Starbucks CEO and Slaying Dragons - Episode 072

Welcome back. Yeah, Another episode C Suite Unfiltered. We are jumping straight in. We got a lot of headlines, a lot of, lot of business news happening. So we'll start right from the top because this is some pretty big news across, across the markets, if you will. Starbucks has replaced their CEO. So what are your initial thoughts on this? I can, I can give the key points. This is a CNBC article I pulled up here. So Starbucks is ousted CEO Laxum Narration, I think is how you say it. Something like that. Effective immediately. So this yesterday at time of recording, Chipotle CEO Brian Nicholl will step in as the coffee chain's New Leader on September 9th. Starbucks sales have struggled in recent quarters due to shrinking demand in the US and China, its two largest markets.

Yeah, yeah. So Brian is probably the best food operator in terms of CEO executive in the world. And so this is, this was a sign of this was that literally the market share of stock Starbucks jumped by billions and billions of dollars. But 22%. So is it 100 billion dollar company, something like that? I think it's 100, about 100 billion, yeah. If I remember correctly. And so if it jumped by 22, it means he basically with that one announcement, they created $20 billion of value.

So yeah, the previous CEO of Starbucks had a pathetic interview with Jim Kramer after their last quarterly report. Basically said falsehoods about them gain like keeping stable their market share of coffee in the United States was like, no, it's not true. Duncan's eating away at you. Dutch Bros. Is eating away. McDonald's eating away your market share. And so he had like a. Everything in their earnings report was like bad, bad, bad in US China, like comparable sales per store, everything. And then he gets on this show and he's like everything is great. And, and even Jim Cramer called him out. He's like, no, you're like this is a lie. And then you had that interview we talked about from.

Schultz.

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. And Howard Schultz.

Howard Schultz, the founder who's not involved in the company at all, basically had just wrote, written an open letter to the CEO basically calling for like regime change. Yep. So I think everyone wanted to mount and it's proof when that when they made this announcement, the stock of Starbucks went up 22% and the stock of Chipotle went down I think 10 or 11%.

Yep.

Potentially one of the best executives in the food industry. My opinion.

Yeah. So in this article it does say the high was 24.5% increase to Starbucks stock and Chipotle stock fell around 10% during the announcement.

Yeah. And like if you look at when he joined Chipotle, if I remember correctly, it was about seven years ago. The stock price I think was around like $7. And now it's like 50 something. It was at 55, I think, and it dropped yesterday to 50, but still basically a 7x return. When he joined Chipotle, they were having declining single store sales.

Right.

So for example, if you look at Augusta Nation year over year, we're like almost 40% increase in average location sales. And that's mostly because locations are growing. Well, when you hit a mature market like Starbucks, where a lot of locations have been open for 10 or 15 years and like Augusta, where it's like two to three years average, you should be like marginally increasing every year to just be healthy. Like you don't need to be jumping 30, 40, 50% a year.

Yeah.

Because you simply have mature locations. However, declining same store sales is like a huge indicator that a brand is losing its power. And this is in part because of other players like McDonald's getting in taco Bells, like all of a sudden doing caffeinated drinks. But even like Coca Cola and Pepsi doing and like prime and all these other caffeinated beverages. Celsius. Yeah, Monster. All these players, now it's all caffeinated beverages. So those are going to eat away at the market share. And so ultimately though, this guy coming in, I think he's going to solve the mobile app issues.

I think he's going to solve the. I think the number one thing he's going to focus on. I'm just going to guess. Yeah, I think he's going to think about throughput a lot. So when what Chipotle did that I thought was really good when he came in is he just looked at like the process and how do we make this faster? We need to get the line. Yes, we're happy there's a line, but we need to get people through here as fast as possible. Cause the likelihood of them coming back is greater if we get them through this line as fast as possible. Correct. Also, if you're serving an affluent person, they value their time. So waiting is like off the table. And so any sort of wait around the mobile app and then waiting in line at stores is like not good for the type of customer you're trying to serve. The same thing is true like for us with instant pricing and is like people do not want to meet five estimators and have a bunch of quotes sent to them and go through. They Just want to buy. Yeah. And so I believe he is going to do several things. I think he's in a cost cut in terms of what he kind of did with Chipotle which is like smaller portions. I think you're going to see some shrinkage of sizing at Starbucks.

