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Sept. 11, 2020 - PBD - Patrick Bet-David
01:57:11
Bet-David Podcast | Guest: Matt Sapaula | EP 10

FaceTime or Ask Patrick any questions on https://minnect.com/ Patrick Bet-David Podcast Episode 10. Download the podcasts on all your favorite platforms https://bit.ly/3sFAW4N Text: PODCAST to 310.340.1132 to get added to the distribution list Follow Matt on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/matthewsapaulainc The BetDavid Podcast is a podcast that discusses, current events, trending topics, and politics as they relate to life and business. Stay tuned for new episodes and guest appearances. Connect with Patrick on social media: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/patrickbetdavid/?hl=en Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/patrickbetdavid Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PatrickBetDavid.Valuetainment Follow the guests in this episode: Adam Sosnick: https://bit.ly/2PqllTj Matt Sapaula: https://bit.ly/3mfspRS Share your thoughts with Patrick Bet-David about this first episode on Twitter http://www.twitter.com/patrickbetdavid To reach the Valuetainment team you can email: info@valuetainment.com About the host: Patrick is a successful startup entrepreneur, CEO of PHP Agency, Inc., emerging author, and Creator of Valuetainment on Youtube. As a natural critical thinker, Patrick takes complex leadership, management, and entrepreneurial ideas and converts them into simple life lessons for today and tomorrow’s entrepreneurs. Patrick is passionate about shaping the next generation of leaders by teaching thought-provoking perspectives on entrepreneurship and disrupting the traditional approach to a career.

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Time Text
I just won't stop saying rapatone, papatone, rapatone, datarone.
So that might be a problem.
Okay, ready live.
All right.
So can they see us?
Can they hear us?
That's all I need to know.
All right.
Good to see you.
Folks, it's good to be on with you.
Today we have a special guest with us, my brother here, Matthew Sopala, a former Marine who is now the chief distribution officer of PHP Agency, which is obviously no pressure, but I'm excited to have you here on the podcast.
Honor to be here, PBD.
Thank you.
We got our buddy here, Adam Sosnik back.
Fellas, we have a lot to cover today.
Obviously, what makes it special about today's podcast, today's on 9-11, which we'll spend some time talking about that here in a minute on where all of us were at on 9-11.
I'd be curious to know this.
Obviously, we know where Kai was at.
We know where Sam was at.
You know, these guys were in Fetuses, 9-11-01?
No, not yet.
You were three years old, but some of them possibly Fetuses.
So, I mean, let me share with you what we've got to cover with you here today.
If you're watching this, press the thumbs up if you're here with us.
Share the podcast if you're on with us here.
We got a lot of topics.
One of them is a documentary I just recently watched that I want to share with you, which accidentally, one of my friends, Robert, ends up sending this to me in the middle of the night, and I'm looking at this saying, We just talked about this on the podcast.
He says it's crazy because I didn't even watch the podcast today, and it was talked about.
That's what's crazy about the timing of this documentary he sent, which we'll talk about in a minute here.
Some updates about Goldman Sachs, but what they're predicting with the GDP.
I think it's important for most of us to want to notice.
The merger that was supposed to take place between Tiffany's and Louis Vuitton is not looking too good.
Amazon hires an interesting ex-NSA spy chief to work with them.
Netflix culture, because of Reed Hastings' name coming up a lot lately.
Twitter is trying to sublease their space in San Francisco.
So Twitter, Jack Dorsey, and Netflix, Reed Hastings, have complete opposite philosophies on work environment.
We'll talk about that.
And then Citigroup hires their new latest female board challenge.
U.S. firms add a black director to board within 12 months.
You even saw Kanye West today messaging saying, I'm not on the board seat of Adidas, and I'm not on the board seat of Gap.
And I wonder, how is Kanye West not on the board seat of Adidas?
That's a very valid point on why you wouldn't put the guys selling those shoes.
You probably want to have his perspective there.
Then some things with TikTok.
Then you got Germany putting pressure on Russia, hacking taking place in election with Russia, China, and Iran.
And then rental properties in Manhattan, which are tough to find, are easy to find right now for a specific reason.
But let's first talk about 9-11.
Let's get right into 9-11.
So if you're listening to this, I'm curious, where were you in 9-11?
But more curious about you guys.
Matt, where were you on 9-11?
I was in a uniform.
I just got out of the Marine Corps and I enlisted with the Illinois National Guard.
So I was a crew chief on a Blackhawk.
And I was on my way to the base.
I just dropped off my son.
That's cool.
I think Ruben was in fourth or fifth grade.
Just dropped him off at school.
And they called me.
Hey, Sopaul, hurry up, get in here.
What's going on?
Somebody flew a plane into the Twin Towers.
Why would somebody fly a Cessna?
There was a pilot lost?
That's what I was thinking.
I thought it was a small Cessna.
Yeah, I thought it was a Cessna.
I thought it was a pilot that pilot Ari got lost and maybe it was cloudy that day and boom, Twin Towers.
So I get into the radio room.
We're all there because we're all kind of looking at the TV, looking all weird at the TV, like, okay, a lot of smoke is coming out the buildings.
I said, that just can't be assessed now.
I mean, what is the snow?
