One more week off for us as we kick this dumpster fire of a year to the curb and ring in the new year! We’ve got a tough stretch ahead of us, but hopefully things start looking better on the “back nine” of 2021.
First up this week is the one and only Scott Galloway.
The COVID-19 outbreak has turned bedrooms into offices, pitted young against old, and widened the gaps between rich and poor, red and blue, the mask wearers and the mask haters.
Some businesses, like home exercise company Peloton, video conference software maker Zoom, and Amazon, woke up to find themselves crushed under an avalanche of consumer demand.
Others, like the restaurant, travel, hospitality, and live entertainment industries, scrambled to escape obliteration.
But as Galloway argues, the pandemic has not been a change agent so much as an accelerant of trends already well underway. In his latest book, Post Corona, he outlines the contours of the crisis and the opportunities that lie ahead.
Hour two is another business school professor.
How do you find a competitive edge when the obstacles feel insurmountable? How do you get people to take you seriously when they're predisposed not to, and perhaps have already written you off?
Laura Huang has come up against that problem many times, and so has anyone who's ever felt out of place or underestimated.
Many of us sit back quietly, hoping that our hard work and effort will speak for itself. Or we try to force ourselves into the mold of who we think is "successful," stifling the creativity and charm that makes us unique and memorable.
In her recent book, Edge: Turning Adversity into Advantage, Huang offers a different approach.
She argues that success is rarely just about the quality of our ideas, credentials, and skills, or our effort. Instead, achieving success hinges on how well we shape others' perceptions, of our strengths, certainly, but also our flaws.
It's about creating our own edge by confronting the factors that seem like shortcomings and turning them into assets that make others take notice.
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"Jill on Money" theme music is by Joel Goodman, www.joelgoodman.com.