May 11, 2025 • 60 mins
Dan and Sean return to the mic with a message for the wanderers, the misfits, and the intellectually restless. This episode explores what it means to seek challenge instead of comfort, to embrace unfinished thoughts, and to carve out space for messy, real-time reflection. If you’ve ever felt like a mental nomad—curious but unrooted—this one’s for you.
Topics Covered:
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Why we sometimes feel allergic to routines
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The surprising difficulty of “simple” goals
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Building the room when you don’t fit the ones you find
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Podcasting as an act of unscripted exploration
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The value of talking through your thoughts before they’re fully baked
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
That's, think, I want fellow nomads, right, that are willing to bounce around from, notlike, what is that, guess.
mental nomads that are willing to move around from idea space to idea space and try tolook at things from different points of view or
Well, it's like they can go to the Jehovah's witness lecture, but not become a Jehovah'switness.
(00:23):
And then they can go to the, the Buddhist monastery, but not necessarily become Buddhist.
And then they do, and so on and so on and so on.
And then they, and then they reach alignment, right?
because, because you've taken the best of what suits you from so many differentdisciplines in the world.
Welcome to Unqualified Advice, the show where we try to make sense of business, investing,and life with just enough experience to get ourselves in trouble.
(00:48):
I'm Sean and he's Dan.
We both started in different careers, Dan in IT, climbing the ranks to Chief TechnologyOfficer in New York, and me in manufacturing, managing production quality across three
countries.
At some point, we both decided we didn't know enough.
So we went back to school for our MBAs.
Me at Columbia Business School and Sean at the University of Houston, downtown.
(01:10):
And after all that, we figured the best way to share what we've learned and what we'restill figuring out is to start a podcast.
So if you like deep dives into decision-making, business strategy, and the occasionalhalf-baked investing theory,
Or just enjoy listening to two guys challenge each other's ideas and occasionally admitwhen we're wrong?
You're in the right place.
(01:31):
Welcome to Unqualified Advice.
Morning,
Good morning, Dan.
I am sitting over here enjoying, bright eyed bush tails enjoying my thermos of coffee.
So if you hear me curse in the background, it's because I accidentally burnt myself.
I thought you were going to say, because I ran out.
How are you doing this morning, Dan?
(01:51):
You know, I'm trying to hold on.
um You know, we've been experimenting with pricing um and also like there are super opaquethings in the marketplace of like, is the consumer already feeling weakness or are they
protecting their pocketbook early?
Anyway, know, volume, traffic, all the things that are important to keeping the businessalive are down.
(02:16):
uh you know, yeah.
It doesn't feel good, uh, combined with the complete and absolute uncertainty about likewhat is going on and what the plan is.
So, uh, as much as I would like to tell you that we will not touch politics or, uh, eventhink about it.
And anyway, uh, it is basically 90 % of my life now, I think.
(02:38):
And so I ended up talking about it last night.
Howard Lotnick was in one of my dreams.
I don't remember the dream.
I'm not very good at remembering dreams, but I know he was there.
And that to me is completely.
terrible and fucked up.
I don't want them there.
Maybe he was trying to incept you.
Yeah, yeah.
To the, to the non grownups in the room, trying to take, you know, it's like, I'm, I maybeI was aligning myself with Scott Besson or something like that.
(03:02):
And then Howard Ludnick comes in he's like, ah, Peter Rotardo and I over here.
I don't know, man.
I have to say I have to say I have to I have to say in it in my headspace that that isvery much a current like I'm not going to able to avoid it either.
(03:24):
uh
A lot of what we have done recently at work and what we have found out where we're goingto be doing for the next year or two has been directly impacted by the tariff and trade
policy and the uncertainty of what is going on.
We are definitely looking at, you know, changing our, changing what we were expecting tobe working on to different things at this point, because we have to make some quick pivots
(03:50):
and try to.
uh...
you know mitigate the impact of certain items that are going to cost more if we keep themsourced where they currently are versus trying to find new homes for them uh...
so it's
you talk about like you, uh, you're, know, like I have zero industrial capacity, right?
Like there's, there's no option for me.
It's like source from China, source from Vietnam source from somewhere.
(04:11):
Someone's got to make stuff for me because it's a tiny, tiny, tiny little microscopicbusiness.
And there's no way that, I mean, it's impossible.
You can't go build a seven and a half million dollar factory in order to make a milliondollars in revenue.
Like this is not how it works.
uh, but like you guys do have industrial capacity.
You have.
um, welders and trades people and stuff that you actually do and make here on the groundin the United States.
(04:37):
Can you talk a little bit about like what a 30 % tariff in China would do?
What a 65 % tariff China in China would do to your guys's, you know, production and sortof like how you're shaping up that next year of projects.
so let me put it, let me say this.
So we have a manufacturing capacity globally.
We have a center in China, a couple of centers in China that manufacture components orthat source components locally manufactured and put them in an assembly and then ship them
(05:05):
out.
a lot of those parts actually come to the United States.
And so, you know, those items are, you know, up potentially for a 200 % tariff on certain.
depending upon how, how the impact stack.
So at a 200 % level, we are very competitive locally, I will say.
(05:27):
However, I don't know what that does to the rest of, to the actual end use market.
So it would it be a, a more work from a shrinking pie situation.
so we are actively, in SLB looking at
our global sourcing practices and saying, should we make more things closer to the basinwhere they're being used?
(05:48):
We refer to different areas as basins because their geological basins.
And so we're looking at trying to say more manufacturing of different items in differentlocations and rationalizing what items are being manufactured in which countries globally.
(06:09):
I guess from, from maybe a listener standpoint, like it could be, maybe it's somewhatobvious that there's going to be a reshuffling, but what would you, if you were to place a
bet in terms of value capture, where's the value capture moving from and to is it doesthis rebalancing move more value capture to the United States in a meaningful way?
(06:33):
Or is it just a, it's a lot of productivity and wasted and like,
brain cycles to just do stuff.
I think it depends upon the products.
And one thing about our products is we are not incredibly high volume.
(06:55):
A large number of units made for us in a year of certain product lines might range from,let me think of, how about mid-tier products would be?
6,000 to 15,000 units in a year, know, like at the high end volumes on a lot of these.
There are certain things that it's in the tens of thousands that are very small componentsused frequently over in other components and other assemblies.
(07:22):
But for the most part, any finished assemblies we're making are on the orders of magnitudeof thousands.
In a given year, sometimes tens of thousands.
m
At those volumes, uh, our, shops and capacity in America for us, with our, you know,obviously there is a different labor rate.
(07:43):
There's different, there are different utility rates.
There are different compliance costs, the overall burden rate, uh, what, we have to payper hour here.
Um, and making these finished products with tariffs on still the raw inputs, right?
So we're not getting the inputs.
Tariff free so we still have a tariff on those we believe some of our domesticmanufacturing we start to see it being Making sense for us to do it here in the 30 40 50
(08:15):
percent range Depending upon the product so depending upon where the tariffs land which wedon't know It seems like it's going to be in that range where for a lot of these products
again, they're they're not super high-volume
uh...
we'll see what and we'll see what then the also the again the end market might declinebecause of the increased cost overall because that's just because we're competitive
(08:40):
doesn't mean that it's still a will be the cheapest on the market at that point we don'tknow that and or that at that price point that what the level of activity will be because
the cost of drill their cogs just went up so that they're not gonna wanna
has hurt.
Yeah.
hurt or if a barrel of oil hasn't gone up 30 % correspondingly, we don't know how that'sgonna work out through the system and how it's going to reach new equilibrium, but it's
(09:11):
definitely changing.
Yeah.
mean, a lot, feel like a lot of the perspective is like, well, if the economy is here andthen the tariff goes here equals this.
it's like, uh, well, the tariff went up and therefore you would should expect the economyto go down and then that leaves even less.
it's like, if you needed a dollar of revenue to pay all your bills, then, I'd say doubleit.
(09:32):
But if the economy weekends, doubling your revenue is going to be pretty hard.
Yeah, well said.
Then you have to take market share, right?
The only way to do that is by take, then we go back to payroll, yeah.
Payroll is the economy, and it's going to get decimated.
think, you know, yeah.
I'm having a hard time not coming back to that part of the equation.
(09:55):
And I would imagine that's because you have, do you actually have product on water rightnow?
So.
it might have gotten unloaded.
I don't know.
I'll find out tomorrow.
Okay, okay, so and you don't know and you don't know what you're what that means for youat this point might get a little tomorrow and you still don't know what it means
I can stab a pretty good educated guess on what's going to be.
(10:18):
But given how like not written down the rules seem to be.
Who knows?
Who knows?
See, that to me would just, I would not be sleeping all weekend because I would be sittingthere worried about, I going to get a bill for this or for this?
if it...
time, I think there's going to be a whole lot of not mine.
I don't think.
(10:38):
Um, but I think there's a whole bunch of product that's just going to go straight tolandfill.
There's going to be brand new stuff that got shipped in and it goes to landfill becausepeople don't have the business.
American businesses don't have the cash to pay the duty.
Yeah.
I mean, the amount of working capital increase that is required for this is just insane.
(11:03):
Oh, thank you.
I'll scoot up.
Is that better?
Okay, yeah, the amount of working capital.
amount of the increase in working capital is insane on all of this.
You have to have so much more cash flow to be able to make it work.
mean, even if you end up still selling the same margin, your cash flow is going to just beabsolutely decimated until everything reaches new equilibrium.
(11:28):
So if we do some level of austerity, like Doge, and we fire a bunch of people and there'sless money moving around the economy because of that, and you cancel so many contracts at
all the consulting firms that another 100,000 high earners are let go, if you visualizethis within the economy,
(11:58):
And yet with tariffs, you're basically saying to all American small businesses, likeyou've got to grow in order to just survive at the level that you've gotten uh accustomed
to.
I don't know if that's the right way to say it.
It'll probably because it'll still be depressed from what people have gotten accustomedto.
They've got to grow the business just to like not shut down.
ah I don't understand how that equation balances.
(12:22):
Yeah, I don't see how it does.
It's not, I just don't see how you do get a balance ever off of it.
It seems as though...
I don't know, I...
It doesn't...
Dan, doesn't, Dan.
I don't know.
to like, you know, I just keep playing with the idea because I'm trying to find the paththrough.
But it just does not.
(12:43):
So, I mean, anyway, this I left a thing in our notes that maybe now is the time to move toit.
And all I all I put.
moment.
All I put in was asymptotic society and moving asymptotically is like towards infinity,right?
Like it's moving towards a destination that you never actually reach.
(13:06):
And my thought here, oh my armchair quarterbacking thought here is we are asymptotic as aspecies and that every time things get good, we have to go mess it up.
And, um, and this feels like one of those times.
Not that everything was perfect, but perfect is not reachable.
(13:27):
You will never get there, but things were cooking along pretty good.
then, um, you know, that meme where like the kids riding the bike and then, and then it'sjust like him holding a stick.
And then this next frame is him putting the stick in the spokes.
And then the third is him like crashed on the ground.
That exemplifies like the past four months.
I think that is the meme of 2025, honestly.
(13:51):
That's what it feels like in many ways between what the policies that have gone in, howthey've implemented what the, I think the absolute.
impact to our credibility with the world has taken the hit that that's taken.
(14:16):
uh People aren't going to be able to reliably plan to build a facility here in the UnitedStates at the moment because I don't know what's going to come in six months.
Is he is this all backed off completely at this point?