And next thing you know, boom, the second aircraft.
I'm like, what are we watching here, guys?
Is this Die Hard?
Are you guys watching Die Hard?
I thought it was the best.
You really haven't seen it.
And everybody was just looking at the TV in shock.
Our mouths are starting to drop.
Quiet.
Quiet.
Guys, we're being freaking attacked.
Holy shit.
So we're gearing up.
And we're already in uniform to do a training mission.
I said, this is about to go from a training mission to either rescue or a counterattack mission.
And we're about to fly.
We're from Chicago.
So we're about to fly to New York.
What's going on?
And so, right, as soon as that happened, they grounded all the aircraft, non-essential, or FAA grounded everybody.
Everybody was pissed.
A couple days later, a day later, the New York National Guard was in our area.
They were with us at the Midway Airport.
And they were calling home.
They couldn't get a hold of anybody.
The cell towers are down.
It was just an odd scenario.
But that was the day.
And then right after we saw that on TV, I went to the school.
I said, listen, I don't know what's going on.
So I picked up my kids.
The teachers came out crying.
Is there something going to happen at the school?
Is there something going to happen?
I'm just picking up my son.
I'm just picking up my son.
I'm sitting back home.
So therefore, I can deploy if I need to.
But it's a very eerie day for me.
What is a day for you?
And just so people understand who Matt is, you had already been in Desert Storm in the early 90s.
Yeah, right.
I mean, talk about that a little bit because this is almost a decade later, and now you might have to go back again.
And that was the biggest thing that we were talking about.
I said, well, if we just took care of business the first time we were there.
Damn.
So it would never happen.
It would never happen.
That's the first thing I remember.
That's what you were thinking.
That's what we were thinking.
So what do you mean, take care of business?
Because we were there.
It was a four-day, five-day war?
In Desert Storm.
So for our younger audience out there, this happened in 91.
Yep.
And it happened under the first President Bush.
Yep.
Desert Storm.
Schwarzson.
Yep.
Swarzkoff.
Swarzkov.
And so that's what we're saying.
If we were just taking care of it.
But then again, we don't know.
We're armchair quarterback in this whole thing.
I didn't know how deep it was.
But, you know, we got in and got out.
And, you know, and to see this happening again, the reason, and here's what we're saying as young man, we want to fight these wars, so therefore our kids don't have to.
And here we are, 17, 18 years still over there.
Still freaking fighting these wars.
Yeah, my story is not as heroic as Matt's.
I was a.
Oh, by far anywhere.
Well, I mean, you had already been over there and you had served.
I was a senior in college and getting ready to enter the real world.
That was, you know, where were you?
I was at 9:30.
I was in my apartment in Tallahassee, Florida, at Florida State University, home of the Seminoles.
I was living with like a duplex of eight buddies.
Yeah.
Right?
Like four on one side and four on one side.
Black guy, a French guy, a Colombian guy, a couple Jewish guys, you know, white, like MAGA type of guy.
We had the most eclectic crew at Florida State.
And I just remember one of our buddies, because this happened at, was it 8 a.m.?
Was it a little bit before that?
Yeah, I mean.
Right around then.
And I remember we were all just kind of getting ready to go to class.
Everyone's getting up and showered.
I remember just all standing there, all different types of people, diversity, and all just all Americans.
And being like, what the actual is happening right now?
Yeah.
And no one had any clue.
We weren't like, oh, it's an attack.
It's freaking a couple of Saudi Arabians.
Like, we had no idea.
I actually had class at 9 a.m.
I'll never forget.
And I remember I went to school, like having no clue what was happening.
I get to class.
They said, no, class is canceled.
Like, get out of here.
And I was like, okay.
So you take this, like a campus bus.
And I remember sitting on the bus back to my apartment.
People of all different age, shapes, sizes are sitting there like, what's going on?
What is going on?
Who are you?
Can I trust you?
Was it loud?
Was it quiet?
Quiet.
You can hear a pin drop in a bus.
When do you ever hear that?
So scary stuff.
And obviously, times have completely changed since that day.
I know you have a crazy story.
So I was, it was my second day at Morgan Stanley Dean Wooder.
9.10 was my first day.
Get out of here.
So it's Monday, 9-11 is Tuesday morning, 6.30.
We're at the office.
Dave Kirby holds a meeting and we're sitting there listening to him.
And then one of the brokers from the corner office screams, turn on the monitor, turn on the monitor.
We turn on the monitor to see what's going on.
And you saw the first plane.
And we watched the second plane hit live.
And I'm in the ninth floor of the New York Life building today in Glendale.
And later on, we ended up having an office in that same exact building.
Yeah, I'm the same exact.
Exactly.
Exact life of an entrepreneur building is where Morgan Stanley was with New York Life.
And I'm looking around.
Everybody's looking around the window looking for planes.
First thing you're talking about.
You're looking for planes.
Because Morgan Stanley's headquarters got hit with 3,600 employees.
That's where Morgan Stanley said.
And I'm supposed to go to Fort Trade.
Exactly.
Twin Towers.
So when that happens and the towers come down, I mean, it was a mess.
They sent us home.
The following day, brokers, the market didn't even open up the market.
They were so worried what's going to happen.
