#213: The Benefits of a Pandemic: Resiliency & Deurbanization

Welcome to The Conscious Pivot Podcast with international speaker, business mentor, bestselling author of Pivot, and your host, Adam Markel. The Conscious Pivot shares the stories and wisdom of people who have successfully reinvented some area of their business and personal life. You'll gain powerful insights into how you can fully embrace new opportunities, increase your performance, and master the art and science of innovation and resilience. So please join Adam as he guides you on your conscious pivot.

Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of the Conscious Pivot Podcast. I'm your host, Adam Markel. I'm feeling in this moment in a state of bliss, a state of bliss because I'm in the state of Maine and it feels very, it feels really peaceful here. It's quiet. We're on the coast. There's not a lot of people around. And right now that just feels, that feels right. I'm a city guy. I grew up in New York. And lived in or around big cities for most of my life. We live in San Diego, which is not so much a big city these days, I don't think, but it's definitely a lot more big city and a lot more congested than it is here on the central coast of Maine. But this is the season that this feels right. And so often I think we don't really give enough attention to the fact that we're going through seasons, that there are seasons happening all around us in the world. We're used to seeing that, and yet when we're going through a particular season in our life, it might be that this is a season of change for you, season of making certain pivots, macro pivots, micro pivots, what have you. It could be that this is a season of harvesting, that right now because of what's going on in our world, your business or some other part of your life is really thriving and doing phenomenally well. I know a number of people that are really making great use of the opportunity because so much traffic has— buying traffic has come online and that that has really driven their numbers to places they couldn't have even predicted. So it may be that that's what's happening for you, but even that's a season. There's that old expression that this too shall pass, which I think a lot of times there is that statement of this too shall pass because people don't know what to say, especially when somebody is experiencing something really hard like the loss of a loved one or some other hardship in life. And it's a good line. I'm not taking exception with this too shall pass. It's just that we don't consider it in its full, in the full dimension of it, I think. Which is that even when things are good, like it's sunny and things are working in your favor and the skies are fair and the winds are fair and all that kind of thing that means that we're happy or we're healthy or we're prosperous, everything is temporary. That's something that I think the Buddha and Buddhism is known well for, is this law of impermanence, that things change, that nothing is in fact permanent. And so this too shall pass just means that everything is impermanent, the good, the bad, the ugly, whatever we call it. So I find myself in this season realizing that this too shall pass, that whether it is in fact feeling like a good place, this season feels good for you in the moment, or maybe you're in a great deal of pain and there's been a lot of suffering through this season as it has been for so many people. Truly, this too shall pass. With that said, I feel very honored, blessed in fact, to be able to have this conversation with all of you and to invite other really amazing people into the conversation. Today is no exception to that. I have a great guest on the show. Hi, Adam. The gentleman's name is Naresh Vissa. He's the founder and the CEO of Krish Media and Marketing, a full-service e-commerce solutions provider. He's also the host of a show that I was a guest on, and I really enjoyed his style of interviewing me on that show and the conversation, and that's why we wanted to get him on our show as our guest. And the show is called The Work From Home Show. It was really perfectly timed for what's going on in the world, and in fact, I believe that the show was created As a response to exactly what took place, which is that people had to work remotely. So the Work From Home Show is his baby, him and his partner whose name is Adam as well. He is also the author of several books, including the bestseller 50 Shades of Marketing: Whip Your Business into Shape and Dominate Your Competition. That's quite a title. Naresh, great to have you on the show, brother. Thank you for being with us today.

Hey, thanks a lot, Adam. Just really looking forward to the interview and I share your sentiments as far far as just being thankful, giving thanks, and the spiritual— I know you're a spirituality expert, and that's something that I focus on every day, no matter the time of the year, winter, pandemic, you name it. I take 5 minutes out every day and just give thanks for just having this wonderful conversation with you. Thanks for being able to live where I currently live in Tampa, Florida. Thanks that I'm healthy, my son's healthy, my wife's healthy, our other family members are healthy. Just giving thanks for all the wonderful things in life. So again, thank you, Adam, for having me on the show.

Yeah, a pleasure. So I read a little bit of your bio there. What's not part of that bio that you would love for people to know about you?

Well, just a little bit of a background. I consider myself a digital marketing small business owner. So we run a digital marketing agency. We do pretty much anything and everything online and digital. I'm also an author. So you did mention one of my books, but I've also written 4 other books that have done quite well. So I consider myself an author and I am coming out with my next book next year. I've actually had delays during the pandemic simply because some of the topics aren't relevant to, to just being locked down. And so next year would probably be a better year to come out with the book instead of this year. And I also consider myself a real estate investor. I don't think I'm a fledgling real estate investor anymore, but I do have a real estate investment firm called Krish Capital. And I don't think it's a— yeah, like I said, it's not a startup anymore. It's cash flowing pretty well and really aggressive in growing that, especially with the incredibly low interest rates that are going to continue for the next year. So looking forward to pursuing the real estate side of things. and really take it to the next level over the next 1 to 2 years.