(14:36):
It's been so up and down that
I don't think it's going to have any meaningful uh impacts at a very large scale.
think there are certain spaces that will benefit where there's already existing capacitythat might be underutilized.
There will be some capacity that was being brought online maybe being trying to expediteit.
(14:58):
um But as far as new facility builds and new capacity coming online, I don't...
Okay.
Let's grant the executive too many powers.
And he gets this wish.
The Federal Reserve is no longer independent, or at least is a puppet state for awhile.
(15:20):
And they take rates from whatever they are, the federal, Fed funds rate for whatever totwo.
Mm-hmm.
Previously, the way the economy was sort of like working and incentivized, most money justwent into risk assets.
And to things that like, maybe mathematically just didn't make sense or would have nevermade sense if money weren't free.
(15:42):
But we went through a period where money was free.
Mm-hmm.
if tariffs were to remain.
40 or above.
Does that change and these rates, the internal rates come down?
Does that incentivize the kind of investment?
that they say is needed.
Yeah, I think it would be largely good for the country too, but like actual building,actual infrastructure, private infrastructure, rather than just more stock market, more
(16:07):
Bitcoin, more, you know what mean?
Would it just flow to risk assets again, or would it be a different kind of risk assets?
Talking again about like, well, a $1 million revenue business that's maybe taking home 200grand.
If your, if your margins are good, is not going to be able to afford to erect, you know,buy the land, erect the factory, fill it with machines, fill it with labor.
(16:31):
Like that's not in the cards for a business that size.
Right.
So you, you have to either pool and share or, um, or take on like a massive SBA loan orsomething in order to like make that happen.
Right.
And I hope that you can grow the business anyway.
Um, like would those kinds of risks be taken?
I wonder.
That, yeah, so your theory being that if, because,
(16:58):
much uncertainty.
you were to turn the uncertainty down just a little bit and say like it's 40 % across theboard, doesn't matter where you're getting your stuff.
Or maybe let's say it's like a little bit more targeted, makes more sense, right?
Like so that we remove some of the uh non-linearity of the tariffs because reasons.
ah But we basically made money free again.
(17:18):
ah
then does where does that where does that basically where does that easy easy money thatyou can get from very low interest rate loans and or uh other stimulus that might be
coming with that like depending upon
your labor in manufacturing is also super cheap because you've chose China or India orwhatever, but now all of a sudden that is artificially inflated.
(17:47):
If you, I mean, ultimately, if you had something that people felt like that was a stablelong-term outcome and that's what to expect, then I think yes, that in that situation,
yeah, exactly.
If you were able to set up a like situation where that was a stable expectation, then yes,absolutely.
(18:08):
think on some level, certain types of businesses would try to.
certain people would start looking at uh building more locally, I think.
However,
You said something interesting about risk assets.
why, like in previous times, a lot of money is piled into risk assets during that.
(18:28):
why would they not pile into risk assets in that state and instead into a lower yieldingcapital investment in a, because the margins you're gonna get off of most manufacturing
facilities are gonna be much lower than.
you know uh...
must much more gross margin than uh...
you know a lot of businesses you can invest in and that's the five hundred in manysituations
(18:51):
I don't know.
I guess I'm looking at it from the standpoint of like, going back to your, your statementabout, you know, needing stability, kind of like knowing that this is the plan going
forward for a longer period of time.
think you'd have to have that because if I don't know how long this free money regime isgoing to last, then my risk, my risk asset of choice is going to be liquid.
(19:17):
Uh, factory is not liquid.
Real estate is not particularly liquid.
um But if I knew that this was going to be the future in the United States economy for thenext 20, 25 years, then I could go risk on for the next 10 and then bank that ladder,
(19:40):
ladder 10, ladder 15, um Big cash outlay to go build the thing.
And then yeah, your margins aren't great, you have basically no taxes now because you'regoing to be able to shelter those inside of all kinds of depreciation and whatever.
um
I don't know, does that make you take home and then you've got this real asset in theUnited States?
(20:02):
Yeah, no, I think that makes sense.
And for the uh for certain size businesses that will certainly make sense.
Like you said, I wonder what size it starts to make sense because it doesn't work for theperson doing a million dollars in revenue every year at 10 million.
I mean, I think you'd have to be talking about businesses that are like probably in theclose to triple digits, like at least 100 million revenue.
(20:28):
uh...
before you start to say that probably makes yeah
Yeah, also you have to find a place to do it where people know how to build the equipmentor the tooling.
so it would be, it will be certainly possible and probably you'll see expansion of umcertain manufacturing bases that are already kind of present, right?
(20:57):
And some of those.
mid-size existing companies already that already have the footprint expanding more so thannew businesses coming up from from whole cloth.
But.
agreed.
I also think you do have like I think of like a service center model, right?
Like kind of how my supplements business works, right?
(21:18):
Like almost no supplement companies make their own supplements.
Oh, like not very many at all because it's so expensive compliance costs are insane andyou know, so we go to other people who specialize just in Manufacturing that's the only
thing they do and they do it for
hundreds if not thousands of brands and they've got all the compliance, they've got thelabs, they've got the testing, the scientists and so on and so forth.
(21:40):
you know, it's fine.
Like, you know, people will be like, well, I really want a neuroscientist to own thesupplement company that I buy from.
It's like, you have no idea what the back, like even some small brands, as long as they'regoing through some rigorous third party testing, you'd be surprised at how highly executed
things are.
The marketing is a different thing.
I am not surprised actually, because I think there's enough regulation in that space tohave created that need for those things to develop and over time it makes sense that that
(22:11):
ecosystem has been something that developed.
And it's a litigious society, you tend to steer toward clear paths.
Yeah.
Steer towards, steer towards low de-risking what you're doing by going throughwell-regulated, well-approved, well-inspected above board companies that can prove it.
(22:33):
um Yeah.
You, and honestly, you could, you could have a situation where somebody maybe, you know,small, smaller sized or mid-sized shops building up that service.
um
You know, kind of parts by type that you used to see if you go around Detroit, you'll seea lot of you used to at least a lot of like stamping houses where it's not that anyone
(23:00):
they're making, you know, any one product for, for themselves.
They're making, they're just doing, you know, take turning sheet metal stamp to me intodifferent shapes and
and Ford and...
Yeah, and a bunch of, you know, it's like, I'm making all the stampings for all thesecompanies.
So there, might see things of that where it's a, you know, we make this, we are good atthis one task and we are a shop that does that.
(23:24):
send us all your work.
ah
that.
the, I mean, of course I could, like the whole, um, dang it, the term just left me like acomparative advantage, right?
Like that's one of the beauties of globalization is that every country, location, whateveryou want to call it can like specialize into something that they've, they aim to get good
(23:45):
at or already good at, just geographically advantageous things are there for them.
Versus like the United States trying to do things that we're not good at and aren't set upfor and labor costs are too high or, know, it's like you're trying to force a solution
onto something that like doesn't, you know, math.
(24:06):
Yeah, yeah, that very, very much we're trying to force a solution without understandingthe fully available inputs, I feel.
And it's like, yeah, well that'll develop.
like, will it?
What tells you that that will be able to develop there in a fruitful way?
The other thing that I think about a lot is how, you know, this is like a contested sortof space, but, uh, after the GFC, they did, you know, crazy stimulus sort of in the
(24:37):
system, but they didn't get really any stimulus down to the people.
And then with COVID, it was completely different.
One, the body politic had changed, but, uh, they got more stimulus to the people.
And also the outcome of COVID was not at all related to how.
the GFC went, but you couldn't see that.
(24:57):
you can't see the future.
So they did what they could in order to like not let things implode.
But with the GFC, like, you know, you look at almost any graph out of Fred and it's likethat recovery was like a decade.
you know, whether you're looking at housing starts or you know, just like so manydifferent numbers it was like a decade long recovery and
Yeah, it was weird that it was weird that we went from this.
(25:21):
I feel like the recovery, it was never over.
And then all of sudden it was really good.
was just like, we went from being like, we're still stuck in this.
Hey, wait.
Yeah, then I think.
went to interest rates really started to come down.
could refine my home six times in five years.
That's when I think I really started to feel like, we're through that finally.
(25:42):
That was, yeah, 2015, 16, I guess.
Somewhere in there.
Yeah.
ah Yeah, so anyway, now I think about this whole transition that is trying like basicallybeing it's like a cram down, right?
And.
since it's not particularly strategic or tactical or specific, ah I kind of look at thenext, the possibility is, is if there's no sort of about face around any of this, then the
(26:14):
next decade plus is hard.
And I don't mean like, woe is me sort of things.
It gets darker.
um Yeah, like 2009.
2010, these were not good years from big swaths of the country.
(26:34):
And I think it's going to be similar here.
I remember that being a particularly stressful period.
mean, company I was working for at the time had declared bankruptcy and living through myfirst rounds of layoffs as a professional person.
Uh, it was a, it was a gross feeling and looking to, you know, find new work was achallenge.
(26:57):
Uh, I knew a lot of people that I were graduating with that were having a, I do, I dowonder, um,
You know, what are today's graduates seeing?
How are they feeling?
What are they saying right now about what the job market looks like?
I wonder if this year's graduates that are gonna be coming out here in just a couple ofweeks, are they having a harder time than last year's?
(27:22):
Because of some of this.
Now what?
YouTuber.
All right.
I wouldn't consider it a job, I guess I guess people just want to be able to be paid to beon YouTube.
Hey, I mean, what are we doing here, Dan?
I guess like we're doing this for not getting paid.
(27:45):
Yeah, I've not considered this to be part of a job.
It was more of a yeah, this is this is fun.
to me, that's what's interesting.
It's like, uh, being a, making it as a YouTuber, I think has a lot less to do with wantingto be a YouTuber and having a lot more to do with gaining some life experience and having
a perspective and then sharing that.
(28:07):
and so coming straight out of college to be a YouTuber, I mean, while there are some, orpeople who didn't even go to college break through.
and succeedingly rare.
It's kind of like saying, I'm going to drop out of uh Harvard because I'm the next MarkZuckerberg.
It's like, well, there's like a 0.0001 chance.
Yeah, no, he had a going concern.
use somebody else's platform and you have to, you'd have to go build some, build a newplatform.
(28:30):
um And then you can be Zuck.
ah Although he might be forced to spin off Instagram or WhatsApp.
So maybe you can buy one of those from him if you have a few hundred billion layingaround.
100 billion.
Exactly.
Well, as soon as that free money starts rolling around again, count me in.
(28:53):
it's a, yeah, and all that's an interesting, coming back to our kind of original, youknow, asymptotic society idea and that we have a way of just never getting to where we
think we're gonna go.
Sorry.
Excuse me, I'm sorry Dan.
(29:15):
You there?
Yeah.
Well, I was to draw this to Louis Becker and back to, know, how we kind of got here witha, you know, your idea of an asymptotic society.
Like when I think of an asymptote, it's because things are going, you know, you'reskyrocketing going so good, but like, you're going to infinity, right?
You can't ever get there because it's, it's, it's just so far away as well.
um
(29:38):
It almost feels like, what was I gonna say?
It's almost like, it's like a higher order function where instead of being like a square,it's like a cube or a.
power of five function, where so when you're zoomed in on a portion of the graph, it lookslike it's an asymptote.
(30:04):
But then what's actually going on is it's a higher order function with, you know, to likethird or fifth power.
So then you get like the, it goes from being an asymptote to, oh, shit just happened,things slope over and it goes down for a while.