The following day, brokers didn't even want to call their clients.
They didn't want to call anybody.
And you know what's even crazy when you think about this?
While this whole event takes place, and you know, it's, you know, who did this?
This person did this.
It's linked to Osama bin Laden.
Here's who did all these stories that are coming up.
And I'm getting involved in the financial industry.
I'm 6'4.
I'm Middle Eastern.
I'm hearing all these stories.
I'm going out there.
It's like, it's constant, you know, where are you from?
I'm from Iran.
You're from Iran.
It's perfect time to enter the world.
Exactly.
Perfect time to get into it.
Everybody left the marketplace.
Everybody in that office left the industry.
It was like the worst time to be a part of it.
But, you know, the one thing I will tell you when you see when 9-11 took place the following, here's the one thing that we haven't seen this time around.
And it's almost as if a crisis is required to unify the world.
When 9-11 happened, no one in New York looked at you as a Republican or a Democrat.
Nobody looked at you as black or white or Latino.
Everybody was just going, where are your kids?
They're missing.
You haven't seen them.
Wait, let's go find them.
Hey, where's your husband?
Let's go, firefighters.
Hey, you know what?
I want to go to war.
I'm willing to re-enlist.
I'm willing to get into it.
There was this idea of unification versus you think about a crisis that we're going through right now with COVID.
It's a divisive, it's division.
We're divided with this crisis versus being united with 9-11.
When 9-11 happened, America was United States of America.
When COVID happened, America was a divided states of America.
So who was the hero during 9-11?
Who was the beacon of hope?
Freaking Giuliani.
Yeah, Giuliani was the beacon of hope.
He was.
And now he's blasphemed as like this antichrist.
People forget, man.
People forget very quickly what you do for them.
People forget until you die in history books.
You know, this whole Churchill story, one of the most hated guys there.
But when you needed somebody to come in and take care of business for you, you called Churchill.
And then years later, after the guy's dead, then you really read about who this guy really was.
You know, you almost got to wait sometimes for some stories like that, for what Rudy Giuliani did to New York.
But, you know, that's the part where you hope that we experience a similar thing where America becomes united again today.
It's a different thing.
But again, for everybody out there, you know, just go watch a video when you see firefighters showing up and trying to get people out and you hear how many firefighters got hurt, how many cops got hurt.
You will look at cops and firefighters in a different way than the way they're being painted right now, the last six months.
It's a different ballgame.
Those were heroes.
Yep, sure.
Especially in one of the first responders.
How different would 9-11 be if it happened in the day of social media?
How different would 9-11 be if it happened in a social media?
Of live streaming.
See, I don't think it has to do with in a day of social media.
I'll tell you in a different way.
How different would it have been in a divisive media time?
That's the difference.
Because if it happens today, everybody's pointing fingers.
And don't get me wrong, back then, it's not like it wasn't divisive.
I mean, Fahrenheit, 9-11.
Whose fault was it?
Bush's job.
He did it.
He's sitting there reading a kid book.
You know, you got all these other things that was coming up.
Don't forget it was also the year after the debacle of the 2000 election.
Gore, Bush, Bush, Gore, which is it?
Florida, the Chads, the ballots.
There was that going on as well, but somehow we came together.
Somehow, we were united.
This time around, it's a little bit of a different story.
And, you know, you wonder why that is.
But, you know, again, for everybody that's watching this, to everybody that served, to everybody that was there, to all the families, I remember reading a People magazine on the cover was mothers with children.
These are moms whose fathers, husbands worked at the World Trade Center, and the planes hit, and the kids were born after 9-11 to a father that passed away.
So there's a lot of emotion behind the story of 9-11.
Before we move on, because I know we have a lot to talk about, just on behalf of someone who has never served, I'm sitting here with a Marine and Army.
Just respect for you guys for serving for our nation.
That's just number one.
Number two, as someone who has never served, I mean, I played college football.
That's nothing in comparison to what you guys have done.
Just number one, salute.
Number two, why don't you just talk to the audience about what it's like to serve and what that means for your country?
Because I genuinely want to know.
I mean, you must have a different perspective when you talk about 9-11, when you talk about our country, when you talk about the flag, what it means to serve.
Matt, what would you say?
You know, we were talking to General Mattis a couple of weeks ago during our virtual convention.
And one of his talks at the Pentagon, his first talk at the Pentagon was on Martin Luther King Day.
And he says, we need one thing about the military, it goes back to its fundamental, it goes back to the core beliefs of the United States in terms of fundamentals of how to get along with other people.
You know, in the military, even though we would have given Patrick uniform a hard time, black, white, Latino, Asian.
I remember this African.
I was doing an inspection and I was going, I was getting to know my Marines.
And I says, what's your name?
He says, my name is Moimi Apudapu, Salvador.
What?
Moimi Apudapu Salvador.
Okay, Moimi Apudapu.
Salvador.
He's African for Salvador.
I said, so where did a Salvador come from?
Because you don't look anything like the Salvador.
You look very African.
And the way you're sounding, the way you're boys, you know, people from Africa.
Moimi Apudapu.
Yes, right, that's right.
And so he says, well, Sergeant, I wanted to sound like an American, so I picked Salvador.