Resilience. It's the unsung hero in every success story that you will ever hear about. And in times of massive change and disruption, the kind of rapid change that we're all experiencing as leaders, as business owners, as entrepreneurs, we have to learn how to not only increase our own resilience, but that of our teams. So right now, we have a powerful opportunity for you to find out just how resilient you are. Some years ago, my team and I created the Resilience assessment that more than 5,000 business leaders across the globe have taken. And all you have to do to get your own free resilience leader assessment is go to resiliencerank.com. It takes less than 3 minutes, and it's our gift to you for being the leader that you already are. Other free resources and tools will accompany your score instantly. So go to resiliencerank.com and find out just how resilient you are. You know what? I didn't expect, and what's really fun for me about this show is I don't have to expect what's going to happen because it always just really unfolds in a perfect way. I'm curious about, to discuss a little bit about real estate. We're going to talk about a number of things today, but that hasn't been a topic that's come up on a show that I can think of recently. So, let's talk about that. Yeah. You know, obviously, it's a market. Real estate is a market just like Stock market is a market and there are lots of markets. What's your take on the market as a whole, the real estate market? Obviously, there's tons of submarkets. So, South or Central New Jersey is a very different market than Southern California and South Florida and all that kind of thing.

Yeah. So, really, really good topic and discussion and something that I like to share with people because people just assume The real estate market is this one big market, and that's just not the case. It's kind of like talking about the weather, right? So the weather market— there is no weather market. The weather here in Tampa, Florida is very different from the weather in New York City right now, which is very different from the weather in, like you said, Southern California or up in Maine. Although right now it's still the summer months, so the weather is somewhat similar, but you get what I'm saying here. Real estate is the same. And it has changed a lot since March 2020 when the pandemic hit and when the lockdowns were implemented. And also with the riots that have been going on, because that's had a huge effect on urbanization or de-urbanization in real estate as well. So we've seen a lot happen. And so we can— I want to quickly talk about 3 things. Mortgage rates. I want to talk about the commercial real estate market, which ties into my show, the Work From Home Show, and then also the residential real estate market. So in the case of mortgage rates, we are seeing all-time lows in interest rates across the board, really any interest rate, whether we're talking savings rates, CD rates, bond yields, treasuries. And in the mortgage market, You can lock in a mortgage loan for rates that are just out of this world. I mean, it's, it's, you're pretty much getting a free mortgage really at the end of the day, because the inflation rate right now is about 3.5%. That's what the government published. So if you can lock in a mortgage rate and what I'm seeing right now, let's just say a $100,000 home, 30 years, fixed rate, 20% down. So this is all the kind of bare minimums. Right now I'm seeing that is going for about 3% to 3.5%, assuming you have a credit score above 740, 750. And like I said, the inflation rate right now is about 3% to 3.5%. So you're essentially getting a free— locking in a free mortgage. And that has caused really an amazing demand in residential real estate. People kind of just assumed, oh, we're in this huge Recession, depression, 55 million people have filed for unemployment over the last 6 months. The real estate market is going to crash. That hasn't happened. What I saw personally, the months of April and May were very slow. And then all of a sudden after Memorial Weekend, all the players just came out of the floodgates and started buying up homes left and right. And so sticking to the mortgages right now is just a really, really good time to refinance. to take out debt because of the low interest and to start a business. I mean, it's really an amazing time. And that's why I don't expect, at least the real estate values in boring, smaller linear markets. I'm not talking about San Diego or New York City or Los Angeles. We'll get into that discussion about those cities. But Those kind of smaller— I'm talking places like where I am, Tampa Bay, Orlando, Memphis, Tennessee, Jackson, Mississippi. I own properties in all these places. Indianapolis, Indiana, parts of really Alabama has gotten a lot of influx of people migrating down. I don't know why, but it's— Birmingham. Yep. Birmingham, Tuscaloosa. So the point is that the low interest rates have brought in Regular mom-and-pop investors like me, but also the very, very large institutions, the real estate private equity firms, the big banks, the Wall Street banks. They've come in because they're essentially getting paid to take out their mortgage. A place like JP Morgan, for example, they already have an internal mortgage department through Chase. And so these banks are coming in and just— they're not even— I don't even think they're doing much research. They're just coming in And buying up properties left and right. And until that buying behavior changes, the real estate market is going to continue to stay afloat and maybe even continue to go up. Now, on the other hand, if you are a landlord, which is what I am, there is a problem not with valuations but with evictions. So we've faced, like I said, 55 million unemployed. And now you've got tenants who, who don't have jobs and who are depending on unemployment stimulus. And they're actually, they're actually getting paid a lot of money compared to what, at least my tenants, compared to what they were making before working. They're making more than what they were making. But there's a lot of uncertainty and states have come in and implemented these moratoriums on it, basically banning evictions. So there's a lot of kind of nebulous policy going around because most of the states backed off of that moratorium. But then the president came in and, and I guess ratified the eviction. You know, basically you can't evict people. So that's now working itself out, but you can expect to see a lot, lots and lots of evictions. But on the other hand, part of the reason why the real estate market is doing so well Is because there is a waitlist of people who want to rent. There is a waitlist of people who want to work from home. They need that extra bedroom. They need extra space now. They're moving out from the crowded multifamily condos and apartments to more private, more spacious single-family homes. People downgrading, maybe they lost a job, they're downgrading from more expensive homes or mortgages, downgrading to smaller ones. And then you obviously, like I touched on earlier, you have the migration out of huge cities like New York, Chicago, DC, San Francisco, Seattle, Portland, a migration out of those urban areas and to the suburbs and also to more tax-friendly, more tax-friendly, safer states. Like we brought up Alabama, Tennessee, Florida. And so we've seen a— A lot. The real estate market has been affected a lot by all these different factors.

