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Let’s Have A Chat for Friday, March 1, 2019

Let’s Have A Chat For Friday, March 1, 2019

Transcription:
And good evening everyone, it is Friday. Friday March 1st the first day of the third month of 2019. I’m your host David Guerra and welcome to LET’S HAVE A CHAT (the Friday edition). That’s right, the calendar says it’s Friday and that means it’s time for Forbes Friday so again
straight from Forbes.com, Forbes magazine, the website, the email newsletters. Hey, if you haven’t signed up for the newsletters, check them out and do so. I highly recommend it and that’s where this one comes from. It’s a little snippet of something but it’s something I saw yesterday and it kind of got me thinking, of well the shape of things to come. Well actually three things happened in the past 24 hours, my oldest my daughter she’s looking for a job so she’s thinking about applying at J.C. Penney and then I’m going like well if they’re
still around to hire you’re more than welcome to and the next was I drove by a Payless Shoe Store with 40 to 50% off discount right now because they’re going out of business everything must go. Now in the Forbes Daily Dozen I saw that they were talking about Victoria’s Secret since 2015, the stock value slipped 75 percent and Victoria’s Secret still has not come out of that. How do they get themselves
out of it? Folks, they need to recognize that things are happening in the retail industry, the anchor stores are going…the anchor stores are those stores, the big stories at the malls, they’re the big ones like Macy’s, JC Penney, Sears it was once Montgomery Ward remember that and Woolworth’s back in the day. Well, that’s what’s going on is those anchor stores. They are going and slowly all the other ones
that aren’t keeping up are going and why are they disappearing? Why is Payless disappearing? Shoes? Everybody needs shoes, we all need shoes and Payless whoa! Everybody wants to pay less for shoes but again they have good shoes there. Don’t get me wrong I purchased from
there before and as matter of fact I walked in there and purchased a pair of sneakers yesterday at a great price.

So, what’s going on? Well, it’s plain and simple, if you’ve been on this planet long enough you’ve seen the little cardboard boxes with the little smiley face on it. No, no it’s not the it’s not a box from Brazil because it says Amazon and just like that box was not from Italy because it said Fra-Gi-Le. Nope it’s Amazon.

That’s right, Amazon, Amazon.com they’ve got everything, anything you’ve ever wanted. They’ve got it there that you could find it and if
you don’t they can probably wait a bit and somebody will sell it. I know this because I also am an Amazon seller and I sell on Amazon so I sell my stuff there and again full disclosure.

But is it taken away from the local jobs! NO! It’s just taken away from those that don’t want to compete, don’t want to as the kids say
“POST UP”, they are not doing that. They are not stepping up their game and if those local businesses, those brick-and-mortar stores do not want to step up their game then where they’re gonna go? By the way of what was once Hastings Records and Books. Remember that bookstore Hastings records and books? There we go *BOOM* Barnes & Noble came wiped them off the face of the earth and
then remember that Blockbuster Video? Same thing,  they had the opportunity to do what Netflix is doing.

They had the execs that chose not to they said oh that’s never gonna fly! You know who doesn’t fly anymore? That’s right, the CEO cuz he has no place to go. It’s just that simple folks. The times are changing and if you’re not changing with those times you’re gonna get exactly what you deserve. A couple years ago I wouldn’t have thought about sitting up here and standing up here in front of this doing live stream video. I would have thought about that but I resisted for the longest time I resisted joining Facebook but you know what, that’s where it was all going on. You’ve got to see the writing on the wall and you can resist it all you want or it’s like oh no they won’t change for me. You’re too late, you’ve already missed the boat the time is or the times already gone the ship has already sailed, that plane has already
taken off. That’s right so bon voyage, see we can’t even say bon voyage anymore now we have to say “bon voy” because someone’s changing with the times and we need also in business and leaders those that lead people, we have to be changing with the times.

I’m not saying be the next Elon Musk, I’m not saying be the next what’s his name, what’s his name, Zuckerberg! You know or anybody else no what I’m saying is be yourself but be yourself in an involving constantly evolving constantly changing state. You’re gonna find yourself you and your business are gonna find yourselves the way of the dinosaur, the way of Hastings, the way of Tower Records. Remember Tower Records? Yeah they have an online presence but it was nothing like Tower Records that was like the epitome of a record store. You look up
record store in the dictionary you saw Tower Records. That was it that was the place to go but where are they now it’s Amazon and iTunes and Apple. Where are they now? Where will Macy’s be in a little while, where’s JC Penney, where Sears, where’s Payless Shoes and unfortunately
Victoria’s Secret needs to ramp up their game. Sure they can one time a year do that that show or that risque show on on TV once a year but is that enough? No! It’s not enough. It’s not enough to bring in the money, to raise the stock value because again dropping 75% that’s a lot but if you’re delivering constantly and maintaining and working and improvising and innovating then guess what. You might just have a good thing on your hand and it’s worth the wait for it to grow back up. Now you know what four years later on the verge of five years later for Victoria’s Secret then what exactly nothing will happen.  Only the bad stuff will happen, unemployment, layoffs. chapter 13, bankruptcy, courts it’s crazy but it’s true.

On that note, so something to think about continue innovating, continue changing, continue providing, continue to grow, continue to innovate, continue to be better than you were yesterday. If you’re not, someone’s going to have you for lunch and that is probably going to be Amazon.