Salvador.
That's it.
That's it.
He wanted to sound like an American last name.
He picked Salvador.
That's what American last name is.
Wow.
Not Johnson.
Not Johnson.
Not Williams.
Not Bet David.
Wow.
So, you know, so the military, we looked at one color.
We looked at one color.
We looked at one race.
What are you human race?
What's the biggest thing that you have taken from the military?
Biggest thing I'm taking from the military.
Well, you know, self-sacrifice, I would say, especially in a day we're thinking about self-sacrifice, and that's why you work hard.
I'm willing to sacrifice myself for your life and the life of my brothers and my sisters than I probably am for myself.
Wow.
And that's why you got these guys.
They are heroes.
I mean, we serve, but the real heroes are the ones in the towers.
The real heroes are like the Pat Tillmans that gave up an NFL career to get in, right?
They actually gave up their life for this, as General Mattis would call this experiment called America.
By the way, when you talked to Jenner Mattis, some news came out about Mattis yesterday, right?
Yeah, because of this whole, you know, Trump talking about, you know, the COVID, all this stuff.
And so the same author said, oh, by the way, I also had some conversations with General Mattis that North Carolina, North Carolina, North Korea.
They're about to launch the Missile Crisis, the nuclear missiles, whatever.
And Joe Mattis is at the ready.
General Mattis has been around not only the Marine Corps, the United States military, but around the world galvanizing relationships and building relations to it.
So he was really worried about North Korea trying to get some real attention.
And this is when this is just yesterday?
It was just yesterday, but it was stuff that was done when he was a Secretary of Defense.
Right.
He was ready for it.
He's ready for something.
It's 2017.
Sleeping in his mouth.
That was the article came out.
The story came out yesterday.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, you think about the Mattis.
I mean, when Matt did the interview, were you in the room when Matt did?
It was one of the most ridiculous interviews I've seen.
Profound.
Shout out to Matt, you know, you for how you did it.
That was just for the record for our viewers.
Yeah, Matt interviewed General Mattis.
General Mattis.
And it was powerful to see that taking place with the interview.
By the way, General Mattis has some of the most famous lines ever, doesn't he?
Oh, yeah.
Have you read some of his lines?
Have you read some?
Give me some of the highlights of Mattis, Famous Mattis lines, which you got to love this guy.
Famous General Mattis lines.
He's a modern-day Chuck Norris.
Yeah, there you go.
Just type right there.
Shout out to Kai for spelling it correctly.
Oh, he almost had it.
So go right there.
I go up.
Let's see which ones comes up.
It's quite fun to shoot them.
It's a hell of a hoot.
It's fun to shoot people.
This is what he said in 2005.
There are some assholes in the world that just need to be shot.
Okay, that's too many.
I come in peace.
I didn't bring artillery, but I'm pleading with you with tears in my eyes.
If you with me, I will kill you all.
Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet.
There are some people you think, some people who think you have to hate them in order to shoot them.
I don't think you do.
I mean, this is a pretty edgy guy.
Okay.
Yeah.
And he chose not to get married and have kids because he married his career.
The warrior monk, they called him.
Because he dedicated himself to the war.
45, 44 years ago.
Can we read the last few quotes?
Because if you only read the first five, you think this guy's a complete maniac.
He actually is a brainiac, if you will.
Eight and nine.
Go ahead, read it, Adam.
I get a lot of credit these days for things I never did.
You know, it's funny that he said that because when I thanked him for this interview, for the interview, he said, no, no, I thank you for Marines like you.
Yeah.
Sergeant like you, I built my career on the backbone.
They did a lot of work.
They made me look good.
That's what he said.
And the last one: engage your brain before you engage your weapon.
Engage your brain before you engage your weapon.
So yesterday we had a girl come in here to help 15 people get a license to carry.
And it was so surprising when we send the email to our employees to see who was going to participate.
You had some people that brought their entire family.
Like one of us guys brought his mom.
You know, hey, we want to get a license to carry out.
Everybody's caring in this.
And by the way, she was so good.
I wouldn't mind bringing her back to bringing to the podcast because of the way she was telling the story.
Oh, she was impeccable on the way she told the first 30 minutes on the way she explained license to carry on what happened to her story of having a license to carry.
You know, while I'm reading some of this stuff and she would talk about engage your brain before engage the weapon, she had a lot of good things to say.
So can I make a note of it?
We may want to bring her up to the podcast.
So, all right, so there's General Mattis right there.
So we've covered a lot.
You asked about military.
For me, military, what it did for me was I went in because I couldn't wait to leave Glendale, California.
I was working at a very big four prestigious burger company called Burger King.
It's the big four.
It's the big four.
I was at a big four, though.
You have to call it a big four.
Burger King.
Big three ice cream.
That's exactly it.
So I'm working over there with my friends Devine Baharians and Kogan Alaverdian, and we're working over there.
And, you know, I just said, I got to figure out what I want to do in my life.
Monday I'll go to the recruiting station.
I joined the army.
I go in.
I go to Fort Jackson.
I go to Fort Campbell, Kentucky, Hunter First Airborne.
To me, when I went in, it was G.I., Bill, you're going to have fun, uniform, get away.