Yes. And the deurbanization, I think, is really fascinating. And I don't know if you've done any research or looked into sort of historical, anything that would represent a time in our history where this has happened before, where there's been this movement out of cities and into urban, into rural areas. I don't know that there's been a time that we can think of recently where that's happened, but have you studied to sort of see where this has happened in the past and what triggers any reversal of that? Because obviously, investors, I'm always, when I invest, long-term. Because with real estate, for example, and I've owned a lot of real estate in my life, and one thing that's been true for me, there's always the location, location, location truism, which is a truism, and you do have to Be conscious of that. But another one is that you've got to have a time horizon because if you don't have an appropriate time horizon when it comes to real estate investing, you can get really burned. I mean, a lot of people got into real estate in the early part of this century and, you know, so 2002, 2003, and even before that, they started buying up real estate and we saw a real spike and a real peak in 2003, 2004, 2005, and then by 2006, We were already past the peak and by 2008, when our financial crisis occurred, we saw just a debacle. I mean, we saw the perfect storm of—

It was a real estate crisis, really.

It was an absolute real estate crisis. And so obviously, we've come a long way. We're sort of 12 years since the worst of it, so to speak, or maybe 9 or let's see, 2010. Yeah. So 10, 11 years since the worst of that crisis. You've got to think as a real estate investor for the long term because if people had been buying at that time using what was very loose credit and loose requirements to get credit, to get a mortgage, if you were buying things that you were able to cash flow and hold for the long term, you wouldn't have needed to sell. You wouldn't have lost your home in foreclosure or your condo in foreclosure back then. And I think that was the problem is that people thought, well, look, this will go on. Long enough for me to double my, you know, double my investment and flip it and flip 10, you know, over a year and make 25% or better. And that was what perpetuated— that and a lot of other regulatory issues that perpetuated that perfect storm. So, this is just sort of a question about, you know, what do you see in this de-urbanization? Have you seen any historical parallels to it that would inform us Now going in and where do you see the opportunities if that's the case? In fact, people are leaving the cities for more land, more room, et cetera. What do you see the opportunities there?

Yeah. So there's a lot to unpack there. Let's start with the first question, which is historically, have I done research and seen anything like this? And the answer is actually pretty simple. No, because the difference this time around Versus the Spanish flu from 1918 or the other depressions or recessions that we've gone through. The difference now is the idea of working from home and internet and technology has become adopted. So if this happened in 1990, 1985, the world would be in very, very terrible shape. But We've set up— we meaning our technologists, the world in general— have set up an infrastructure so that we can take a big chunk of our economy digital. And so that's what's kept the economy running. It's really the technology. And that's why I even say the real heroes during this period— and look, I don't know if this is a controversial statement, but look, it's my opinion— the real heroes have been the IT folks, the people in technology, IT, Whatever was left of the economy to salvage, they've just done a tremendous job over the last 15 years setting up the system, setting up the economy, setting up businesses so that they could immediately go digital and continue to operate profitably.

I'm going to pause you just for one second and say, I'm pretty certain, but this is your statement, so you can correct me if I'm wrong, that they're among the heroes, because I know for sure you're not saying that That somehow or another the IT people who've created this infrastructure for many of us to be able to continue to work and earn from anywhere, you know, whether it's working for someone else or it's our own business, it is a game-changing platform and a game-changing context that we didn't have 20 years ago to fall back on had this happened then. And that has nothing to do with all the people who are the frontline workers, nurses and doctors and everybody else that are heroes in our pandemic world, right?

No, you're right. And the reason why I bring up the— and by And by IT, I don't mean, you know, SAP guys. I mean really anyone who works in technology or has implemented technology. And the reason why I want to give them the credit that they deserve is because our frontline workers, our first responders, they get all the credit. I mean, you hear it all the time. You see the commercials on TV. I mean, they already get so much credit, whereas the IT guy, I mean, people don't even talk to him when he's— Now,

Naresh, I'm so glad you're bringing this up. Because there are— you can only imagine that there are people that have been really adding tremendous benefit and supporting everything sort of holding together in the midst of a bona fide crisis that don't get called out and acknowledged. And so I personally just love the fact that you are bringing this up so that we can in fact hold this a place of gratitude and appreciation for a whole host of people that are not regularly called out as heroes.