Shrinkflation.

Yep. Then I think you're going to see a massive increase in the production and their throughput. So like though I think he was going to get in and start really measuring how many customers per hour, how many customers per minute and then looking at the drive through. So for example you would totally do with the drive through was like revolutionary where they were able to get around all sorts of legal aspects of what a drive thru is simply by saying like you drive up, you scan this thing, you order and then we'll bring it out to you. No longer a drive thru.

Yeah.

So there's a lot of regulations around drive thrus and how those can be set up. And so they got around that and like they're I think like, I think like 50% of Chipotle's or on or sales from their online app. Their app?

Yeah.

So they're very same similar to Starbucks. I think he's going to crush it. Do I think it's worth buying Starbucks stock?

No.

Mostly because I do think it's in a market share market that's extremely competitive right now, has a lot of strong brands. But if anyone's going to turn around the business it's this dude.

Yeah, yeah. It says so that Nichols has, has served as Chipotle CEO since 2018. He previously led Yum Brands Taco Bell. So he has experience with Taco Bell as well. During his time at Chipotle his the stock soared 773%.

Yeah. 7X. Yeah.

That's good. Yeah, exactly. Exactly what you were saying is a 7x, he said. Our board a couple months ago started to engage in a conversation about the leadership of the company. And I made an overture through someone to Brian and he took the call. This is someone from Starbucks. We thought we had the opportunity to engage with one of the biggest names in the industry. Someone whose track record is just clearly proven not only through the spectacular results that he had at Chipotle, but also before that he worked for Pizza Hut and Taco Bell. He knows the industry and we thought that he would be the right leader for this moment. Basically everything you said but just the, the overarching theme of what Starbucks thought.

You know, it's so funny. So the previous CEO of Starbucks there was this interview where he basically said he would not answer any messages or phone calls after 6pm unless it was literally the business was about to collapse and this guy's getting paid $28 million a year.

Yeah.

I was like, I. So this sort of stuff, this sort of news to me is very interesting. That's why I know so much about this. Like, I dig stuff because, like, I'm getting to the point where I know in the next, like, five to 10 years, I will hire CEOs, and I. I'm even hiring executives now and bringing them out from outside the in. And so it's actually, like, making sense to me.

Yeah.

Okay. This is why. So you pace people so much because, like, the type of person that's going to clock out, six o'. Clock, I'm sorry, you will not be my CEO. And every single investor in Starbucks thinks the same thing. And the reason there's proof of that is that when he got fired, everyone's like, buy the stock.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Because if you, if you're gonna be an executive, if you're gonna be an owner and think that you're gonna clock out every single day at six o', clock, and unless your business is literally about to fail, you will not answer a single message. I'm sorry, but you do not deserve your paycheck.

Yeah.

And so, like, what you're willing to put in is what you're gonna get out. And if you're gonna be like, I'm gonna clock in, I'm gonna clock out. And he basically works about seven to eight hours a day. And, like, look, I understand that that's great if you want to be a wage earner and do that, but if you're me, a CEO of executive company of a publicly traded company, and have, like, billions of dollars behind you.

Yeah.

What are you thinking?

Yeah.

So anyways, I don't know where he's gonna get a job next, but wherever it is, don't buy that stock.

Yeah, so that's pretty much it. It said Starbucks did not. This is kind of how the article wraps up. Starbucks board did not initially respond or engage with the. The nickels for some time, driven in the part to the lingering influence of Schultz.

And then. Yeah. So basically, I don't want to read a bunch of stuff that isn't really relevant, but basically, this is the change. This is how it's happening. They feel like he's the best fit, has the most experience in the food industry. And then this article also highlights the app, like you were saying how he really nailed the systems in the Chipotle app and they're hoping that that will help fuel Starbucks app.

I bet they had to pay him so much money.

Yeah.

But it's so worth it. If there's anyone that can take over a founder like company from Howard Schultz and lead it to its next leg, it's this guy.

Yeah.

And like this is the quintessential Tim Cook to Steve Jobs in my opinion. Like it like this is the type of leader he needed to find in order to be able to step away for good.

Yeah.

Because he's had to come back twice.

Yeah.