And then I go on April 15th, and then 4th of July hits, and I'm in South Carolina, Fort Jackson.
And 4th of July, the entire time is what?
Barbecue, having fun, all this other stuff.
Then you go and you celebrate 4th of July in uniform on, you know, in the military unit, you know, Fort Jackson.
And then you watch, you know, colonels in tears.
You watch, you know, captains in tears.
You watch Sergeant Majors in tears.
And you're asking, why are you in tears?
Do you realize what it, do you realize what it took for us to have our freedom?
And you listen to the same song that everybody's heard before.
Man, it got me so emotional.
Then we get to our unit, and I never forget this when I got to Hunter First.
They said there's a movie coming out that has to do about your unit, and you are the first to watch it before the public sees it.
And we're like, okay, cool.
What's this movie?
So we'll go into the auditorium.
We go into the auditorium and the movie starts.
You know what the movie was?
Saving Private Ryan.
Let me tell you, buddy, we watched Saving Private Ryan with 600 of us.
You were at 600 people were ready to go to battle after watching this movie.
Big guys in emotions, tears, hugging each other.
Let's go.
Nobody messes with you.
It was intense.
1998, what year was that?
1997 is when I got to my unit.
So it's late 97.
I would say, you know, Saving Private Ryan probably came out somewhere late 1997.
And then you go to the unit, you learn what it is to sleep four hours a night.
You learn what it is to work your tail off.
You learn what it is to, you know, have to go out there in the mud, in the field, sleep, all this other stuff.
It was one of the best decisions I ever made in my life to join the military.
If somebody's listening to this, you're 18, you're undecided on what you want to do with your life.
Military may not be a bad option.
When you watch that opening scene, he talked about self-sacrifice, right?
And I want to know what your number one takeaway was in general.
But when you talk about self-sacrifice, if you have not seen Saving Private Ryan, that opening scene is ridiculous.
Yes.
I mean, you're about to serve for America.
You're talking about you have served.
Opening scene, you're storming the beaches of Normandy, trying to take down the Nazis.
Half the platoon was just clipped.
Yeah, done.
Blown away.
75%.
Tom Hanks can't hear.
What did that do to you?
I mean, you think you're tough until you see that.
You're like, okay, how are you going to be reacting to that?
What kind of time do you have to be thinking about any of this stuff?
What is your reaction mode?
Boom.
The moment that thing goes down, you could be done.
Your life is over.
Yeah, it's a very, it's emotional because, you know, yesterday the girl was saying how, you know, I don't know who asked the question.
If you're in the car, oh, one of the guys asked the question.
He says, my brother was driving and three guys pulled up to him next to him in a car in the freeway and they started shooting up in a paintball.
Paintball.
Yeah, paintball.
But, you know, it's still your word.
Like a guy takes out a gun, they start shooting them up.
He says, he asked her, is it legal if somebody has a license to carry to take out the gun and shoot the car?
She says, first of all, you're not going to hit the car.
You're going to miss the car.
Okay, you're not going to hit it.
She said, second of all, you can think how you're going to react in those moments.
You will never know until you are in those moments.
What she does for a living is she chases human traffickers.
That's what she does for them.
She works with cops, FDI.
That's what she does for a living.
And by the way, would you call her a badass guy?
Would you say she's a qualified badass?
She's teaching a class.
She's got a piece right here.
She's fully locked, you know, locking low.
She's ready for it.
And, you know, when you ask the question about what you do when you go there, anybody can say, let me tell you, you know, I'm going to do this.
You have no idea when you see that.
You can't train for that.
How do you train for that when you open up?
These are 18, 19-year-old kids that have to have a quick reaction to it.
I don't know.
What are your thoughts when you see that scene?
It's funny because you're from LA, right?
So I remember Diaz.
Diaz, if you're listening, Platoon 273, Echo Company, 2nd Battalion.
Come on, baby.
Diaz, big gangbanger.
Diaz, right?
Gangbangers.
Which Diaz?
He's a recruit.
Okay, I was in boot camp.
I was in boot camp with.
I was in boot camp with him.
Different DS.
Okay, a different DS.
Because we have a DS as well.
He's a big guy.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's a different DS.
So he's a big, big thug.
And as soon as we got to that gas chamber to practice how you would react in a gas chamber and a C6 gas, CS gas, riot gas, he was crying like a baby in a corner.
Straight up.
Straight.
So, you know, you never know until people are put in those positions.
They're confronted all day long, front all day long.
And people, the least that you least expect to be strong and courageous in the moment, it's surprising when that happens.
You learn.
You'll learn a lot about people when something happens to them.
To wrap this up, Pat, to move on, what was your biggest takeaway from the military?
He said self-sacrifice.
What was it for you?
I just wouldn't be who I am today if it wasn't for the military.
To me, the camaraderie, you cannot explain.
The level of camaraderie.
You know, last night we went to have a cigar, right?
And we went to your spot, Chamberlain's.
Chamberlain's going over here.
Yeah, very soon.
So we go to Chamberlain's and we're sitting having cigars.
And I'm no longer, obviously, the CDO of the company.
Matt is not the CDO.
But when I got out of the military and I decided to go into sales, everything I ever did, I wanted to have that element of camaraderie because it's tough to explain.
