Episode Transcript
A severance pay of 417 million dollars when you retired. And yet we're given a bailout of 219 billion tax holders. I do not agree with the bailouts of any company. Did you know that the Anne Rind Institute asked for a PPP? I did not. In their laissez faire, in their laissez faire.
That's why I was like, Oh, they're all about laissez faire capitalism where it's less involvement of the government, but yet. That philosophy institute of philosophy applied for a PPP loan and got it. Did they pay it back? Uh, that I didn't get to. See, you're only cherry picking now. I don't know if they did.
I didn't know that they took one out because I don't follow the institute. I listened to what they had to say. I was listening to what the original, you know, Ayn Rand, I've read. The books, capitalism, the unknown ideal, because it's never been tried completely. The Collective Perspective is set out on a mission to understand some of the most impactful and controversial trends and topics in our lives today.
Hi, I'm Jeff. Hi, I'm Travis. Hi, I'm Juwan. Can we find common ground in the middle, in a peaceful manner, but with real community benefit? We believe as veterans and concerned citizens, we are striving to bring together diverse views. With fact based research to navigate this tough terrain in a search of a viable path forward.
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If I want to buy something from you, it's alright, well, what is this product? Alright? I like that product, maybe I can use it. How much does it cost? Well, it costs this much. Alright? I'm okay with that. I agree to that price. It is a mutually agreeable transaction. So, the company, apparently, felt that what he did for them was worth his severance package.
Now, we're not talking about You're saying that because you know for a fact the company felt that way or that's how he, that's how he made it happen. That's how transactions occur. Mutually beneficial. Again, the point is he fired a bunch of people, took all the way their pension plans, but yet he had a great Seems like you're slipping more so into a morality kind of vibe with his decision that he made.
Well, Travis said he was a moral person. I mean, he agreed it wasn't probably the best person. Amoral? Immoral? I don't know. What did you say? Immortal? No, because he's dead. Well, I mean, with business, but business itself has, there's no, it's what's the best interest of the health of the company when you talk about bottom line.
And that actually is separate from capitalism. If you want to be completely honest, do you have you, I give you a prime example. Do you own an LLC or a company or corporation? I do not. I do. You do? S Corp. How long have you maintained it? Just started this year. Yeah, I've had an LLC corp, like an LLC for like eight years.
You're a member manager. And one of the things that I think you're having an issue with, it's because we managed this company that the actual state owned. Or in some, to some degree, I'm going to be as accurate as I possibly can, but you're managing a company that registered through the state of Florida.
It's like you're a member manager, you're managing this LLC. That's protected by the copyright, by the laws of America. Basically, with capitalism, uh, it's just a free market. You just solicit and sell your product, like he's saying. But what you're talking about is totally different. It's a CEO being a CEO.
And one of the things with the bailout, that's just the benefit of being a citizen of the United States of America. It's saying, okay, I am a citizen of this government and these are some of the benefits we have in our government system. Do you think that if we all were able to vote on whether we should provide the bailout that the people would have approved of it?
I'll just go a little bit further than that. The Bible says, my people are destroyed for the lack of knowledge, so they've rejected knowledge, I've rejected them. It's not an issue of what's going on, it's the fact that the American people are not educating themselves on the benefits and the privileges they have or have access to in America.
And they're not having conversations like this. So I think, to my point though, that, that Jack Welch destroyed capitalism. I don't think that it was capitalism that he destroyed. No, he just knows the rules to the game. He lived within the rules. He used the rules and he also used influence. Yeah. And money to change rules.
These are all legal components to being a citizen in the government of America. They celebrate you bringing, taking lobbyists to government and soliciting on your behalf. Now, I think throughout our podcasting that we've done, I've been very clear. I'm very limited government. I think the government only serves three functions and I've pointed those out before.
Yes, if we did away with a lot of the government regulations, in particular, taxes, I am so against Okay, but here's the thing, man, is that, I don't mean to cut you off, but I think it's important. Capitalists are paying the government. Where's the break? I just, I guess that's where my disconnect is, is that if they're controlling what the government is doing and they're controlling our politicians, aren't they, why are they being taxed?
