The Tenant’s Tale: Importance Of Resilience In The Real Estate World With Marc Miller

Life happens, and not always the way we expect it to. Every single day we face change, stress, and uncertainty. What if you could learn to thrive no matter what life throws your way? Resilience expert Adam Markel and his inspiring guests explore breakthrough strategies to fully embrace change and build the resilience required to become change-proof.

Hey there, Change Proof listeners. Change Proof True family. Today's podcast, I get to talk to Mark Miller, who is a guy, very, very interesting man, came from a lower middle class economic background, entered the office leasing business with absolutely no contacts, and had a very— had and continues to have a very prolific career in that space after trying some other things out that you'll hear about during our show, including being a member of a Big 8 accounting firm. And is now an artist as well. I think you're going to love this conversation with my guest today, Mark Miller. So stay tuned and enjoy. Hey Mark, welcome to the show. It's great to have you today. And I want to ask you this question to begin with. What's something that's not a part of your bio that you would love for people to know about you? Just one thing that's not typically part of your bio or your intro, Let's say that you would love for people to know about you?

Probably that I'm a very visual person that is so into nature and colors.

Yeah. And it's interesting cuz if people are only listening to this, they won't get the flavor. But if you're watching on YouTube, you'll see that behind Mark on the wall is quite a bit of artwork. So obviously I don't want to talk about the artwork for more than a moment here just because people can't see it if they're not watching it on YouTube. But can you say something about what is hanging behind you?

Absolutely. Since I was about 5 years old, I started drawing whatever I had available, whether it was a children's pastel set or crayons. And as I got older, it led to using Parker pens and Papermates and then gels and Sharpies and even fountain inks. And make a long story short, from the size of a business card up to, on average, 10 by 14 inches, I create abstract works of art. And in the past year or so, we decided to basically introduce it to the world and go commercial and also go organic in terms of people getting to know where I come from and why this is authentic, soulful work.

Yeah. Just so naturally let out. I would've said, is there something that I've learned about you in just the first couple of minutes of our conversation? Because we've never had a conversation before. This is one of those wonderful moments in podcasting where sometimes you get to meet a guest for the very first time. Just at the moment where you're going to have an interview. But you took a really— just for folks that might be wondering, what was that space between the question I asked you and your answer to that question? That was a space which, of course, we're not— haven't edited out, which I would've said you're thoughtful because you didn't just start to respond as so many people tend to do, meaning you begin to speak and then you figure out what you want to say or what you're going to say. In the process of speaking. And I think that's one of those interesting things that you tend to notice about folks at times, but you didn't do that. You took a pause and you thought some more and then you responded. So that's something I noticed about you. Is that true?

First of all, I appreciate what you said because the mind is different than the mouth oftentimes, right? And the first impression I had was, should I— what's not on my bio is the fact that I ran a marathon. When I was 22. That's something that— is it relevant? Who cares? But in terms of resiliency, that was one of my first huge tests in not stopping during pouring rain for 4 and a half hours. And even though my brother and I started it together, his pace was a little too fast. So within half a mile, I let him go over the Verrazzano himself. And then I continued my race all alone. But kind of like that, the loneliness of the long-distance runner. You've heard about that.

Sure.

Sorry for the shaking. I'm going to move back a little. So that's the first thing that came to me. But then I said, I mean, aside from maybe some internal mental toughness or resilience, that's not necessarily what I wanted to portray or introduce myself to you.

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. I was thinking, my brother is the runner in our family too. I mean, I don't think I could finish a marathon at the moment. Let's just say for argument's sake I could. finish it, he would probably have left me in the dust within half a mile, and I'd let him go over to Verrazzano all by himself.

Exactly.

Just like you. Well, your career is quite a bit different than what people might somehow in this moment be thinking it is based on what your first answer was anyway, because your career hasn't been about art or about artistic pursuits, even though that is a part of your journey at this moment. So we can certainly talk about that too. Why don't you take us back to, or share a little bit about what your career over the last 39 or about years has been? Because I think that's fascinating. I actually want to explore a little bit of that, the contours of that space with you today, given the environment that we're all living in.