And, you know, when you look at the Netflix culture, one thing about the Netflix culture, you read through it, if you've never read this.
Yeah, well, we'll cover this here in a minute.
Cool.
When you go through a culture that you create, there were people that joined the military that hated the culture.
I have a friend of mine that I went to high school with.
He went to a completely different unit.
He went to Alaska and he went to Anchorage, Ford Wayne Wright.
I don't know if you know Ford Wayne Wright on Alaska.
He hated the military.
When he got out, everything he said was bad about the military, right?
I have friends who went in the military, couldn't stand it.
Oh my gosh, it's terrible.
They do this.
They do that to you.
It was horrible, right?
I have friends who have worked at Netflix who said I hated working on Netflix.
I know people who worked at Amazon who hated working at Amazon.
I know people that worked at Apple under Steve Jobs' regime and they couldn't stand working on something like that.
But if you go in, if you like that, you know, team, camaraderie, call out, challenging, pushing, humor, laughter, teamwork, I got your back.
If you like that, you would love the military.
So all of that we brought out to what we did.
Every business I've ran, every office I've ever ran, the culture of it's been going back to what we had at 326 Engineers at 101st Airborne Division Air Assault.
When we served at that unit, we had a unit.
We had a group.
It was myself, Bradford, Gutierrez.
It was a group of us, Klingerman.
It was a group of us that you couldn't mackerel.
You couldn't separate this group.
It was a certain level of camaraderie.
You sat together.
You sat at the chow hall together.
Everything you did, you were brothers, right?
So if you tell me what you take away from the military, I cannot describe to you the high you get from the camaraderie in a military.
And, you know, you miss it, but you hope to create it in another environment that you work in.
Obviously, that's exactly what we've done.
I was going to say, when you were describing that, that sounds exactly what you've built at PHP.
Yeah.
What's the longest run individual you've ever been on?
If you went out to go run for a distance just to go out and jog before military, what's the longest you've ever run?
Before the military?
Before the military.
To the 7-Eleven.
Longest run.
And next thing you know, you're in boot camp.
You're in formation.
Next thing you know running miles.
Did you ever think you're going to run miles like that?
No.
No, I was not a long-distance runner.
That'd be the thing.
Yeah.
That'd be the thing.
I'm like, we got to run three miles.
We've got to run five miles.
We got to march 26 miles.
I'll never do this alone, but amongst the unit, amongst team, camaraderie for your brothers, man, let's hump it out.
That's awesome.
Yes.
So, for anyone out there, our younger audience out there considering going to the military, 100% a good decision?
100% good decision?
No.
Because if you are decided on what you want to do, no, you don't need the military.
But if you're lost, if you have no clue what you're doing with your life and you want to have an environment that's going to teach you discipline, toughness, independence by yourself, washing your clothes, cleaning your place, somebody challenging you that maybe your parents cannot do because you're emotionally attached to your parents.
May not be a bad idea.
You got to realize Trump went to a military academy as a kid because he even talks about it.
He was a difficult kid growing up, right?
So his father, Fred, sent him to Military Academy.
He kind of straightened him out.
And he told the story.
He says, back then, when it was about discipline, discipline was they could hit you back then when you went to military academy.
It wasn't the PC environment today.
No, not today.
When he went, I mean, you've got to realize he's 74 right now.
So when he went, say he was 11, 12 years old.
What is that?
62 years ago?
What's 62 years ago?
It's 1960s.
1958 is when he went to military academia.
I mean, that's a completely different America than what it is.
Different world, though.
Complete.
You could get away with a lot of stuff.
But I think if somebody's undecided what they want to do with their lives and they want to go see the world, you're going to see the world.
You're going to have great opportunities.
And, you know, I mean, look, shout out to Bradford.
Bradford, my buddy, who's got a channel called Beer Wire Spirits.
He's killing it.
I'm so proud of him for what he's doing.
This guy goes in and he doesn't just go in and do special forces.
He decides to go 20 years and takes it to a whole different level.
Some of the projects that he's done, I can't even talk about out of respect to him.
But you got some people that go in and turn it into a life.
And it's not about money because you don't make a lot of money.
You make $2,000, $3,000 a month.
I remember this guy's.
You don't make a lot.
But yeah, that's how I said about military.
So salute to you two, military veterans, and salute to our military veterans.
Everybody on the vehicle.
If you're a veteran, post below, if you're a veteran, we salute you.
If you are a veteran, we salute you.
By the way, let me bring up this Josh topic.
A lot of people are asking about Josh.
Let me just address it here once everybody understands.
Josh came out here.
He was doing some digital marketing for us, and it was going good when he was in, I think he was in Arizona working for us.
And then him and I had a conversation together about him coming out here.
And I decided to hire him because of his abilities to be creative and come up with great campaigns.
We hired him on board as a president of ITAME.
Six weeks later, it didn't work out.
I asked him, I don't think this is going to work out.
We went a different direction.
We wished him nothing but the best on what his endeavors are going to be, but it didn't work out.
And, you know, when you think about the Bed David podcast here, what we're doing, a couple things you guys got to keep in mind, the people that are watching this, I created this podcast for one reason.
Let me explain to you what this is.
