Coronavirus is not end of the world the covid-19 opportunity

Nader Sabry — Growth Hacking
22 min readApr 5, 2020

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Coronavirus is not end of the world

The start of our talk

welcome to Coronavirus is not end of the world the covid-19 opportunity: Hey guys, welcome to my talk about Corona virus and why it’s not in the world. It’s important to note that I’m doing this presentation on the first day of April. So this is definitely not an April fool’s joke, although I woke up this morning hoping Corona virus was an April fool’s joke, but it isn’t. So don’t worry, it isn’t. The end of the world is actually many great things that will come out of this. So before I get started, I always like to remind anybody who is joining, um, directly in YouTube. If you’re listening to this on another channel like Instagram or a podcast, please head over to my YouTube channel. Uh, I’d love to have you subscribe like this video, share it with those who may find this upgrade value and I have $100 bonus at the end. I always like to give some value and I hope it is in within context of those who are tuning in.

About me

Let’s get started. Um, before I do that, I’d like to introduce myself. I’m Nader Sabry. I work on unlocking unseen possibilities by unraveling how people and innovation come together to change the world. As a strategist, innovator and entrepreneur, I’ve recently published a bestselling book called ready, set growth hack. I’ve directly raised $20 million, 100 million indirectly for startups I helped cofound $3 billion in FDI, 43rd person a to be certified by NASA as part of their NASA space certified program. Recently appointed as a judge to the space hall of fame and a top 50 writer in innovation on medium.com and we are getting started. So we’re going to be looking at three different things. We’re going to be looking at the cycle, the change and the calibration of how to look and understand not also how this is not in in the world, but how to actually make sense of this and find opportunities on how you can actually hack your way through what’s about to happen.

Virus pandemic history and in context of Coronavirus is not end of the world

Let’s get cracking. So there’s a great visual that’s available. This is by the visual capitalists. It is a little bit out of date as the Coronavirus moves quite quick. This is on March 15th. The numbers have obviously escalated, but in perspective to other viruses, it’s still quite small. Okay. Just wanted to put that out there before we get started. So one of the theories that I’ve been using for a number of years is something called the evolutionary revolutionary cycle. It was invented in the 60s, if I recall. It was originally used in organizational behavior, but has been applied across the board in several places. In fact, it was one of the key tools I used in my dissertation for my own master’s degree in strategy. And um, it’s an incredible way of thinking. The essence behind it is that we all evolve. Uh, so it applies to people, organizations, communities, countries, societies, applies at all levels.

Visual Capitalist on Twitter: "The History of Pandemics, by Death ...

The evolutionary revolutionary cycle

And we’re going to be looking at it at its most macro level at this point. Now we all evolve as you can see that line going up there. And then you got a little, uh, Thunderbolt there, which is a revolution. That’s why I call it an evolutionary revenue revolutionary cycle. Okay. And so what happens is you end up going through this in your personal life, in your organization. Economics are exactly the same way. So you probably hear that when, when we talk about this, people are like, Hey, we had this thing in 2008. We had this in 2001. We had this thing back in 1991 92. We had this in the early eighties. And so the reality is that it’s manifested between different ways, but that is exactly the evolutionary revolutionary cycle. What’s unique from an economic perspective? If you look at all those different revolutionary points I talked about, they all start in one sector and then work its way towards systemic economic problems.

Coronavirus is a broader pandemic

Unfortunately with the Coronavirus, this is actually much broader, much deeper and much wider in its reach. Meaning this affects basically 7.8 billion people, uh, at all levels, right? So this is not a, this is not like in 2001 where it was the.com crash where it was primarily, uh, related to technology companies. This goes way beyond that. Now, obviously we’re here to talk about what the opportunities, and I’m going to show you how this is definitely not end of the world. Do we step back and we take a look at this as an evolutionary revolutionary cycle. We’ve stepped out of an evolution. We’re stepping into a revolution, which is the Corona virus itself. Now the beauty of this model is when a revolution takes place, as you can see we have a a line that just cuts across right there. And those, there are basically rules.

