Five recession-proof investments you must make

Note: Today’s arti­cle come to you cour­tesy of Robin Sharma, best-selling author of The Monk Who Sold His Fer­rari, The Great­ness Guide and  The Saint, the Surfer and the CEO: A Remark­able Story About Liv­ing Your Heart’s Desires. 

Video: Lead­ing with­out title, cour­tesy of Robin Sharma Leadership

Wel­come back to Reflec­tions of a crazy Colom­bian. In today’s arti­cle we will share five invest­ment strate­gies that you must con­sider in these trou­bled times. I have men­tioned this arti­cle comes to you cour­tesy of best-selling author Robin Sharma. Ok, time to be trans­par­ent: Robin did not write this arti­cle. How­ever, the arti­cle is inspired on the last install­ment of his reg­u­lar newslet­ter Lead­ing with­out Title, of which I am sub­scriber. I hope you will enjoy the show.

INVESTING IN THE DOWNTURN

Most peo­ple these days are scared. The econ­omy is going down the toi­let, the swine flu pan­demic is in full swing, and tax return sea­son is around the cor­ner. Whilst I am not sure which of these is more scary, I do know that fear is not the great­est decision-making tool at our dis­posal. So to help you nav­i­gate these trou­bled times, I am going to share five invest­ment strate­gies you should seri­ously consider.

Despite the title of this arti­cle, I am not really say­ing you have to fol­lor these rec­om­men­da­tions. As best-selling author Dan Mill­man says,

“You don’t have to wait to make pos­i­tive and empow­er­ing changes; You don’t have to go to school;You don’t have to go to work; You don’t have to go to war;You don’t have to behave as other peo­ple expect or desire you to. You don’t have to do any­thing. Just recog­nise that every action or inac­tion has con­se­quences, and that your will­ing­ness to accept these con­se­quences gives you the power and free­dom to choose who you are, where you are, and what you will do”.

Whilst it is true that you don’t have to fol­low these rec­om­men­da­tions, I sug­gest you con­sider them and make a choice.You might find unimag­in­able ben­e­fits from imple­ment­ing one of the fol­low­ing five strategies:

1. Invest in your team
2. Invest in your brand
3. Invest in new markets
4. Invest in your values
5. Invest in yourself

Why are these invest­ments good dur­ing a reces­sion? Because they either require lit­tle money (ie. you can afford it), pro­vide expo­nen­tial returns over time (ie. will posi­tion you to reap the rewards of the next upturn), or both. Let’s explore each of them in detail.

1.  INVEST IN YOUR TEAM

Do you know some­one who has recently been down­sized? Then you know the cur­rent labour mar­ket is in pretty bad shape. Yet pre­cisely because of that, it pro­vides an incred­i­ble oppor­tu­nity for com­pa­nies with good lead­er­ship. It has never been so easy to attract, moti­vate, and retain world-class tal­ent. Many organ­i­sa­tions are in such a hurry to cut costs down that they are not thought­fully look­ing at people’s tal­ents and poten­tial before they mind­lessly start down­siz­ing. You don’t have to make the same mis­takes! If you are down­siz­ing, take your time and con­duct due dili­gence to ensure you keep the best peo­ple in your team. On the other hand, if you don’t need to down­size, invest in the future by bring­ing the best peo­ple into your team. With the cur­rent con­di­tions in the labour mar­ket, now is the per­fect time to build that team of great spir­ited peo­ple Herb Brooks talks about. If you want to know how to build a great team, check our lat­est video of the month “Build­ing a great team - a trib­ute to Herb Brooks”

2. INVEST IN YOUR BRAND

Stand out! This is one of the eas­i­est times to make a good impres­sion with­out hav­ing to go out of your way. Have you noticed that every­one is neg­a­tive; bad cus­tomer ser­vice abounds; invest­ment in long-term Inno­va­tion is close to non-existent; and cliches such as “peo­ple are our great­est asset’ are sur­pris­ingly absent? Yes, as uber-marketer and brand expert Seth Godin has so elo­quently put it, You Are Bor­ing. To stand out, stay pos­i­tive and take the path less trav­elled. Make a good impres­sion. Choose your atti­tude. Aim for Cus­tomer ser­vice excel­lence. Feed your cre­ative self. Imple­ment at least two of these tac­tics, and great rewards will come to you.

3. INVEST IN NEW MARKETS

When the mar­kets are as hardly hit as they are now, it cre­ates a fan­tas­tic oppor­tu­nity for invest­ment. No, I am not talk­ing about buy­ing the right shares (although buy­ing shares in com­pa­nies with strong cash flow and dis­ci­plined man­age­ment teams is a great share invest­ment tac­tic).

What I am talk­ing about is open­ing new mar­kets. Despite what TV pun­dits would like us believe, not every sec­tor in the econ­omy is in a reces­sion. If you find an emerg­ing mar­ket, this is a great time to build a busi­ness there. You might just find that your biggest chal­lenge will be get­ting the fund­ing for this ven­ture; after all, banks have kind of stopped lend­ing these days. But that’s ok; there are lit­er­ally mil­lions of peo­ple who do not know what to do with their money. Think about it: if you had cash avail­able, what would you do with it? There are almost no invest­ments with a decent rate of return avail­able to retail cus­tomers; so build a sim­ple yet solid busi­ness case, and go get Other People’s Money. Just make sure you treat it as if it was your own, and you should be able to do pretty well.

4. INVEST IN YOUR VALUES

Times of uncer­tainty like the cur­rent ones beget us to Get back to basics. Under cur­rent eco­nomic con­di­tions it is per­fectly accept­able to fol­low a strat­egy of stick­ing to your knit­ting. Fig­ure out what you’re good at, who your most valu­able cus­tomers are, and what are the ser­vices and val­ues you stand for; Then spend some time going to those cus­tomers, reminde them of what you stand for, and offer your ser­vices. By build­ing a busi­ness based on integrity, you can cre­ate growth, even in the most depressed of markets.

If all else fails, go back to fun­da­men­tals: Renew rela­tion­ships with your loved ones, and savour the sim­ple things in life. They usu­ally are both price­less and free, so no eco­nomic down­turn will ever take that away from you.

5. INVEST IN YOURSELF

Would you be sur­prised if I said this is one of the best times to invest in learn­ing new skills? Despite your mem­o­ries from school, learn­ing can lead to increased lev­els of pas­sion and engage­ment; you just need to find out some­thing you WANT to learn (as opposed to some­thing you think you NEED to learn). If you are like most peo­ple, you are likely to have been run­ning your­self to the ground like a hope­less worko­holic with­out a 12-step pro­gram; After all, short-term prof­its for either your­self, your com­pany or both often place unsus­tain­able demands on your time, and a grow­ing econ­omy pro­vides ample oppor­tu­nity for short-term prof­its. Unfor­tu­nately, chances are you invested close to zero in your learn­ing and devel­op­ment as you focused on short-term returns. As Robin Sharma says, “to be a bet­ter leader, [ you must] become a big­ger per­son.”. Do your­self a favour and invest some resources (time, money or ide­ally both!) in your­self. Go learn a new skill on some­thing you enjoy. It will make you a bet­ter father, a bet­ter mother, a bet­ter worker, and ulti­mately a bet­ter human being.

Nowis the time to stop read­ing and start mov­ing. Just pick one of these five invest­ments and take imme­di­ate, mas­sive action today. I promise you won’t regret doing so.

Tagged as: Investments, Lead without title, leadership, Life, Recession-proof, Robin Sharma, Strategies, Timeless wisdom