Absolutely. I was the last person to jump into office space or brokerage or any type of field like that, because again, there was no one in my home that was involved in real estate. My brothers were becoming accountants and CPAs and the rest, and I was the youngest of the 3 of us. And by the time I was 15 or 16, I just had my eye on the Big 8. Now it's Big 4, as you probably know. And

accounting firms for people, anybody that may just not know what that whole thing—

Yeah. Now they have HR and consulting and God knows what else, but you're absolutely right. Primarily accounting. So I think my first test, if you will, as an adult and as a professional came 8 months after killing myself to get the job when I was canned. And it was just because they saw that even though I struggled and I raced through college to get this job before the age of 20, the field was just not for my personality. My personality is not just for sitting and doing tick marks and checking other people's records. It's more getting to know people. It's more research. It's more thinking. And again, the visual part just kind of came out of nowhere. But so after I left accounting, I found this position with a real estate firm that I was— firm that I was auditing. There was one guy that wanted me on his team, quote unquote. And then the chairman of the firm was known as a very eccentric guy. And he asked people questions like, if you're at the end of a movie theater line with your girlfriend, how are you going to get to the front of the line and get in? It was just strange stuff like that. So he didn't like my answer. So I went on to other firms. As you said, Adam, over 39-plus years, including 8 and a half in my own boutique between 2000 and 2008, a very historic period of time for Americans especially. I had created something called Miller and Partners, which was a boutique tenant representation firm. And I did that 19 years after starting in the industry because, again, the integrity was lacking. at my old firm that I had become a managing director of. And I left some chips on the table at the age of 39 at that time and said, you know what, even though people are talking recession and this and that, I have some clients, I have some loyalty, I have a core group that love what I do, and let's do it. And then that led me on a different journey of eventually getting bought by a bigger firm in '08 that I felt comfortable with and on.

Sure. And it's interesting because that space, the multifamily space, the tenant-landlord-tenant area is very much relevant today. It's in controversy, I think, on some level today in ways that I don't know how predictable those were. Perhaps it was because there's quite a number of investors that had been buying up single-family homes and buying other multifamily structures. in order to maximize profits as landlords, as property owners and landlords. And right now we're in a situation where there's— the rental market has really kind of spiraled in many markets. And I'd love to get your take on that because I think it's bringing up some interesting sort of stuff, like we were in college and having an ethics class.

Right.

We understand that the purpose of, in many ways, capitalism is that people create businesses and those businesses thrive. And when those businesses earn profit and they thrive, there's sort of a shared, a sharing of the profit, if you will, because people earn more money at those places and those people spend more money and the economy, it's just sort of a ripple effect where every, all the boats are rising. Yeah. Because the tide is rising. And yet there's another story of capitalism that tells some of a tale. So I guess I'm trying to leg into this conversation today about resiliency, but more from the tenant side. And I'm not being a tenant advocate here in any way. I was a lawyer for 18 years and I represented for a period of time, I mean, I did a lot of real estate work and I represented developers and also the financing arm of commercial development and residential development. And for a brief period, I handled, well, for 5 or 6 years, I handled bankruptcy work as well. And so I got to see kind of up close and personal the relationships between landlords and tenants and all that kind of thing. So I'd love to just get your sense of what's the landscape today. We could start kind of big aperture, wide lens, talk about your thoughts on the environment, and then we can also talk about resiliency in that context as well. Sure.

I just want to clarify, Adam, that I'm more of a commercial guy than a residential guy.

So, yep, that makes sense.

Yeah, yeah. So when it comes to the multifamily or the landlord residential tenant side, I could speak to it as a business person, but not as what I would call a market expert.

That's fair. So you know what? We'll do this. I want to talk about that too. But I will say that if we were— again, I'll put my lawyer hat on now, right? So I'm not calling you as an expert witness to the stand. You don't have to talk about your CV. And qualify you under federal rules. All right, cool.

Okay, good. So yeah, where I'm coming from is basically I was exposed to the industry from an office leasing, office space, commercial real estate point of view. And instead of becoming in-house with one of the big real estate families or institutions or becoming a building agent, I just grew my career organically, one tenant, one space user at a time, whether they were IT or architecture or law. And built this following and organically was able to get referrals as well as grow with my clients. Like some clients would come into New York with 10,000 feet and I, at the end of several years, we'd be up to 60,000 feet in some cases based upon their industry model.