Or why, why is that? I'll, I'd like to just say one thing and make it very clear. No corporation or business pays taxes. None. But why is that? It's input into their bottom line. Cost to you when you pay for that service. Oh, you're paying for it. Yeah, you're paying for that That's why I say no company pays taxes It's all passed down to the end user.
They spend millions and millions of dollars lobbying for regulations to be lifted And so many different areas, uh, or to be imposed. But there are some regulations that need to be in place because a lot of, yeah, exactly. But there are companies out there that are polluting the earth, creating all these type of different ailments and different areas.
You know, there's stories of all that as well. Then that's where they famously implement the conspiracy concept. It's always the conspiracy when it's not the collective saying it is. something that's happening to us or infringing upon our health or our safety or our well being. It's always a conspiracy.
Again, it's the government's fault is allowing these regulations to be lifted. It's the government's fault with allowing Certain things that they know doesn't, doesn't benefit the collective, the general public, but just the, what would you would say the 1 percent of the, the corporate entity in America.
But it's like you got to pick the lesser of two evils because the economy itself relies on these companies to stay healthy in, in many perspectives. Yeah, but I, I think we're, so another aspect of what Jack Welch does, and I, I kind of feel that And I understand that Americans are going to want more money.
They're going to want. And again, that comes down to Americans just paying more for the product at the end of the day. Right? Let's say an American made pen is 10 more because I had to pay the wages of this American to make it versus some Chinese kid, right? I personally, at this point. I would rather just buy the American product knowing that I support an American than some other foreign country.
Now, I think that's where I have offshoring jobs where I call AT& T, I call Adidas. For example, my wife had some shoes that she ordered from Adidas. We talked to somebody in India five times. Wow. And we still don't have a resolution for it. Offshoring jobs is, is. Well, I mean, it was offshore jobs was created because of the issue of inflation.
But that was Jack Welch's idea. Inflation is causing so many different issues concerning our dollar system and our, the value of the dollar. It makes the average person work harder and longer because they need more money to sustain themselves in this society. Now, I, I think that when it comes to that.
The offshoring of jobs, the government made regulations and rules, and they lifted, say, tariffs on other countries that made it more beneficial and less expensive to have the production in other places. Exactly. And that's where the lobbying comes in. And it all comes back to the taxes that are imposed on people and Corporations, air quote there, because, you know, they're going to want to save as much money as they can.
Now, I do believe that not too long ago, there was a, an administration that started imposing tariffs on China. And we saw a boom in our production here in the United States, because it was no longer beneficial to have products produced outside of the country and then brought back into the country. But then there was also a fleet of ships sitting out.
Side of long beach for the longest time too. Hmm where we couldn't get supplies. We had supplies, bro I'm telling you from the industry that i'm in That somebody would want to buy something and he can attest to this They wanted to buy something and they couldn't get it because it's sitting out out offshore of long beach for months with all the other freight ship, absolutely, and it was all a lot of the Technical things, and I think that was a buildup and a result of things that had happened over many years prior.
It wouldn't have happened though if it, if we built the stuff here. It was a buildup of things that had happened over many years prior to that point. that made it more beneficial to be produced overseas? Had those regulations or tariffs not been lifted way back? Originally, that's how we funded our country, was on tariffs.
Nobody paid taxes. Not before 1913. There were no taxes. And then that's when the taxes came, but had that not happened and say the cost of producing a supercomputer or a semiconductor here in Texas, what Elon wants to do or wanted to do here in Texas, not here in America, here in Texas, we wouldn't be waiting on those things because they would have been made here.
And during that time when all of that was happening, we did see other companies start to step up and make those semiconductors and those microchips and microprocessors here in the U. S. to start implement and making it back here again. But then things happened and people left the office and Did you hear about the chip plant that burned down in Japan?
The chip plant that you're talking about. No. It was actually in Japan that it burned down. So that affected the audio industry pretty heavily, uh, with chips. It was Japan and it wasn't, uh, China? There was a, there was a chip plant in Japan that burned down and everybody that used, uh, even cars and mainly, you know, anything audio digital related all by this one chip.
In my Land Rover Club, a lot of the new defenders were being held up because the chips weren't being made. Having only one chip plant in Japan that made it. They had to scramble, and there was supplies that were already made, and some companies bought, like, gored, like, hoarded them. That way they can maintain their production.
