What would you do without Google?  Could you survive without Gmail, Google Docs and Drive?  What about Facebook, TikTok and Instagram?

Well, 1.4 billion people seem to manage it ok… As you know, I’ve recently returned from a trip to Asia and one of the stops I made along my way was China. While I was there, I had some work to do, but I was scuppered. I needed to open some Google Docs that someone had sent me in Drive. Simple enough you might think? Not in China.

You see, Google is banned there – along with all of the Google products. You literally can’t access it at all. So my work had to wait. But it’s not just Google that’s not available there – Facebook, Reddit, WhatsApp, Twitch, ChatGPT and even their own, homegrown TikTok is totally blocked.

Now, I’m no big social media user. Aside from LinkedIn I hate the bloody stuff. But the idea of NOT being able to access any of these apps that have become so ingrained into our daily life here was a little strange. I’d never really considered it before – how much do we take our technology for granted? I don’t know about you, but I never give a moment’s thought to what life would be like without my mobile phone, laptop, emails, internet banking… the list goes on and on…

Now, the people of China do have access to technology- and plenty of it! They have social networks, messaging apps, video streaming sites… They’re just different

Instead of WhatsApp they have WeChat.

TikTok is replaced by Douyin.

YouKu instead of YouTube

But it got me thinking… We spend our days living our lives surrounded by what we consider normal, like a little bubble. And it’s only when we get out of this bubble that we start to question this “normal” or to realise that our “normal” isn’t everyone’s normal. It’s the same in all areas of our lives… including business.

So here’s a question for you today…

when did you last get out of your little business bubble and spend some time with other business owners? Business owners who might do things differently to you, who might have a different “normal”? You never know what you might discover…