I have a lot of friends that I want to introduce to the world that I want to sit down and have a conversation with.
Like last night when we were out was a podcast.
If you think last night was a podcast.
Last night was absolutely a podcast because we sat there.
We're telling stories.
You know, hey, what do you think about this?
What do you think?
Like, I got a list of 50 friends that I want to invite to be on this show.
You know, these 50 friends that I want to invite to be on this show, it's to sit down and have many different stories.
I mean, we had Tom Zenner, the last two, Mattis here.
We had Rapatoni.
We've had Josh.
We've had you.
We've had Ray Crockett.
Expect to see another 50, 100 friends that are going to be here of people that I enjoy talking to.
These are people that I enjoy talking to.
And many of you guys for years kept saying, Pat, you got to start a podcast.
You got to start a podcast.
You got to start a podcast.
Why do I need to start a podcast?
I remember when people say, you got to start a vlog.
I'm like, oh my, I cannot stand doing vlogs.
I cannot stand doing vlogs, non-stop with cameras following you, watching every single thing you're doing.
But podcasts are a little bit different because you can sit there and have opinions about certain things and kind of share your thoughts.
And so the viewer said, Pat, we love to have the podcast out of a format.
And obviously now we're doing that.
So let's talk about culture.
Is that fair if we talk about culture?
Let's talk about culture.
So we got Netflix.
Kai, when did Reed Hastings write this?
What's the timeline when he wrote this?
Okay.
Can you pull up when he wrote this?
So years ago, Reed Hastings decides to write his culture.
Okay.
He decides to write out his culture on how he wants to build out Netflix.
By the way, if you've not seen this, if you've not seen this, this is a must-read culture deck of Netflix.
I don't know if you've gone through this or not.
It's 120-something pages.
Looks like a PowerPoint of some kind.
It's pretty much what it is.
It's 120-something pages.
He wrote this in 2009.
So it shows post-DVDs.
It's post-DVDs.
Yes.
He writes this in 2009.
And the whole idea is, this is what we stand for.
Okay.
This is what we stand for.
By the way, the last six months, we've been spending time coming up with our own culture for what we were doing here with the company, both for the field and home office.
But he writes this.
Then he puts it online and leaves it public.
Do you know how many views this thing gets?
Kai, can you tell us how many views this thing gets?
Pull up and type in Netflix culture deck.
How many people went to visit?
How many people saw the Netflix culture deck?
Let's see.
11.5 million people have viewed this culture deck.
Can you imagine people say, oh, my video went viral?
Okay.
My podcast went viral.
That's just on his account.
That's just on his slideshare account, by the way.
I sold a million copies of my book.
No, no.
11.5 million people read my culture deck.
For free.
It's a powerful frequency.
For free.
How does a culture deck go viral?
But that's exactly what he did.
Okay.
I had the opportunity to interview his chief talent officer.
Chief Talent Officer, Patty McCord, right?
She wrote a book called Impossible.
I don't know what the book, I think it was called Impossible.
I had her on the Vault conference last year, and I had her come down, and I interviewed her because I wanted to find out what is the Netflix culture and the kind of way they work over there, right?
And listening to her, you would think it's a whole different company on the way.
Powerful.
Powerful is what the book is called.
So here's Netflix, and here's what do you call it?
Twitter.
Let's kind of go through this together.
So Netflix culture, we manage on the edge of chaos.
Okay.
If you think of the last 300 years, we've had factories providing enormous economic value.
And so a lot of our society has the factory as the model of the organization.
Very top-down, very processed, very efficient.
But it's not the right way to run a creative organization.
An organization that needs new ideas needs to be able to make mistakes.
Netflix employees love working here.
It's so fun because people feel the trust, openness of the culture, information sharing, and because they've got incredible colleagues.
And so they got a lot.
They got to do a lot.
Okay.
So Netflix is not for everyone, he says.
Netflix is for people who are learning machines, machines.
A lot of people don't like to be called machines, but he says, no, you are a learning machine if you work here.
Pest machine.
They just love absorbing new ideas and new experiences and are willing to make mistakes to figure things out.
And it's those kinds of self-motivated learners that do so well at Netflix.
And then he says, Netflix CEO Reid Hastings is not a fan of working from home and wants his employees back at the office 12 hours after a vaccine is approved.
You get the vaccine, take the show.
Get back to work.
Get back to work is what he wants.
Now, Jack Dorsey is the complete opposite.
Sure.
Twitter is trying to sublease parts of its San Francisco headquarters after telling employees they can work from home forever.
CEO Jack Torcy has repeatedly said that having a decentralized workforce has been the goal for several years.
Subleasing over 100,000 square feet of office space includes over 878 workstations available up to five years.
Their office spans over 800,000 square feet in total.
They are now subleasing some of their space.
Shoot, we need to get some of that furniture.
Yeah, exactly.
Give me some if they have any furniture.
We're going opposite.
We want to expand.
We want to expand our office.
Right.
Not be virtual.
But I think, but I think the point here is: you got Netflix.
Their culture is you need to be at the office.
Like, you know, they have a what's the one line you said about work?
He says a severance package.
What's the one line about read hastings?
Adequate effort here at Netflix gets you a generous severance package.