Uh, but it was the chip plant that, and now, so they had to go through advanced research and development, not advanced, like, virus. Vaccine related advance. Super bionic relay. We won't get into that. They had to come up with some other chipset. Now you can buy the same product with a new chipset in it, but it's more.
And where's it made? That's a good point. I think it's still Japan. I don't know where they started to manufacture new chip. I thought that I had read previously somewhere that That's why I mentioned Texas. I think it was somewhere in Texas. It might be in California. I don't know where they started making new ones Yes, and that's my point is Capitalism found a solution to it, but the government is regulating it and keeping it down How are they regulating it with taxes and other benefits to certain?
less tariffs from other countries, that it's not costing more for them to ship it over here. I think that's how we would raise the prices or wages of those individuals, the kids working in the factories in China. If our tariffs are high enough here, Then they would either stop making them over there and find something else to do, or we would have them here and the wages being paid to people would rise accordingly.
I want to say that we went through three waves of tariffs where the government started increasing. We're like telling customers like, you better buy this now. It's going 7%. That's correct. And, but at what point at how high of a tariff or how high of a tax would people say Yeah, I don't need that right now.
I want to go something else. That's, that's capitalism showing how it works. And, again, why I think it's been broken was because if we didn't send our jobs and get the materials and build things needs that we need as Americans overseas in the first place. And we did it here. We wouldn't have had that control by another country, you know, or a control by some type of virus that was regulating people, we would have had it here already.
We would have been manufacturing it. I think a lot of that plays into our education too, which is a whole nother big topic. They're not teaching kids the way they used to be. I think it has a lot to do with parents and parents having to go to work and both parents having to work. Not in all cases, but I'm just saying the kids don't get the attention.
But I think we go back to Jack Welch. You lay out the rules and he's like, okay, I can do this. I can't do that. I can do that. I can do this. Okay. Well, let me play the game. Interesting thing about Jack Welch too, if you didn't know. Ronald Reagan was a pitch man for GE, uh, um, Oh yeah, he was the first like kind of Manchurian president in some.
So when he became president, then they were able to actually have legislation changed on behalf of corporate America. And I think that's where it kind of changed the course of lobbyists. Uh, I think we all can agree that lobbyists shouldn't happen. So to a certain degree, I think though, that to a certain degree, capitalism is, it works and we see it working.
It's the government regulation. That's the, that's the whole key there is capitalism's not broken. The system, the, the economic system. will balance out based on supply, demand, and, you know, quality, really, when you have the government saying, all right, well, you have to do this. Are we raising this up too, or?
But I mean, at the end of the day, it's still kind of a smoke and mirrors. I mean, you want it to organically balance out. You want that. You think that it naturally is supposed to do that. But there are men, power men behind the scenes that are controlling. how we think this is going. That was the point that I was going to get to was that the media covers it a certain way.
They're the ones that are supposed to be our ally and exposing these things. You mentioned it earlier about the pollution. The media are the ones that should be reporting on, Hey, this company's doing this pollution. No, they're not doing that. They're actually going out saying, Hey, this company donated this much money to us and look at how good their products are.
Which is propaganda. Exactly. And true capitalism, it will balance out. We haven't tried it. I think people are afraid to try it. Because people will get hurt. The world is a rough place, and things will get broken, things will get fixed, things will come back stronger. But the balance itself does not benefit the 1%.
Do you think they lobbied against raising minimum wage for the last 30 years? I'm almost positive they have. I almost feel like that there probably shouldn't be a minimum wage. How do you combat that? In my opinion, and in my view, what I've seen, a lot of these companies have gotten really too big. To be producing something for everyone.
Their product is wealth at this point. It's not an end consumer product. Their product is wealth for their shareholders. The people in the boardroom, the top, you know, the 1 percent and that got that way because of government regulations. If we were to look back, go back six years, how were you doing six years ago?
Hold on a second. You said that they got that way because of government regulations. I would say it got that way because Jack Welch. Made an example for everybody to do it that way. So you think that Jack Welch He was the first one that did it. No, he wasn't. Was to create the blueprint. It wasn't him first.
But it was the, he created the blueprint for the concept of broken capitalism. No, he, the concept that it's the shareholder that It's the shareholder, it's the shareholder, it's the shareholder capitalism. Well, I mean, you gotta go back to Rockefeller, you gotta go back to J. P. Morgan, you gotta go back to those guys.
