4 of the dumbest things i saw people do in 2020

I vividly remember the feeling I had on December 31, 2019 as we were ending a decade and beginning a new one.  New Year’s bring the feelings of hope, fresh starts, new opportunities and new memories to be formed. I am not sure about you but entering a new decade makes those feeling stronger and more vibrant to me. 

I was so excited about the new decade that  I began it by traveling across the US to attend a women’s conference around empowerment. I left that conference feeling like I was ready to make 2020 the best year ever. The news concerning the virus lingered in the background without much regard. I distinctly remember the morning of January 26th and the news surrounding the sudden, tragic and untimely passing of Kobe Bryant. This hit closer to home for me since I knew him and was a life long Laker fan. 

The next day I remember diving to work and seeing the news vans swarming my community, the tributes, the flowers, the heaviness in the air. It felt like a bad dream. At that point, I felt maybe we should just scrap 2020. The virus was in the shadows but not yet in the epicenter of 2020.  The democratic hunt for the candidate seemed to take precedent over the virus. I remember seeing the headlines say “Be more worried about Bernie Sanders than Covid”… Late February to early March this “virus” quickly moved from a “virus” to a “global pandemic”. I remember the day distinctly; it was a Wednesday. I stopped at the grocery store at the end of the day before picking up my daughter. The shelves were bare and the lines were the longer than Black Friday lines. I remember staring in disbelief. The run on toilet paper I still cannot explain. 

Soon thereafter, the shelter in place becomes a mandate. I picked my daughter up from preschool on 3/13 not knowing she would not return until June 1st!  

The sheer pandemonium that I saw baffled me. I saw people doing things that made zero sense. 

So here we are, the 4 dumbest things I have seen people do in 2020:

One: Not exercising liability management…  

 So in March we saw five trading days that wiped away $12 trillion in value in the stock market. The 10 year treasury hit all time lows and some people were aggressively refinancing and some people weren’t. But if you’re not taking an opportunity to review your liability management, to look at your primary mortgage, to look at your secondary mortgage, to look at your credit card interest rates, to look at your loan debts, interest rates. Then that is a big miss in my mind.

Second: Putting too much weight in One presidential candidate winning over the other…

The dumbest thing that I’ve seen people worry over or lament over is thinking that if one presidential candidate wins over the other, the stock market will significantly decline. I’ve had some people tell me that they think the stock market will  drop 25%  if Biden wins versus Trump and vice versus.  That is simply preposterous thinking to me.

So here’s the thing, if you’re investing in the stock market and you are worried about short term results, perhaps you shouldn’t be investing, perhaps you’re not a longterm investor. But the other thing that I’d like to bring to your attention is candidates tend to run on polarizing platforms. Once they become elected, they tend to become more centrist. They tend to stay more in the middle. And here’s the thing, no president wants on his/her watch the economy to tank, a global pandemic that kills one person yet alone  more, unemployment spikes, his/ her administration was the worst. Nobody wants that on their watch. So once elected, the POSTUS will find a middle ground. And again, the president doesn’t have unending power or control. The president has the checks and balance of Congress.

So I always like to say Congress controls the checkbook. So sometimes the midterm elections are more important than the presidential election. But it’s mind boggling for me to see in mainstream media and people’s visceral reactions that there’s going to be a significant drop in the market, depending on who wins the elections.

The other thing is companies are nimble, policies change. The election is not going to have a dramatic impact on the economy. And the other thing that I think is simply crazy is that people don’t realize that central banks around the world are almost printing money like it is Monopoly. So unless there’s a stagnant decline in printing money, we’re not going into deflationary cycle. But, if you want to think like Ben Bernanke, go for it.

Third: Pivoting during this Pandemic 

Then the third thing that I find absolutely mind boggling is that people are not pivoting and investing in themselves in this pandemic, this COVID new norm. And I will give you personal example. So when COVID hit, after I came through my COVID whiplash, COVID depression and  my COVID hangover. I don’t know all of the emotions that hit me. I realized that this is probably the most epic time to invest in yourself, invest in your business to grow, to provide values for the people that you’re legitimately supposed to serve. People who have legitimate businesses, not people that are pretending on Instagram that say, you look at their Instagram bio and they say that they converted 15 million in sales. Most of that stuff, I don’t believe for a second. Wealth whispers, new money is flashy.

So the thing that I like to say is that when COVID hit I realized this is a great opportunity to grow my business, but that I’d have to grow it differently. I’d have to be engaged differently, have to pivot and then have to think and work smarter. So I partnered with a company that could help me with my video productions. I started doing videos and legit, the first consultation I had, I was scared to death. I said, “I hate being on camera. I’m no good at it.” And the first video I submitted that I thought was a test run actually turned into be my first video, which is near and dear to my heart because it’s where I started.

But here’s the thing, those first videos sucked. And guess what? They’re going to suck. What is it Gary V says all the time? “Your first 100 things of anything are going to suck. Do them anyway.” So I’m doing my own cooking. I know that it sucks. But guess what? I’m continuing to go. And I can’t wait for three or four years from now when people are like, “How did she get to where you are now?” And I’m going to say, “Go, look, at 2020. I was a hot mess trying to figure it out.”

So, I like to also in the late ’90s when we were coming from in 1999 to 2000, the whole Y2K thing. I remember being new in my career and or actually in a different role. But I remember when email was starting to gain traction as a method of communication. And there was an advisor that I worked with that was like, “This is never going to gain traction. It’s never going to change the way we do business.” And I looked at him and I said, “This is going to change everything. This is going to change everything.” And he didn’t pivot and I did. And the trajections are so different.

So I feel in this COVID era where  Zoom and videos and finding ways to bring content and service and serve your audience. By not embracing the new norm digitally, this is a huge miss. And whether we get a vaccination or not, there are still people that immune compromised systems or underlying conditions that may not be ready  to re-emerge in  the world and that social landscape has changed. But guess what? Human connection and the need for it hasn’t. So that is mind boggling to me how people are not pivoting.

Four: Blessed; be a blessing!  

So I always like to say that I’m blessed to be a blessing. And here’s the thing, after we got through the worst part COVID and I realized the sky wasn’t falling, Chicken Little wasn’t coming out of the sky. We weren’t all dying and the market rebounded, obviously. I lost 40% of my business revenue in five trading sessions and I had post traumatic stress disorder from 2008/2009. And I thought we were going back into full blown market correction. And the markets have rebounded.

There’s still a lot of uncertainty out there, but obviously my compensation has stabilized. I look at this opportunity as when I go to a restaurant, sometimes I tip the bill. I’ve when I see a police officer at Starbucks I offer to buy their drink. I just go out of my way to find ways to bless other people. And the people that I partner with, I make sure I tip really well. One of my favorite gifts, is Man Crates and I sent that to a couple of my collaborations

Just taking time to appreciate somebody’s sweat equity into any venture of your business. I think it’s so, so important. And the thing I think that is so amazing is that mindset brings gratitude, it brings abundance, it brings joy. And the more you show up and based on this, I believe the more that is rewarded. So those are the dumbest things I’ve seen in 2020. And all I can say is bring on 2021.