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March 23, 2023 - The Charlie Kirk Show
36:30
The Joy of Entrepreneurship with Venture Capitalist Vic Keller
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Time Text
Humble Roots to Multiple Businesses 00:14:43
Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.
Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus.
I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.
Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.
I want to thank Charlie.
He's an incredible guy.
His spirit, his love of this country, he's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created.
Turning point USA.
We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
That's why we are here.
Brought to you by my friends, Andrew and Todd at Sierra Pacific Mortgage, 888, 888, 1172 or Andrew and Todd.com.
Welcome back, everybody.
We live in a great country, and in this country, we have amazing stories of success.
One of the pieces of feedback I receive from young people is how can I be successful?
All I hear is this negativity on campus.
Well, we want to introduce you to one of the most successful entrepreneurs in the country, Vic Keller.
Vic, welcome to the program.
Thank you, Charlie.
Glad to be here.
You have several businesses, and I mean, the success could go on and on and on.
Tell us your story.
Man, my story is one of coming from humble roots.
I just remember being 14 years old and trying to convince McDonald's I was 15 years old so I could get a job.
And from there, I just had a bunch of jobs.
And then by the time I was, I think, 23, 24 years old, I really understood that I wanted to be an entrepreneur.
I was working at JP Morgan and was learning some great stuff, but I realized I was on the wrong side of the table for really how I was wired.
I wanted to be that entrepreneur that was, you know, controlling those commercial banking accounts and building enterprise and being capitalistic.
We live in the greatest country in the world.
And we're losing part of it, but boy, there's so many great stories that come out of a free market.
Oh, it's, I mean, the free market enterprise we have here is unbelievable.
So just really at 23, 24 years old, started thinking about it at 25, pulled the trigger, started my first business.
And, you know, it sounds complex and daunting when you think about starting a business, but it wasn't.
I talked a couple of my best friends into joining me and went online, formed an LLC and got a website, and I was in business.
What were you selling?
You know, my first business was in the automotive industry and I was selling products and services in the automotive industry.
And it was an absolutely fast-paced, high-energy.
A lot of hustle, but high margin, high margin, a lot of room for error.
I learned when I was young.
I like high-margin businesses.
Okay.
And they really provide a lot of opportunity for fun, expansion, growth, and stuff.
High margin, high volume.
If you find those two, they're the best.
It's the best.
You just need good people as well.
So you were 25.
Did you go to college?
I did.
Got it.
I did.
I went to an Ivy League university called Texas Tech.
Lubbock, Lubbock, Texas.
Lubbock, Texas, man.
That is the Dartmouth of the South.
No, it's not.
It's actually wonderful.
I love Lubbock.
Great people there.
So you're 25 and you just say, I want to start a business.
Did you have that from a young age, kind of that entrepreneurial mindset?
Did somebody nudge you?
Was there kind of an attitude change?
Or do you always want to be the guy in charge?
You know, so my parents are both just blue-collar workers and work really hard to this day.
My dad is an automotive mechanic, and that's my stepdad.
My real dad's an electrician.
My mom sells flooring.
And so that was kind of the roots I came from.
But I had a grandmother that always told me I could do anything.
And she said, you can do anything.
And I listened to her and I believed it because it was so encouraging and empowering.
And she was a custom home builder.
And so I had a little bit of a taste of seeing what it looked like to be an entrepreneur.
And I really studied all my friends' parents and what they did.
And I noticed the ones that had really boring corporate jobs weren't having a lot of fun.
And the ones that were having a lot of fun were the ones that were taking risks and living for the mystery of being an entrepreneur.
And I said, this is what I want to do.
So that was my motivation.
And I said, let's go.
You know, I felt like I didn't have much to lose when I was 24, 25 years old.
I did have a young family, yes.
Young family, but was wow.
Okay, that's even harder.
So, you then went from automotive parts to what?
You have a whole portfolio of businesses now, but walk us through the story.
Yeah, so the story is this: I started my first company in the automotive industry, and I learned the concept of vertically integrating.
So, what I learned is that if I could really get to know my customer and what their problems were, that there were plentiful opportunities to start additional companies.
And so, over the course of about 10 years, I started 10 different initiatives, which really turned into 10 different businesses, all the way from products and services to the last business I launched in the automotive industry was a B2B e-commerce technology company.
But all of that was by studying my customer and really understanding what their problems are.