Cause they monopolized. That's the word. They monopolized, they monopolized, I'm looking for the right word. They monopolized Segments of the economy. Well, yeah, they created big, big oil, and they created big steel, and they created these entities that monopolized raw materials. And forced America to play a certain narrative.
When did Wall Street start? Wall Street didn't come about until probably when So where does shareholder capitalism come to your argument? Uh Shareholder capitalism didn't exist when Rockefeller existed. No, because they controlled So how could you compare that? Let me, let me get to this real quick. This is important for this.
You mentioned that Jack Welch did the share buyback to inflate their profits to make them look like they were better than they were. He didn't invent that. It was in one of the videos you sent me that said that he had favorable legislation passed so they could do it again. That was something that had been done before.
He just brought it, he just brought it back. Probably, like he said, the Morgans, the Stanleys. Again, Wall Street didn't even exist back then, so shareholder capitalism didn't exist. My argument is that shareholder capitalism is the reason why there's pay inequality. Because it's going all to the shareholder, not to the people that run the company, not the core of the company, not the people that run the daily logistics of it.
It goes to the CEO and the shareholder. That's the problem I have with it. That's why to me it's broken. Who are shareholders? Shareholders are people that have money to invest. That's all they're doing is taking money or they hire some other stock broker to do it for them. Okay. And what happens if. And what happens if that company goes bust?
Well, they lose the money. Okay. There's no other ramifications for it, right? They just lose money. How much risk are they taking? They're risking money. They're not risking gold, though, are they? How much risk are they taking? They're not risking gold. They're risking fake money with old dead presidents on it.
See, I think our disconnect on a lot of this comes from how I view money and how you view money. I'm not gonna die with money. Money is, I think we talked about it in the last episode, it's an exchange for my, for my time. Oh yeah, it's the most valuable resource. But you said the biggest insult for somebody is to try to give them money for their time.
But it's ultimately, you're paying for the, the skills, the knowledge that I have. What is money to you? Money is just a way to pay someone for a service, or a product that I want or that I need to survive, basically. It's just a, I had a farm and I was really good at growing carrots. I can, but see, I can only go so far as to grow carrots and I can only grow so many carrots.
One has gone to find, uh, over time people have gone out to find jobs and that's how they get paid is money. For money in exchange for your time. Well, it's more than time because I could just sit here and do nothing and get paid. For some jobs and then some of them I'm out sweating and running and having to troubleshoot and do all these other various things So, I mean ultimately at the day, it's time and the service or whatever.
I'm providing effort effort yeah, so your time is set the payment for your time is decided by you and I think you know, this is where unions in the beginning had an important role And getting people together. Corporations got rid of them. Well, why? Because it's a threat. They don't want, they don't want to have, uh, unions controlling what they have to pay someone.
Or controlling what condition, what working conditions you have. I think the unions have, since their inception, have become very political. And, I, I think they are not true to what they used to be. Dude, nothing is new. Now, what I'm saying is, as an audio engineer, And everything you know about the audio world, I mean, you're, you're top of the game there and very bright and brilliant and how you can design a studio for somebody or you can set up all of their equipment.
That's a lot that you know, and that's what you're charging. You need to set what you feel your worth is. and say, this is what I want to get paid for my services. Are you willing to pay me that? And if they say yes, all right, that's a mutually agreed upon transaction there. That's capitalism. And when you say, all right, well, my time's not worth that much.
I don't feel like I'm worth that much. I'll, I'll, I'll accept that offer. Then you're, I think you are doing yourself a disservice at that point. And I, I think a lot of people don't feel that they have that power to negotiate that price for their time, their effort, their knowledge. If I own my own company, which I do, but if my company, if our company were to get bigger and get employees, do you think that I would sit back and take a bigger wage than you?
I think you would take a wage that's commensurate with your position. And the effort you've put into it, and I think that would be fair. But what if I said that everybody is going to just get paid less and I'm going to get paid this ballooned price? Like I take 90 percent of everything then you wouldn't have many people working for you Well, how is it that these corporate American CEOs can do that then and not all I'm not saying all of them are bad But there are some like Jack Welch Jack Welch, is he alive is he still alive?