Yeah, I don't think an IT person has ever gotten— at least a lot of IT people, they're just never recognized. They're the people in the background who are doing all this work. They don't ask for any recognition. And so it's— we have to thank them. But how does this tie into working from home, the historical trends? Historically, this has really worked out as far as going digital and being able to adapt. And so the trend now is working from home because of everything that's happened. And my prediction long before the pandemic was the next recession that hits the United States, that would essentially force businesses to cut costs, get rid of the office spaces, have their workforce work from home more and outsource more, at least on the technology side, to independent contractors and overseas. And again, this was before any pandemic and all this happened. And I think it would've happened not as quickly, but I think it would've happened even if we just went through a normal business cycle recession. And so how does that affect real estate? Well, now you're working from home. Now you're spending more time at home. The home has become the central location of life. It's where everything is happening. It's where you're eating. It's where you're sleeping. It's where you're playing. It's where you're working. Whereas previously, A lot of workers would spend an hour and a half a day in a car or in a subway or train, and then they would be in an office, a crowded office. These big, nice— that's the other thing, these really large, tall, nice buildings in Silicon Valley and New York City, they weren't around during the Spanish flu in 1918. They weren't around during the— or at least they definitely weren't what they are today. during the Great Depression or really most of the recessions since then. And so that's another major difference. It's commercial real estate. Now you have all this vacant property, whether it's retail shopping centers, malls, or ghost malls as they're being called now, and office spaces as well. And so commercial real estate is looking like a bad deal. If you're in commercial real estate right now, Good luck. And that's across the board from medical offices to hotels. But on the residential side, like I brought up earlier, I'm very, very bullish on that. And as far as the riots go, the riots have made a tremendous impact on people's views of living in a city, their safety. Where you're from in New York, I'm sure you've kept up with the stats, but their homicides are up 86% last I Saw year over year from, from last year to this point this year. And this is a trend among really most major cities: Minneapolis, Portland, Chicago, D.C., Baltimore. The crime in general is just way up. You've got a lot of political things playing into police involvement and how much police should police or whether they should be hands-off. Look, all that affects the way they view their life.

Quality of life in a certain way. In a certain environment, for sure.

Exactly. And so this mass migration, it's already happened. This mass migration has happened where people initially, they thought kind of like you, they're like, oh, let me just go to Maine for a month and then I'll go back to New York City after that. And they went to Florida, they went to Maine, they went to the Berkshires, they went to Utah.

Anywhere you can go, anywhere they'll take you. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. And so they left thinking, okay, it's going to be a temporary thing. And then this was back in April, May. And then they're like, you know what? Like, I don't have to go back into that tall office. I can work from anywhere. I have my job. I'm paying this, what, 40% tax just by living in New York? I think it's more than that in New York City. But, you know, 40% income tax. I can just pick up and move or just stay where I currently am. I don't have to go back. And that's what people are realizing. And that's affecting places like New York City. I don't think— I mean, you're from New York City, but I think this time it's different for New York City. The other times it was able to bounce back, but this time it's very different because people are actually moving. They're actually leaving with their feet. Previously, they weren't doing that. And so you're seeing an influx of people moving to suburbia, You're seeing people, like I said, the states that I mentioned, Alabama, Tennessee, Florida, just kind of friendlier, safer, lower-cost states. And that has a tremendous impact on demographics, on urbanization, and on real estate.

It's interesting. The opportunities right now in that arena, I think, are here for some time. And yet it's counterintuitive because when you hear about high rates of unemployment and an economy that we think is potentially in trouble, that it's likely we're either already in recession or— I don't know that we've been officially declared a recession because

it

takes 2 quarters. So is it officially considered a recession now?

Yes. So the second quarter ended in, I think it was June. So we were officially in a recession starting in July.

So our first quarter— well, our first quarter wouldn't have been recessionary. So I mean, I'm not quibbling, but I'll just say, here we are when we're filming this, we're in August. So I would expect that the second quarter was a negative quarter, but not the first. Do you know whether the first quarter was a negative quarter?

I believe the first quarter was negative as well. Just those 3 weeks in March where places— that was negative. So the textbook definition, I mean, we knew in late March that we were going into a recession. We knew in April that we were in one. But really when that GDP number came out in July for Q2, which was a lot better than people expected, but when that came out, it was official that, okay, textbook academic definition, we're in recession. But the next quarter when we get that data in October, there's a chance we could be out of it by the time that GDP number is published in October because it's looking like the numbers are

What do you attribute the numbers getting better to?

Well, it's simple. I think it's really the reopenings. So these were forced lock— again, this was not part of the business cycle. It was essentially forced, like, okay, you must— you are at— business X is essential versus business Y is nonessential. Now the government labels on businesses, oh, you're not an essential business, so you can't stay open. You have to be shut down. So that's where when you force businesses to shut down like that and you tell people, hey, you can't leave your house. If you leave your house, you're at great risk of catching the virus and spreading the virus.

Wow. The pace of change over the last couple of years has been rapid. And if you're a leader, a business owner, an entrepreneur, you know exactly what I'm talking about. Every day it's something different and something new. But the one thing that I've learned in performing Running at the height of all of those roles has been that we must be resilient. In fact, it's the unsung hero in every success story that you will ever hear about. And it's the reason why my team and I created the resilience assessment that more than 5,000 business leaders across the globe have taken. And all you have to do to get your own free resilience leader assessment is go to resiliencerank.com. It takes 5 minutes. It takes less than 3 minutes, and it's our gift to you for being the leader that you already are. Other free resources and tools will accompany your score instantly. So go to resiliencerank.com and find out just how resilient you are. Beauty salons and health clubs, you know, gyms, etc., were forced to close and then allowed to reopen, and then some places like California forced to close yet again. I mean, just this up and down. I'm going to ask you a question, and honestly, if you don't have an opinion because it's outside of your area of interest even, let me know. The stock market seems to be an enigma because obviously in March, we see the stock market plummet. Really, I don't use that word lightly. It did. It plummeted to about 18,000 from its high of wherever it was at the time.