And that alone gave me just more fuel than I would ever need to start businesses.
When you started, especially in the first couple of years, did you have a business plan or did you just have desire and energy?
Because that's young people, all these students say, Well, I'm studying entrepreneurship in college.
I think it's the greatest waste of time ever.
Yeah, I don't think you study entrepreneurship.
I mean, having been an entrepreneur for 10 years, in my own regard, you do entrepreneurship and then you adjust and you adapt.
Do you agree with that?
100%.
Yeah, I, my business plan, if I ever had one, was on one piece of paper.
I remember it well.
It had about five spheres on it, and uh, it said I was going to do these five different things.
But ultimately, I never sat down and wrote out a plan.
It was really about tenacity and drive.
And, you know, entrepreneurs always talk about taking risk and it and entrepreneurialism being wired for the risk.
I really saw it as being more about the mystery of you really didn't know what was going to happen, but you were going to go after it and you were going to be passionate and driven.
And I learned early on that I was going to be as good as the people I could surround myself with.
And the cool thing about being an entrepreneur is you can surround yourself with the smartest people in the world and you still get to keep your job because they're on your team and they're working with you.
There's talk about how you select people on your team because that's a question a lot of young entrepreneurs give me: how do I select people and understand the different types of personality?
Not everyone wants to be in charge.
Some people want to be operators.
Some people are relational.
Some people have a lot of love of process.
I'm sure you learned a lot very quickly as soon as you're the one that has to assume all the risk.
You know, the best way I've found to assess people is just always be interviewing, always talk to people.
I had a great business partner when I was very young, very successful multi-billionaire.
And I remember he spent most of his time interviewing and talking to people, and I took note of that.
And so I've tried to emulate that.
But ultimately, I'm not looking for a college degree.
Yeah.
I'm looking for someone that is tenacious, that's driven, that's committed, that's really a curious, ferocious learner, someone that just wants to keep learning, that's diving into education, whether it be through podcast, whether it be through having great mentors, whether it be through reading, whatever it is.
I'm looking for that mindset.
I totally agree.
And ultimately, I look for people that are outcome-driven, right?
I mean, in business, there is a scoreboard.
Participation ribbons really don't matter.
There's a scoreboard.
You know, if you're winning or you're losing, it's called net income.
It's your profitability.
That's your insurance.
It gets success.
And so I try to find people that truly understand how to deliver outcomes.
People that are competitive, I love people that have a background in sports is very interesting to me.
So I've always looked for people that are just driven and motivated.
And you sold some of your companies to Warren Buffett.
Is that right?
You know, I was in a very unique situation where my companies were successfully acquired by Berkshire Hathaway.
When?
In 2015.
Did you own a railroad?
No, I did not own a railroad.
No, I actually founded these businesses that ultimately became part of a much larger business in the automotive industry and just very fortunately had the companies acquired by Berkshire.
And so what did you learn in that process?
Oh, well, I learned a lot.
So when I was about 14 years old, I started reading business books.
Yeah.
And I did all I could to study Warren Buffett.
The Oracle of Andrew.
Yeah, and really understand how to build a business that has enterprise value and what that looked like.
I never in my life had any idea that this set of circumstances would come together.
But is what I learned is that if you build a business that is driven on profitability and truly building enterprise value and you're playing the long game, and you can align that business with super smart people, you never know who's going to knock on the door.
Let me ask you about that.
And I don't actually know the answer because this is debated.
If you're trying to drive profitability, what matters the most?
Your employees, your customers, or your shareholders.
So I'm going to give you a fourth.
Oh, okay.
So the fourth is you really have to be missionally focused.
I mean, everybody's.
It's mission above the profit.
Of course.
Yeah, missionally focused.
I mean, ultimately, you've all got to be heading in the same direction doing the same thing.
For me, I measure the success of every business I have based on profitability.
I have no idea how to spend revenue.
I know how to spend that income, and I like that.
So profitability is definitely the outcome.
Yeah, I'm just curious.
I love learning about this.
So let's take one of your businesses you sold to Berkshire.
Can you give an example of what were you making or what were you doing?
Yeah, the businesses I was in, they were not sexy.
So one of the companies that I started when I was in that 25-year-old range was an automotive specialty chemical business.
That is niche.
Yeah, it's called Zach Products.
And I founded that company.
And just to give you some high-level economics, we made a product that cost a couple dollars to make.