I'm telling you he's going off on Jack Welch. Look I'm not No, he died in 20 No, he died in 2001. 2020. Yeah, he retired in 2001. Look, look, I am not Okay, so, when I do research, I go above and beyond things. So, for example, I'll look in all different views. For example, you gave me a review of the book. You gave me one person's review.
But I have a screenshot of a Google search where yours is the top one that you looked at. But then there's 30 more. Reviews on the book. Did you know that? I was looking for something that was counter to what you had put out there. And all of those other reviews were not counter. They were, they were in favor of the views posted in that book.
But to base your opinion only on the one that countered it. Was, wasn't that your stance? That was the only one I could find. I didn't spend a lot of time looking for a lot of it. Well, let me ask you this. From my interpretation, because we only spoke on the phone and text, and text you, did you, what did you think about Do you don't think Jack, let me ask you this.
Do you think Jack Welch did anything wrong? So I think there are two responses to that one from the business side. No. Two from the personal side, from being a human and interacting with people, I think that he did a disservice and this was the other point that I was going to get to, I think. Because, like you said, you wear your heart on your sleeve, you are very, you can be emotional, and that's, that's wonderful.
What really bothered you with Jack Welch was that he took something away from people that was promised, and their pensions, and I agree with you on that. And he, I don't know that he paid them lower wages than they were already getting. I'm not sure. I didn't, I didn't hear that. You know, he started GE with a 10, 000 a year wage, which at that time was equivalent to 107, 000 today wages.
He quit because he wasn't getting paid enough. We can get into inflation being a problem, and that's all, that's a whole other topic with taxes and the Federal Reserve Banking System and the World Economic Bank. Trust me, dude, as a sales guy, my commission's taxed 33%. So if you think I, that's incredible, bro.
I agree, that's part of the problem, but I think that what you're, what you don't like about it, and this is what I'm feeling I'm getting from you, is that he, pardon my language here, shit on the little people. And I see that. I'm not, I'm not disputing that. I'm looking at capitalism and business from that perspective.
Yeah, he did. From the people side of things, that wasn't generally the best way to go. And in that book that you reference, uh, that we read, they said that was one of his biggest gripes. Even the review that I found, the one kind of counter to the Welch book, they said the same thing. Being more people oriented.
I agree. You want people to work their best for you and do their best. And to do that, you have to compensate them fairly. Are you tired of not knowing whether the news media is telling us the truth or not? Or maybe you already know they have been deceiving us for our whole lives and our parents and their parents lives Do you believe in diversity of thought?
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So in a text, uh, the other day we were talking about kind of that topic and you said, I'm confusing people with business. Yes. And I said, do you remember the example I gave you? Uh, I don't. I said, a business has four elements marketing wise. Uh, the four P's is what you're talking about. The four P's. Can you remember what those were?
Uh, people, place, product, and. Price. Price what people what people well the people that make up your business. I think those are important What about the people that you're providing the product or service to? Yeah, stakeholders are that too? Okay, those are all people that have to be in place for all the other three to work and vice versa Mmm, so if you don't have the right people making the product or buying the product or buying the product Or you don't have the proper staff or you don't have a demand.
Nobody, there's not a demand for the product, then all the other things are irrelevant. You know, like if your price is off, you're going to get less sales because maybe the price is off. You know why there's sales in stores? Jawad, do you know why there's sales in stores? To bring the people in the doors.
No. It's, oops, I accidentally bought too much. I need to put it on sale so I can get the new stuff that's coming out. But that sale is still above what they paid for it. Yes, but they lose margin. They lose profit. It happens in the store all the time. Every time there's a sale, bro, I'm telling you, they bought too much.
If your company, your nursing company, didn't have you, what would they have? Someone else. If they didn't have people, if they didn't have someone with your skill level and with your knowledge, they would have no business, right? If everybody just decided to quit. What would they have? What would they be able to do?
Would they be able to function at all? Yes. How? The people that own that business are me. You? So you get a profit share? Not me, not me, not me particularly. The owners of the business that I work for, they didn't just start it and say, Oh, I'm going to hire all these people to do this job. They started and said, Hey, I can do this and this is what I'm doing.