The Dow Jones, yeah.

So a massive decline. And then Now we are either at or approaching even newer highs than before things changed. So what do you believe is the reason that the stock market has gone up in the midst of record unemployment, record unemployment claims, trillions of dollars added to the national debt that nobody seems to be able to explain how will ever be paid for other than who knows what, scuttling Social Security for people approaching it, like potentially me, or something else in the future that nobody wants to grapple with. So fiscal responsibility and looking at debt and other factors, it just seems odd that the stock market would be doing as well as it's doing. Not every company is trading like Apple or like Tesla, for example, but most of these companies are up. Most of the Dow is up.

S&P, as of this recording, reached all-time highs today. The NASDAQ continues to reach all-time highs on a day-to-day basis. Look, I actually started my career concurrently as an equity research analyst, so this is a topic that I follow. Yeah. Yeah, this is a topic that I follow, and I've learned a lot. I've gotten my butt handed to me several times, and I've learned from my mistakes from 2008, 2009, 2010. And this time around in March, we had a family meeting. It was just my wife and me, and I said, look, I've learned from a lot of my mistakes, and this is a time where We can essentially— we're both in our early 30s, and I said we could legitimately start planning for retirement if we play this right. And so far so good. The market, like you said, the Dow Jones reached pre-Trump election levels, which was— I mean, it just wiped out the gains over the past 4 years in a matter of 3 weeks. Those gains were just completely wiped. It took 3 and a half years to to work itself up to Dow 29,500, I think, or 29,000. Now, to answer your question— and then it's come roaring back. To answer your question of why, how on earth are these markets reaching all-time highs on a daily basis, there is actually very logical reasons for it. And those reasons, I think, support my thesis that the markets are going to keep going up. This is not artificial. It's not fake. This is real. And I think they're going to keep going up as we move forward. And here's why. Number one is the federal government. So, and this really, most governments around the world who have such power and capabilities have tried to do the same thing. United States has the most power of any because the dollar is the world reserve currency. The US is a sovereign nation. It prints its own currency. It's not on a gold standard. So the United States, number one, has, I think, done a pretty good job of not letting the unemployment situation get completely out of hand to where masses and masses of people are in breadlines and there's pandemonium on the streets. Yeah, we see the riots, but the United States has provided a lot. And look, if you were to ask me if I agree or disagree, That's a completely different topic.

Politics of it or any of that out of it, but it's more like, as you said, how is it that in the midst of what feels like— what is a recession, feels like a recession for a lot of people, that the market is going in the exact opposite direction?

Well, so the stock market is always forward-looking. So it's forward-looking by about 4 to 6 months. And that's the first thing to keep in mind. The second thing is all this money injection. So this is where I bring up the unemployment or the unemployment benefits that have gone up, the stimulus that looks like they just passed a second, another round of stimulus checks going out to people. So what they're doing is injecting liquidity into the markets, into not into the economy, but into the markets. And so what you're doing is essentially putting money in people's hands. And like I said, central banks and other governments around the world are doing the same thing. So there's a lot of— and the Federal Reserve, so that's on the monetary. So on the fiscal side, that's what I've talked about. On the monetary side, the Federal Reserve have lowered interest rates as low as they can go. And on top of that, they continue to essentially monetize the debt at record, record levels. So there's a lot of stimulus. There's a lot of liquidity in the market. Now, if you just think about it, all right, we've injected over— just the United States has If you add all this up, that's over $10 trillion that's been injected into the markets. Where is that money going? So a lot of the economy was shut down, so it wasn't going to travel and leisure or airlines or hotels. It wasn't going into many different sectors of the economy. So where a lot of that money was going was into the US stock market. Now all of a sudden you've got a lot of people at home unemployed saying, oh, I've got some money to play around with. Let's start trading stocks. But the bigger impact, that's a small impact. It's had a decent impact on the market, but the bigger impact is the liquidity that's been injected. The US is investing in in itself, in the US and its treasuries and its stock market, but foreign governments, foreign nations, what are they doing with all that money? What are those people doing? They've basically sought the US as a safe haven and said, let's put it in the US stock market. And the latest statistic I read is that of all this tens of trillions of dollars that have been injected globally, only about 35% of it has been actually put to use, whether it's been spent on goods and services or it's been put into the stock market. The rest of the 60% to 70% is still sitting on the sidelines. It hasn't been used yet, and it's going to be used. You know it's going to be used. It's not just going to keep sitting there. And so when it's put into use, where's the money going to go? It's going to continue, I think, to come into US real estate, US stocks. And so that's why I'm very bullish. There's also sentiment in general that we're not going to lock down again, even if there is this second crazy wave. We did that, we tried it, we learned from what works, what doesn't work. So we're not just going to blindly just shut everything down and say, lock yourself at home. We've gotten that assurance on both sides of the political aisle. So there's a lot of optimism that even if we have to live with this virus without a vaccine, We're not going to shut down the grocery stores or the restaurants or the barbershops, just the economy in general. So there's a lot of optimism. And quite frankly, one of the problems is even though there are 50 to 55 million who have— or 55 to 60 million now who filed for unemployment, businesses are struggling to hire. They're struggling to get someone to do haircuts or work at the restaurant or even fill the You know, corporate job. It's been a huge struggle. And so that's something that around the world governments are going to have to figure out. Okay, like we kept the economies afloat. Now let's try to go back to— try to go back to work. And that's going to be the challenge moving forward. But all this, I think, is very, very optimistic and supports why the market is reaching all-time highs and why I think it's going to continue to go— I don't want to say skyrocket, but I think it's going to continue to go up in a linear fashion from here on out.

