A period of crisis always brings out a burst of reinvention.  It was one of those Aha! moments for me in school when I finally put together the down turn in the aerospace industry in the 1970s and the birth of the home computer industry.  It’s sad that all those engineers had to lose their jobs, but now we have computers, and laptops, and tablets in every room of our homes. 

We are in a period of crisis right now that is also bringing on a burst of reinvention.  A conference call I was on a couple of weeks ago brought out the statement from one attendee, “I’ve been knowing I should put my material online for years now, but now I have no choice!”  It’s not just a matter of finding new ways to do what we already do, but also finding new markets, industries, or even departments within an organization to do what you did before now that you can’t do it anymore the way you did before.  

A recent call with a potential client sets the perfect example.  The woman is a home organizer.  When people are concerned with making their mortgage payments, they don’t really care how organized their house is, so the woman’s business was down significantly.  Before the crisis, she had a referral from a home client to organize their office as well, and the potential client wanted to talk to me about expanding her business into office organization officially.  I thought this was the perfect time period for her advice, since people have more time on their hands to re-organize their offices.  She wasn’t sure, however, that her expertise extended from home to office.  To me it was a natural fit!  I knew articles in trade, industry, and association publications on how to use the downtime to dig into the projects you’ve always wanted to and clean out those files, finally. 

How many of you have articles that you now have time to write, finally?