I just finished a steaming hot bowl of my super favorite Yushoken ramen that I prepared by myself, and it was really almost as good as having it in their restaurant, sans the long queue. The ramen kit was delivered after waiting for a few days because they were just overwhelmed with orders. But wait, the number one rule of the ramen god before was NO TAKE OUTS, and they never had delivery service too. I also enjoyed the really delicious and freshly baked cinnamon rolls that were baked by my sister who is was a very busy Make-up artist before the lockdown. She just recently learned the recipe and now she can barely cope up with online orders. The rolls were delivered by a Grab for delivery guy who I found out was an accountant before this pandemic. Now, he said, the money that he is making is more than the salary that he used to get, although really very tiring. In one of our bedrooms, my daughters were attending a workout session online being conducted by Plana forma which they had to pay first before they can join the class.
Last Tuesday, a flash meeting that was announced by the President of Filipino Homes, Anthony Leuterio for important updates from Weecomm Development Corp. at 9:00 PM for a 9:45PM Zoom session which started on time, was attended by 160 leaders and agents, and ended past 11:00pm. If it was announced a day earlier, they would have had 400 participants, easily. Filipino Homes sold over P1.5B in April and over P500M in the first 10 days of May! Their sales were only limited by the ability of some developers to accept online transactions. Otherwise, they could have easily sold P2B, even during Covid time.
A new Institute for Real Estate for Filipinos that will offer extensive Online courses with some of the most respected speakers have also been established to be accredited with PRC for CPD credits. This is in anticipation of the new norm policies that do not allow public gatherings at least until the end of the year. Cinemas are closed and may stay that way for quite some time but watch out for the coming of the Drive-in movies that was very popular in the 60’s in the US and will be very practical for this practice of social distancing.
I can go on and on with examples about people and companies who did not wait for the Lockdown to be lifted, or for the curve to be flattened, or for the new norm to be set in order to ‘Bounce Back’. They SHIFTED with the market and adapted to the current situation, which eventually will definitely be part of the New Normal.
Even without the Covid-19, Shifts happen in the market, with the different industries. Disruptors come up unexpectedly from nowhere and grab the market share of the complacent dominant players. For real estate, my personal opinion as I have shared in my different talks since last November 2019 was already due for a Shift if not a correction.
The prices were simply getting too high and out of reach of the real market.
People say that things will change in the new norm, but actually, things ‘have’ already changed and will never be back to the way we did things before, the way we lived before and the way we did business before. If we will wait for the economy to Bounce Back, it will be quite difficult to predict when it will happen but what we can definitely control now is our ability to SHIFT with the market and ADAPT to the situation. We don’t have to wait. If we do, it might be too late. Competition will be very stiff as the whole world adjusts to the changes of the new norm. It is in this adjustment stage that we should be very observant, flexible and ready to serve the market needs, in the manner that it wants to be served.
The times also require us to reinvent ourselves and our businesses as well. If we are expecting to ‘bounce back’ to the way we were before, the products, the system and the same distribution channels, we might just be disappointed or wait indefinitely. The one who knows how to Shift & Adapt will be the one who will Survive and maybe even Thrive! So, the next time you are thinking of an option, the reminder is there on your keyboard. Control your Shift.
