find ourselves longing for the good old days.

Simple things like a friendly smile or a happy hello on the phone seems rare in a time of rush, rush hurry, hurry. Do you remember sitting with granny and granddad in the afternoon paging through photographs from way back when. Listening to the tales that went with each picture. How Uncle Robert was such a good looking man and Aunty Norma was always looking to fix the kitchen.

The smell of scones fresh from the oven with rich butter and cream smothered in chunky strawberry jam. I hope I am not alone with memories like these as they are the ones I want to repeat with my grandchildren one day. We the 40 to 50 generation are lucky as we missed the baby boom years. We owned the 80’s with bad hairdos and blue make up (ha, ha). That feeling of being safe and secure in the knowledge you are with people you trust. With this memory of feelings of trust and all I must move to the reason for my ramblings.

I just read an article that triggered these memories for some reason and the article centered on the importance of looking after your customers because today’s market place is flooded with choices and easy information. All you need is a phone and some data and Google will do the rest. How do you chose when you are given 200 choices? Do you take the one on top or do you have time to read through all 40 pages of each website. I think not, we simply call a friend and ask do you know of or have you heard of anyone in that industry that can help. Word of mouth is still king even in the time of Google.

Yes we have an information overload from the digital world of the information highway. We still all seem to enjoy the comfort of word of mouth advertising. For a while we believed the best was to go with brand names like Nike, Coca Cola or Woolworths. After the last 20 years of being lead blindly by the advertising machine we have begun to question more and use a little common sense.

Just another trigger with regards to getting information straight from the horse’s mouth, I recently went on a recon into Soweto with a new found friend Alex. He was involved in the history of Soweto in the 1976 uprising and lost some friends and family to the struggle. He told me tales of how they lived and the sense of togetherness felt by many people of all races and religions. We actually went to look at opening a storage facility for the people of that town. Getting the history and background to the areas we looked at from a man who lived there for over 40 years gave me the confidence and motivation to look at this seriously. You can’t get that from Google.

We still have a couple of billion people who will follow blindly the trends and fashions as we did as youngsters. However I believe in the future we are building we will become more selective of where information came from we will still utilize the internet to book our storage unit or concert ticked to watch UB40 at the FNB Stadium. Finally we are starting to use our discretion and reason again. We need to get back to basics in everything we do. Look after your family and look after your clients. No matter what job you do weather it is from a street sweeper to the MD of Liberty life, we all have a client or customer to keep happy.

So with that parting thought, take care of three things in this order.

1. Your self
2. Your family
3. Your customers and friends alike

The rest will fall into place as we go.

Anthony