Yeah. It's, I suppose, one of the more interesting inflection points when we look back on this from a year from now, 2 years from now. We'll see that there were certain points where you couldn't get in the way of the moving train. And that's usually the case anyway with trends that Very difficult to stop something that is in motion or to reverse it. A body in motion tends to stay in motion. A body at rest tends to stay at rest. And so it would be, yeah, I would say getting in front of some of these things now would be dangerous, especially if you were going to sort of take a contrarian point of view and real estate potentially being one of them. So what I'm hearing you say, and for those that we don't typically talk about this on the show, so hopefully people will get a great deal of value out of it as well, that there are these micro markets that are, or markets that are sort of within arm's reach of more large urban areas that might be or are already the beneficiary of this flight, this retreat from sort of the more congested city life. Do you think that New York City or San Francisco will see real estate recession?

Absolutely. I think New York City already is in real estate recession. And if you just look at the rents, I actually have—

Rents come down in New York City?

The rents have plummeted 40% to 60% in some of the most prime areas of New York City. And I actually have some—

Because of vacancy?

Because of vacancy. And I have somebody very close to me who, while people are moving out of New York, he said, hey, I want to do an Airbnb for 2 months, because if he's there for longer than 3 months, then he has to pay the state tax. So he said, I just want to go to New York City because I can be there for 2 months, I get a 40% to 50% discount, I can be in the heart of Manhattan. New York City is now back open, at least the Nightlife is back open. So he was like, why not? Now is the prime time to do it. It's like every person's dream. I mean, foreigners, all they think about is, before they immigrate to the United States, New York City. That's where they want to go. So this is really the dreamland right now from a cost perspective. But New York City is absolutely in a real estate recession. Like I brought up earlier, think about all those big, large buildings. that they have. And now they're at 20% capacity as far as people using those buildings to work. And those companies have kind of become more progressive and adopted the work-from-home approach. These are large blue-chip bureaucratic organizations that have found that, oh, you know what? This whole work-from-home thing is going just fine. We don't need the people in the office. Then on top of that, that obviously affects commercial real estate, but If you were to walk down Fifth Avenue right now, it's like a ghost avenue. I mean, Fifth Avenue, I believe that's the avenue that has most of the retail, the big retailers, the big Macy's, the big Neiman Marcus, the NBA Store. You drive down and they're boarded up, and I don't think they're coming back. I mean, some of those retailers have already filed for bankruptcy.

Yeah, Neiman Marcus is Astonishingly enough, but yeah, there are a lot of companies that probably will not come back. So let's just pivot ever so slightly here to something you said earlier, which is that you'd gotten— I'm using my language, not what you said earlier, but you've invested in the past, got burned, obviously tried to time things or at least invested wisely at the time. Every good idea, I should say every mistake starts out as a good idea. I know that one from my own life experience, and I'm sure it was not easy for you to invest and not have it work out and then be in the situation where you're now talking to your wife again and looking at, you know, somehow now is different. So, rather than going into that, what I'd love to know is, what was it that has kept you resilient? So, to be able to— so, to get burned in the investment space, which any seasoned investor knows what that's like. Yeah. You cannot invest and not at some point understand what it's like to lose, to make a poor investment or have it become a negative in some way ROI-wise. So, how would you define your resilience and your wife's, you and your wife's resilience in that area? And what can you say to people right now who may have also gotten burned, let's say in 2008, when the market crashed and people were losing homes, losing investment properties, etc.? People are still, I think, leery from that, have the burn is, is still in recent memory, so they still can feel it and might be hesitant to, to be looking at what's— what are the opportunities right now? How do you get to get through that mindset? What's the resilience piece of it?