Makes—

so I'm sorry, go ahead.

No, please, after you.

Yeah. So basically the nature of that side of the business called tenant representation is basically creating leverage and space between the tenants who has less power and the landlords and their brokers that have most of the power. And that's something that I took to like a fish to water, thankfully. And I think after that negative experience in my brief accounting career, it gave me that charge of energy when I saw this service that I felt I could provide beautifully and get well paid for it.

Yeah. So again, just philosophically, let's say, not from an expert's standpoint, we're going to talk about the commercial, but I want to just of start with the residential because, and it may well be that on the philosophical or opinion level, your opinion is just based on personal, your observations or your own experience in life, et cetera. But I'm just curious, do you see the sort of challenges in the way that rents have escalated, for example, across the country?

Absolutely. I think there's a disconnect between what's going on with people's lives and the institutional owners that, as you were saying before, are buying up suburban homes in addition to their holdings in the cities and the CBDs. So I think it's very difficult depending upon where you are in life. I mean, obviously for young people graduating college, graduating law school, still in that mode of building a career, like always, they might have to share apartments like we always did, but because rents are so high, they now have to squeeze in even smaller space. And therefore they have to spend more time in the cafeteria or the library or the local Starbucks, unless of course the WeWorks of the world open their doors for people that can't necessarily give WeWork $500 to $2,000 a month. So I think again, as we go older than just people that are sub-30, we're dealing with people that have career issues and have been dislocated because of their companies or because of an M&A or Maybe even a Chapter 11 in the— a chapter, is that what it's called? Chapter 11 in the— and then they probably have a kid or 2 and they're 35 or 45 and they have to pivot, to use your terrific word. Yeah, I think it's very challenging. I think that as you were saying about the balance of capitalism, it's a huge issue because you don't want the government's hand involved with anything. We want the free hand of the market, but when the free hand of the market starts to weigh the scales to such an extent on the power side and the regular people that don't have the significant bank book or the institutional money or the parental money, whatever it might be, to pay their rent or pay their mortgages. There has to be some simple kind of like justice. I don't want to use any prefix before the word justice, but just adjust their environment where people can be a good citizen, Make an honest living and be able to house themselves and their families, right? In a safe area.

And have access to the American dream, which I do believe is still alive and well, or alive anyway. And something that we want. I mean, I certainly want it not just for myself. I want it for my kids, my grandkids. I want it for everybody's kids and their grandkids or whoever, because that's the great promise of this nation is at least that's my philosophy about it. Oh, I do. And that's the promise to all of us, not to some of us, not to just the privileged or just the powerful or just the rich. So the cost of admission, I mean, look, we've seen it in so many areas, not just in rents. I mean, good grief. As you and I are speaking, there are sports championships going on right now and playoffs and things, and just the cost to take your kid or to take a family or to just go yourself, go with a friend, to a ballgame is pretty exclusive in terms of what that cost looks like. So

no, absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, I think it's a challenge of any— again, capitalism is the worst system unless you compare it to all the others, right?

For sure. I

mean, you've heard of that. Exactly. Of course. So I think that it's a matter of who are we trusting? Who does the common citizen that isn't running for political office right now or isn't necessarily on their town board or whatever? Who can you trust? Who will listen to you? And then try to make— it's all a matter of problems and then solutions, right? That's one of the reasons I've always been into reading self-improvement literature and other things, because I realize that if I can gain wisdom from people that have lived much, much prior to my being around and my needing that wisdom, I don't have to make so many mistakes myself.

Yep.

So, so there's a lot of lessons, a lot of lessons.

Well, Maybe last question on this for the moment, but I'd love to get your thoughts on what do you see as the future there? Do you see there being a swinging of the pendulum in some other direction? Have any thoughts on where this is headed?

With housing, you mean, or with residential?

Yeah, I mean specifically with the housing end, and we're going to switch over. I want to talk about commercial in a different context, but similar.

