Last year was supposed to be the year that everything fell in place and we would take off to greater heights.
It is the year, we found out about a place called Wuhan in China, we forwent shaking hands and hugging without being branded anti-social, sneezing was taboo and we almost went bat crazy being in isolation.
They say,
"If you want to make God laugh tell him your plans...
In the best tradition of turning lemons into lemonades, here are some lessons learnt from a year we would all love to forget.
1. You never know when the rainy day is coming
It is a fact of life that things will be going well until they don’t. And like a thief in the night the bad times never announce themselves. Who would have though that a flu-like disease would shut down the world – literally?
So if there is one thing that 2020 showed us is the importance of saving. We don’t save for lack of cash or lack of willingness but because we don’t know how to save. When we get our paycheck, we intention to save something after we have catered for all our expenses and inevitably we don’t save. The trick is when you get your paycheck save some predetermined amount first and spend what is left.
This simple, but not easy, shift in perspective will make a world of difference in beefing up your savings, and therefore readying us for the inevitable rainy day.
2. Multiple streams of income became real
With paychecks being cut or lost altogether, the old say about keeping all eggs in one basket took on a new importance.
Beyond your major income do you have other income streams you can count on, on a regular basis? Are they diverse enough that if some dry up others will be there to take up the slack?
And how do you build up these income streams? You can earn income from your selling your expertise – consulting or from a hobby you pursue in your free time. The trick is to provide value and make known what you do – marketing. Once you build a reputation guard it with your life.
With your savings you can start investing to build these income streams. Do it like the banks, build your asset base from near cash assets – savings and fixed deposits, to treasury bills and bonds to shares in companies and eventually to more fixed assets like real estate.
"The mistake many of us make is to jump straight into fixed assets, which while a good store of value, return very little cash-on-cash and can often leave us asset rich and cash poor...
Systematically building this pile of cash generating assets, may make the difference between returning to your parents house at the next crisis or weathering the storm with a smile or at least a grin.
3. The personal brand takes work
In our office space, working in a functioning organisation, doing what we do best, can be deceptive. No one but your immediate colleagues and boss know or appreciate your value. That is all very well as long as you are in the job you are in. As soon as you lose that job you realise you are not so hot as you thought. Not that your expertise or experience disappears in a puff of smoke, but because not enough people in the wider world appreciate your value.
Just because you have all the letters of the alphabet after your name doesn’t mean you deliver value.
So personal branding became important in 2020. The market will pay you according to the perceived value you can deliver. The market can not divine your value. You need to communicate your value deliberately, systematically and consistently for it to be fully appreciated.
This takes work, work we should be doing every day and especially in the good times when hakuna matata.
4. Social capital was key
When things are going well – the money is flowing in, we are covering our bills, with some left over to have a good time we forget the value of social support systems. The people around us – at home, at the office, our alumni became useful in getting us through the darkest, loneliest periods. The extent to which they were useful depended on how we had watered these relationships in the good times.
Ironically despite the world being more connected we are actually more detached from our social networks.
We need to invest in these more ahead of the next crisis. In the words of Dale Carnegie, “be interested to be interesting”. Speak to our people, find out what makes them tick, be available, help when you can, accept help where you can (a friend in need is a friend indeed) and generally be more friendly, even if to two other people in your life.
5. Invest in your inner resources
But when all was said and done, regardless of if you had a village supporting you or you were alone, it was really up to you to struggle through the year.
There is a case for building your inner resources – mental and spiritual during the good times so that your inner peace is not easily disrupted when the hard times come along.
Mentally you need to keep learning and that means you have t o maintain an open mind that is easily teachable. Hanging on to fixed positions for security, means that when the upheavals come we will not have the mental flexibility to adjust.
A continued quest of self discovery will eventually bring one to the universal truths that religions have tried to codify down the ages. Finding ones own truth – not the turnkey solutions parroted by charlatans, is a continous and arduous journey. The end benefit is that the journey grounds you, more than any religious dogma does and when the hard times come along you will have an anchor.
Otherwise Happy New Year to you all and may 2021 be more easy on you – on us all, than 2020.