And then it comes back up and then comes back down and you can, the trend line is up anddown, up and down and looking out over time.
like in the grand scheme of like billions, it's ultimately maybe asymptotic or going up.
(30:30):
But on any more smaller time scale, you actually, I don't know, how these.
because like, know, is today better than in 1650?
Certainly.
Right?
there have been, there are like these local, local maximas and then, yeah.
now we're just in that point where we have to go through a little decline.
(30:55):
Maybe, I mean, we...
No, yeah.
We, I don't, yeah, I was gonna say it's not set in stone yet.
Like, you know, you listen to us today and you could probably paint us both as with a dimview of the immediate future.
And I would agree that that is my view right now, but like I'm willing to change thatperspective tomorrow should, should one person change their mind.
Yeah, things happen.
(31:16):
We don't know why they happen, but things can happen.
And yeah, none of this has to be.
uh interview slash speech on stage Ken Griffin gave recently?
Yeah, okay.
So for people unfamiliar, Ken Griffin is like perhaps the richest and most successfulhedge fund manager in history.
One of them, uh maybe like just below Rentech.
(31:38):
And uh so he's founded and uh runs Citadel, which is now a litany of financial servicesbusinesses.
And he was a huge, like mega Republican donor this past cycle.
And he just gave a speech of like, well, we are, you know, these tariff moves have ruinedAmerica's brand.
(31:59):
He thinks, you know, we've sort of like killed 20 % of our worth, which is a staggeringsum, if you really think about that math and that we need a reverse course like pronto.
uh
post-haste, how many other, like, you know, it's just basically like right now, like thiswas, you should just call it a shot, this was completely dumb and, I'm putting words in
(32:26):
his mouth now, but like, he seemed pretty sure of himself.
And I mean that as a compliment.
yeah.
I was, I was happy to see him saying that, uh, because knowing that he had been, you know,a staunch supporter, uh, at one point around maybe not staunch, but a supporter.
Yeah.
Uh, the, the big boys coming out and saying, Hey, you got to put brakes on this policybecause you are, you are.
(32:50):
You are effing up the system.
Yeah.
You are, are, you're destroying value.
You're, you're not doing this in a way that is going to work.
not going to work.
No.
Like again, with creative destruction, it's like, I might not want it or choose it becauseit does equal pain, but you get somewhere with it.
And, uh, maybe I'm just not indoctrinated though, cause like I talked to other people andthey're clearly like, no, this is, I don't think so.
(33:16):
Yeah, don't, maybe I'm wrong.
It's very possible.
It just, from what I see in my experience and I guess my perspective, my lens, the way Iprocess it, it feels entirely, almost entirely destructive.
and study of history.
Like I think sometimes we, you know, ah you and I probably both are a little bit more likeuh willing to
(33:42):
give space to the other idea because we are willing to change our minds and hear otherperspectives.
I think most of the time, I can probably get rigid every so often, but um with that, yeah,with that, uh think it's hard.
We don't always stand our ground on the fact that like we're not just,
(34:06):
total armchair quarterbacks that know nothing and just have like a perspective fromwatching TV news all day.
Exactly.
I mean, well, that's also that's a stereotype of that's like 3 % of people or 2 % ofpeople, right?
There's not there's actually not that many people that are out there that fit that thatthat armchair quarterback.
(34:28):
well, let's let another idea to play with then there's something I've been struggling within my mind because I'm trying to like, one be open minded and kind and um give space to
these things that like I think I fundamentally disagree with.
uh
If I were to say something about the technicalities of horizontal drilling in the oilspace to someone who knows nothing about it, they might very well say like, I just don't
(34:58):
know anything about that.
So I don't know that I have an opinion.
But if I asked them about uh tariffs, then they have an opinion, even though they've readzero history on it and
have forgotten anything that they've learned from maybe high school was the last time theyhad any touch of policies like this and how much were any of us really paying attention to
(35:21):
like the visualization, visualization in our heads of what an economy is.
It's an extremely chaotic, complex system.
Mm-hmm.
But this.
I struggle with why we can so profoundly have opinions around certain places.
You said staying, you know, the lane thing.
(35:42):
think it's completely sad that one has to stay in their lane, but they'll happily do so incertain areas and then happily just like go anywhere and others, even though they, you
know.
It's about what what feels important to them or what part of what if it's if it's beentaken up as part of their teams or Like a subgroups a subgroups religion and identity then
(36:09):
they're gonna have an opinion about like you made a comment there about well I don't Idon't know much about the technique as a horizontal drilling So I would maybe say I don't
have an opinion but there are some people in some subgroups that same thing But would verymuch say I have an opinion and let me tell you
that fuck you get out of this house.
I don't want to hang out with you.
It's like, Oh, okay.
Well, my bad.
Uh, I'll just scoot along.
(36:29):
Um, so there are definitely, it goes, it happens like, you know, no, um, no, I mean,people aren't aren't that, but like I've gotten, yeah.
Yeah.
it's
it's universal, but it's what's important to some subgroup.
like, if you don't have an opinion about it, actually you're probably more likely to makean informed judgment ultimately because you haven't been prefed a bunch of things that may
(36:59):
or may not be true.
It's not what you don't know, it's what you know that just ain't so, as uh Mark Twainsaid,
Yeah, one of the guys I used to work for uh started off every letter with that quote.
that's it's good one i i i brought it up at work a couple of times this week actually andsome moments of uncertainty
(37:19):
right here with you, like several times, like just trying to like take a thing that Ithink is absolutely dumb and say like, if we twist this?
What if we look through this other lens?
Can it work this way?
Okay.
I'm trying to be open and play with these things because like, you know, or, you know,it's not even that I'm trying to find a place of agreement.
I'm trying to find a place of prosperity.
(37:41):
Like I'm trying to find a way through.
uh I'm willing to travel with a group that like, I don't know, identify with.
if we can all get to a good place.
I uh want fellow nomads, right, that are willing to bounce around from, not like, what isthat, guess.
(38:01):
mental nomads that are willing to move around from idea space to idea space and try tolook at things from different points of view or without necessarily being everything,
desert sands are always changing the shape of the landscape around you.
Well, it's like they can go to the Jehovah's witness lecture, but not become a Jehovah'switness.
(38:25):
And then they can go to the, the Buddhist monastery, but not necessarily become Buddhist.
And then they do, and so on and so on and so on.
And then they, and then they reach alignment, right?
because, because you've taken the best of what suits you from so many differentdisciplines in the world.
And I'm just picking on some examples, I guess.
(38:47):
It's like a, uh, a fund of funds in a way.
no, uh, no, but then I think this is maybe a good, a good, a good point actually, as we'rediscussing this to maybe talk a little bit about, um, one thing we're trying to do around
here for a little, little pod housekeeping, uh, for, for everybody.
Um, so we've been getting some feedback from some listeners and thinking about how to,know, what, what is our purpose here, Dan?
(39:13):
Why, why, why do we do this show?
between Dan and I, we have, you know, two different, very different backgrounds.
We've decided like, want, really want to steer the show through, through the lenses ofthose backgrounds in our current situ, our current places in life.
myself being more, working in a large scale corporation where we have a lot ofbureaucratic policy, you know, we are, I am not, not eating what I kill.
(39:37):
Unlike Dan, who is coming at it from a much, you know, the small business side and having,you know, worked in finance, but now out there doing his own thing.
And, you know, what we hope to bring about from that is, Dan, I'm not sure.
What, why are we doing this?
It's through the, I think it's just through the lens of entrepreneurship, both like thepractice of and the aspiration for.
(40:01):
there were, mean, I think back through my history and it's like, and I remember in highschool days trying to figure out like, how can I do a thing that like, I was mowing lawns
and I hated it.
So like, can others, is there something else that I can do that I actually do like, andI'm good at that isn't a job.
Um, but then, you know,
necessity and also young people should go get experience.
(40:24):
So I got a job and it was awesome.
And then I went back to trying to figure out a way to do it my way and on my own.
So I think it's that partly as that journey and informed by where I am today and all thedifferent struggles and the things that the litany of reasons you may not choose this
(40:45):
path.
and
And then from, know, I think when we were talking about this, you were saying like, youknow, I tried and it didn't quite go the way I had hoped or planned.
you know, there might be another, you know, there's probably going to be another try inthe future.
Um, don't quite, you don't quite know where, what that looks like today, but it's thisaspiration, this willingness to try, um, that I think is important.
(41:13):
This journey.
this aspiration towards entrepreneurship.
I think that is very much why we started having even these discussions together was thatwe were both, know, you were on the path and I was trying to get on the path.
And I think that there's been a lot of things I've learned, uh, from my, my experience,you know, getting on and stepping back off, uh, or never really offloading, guess, or off,
(41:35):
off ramping fully.
I just, feel as though it was a, it was a huge growth for me personally.
And I think that the things that you've shared with me as I was working on that path, Danwere valuable.
And I think that's why I want to be here, sharing these ideas, having these ideas, thesediscussions, even sharing them with, with others.
because just the, process of talking through how you, how you approach running your ownsmall business.
(41:58):
with somebody is hugely beneficial for, for when you're in that head space of, of, ofuncertainty and not knowing what's the next thing that's coming.
It, you grow so much through, through the act of, just talking it out in a way.
I, uh, I do a lot of processing by talking it out.
(42:19):
Um, and I think you've dear listener have heard it happen on air a few times.
It was like, I get halfway through an idea and I'm like, I don't that's, and I actuallydon't like this idea now that I'm hearing it out loud.
Um, and then it happens.
And so, yeah, it is, it's therapeutic and also just terribly valuable to be able to talkthings out.
Um, and going back to, you know, trying to, trying to be trying to make something out ofnothing.
(42:45):
Uh, whether you go and acquire a business and then run it or start something from nothing,like it can't, it is, it's not, it can't be, it is an incredibly lonely.
and there are ways to, you know, help with that, but one of them is conversations righthere like this.
And, I think one of the beauties of this medium podcasting and YouTube, what, you know,all the things is a lot more of this is now out in the open.
(43:14):
Whereas it used to be behind closed doors exclusively.
so getting access to it was really hard.
So the other thing that's always on my mind with this is like, can you, can you get toyounger people who aspire?
Doesn't even have to be younger.
Can you get to other people that aspire to these things?
And then it triggers like a rabbit hole, whether they stick with us or move on or likefind some other path.
(43:35):
doesn't really matter, but like, can we trigger more creativity, spontaneity and,
agency within our populace.
It sounds big, but why not have a big thing?
No, and to find that community of people that are interested in these ideas and exploring,these things for themselves.
(43:56):
I look forward to the day when we get some good pushback on some things we've said whereit's that is, Hey, you said this, but did you think about it this way?
You know, that's the day that I'm looking forward to most is seeing that comment on avideo somewhere.
um
And I'm like, huh, no, I didn't.
That's a great idea.
Let me look into that.
(44:16):
Um, because that's when I grow the most is when I'm challenged and, don't take itdefensively and just take it openly and, try to process it and come out with a, From that
viewpoint, how do I feel if I, I, if I still feel the same way after, after thinking aboutit, then, okay, no, I'm, I don't, I don't care to get that, that argument, but.
(44:41):
But maybe I do, you know, I've, I've changed my mind several times in the last week onthings like that.
So.
Yeah, totally, totally.
Or you can be more confident in the ideas that you hold because someone has gone andchallenged them and you, it's not because you got defensive or dug in, it's because the
idea has been even more illuminated than it was.