I think I see more of a trend going toward the micro apartment developments. And that's why even micro hotels are huge too, because everything from construction to engineering to all of the ancillary services that go into renovating or building is so high. Everything's just crept up even prior to this new dose of inflation. I think, I believe that in order to capture a certain amount of steady long-term revenue business that they don't have to necessarily replace every 9 months because someone either, God forbid, goes bankrupt, loses a job, et cetera. I think they have to go smaller and more affordable with more services within the buildings or within the structure so that people can have that huddle, that gathering space somewhere else outside of their 300-foot or 350-foot apartment or a small townhouse. Very small. So that's one trend. Yeah,

I love that. And I think that's a great trend to Will you define the microspace just a little bit for our listeners as well?

Sure. Microspace basically means the landlord is offering a footprint or box that's smaller in size, more compact for each living area, but extremely intelligently laid out in terms of where the windows are in relation to where the master bedroom, so to speak, comes out of the wall when you need that. When it's not coming out of the wall for sleeping. It's backed in, so you then have a sofa area for entertaining and a small kitchenette because, excuse me, you're not having dinner parties for 6 or 8 people necessarily. So I think that's what we're talking about, intelligent design on that. And then we're talking about developers and landlords being extremely sensitive to what is their, the population. Who are they attracting? Is it the new college grads to 35? Or is it the 40 to 60 crowd, married or unmarried or divorced and single again, or whatever it might be?

Sure.

Because the amenities, whether we're talking residential or—

Or empty nesters or just any of them.

Exactly. A lot of empty nesters, correct me if I'm wrong, do not necessarily want an environment that's going to exclude their grandchildren from playing in the pool.

Exactly. Yeah.

It's kind of interesting, some of these models of development firms and their communities that just exclude children and grandchildren from staying over for many, whatever it might be, and enjoying. But I think the amenity aspect from a commercial and residential point of view is going to be the wave of the future in terms of attracting the right people who could pay rent over a longer period of time, be happy in less space or in a different type of living arrangement.

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 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 The best way to take your own free resilient 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. A sort of a hybridization where living and working aren't necessarily so far apart, or even where living, working, and shopping, where there's that commercial end of it, are also not so far apart.

Exactly. I mean, that's what we're seeing a bit in the Hudson Yards development of West Chelsea in Manhattan, is that 24/7 attempt by the related company to create that kind of an environment of the retail, of the tourists coming, of the office, et cetera. And of course, people living there.

Right. Which is on some level, I guess you could say it's ironic, but it's just like watching history repeat itself because it wasn't long ago. It was probably still during my growing up years that the norm, at least in the metro area, New York metro area, was you did live in smaller units, mostly apartments. My grandmother lived in an apartment her whole life until she left the city. They had bought a house up in the Berkshires, Western Massachusetts, for a song. Of course, back then, and that was the first house she ever lived in. But for the most part, her, all of her family, her 4 siblings that included lawyer, doctor, writer, et cetera, they all lived in apartments. On one floor was one family member and 2 floors down was another family member. And interesting. And then you came out onto the street and there was all the commercial stuff that had to do with that. Right. What wasn't really part of that mix was the work part. And the fact that we're living in a world now where not only, as you said, gathering spaces can be communal, coworking spaces prove to be good businesses, but a lot of people are working in hybrid situations. Maybe they're not in the office at all. They're completely virtual. Maybe they're in this blending, 2 days in the office, 3 days away, et cetera. So everything is kind of up for grabs, it seems. But the one thing that seems to not be negotiable For me, I mean, in terms of just, I'm a researcher in terms of resilience. I do a lot of keynote speaking on the topic of resilience, but also on, I'll keynote on work-life harmony-ish challenges and stress management and mental health and things related to resilience. But in that research, what I see in the trends really reflect a pushback against things like This trend to exact more and more money for regular, just sort of common living, the ordinary things that are necessary for daily life, not extravagances, not luxuries, but just the ordinary stuff, that is not sustainable. That is not a model that I think is sustainable. So I'm—

Absolutely right. I mean, we have something in Manhattan It's elsewhere in the country, but it's extremely aggressive in Manhattan, called the differential between rentable square feet and usable square feet. In between the two, there's something ascribed called a loss factor, and loss factors include part of the common area off the elevator, the lobby of the building, the electrical closets, et cetera. But there came a time about 25, 30 years ago, and it got worse progressively until they couldn't make it more onerous than it was. They were basically— unfortunately, landlords were going out more aggressively from the 100% envelope of the structure. And with architects that were signing off, they basically now have 130% of a building that they're charging rent on. Last time I checked, that's not fair. And that's not— I always say it, I hope it's okay for your podcast, but I always say that if Eliot Spitzer's father was not a real estate developer, Spitzer would've went after the real estate industry, not after Wall Street.