Cycle model Coronavirus is not end of the world

The rules are changing as we speak as coronavirus unfolds

Rules are what govern our economy, our society, our culture, our organizations, even how we conduct our own habits. Okay? And when a revolution takes place, it’s a primary driver that changes everything around you is basically the rules. And as we shift over here, you’ll see that there is a before and after. So there are the old rules and then there’s kind of the new rules. So let me just head back here. And so right now and a remember, we are now April, 2020 and we are in a transition stage. So I hear a lot of guys talking about all kinds of predictions. And theories and, and it’s just all over the place and a lot of people are confused. Um, I, I’m equally as confused with so many these crazy theories that I’m hearing. The point is that we are in play. And what I mean by we’re in play is that we are in transition.

And the last thing to do when you’re in transition is to try to decide where that destination is going to be when you don’t know when that destination is going to be. Therefore, every prediction that you make will be very sketchy at best. We have an old saying in Australia seen 99% of all predictions are wrong. And so therefore you focused on that 1% to get it right, but you can only do it through discovery. And that’s really what this is about. So stepping back, those are the rules. Okay? There are old rules are being obsoleted and there are new roles, rules in the process of being made as we speak. So an example that many of us are experiencing right now is e-learning. Uh, you know, for those who have children, um, who can’t send their kids to school, the only option left would be e-learning.

Major changes and how we are adopting moving towards a post coronavirus world

And that’s been something evolving, right? Evolving for a number of years. And here we are in this Corona revolution and all of a sudden everybody’s on e-learning, right? Everybody’s trying to be virtual. Everybody’s using zoom, Skype, you name it. The, they are virtualizing everything they need to do because they have to, right? So as that happens, new rules are being written. They are not written yet because we are still in an F. we’re still in the process of that transition at the moment. And so it makes it a little bit difficult. But what I want you to think about is that we are definitely not at the end of the world. You need to look at that next evolutionary cycle and new rules are being written and that’s what we need to focus on. So what we’re going to do is we’re going to step over now from cycle to change, and we’re going to take a closer look at what this means.

LESST model (Leadership, economics, social, security and technology) in context of the coronavirus situation

I use an abbreviation called LESST. okay. Um, no pun intended. Of course, if you have some really good quality that’s good for you, that’s especially boosting your immune. Definitely have more T. this is not what this is about, but it’s just a way of us keeping our track by using a nice way of bringing the message into a way that we all remember. So what LESST is about is we’re looking at leadership, economics, social security, and technology. These are the primary driving factors. There are many things that we can talk about that go beyond that, but we’re going to keep it isolated to these for now because these are the primary ones that would have a massive impact. Now, the way we’re going to look at this is I want to conduct a very unique experiment. And how I want to do that is I want to get you commenting at the bottom of this video, and I’m not going to give you predictions because this is not what this is about.

LESST MODEL Coronavirus is not end of the world

Creating dialogue before making predictions

This is about creating a discussion and a dialogue about how we are moving through this transition. Okay? Now when we step back and look at leadership, what we’re looking at is we’re looking at things like a government, non-government organizations, community and spiritual leaders. We’re looking at things like compassion and consciousness and harmony and competencies, and, and we’re looking at all those factors from up top the bottom right? And what we want to do is we want to apply a formula to every one of these things that we’re looking at, right? We’re going to apply a formula, which is, you can see here is the factor equals change equals outcome at friends, okay? And what that means, and here’s an example. So we’re going to put in the leadership virus, okay? So put the, don’t forget the hashtag because we want to, we want to get this thing viral, no pun intended, of course, to get others involved in this discussion.