(45:02):
Yeah.
yes, you know it stands up to that test, right?
It's like a year to year.
I have considered a whole nother angle.
Thank you.
hypothesis, I've tested at least one null theory against it and just keep bringing thetheories that you might think disprove it and you end up with much stronger ideas
ultimately and shaped much differently than you would think.
(45:24):
I'll say that.
So that's the lens that we're, we're trying to be mindful of when we come and think ofdifferent topics, but I would imagine it's still pretty, it's wide ranging.
think, um, you know, part of Sean and I's relationship is just general curiosity.
Uh, and so we like to play with ideas.
like to go and experiment and we like to challenge, um, in the interest of getting better,uh, how and what we're thinking about.
(45:51):
So.
Um, we'll still probably do the philosophical sidebars and the, uh, what about, know,asmotic society questions and all that kind of stuff, because we, enjoy them terribly, but
I think they're directly connected to, you know, our way of life and trying to understandit and always paying attention, not only to the on the ground tactical tactical stuff like
(46:13):
micro econ, um, but also keeping an ear toward the,
dismal science, if you will, of macroecon.
Right?
Science indeed.
Science feels generous.
Well, is it just that science and math can't get to complex chaotic systems?
(46:37):
Because once you move in a macro, it's like that's very much it.
well that and science and math can't get into behavioral psychology.
well, if we go quantum, then maybe we can figure it out because like, think a lot of macrois sort of like Schrodinger's cat.
It's like until you've gone and looked at it, is it dead or is it alive?
(46:58):
You don't know.
oh
there's because there's a lot of things that are just built on pure faith that oh
something can change, yeah, something can change and people just all of a sudden startbehaving a different way for no necessarily real good reason, just that they all are
pretty sure it's the right thing to do and that changes the outcome, right?
(47:21):
It was like the vibe shift at the start of this year.
Like that's why I got excited.
It felt good.
And it's like, if we could have kept that ramp going, cool.
But I think the ramp is in the other direction now.
uh
well, hey, it seems to have stabilized lately.
So this week was fairly stable.
(47:43):
But I think we are in a die of the storm, so to speak, we're
I agree.
That's exactly how after some conversations I had with people, I felt like I have thestorm.
They have absolutely no idea they're in the middle of hurricane, but it's coming.
Cause like all the orders to China that should be being put in for Christmas usuallyhappen right now.
(48:06):
And there's like none.
So expect empty Christmas trees or you know, $1,600 Nintendo Switches.
And that's not because of tariffs, that'll be because of demand and supply imbalances.
I-
Probably an exaggeration, but directionally accurate.
I have to imagine that there are orders that are perhaps being made with the anticipationof future deals.
(48:33):
That's that will probably prevent some fall through on some of this, but a lot of it.
Yeah.
There, there might not be certain things as easily available as usual, as usual later onthis year, because the orders have industrial orders of, yeah, absolutely slowed down.
Uh, you know,
fallen off 60 % or something of that nature.
(48:53):
ah I think the number I saw from ISM.
Yeah, these are.
had a whole piece when from, maybe this is, I can't remember.
I meant to ask you, like you had recommended last time we met, like one of Cittrini'spieces and I can't remember which one it was.
it was kind of an older one I ended up, I was pulling back up, was like from 2020, I'mlike, I thought this was recent, but he had just reposted it recently, said, this is
(49:18):
current again.
So that's what it was.
Yeah.
Love it when history repeats.
maybe, no, there was a newer, there was not yet recent one, or maybe I got, no, no, no.
This is one kind of recapping his, uh, one week in the United States, visiting, visitingfactories and business owners one week in China, visiting factories and business business
owners.
(49:39):
And, um, it was a very good, it's good.
Illuminating, you know, being able to go to China and see like.
factory is just going like, I don't know, they're on a whole lot of orders, which kind ofconfirms the whole like, we're going to screw China side of it.
But at the same time, it's like, do you know what kind of pain is going to be on thisside?
Like, it's just delayed, you think you just won, but like the American consumer is goingto be having a fit and not too distant future.
(50:06):
And the American consumer is the voter.
So
Mm-hmm.
Murky, murky, hard to see the future.
Well, I don't, does he care about the voter anymore?
Like, why does he care about the voter?
What they think there's, there's, there's no need to have an opinion on it for, from hisstandpoint.
I think in, in many ways, I think he, it probably bugs him if he's not well liked, but,uh, but other than it bugging him, there's not functionally anything who gives a shit.
(50:39):
no, bad poll numbers.
Yeah.
I don't know.
There's some part of me that's like the ego is so strong.
I have a hard time believing that he's going to be able to brush it off for length.
For now, sure.
But length, not, you know, I've been saying this to like anybody who has open ears.
I'm like, you're dealing with a society with 4,000 years of history of a willingness tokill and maim tens of millions of its own people in service of a goal.
(51:05):
And you think we are going to be able to, you know, endure more pain than them.
I think you should re-examine that lens, right?
And so, and then trying to examine that lens through can Donald Trump, just the oneperson, endure the kind of necessary pain?
I'm like, I don't think so.
He wants to be loved and admired.
And I don't think this is a path to doing that.
(51:26):
Like maybe on a 20 year time scale, it is a path to that, but he's not gonna be alive in20 years.
And supposedly there'll be elections in less time, so.
In theory, I think there's supposed to be one in about three years and nine months or so.
uh I actually be three years and six months now.
(51:48):
Yeah.
No, no, I'm not really thinking about it yet.
Yeah, me neither.
Just trying to live for today.
Yeah, it's, we got more of this coming through.
It's just chaos, right?
We're going to be dealing with chaos for a bit.
and listen to several of our episodes, we talked about the chaos monkeys and throwinggrenades in the room and how like some of this could be welcome and healthy.
(52:13):
And, uh, but there's also like the whole shrapnel that I, you know, I blew up that roomand didn't mean to and stuff like that.
So, you know, that's why I keep coming back to these, you know, words like murky and.
You know, it's not all bad.
Uh, but there are localities of thought that.
(52:33):
I fall into.
Yeah, I find myself getting into some worst case spirals more, more lately.
And although I, I guess maybe because it things quieted down, I, I, I felt, I felt alittle less, a little less, I don't know, a little more hopeful about it this week for
some reason.
But I think because it's like, okay, they're, they're backing off.
(52:56):
At least they're making moves in a direction that seems better.
So it's, it's not stagnant, right?
Uh, didn't every.
Things are, things are still changing and it's chaotic.
So at least we, I, it's good that we know, we know that we don't know is what I'll say.
Because if we knew it was what it is right now, that would be very bad.
(53:17):
But I think it's, it's, it's good that we know that we don't know.
Like, yeah, yeah.
Like this is like, okay, we're, this is still ongoing.
This is going to be ongoing for a while.
And I think we're going to be in a, a state of, you know, I expect these, whatever's leftof the 90 days to be very.
chaotic.
uh And you know, lots of lots of lots of unpredictable news that will have impacts that wewon't know really fully how they're going to shake out for another six months.
(53:44):
And I think, you know, from the entrepreneurial aspect, this stuff impacts you a lot moredirectly than like this is in your day to day, this is impacting your day to day a lot
more directly than perhaps a lot of people.
affects whether I can feed my kids or not.
Yeah, if you're in education, you know, this is talked about, I don't think it'snecessarily impacting their day to day outside of things that would be available to
(54:10):
purchase or their.
with just regular jobs think it's, you know, whatever.
That's the picture I'm getting as I talk to people.
It's just like, and that's why I go back to the eye of the storm, right?
Like I think if things stay where they are or get worse, ah I'm thankful that I'll declarebankruptcy and completely start my life from zero over again.
And I'll have like a one year headstart of most W2 employees who are on their way togetting laid off.
(54:34):
That's like my worst case lens of like, at least can be sprinting and will have been for awhile because I get to be ahead.
was like, this sounds terrible, but he says it was such an upbeat tone.
I'm impressed, yeah.
moving rather than not moving.
The exact, yeah.
So I think, you know, this is one situation where I think being an entrepreneur puts you alittle bit on the, you know, the cutting edge or the, the Sabres edge of what's happening.
(55:04):
And, for me, you know, working in, in basic manufacturing here in the States, it's easy tosee that it's going to impact us.
And I still, I know that we're looking at, you know, new work at our facility that, know,should be.
You know, good for our local facility in theory, but at the same time, also feel extremelyuncertain about what that volume of work is going to be.
(55:29):
Okay.
And also, also, yeah.
Yeah.
So I will say strategically we are, we are, it seems from a high level corporate strategicstandpoint saying we're probably going to spend some money here to do some retooling.
Yeah.
So it's.
I feel like there's a whole, at least in my mind, there's a whole lot of freeze ratherthan action, which freeze hurts everything.
(55:55):
Now, yeah, now the, the scope, the, the, level of that spending might be very subdued, butthere will be some allowance or at least we're working on, but you know, let's be honest,
it's April, uh, 2025 capital, but our 2026 capital budgets are due in October.
Like we're starting to think about what needs to go into those now.
So this is a lot of the things we're doing now won't really even roll out and fully beimplemented till in 2026, 2027, in some cases, because it's going to take a while.
(56:24):
Ken Griffin's comment about 20 % is so interesting because like if you just look at todayand I think, you know, there'd be probably a lot of people that would hear it sound a clip
like that and be like, what's that guy know 20 % like I just bought a new grill things aregood, baby.
And when in fact, it's about the empty Christmas tree coming.
(56:45):
That's months away.
It's about corporate planning about 2026, which is happening now.
And the completely pulled back spending
and investment cycle that takes, you know, another year or two to turn around and spinback up if things were to just magically be quote unquote better today.
Right.
It's like you buckle up for one to two years of depressed economic activity because ofwhat's happening today.
(57:11):
Even though you might feel like today, nothing has changed.
We're Ear quotes.
Because, because there's headlines and people are, some people, the chaos looks, lookslike good and probably like winning.
Cause it's like, we're, we're, I have a particular viewpoint on China.
And I think that, you know, we should be moving away from China in their head.
(57:35):
And this, these are steps to do that.
So this feels like, these, we're taking the actions to do that.
Um,
Another comment I heard was Biden didn't do anything, which made me think, one, youweren't paying attention and two, uh, because it didn't seem to be a comment about
disagreement.
It was more just like, well, nothing was getting done.
So why have that person in the job?
(57:55):
Which I can understand to some degree.
but so here we have this, uh, we have the kid riding the bicycle and putting the stick inthe spoke.
Um, so that's better.
Yeah, he did something.
difficulty with.
was like, we were doing bad things.
So doing bad things is better than, but then again, I'm putting all of my opinions righton top of that.
(58:16):
Yeah, there's plenty that can be sussed out and separated, think.
Yeah.
To be more nuanced, like if I'm asking for better, more tactical, nuanced economic policy,I can do the same for my delivery of my opinions and ideas.
Exactly.
Should we leave it there?
we should leave it there.
(58:39):
Let's leave it on.
and we're going to do our best to not talk tariffs and politics next episode.
I promise it'll be on my mind though.
I'm not promising shit.
Yeah, it's it's who knows we'll see
economic roundup to have to talk about because of all the changes.
It's exciting times.
It's exciting times.
(59:00):
All right.
what people want it amusing ourselves to death.
Right now we have uh something to pay attention to.
ah We have been split on the, the, you know, cheering squad.
We're now at a football stadium with uh one side wearing blue, one side wearing red.