Right.

Yeah.

And I'm not saying right as in like, I know that for a fact or even agree, but right in the sense that there has been an issue. I mean, again, I grew up in New York for people that don't know that. So I've grown up sort of hearing about slumlords, hearing about all the shenanigans that I don't think that's the norm, by the way. But there are situations where landlords have gotten the reputation of Just sort of whatever advantage they could take. I don't know whether it's measuring the square footage of an apartment out to the studs, even though that's not technically the square footage that's usable within that or livable in. But it is one of those things, as you say, that you're identifying this ethical— I started this conversation by sort of framing it around the ethics of it. So the thing that doesn't, won't hold water after a while. Like just recently I read in the Times that in Kansas City, they're pushing back on landlords and on property owners based on what has been something like a 30 or 35% increase in rental pricing over the last 12 months. And that's about double the average in the country, which even that half of that is shocking, frankly. Absolutely. So yeah, it's, so I don't know whether we're at a precipice or what have you, but as I said, as a researcher, I'm always curious what the trends are. And I do recognize that it's like a pendulum. So it swings in one direction for some period of time, whether it's stocks, bonds, real estate, whatever it might be. And then it reverses course to some degree. There's a brief period, I suppose, we're in this nice middle area.

You mean right now we're in this middle area?

No, I mean like when the pendulum is making—

Oh, it will be nice. It will be nice. Right.

That we find ourselves in some zone in the middle. But let's talk about— what was that? Sorry.

No, I was just going to— I was just going to say we're dealing with demography. We're dealing with a population that's growing and we're dealing with a housing and commercial building stock that's getting older or getting demolished for other purposes. So it's like the supply of the people, of the bodies needing apartments and homes and places to live, or especially are growing always. That's the nature of life, right? People have children. But on the other side, again, if the housing stock in a municipality or a town or a hamlet or a big city has not been staying on top of their game in terms of the individual landlords or the owners, even the city sometimes being involved in transportation and cleanliness, quality of life issues is huge. No one wants to live on a street or within X number of blocks if they, it's an eyesore or they're not safe going home, coming home.

Or it's not clean. Yeah.

Exactly. Exactly right.

So yeah. So I want to shift now into looking at commercial, which is again, totally a related thing, but it is its own niche for sure.

Right.

And I would've expected coming out of the pandemic with, again, going for a period of sort of whatever it was, at least a year in many places that commercial space was unoccupied. And by the way, part of our business works with organizations on a consulting basis to operationalize resilience in those organizations. And one of the challenges that we hear again and again right now is getting people back to work, getting people back in the office. In fact, there was an accounting firm, a large accounting firm, I won't name the name, where they were saying they had a brand new building that was built before the pandemic. Gorgeous, amazing, spent a lot of money on it. They pay out, they've got a lot of debt on it, all that. And they've got about 30% occupancy in this building of theirs. And so part of what we're helping them with, assisting them with, is to get people in a place where they want to come back to work and they can utilize that space. But I guess my question for you is, coming out of the pandemic, I would've at least thought it possible that more commercial developments went belly up because people were just not occupying that space. Now, of course, people are in long-term leases, so it could be you're going to Maybe is there bad news down the road, do you think? What's the state of that marketplace?

Well, I think there was a lot of, let's call it forgiveness from the various people that either hold paper or held leases in terms of the reality that not only do we not have people filling up the space, our business, our P&L, just look at our numbers. And out of respect for the owners of property, they have a right to say, if you're asking for some relief and some reduction in a number of months free, et cetera, then we have a right to see the actual numbers to show that your business is down. That's only fair, right? In any environment, we always know that people that are doing great in a tragic environment, but they still gotta complain and ask for something free. People just do that.

Well, plenty of people took PPP that didn't need it, but we won't go down that road. Yep.

Right. So, so to your point, the question of getting people It's, I guess every, I don't know if, do you think everything in life is a carrot and a stick? Adam, what's your view on that before I answer the other question?