#leadershipvirus

So we’re going to put him #leadershipvirus equals, and now you’re going to put what you think. This is not about a prediction that somebody else’s made or what I’m telling you right now, this is about what you think, okay? So the example I’m using is leadership virus equals community leaders on the rise. Okay? So that’s the change and the outcome that you see is more cohesion. And then you put at whoever you feel would contribute to that particular thought. Now if you don’t have anybody, that’s perfectly fine. If you’re joining me on another platform that doesn’t allow it, uh, you can switch over to YouTube. You can find other ways to share it with people. The point is, I want to create dialogue around these ideas. So let’s recap. We’re looking at leadership, which is about government, non-government, community, uh, and spiritual leaders, compassion, uh, consciousness, harmony and competencies.

Now write your formula in the comments, okay? Right? The hashtag #leadershipvirus and then equals the change that you look at, what you think is in the process of transitioning at the moment, and then the outcome you believe, which will happen on the other end. All right? So that’s where leadership and over to economics. So economics, we’re talking about consumption patterns. A startup needs, uh, you know, what kind of help they’d need. Financial support across the board, bail out stimulus packages. And a whole lot more. Economics has got a whole lot more under the hood. So stepping to back to our exercise here, head over to the comments. The structure we’re using is the hashtag, uh, with the factor equaling the change that you see and the out and then equal the outcome you believe which will happen. And then at friends, whoever you believe can add to the conversation.

#economicvirus

And on this particular case, what will the example that I’m using is at economic virus. So that’s the hashtag we can use is #economicvirus equals less spending on movies equals more online content creation, essentially dispensers, dispensable, I’m sorry. Discretion. Discretionary spending has decreased because we cannot go out to spend on those extra indulgences we were using before to entertain ourselves. Therefore we’ll be spending more time online consuming more content. Therefore more online creative content is going to be required, uh, to keep people entertained. Shifting over to social. So social is about, you know, low levels of trust and physical engagement together and as loneliness, exclusion, cultural challenges. We are going through a lot of these right now. So stepping back, go back to the formless hashtag factor in this case is social virus equals the change. Do you see that’s happening equal? The outcome you believe it’s gonna lead to and at anybody else that you think that can contribute to that conversation?

#socialvirus

The example that I am using is at social virus equals less trust, no shaking hands equals creative physical gestures. Now there is a, some very creative ways that have come out. One of them is the WuHan shake where you basically don’t shake hands, but you kind of have a gesture where you tap each other’s feet. And I think we’re going to see a lot more hand gestures, uh, beyond some of the more obvious ones that we use when we’re upset, um, that are becoming a universal rather than cultural. There’s going to allow us to communicate in different ways, right? We’re, we’re, we’re beings that, um, yearn for the human connection and um, yeah, I think we’re going to be creating a lot new creative ways to connect with one another. So hit up the comments below with the hashtag social virus and let’s see where that goes.

#securityvirus

Don’t forget to include those who can add to this conversation. Next is security. Obviously this has got a lot of us worried at the moment. So we’re looking at things like cybersecurity, physical security, new biosecurity. How does all this aligned? We’re looking at things like personal safety, protection, privacy, unseen security risks. So we’re looking at a whole storm of stuff, right? So stepping back again, head over to the comment section. We are putting hashtag factor in this case it is security virus, which equals the change that you see is happening at the moment equal the outcome you see at who you think can contribute to the conversation. In this case, my example is hashtag security virus equals less privacy equals new secrecy tools, right? I think that VPNs and those type of other kind of secrecy tools that keep us at least away from prying eyes that we don’t want looking at what we do is going magnificently enhance.

#techvirus

I think it’s one of the outcomes and one of the changes in place is the idea behind privacy and many countries. Right now there are movement, uh, PR, uh, permits, which uh, we all hope was temporary, but this could open up to other things. Yeah. So hit up your comments below. Let’s get that conversation going. Moving to the next is technology. This is one of my favorites. All right, so remote engagement and enriched interactions, demand on infrastructure, productivity, server delivery and security. Now, uh, we are not overlapping with security. We are talking about just purely technology security and the other one we’re talking security as a broader one just so there’s no confusion. So stepping back, we’re going to use the same form, like go down to the comments. You’re going to use hashtag factor equals the change you see that’s happening equal. The outcome you see that’s going to come out on the other end and add anybody who can add to the conversation.