And we sold it for $12 to $15 a piece.
And that left, by the way, a lot of margin, very high profit margins.
So we were able to really invest in the education, the people, and the process that went around the product together.
I can see why Warren Buffett bought that company.
He loves companies like that, that are stable, that are kind of annuities, basically.
You're never going to not need it, right?
And he does an amazing job, you know, buying companies that most people have.
Well, it's a great compliment to you.
The diligence, he doesn't make, he doesn't buy bad companies.
I mean, so it's he has he has done a couple bad bets.
I shouldn't say that.
Like he thought he thought Apple was a waste of time for a couple years.
Well, he came around.
Eventually, yeah, and then he put about $200 billion behind it.
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So I asked you, and it's a tough question, right?
Because all of them matter, right?
So, but in your particular business, it was about driving profitability.
How do you balance that with quality?
You know, I think every business, their greatest risk is to lose quality.
Quality is number one.
So you have to have quality.
Obviously, profitability is a derivative of quality in many cases.
But for us, every business I've ever been in, we just have not had the luxury of having subpar quality.
So we've always focused on quality.
And as I said earlier, I love margin.
I love margin.
Yeah, so how do you balance margin with doing something beautiful?
Well, the more, I mean, my experience has been the better quality product you make and the better brand that you can deliver to the marketplace, the higher price you could charge.
And ultimately, the more margin you're going to have.
So I think your greatest insurance against protecting margin is to have undeniably the absolute best quality product or service that you have in the marketplace.
And if you have that and it's undeniable, I don't think you get beat up on pricing as much.
Yeah, and that's contrarian to how some people try to flood the market with cheap nonsense, right?
Or they try to, you know, erode the quality, you know, do things overseas and all that sort of stuff.
So let me, so you, you, you're, one of your life's calling is to raise up other world-class leaders and innovators.
We have a massive crisis in our country of a decline of entrepreneurship.
We do.
I think it's because we're sending too many kids to college.
You can feel free to disagree.
I think that college kills entrepreneurs.
But why is it happening and how do we fix it?
Yeah.
So I think it's happening because the education system that's in place is definitely not aligned with the skill set and the tactical knowledge that someone needs to have to be an entrepreneur.
Quite candidly, the education and the information that you need to be an entrepreneur is far less complex and complicated, in my opinion, than what you learn in traditional academia.
I also believe that your vision needs to be based on your knowledge.
And ultimately, we have a lot of people in our country that unfortunately have a vision based on hope and aspiration, and they really don't have the knowledge behind what it takes to deliver that.
So look, I had a great experience in college.
I'm glad I went to college.
I worked 80 hours a week, waiting tables, and somehow found time to go to college and may have had a few cocktails along the way.
We don't drink in Lubbock.
Yeah, we didn't drink in Lubbock.
Keeping Customers Under Pressure 00:05:34
I don't know what else we did, but I met my beautiful wife there.
So, you know, I had a great experience, but I would tell you that based on what I do today, the four years that I spent in college were not a great use of my time as it pertains to what I was doing on campus.
I just don't think our academic system is aligned with what people really need to understand to be an entrepreneur.
And I think you're a rare breed.
You are going to become an entrepreneur no matter what, based on the story you're telling me.
It's in your blood.
It's in your DNA, right?
I'm afraid of the people that are right on the edge, the people that could become entrepreneurs, and they might get saddled with debt and bad ideas.
We need a society where we have more entrepreneurs.
We have more people that are rising up and more people that are taking risks.
It's a great life.
It's an unbelievable life.
I mean, not only do you provide well for your family, but you provide well for other families.
You build a community.
And we live in the greatest country in the world, even despite our challenges.
We live in the greatest country in the world when it comes to free enterprise and capitalism.
And listen, there are some things that are challenging that right now.
But I could tell you, if entrepreneurs rally together and rise up, that's what's going to win this.
Let's, but I want to talk about, yes, it is great, but it's not for everybody because tell me, I'm sure there was a time that was a fork in the road, or maybe you had nothing but success, but where you had to probably say, I don't know if we're going to make payroll or talk about that because that's also not for everybody.
Gut check time.
Gut check, heart check, anxiety, blood pressure.
You know, I mean, any asking the banker to extend the line of credit.
All of them.
Check, right?
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, being an entrepreneur is not for everyone.
Being involved in an entrepreneur.