Because he leaves and then things fall apart. He leaves and things fall apart. And so now he's left. He. Then again things fell apart. He has to write this share like letter basically like destroying Starbucks. And so this guy I think has the chops to make it happen.

Yeah.

And like this is super interesting to me because like I, I really like, I know this will be my like main focus over the next several years of like finding executives and then looking at track records and be like who's winner, like betting on the jockey.

Yeah.

So it's interesting.

Cool. Love it. Well, that is Starbucks news. Now we're going to switch it up. I think this next article actually mildly relates to, to our industry which is why I wanted to bring it up. So this is an article about Home Depot actually and this is from the street.com so Wall street article. And basically it says Home Depot CEO flags alarming trend that's hurting sales. And he basically lets everyone know what the source of the company's struggles are.

Well, it's because of interest being high, people aren't borrowing money to do home improvements or instruction.

Yep. Basically that's what he gets at. So In Hope Depot second quarter earnings report in 2024 revealed that in comparable sales in the US declined 3.6% compared to the same time period last year. Also the amount of money customers are spending at store decreased by 1.3%.

What percentage down since 2022 did it say?

It doesn't say. This is just a year over year. It might get into that. So while sales decline, the company's operating income, which is how much a company makes after expenses, dipped by 0.8% and its net earnings also decreased by 2%. During a recent earnings call which discussed the report, Home Depot CEO Ted Decker said that the company has started to notice that consumers are pulling back on funding large home improvement projects which usually involve kitchen and bath remodels during the quarter. Higher interest rates and greater macroeconomic uncertainty pressured consumer demand more broadly, resulting in weaker spend across home improvement projects. Additionally, we saw continued softness in spring projects, which were also impacted by extreme weather changes throughout the quarter, said Decker. So that's the CEO of Home Depot.

Yeah, yeah.

So any thoughts on that? It relates to our industry, right? Lawn care, landscaping, because we are in the, you know, home services space. Do you feel like this is a trend that is also affecting our industry? Based on what you see, do you think there's going to be a bounce back? Feds talking rate cuts, Wall Street's saying, hey, there might be rate cuts which we might get into later. But what are your thoughts on the. The comments from the CEO of Home Depot?

Look, we're just used to everything going up and to the right so dramatically over the past four years that like a normal reset is like we haven't had a down year. This is like 4% down. Right. They had a 2% down in profit. Yeah, right. So the fact of the matter is if, I bet if you look this year over year from like 20, 20, 21, 22 and 23, they were like 5%, 10%, 15%, it's like jump, jump, jump. So this is normalization. If you look at their stock price, it hasn't gone down a lot. It's basically just been flat for the past year and a half.

Yeah.

Because of interest rates being high. So you know, in terms of our industry, I think we all just got really fat and happy on like projects rolling in all the time, leads pouring into like our, you know, like it was so easy. Like more than 70% of Augusta turned off their leads during like 2020, 2021, 2022 and so turned throttled their leads. I should say like either like stop taking in person estimates or no projects or Boeing only or something. Whereas like now I think there's like maybe a couple. And so again, this is a natural market cycle. And yes, it has impacted our. I have know of multiple companies, especially big ones around projects that have been extremely erratic with their revenue this year, where they're just living from basically project to project. In the past they've been booked out six or 12 months. And so yeah, it's impacted everybody. Like interest rates going up means the cost of capital is higher, which means people will spend less money. Hence like we are going to go into an economic. Even the jobs report last month, it was really, really bad. And so compared to expectations. And so that's what happens when you raise interest rates.

Yeah, yeah. And then this article goes on because the CEO Decker did address kind of the housing market in general, kind of his macroeconomic comments that I read earlier, he was alluding to the housing market. So the article says, as the housing market is losing its affordability, a growing number of consumers have refrained from buying homes. In June, existing home sales declined by 5.4% as the median sales price reached $426,000, the highest price ever recorded, according to a recent report from national association of Realtors. So basically the CEO of Home Depot is also saying that because there isn't all this turnover in the housing market, people don't buy a home and then instantly want to do a remodel, instantly want to build the deck, instantly want to whatever, change out some appliances.