Yeah, no, I don't see it as either or, but I guess I wasn't clear either because what I'm curious about is, do you see there being, I mean, are there signs that there's systemic issues in commercial real estate given the fact that in our experience anyway, the workplace will never be the same as it was. That's for sure. And there's a certain percentage of people that will never come back to the office.

Well, I think when you're dealing with work that could be done wireless in the clouds, files are safe. The idea of collaboration and collegiality on an hour-by-hour or day-by-day basis has really lost its truth. Some companies are saying, Well, the partnership structure, we can work from home because we've earned it. But if you are in the first 10 years or whatever of your career, then you better get your butt in the chair in the city or wherever it is, because that's how life works here at this company. Now, each company takes a different posture, but I think, I believe the lockdown and the fear that it evoked in terms of the plexiglass panels and how many to an elevator and stand this way and go that way. Don't breathe on him or her. This goes way beyond the idea of you can't even compliment anybody if you like their outfit anymore, right? That's another subject. So I think that— I don't think things are going to return to normal. I think we're going to see a deficit from the number of people in the office in any given day or week. You were mentioning correctly a lot of the hybrid models, 2 in, 3 out, or vice versa, et cetera, different things. And the question is, How can a culture of a company become so attractive to its staff, no matter what their level, that they want to be there?

Yes, that's the wonderful task that sometimes we are able and honored really to assist with in finding some of those answers when we're working with folks, companies, and their leadership teams. But do you see there being systemic issues in commercial real estate as a result of this? I mean, whether it's that or it's even The boxes that we know as the outdoor malls and things like that. Do you see sort of longer-term structural issues in that industry?

It started when years and years ago Nordstrom's and Saks and all the other brands started experimenting with a smaller box theme, Saks and Company or the Closet, Nordstrom's Closet or something. So that was just the tip of the iceberg pre-COVID. In terms of the idea of, do we really need a 50,000 to 150,000-foot box, as you were calling it? In my opinion, these last 2 and a half years have solidified the idea that there's no more business as usual for— I mean, it's one thing if you're a strip center. If you own a number of stores in downtown Charleston, your business model is not going to change as much as if you have a shopping center outside of Summerville an hour away, just to get some geography there.

Yes.

So, yes.

The location thing, which—

Exactly.

True to a great extent. Yeah.

Yeah. What I believe is that malls and owners of property have to totally rethink their land use, in other words, and then see if the current zoning even clicks. But you may need to— one may need to, I should say, really get diversified with the number of quote unquote services, as well as whether it's healthcare, whether it's car washes, whether it's— and then the store mix. And the eating, people have to eat. So they want that variety, but they want fresh and healthy and not something that's just to, you know, that's been sitting there for even a couple hours. People have high expectations. So I think in terms of the clothing companies and the, they all have to rethink how much space they could really afford. And this goes back to then the landlords have to say, well, who's going to fill in the rest of my space? Do I go build a residential component in a vertical or horizontal? mall, which is secure, separate, but has access to all of the other things to make it more lively, et cetera.

Again, I'm sure that none of this isn't being thought of, talked about in more the setting of people invested in that space. But it does strike me as sort of intuitively more than interesting, but maybe even really on point because if malls go dark, If stores, if boxes go dark because there aren't paying commercial tenants for those spaces, that makes sense. Repurposing those spaces in a way that you were talking about, that microspaces, kind of a trend before the pandemic of tiny homes and that idea. And tiny homes makes a lot of sense for a lot of reasons, but it still means putting a home on a piece of land. And a lot of people can't afford the price of admission, the land itself, let alone the expensive cost of a tiny home. These are not cheap structures either. As you might have imagined, it's not like building a lean-to or a treehouse. Just get a quote and you'll know what I mean. But utilizing space that might otherwise have just outlived its optimal use, for example. I don't know, is there a lot of vacant space in Manhattan, let's say, as an example, vacant office space? Do you see that trend increasing as leases come due and they may not be renewed. Do you— what's your thoughts on that?

Yeah, I mean, we're dealing with a historic amount of both sublease space as well as direct space that is on the market. And the media and the landlords and the PR people that work with them are trying to spin a different story about the leasing velocity coming back and how busy they are. But I'm representing a few tenants now, an investment firm, a family office, consulting on a few others, and everybody's trying to navigate how do we see the future and are we adding or subtracting. Most companies that are not growing in terms of new departments or new businesses are definitely upon renewal or earlier, if they could sublease, will be downsizing.