And yeah, and then we've got a team on field that's actually doing stuff.
(59:25):
Get your tailgate set up in the parking lot.
Get your freedom fries or your french fries and let's go.
ah Well thanks for tuning in this week everybody.
We appreciate it as always.
We'll catch you next time on another episode of Unqualified Advice.
That's, think, I want fellow nomads, right, that are willing to bounce around from, notlike, what is that, guess.
mental nomads that are willing to move around from idea space to idea space and try tolook at things from different points of view or
Well, it's like they can go to the Jehovah's witness lecture, but not become a Jehovah'switness.
(00:23):
And then they can go to the, the Buddhist monastery, but not necessarily become Buddhist.
And then they do, and so on and so on and so on.
And then they, and then they reach alignment, right?
because, because you've taken the best of what suits you from so many differentdisciplines in the world.
Welcome to Unqualified Advice, the show where we try to make sense of business, investing,and life with just enough experience to get ourselves in trouble.
(00:48):
I'm Sean and he's Dan.
We both started in different careers, Dan in IT, climbing the ranks to Chief TechnologyOfficer in New York, and me in manufacturing, managing production quality across three
countries.
At some point, we both decided we didn't know enough.
So we went back to school for our MBAs.
Me at Columbia Business School and Sean at the University of Houston, downtown.
(01:10):
And after all that, we figured the best way to share what we've learned and what we'restill figuring out is to start a podcast.
So if you like deep dives into decision-making, business strategy, and the occasionalhalf-baked investing theory,
Or just enjoy listening to two guys challenge each other's ideas and occasionally admitwhen we're wrong?
You're in the right place.
(01:31):
Welcome to Unqualified Advice.
Morning,
Good morning, Dan.
I am sitting over here enjoying, bright eyed bush tails enjoying my thermos of coffee.
So if you hear me curse in the background, it's because I accidentally burnt myself.
I thought you were going to say, because I ran out.
How are you doing this morning, Dan?
(01:51):
You know, I'm trying to hold on.
um You know, we've been experimenting with pricing um and also like there are super opaquethings in the marketplace of like, is the consumer already feeling weakness or are they
protecting their pocketbook early?
Anyway, know, volume, traffic, all the things that are important to keeping the businessalive are down.
(02:16):
uh you know, yeah.
It doesn't feel good, uh, combined with the complete and absolute uncertainty about likewhat is going on and what the plan is.
So, uh, as much as I would like to tell you that we will not touch politics or, uh, eventhink about it.
And anyway, uh, it is basically 90 % of my life now, I think.
(02:38):
And so I ended up talking about it last night.
Howard Lotnick was in one of my dreams.
I don't remember the dream.
I'm not very good at remembering dreams, but I know he was there.
And that to me is completely.
terrible and fucked up.
I don't want them there.
Maybe he was trying to incept you.
Yeah, yeah.
To the, to the non grownups in the room, trying to take, you know, it's like, I'm, I maybeI was aligning myself with Scott Besson or something like that.
(03:02):
And then Howard Ludnick comes in he's like, ah, Peter Rotardo and I over here.
I don't know, man.
I have to say I have to say I have to I have to say in it in my headspace that that isvery much a current like I'm not going to able to avoid it either.
(03:24):
uh
A lot of what we have done recently at work and what we have found out where we're goingto be doing for the next year or two has been directly impacted by the tariff and trade
policy and the uncertainty of what is going on.
We are definitely looking at, you know, changing our, changing what we were expecting tobe working on to different things at this point, because we have to make some quick pivots
(03:50):
and try to.
uh...
you know mitigate the impact of certain items that are going to cost more if we keep themsourced where they currently are versus trying to find new homes for them uh...
so it's
you talk about like you, uh, you're, know, like I have zero industrial capacity, right?
Like there's, there's no option for me.
It's like source from China, source from Vietnam source from somewhere.
(04:11):
Someone's got to make stuff for me because it's a tiny, tiny, tiny little microscopicbusiness.
And there's no way that, I mean, it's impossible.
You can't go build a seven and a half million dollar factory in order to make a milliondollars in revenue.
Like this is not how it works.
uh, but like you guys do have industrial capacity.
You have.
um, welders and trades people and stuff that you actually do and make here on the groundin the United States.
(04:37):
Can you talk a little bit about like what a 30 % tariff in China would do?
What a 65 % tariff China in China would do to your guys's, you know, production and sortof like how you're shaping up that next year of projects.
so let me put it, let me say this.
So we have a manufacturing capacity globally.
We have a center in China, a couple of centers in China that manufacture components orthat source components locally manufactured and put them in an assembly and then ship them
(05:05):
out.
a lot of those parts actually come to the United States.
And so, you know, those items are, you know, up potentially for a 200 % tariff on certain.
depending upon how, how the impact stack.
So at a 200 % level, we are very competitive locally, I will say.
(05:27):
However, I don't know what that does to the rest of, to the actual end use market.
So it would it be a, a more work from a shrinking pie situation.
so we are actively, in SLB looking at
our global sourcing practices and saying, should we make more things closer to the basinwhere they're being used?
(05:48):
We refer to different areas as basins because their geological basins.
And so we're looking at trying to say more manufacturing of different items in differentlocations and rationalizing what items are being manufactured in which countries globally.
(06:09):
I guess from, from maybe a listener standpoint, like it could be, maybe it's somewhatobvious that there's going to be a reshuffling, but what would you, if you were to place a
bet in terms of value capture, where's the value capture moving from and to is it doesthis rebalancing move more value capture to the United States in a meaningful way?
(06:33):
Or is it just a, it's a lot of productivity and wasted and like,
brain cycles to just do stuff.
I think it depends upon the products.
And one thing about our products is we are not incredibly high volume.
(06:55):
A large number of units made for us in a year of certain product lines might range from,let me think of, how about mid-tier products would be?
6,000 to 15,000 units in a year, know, like at the high end volumes on a lot of these.
There are certain things that it's in the tens of thousands that are very small componentsused frequently over in other components and other assemblies.
(07:22):
But for the most part, any finished assemblies we're making are on the orders of magnitudeof thousands.
In a given year, sometimes tens of thousands.
m
At those volumes, uh, our, shops and capacity in America for us, with our, you know,obviously there is a different labor rate.
(07:43):
There's different, there are different utility rates.
There are different compliance costs, the overall burden rate, uh, what, we have to payper hour here.
Um, and making these finished products with tariffs on still the raw inputs, right?
So we're not getting the inputs.
Tariff free so we still have a tariff on those we believe some of our domesticmanufacturing we start to see it being Making sense for us to do it here in the 30 40 50
(08:15):
percent range Depending upon the product so depending upon where the tariffs land which wedon't know It seems like it's going to be in that range where for a lot of these products
again, they're they're not super high-volume
uh...
we'll see what and we'll see what then the also the again the end market might declinebecause of the increased cost overall because that's just because we're competitive
(08:40):
doesn't mean that it's still a will be the cheapest on the market at that point we don'tknow that and or that at that price point that what the level of activity will be because
the cost of drill their cogs just went up so that they're not gonna wanna
has hurt.
Yeah.
hurt or if a barrel of oil hasn't gone up 30 % correspondingly, we don't know how that'sgonna work out through the system and how it's going to reach new equilibrium, but it's
(09:11):
definitely changing.
Yeah.
mean, a lot, feel like a lot of the perspective is like, well, if the economy is here andthen the tariff goes here equals this.
it's like, uh, well, the tariff went up and therefore you would should expect the economyto go down and then that leaves even less.
it's like, if you needed a dollar of revenue to pay all your bills, then, I'd say doubleit.
(09:32):
But if the economy weekends, doubling your revenue is going to be pretty hard.
Yeah, well said.
Then you have to take market share, right?
The only way to do that is by take, then we go back to payroll, yeah.
Payroll is the economy, and it's going to get decimated.
think, you know, yeah.
I'm having a hard time not coming back to that part of the equation.
(09:55):
And I would imagine that's because you have, do you actually have product on water rightnow?
So.
it might have gotten unloaded.
I don't know.
I'll find out tomorrow.
Okay, okay, so and you don't know and you don't know what you're what that means for youat this point might get a little tomorrow and you still don't know what it means
I can stab a pretty good educated guess on what's going to be.
(10:18):
But given how like not written down the rules seem to be.
Who knows?
Who knows?
See, that to me would just, I would not be sleeping all weekend because I would be sittingthere worried about, I going to get a bill for this or for this?
if it...
time, I think there's going to be a whole lot of not mine.
I don't think.
(10:38):
Um, but I think there's a whole bunch of product that's just going to go straight tolandfill.
There's going to be brand new stuff that got shipped in and it goes to landfill becausepeople don't have the business.
American businesses don't have the cash to pay the duty.
Yeah.
I mean, the amount of working capital increase that is required for this is just insane.
(11:03):
Oh, thank you.
I'll scoot up.
Is that better?
Okay, yeah, the amount of working capital.
amount of the increase in working capital is insane on all of this.
You have to have so much more cash flow to be able to make it work.
mean, even if you end up still selling the same margin, your cash flow is going to just beabsolutely decimated until everything reaches new equilibrium.
(11:28):
So if we do some level of austerity, like Doge, and we fire a bunch of people and there'sless money moving around the economy because of that, and you cancel so many contracts at
all the consulting firms that another 100,000 high earners are let go, if you visualizethis within the economy,
(11:58):
And yet with tariffs, you're basically saying to all American small businesses, likeyou've got to grow in order to just survive at the level that you've gotten uh accustomed
to.
I don't know if that's the right way to say it.
It'll probably because it'll still be depressed from what people have gotten accustomedto.
They've got to grow the business just to like not shut down.
ah I don't understand how that equation balances.
(12:22):
Yeah, I don't see how it does.
It's not, I just don't see how you do get a balance ever off of it.
It seems as though...
I don't know, I...
It doesn't...
Dan, doesn't, Dan.
I don't know.
to like, you know, I just keep playing with the idea because I'm trying to find the paththrough.
But it just does not.
(12:43):
So, I mean, anyway, this I left a thing in our notes that maybe now is the time to move toit.
And all I all I put.
moment.
All I put in was asymptotic society and moving asymptotically is like towards infinity,right?
Like it's moving towards a destination that you never actually reach.
(13:06):
And my thought here, oh my armchair quarterbacking thought here is we are asymptotic as aspecies and that every time things get good, we have to go mess it up.
And, um, and this feels like one of those times.
Not that everything was perfect, but perfect is not reachable.
(13:27):
You will never get there, but things were cooking along pretty good.
then, um, you know, that meme where like the kids riding the bike and then, and then it'sjust like him holding a stick.
And then this next frame is him putting the stick in the spokes.
And then the third is him like crashed on the ground.
That exemplifies like the past four months.
I think that is the meme of 2025, honestly.
(13:51):
That's what it feels like in many ways between what the policies that have gone in, howthey've implemented what the, I think the absolute.
impact to our credibility with the world has taken the hit that that's taken.
(14:16):
uh People aren't going to be able to reliably plan to build a facility here in the UnitedStates at the moment because I don't know what's going to come in six months.
Is he is this all backed off completely at this point?
(14:36):
It's been so up and down that
I don't think it's going to have any meaningful uh impacts at a very large scale.
think there are certain spaces that will benefit where there's already existing capacitythat might be underutilized.
There will be some capacity that was being brought online maybe being trying to expediteit.
(14:58):
um But as far as new facility builds and new capacity coming online, I don't...