The volume of sales is similar the last couple years. The difference is a couple years ago, money was so cheap, people were getting home equity lines of credit left and right to put a deck on, do the landscaping project, add another bedroom, do the remodel, et cetera. And their equity had gone up so much it made sense. Now like that capital costs so much and their home equity hasn't gone up 30% in the past few years. Right. So there's not as much room to do another home equity line of credit. And they don't want a home equity line of credit because now 9 and 10% interest instead of 3 and 4%.

Yeah. So how do you think that this impacts the lawn care landscape industry?

Yeah, there's, there's going to be less leads. I've seen more closures in the industry in the past 12 months than ever before. We've seen it in Augusta. And so I think it's really hitting project based work. Like there people are really just like, oh, we got to diversify, we got to add another branch, another department. We've got to add some sort of maintenance. And the erratic behavior of having 50, 60, $70,000 projects on a business as a million dollars in revenue, that means a couple projects going bye bye in a year is like all your, all your profit. Right. And a lot of the cost associated with projects is fixed. So like you buy the excavator, you buy the dingo, you have the shop space to store the equipment. And so whether or not you get the extra two or three projects on a million dollar business is the determining factor of whether or not you make profit because you have the assets no matter what, you pay for the insurance no matter what. And so yeah, I'm not concerned. I'm just, I think this is a healthy reset. People recalibrate back to maintenance. A lot of the large companies will either recalibrate or they will go out of business. And I've seen a lot of them selling for basically book value right now because they're not, they're not selling with 12 months of booked out projects. They're basically selling and saying, hey, buy our equipment. We got products for the next couple of weeks. And on a project based, project based work, when you don't have recurring revenue, that's all you're selling. You don't have anything to sell besides your contacts. Like, yeah, these people in the past we have done work for. And then here's all this equipment, but we have no work in it. Like there's no promise of earnings. Promise of earnings is extremely important. And so either a, you have extremely strong brand that is basically leads are pouring in. Like there's a consistent lead flow from the brand or you're getting consistent revenue with contract or contracts. So like some sort of recurring revenue. So the enterprise value of those, those, those businesses, brutal. They're not selling. And so people are closing down or shifting or selling their equipment.

Yeah, so I have a question about that because a lot of people I feel like in this industry at least, you know, the folks that I've talked to and just how I've operated in your businesses, not only as a salesperson but as a manager, is that you typically try to get through each year as like its own kind of individual microcosm to the, to the greater life of the business. Business, if you will. Each year is a little bit different. Right. Some leads you, some years you have more leads, some leads you have less. Some leads you sell a lot of mulch. Some, some years you don't. Right. So it's just different. Do you feel like, because I recently heard you say this on a Mastermind in Augusta, that. Do you feel that next year, 2025. I'm summarizing what you said on Mastermind, which is that next year will be a hard year financially, economically, for a lot of business owners. Or do you feel like based on most historical data, it will actually be a bounce back year for the economy because we'll have a new president.

I don't think politics will play into this. Everyone will make it political. But the reason the inflation has happened is not necessarily because of politics. Like there was so much spending in 2020, even in the previous administration, that inflation was bound to happen no matter what.

Well, let me just clarify real quick. If you look at historical data, typically most economic trends, stock market, primarily Jobs reports, things of that nature typically are better after a new president is elected.

Did.

Yeah, like just the historical data. I'm not making it political like red or blue. It's just if there's a new president, typically most trends we look at are positive because we're all optimistic that things. Exactly.

And so if you look at like, like Democrat versus Republican, for example, the stock market does not actually follow any trend in terms of who's red and who's blue, which the direction to go. Look, there's even booms and busts. Right. You're not going to be able to fight interest rates. Interest rates are the determining factor of the market. And so if you want to fight the Fed, go for it. But I promise you if they cut interest rates tomorrow by 2% the stock market would just rip. Yeah, crazy because everyone would pour pool money out of bonds where they're getting higher interest rates and they throw it into the stock market like it just, it's basic. Now does it mean cutting, cutting rates are going to come, are going to be cut soon? We know that. Does that mean the stock market is going to go up? No, because we already have baked into the pricing over the past six to 12 months that the stock market that the interest rates will be cut. So a lot of times the, the, you know, you sell was, you buy the news, was it?

No, sell the news by the rumor.