So the example that I’m giving is hashtag tech virus equals remote engagement equal online mega conferences. So there’s a slight mistake. There’s actually removed, but it’s actually remote. Should be. So basically, I mean we’ve already seen this change. I see it happening more and more. We see conferences and exhibitions and all kinds of events, small and large, just complete 100% wiped out. Some of them are being for much later dates in hopes that we can physically connect. That being said, events are not going to stop. And I believe that online mega conferences are going to start taking place where people can start to catalog the, the activities. And what I mean by that is let’s say somebody who’s really good at a particular part of an agenda in a, in a larger concept of a conference, uh, you can start to get people who are highly focused to contribute to those different parts of the agenda.

Big tech, big changes big results

And now you can kind of decentralize the capability of developing very high content, mega conferences online. You know, something that we didn’t have in the past. It was all highly, let’s say, because of monetization and sponsorship purposes, you would be pretty well refined to high who had the big bucks to make it happen. I think that kind of thing is going to change. So don’t forget the, the, the hashtag #techvirus. All right? So put it downstairs equal the change that you see and the outcome on the other end and get those who you think that can contribute to the conversation on board. So that’s the end of that. And we’re going to now look at the third part of, of how we’re going to do this. So at the beginning, you know, we looked at the cycles. You understand what is the problem that we’re going through change by, by understanding that, you know, we may not necessarily be able to predict exactly what is going to come out on the other end, but we’ve got a process that we are collectively going to work on together.

Calibration by creating context and aligning relevance to make sense of the coronavirus pandemic

Uh, I encourage you to please to share this and get others involved as we comment below with the different hashtags that are provided by factor, which is LESST now we’re going to move to calibration. Calibration is about how do we make sense of this. And I encourage everybody watching this too. The reason I want you to keep sharing the comments and get people involved. As the conversation gets much richer, you’re going to be able to create a calibration So what are we talking about? calibration. Now this is not the virus. This is definitely not to illustrate anything of that nature. What this is showing is a chaotic environment of information. Okay. Now in order for us to work with information, we need to understand context and relevance. And we’re going to talk about what the difference between the two are and as we shift through understanding context, because context will come before relevance.

calibrating for context and relevance Coronavirus is not end of the world

Okay? And we start to get our information a little bit more organized. And finally we’ve got it all aligned and now we’ve got context and relevance. So context is about questions and relevance is about answers. Now I would say from experience, I’d say quite a few of my clients in the past and several startup companies they have built and help build. Don’t get this right. Um, I think a good example is led by bill gross from idea lambs. He did a Ted talk and he’d taken, I think it was about five factors he’s seen out of hundreds of companies he’s funded. And obviously he would remove the most obvious ones, which ones people would tackle. And people would say, well, it’s about the best idea, best execution, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But the, the factor was timing. And timing is all about context and relevance.

Mastering calibration is key to success in uncertain times

And if you learn to master this as a concept and be able to apply it, you can go really, really far with a lot of things that you want to do. And there’s no better time to actually do it now. So getting these two aligned, it’s important to understand that you know, getting the right questions in place and aligning them with the right answers allows you to create context and relevance. And it’s a question that I ha I put into a lot of the dialogue I have a lot of my clients and friends. I say, well, what’s the context and is it relevant? Right? Meaning, if we ask the right questions and do we have the right answers. But it’s like, are we, are we doing this at the right time? Right? So let’s step back. It would just give us a little bit more context, no pun intended.

mastering this will show you how Coronavirus is not end of the world

Of course. Again, so context is about asking the right questions. So we’re looking at like the right questions, the right timing, the right depth. We’re not looking to ask the wrong questions in the wrong time of the wrong depth. We want to get that right from the beginning. We were talking a bit more, uh, with a model I have that can help you do that. And relevance is about listening really well. Uh, applying critical thinking and ensuring that, you know, the applicability of, of the answers you have, uh, align with what you’re looking at. What you’re not looking for is, you know, no, you know, if you’re, if you’re not doing any fact checking, then you know, you may be getting some great answers, but they not be validated or verified and that would lead you to nowhere. You’d have actually very little to no relevance.