Yeah, being involved in an entrepreneurial environment, I believe, is for everyone because it's healthy, it's invigorating, it's life-giving, and it's opportunistic because as the business grows, it creates opportunity for everyone involved, unlike big bureaucratic organizations.
So, you know, I cannot tell you.
I mean, I remember in probably 2007 or 8, we were in a hurry to ship some product to one of our customers at an automotive dealership, and we were shipping it from Dallas, Texas, trying to get it to California.
And we couldn't get it there fast enough.
We thought we were going to lose the customer.
And I had a shipping manager that had the bright idea that we were going to put these highly flammable chemicals via an overnight flight.
And sure enough, the product leaked, didn't cause any damage, but the plane had to make an emergency landing.
You're kidding.
No, and it was a bad situation.
Well, then you had to pay, probably.
Was it not on you?
Or was it insured?
I can tell you, people always say they don't want the IRS knocking on their front door.
The FAA knocking at your front door is even more anxious-ridden.
I think that's exactly right.
Yeah, so they came to my office and they wanted to meet.
That's not a civil investigative demand.
That is, it was a very dynamic story.
People don't know.
The FAA has arrest authority, too.
They do.
They have handcuffs.
They don't use it a lot.
So we had about a million-dollar fine that we had to deal with.
And the good news is.
Right before 08.
Yeah.
The good news.
Yeah.
Literally 07.
The good news is that we were able to settle.
Wow.
And the guy that made the mistake, the FAA shows up.
They give us, they scare the heck out of me.
We have a big fine.
We end up negotiating it down.
And then I had to deal with my shipping manager that decided, you know, he was going to put some product on a FedEx plane that only needed to be shipped around because it was a highly flammable, combustible chemical product.
And so I had a big decision to make.
And you talk about what allows businesses to succeed.
And I think a big part of what allows businesses to succeed is not giving up on people and making the investment and growing and developing people.
So the guy that made this horrible move, I put my arm around him.
It may have been more like a headlock, but I put my arm around him and explained him the mistake he made, told him what he cost the company.
And he said, I guess I have to quit.
And I said, you know, this was a very expensive education that we just paid for for you.
No way we're going to let you out of here that easy.
And to this day, he's still with wildly successful.
But yeah, it was tough.
And I have, you know, Charlie, you ask about these stories of making payroll.
You know, there were definitely a lot of tough days of knowing if we were going to make, not knowing if we were going to make payroll or not.
But we also had some product failures early on where customers really could have given up on us.
I remember we had a product that we launched in 2003, 2004 that measured the tire pressure of automobiles.
And we pre-installed this product on 400 vehicles.
That's 1,600 tires.
And our commitment with this product was that tires were going to stay properly inflated because of this product that we brought to market.
And we installed these products in Phoenix, Arizona in July.
And there was a plastic seal, and we had 1,600 flat tires.
So the very opposite of what we said we were going to do.
We had a customer call us that had 400 vehicles on their dealership lot and they had 1,600 flat tires.
And there was a lot of screaming and yelling that was going on.
But ultimately, you know, I got to.
I didn't know it can get to 132 degrees.
Yeah, exactly.
I had no idea, right?
And then on asphalt, it gets hot hotter than that.
Hot, hot.
And so ultimately, we had to re-engineer that product overnight.
We ended up keeping the customer.
Wow.
And we sold that product into the marketplace for another 10 years, and we never had that happen again.
But, you know, I have found that customers that you collaborate with, that you work with, that you bring into the fold of what you're trying to do, that they're not only your best customers, they become your best friends.
And I had a lot of people as I was building businesses that, you know, there was no work-life separation.
We were friends.
Re-engineering for Extraordinary Growth 00:16:11
We did life together.
And I would sit them down and say, hey, what can I do to do better to serve you more?
And let me tell you, customers are willing to tell you what you can do to serve them better.
And that is something you should listen to.
You have a company here.
Tell us about it, Christensen Arms.
Yeah, Christensen Arms is an outdoor sporting good company primarily in the bolt action rifle space.
And we're kind of the hottest firearm in America right now.
Beautiful stuff.
Yeah, we focus on hunters.
We focus on people that are out in the field, whether it be women, men, children, families that are out hunting.
And we build highly sophisticated rifles that are built around accuracy, primarily built on a carbon fiber stock chassis and with carbon fiber barrels.
But an amazing, amazing company.
I have some great, great partners in that business with me.