Yeah, exactly. And so you know, people have already baked into the pricing of a lot of these companies that interest rates will be cut. Yeah. So I predict that this is why I just moved out of all my individual stocks back into indexes is like, I believe there'll be a trend back downwards as interest rates actually do get cut from the stock market and then they're going to rip because the, the Fed will have to cut rates in order to prevent joblessness and they will do that probably under the, you know, new administration. It'll be weak economic data. I believe in 2025 they'll have to cut interest rates a lot. That will then cause a massive, massive spur again and inflation will pick up, back up. Not, not like 9% but I see 4 or 5% happening again. So I don't know, I don't know any of this stuff but it just like I've only seen this now like three, like two or three times. This is why I just, I wish I was a 60 year old investor in like a 30 year old body.

Yeah.

Because you would have seen all of this like another five or six times.

Yeah.

And so my Goal is like, I try to learn from all, like, the past cycles of, like, hey, look at interest rates, look at the stock market, look at interest rates. See, when. When consumers are spending money. And so, like, I believe in 2025, it's going to be who can market the best. Because customers are not going to be looking to spend money. It's going to be who can get their customer cost per lead and their customer acquisition cost dialed in to know what it is and then just optimize it and actually know it. And when they put dollars in, they get a customer on the other side. People do not know what that number is. They just don't. And so the people that do, they'll be able to play the game enough to know how to spend money and get customers. But people are not going to be looking to spend money next year. They're going to be looking to keep their job. Right. And so as soon as we've already seen, like, unemployment start picking back up, like, I can find engineers now. Even two years ago, it was impossible to get engineers because Google and Facebook were hiring tens of thousands of them. Well, now when they're laying tens of thousands of them off, it completely changes the market. So anyways, all that to, say, 2025, I think it'll come down to who can market the best, because I think that the hiring thing is going to become a much easier game to play. And even yesterday, the reason we talked about the mastermind is like, Kevin put up a. A post for hiring and got 74 applications in the first 24 hours. And so he's like, how do I weed these people out? Yeah, that was not a question two years ago. Because that same post would have gotten two or three applicants and none of them would have shown up for an interview.

Yep, exactly.

So things can change very quickly. And so I just genuinely believe that we're gonna have tons of applicants. It's gonna come down who can you. Who has a system for interviewing? Because it's not like all these are gonna be good candidates. Right. We're still gonna have to weed them down. It's not like the market's gonna become easier to get good people. It's just like, you're going to have to find a better way to filter them down, have some sort of screening process, a better training process, and then a way to actually get customers in the door when you're paying for them. And even at Valium, this is the first year we've paid for customers. Yeah, right. We've never done advertising. And it's because like we have to figure that game out in order to know, like, okay, hiring might become easier, but we have to go get the customers now.

Yeah, yeah. It's interesting you bring all that up. I think that's fair. It's, you know, I think whether economic times are good or bad, typically the people that, that win are going to be the ones that have a system in place that have figured out how to either gain customers, hire employees, whatever it is, cut costs. Those are the people who are going to win. So I think what you said there is accurate and important. Now I did look this up while you were going on your, your tirade there, inspiring all of us, which I appreciate. This was posted 10 minutes ago on Yahoo. Finance. Mild inflation reading offers Fed a green light to cut rates in September. Now, this is nothing new. They've been saying this for months and months and months. But bear with me here. So the consumer price index increased 2.9% over the prior year in July, down from June's 3.0 annual gain in prices on a core basis, which strips out the more volatile costs of food and gas. Prices in July climbed 3.2% over last year, down from 3.3% in June. This was the smallest increase since April of 2021. I think this report is a green light for the Federal Reserve in September. Nathan Sheets Said, who is a global chief economist for Citigroup, and Fed chair Jerome Powell made it clear at the end of last month that a cut in September was on the table as long as the data supported it. He and other policymakers have said that they want to be sure that inflation is in fact moving sustainably, down to their goal of 2%.

Yeah. It's funny because, like, if you look at the stock market, it's like Warren Buffett says, like in the short term it's a voting machine. In the long term, it's a weighing machine. Right. Because like last week, for example, you had the whole yen carry trade unravel. But then they got, we had bad economic data that is the jobs report coming in. Very cool. So everyone going into recession. Right. Well then this week it's like, well, because we're going into recession, we're going to lower the interest rates, which then buoys the market. Right. So, like, it's a healthy thing for an economy to have these kind of checks and balances.