Um, you don’t want to have several assumptions unverified as well and misalignment of information. So you need to be very careful about these things because you know, although we may be asking the right questions, the answers that we’re bringing in to create relevance, uh, we may not be fact checking them. We may be working with too many assumptions and we may not be aligning the information properly. And so we’ve gone from having context but not having relevance. Yeah, and that’s what this brings us to here is understanding how context and relevance work together. So, so we’ve got here context, uh, on the left side here. So low co co context all the way to high context as you move to the right and at the bottom is low relevance all the way to high relevance at the very top. Now where you want to be, isn’t it in the top right hand corner where you have high level of relevance cause you’ve a context.

Context and asking the right questions about coronavirus

So context, you’ve asked the right questions and you’ve got the right answers. But when you shift over to the top left, you have the right answers but you don’t have the right questions. Does that ever happen to you before? Like you’ve got answers to things that make a lot of sense but you’re not necessarily understanding the context around it that that happens to quite a few people that I know. A good example is when people create technologies that answer uh, well I mean they’re the great technology but they don’t really solve anything of great mass or are great value for anybody. And so that would be a perfect relevance but no context and where you definitely don’t want to be as in the very bottom left corner where you just don’t have context or relevance at all. You’ve completely lost. And the bottom right hand corner, sorry, bottom left hand corners where you don’t want to be in the bottom right hand corner is where we have a high level of of of context.

So we’re asking a lot of awesome questions but we’re not really getting the answers or pursuing the answers we need very well. I would say most of the people that I deal with, our circumstances are usually in that bottom right hand corner. Um, you got a lot of very smart people that can get a lot of the right questions and framing that context in a great way, but getting the relevance, uh, on how to align those really great questions is a real challenge, uh, to pull off. So here’s a cheat sheet that I use. Uh, I’m gonna make this available to you. Uh, you’ll find a way to do that in the description. And basically this is a systematic breakdown of 24 high level questions that you can tweak and obviously create even better or deeper context with. So, for example, you know, why is this happening?

Relevance finding the right answers and how Coronavirus is not end of the world

So coronavirus, you know, why is this happening and why does it exist? Right? And so this is like a, a purposeful question to understand, you know, where does this come from? And I know quite a few people researching what are viruses right now, which, which helps create context exactly around, you know, why is this, why is this happening and why does it exist? Right? And we’re learning a lot of things about viruses that we never knew we took them for granted. I mean, I know we don’t see them, but you know, as part of the problem, right? Seeing, see, seeing is believing. But what happens when you don’t see it? Right? So things also like, okay, so you know, when did it start? Right? And there’s a lot of questions about that. You hear that in the media, you know, there’s a timeline that people put in and whether the, you know, when it started and it doesn’t make a difference because we see how fast this thing is moving and we are in a race against time.

And that creates a lot of context because when we understand the speed of it, you know, and anything like Lex questions like when, when might it change? Right? What, what factors can escalate this thing or deescalate it? Right? When will it end? I mean, you know, again, what are the factors and ways of putting this to an end? Um, you know, and when to take action. I mean, now we see this with a lot of our politicians. I mean we have a lot of opinions about that. You know, some politicians we believe have taken action too late, some too early, maybe some on time, maybe none at all. Um, that it helps create a lot of context because you know, for example, you have a leadership that hasn’t acted fast enough. There’ll be a lot of questions around the context of why, right? And that would bring you towards creating a lot of relevance as we moved to the next part.