And we had the opportunity to make an investment in the business just about three and a half years ago.
And today we're kind of the hottest thing that's in this space that we're in.
And we're pressing hard every day to make sure we keep that spot.
So mostly bolt action long.
Yeah, most both, yeah, bolt action, long-range hunting rifles are really our specialty.
We make a few other products, but that's really what we focus most of our time.
And business is pretty good?
Business is great.
We have amazing people.
We have amazing customers and business is really good.
You know, obviously during COVID, a lot of people learned about the outdoors, all the way from taking on shooting as a sport to hunting to just being outside.
And it certainly helped our business in a big way.
But we've been able to maintain the momentum.
So let's talk more broadly, more macro.
You're involved in a lot of businesses.
One of the ways that I think the three enterprise system is being put in jeopardy is inflation and the central bank policies.
What are your thoughts?
You know, I think that we are in an environment right now where government's trying to be big and they don't exactly know where their place is and what they need to do.
But one place that I feel like government does have a place, if any, is in helping us have regulatory systems around banking.
I think that's really important that we have that.
As Americans, I know we want to make sure we have a sovereign, strong banking system in place.
And I think that's a place the government can help us.
And they completely failed.
They completely failed.
So the one place that, you know, we really need our government to take a hold, being good fiduciaries, make sure that there's compliance across the banking institution network, and they completely failed us.
So I think it's a tragedy.
I think it's sad and it's completely unnecessary.
You know, the bank that was a catalyst that really caused all of this to start, which obviously is nowhere near over, we're just beginning, had very poor management systems and processes in place.
And, you know, I think the victim of what's happened with the banking system over the last few weeks are not the banks.
It's the tens of thousands of entrepreneurs and the hundreds of thousands of employees that are that are missionally driven, that are trying to build extraordinary businesses.
And who to think in the United States of America that we could have a bank that fails?
And it's happened before, but it's so rare.
We've had three.
Yeah, three.
Signature Silicon Valley, there was a third, but yeah.
Unbelievable.
And we had, you know, I mean, as early as this morning, another big bank stocks just cratering.
It looks like they may be in trouble.
I think it's, I don't, I don't want to say the name because I don't remember it, but it's big.
It's big, big, big in the headlines.
But the reality is that's something in our country we shouldn't have to worry about.
And we're worried about it because the government just, quite candidly, didn't do their job.
I mean, and it's, and the fact that we have all of these bailouts in place and now we're bailing out the bank.
But are we really bailing out the bank?
I don't know about you, Charlie, but I'm excited to get my stock certificate for what I'm going to own of these banks since I know my tax dollars are towards buying it.
So I can, maybe I own a bank.
Well, I'm afraid we're going to nationalize the bank soon.
And the whole thing is so messed up in so many different ways.
And it's a buy.
The central bank just, we've had way too much money created in the last couple of years.
Asset prices are out of control.
Inflation is out of control.
And these banks, they were able to get drunk on the sugar high of low interest rates.
It does not take a genius to make money in low interest rates.
It takes geniuses to make money in this market.
I mean, absolutely.
And to navigate this.
Now, we're going to see who's really a good business person.
When you have the lowest interest rates ever, everybody's making money.
Okay.
Money's cheap.
Ideas look great.
It's flowing.
Which kind of is a segue.
Where do you see the opportunity in this current market?
Because you have KLV capital, right?
I'm just kind of going to the website now.
It's super interesting.
Are you in a passive posture, a neutral?
Are you in retreat?
Are you leaning in?
What do you see as an opportunity right now?
Because some things are getting less expensive.
Some things are getting more expensive.
Valuations are really confusing right now.
What sectors do you see opportunities in?
So from a macro perspective right now, I am very bullish on where we're going to be in the long term.
How long is that long term?
You know, I think when I think about it, I probably think of 10 years.
Okay.
That's very, very long term.
Yeah.
So I probably think of 10 years of where it's going to be.
So I'm looking for where the opportunity, you know, it's much like Buffett's mentality, right?
Is really when the markets are down is when the time is to buy or when things are.
But are they even down yet?
That's the we don't even know.
You know, I don't know.
I'm not an economist, but I can tell you this: I don't think it's going to be as bad as some are suggesting.
I don't think it's going to be 08.
I don't think it's going to be 08.
I think housing will be regional.
I think Sunbelt will go down 10, 15, but maybe even have a little bit of an uptick soon.
