I had a conversation last week with a friend/ex-colleague/current customer (by the way – I love this combination! I remember when I was just starting out my boss told me you couldn’t be friends with people at work – what a load of absolute bollocks! Also, sorry – got distracted really early there!)…about the menopause. Why am I writing about that you may ask? And in fact, I’ve asked myself the same question. It’s not something I ever thought I’d write about in a business context.

How are you? Now take a moment…how *are* you? This time round, I think lockdown feels harder and it’s a feeling I’m hearing quite a lot. Certainly my kids are struggling with endless Teams calls (we all know how that feels!) and in meetings people that I’m talking with are saying the same. Maybe it’s the damp and cold weather, maybe it’s the fact that somehow we feel like we’ve lost a year or maybe it’s just been too long without seeing (and hugging!) our friends and family. But it’s hard at the moment for many of us.

We’ve had helluva year for sure. For many of us it’s been a period of stress and sadness, but I also think a lot of good has come out of it to. In many ways, the pandemic has allowed us all to focus on what’s really important – our friends, families and connection. In the first lockdown I actually really enjoyed having so much time at home with my family – and walks round the village in glorious sunshine where everyone said hello and there was a real atmosphere of ‘we’re in this together’.

Last week, I had a really good debate on LinkedIn with @Douglaswoodburn at CRN and some of the brilliant ladies who had recorded videos about the distance that there still is to go to see proper equality of representation for women in the channel.

There’s a famous quote (which may or may not be a Chinese proverb) that says: ‘The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second-best time is now.’ What it’s basically saying is if you want success in the future, you should take action now.

Recently, someone shared the video on LinkedIN of Steve Jobs launching the famous ‘Think Different’ campaign from Apple. His introduction to this talks about how marketing is ‘noisy’ and that ‘speeds and feeds’ are not of interest to today’s buyers. This was back in 1997 and yet what he said is as relevant as ever today.