Yeah, well, a lot of it, to answer your question, I'm gonna have 2 different answers, one from an investment perspective and one from more a like life perspective. So from the investment perspective, Really what I have to say, and this goes somewhat contrary to what I said about New York City earlier, but not really. They are kind of one and the same. It was Sir John Templeton who once said the foremost dangerous words are, this time it's different. For really an investor or for anybody in general, this time it's different. And what I do have to say is, It's not from an investment perspective. So the US economy, the stock market, the investments, real estate, look, everyone's going to need a place to live at the end of the day. They're going to need a bed to sleep in. And so if you are, I mean, I don't know how you would be now, but if you are, for whatever reason, you lost a lot of money in investments over the past 6 months since March 2020, February 2020, Just understand, just like in 2008, 2009, you might have been way down if you just rode along with it and took that advice of not going with the herd that, oh no, it's different this time. Just come back and look 5 years and you're going to be fine. Just don't even look. It's so unhealthy to be constantly looking at the value of your property or, you know, how much is my stock up today? How much is it down today? That's not a healthy way to live life. And so if you happen to be down, just listen to me right now and say, you know what, I'm not even gonna look. I'm just gonna leave it alone for 5 years and I'm gonna come back. And I guarantee you, you're gonna be in a better place because you have overcome whatever this anxiety is. And you'll see that actually mathematically you're actually up. So that's the first thing from an investment perspective. Now, from a life perspective, resilience is essentially the ability to recover from difficulties. And all of us, I mean, it's— I think resilience is one of the most important characteristics anyone can have. And people need to go through difficulties. Absolutely. Whether it's the ups and downs of life, loss, job, relationship, emotion, whatever. If you don't have resilience, that's probably because you haven't faced any difficulties, and the difficulties are probably coming because no one goes through life without facing difficulties. So as far as resilience in just a life perspective goes, because there's a lot of turmoil not just in the job front, but if you look at divorces, I mean, the courts are backed up. I've got several people close to me who are going through them right now because of the pandemic. It caused problems and divorce courts are backed up, estate courts, you know, a lot of death has happened, they're backed up. So I think as far as what I do to be resilient in life, not just with investments, but just in life in general, there is the— and this is taken from the book 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. There's basically staying healthy mentally, physically, spiritually, and emotionally. So mentally, I take that to essentially exercise my brain to stay up to date, just with— not with like the news or anything, but to keep my brain fresh. That means learning new things, writing. We brought up earlier that I write books, and then I also play a lot of chess. I mean, you can do all these things on your phone. You don't have to go anywhere to do it. So that's how I kind of stay sharp mentally. Physically, I try to exercise every day. Tonight I'm going to go out, play tennis. I try to play tennis twice a week. On the days that I don't play tennis, I just run around the block. I mean, just outside, get some fresh sunlight and do some cardio. So that's the physical side. Spiritual, we brought up earlier to start the episode. That's to me. I happen to be religious, but you don't have to be religious. It's just giving thanks at the end of the day. Just giving thanks to— it doesn't even have to be to a particular person, just giving thanks to your life. And then emotionally is being around good people. And if you find yourself constantly angry or upset or nagging, It's probably because somebody is doing that to you. And so those are the people you have to get out of your life. You know, you need to remove those people from your life so that you're around people who you like talking to, who are positive, and who are just— have a very positive impact on you. All 4 of these areas, like I said, taken from 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. It took me years to implement them into my life. This was not an overnight thing. And all 4 of these helped me build resilience during my lows, during my downs, because you can't just say, oh, my life is good right now, I'm going to give thanks because I feel really good. It's something you have to do every day, no matter what's going on in your life, something that you absolutely have to do. And that is what has helped me personally build resilience. It's helped me build my business. It's helped me become a better real estate investor. It's helped me It's helped me have better relationships with people. It's helped me get rid of people in my life. It's helped me build thicker skin. It's just helped me in so many different ways. And so that's kind of my formula.

I really hope you're enjoying this episode of the Change Proof Podcast. If you've not yet gone out and gotten your own copy of Change Proof, it's not too late. You can get your copy right now by going to changeproof.com and not only getting the book and all the bonuses there, but getting access to our proprietary resilience assessment tool. It'll just take you 3 minutes to do, and it's something that will really help you to utilize the book even more effectively to create practices and rituals and habits that will increase your mental and emotional, physical, and even spiritual resilience for the long term. Again, go to changeproof.com to get your copy today. Now, Raish, I got one last question for you, and I really appreciate that you covered in a holistic way just a moment ago in those 4 quadrants, the mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual. Because resilience isn't just physical, it's not just one thing, and we're not just coming from one place. So many of these things affect our daily attitude and the experience that we have of being in these times. What is one of the things I think that's most difficult and is creating tremendous fear and anxiety? with many, many people is just the uncertainty of it all, just the sheer uncertainty. So my question to you is, how do you leverage the power of uncertainty? What's something that comes up for you that would enable you to leverage the power of uncertainty in this time, since that's really among the things that are most prevalent that people are feeling right now? They're feeling uncertain.

Yeah, well, I think the uncertainty is kind of like luck. And in my case, and I'm sure you've faced this as well, Adam, I know your story when you left the legal profession and you went out on your own. That's a lot of uncertainty that you— it's unheard of for an attorney to do that. And really, most business people, entrepreneurs, I mean, our lives are just filled with uncertainty from the day we started, we got into business. It's been nothing but uncertainty. But to your question, the average person listening to this show, probably they may not be an entrepreneur, Maybe they lost their job. And really my only advice to them is number one, what I just talked about, the kind of practice that you need to do to improve yourself, to maintain health, to stay healthy. That's very important. But the second thing is just working hard at improving yourself. So that's continuing to pick up skills. I believe skills are today's currency. So if you have skills, whether it's writing or speaking or technology, I believe Tech skills are like— so skills are just so important, and I recommend that people really not just focus on one skill but try to master multiple skills. And if— just try to find things that you're good at and pursue them further. And if you don't know what you're good at, well, we have this great thing called the internet and Google, and a lot of things are available for free online. And that's how I perfected many of my skills. Through free newsletters, blogs, podcasts like yours, books. There's just so much stuff out there, so much available that you can utilize free of charge. And so I believe that if you really get good at some of these skills, then these uncertainties that you have, if you combine the skills plus that kind of daily practice that I talked about, the uncertainty should go away because Good things are going to start happening to you. It's just going to come to you. That's kind of the philosophy.