Yeah.

Right. And so the thing is this, when the market crashes and you're at 0% interest and you, you can't bring interest rates, then what do you do and that's like, this is their last bullet in the chamber. But if they pull this and then inflation pops back up, they're dead. That's why they've let higher interest rates run for a lot longer than they expected is because you can't. Like, if they pull out the chamber, they start cutting interest rates right now, and then inflation takes back off. They are going. They are in a world of hurt. They have no more bullets in the chamber because there'll be low interest rates and high inflation. And, like, we would be. It would be really bad. And then our debt spiraling out of control. Yeah, Debt payments would be expiring out of control. Like, it would be really bad. So that's why they're letting it go for a little bit. And there's been a little bit of pain in the market and, like, in terms like, you know, Main street and it'll probably continue for the next year or two.

Yeah. And that's where you get massive. Once again, non economists, this is me just trying to learn that is where you get massive devaluation of your currency. Correct. That. That can be a recipe. Right. When you have this lower interest rates, super high inflation. Well, now the value of the US Dollar is getting smaller and smaller.

Correct. Yeah. Over time.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay, cool, dude.

I did a deep dive on. This is a good. The good read. Okay. So if you want to spend 15 minutes and educate yourself on money, actually, I'll do.

There you go. Perfect.

Love it. Awesome.

All right, well, now we're going to change that. A lot of headlines, a lot of big financial news. But, you know, in the comments, people said they like, when we stick to more financial news, more business.

Well, I haven't, I haven't seen any politics stuff. It's now off the radar.

Fair enough.

No more. I'm. I'm out. I literally went into my settings on YouTube and said, I want nothing to do with politics.

What about Trump and Elon on their spaces?

Didn't even watch it.

Oh, Trump's back. Well, you couldn't watch it. It was audio. Oh, Elon hosted a space with Trump and they talked for two hours on.

X. I'm sure it was good because.

Trump's back on X, back on Twitter. Okay, so. Because he got kicked off. Okay, now he's back.

So all politics, I'm out.

Yeah, fair enough.

I'm done. After the assassination, I got, like, really into it for like two or three days. I'm like, all right, I'm done. Yeah, no more. Zero, nada. So you can Ask me any political question. I have zero response.

Yeah, I just love Trump's retelling of the assassination attempt on spaces. That was probably the best part of it. I didn't listen to the whole thing. It's two hours long.

It was like there were bullets flying over my head. It was just so many bullets. And the brave men and women, so brave. The bravest. No, it was great. It was awesome. Anyways, all right, we're gonna switch it up now. This was posted by a couple of owners inside of Augusta. I did watch the full length interviews. Jordan. It's clip from Jordan Peterson's most recent interview with Joe Rogan. And a couple owners in Augusta posted this clip. I thought it was a great clip. I thought, let's play it for Mike. Andy's. See what his thoughts are on this.

Did I not see this? Was this in the group?

There's no difference between responsibility and adventure.

That's a killer thing to know. The heavier the responsibility, the more profound the adventure. And so I've been suggesting to young men in particular, it's like you want to get your life together.

Take the path of the maximal responsibility. Not because you should, even though you should. That's not why. It's because that's the pathway of maximal adventure. So you say, well, what's the meaning of life? It's like it's the meaning that reveals itself when you take the pathway of maximum responsibility.

That's. That's exactly the message of the crucifixion. That's precisely the message pathway of maximal responsibility. And that's a terrifying thing. There's no difference between. Between that and the. The dragon and treasure stories that are, you know, unbelievably archaic. The greatest possible treasure is to be found where the danger is most intense.

Right.

Always right.

The dragon guards the gold.

Always Right. Well, and so one thing to know is that if there's a dragon, there's a treasure somewhere. Really Right. Really Right.

I have this video I might post. I might not post it. I'm thinking about posting it on my birthday on the 29th.

And it's basically on your birthday on the 29th.

What did I say?

You said on your birthday on the 29th.

No. Okay. On my birthday on the 13th.

What changed?