Let me start here and then grow from there. They wouldn't be able to maintain the, uh, the demand. I think it depends on what your goals are. This is how we can probably come to a close on this is, I still don't believe capitalism is broken. I think that everything that you have described comes down to a crony capitalism, which is not true capitalism.
That is using the tools of government to dictate the winners and losers. So would you agree that true capitalism would take care of employees? I feel that yes, a true capitalism would benefit everyone, including the, the workers, the employees. Well then why didn't you just say that at the beginning? And I don't know that either of us really changed our minds, but it didn't affect our relationship.
I can see where you're coming from, and I do understand. Or how you can view capitalism as being broken. What I don't think though, is that you can separate the business from the people aspect. You are, you're a very caring person and you want people to do well. And when you see that there's that 1 percent that's taking everything, it makes you mad.
And it does. It makes me mad too. That's where I feel that it's not capitalism that did that. It's government intervention in the system that has created winners and losers. They're the ones that are picking the winners and losers. That 1%. I don't think that a true capitalism would benefit that 1 percent so much, and that's why they're afraid to try it.
I can accept that. I think that you know, when you value your time and you come to a You come up with your, what your worth is, your time, expertise, your knowledge, what you're using, what you're doing for someone, and the capitalist way would be where you both, you throw it out, this is what my worth is, and they come back and they make counter and say, well, this is how much I see that's worth is, or that worth is, and then you will negotiate to a mutually agreeable, Price price point there for your time at the end of the day, when you're all finished with that, you, you both win, they're getting your service and expertise, their, your knowledge, and you're getting compensated by what you feel is appropriate or adequately within your range of a price point for your time.
And what would you say if they didn't treat you fairly? I guess that's where my point is coming is that where people tie into it. I think if they don't treat you fairly, then you don't have to proceed with that contract or go along with what they're proposing. You're right, you don't have to, but what if it's the only means of something and I don't know the last, well, I guess you were trying to find a job last.
I haven't tried to find one in several years, but you know, you have to have a job before you quit a job. You can't, especially with responsibilities, family, you and I couldn't just quit our job. And I mean. I know I couldn't. I don't know why I'm so pasty. No, I think you're right. You do have to have a job before you quit a job, but I'm not sure how that plays into this.
Well, you were saying that if they weren't treating you fairly, that you wouldn't have to work for them. But I couldn't just, you know, some people just, I think where they get stuck is change. Change is difficult. Change is good, though, for, for me, because it means that new things are happening. Growth is happening.
Um, yeah, I, I see that point. I mentioned it to you earlier about how we view businesses. I feel you have a I think that your view is more like the business is the person Yeah. Kind of thing, and you keep them together. So whatever someone decides for the health of their business, you feel like it's almost a personal thing, not it's business related.
And for me. I can see how business and personal are very separate. Business is its own thing that doesn't have feelings. It doesn't have, it's only agenda is to make money and to provide whatever service it is or product. I think that to make a decision or the business isn't always the same as what a personal decision would be.
I do agree. that there are some people that use unscrupulous means to get to that for the business. And there should be some connection between the owner, the person in charge that's running the business and their employees. I think that's where. we can agree on is you have to do business in a moral and just way.
But what I see happening in some of these big fortune 500s or the top 1%, the one percenters as you, as we call them, not just you, we all call it that. They are almost immoral or amoral without morals when they're making business decisions. And that's where people get hurt. That's where the, the little guy.
If you will, it gets hurt and I can see it from both ways. It may be a detriment to me that I can understand that side of things because of my line of work. Sometimes I have to detach myself from a situation so I can either one cope with it or to help others cope with it and life and death situations or when someone's loved one passes away.
Sometimes I have to step back and say, all right, my interaction with the person before they died, people would confide in me and I can understand their decision making process. I can see what they're going through, but I also understand that the family, they don't want to see that. Part of them, that person, their loved one, not be there anymore.
And it hurts and nursing, you kind of have to be that rock for them so they can let their grieving process start. I can pull myself out of that situation and say, well, I know you have to make money, so do I getting back to the business side of things. I can understand what the business needs, but maybe that's where how you perceive Jack broke it was that he doesn't have that personal side.