Okay.
Let's grant the executive too many powers.
And he gets this wish.
The Federal Reserve is no longer independent, or at least is a puppet state for awhile.
(15:20):
And they take rates from whatever they are, the federal, Fed funds rate for whatever totwo.
Mm-hmm.
Previously, the way the economy was sort of like working and incentivized, most money justwent into risk assets.
And to things that like, maybe mathematically just didn't make sense or would have nevermade sense if money weren't free.
(15:42):
But we went through a period where money was free.
Mm-hmm.
if tariffs were to remain.
40 or above.
Does that change and these rates, the internal rates come down?
Does that incentivize the kind of investment?
that they say is needed.
Yeah, I think it would be largely good for the country too, but like actual building,actual infrastructure, private infrastructure, rather than just more stock market, more
(16:07):
Bitcoin, more, you know what mean?
Would it just flow to risk assets again, or would it be a different kind of risk assets?
Talking again about like, well, a $1 million revenue business that's maybe taking home 200grand.
If your, if your margins are good, is not going to be able to afford to erect, you know,buy the land, erect the factory, fill it with machines, fill it with labor.
(16:31):
Like that's not in the cards for a business that size.
Right.
So you, you have to either pool and share or, um, or take on like a massive SBA loan orsomething in order to like make that happen.
Right.
And I hope that you can grow the business anyway.
Um, like would those kinds of risks be taken?
I wonder.
That, yeah, so your theory being that if, because,
(16:58):
much uncertainty.
you were to turn the uncertainty down just a little bit and say like it's 40 % across theboard, doesn't matter where you're getting your stuff.
Or maybe let's say it's like a little bit more targeted, makes more sense, right?
Like so that we remove some of the uh non-linearity of the tariffs because reasons.
ah But we basically made money free again.
(17:18):
ah
then does where does that where does that basically where does that easy easy money thatyou can get from very low interest rate loans and or uh other stimulus that might be
coming with that like depending upon
your labor in manufacturing is also super cheap because you've chose China or India orwhatever, but now all of a sudden that is artificially inflated.
(17:47):
If you, I mean, ultimately, if you had something that people felt like that was a stablelong-term outcome and that's what to expect, then I think yes, that in that situation,
yeah, exactly.
If you were able to set up a like situation where that was a stable expectation, then yes,absolutely.
(18:08):
think on some level, certain types of businesses would try to.
certain people would start looking at uh building more locally, I think.
However,
You said something interesting about risk assets.
why, like in previous times, a lot of money is piled into risk assets during that.
(18:28):
why would they not pile into risk assets in that state and instead into a lower yieldingcapital investment in a, because the margins you're gonna get off of most manufacturing
facilities are gonna be much lower than.
you know uh...
must much more gross margin than uh...
you know a lot of businesses you can invest in and that's the five hundred in manysituations
(18:51):
I don't know.
I guess I'm looking at it from the standpoint of like, going back to your, your statementabout, you know, needing stability, kind of like knowing that this is the plan going
forward for a longer period of time.
think you'd have to have that because if I don't know how long this free money regime isgoing to last, then my risk, my risk asset of choice is going to be liquid.
(19:17):
Uh, factory is not liquid.
Real estate is not particularly liquid.
um But if I knew that this was going to be the future in the United States economy for thenext 20, 25 years, then I could go risk on for the next 10 and then bank that ladder,
(19:40):
ladder 10, ladder 15, um Big cash outlay to go build the thing.
And then yeah, your margins aren't great, you have basically no taxes now because you'regoing to be able to shelter those inside of all kinds of depreciation and whatever.
um
I don't know, does that make you take home and then you've got this real asset in theUnited States?
(20:02):
Yeah, no, I think that makes sense.
And for the uh for certain size businesses that will certainly make sense.
Like you said, I wonder what size it starts to make sense because it doesn't work for theperson doing a million dollars in revenue every year at 10 million.
I mean, I think you'd have to be talking about businesses that are like probably in theclose to triple digits, like at least 100 million revenue.
(20:28):
uh...
before you start to say that probably makes yeah
Yeah, also you have to find a place to do it where people know how to build the equipmentor the tooling.
so it would be, it will be certainly possible and probably you'll see expansion of umcertain manufacturing bases that are already kind of present, right?
(20:57):
And some of those.
mid-size existing companies already that already have the footprint expanding more so thannew businesses coming up from from whole cloth.
But.
agreed.
I also think you do have like I think of like a service center model, right?
Like kind of how my supplements business works, right?
(21:18):
Like almost no supplement companies make their own supplements.
Oh, like not very many at all because it's so expensive compliance costs are insane andyou know, so we go to other people who specialize just in Manufacturing that's the only
thing they do and they do it for
hundreds if not thousands of brands and they've got all the compliance, they've got thelabs, they've got the testing, the scientists and so on and so forth.
(21:40):
you know, it's fine.
Like, you know, people will be like, well, I really want a neuroscientist to own thesupplement company that I buy from.
It's like, you have no idea what the back, like even some small brands, as long as they'regoing through some rigorous third party testing, you'd be surprised at how highly executed
things are.
The marketing is a different thing.
I am not surprised actually, because I think there's enough regulation in that space tohave created that need for those things to develop and over time it makes sense that that
(22:11):
ecosystem has been something that developed.
And it's a litigious society, you tend to steer toward clear paths.
Yeah.
Steer towards, steer towards low de-risking what you're doing by going throughwell-regulated, well-approved, well-inspected above board companies that can prove it.
(22:33):
um Yeah.
You, and honestly, you could, you could have a situation where somebody maybe, you know,small, smaller sized or mid-sized shops building up that service.
um
You know, kind of parts by type that you used to see if you go around Detroit, you'll seea lot of you used to at least a lot of like stamping houses where it's not that anyone
(23:00):
they're making, you know, any one product for, for themselves.
They're making, they're just doing, you know, take turning sheet metal stamp to me intodifferent shapes and
and Ford and...
Yeah, and a bunch of, you know, it's like, I'm making all the stampings for all thesecompanies.
So there, might see things of that where it's a, you know, we make this, we are good atthis one task and we are a shop that does that.
(23:24):
send us all your work.
ah
that.
the, I mean, of course I could, like the whole, um, dang it, the term just left me like acomparative advantage, right?
Like that's one of the beauties of globalization is that every country, location, whateveryou want to call it can like specialize into something that they've, they aim to get good
(23:45):
at or already good at, just geographically advantageous things are there for them.
Versus like the United States trying to do things that we're not good at and aren't set upfor and labor costs are too high or, know, it's like you're trying to force a solution
onto something that like doesn't, you know, math.
(24:06):
Yeah, yeah, that very, very much we're trying to force a solution without understandingthe fully available inputs, I feel.
And it's like, yeah, well that'll develop.
like, will it?
What tells you that that will be able to develop there in a fruitful way?
The other thing that I think about a lot is how, you know, this is like a contested sortof space, but, uh, after the GFC, they did, you know, crazy stimulus sort of in the
(24:37):
system, but they didn't get really any stimulus down to the people.
And then with COVID, it was completely different.
One, the body politic had changed, but, uh, they got more stimulus to the people.
And also the outcome of COVID was not at all related to how.
the GFC went, but you couldn't see that.
(24:57):
you can't see the future.
So they did what they could in order to like not let things implode.
But with the GFC, like, you know, you look at almost any graph out of Fred and it's likethat recovery was like a decade.
you know, whether you're looking at housing starts or you know, just like so manydifferent numbers it was like a decade long recovery and
Yeah, it was weird that it was weird that we went from this.
(25:21):
I feel like the recovery, it was never over.
And then all of sudden it was really good.
was just like, we went from being like, we're still stuck in this.
Hey, wait.
Yeah, then I think.
went to interest rates really started to come down.
could refine my home six times in five years.
That's when I think I really started to feel like, we're through that finally.
(25:42):
That was, yeah, 2015, 16, I guess.
Somewhere in there.
Yeah.
ah Yeah, so anyway, now I think about this whole transition that is trying like basicallybeing it's like a cram down, right?
And.
since it's not particularly strategic or tactical or specific, ah I kind of look at thenext, the possibility is, is if there's no sort of about face around any of this, then the
(26:14):
next decade plus is hard.
And I don't mean like, woe is me sort of things.
It gets darker.
um Yeah, like 2009.
2010, these were not good years from big swaths of the country.
(26:34):
And I think it's going to be similar here.
I remember that being a particularly stressful period.
mean, company I was working for at the time had declared bankruptcy and living through myfirst rounds of layoffs as a professional person.
Uh, it was a, it was a gross feeling and looking to, you know, find new work was achallenge.
(26:57):
Uh, I knew a lot of people that I were graduating with that were having a, I do, I dowonder, um,
You know, what are today's graduates seeing?
How are they feeling?
What are they saying right now about what the job market looks like?
I wonder if this year's graduates that are gonna be coming out here in just a couple ofweeks, are they having a harder time than last year's?
(27:22):
Because of some of this.
Now what?
YouTuber.
All right.
I wouldn't consider it a job, I guess I guess people just want to be able to be paid to beon YouTube.
Hey, I mean, what are we doing here, Dan?
I guess like we're doing this for not getting paid.
(27:45):
Yeah, I've not considered this to be part of a job.
It was more of a yeah, this is this is fun.
to me, that's what's interesting.
It's like, uh, being a, making it as a YouTuber, I think has a lot less to do with wantingto be a YouTuber and having a lot more to do with gaining some life experience and having
a perspective and then sharing that.
(28:07):
and so coming straight out of college to be a YouTuber, I mean, while there are some, orpeople who didn't even go to college break through.
and succeedingly rare.
It's kind of like saying, I'm going to drop out of uh Harvard because I'm the next MarkZuckerberg.
It's like, well, there's like a 0.0001 chance.
Yeah, no, he had a going concern.
use somebody else's platform and you have to, you'd have to go build some, build a newplatform.
(28:30):
um And then you can be Zuck.
ah Although he might be forced to spin off Instagram or WhatsApp.
So maybe you can buy one of those from him if you have a few hundred billion layingaround.
100 billion.
Exactly.
Well, as soon as that free money starts rolling around again, count me in.
(28:53):
it's a, yeah, and all that's an interesting, coming back to our kind of original, youknow, asymptotic society idea and that we have a way of just never getting to where we
think we're gonna go.
Sorry.
Excuse me, I'm sorry Dan.
(29:15):
You there?
Yeah.
Well, I was to draw this to Louis Becker and back to, know, how we kind of got here witha, you know, your idea of an asymptotic society.
Like when I think of an asymptote, it's because things are going, you know, you'reskyrocketing going so good, but like, you're going to infinity, right?
You can't ever get there because it's, it's, it's just so far away as well.
um
(29:38):
It almost feels like, what was I gonna say?
It's almost like, it's like a higher order function where instead of being like a square,it's like a cube or a.
power of five function, where so when you're zoomed in on a portion of the graph, it lookslike it's an asymptote.
(30:04):
But then what's actually going on is it's a higher order function with, you know, to likethird or fifth power.
So then you get like the, it goes from being an asymptote to, oh, shit just happened,things slope over and it goes down for a while.
And then it comes back up and then comes back down and you can, the trend line is up anddown, up and down and looking out over time.
like in the grand scheme of like billions, it's ultimately maybe asymptotic or going up.
(30:30):
But on any more smaller time scale, you actually, I don't know, how these.
because like, know, is today better than in 1650?