Okay, so. No, but what I'm, I'm thinking of doing is posting my very first video that's like non business related. Oh. Inspired by one of Alex's recent videos, which is like really honest advice for men in their 20s that want to win.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

I'M thinking about doing the same title and just like doing my own version.

Yeah.

Because now I'm turning 29. Yes, yes. I've gone through all my 20s.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, we'll see. Okay.

One of them is similar to that. Yeah, one of, one of my, like my things is similar to that. Yeah, but that's, that's really good. That's really good.

Yeah, I like that. He says that the, the path to maximal responsibility is not something that you need to do just because you should do it. It's because it'll help you get your life in order.

Yeah. And I think the balance that would be that you don't want to be frivolous with your.

Taking on of responsibility if you don't have the capacity to actually lead responsibility.

That's where I would be cautious. For example, I want to take a lot of responsibility. Great. I'm going to hire tons of people.

And I'm going to.

Wait a second. Like, yeah, that's a lot of responsibility. But like that might be reckless.

Yes.

And so I think there would be a balance and like, well, maximum responsibility. I'm going to have a bunch of kids. But wait a second. Can you provide for them? Right, right. And do you have the emotional stability to be able to do that? So I think there's a balance, but yeah, that's a great point. Yeah, I think some more responsibility. Yeah, that's a deep thought.

I personally am like a huge fan of these thought exercises and I think that there's an element to. There is a danger to having no responsibility. Right. Where people have no responsibility to anyone but themselves and they become not only a negative output towards society because all they do is care about themselves, but also a negative output to themselves because they do not have anything outside of themselves that matters.

Yeah. Well, even more asinine is no responsibility with things being given to them. That's even like a double whammy.

Yeah.

That's like entitled. You know, kids that give a bunch of money, but then it's also like they have all the resources and no responsibility. And I would say the same as like with people that like play the government welfare system.

Yeah.

Like no responsibility, no job, no landlord. It's all just given to them.

Yeah.

And they have no responsibility.

Things given to them and they have no responsibility. I think that's like really bad. Yeah.

I think taking on responsibility is the assumption of risk.

Yeah.

You are assuming risk by taking on responsibility. Like my wife and I have a kid now. There's a lot of risk involved with having a kid, like we have to keep him safe, we have to keep him fed, we have to keep him warm.

Like, you know, assumption though is slightly different. Is that responsibility. I feel like it could be wrong here in it means that there's other lives being impacted other than yours. So it's risky for you to climb on a mountain right now. It's your responsibility if your son's on your back to keep him safe.

Yeah, I see what you're saying.

Right?

Yeah, that's a good balance to it. So I thought it was a, it's a great quote. I do. I will say I have to disagree with something though.

Okay, which part?

Which is the Joe Rogan. Yeah, dude, I love Joe Rogan's reactions. Whoa, whoa. I love his reactions. I will disagree with the, the last portion of it. Like if there is a dragon somewhere there's a treasure. I think there is also things that can be maximally detrimental to you that can seem like a responsibility in way, in like a twisted reality that you think there's going to be some reward. Simple example, bad example. People that get addicted to drugs. Right. Because like they're chasing that high and that high is so good and it like, you know, people will say oh, I perform better or I this or I that or it makes me feel good or I can communicate better. It's like, well, you're just gonna keep chasing that high and eventually it's gonna get worse and worse and worse and there's no treasure at the end of that dragon.

Yeah, I see. I, I believe though he's conflating two words, risk and responsibility.

Yes.

Right. Because what you're talking about is the drugs is a risk. Yes. But you are not being responsible by taking that risk because you're putting the lives of other people at risk.

Yeah, I see what you're saying. Yeah.

And so I think there is a conflation somewhat like going after the dragon is only your responsibility if you're fighting away from others. Like I could be wrong here, but I always say responsibility involves the livelihood and the lives of others and the goodness of the well being of others, not just your own. Right. Because the person taking drugs you could theoretically say yes, it's risky, but responsibility off the table, they in themselves could see as better for them. And it's the dragon they're trying to face and they're willing to take the risk for it. Yeah. As they get the high.

Yeah.

But net, net. When you look at other people being involved, they're risking their family, they're Risking, you know, their job, their livelihood and now other people on the equation. Now it becomes bad, right?