What you're describing is that the good things, quote unquote, the things that would— will show up, not would, but will show up, are on some level not even predictable. The beautiful part about this is that even the good is uncertain. The good is not necessarily predictable. And that's what I found in my life in so many different pivots professionally and even personally, that when I challenge my addiction to certainty, my addiction to having to know things before I can take an action, or my having to know things in order to sleep well at night, that what has opened up are opportunities I couldn't have predicted and great results that I didn't necessarily set out to see happen, as well as a number of things that I did see. intend to see. So I agree so much with what you just said, Narayen. I think it's really a practical way to not just white-knuckle the experience that we're having, that many people are having right now, but that you actually can leverage this uncertainty for your long-term success. And that's something we're going to explore quite a bit more in upcoming episodes of this show, in part because I've got a book that's coming out in the spring with McGraw-Hill that's called Change Proof. Leveraging the Power of Uncertainty to Build Long-Term Success. So I'm really excited about that project, looking forward to sharing more about it over the next few weeks and months. And Naresh, I've loved having you on the show. Great conversation. Love the fact that we talked about something we never hardly ever, ever touch on this show, which is the investment arena. And to have gotten your perspective in real estate, residential, commercial, and even the stock market was a blessing today. Thank you.

Thanks a lot, Adam. I really enjoyed the conversation. It's been worthwhile and I hope your listeners took away a lot.

For me as well. And I will remind myself and say this out loud for all that are interested in plussing the concept that Naresh brought up about our rituals and how important it is that we have rituals that are able to keep us on that growth footing and keep us in a space Where we are able to be our best and to combat the fear that often keeps us really playing safe or just living kind of scared existences. And to me, rituals do that. Rituals get us or have the capacity to take you out of your own way. And that's what it's done for me. So this one particular ritual, I've got rituals for everything from the moment I wake up until the minute I put my head on the pillow. And even then I have a ritual when my head hits the pillow. And the waking ritual is the one that I believe has been the most powerful. It's the subject of the TED Talk I gave about what we can do at the beginning of the day to set ourselves up for the absolute best day that we could ever conceive of. And so the first step in creating that great new day, which we can start tomorrow, all of us can do it from this moment even, and that is first of all to wake up. That's the first step. So Naresh, you woke up today, right?

Absolutely.

Yeah. And when you went to sleep last night, you put your head on the pillow, did you have a contract that you were gonna get to wake up?

No.

Nope. That's it. It's the great unknown. You talk about uncertainty. We go to sleep at night, there's no guarantee we get to wake up. And in fact, we know for sure when we do get that moment, we're waking up, you realize you're waking up to a new day, there are people in that very same moment who are not waking up. Yeah. Are taking their last breath at the moment that you're taking your first awake and aware breath. So waking up is key. Feeling in that moment, even into that situation I just described, feeling into that and coming away with gratitude, being able to do what you said earlier, which is on the side of your own connection to yourself and connection maybe to spirit or whatever it is that you think is sort of the energy that animates everything in the universe. Yes. You get in that moment to just express gratitude and appreciation. For your own life and for that breath and for your kids, your family, for the day, the sun, the rain, the moon, the stars, whatever you can be grateful. And step 3 is to actually consider the words that you first speak. I'm not a terribly religious person, but very much interested in spirituality and on a spiritual path of my own. And I love the way the Bible begins. I love the first words. that say that, and God said, let there be light. And that's, again, whether you believe that literally, figuratively, or you don't believe it at all, it's something interesting in the fact that what is the most popular book ever written and everything else, that it starts with a statement of speaking something into existence, that God spoke the world into existence. And again, whether that's a metaphor or you believe it literally, whatever your beliefs are is not my concern. But for me, it means that the power of our words is really paramount. To recognize what comes out of your mouth is a prophecy so often of what you will see show up for that day and for beyond that day in your experience. So what do you want to speak into existence when you start your day? That's my question to all of you. I know for me, the 4 words that I use are, I love my life. And these days and almost all the time, I also in parentheses say, no matter what, no matter what, whether it's the best of times or the worst of times, again, this too shall pass. What's a constant is whether you show up for that day prepared to love life, love your life. And so my question to all of you is, what do you want to speak into existence tomorrow when you wake up? You decide. You could borrow those 4 little words, those 4 simple words. You could You could create your own. You could say something entirely different. It's totally up to you. You have that total freedom to speak into existence everything that you want in your life. And I get that that sounds a little motivational and so be it. We all need some motivation and some inspiration in our lives daily, I'd say. So, Naresh, again, thank you so much for being a guest. Everybody, please go right ahead and check out the show notes. You'll find out more about the Work From Home Show, the Naresh and Adam Show, and the work that Naresh is doing in the world, the books that he's written that you can get access to. Leave a comment as well, please. adammarkel.com/podcast to leave a comment. Subscribe if you haven't yet subscribed and feel free to share this message, share this episode with other people, people that you think could benefit from it. It really helps us to spread some of these ideas and we really appreciate your help in doing that. Ciao for now. And again, thank you so much.

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