Evolution, not Reinvention
Staying Relevant Over Time
What do you think of when you think of reinvention?
You may think of someone or something old that’s trying to be new again. You may think of pop culture. Madonna’s name always comes up when talking about reinvention. Her looks, interests, and music have changed over time, so people like to say she’s reinvented herself.
Would you say Arnold Schwarzenegger reinvented himself when he went from The Terminator to the Governor of California? What about Martha Stewart? She started in private catering and moved into cookbooks, TV shows, and a magazine. Now she’s selling wine, CBD products, and is on the cover of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition. It almost makes you forget that she went to prison for perjury in an insider trading case.
What about companies? Would you say Amazon reinvented itself when it went from books to… everything? Or Netflix, as it moved from mail-to-home DVDs to international content creators. What about Target? Target was initially an experiment by the Dayton-Hudson Corporation to see if there was a market for a lower-priced discount retailer, all the way back in 1960. Target eventually became bigger than Dayton Hudson, and in 2000, the company changed its name from Dayton-Hudson Corporation to Target Corporation. (They also eventually sold the Dayton Hudson stores.) One might say Dayton-Hudson reinvented itself as Target, but did it? Or did it just evolve? Moving to where the market was or was going, pursuing areas of opportunity, and shedding things that weren’t as relevant anymore.
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Evolution over Reinvention
I don’t like the term reinvention: the action or process through which something is changed so much that it appears to be entirely new. It implies a sudden break, an “old” and then a “new,” as if there’s a switch and you flip it from one to the next. That you or your organization have become irrelevant and now must “reinvent” yourselves out of bankruptcy or on your very last dime. That’s never a good position to be in.
Instead, ongoing and healthy evolution should be your goal. Seek to evolve constantly, in subtle ways, and in larger big leaps, sensing and responding to opportunities, your interests, the market, and where you think things are going.
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Evolution Experts: Gary Vaynerchuck and Martha Stewart
Below are two podcasts that feature two experts of evolution, Gary Vaynerchuck and Martha Stewart.
The first is “Decoder with Gary Vee.” If you’re not familiar with Gary Vaynerchuk, he got his start working at his family’s liquor store, which he turned into an online wine shop and began hosting a long-running YouTube show called “Wine Library TV.”
He then created the gigantic GaryVee brand, he co-founded the restaurant reservation platform Resy, which he sold to American Express in 2019, and Empathy Wines, which he sold in 2020.
He also runs a holding company VaynerX, which contains the ad agency VaynerMedia, Gallery Media, which owns lifestyle websites, and VeeFriends — Gary’s NFT and intellectual property business. VeeFriends NFTs came with tickets to VeeCon, Vaynerchuk’s business conference. Gary also co-founded a sports agency — VaynerSports.
He’s busy, to say the least. And he’s certainly not just the host of Wine Library TV. He’s evolved, and he has lots to say about how and why he has evolved over time and where he’s going. There are great insights into looking, listening, and making choices about the future, knowing only what we know today.
- Decoder with Gary Vee: https://www.theverge.com/23766700/gary-vee-vaynerchuk-vaynerx-vayner-media-influencer-content-marketing-social-media
The second is “On with Kara Swisher,” in which Martha talks about her journey so far and where she’s going. She’s 81 years old and has a lot of plans for the future- and she has plenty of thoughts on reinvention and evolution.
- On with Kara Swisher, featuring Martha Stewart: https://www.stitcher.com/show/on-with-kara-swisher/episode/martha-stewart-makes-no-apologies-for-being-perfect-304660255
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How are you evolving? How do you want to evolve? What opportunities do you see, and how might you begin to test them?
Or are you waiting to become irrelevant so you can reinvent yourself?
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