Yeah. So it's interesting either way. I like it. I think that taking. I like that he starts by taking. The path to maximal responsibility is also the path of maximal adventure. I think that is very important. That's cool. That's very important for our society nowadays because people really think like, oh, I have to travel abroad, I have to do this, I have to have this unique experience. It's like. Or you could have these awesome responsibilities and like just be. Go along for the ride.

Yeah.

So I thought that was really cool.

The dragon. That's treasure and that's pretty cool.

Yeah.

Even like the relationships, every relationship has a sense of responsibility or risk associated with it. Yeah.

That's fair.

The reason for that is because there's a reward. The same way when you drive, there's a risk that you're going to crash. However. However you do it because the reward of getting there faster than the risk of dying.

Yeah. Yeah.

And so it's interesting. I like it.

Yeah. So anyways, that's all I got for today. Not financial advice.

Loaded.

Good. Let's go.

So I Recommend Everyone take 10 minutes, look up the difference between treasury bills, treasury bonds and treasury notes.

Okay.

And understanding what that all means, it's really cool stuff. I've been diving deep on it.

You know you're going to make some plays on any of those or no.

No, you can buy.

Yeah.

Buy them from treasurydirect.com or treasury.gov if you want to buy treasury directly. But the long and short of it is this bonds is I am going to pay for a bond and I am going, you're going to tell me, hey, in 30 years you're going to give me my principal back, but over the course of time you're going to give me interest. Okay. So if I buy a 30 year treasury bond, you're going to pay me, let's call it 3% interest over the next 30 years. At the very end you're going to my principal back.

Right.

All along. That way I can sell the bond to someone else. And so if interest rates go up, the value of that bond goes down and vice versa. Okay. Treasury bills typically less than a year or always less than a year in longevity and also known as T bills. T bills. Yep. Is I'm going to buy for $95, I'm going to buy a one year t bill and in one year you're going to give me $100. So basically it Matures and I get the upfront. Like, I pay nine, I give you 95 bucks and you say, hey, in one year, I'll give you 100. So there's no interest. It just. It matures and you give me the money. Right. Also can be exchanged and bought and sold. Yep. And then notes are usually between two and 10 years.

Yeah.

But they're treated more like bonds. Yeah.

Love it. It's good. Great financial advice. Not financial advice. My not financial advice is Check us out on LinkedIn. Oh, I saw the other day, dude.

I tried to accept your friend invite. Yeah.

So we're getting into LinkedIn now. We're big corporate guys.

Oh, yeah, right. Yeah. VP of sales. You're like, yeah, I can throw that one.

Well, yeah, I mean, I'm a corporate.

Guy, so all the corporate jargon on LinkedIn just makes me cringe.

Yeah, it's the worst. But I was like, do I want to make my LinkedIn profile look like kind of who we are, or do I want to, like, fit the mold of LinkedIn? I was like, it's probably better to, like, play the rules of the game of LinkedIn.

Yeah.

Use those big fans.

I am using LinkedIn for executive hires.

Exactly. So I asked. I had a discussion with Liz, our coo, and she was like, yeah, Mike's getting into it more. She's like, I'm getting into it more. I was like, great, I'll just make one.

Yeah, I don't know. I'm getting into it more. I'm posting on there. Just.

Well, you're posting more. Yeah, more active.

It's good to set up, like, co pilot as a business, etc. Yeah, you could do that if you went for Augusta. Set up the actual entity in LinkedIn. You can set one up and then take ownership of it so you can control it and people can like, be like, well, we can look.

We can look at this after. Because I'm pretty sure that's already set up.

Oh, really?

Yeah.

Oh, you know, I think I did.

You're right.

But we had to do it for copilot because we're hiring. We're spending quite a bit to, like, find, you know, engineers and stuff like that. So it's definitely good for, like, white collar jobs. I'm not gonna lie. It's better than indeed when it comes to white collar jobs. Yeah. To find employees. Yeah.

Well, because people can, on their LinkedIn profiles say that like, oh, I'm open to being hired. I'm basically open to being recruited. Please recruit me. Or you can say I'm closed off. What do you think I put.

No. I sound close enough. I was like, please don't contact me for hiring or recruiting. I really like what I do.

Cool. That's all I got. Like and subscribe.