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Liking Irrelevance Less

One of my all-time favorite quotes, it is not my top all-time favorite quote but it’s up there with about three others. I like this quote a lot because it is refers to the one thing that I talk about. I mean I harp on it. I beat it down and try to cram it down people’s throat. I do now once you cram stuff down people’s throat you cannot make them accept it but I do hope it at least gets people thinking. If I don’t get them thinking, I hope to at least raise an eyebrow or two. That quote is by General Eric Shinseki, former Chief of Staff United States Army:

“If you don’t like change you’re going to like irrelevance even less.”

 
“If you don’t like change you’re going to like irrelevance even less.” I think that about sums it up as General Shinseki says change is going to happen. You have got to either embrace it or accept the fact that it (change) is here. It is coming, it is going to happen and if you don’t change, guess what? That’s right you are going to fall by the wayside. You are going to be sent to the side of the road. You are going to be one of those people that sits there and watches the parade go by and then wonder what happened. That is the truth. That’s your destiny. It does not get any truer than that. You are going to become irrelevant. Change is coming and I’m seeing it all over the place. I am seeing it everywhere. Now more so than ever and it’s technology is doing that technology is driving that change.
 
What do we do? Well, we can sit here and put our head in the sand and expect that it’s not going to happen to us. I guarantee you it’s going to happen to us. It is going to happen. Every industry is going to be impacted by change and if you do not believe me you have got your head in the sand.
 
Look at look at what Netflix and Amazon Prime did to Blockbuster. Look at what happened. Where is Blockbuster now? They are gone.
 
A huge company, a huge organization and now they’re gone. They are gone because they refused to change. They refused to adapt. They had a chance to buy Netflix. They had a chance to buy out Netflix and they chose not to. Now, Blockbuster Video is gone and folks, it is going to happen across a lot of other industries.
 
It is already happening, now in the food service industry specifically the pizza industry. I saw this commercial earlier this week for the Little Caesars pick up portal. You can order online on your Little Caesars app on your phone and you can pay online. Through the app on the phone, you enter your credit card information or your debit card information. Then you just show up at the store because they don’t deliver. You show up at the store and you go to the portal. You find your little number then you enter the code, the little door will open, that applies to you, and it’s just that simple and you take your pizzas, you leave. You never have to talk to a human being. That is right, you never have to talk to a human being.
 
AirBnB, look what it is doing to the hospitality industry. Rocket Mortgage; look what it is doing to the home lending industry. Realtor dot com app where you can search by drawing a little circle or draw a pattern that shows you all the homes in that search area. That is going to continue rock the industry. That app and others like it are going to change the real estate business. It does not care what anybody says, the real estate business needs to change. It is going to happen because it is happening already. If somebody is sitting out there not believing that it is not going to happen or think that people will not do that, people won’t allow that. Yet, look at what happened to the horse-drawn carriage, that’s right the automobile industry took care of that.
 
Now look at what is happening to the driving industry. We are getting driverless vehicles, the consumer will no longer be driving their own vehicles. Sure there might be somebody driving a vehicle but the consumer themselves will not be driving the vehicle. Look at Lyft, at Uber, it is happening.
 
To continue living a life and a mindset of “oh, it’s not going to happen to my industry” is nonsense. Guess what is going to happen to the pharmaceutical industry, the pharmaceutical business, those pharmacies at Walmart, Walgreens, CVS, Target? The Pharmacy business is going to combine a little AirBnB, a little Rocket Mortgage, and a little Little Caesars. That’s right, what is going to happen, I do not know if you have seen them but there are these little robots that make mixed drinks. In Japan and in the larger cities like Las Vegas in some hotels, they have robots that mix drinks because they know exactly where the vodka is, their mechanical arm goes and pulls it. It knows exactly how much to pour to get two shots of vodka. It knows how to shake, stir whatever you need. It knows how to drop the cherry or the olives into the martini and present it to you.
 
Guess what is going to happen because it is happening now. It has already happened and it’s going to continue to happen. This coming change is going to rock the pharmacy business and it’s going to rock that industry on its heels.
 
Folks, while it is quite simple, the problem remains. There are people out there that refuse to accept the fact that it is going to change. While there is always going to be a need for a human. There will always be a need for human but a human to ensure that the machine is still up and running. To ensure that the machine is still doing what it’s supposed to do. Yes, there is going to be a continued need for a human, for the time being. Humans but eventually, we will all putting ourselves out of business, out of a job. Technology is and will be putting everyone else out of business.
 
Thus, you need to adapt, you need to change, you need to plan and you need to act on that plan. If you do not, I sure do hope you like irrelevance. Relevance and Change is coming and it is going to shape the future. Either you are relevant or you are not relevant and that is all there is to it. It does not matter what you do. It is going to happen and again, it is changing all around you and if you are not seeing the forest for the trees then you get exactly what you deserve.
 
What are you doing to go with that change that is coming to stay? To remain relevant as opposed to becoming irrelevant? The time to act is now because before you know it, you are going to watch that parade go by and you won’t know what happened.
 
Personally, I’d much rather be in the parade but then again, that’s just me.
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NEW ARTICLE: 5 Things All Leaders Must Do At The Start Of The Day

The article: 5 THINGS ALL LEADERS MUST DO AT THE START OF THE DAY is the next article by David G. Guerra. In this article David discusses what he sees as the 5 things all leaders must do just before and at the start of the business day. While a leader must wear many hats there are some that are non-negotiable. These five things are not the only thing a leader must do everyday but it is a foundation to being a great leader of which showing up is most certainly at the top of any list.

Read this brief 1200 word article and if you are so inclined there is an option to download the article in PDF format.

click here to read: 5 THINGS ALL LEADERS MUST DO AT THE START OF THE DAY