Well, if I lay all these people off, then they're going to be broken. They won't be able to buy my product. That's not what he's thinking. He's thinking, all right, well, production costs just went down. Profit margin just went up. I just made more money for the stock market. Right. I mean, that's, that's, uh, and that's where I, where we do come to an agreement on is that the moral aspect of business, I think it should play a bigger role in capitalism to help benefit.
My major point is that the people that make the company, unless it's completely AI or robotically made. Make up the company. So if you take care of those people and there's companies that are profit sharing, they have great benefits. They take care of their people. They have a livable wage, but the majority of Americans, inflation goes up, items go up, groceries go up, everything goes up, rent goes up, but their wage stays the same.
It stayed that way for. It's still that way for over 20 years now to me would be just a better way with people having more money They will spend more money and then you'll make more money But I think where we once saw an opposition We don't really see that much different and I think that's the whole point of this exercise Is that once we've talked this through we've realized that hey, we both want what's best for the people We both now better have a better understanding of what business is We have a business here at the podcast.
We're a nonprofit and we're set out to help those that are sex trafficking victims. One day we'll make a salary, but until then, I can tell you that if our company grew to multiple people, the most important thing to me would be to take care of my people and make sure that they're taken care of. Because to me, if they don't have any outside stress, then they can focus on providing whatever product or service that I have.
But I guess it's, you know, like it's a personal. It's a personal, uh, perspective because I treat my business people as friends and it's a relationship and it's personal to me. And I think that's where our business has done best because you have trust. You guys are working on the same side of the table.
Oftentimes you go to buy a car and you're sitting on the opposite side of the table and they're trying to get one on you and you're trying to get one on them. It's just, it's the opposite. You guys are fighting against the chairs that are working together. It's not personal. Business is not personal.
Friendship's in where business begins. And I think we all forget that. We forget that. And that actually is the responsibility of these executives that are in positions of power. It's to maintain and to grow that bottom line. And the employee, the actual person, the name doesn't exist. Their personal name doesn't exist.
It's employee 2. 51 blah blah blah blah. That's the detachment and that's the detachment in America, because America itself is a corporation and every aspect of it is built upon the concept of a corporation. So when you talk about, is it dead or is it broken? It was never intended to benefit someone to, to work for a human.
It was, it was created to benefit business and free market in business for the premise of competition and financial growth. It's kind of like at what cost though. Right. Cause at what cost we, and we talked about this earlier about during the pandemic, where we, you know, we did quit, couldn't source things because we couldn't get it.
Everything shut down. It was produced outside the United States. And unfortunately, all of these things are manufactured. These things are strategically and mathematically predicted. They're all designed to happen at a certain time. These depressions that happen, they're all mathematically planned. You talk about stock markets, they're designed to crash.
The whole premise of the value of a stock being built up and then crashing is all mathematically designed. And it's not even conspiracy, it's built that way. In order for the stock to go down, for people to look, okay, let me buy this now because it's low. It's all created, all mathematically created and designed for that.
Humanity, the human, the actual person, us, it's our responsibility for us to love each other, for us to care and cover for each other. Big business and corporations, they truly don't feel like that's their responsibility. I think what Jeff's getting at is more the CEOs, the C suite people, if you will, should be more visible to the everyday worker to be out there with them.
And yes, they have the money aspect and the ordering and insurance and you know, there's a lot of stuff that goes into running a business. But they lose that human element, that human contact, because they stay in their C suite. They stay in their office, and that's all they see. They don't make that connection with the workers.
And I think some of the better companies out there, the owners are out there with the people. That's great leadership. Yes. And the, when I got my master's, there was a business aspect of it and that's what it's all about is you don't have a leader. You have, you may have a, a team, I guess it is a, it is a leader, but they don't lead from top.
down. They ask the workers, Hey, what can make your job better? And they work to improve that aspect to get that buy in from everybody. It's all about the buy in and making everybody feel wanted, needed and valued and appreciated. Greatest leaders I know serve. They started from the bottom, built their company with their hand.
They understand that the CEO that you're talking about He went to college and got a degree and they sat him in the seat and said, okay, run this, run this show. He's detached. He doesn't understand what you just said. He doesn't understand the human side of it. He only understands that he has to succeed as a CEO to grow this company.
