9 Questions To Ask When Crisis Hits Your Property Business

At Limitless Monks, we have ourselves seen 2 recessions in our own employment life time and what appears like the third one is on its way.

And, so should follow the crisis management plan for your property business if you are sleep walking into one.

Just to give an idea of what I mean, here is a quick list of the three.

Me thinks, a minor recession is on our way due to COVID-19 that probably can last atleast 12 months to recover from the point of complete end of lock down.

With a great level of immaturity during the dotcom bubble and just about starting a career in IT back in 1999/2000, there was a massive pressure to survive in a very competitive workforce environment in India.

Fast forward 6+ years and the pressure was no different but this time in UK with IT and a technology blog to our names.

Roll over 10 more years the pressure right now is no different either except that property portfolio is added alongside IT engagements.

The solution then was survive and reset, the solution now is survive and reset too. Be it in your personal life with loved ones or within your business.

But:

Given we have seen two of those similar situations before, we have some good lessons that we learnt.

This post is a summary of what myself and Ravi Vadugu put together as no non-sense and no-hype questions to ask ourselves when this all COVID-19 stuff started to kick in and as a crisis management prep exercise should we come across one.

Now that I love playing numbers in blog posts, this one is 3 of 3s. i.e. 3 categories and each one having 3 questions.

Here you go.

1) Your Liquid Money

When it comes to liquid money, the biggest issue with small businesses or largest of enterprises alike, most do not know what and where is it.

Time and time again I have seen in biggest of enterprises that I have worked in the past, where they don’t systems to show the cash available on the spot.

Talk about crisis management and companies like Virgin Atlantic going bust without government support as per the latest news this morning.

There will be a period of uncertainty before a response strategy is defined and actioned.

So if you are an entrepreneur and specifically if you are a property investor then here are the 3 questions you should answer to the dot on liquid cash.

1) What is my cash liquidity?

2) Where is it?

3) How easily can i get it?

Here is the thing:

Last two recessions we have asked same questions but not with such clarity.

We ended up in situations due to which we had to retract from our positivism and ask ourselves what is the most important question we should answer at that moment.

But:

This time its different. As soon as we sensed the situation we had our questions and responses ready.

This is it, isn’t it?

We have to go through an experience multiple times before we can structure our learning’s into a logic format or system to be able to implement the next time we hit the similar situation.

Meaning:

Use this lockdown or any impact you see due to current lockdown as the biggest learning and create your own self/business survival guide.

Simply because:

You will have these scenarios repeat every now and then in your life time and you don’t get such opportunities to learn very often. Not for a decade if I take last recession to this lockdown.

2. Your Mindset

Needless to say that in any business and in personal life unless we have grown ourselves mentally, we don’t stand a chance to lead ourselves towards our vision.

So here are few questions that we ask on a daily basis and hold each other in such times even if we are perfectly fine.

4) Do I have any fears/risks that concerns me?

As an armature investor in the past, I always had panic attacks handling property in such unusual situations.

Here is a fact:

Any fears or inner dialogue leading to such panic attacks are just biggest factors for half the investors to give up on their portfolio and sell them off as quickly as they can.

Besides:

You would not want to under estimate your well being and the effects such fears can have on your own health. Having been at receiving end, I can definitely say am more than capable of handling those with defined routines in our lives right now practising them for couple of years now.

5) Awareness, Have I embraced it?

The single difference between improving your position any day, be it crisis management scenario or not is to be aware of your actions and thoughts.

What you think is what you do and what you do is what you become.

So more than anytime else you would want to be mindful and conscious of what you think and what you do.

Simply because:

This can have lasting effect on both your property as a business and your mindset towards your future growth.

6) Am i prepared for the growth ahead?

There are two types of mindsets that you will come across within a period of recession or situations leading up to recession.

One:

Who will always talk about what is happening and why they have been telling the community not to invest heavily, distribute the little investment and eventually end up selling their portfolio.

The other:

Who will always face those fears and think about what needs to be done now to make best use of the time available and prepare for the growth that awaits once the recovery is on its way.

Question is:

Which side are you on. Are you putting enough effort to just continue as normal despite the fears and looking for opportunities to self educate, raise funds required for later and network with people.

3. Your Investments

Whilst liquid cash is something you want to get as much as you can to survive, the secret to build your empire solely rests on your ability to how well you come out of the situation.

7. Have you assessed the net impact due to whatever crisis?

Whilst the procrastination kicks in many a times with inactivity and depression for many, there is something you can help yourself with before you or anyone gets into that state.

i.e.

Having a clear idea of your accounts, what is the net impact and how much of liquid cash do you need to survive if you are into real trouble.

Where does it come from and how is something that can always be answered later once we know what we need.

Having changed my role in March 2020 within my IT business, having stopped a refurb due to lockdown and a tenant leaving a rental we do have our contingency plan well sketched with full sight into the cost of survival for next 6 months.

If you haven’t put your plan, then now is the time to do it with all the love and energy you have got.

8. Will I hold on to my investment?

We still remember, back in 2007 despite the recession both of us went and invested on land in growth areas overseas.

We held on to the investments which was no less than a world war in our lives paying the monthly premiums.

But:

Over the period of the decade we realised that the strength with which you can hold on to your good investments defines your position later in the day.

I say good investments, because this leads into the next point or question seamlessly.

Personally we have added a new skill doing some rookie mistakes investing in some stocks.

A subset of funds we kept aside for refurb are into stocks with shares of reputed companies at their lowest ever.

Talk about diversifying your investment, we are doing it now within the lockdown period even if we have mistakes to our name. The strategy is same again to buy and hold up to the right time.

9. Is this a reset point of some sort?

Look at the situations like this as that time to soul search yourself to put the bad investments firmly behind you when the situation settles down.

Break the lockdown and the investments will start hitting the roof and time to get rid of your bad investments if any.

Needless to say I have one unit that I definitely want to get rid of which although has given me good cashflow, has too much money left to my liking hitting my ROI within our deal profile.

In a nutshell, ask yourself if this is one of those reset points where you would like to review following but not limited to….

• • • Investments you have done so far
    • Your strategy changes if any
    • Your goals next 5 years
    • Your education that you need to go through

In conclusion, crisis management may cause a little pin implementing but if you are able to overcome that feeling of any crisis, life becomes more thrilling and challenging all of a sudden. Forget about others but at Limitless Monks we get sucked into the process of development and growth when such growth opportunities are thrown at us.

Recession data source: wikipedia

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