So I'm looking for opportunities.
Where are you across the board?
I'm looking.
I love, here's what I love.
I love experiential businesses that have great profit margins.
Experiential.
So like amusement parks, you mean?
No, like not.
Something that those are great businesses, by the way.
No, they're incredibly high margin.
And the real estate is the real business.
A business where you can really differentiate yourself in the market and you're not a commodity where you can do something different, right?
And you could think about, you know, a great story as there were, you know, hundreds and thousands of coffee shops around before Starbucks came.
But as Starbucks came to market, they really took a blocking and tackling business and they made it experiential.
And it's been wildly successful because of that.
So I look at opportunities to innovate and really where you can take products and you could innovate.
You could take services and innovate is what I'm so passionate about.
And so I love, I love a lot of different sectors.
I love tech, but I also like hard products.
I like services companies.
And so for right now, there's two things I'm looking at: businesses that are great value buys, which, by the way, there's some that are starting to come available because the economy is a little off.
And the ERC is drying up.
All this COVID bridge money is gone.
It's gone.
You're going to start to see real businesses from not so real businesses.
Oh, it's happening every Sunday.
I'm sure you're getting calls every day.
Every day.
Is what I'm most excited about is extraordinary talent.
I am hired.
People.
I love amazing people.
I love creative people.
And so right now, as I read this morning that Facebook's laying off, I believe another, or no, it's Amazon.
They're laying off another 10,000 people.
And, you know, and I'm like, who are they?
I want to know who they are.
I want to know their background.
I want to know who's a top performer.
I want to know everything I can because every business that I'm in today, our growth and our success is totally dependent upon having extraordinary people that make the business grow.
So I'm bullish on the talent that's out there.
And I'm definitely bullish on, I think there's going to be an opportunistic time to buy.
But in our companies right now, let me tell you what we're doing.
We are absolutely sharpening our pencil.
We're building the tightest models we ever have.
We're trying to gain operating leverage.
And operating leverage is really hard.
So when you have margin contraction and you have supply chain issues and you have costs going up in every area, it's hard to really optimize your operating margins.
But we're working really hard at it.
And yesterday I was with one of my teams all day and we were going through our model figuring out how can we protect this business and protect our margin in a down economy.
And so it's gotten hard.
You know, it's funny, we talk about banking and they require, in businesses that I'm in, some of them have leverage, right?
Some of them have leverage, some of them have debt.
Hopefully good ratios, but great ratios.
But the reality of it is the banks require us to have the most extraordinary models in the world to make sure we're well protected.
They don't even have that for themselves.
That's what I was going to say.
It's unbelievable.
It's unbelievable.
Such frauds.
Yeah.
So at any rate, that's what we're doing.
But I'm excited about the opportunities that are going to be out there.
And for me, every business I've ever been a part of has been about having extraordinary people.
And so I think the more of a bench I can have of extraordinary talent gives me more opportunity to go seek opportunity, to go buy companies, which I love to do.
And you're going to be getting a lot of calls to buy companies and start companies.
And you're right.
At this time, it's somewhat about surviving and outlasting your competitors because there's so many goofy market signals.
It's really hard to forecast this moment.
It changes every day.
Well, yeah, I mean, over the weekend, I called some really smart rich people I know and asked them just about real estate because things are starting to go down a little bit here.
And I said, what do you think is going to happen?
From the range of spectrum, I'm talking about really rich, smart people.
They go, okay, Charlie's going to be worse than 08.
It's going to be Nicaragua to actually, I think high-income housing is going to pick up over the summer.
And it's all, you know, I think that the buyer's market, if you blinked, you already missed it.
I'm like, that's a really, you have two really smart rich people that are completely disagreeing.
So I just think it's guessing is where we're at right now.
Yeah.
Oh, I've got great friends that are in the multifamily home business.
And, you know, that's gotten really challenging here in the last couple of months.
No kidding.
But the luxury market does continue to prevail.
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So, Vic, I want to talk about ESG.
I think this is a big threat because I am bullish on the future of America Economic.
We have so much pent-up talent.
We have so many entrepreneurs.
We have so many assets.
At the same time, we got so many problems.
I mean, we talk about the problems all day long, but I think ESG is a structural problem that if we don't sort this out and put this to bed, it could be a massive hindrance on our growth.
Do you agree?
I fully agree.
I think it is very politically driven, obviously.