I just saw a very remarkable story on the social medias recently. I guess Stanley, I think we talked about them before, but I'm not sure if this is the same tool maker. They make a lot of thermoses and mugs and stuff. There was a little 30 second video on like a TikTok or Instagram, I can't recall which one it was.
Where this young lady's car burnt down. It caught fire and completely destroyed the car. But her Stanley mug was still inside of it. And it was 24 hours later, she went out, grabbed her mug, and said, see, this is Sta this is really good. The ice is still in it. Well, somebody quickly went in and talked to the CEO and he's put out a video right after that.
He was very clear. He said, this is the first time and most likely will be the last time. We'll give you another, you know, some Stanley products and we're going to replace your car. Look how extreme that situation had to be in order for them to care. Wouldn't the average person. Well, everybody's looking for positive press though, too.
Yeah, they're looking for positive press, but the average hardworking American, does he really have to go that extreme for the little guy to have get any attention? I think, I think it's great. I think it catches on like wildfire that if, Hey, I heard this company did this, I'm going to buy that company stuff.
I mean, yeah, I mean, essentially you, you'd on the surface. Yeah, it's, it looks great. On the surface. Now I'd say in six months, if you went back and did a climate survey of that company and said, Hey, how is it to work for this guy? Well, if he came out personally, the CEO came out personally and put out a video at the request of people that work for him, say, Hey, check this out.
I mean, this is great publicity. Look at how good our product is. What can we do for this person because that spot alone will get more views and more. Impressions in anything that they can put on the TV most likely. Sounds like we're talking about the golden rule. What's the golden rule? Treat others as you would like to be treated.
Well, the Bible says clearly if someone prays on the corner in public, he gets his reward. He said whatever you do in secret, God will reward you. At the end of the day the reason why it's in secret because the true and true intent of doing something in secret is that It's genuine when you do something in public to get acknowledgement.
It's just that's what you want You want public you want public accolades right then and there so the greatest guys that that give back and and give to the communities They don't even want to cam around them They they don't even want to be you to know that they're actually doing it because it's genuine And they don't want the attention they want To be a blessing to someone without any attention.
It's not the guy doing good things on Tik TOK, handing people money to some degree, again, anything good is good. But when you genuinely have a genuine heart to really be a blessing to someone. And if you have the power to change their life, do it. You don't have to turn lights on or cameras or say action to do it.
It's kind of contradictory to what we just experienced. I have to say that I feel extremely blessed to be in the presence of both you gentlemen, not only on a consistent basis doing this podcast, but having being able to have conversations and not walking away. We're not slinging mud. We're not making fun of each other.
We're constructive. We're trying to make a change in today's society. I would like to think that everybody listening to this can say, man, what a great example of how a conversation should go when people don't see eye to eye initially. And a lot of times I think if you just talk it out, you'll notice that you're probably about 99 percent share the same thing that that person is.
And it's just. I honestly thought that Travis thought that the corporations are doing the right thing. I kind of feel that at this, at the end of this conversation that, No, he agrees that the people are important and that we should take care of them. Where I thought maybe he didn't think that before. But it took the conversation.
Didn't happen any other way. Yes, I still feel that corporations They can't, or businesses, they don't do right or wrong. It's the people that own and run them that do the right and wrong. And that's, that's where it comes down to. And that's what I mean by detaching myself from the business side. All right, this is what the businesses are designed to do.
This is what it's going to do and what it needs to do to be a positive business for whoever. But taking care of that, the people that work for you or the customers that you serve, that takes that human connection. Stanley Cup was a good example of a human element adding to the value of a corporation.
Absolutely. I feel blessed to be in the presence of you two gentlemen. And that we get to navigate this world that we live in, the turmoil and the good part of life. Yeah, I really feel that some of the key takeaways are to be in a debate or to be respectful. Allow someone to finish their thought and to really listen to what they're saying.
And try not very difficult, but try not to have an emotional response. For me, um, everything is spiritual. You go back to what For me, what pleases God and my responsibility is to love my neighbor as I would love myself. I would never put myself in a situation that I wouldn't be sensitive enough to care for someone else about.
That sustains you in life. That's happiness. That's balance. That's peace for me. This podcast. Um, does that it's a platform for people for hope let's inject information to the people so that they can have a reason to hope for better and that's what the collective perspective. So everybody thanks for listening.
Peace out