Shrinking their footprints. Yeah,

exactly. I think as on a long-term basis, it's a very serious threat to building owners. And we're already seeing a lot of some of the formerly office space being converted into gathering. No, not residential.

No, not yet, but into those coworking. Yeah.

Into the coworking and into the amenity space.

Got it.

So if there happens to be a floor with a large outdoor area or terrace, they'll make that floor into ping pong, espresso bar, beautiful couches. There's this one landlord by Grand Central Station which rebranded into an office building almost like a Beaux-Arts hotel.

Yeah.

And I got to give them a lot of credit because they— '25 building that had columns and it really didn't lay out great for space users in the modern era. But the way they started building out their space, stripping the columns to the metal, bringing up the ceilings as high as possible, not dropping them obviously, which is also Moving away from carpet. We've been seeing a lot of carpet disappearing, having polished concrete, right? Or some of the faux wood materials as flooring, which is cleaner, more hypoallergenic, et cetera.

Yeah. Let's not be in the carpet. Somebody's racing to get out of the carpet business right this second.

Exactly. Exactly. By the way, Adam, everything I'm sharing to you is totally proprietary and trademarked.

Okay? Yes, of course. We'll have that.

Exactly.

Very fine print in the show notes.

Unbelievable. It's so fine. You would not believe it.

That's right. You would not be able to even read it. In fact, it's so fine. Mark, I have so enjoyed this conversation. My last question for you just is really about your personal— it's going to switch gears entirely.

Okay.

I would love to get either your definition, your own personal take on resilience, this word, or something about how you Create resilience, whether it's through habits, rituals, practices, et cetera. Pick either one of those or both if you like.

I think I'll pick the latter side. For me, being resilient is being grounded. And as I've matured in my life to where I am, it's been a philosophy of believing in a higher power. I call him God.

So, so do I, by the way. Yeah.

Okay, good. That's nice to hear. So I basically have a little mantra. It's— I wrote it down so I don't forget it. Basically, faith, trust, work, meaning effort, and then surrender. And again, that's not something that has never been spoken about. A lot of the football coaches talk about working the process and have your blinders on about the threats from any other team, or don't worry about the win, just do your job. So I think the idea of surrendering for me, but loving life is what gives me the resilience to deal with getting smashed by the waves and needing to get back up because I have a family, I have responsibilities, and I have goals. I love growing and continually getting my art introduced. It's new for me in terms of presenting art and seeing people's reaction, but it's— I must tell you, it's been so gratifying. The fact that people want to put something that I created On a special wall or something. It's been incredible, Adam.

Mark, I've so enjoyed this conversation. I really feel—

Thank you. Thank you.

Those words that you just shared, I have, I share a lot of those very same belief systems. You have a wonderful, it's like there's 2 things happening for me in terms of this, that you are a pivoter and that you've got this wonderful pivot story, which is not, some people think, you know, I wrote this book some years ago and actually Simon& Schuster just re-released it in a paperback update and all that. for the pandemic times, this book Pivot. But it's less about having this jump ship or leave your current thing, whatever that thing might be. And it's really more about what you just described, which is that you're utilizing the career that you've put so much time and effort and love into, I would say, over 39-plus years in that commercial real estate arena. But you're also embracing this other aspect of yourself, these other interests and these other talents that you have. In the art space, there's no mutual exclusivity. It's both, not either or. I truly love that about you, Mark.

Thank you. Thank you so much, Adam. I really appreciated the conversation too. And congratulations on the getting back into the paperback on Pivot. It's awesome.

Yeah, it's fun. The new book that came out was a McGraw-Hill book called Change Proof, and that book is really more focused on resiliency. And you said something that also really resonates with me. I gave a TED Talk some years ago. which talked about my journey, which has been a rocky road like everybody's, everybody I know. But I love my life. I have love for life and I appreciate, I'm grateful for my life. You said something really similar to that. Yeah. So to love life, I think is a very important resilience tool.