Certainly.
Right?
there have been, there are like these local, local maximas and then, yeah.
now we're just in that point where we have to go through a little decline.
(30:55):
Maybe, I mean, we...
No, yeah.
We, I don't, yeah, I was gonna say it's not set in stone yet.
Like, you know, you listen to us today and you could probably paint us both as with a dimview of the immediate future.
And I would agree that that is my view right now, but like I'm willing to change thatperspective tomorrow should, should one person change their mind.
Yeah, things happen.
(31:16):
We don't know why they happen, but things can happen.
And yeah, none of this has to be.
uh interview slash speech on stage Ken Griffin gave recently?
Yeah, okay.
So for people unfamiliar, Ken Griffin is like perhaps the richest and most successfulhedge fund manager in history.
One of them, uh maybe like just below Rentech.
(31:38):
And uh so he's founded and uh runs Citadel, which is now a litany of financial servicesbusinesses.
And he was a huge, like mega Republican donor this past cycle.
And he just gave a speech of like, well, we are, you know, these tariff moves have ruinedAmerica's brand.
(31:59):
He thinks, you know, we've sort of like killed 20 % of our worth, which is a staggeringsum, if you really think about that math and that we need a reverse course like pronto.
uh
post-haste, how many other, like, you know, it's just basically like right now, like thiswas, you should just call it a shot, this was completely dumb and, I'm putting words in
(32:26):
his mouth now, but like, he seemed pretty sure of himself.
And I mean that as a compliment.
yeah.
I was, I was happy to see him saying that, uh, because knowing that he had been, you know,a staunch supporter, uh, at one point around maybe not staunch, but a supporter.
Yeah.
Uh, the, the big boys coming out and saying, Hey, you got to put brakes on this policybecause you are, you are.
(32:50):
You are effing up the system.
Yeah.
You are, are, you're destroying value.
You're, you're not doing this in a way that is going to work.
not going to work.
No.
Like again, with creative destruction, it's like, I might not want it or choose it becauseit does equal pain, but you get somewhere with it.
And, uh, maybe I'm just not indoctrinated though, cause like I talked to other people andthey're clearly like, no, this is, I don't think so.
(33:16):
Yeah, don't, maybe I'm wrong.
It's very possible.
It just, from what I see in my experience and I guess my perspective, my lens, the way Iprocess it, it feels entirely, almost entirely destructive.
and study of history.
Like I think sometimes we, you know, ah you and I probably both are a little bit more likeuh willing to
(33:42):
give space to the other idea because we are willing to change our minds and hear otherperspectives.
I think most of the time, I can probably get rigid every so often, but um with that, yeah,with that, uh think it's hard.
We don't always stand our ground on the fact that like we're not just,
(34:06):
total armchair quarterbacks that know nothing and just have like a perspective fromwatching TV news all day.
Exactly.
I mean, well, that's also that's a stereotype of that's like 3 % of people or 2 % ofpeople, right?
There's not there's actually not that many people that are out there that fit that thatthat armchair quarterback.
(34:28):
well, let's let another idea to play with then there's something I've been struggling within my mind because I'm trying to like, one be open minded and kind and um give space to
these things that like I think I fundamentally disagree with.
uh
If I were to say something about the technicalities of horizontal drilling in the oilspace to someone who knows nothing about it, they might very well say like, I just don't
(34:58):
know anything about that.
So I don't know that I have an opinion.
But if I asked them about uh tariffs, then they have an opinion, even though they've readzero history on it and
have forgotten anything that they've learned from maybe high school was the last time theyhad any touch of policies like this and how much were any of us really paying attention to
(35:21):
like the visualization, visualization in our heads of what an economy is.
It's an extremely chaotic, complex system.
Mm-hmm.
But this.
I struggle with why we can so profoundly have opinions around certain places.
You said staying, you know, the lane thing.
(35:42):
think it's completely sad that one has to stay in their lane, but they'll happily do so incertain areas and then happily just like go anywhere and others, even though they, you
know.
It's about what what feels important to them or what part of what if it's if it's beentaken up as part of their teams or Like a subgroups a subgroups religion and identity then
(36:09):
they're gonna have an opinion about like you made a comment there about well I don't Idon't know much about the technique as a horizontal drilling So I would maybe say I don't
have an opinion but there are some people in some subgroups that same thing But would verymuch say I have an opinion and let me tell you
that fuck you get out of this house.
I don't want to hang out with you.
It's like, Oh, okay.
Well, my bad.
Uh, I'll just scoot along.
(36:29):
Um, so there are definitely, it goes, it happens like, you know, no, um, no, I mean,people aren't aren't that, but like I've gotten, yeah.
Yeah.
it's
it's universal, but it's what's important to some subgroup.
like, if you don't have an opinion about it, actually you're probably more likely to makean informed judgment ultimately because you haven't been prefed a bunch of things that may
(36:59):
or may not be true.
It's not what you don't know, it's what you know that just ain't so, as uh Mark Twainsaid,
Yeah, one of the guys I used to work for uh started off every letter with that quote.
that's it's good one i i i brought it up at work a couple of times this week actually andsome moments of uncertainty
(37:19):
right here with you, like several times, like just trying to like take a thing that Ithink is absolutely dumb and say like, if we twist this?
What if we look through this other lens?
Can it work this way?
Okay.
I'm trying to be open and play with these things because like, you know, or, you know,it's not even that I'm trying to find a place of agreement.
I'm trying to find a place of prosperity.
(37:41):
Like I'm trying to find a way through.
uh I'm willing to travel with a group that like, I don't know, identify with.
if we can all get to a good place.
I uh want fellow nomads, right, that are willing to bounce around from, not like, what isthat, guess.
(38:01):
mental nomads that are willing to move around from idea space to idea space and try tolook at things from different points of view or without necessarily being everything,
desert sands are always changing the shape of the landscape around you.
Well, it's like they can go to the Jehovah's witness lecture, but not become a Jehovah'switness.
(38:25):
And then they can go to the, the Buddhist monastery, but not necessarily become Buddhist.
And then they do, and so on and so on and so on.
And then they, and then they reach alignment, right?
because, because you've taken the best of what suits you from so many differentdisciplines in the world.
And I'm just picking on some examples, I guess.
(38:47):
It's like a, uh, a fund of funds in a way.
no, uh, no, but then I think this is maybe a good, a good, a good point actually, as we'rediscussing this to maybe talk a little bit about, um, one thing we're trying to do around
here for a little, little pod housekeeping, uh, for, for everybody.
Um, so we've been getting some feedback from some listeners and thinking about how to,know, what, what is our purpose here, Dan?
(39:13):
Why, why, why do we do this show?
between Dan and I, we have, you know, two different, very different backgrounds.
We've decided like, want, really want to steer the show through, through the lenses ofthose backgrounds in our current situ, our current places in life.
myself being more, working in a large scale corporation where we have a lot ofbureaucratic policy, you know, we are, I am not, not eating what I kill.
(39:37):
Unlike Dan, who is coming at it from a much, you know, the small business side and having,you know, worked in finance, but now out there doing his own thing.
And, you know, what we hope to bring about from that is, Dan, I'm not sure.
What, why are we doing this?
It's through the, I think it's just through the lens of entrepreneurship, both like thepractice of and the aspiration for.
(40:01):
there were, mean, I think back through my history and it's like, and I remember in highschool days trying to figure out like, how can I do a thing that like, I was mowing lawns
and I hated it.
So like, can others, is there something else that I can do that I actually do like, andI'm good at that isn't a job.
Um, but then, you know,
necessity and also young people should go get experience.
(40:24):
So I got a job and it was awesome.
And then I went back to trying to figure out a way to do it my way and on my own.
So I think it's that partly as that journey and informed by where I am today and all thedifferent struggles and the things that the litany of reasons you may not choose this
(40:45):
path.
and
And then from, know, I think when we were talking about this, you were saying like, youknow, I tried and it didn't quite go the way I had hoped or planned.
you know, there might be another, you know, there's probably going to be another try inthe future.
Um, don't quite, you don't quite know where, what that looks like today, but it's thisaspiration, this willingness to try, um, that I think is important.
(41:13):
This journey.
this aspiration towards entrepreneurship.
I think that is very much why we started having even these discussions together was thatwe were both, know, you were on the path and I was trying to get on the path.
And I think that there's been a lot of things I've learned, uh, from my, my experience,you know, getting on and stepping back off, uh, or never really offloading, guess, or off,
(41:35):
off ramping fully.
I just, feel as though it was a, it was a huge growth for me personally.
And I think that the things that you've shared with me as I was working on that path, Danwere valuable.
And I think that's why I want to be here, sharing these ideas, having these ideas, thesediscussions, even sharing them with, with others.
because just the, process of talking through how you, how you approach running your ownsmall business.
(41:58):
with somebody is hugely beneficial for, for when you're in that head space of, of, ofuncertainty and not knowing what's the next thing that's coming.
It, you grow so much through, through the act of, just talking it out in a way.
I, uh, I do a lot of processing by talking it out.
(42:19):
Um, and I think you've dear listener have heard it happen on air a few times.
It was like, I get halfway through an idea and I'm like, I don't that's, and I actuallydon't like this idea now that I'm hearing it out loud.
Um, and then it happens.
And so, yeah, it is, it's therapeutic and also just terribly valuable to be able to talkthings out.
Um, and going back to, you know, trying to, trying to be trying to make something out ofnothing.
(42:45):
Uh, whether you go and acquire a business and then run it or start something from nothing,like it can't, it is, it's not, it can't be, it is an incredibly lonely.
and there are ways to, you know, help with that, but one of them is conversations righthere like this.
And, I think one of the beauties of this medium podcasting and YouTube, what, you know,all the things is a lot more of this is now out in the open.
(43:14):
Whereas it used to be behind closed doors exclusively.
so getting access to it was really hard.
So the other thing that's always on my mind with this is like, can you, can you get toyounger people who aspire?
Doesn't even have to be younger.
Can you get to other people that aspire to these things?
And then it triggers like a rabbit hole, whether they stick with us or move on or likefind some other path.
(43:35):
doesn't really matter, but like, can we trigger more creativity, spontaneity and,
agency within our populace.
It sounds big, but why not have a big thing?
No, and to find that community of people that are interested in these ideas and exploring,these things for themselves.
(43:56):
I look forward to the day when we get some good pushback on some things we've said whereit's that is, Hey, you said this, but did you think about it this way?
You know, that's the day that I'm looking forward to most is seeing that comment on avideo somewhere.
um
And I'm like, huh, no, I didn't.
That's a great idea.
Let me look into that.
(44:16):
Um, because that's when I grow the most is when I'm challenged and, don't take itdefensively and just take it openly and, try to process it and come out with a, From that
viewpoint, how do I feel if I, I, if I still feel the same way after, after thinking aboutit, then, okay, no, I'm, I don't, I don't care to get that, that argument, but.
(44:41):
But maybe I do, you know, I've, I've changed my mind several times in the last week onthings like that.
So.
Yeah, totally, totally.
Or you can be more confident in the ideas that you hold because someone has gone andchallenged them and you, it's not because you got defensive or dug in, it's because the
idea has been even more illuminated than it was.
(45:02):
Yeah.
yes, you know it stands up to that test, right?
It's like a year to year.
I have considered a whole nother angle.
Thank you.
hypothesis, I've tested at least one null theory against it and just keep bringing thetheories that you might think disprove it and you end up with much stronger ideas
ultimately and shaped much differently than you would think.