It is hard to make sense out of.
If you're someone that is held accountable and responsible for building businesses that are going to financially support the economy and financially support families, and you think about profitability and you think about the long game, it's really hard to figure out where ESG comes into play.
Obviously, we all have, as Americans, we have tremendous responsibility to be good stewards of this earth, of the people, of everything that we want to talk about.
As capitalists, we're charged with that as well.
But to have such a nebulous, strange policy in place.
It's a social credit system, isn't it?
It just makes no sense.
It makes no sense at all.
And I have businesses that it affects more than others, but I can tell you when I look at whether it be net income or whether I look at EBITDA, it's not like EBITDA plus ESG.
Well, let's give an example, right?
So you have Christians and Arms.
Yeah, great company.
If somebody that does the ESG rating is an anti-gun person, they could just say you have a bad rating because you don't have social governance because I don't like that you make guns.
It's very unfortunate how our political system seems to be very lenient towards people that are on their side and quite the opposite for others.
So ESG is a big problem.
Let's talk just in closing about the opportunity.
A lot of young people in this audience, what is your advice?
I know that's a big question.
Words of wisdom, things to share for a young person right now in the country.
Yeah.
So first of all, it's a challenging time, but with adversity comes opportunity.
And I believe that the generations right now that are in school are going to have an unbelievable runway of opportunity because of, quite candidly, a lot of misfits that are in place right now that'll go away.
So my motivation is learn things that are practical, that are practical, that are real.
Gain knowledge in areas that ultimately are real.
If you look at businesses that are just driving revenue and are hype, you know, go look at their financial statement.
Go look at their financial statement.
There's a lot of hype.
Yeah, yeah.
Get away from the hype.
I can tell you right now, I'm not a profound intellect.
I didn't spend a ton of time in academia.
If you are creative, if you treat people well, if you work hard and ultimately do the right thing, this company is really rewarding.
But you need to be educated.
That's my concern with a lot of tech companies, though.
It should be.
Users is how they generate, but that's how they have value.
Have no have no idea how to monetize that.
They haven't figured it out in a lot of cases.
And, you know, I'm not, I love tech companies.
I'm an investor in tech.
I own some tech companies.
Tech's great.
But at the end of the day, be a part of a business that makes a profit, that makes a real profit.
It's the best insurance you could ever have for success.
And if you're, you know, a young emerging business person, whether you're going to be a professional or you're going to be an entrepreneur, so you're going to work for a company or you're going to be an entrepreneur, you want to be entrepreneurly-minded.
Yes.
And so we spend a lot of time.
I have a program today where we train up young professionals and entrepreneurs on how to really go tactically execute in business without having to go to college.
Get rich slowly.
Yeah.
And that's the best.
Build wealth.
That's the best advice somebody gave me, Charlie.
Get rich, slowly.
And it's like, okay, that, you know, the issue about a profit-driven business is it's not going to get a 10, you know, 1,500 times, you know, EBITDA or earning valuation or user valuation, right?
No, it's going to have a nice, you know, profit and it'll pay the bills and you'll have low debt and you'll be able to then build a life from that.
Try to be a workhorse, not a unicorn.
Yeah.
And that's where they say, I want to be the next Jack Dorsey.
I want to be the next Mark Zuckerberg.
You're not.
Yeah.
Right.
But you can have a nice profitable business and then you can do other things.
And that's actually the stable.
I think we're going to hope.
I think we're going to have a whole market signal back to legitimate value creation.
Completely.
Because there's a lot of vapor.
I mean, look at a lot of the crypto.
I love crypto.
I'm an investor.
Same.
And I've actually done pretty well despite all this nonsense.
But a lot of people have lost money because a lot of it was vapor and smoke screen and all that.
I think banks are going to get smarter as well.
Well, they better.
I mean, they have no choice or else the entire financial system will collapse.
Vic Keller, thank you so much.
This was great.
Thank you, Charlie.
Check out the website.
Also, Christensen Arms.
Go buy a rifle.
And I know that I don't know if I have a Christensen Arms yet, but I will.
Well, it's great.
I love shooting, so it's great.
And hunting as well.
So go to vickeller.com.
Great wisdom.
Vic, thank you so much.
Thank you, Charlie.
Email us freedom at charliekirk.com.
God bless you and God bless this great country.
Thanks so much, everybody.
We'll speak to you soon.
For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk dot com.
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