Yeah. I mean, we're all being barraged by a lot of negative things in the media or politics, and unless we have the The top-of-mind aspect that we have to choose life and what is life-affirming and life-enhancing. And are we spending too much time in front of the computer and not enough in nature and all of these other things? So I did watch your TED Talk, Adam, and I appreciated that health battle that you, that scare you had, and you came back and reevaluated. I really respect that. You're doing great. Obviously you look great.

Thanks. Thank you, Mark. All right. Well, you guys make up your own mind. Go on YouTube, check out this episode so you can see and Send me a message or whatever. We have full show notes. This is a message out to our listeners right now. Of course, we have full show notes. You can find out more about Mark and find out, just basically find the places in this conversation that you might actually want to remember or share with your teams or noodle on yourself. We love comments and you can leave a comment at adamarkel.com/podcast. So I get it directly. I read all of those. You can also leave a review. On any of the podcast platforms that you're consuming this on, whether it's Stitcher or it's iTunes or what have you. Even, I believe, on Spotify now you can leave a 5-star review. Hint, hint. We'd love that. And again, the comments are so welcome. I do read them all. I respond to them and I appreciate them. Feedback is like oxygen to us. So with that, I'm going to say goodbye and say thank you, Mark, for this really just interesting and fun conversation. I've thoroughly enjoyed it. And as always, I wish you well. And everybody out there listening, I wish more than anything at all that you can love your life no matter what. And with that, we'll see you soon.

Be well, Adam. See you soon. Bye. Thank you.

Well, I don't know about you, but I totally loved that conversation. I don't even say I don't know about you. I'm positive that you enjoyed that. And the conversation that I've had today with Mark Miller was very, very interesting. Just the track, the trajectory of what we spoke about, everything from the housing climate that we're in right now. I could call it a housing crisis in many ways. Inflation is just a word, but the reality is that people are being adversely affected by the price of rental, their rent in the residential space. But there's also a lot that is happening in our commercial space and What was quite interesting to me was not just that we spoke about sort of the ethical bounds of both the residential real estate environment as well as the commercial one, but this interesting opportunity that exists in a hybridization, if you will, of those 2 spaces and talking about microspaces in particular and where there's even opportunities for developments, residential developments to really embrace the work-life scenario and relationship in ways that have never really been thought of before recently, as well as where commerce comes in. And we spoke about that from an ethical standpoint, from a standpoint of economics, from a standpoint of identifying trends and where those trends are taking us and where we've been and, and what signs we see ahead of us. We talked about Mark's own pivot story and his transition from Big 8 accounting to the work that he is currently doing, has been doing for many years, as well as the passion project that has turned into a business for him on the art side, an element of his life, a part of his personality, talent that he probably didn't know he had until recently and or was inspired to share that. talent with the world. Fascinating. And just, I think something that we can all take away, learn from, share with others. So I hope in fact that you get so much out of this episode, have gotten, and will share it with many other people. Of course, I'd always, we'd always love to learn more about you. So you can feel free to send us a message. You can go to adamarkel.com/podcast. It's a great place to leave a message, leave a comment, et cetera. You can always send us a direct email at team@adamarkel.com. You can do that as well. And if you've not yet gotten your own resilience score to see, because we talked today about resiliency, about personal resiliency as well as resiliency in those markets, those residential and commercial housing markets and other aspects of that that I think are really in a state of flux right now. Resiliency is the key element in everything How resilient are you mentally, emotionally, physically, even spiritually? You can simply go to resiliencerank.com, resiliencerank.com, and in 3 minutes get your own baseline assessment, a tool that I have used now for many years with more than 5,000 resilient leaders across the globe, everything from Fortune 50 companies to startups. And you get to have access to it right here at your fingertips for free, by the way. 3 minutes, you can find your score and get access to resources that will also meet you where you are, cost you nothing except the moments that it takes to be honest in your answering of the questions, the simple questions, and we can go from there. But I'm so grateful for the relationship. Love the fact that you are listening. Look forward to not only you doing that, more of that, but also sharing it with other people that might benefit from hearing the message that comes through on this show. All right. Well, you be well. And thanks so much again.

Thanks for listening, everyone. We hope you now have even more tools and greater insights to build resilience and become change-proof. Help us inspire others by sharing this episode and leaving your comments over at adammarkel.com/podcast. For more resilience tips and strategies, including support for building change-proof teams, visit adammarkel.com.