got an important assignment for you

I’ve got a assignment for you:

What about your business, your market, your value is not going to change in the next 10 years?

Good question, right?

I can’t take credit for it. It’s from Jeff Bezos. (I know, I know… I have all the thoughts on him too. But this question - it’s one worth paying attention to.

Here’s his full quote:

“I very frequently get the question ‘What’s going to change in the next 10 years?’ That’s a very interesting question.

I almost never get the question: ‘What’s not going to change in the next 10 years?’ And I submit to you that that second question is actually the more important of the two.

You can build a business strategy around the things that are stable in time.”

He goes on, but I’m going to cut him off right here because this is the point I want you to take away.

I cannot last 3 minutes lately without hearing about all the doom and gloom about to come our way.

Whether it be slow launches, plummeting conversions, algorithms constantly changing the rules, for the last 5 years every 3 minutes someone is calling for the end of anything online-related.

And I get it: There’s some serious headwinds out there, more so for some than others.

But it’s also true that I’ve had this conversation every 3 minutes (ok maybe every 30 minutes) for the last 5 years. 

And we’re all still here.

So what gives?

What gives is what Bezos is talking about: the (mostly boring) stuff that’s not going to change. 

Because that’s what your business is actually built of.

What is that in your business? That’s your assignment, to make a list of 5 things that aren’t going to change in the next 10 years.

I’ll give you a hint: It’s the foundational stuff, not all the band-aids and surface level stuff you slap up when it gets popular.

-> It’s your intentionally built network (you knew I was going to say that, right?)

-> It’s your point of view (even if the platforms you use to share that POV change over time)

-> It’s the type of customer who respects your point of view (even if where and how they find and communicate with you might change over time)

-> It’s your framework and however you solve problems for people (even if the inputs your clients bring to those frameworks change over time)

-> It’s your ability to do things in the right order, so you don’t get lost in trends (you knew I was going to say that one too, right?)

It’s all the stuff that you completely forget about because they’re toiling away in the background, making tiny shifts day to day, month to month, year to year that you don’t even notice because you’re so busy with the trend of the day.

Time to give them some love.

And when you accept my homework, hit reply and let me know what about your business isn’t going to change over the next 10 years. We’ll celebrate it together.