(45:24):
I'll say that.
So that's the lens that we're, we're trying to be mindful of when we come and think ofdifferent topics, but I would imagine it's still pretty, it's wide ranging.
think, um, you know, part of Sean and I's relationship is just general curiosity.
Uh, and so we like to play with ideas.
like to go and experiment and we like to challenge, um, in the interest of getting better,uh, how and what we're thinking about.
(45:51):
So.
Um, we'll still probably do the philosophical sidebars and the, uh, what about, know,asmotic society questions and all that kind of stuff, because we, enjoy them terribly, but
I think they're directly connected to, you know, our way of life and trying to understandit and always paying attention, not only to the on the ground tactical tactical stuff like
(46:13):
micro econ, um, but also keeping an ear toward the,
dismal science, if you will, of macroecon.
Right?
Science indeed.
Science feels generous.
Well, is it just that science and math can't get to complex chaotic systems?
(46:37):
Because once you move in a macro, it's like that's very much it.
well that and science and math can't get into behavioral psychology.
well, if we go quantum, then maybe we can figure it out because like, think a lot of macrois sort of like Schrodinger's cat.
It's like until you've gone and looked at it, is it dead or is it alive?
(46:58):
You don't know.
oh
there's because there's a lot of things that are just built on pure faith that oh
something can change, yeah, something can change and people just all of a sudden startbehaving a different way for no necessarily real good reason, just that they all are
pretty sure it's the right thing to do and that changes the outcome, right?
(47:21):
It was like the vibe shift at the start of this year.
Like that's why I got excited.
It felt good.
And it's like, if we could have kept that ramp going, cool.
But I think the ramp is in the other direction now.
uh
well, hey, it seems to have stabilized lately.
So this week was fairly stable.
(47:43):
But I think we are in a die of the storm, so to speak, we're
I agree.
That's exactly how after some conversations I had with people, I felt like I have thestorm.
They have absolutely no idea they're in the middle of hurricane, but it's coming.
Cause like all the orders to China that should be being put in for Christmas usuallyhappen right now.
(48:06):
And there's like none.
So expect empty Christmas trees or you know, $1,600 Nintendo Switches.
And that's not because of tariffs, that'll be because of demand and supply imbalances.
I-
Probably an exaggeration, but directionally accurate.
I have to imagine that there are orders that are perhaps being made with the anticipationof future deals.
(48:33):
That's that will probably prevent some fall through on some of this, but a lot of it.
Yeah.
There, there might not be certain things as easily available as usual, as usual later onthis year, because the orders have industrial orders of, yeah, absolutely slowed down.
Uh, you know,
fallen off 60 % or something of that nature.
(48:53):
ah I think the number I saw from ISM.
Yeah, these are.
had a whole piece when from, maybe this is, I can't remember.
I meant to ask you, like you had recommended last time we met, like one of Cittrini'spieces and I can't remember which one it was.
it was kind of an older one I ended up, I was pulling back up, was like from 2020, I'mlike, I thought this was recent, but he had just reposted it recently, said, this is
(49:18):
current again.
So that's what it was.
Yeah.
Love it when history repeats.
maybe, no, there was a newer, there was not yet recent one, or maybe I got, no, no, no.
This is one kind of recapping his, uh, one week in the United States, visiting, visitingfactories and business owners one week in China, visiting factories and business business
owners.
(49:39):
And, um, it was a very good, it's good.
Illuminating, you know, being able to go to China and see like.
factory is just going like, I don't know, they're on a whole lot of orders, which kind ofconfirms the whole like, we're going to screw China side of it.
But at the same time, it's like, do you know what kind of pain is going to be on thisside?
Like, it's just delayed, you think you just won, but like the American consumer is goingto be having a fit and not too distant future.
(50:06):
And the American consumer is the voter.
So
Mm-hmm.
Murky, murky, hard to see the future.
Well, I don't, does he care about the voter anymore?
Like, why does he care about the voter?
What they think there's, there's, there's no need to have an opinion on it for, from hisstandpoint.
I think in, in many ways, I think he, it probably bugs him if he's not well liked, but,uh, but other than it bugging him, there's not functionally anything who gives a shit.
(50:39):
no, bad poll numbers.
Yeah.
I don't know.
There's some part of me that's like the ego is so strong.
I have a hard time believing that he's going to be able to brush it off for length.
For now, sure.
But length, not, you know, I've been saying this to like anybody who has open ears.
I'm like, you're dealing with a society with 4,000 years of history of a willingness tokill and maim tens of millions of its own people in service of a goal.
(51:05):
And you think we are going to be able to, you know, endure more pain than them.
I think you should re-examine that lens, right?
And so, and then trying to examine that lens through can Donald Trump, just the oneperson, endure the kind of necessary pain?
I'm like, I don't think so.
He wants to be loved and admired.
And I don't think this is a path to doing that.
(51:26):
Like maybe on a 20 year time scale, it is a path to that, but he's not gonna be alive in20 years.
And supposedly there'll be elections in less time, so.
In theory, I think there's supposed to be one in about three years and nine months or so.
uh I actually be three years and six months now.
(51:48):
Yeah.
No, no, I'm not really thinking about it yet.
Yeah, me neither.
Just trying to live for today.
Yeah, it's, we got more of this coming through.
It's just chaos, right?
We're going to be dealing with chaos for a bit.
and listen to several of our episodes, we talked about the chaos monkeys and throwinggrenades in the room and how like some of this could be welcome and healthy.
(52:13):
And, uh, but there's also like the whole shrapnel that I, you know, I blew up that roomand didn't mean to and stuff like that.
So, you know, that's why I keep coming back to these, you know, words like murky and.
You know, it's not all bad.
Uh, but there are localities of thought that.
(52:33):
I fall into.
Yeah, I find myself getting into some worst case spirals more, more lately.
And although I, I guess maybe because it things quieted down, I, I, I felt, I felt alittle less, a little less, I don't know, a little more hopeful about it this week for
some reason.
But I think because it's like, okay, they're, they're backing off.
(52:56):
At least they're making moves in a direction that seems better.
So it's, it's not stagnant, right?
Uh, didn't every.
Things are, things are still changing and it's chaotic.
So at least we, I, it's good that we know, we know that we don't know is what I'll say.
Because if we knew it was what it is right now, that would be very bad.
(53:17):
But I think it's, it's, it's good that we know that we don't know.
Like, yeah, yeah.
Like this is like, okay, we're, this is still ongoing.
This is going to be ongoing for a while.
And I think we're going to be in a, a state of, you know, I expect these, whatever's leftof the 90 days to be very.
chaotic.
uh And you know, lots of lots of lots of unpredictable news that will have impacts that wewon't know really fully how they're going to shake out for another six months.
(53:44):
And I think, you know, from the entrepreneurial aspect, this stuff impacts you a lot moredirectly than like this is in your day to day, this is impacting your day to day a lot
more directly than perhaps a lot of people.
affects whether I can feed my kids or not.
Yeah, if you're in education, you know, this is talked about, I don't think it'snecessarily impacting their day to day outside of things that would be available to
(54:10):
purchase or their.
with just regular jobs think it's, you know, whatever.
That's the picture I'm getting as I talk to people.
It's just like, and that's why I go back to the eye of the storm, right?
Like I think if things stay where they are or get worse, ah I'm thankful that I'll declarebankruptcy and completely start my life from zero over again.
And I'll have like a one year headstart of most W2 employees who are on their way togetting laid off.
(54:34):
That's like my worst case lens of like, at least can be sprinting and will have been for awhile because I get to be ahead.
was like, this sounds terrible, but he says it was such an upbeat tone.
I'm impressed, yeah.
moving rather than not moving.
The exact, yeah.
So I think, you know, this is one situation where I think being an entrepreneur puts you alittle bit on the, you know, the cutting edge or the, the Sabres edge of what's happening.
(55:04):
And, for me, you know, working in, in basic manufacturing here in the States, it's easy tosee that it's going to impact us.
And I still, I know that we're looking at, you know, new work at our facility that, know,should be.
You know, good for our local facility in theory, but at the same time, also feel extremelyuncertain about what that volume of work is going to be.
(55:29):
Okay.
And also, also, yeah.
Yeah.
So I will say strategically we are, we are, it seems from a high level corporate strategicstandpoint saying we're probably going to spend some money here to do some retooling.
Yeah.
So it's.
I feel like there's a whole, at least in my mind, there's a whole lot of freeze ratherthan action, which freeze hurts everything.
(55:55):
Now, yeah, now the, the scope, the, the, level of that spending might be very subdued, butthere will be some allowance or at least we're working on, but you know, let's be honest,
it's April, uh, 2025 capital, but our 2026 capital budgets are due in October.
Like we're starting to think about what needs to go into those now.
So this is a lot of the things we're doing now won't really even roll out and fully beimplemented till in 2026, 2027, in some cases, because it's going to take a while.
(56:24):
Ken Griffin's comment about 20 % is so interesting because like if you just look at todayand I think, you know, there'd be probably a lot of people that would hear it sound a clip
like that and be like, what's that guy know 20 % like I just bought a new grill things aregood, baby.
And when in fact, it's about the empty Christmas tree coming.
(56:45):
That's months away.
It's about corporate planning about 2026, which is happening now.
And the completely pulled back spending
and investment cycle that takes, you know, another year or two to turn around and spinback up if things were to just magically be quote unquote better today.
Right.
It's like you buckle up for one to two years of depressed economic activity because ofwhat's happening today.
(57:11):
Even though you might feel like today, nothing has changed.
We're Ear quotes.
Because, because there's headlines and people are, some people, the chaos looks, lookslike good and probably like winning.
Cause it's like, we're, we're, I have a particular viewpoint on China.
And I think that, you know, we should be moving away from China in their head.
(57:35):
And this, these are steps to do that.
So this feels like, these, we're taking the actions to do that.
Um,
Another comment I heard was Biden didn't do anything, which made me think, one, youweren't paying attention and two, uh, because it didn't seem to be a comment about
disagreement.
It was more just like, well, nothing was getting done.
So why have that person in the job?
(57:55):
Which I can understand to some degree.
but so here we have this, uh, we have the kid riding the bicycle and putting the stick inthe spoke.
Um, so that's better.
Yeah, he did something.
difficulty with.
was like, we were doing bad things.
So doing bad things is better than, but then again, I'm putting all of my opinions righton top of that.
(58:16):
Yeah, there's plenty that can be sussed out and separated, think.
Yeah.
To be more nuanced, like if I'm asking for better, more tactical, nuanced economic policy,I can do the same for my delivery of my opinions and ideas.
Exactly.
Should we leave it there?
we should leave it there.
(58:39):
Let's leave it on.
and we're going to do our best to not talk tariffs and politics next episode.
I promise it'll be on my mind though.
I'm not promising shit.
Yeah, it's it's who knows we'll see
economic roundup to have to talk about because of all the changes.
It's exciting times.
It's exciting times.
(59:00):
All right.
what people want it amusing ourselves to death.
Right now we have uh something to pay attention to.
ah We have been split on the, the, you know, cheering squad.
We're now at a football stadium with uh one side wearing blue, one side wearing red.
And yeah, and then we've got a team on field that's actually doing stuff.
(59:25):
Get your tailgate set up in the parking lot.
Get your freedom fries or your french fries and let's go.
ah Well thanks for tuning in this week everybody.
We appreciate it as always.
We'll catch you next time on another episode of Unqualified Advice.
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