So as you go through the list here, I mean there’s 24 of them. I’m not going to cover all of them. Uh, but these are very broad investigative style context questions. There’s 24 of them. You can go ahead and create more of them. If you have a further suggestions, please do put in a comment, just put context equals and then, um, put the zone. It would fit into, uh, under either why, when, who, what, how, or where. And then we can definitely evolve this. But this is the basic skeleton of it. Moving over to relevance, we got three things that we look at. We look at avoidance. So what are we avoiding? We’re avoiding fake news. We’re avoiding using single sources. We’re avoiding having one choice. We’re avoiding having negativity. We’re avoiding believing everything and we’re avoiding rushing to a conclusion. If you use those six rules, um, you will be diligent enough to look at information that comes through whatever lens or pipeline you’re using to create relevance out of it and sources.

Diversifying our conversation to grow our boundaries of thinking

So it’s important to talk to as many people as possible to a diverse amount of people. So not the same type of people, but as many different types of people as you can read as many sources as possible and read as many different type of sources as possible. Um, I understand with all the fake news and a lot of excess information, you’re just going to have to get better, faster and more diligent added. It’s not an impossibility, but it is definitely a pain in the rear-end. Um, create an ongoing conversation. So what I’ve noticed in creating relevance is that there are some great sources that have come across people who have fantastic insights and their insights change with time. And I didn’t want to be stuck in a contextual situation where I just took a snapshot of what this individual has shared with me, but it hasn’t evolved.

the more you discuss with others the more you realize Coronavirus is not end of the world

And so I find it, you know, to ensure that you consistently relevant, it’s important to keep the conversation going, right? Allow as many perspectives also to emerge. Um, I have so many examples about this where I have people that come up with the craziest ideas. You can imagine, uh, and we’re probably coming across a lot of this right now. I will say there’s no smoke without fire. That isn’t the way to escalate any kind of conspiracy theory. What I’m saying is that things don’t just come into existence on their own. There is a purpose and a reason behind why things happen. So you need to be diligent about that. Your approach should always to be verifying information, validating sources cross-checking when you have information and testing ideas and approaches out. So if you come to a conclusion and you’re going to go about something and you believe that the context and the relevance are aligned, you should be asking, taking those questions and testing different perspectives on how you plan to approach it or maybe some opinions and conclusions you have.

Um, just to see how people react and respond to that, um, is a great way of just fine tuning relevance. So as we reached the end, as I promised, I know this may not be, uh, in context around everybody watching this, but, uh, I’m a growth hacker and I provide growth hacking training, uh, for limited time. I do run this course, which is my level one growth Ninja training course is a 10 day course run by emails, normally $100. I’m going to put a link for you below it. You join for free of charge. Uh, I hope this could be of some help. Um, I just, my, my purpose is just to give you as much value as I can in whichever way I can. And so I hope that this would be of some use before I end. I’d like to remind you that I’ve recently published a bestselling book called ready, set growth hack available in several locations.

Uh, their most popular one is obviously Amazon, so you can head on Amazon and you know, please buy a copy and love to further have conversations with you about how you can use this. This is basically a blueprint that helps organizations 10x their growth. It’s based on 25 years of experience and three years, uh, almost four years now. I’ve intensive research around what makes companies grow and what actually stops some companies from growing. Uh, so hopefully give you some answers and a blueprint on how to actually go about that. So as we’ve include, just like to thank you for tuning in, you can reach me on several channels including my own website, www.nadersabry.com I am very active on Instagram, on LinkedIn, medium, and YouTube. Uh, you can reach out to me on any of these channels and I’ll do my best to get back to you. Thank you for tuning in and please get people involved in the part about changes. We want to get that conversation going. The more people we have involved, the better. Thank you.

And that is the Coronavirus is not end of the world

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Learn more about the author Nader Sabry

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Nader Sabry — Growth Hacking

Strategist entrepreneur & innovator in space tech, government, & health/wellness. Has raised $20m directly /+$100m indirectly for startups. www.nadersabry.com