Adequate effort at Netflix gets you a generous severance package.
So it's not like you're working there.
Oh, I can take as much vacation I want.
I can just kick it, relax, all this other stuff.
No, no.
You better deliver on your product.
If you don't, you're fired.
Sure.
Okay.
But, you know, Twitter is a little bit different.
Work from home.
You know, Netflix says, no, no, you got to be at the office.
Who's right?
Working from home or working from the office?
Who has innovated the most over time?
Has it been Netflix or has it been Twitter?
I think it's Netflix.
Of course.
You know why?
Because there's connection.
There's connection.
This podcast isn't done virtual over Zoom.
This podcast is done here in person.
Support in person.
Why?
Because you can't replace high-tech or high touch with high-tech.
You know, there's a certain feeling, the relationship.
Even though we had a great virtual event two weeks ago, the reason why we sold so many tickets to our regional events, like we broke records in selling tickets to our regional events January, February, because everybody's looking forward to connecting in person.
It was the biggest amount of text we ever saw to a next event after leaving our current event.
Why?
Because people are looking to connect.
People were dying to connect.
People were like, you know, this pandemic, everybody's been separated.
We had people at our house.
We had people at remote offices.
We were connecting and they felt like they were over there virtually.
But there's nothing like being together in a room.
There's nothing like, I mean, church is great, but man, it's nothing like being in church and feeling the Holy Spirit move in the room versus through a computer or TV.
Adam, what do you think?
I agree with Matt for sure.
I will say that there is something magical about not having to leave your house and get everything you want to get done and accomplish all your goals and your dreams and your visions in your PJs.
There's something dope about that.
But so I like the 80-20 approach.
80% of the time, get your ass into an office, be a part of a culture.
But 20% of the time, hey, man, maybe you take Fridays off.
Maybe you, you know, like you're talking to somebody that has not gone, other than being here a ridiculous amount of hours a week, I haven't been in an office in seven years.
Yeah.
And my numbers have gone up every year or else the CEO of my company would put my ass back in the office.
So this is the, you know, I highlight a bunch of different things.
This is the last thing that our friend Reed Hastings said.
And those kind of self-motivated learners that do so well.
If you're self-motivated, you don't need somebody to say, rah-rah, sis, boom-ba, and you can do it yourself.
Yeah.
You can work from anywhere.
You can work from the moon if that's what it'll take to get the job done.
But there's a lot of people that are not self-motivated that need to come to an office, that need to be a part of the culture.
So I don't think creativity doesn't come from the head.
Creativity comes from the heart.
It's got to come from heart power.
It can't come.
Yes, it's logical, but if you want to be creative, you want to develop, you want to innovate, I think you need to be connected.
And what we're learning from this lockdown, this pandemic is like there's a, I believe there's a combination.
There's a combination of virtual, there's a combination, but there's a discipline behind not, you know, staying at home, a refrigerator, ESPN if there's sports on, whatever, kids.
Distractions, kids, distraction.
I think there's a huge value for your company.
You want to grow and innovate, you got to be present together.
The beauty is that due to technology, we're even able to have this conversation.
Sure.
Think about, you know, five years ago, even.
Yeah.
10 years ago, COVID happens.
How's your virtual, how's your annual event looking at that point?
It's canceled.
Straight up.
Well, that other service we used.
Yeah, remember that?
Oh, God.
It cost me one phone.
You phone through the wall.
Babe, if you're listening to this, it costs Patrick a phone too.
I threw my phone.
I threw my five.
But you guys put together an amazing virtual event.
Matt interviewed General Mattis.
Our friend Ricky interviewed Pit Bull.
Daddy.
Was it Guy Tan that interviewed Trey Gowdy?
Trey Gowdy.
Very good.
Very good.
Virtually.
Guy Tan.
It was very good.
Very good.
But there's something magical about that.
That's awesome.
That's dope.
Technology, technology, amazing.
But like you said, nothing takes the place of just, what's up, man?
How you doing?
Even Trey Gowdy said, hey, next time I look forward to doing this in person.
Awesome.
Connection.
It's not a bad plan B.
So let's talk about that.
So let's talk about working from home or working from an office.
So to me, I've recruited a lot of people in my career.
I've recruited a lot of people that didn't fit my culture over my career.
I've recruited people that do well under pressure.
I've recruited people that don't do well under pressure.
I've recruited people that do well working with their wives.
I've recruited people that don't do well working with their wives, right?
I've recruited people that, you know, are hardworking, hard charging, constantly going.
But the one thing I will tell you is I've seen that people that are solo people, there are people that are team people.
You got the solo, you got the team.
It's like sports.
You got kids that want to play tennis.
You got kids that like playing golf.
You got kids that like playing, like swimming.
Why?
Because it's wrestling.
It's me.
I control my failure and success, and they like it.
100%.
Yeah.
It's like, hey, I want to be an attorney.
Okay.
I want to be an accountant.
I want to be a salesperson.
I want to be a, I want one person, surgeon.
I want to be this, right?
And then there's those that are team.
Now, here's what typically happens to team people.
Team people have been team people for their entire lives.
Okay.
These are people that want to be around others.
These are people that enjoy company.
These are people that don't want to go to the movies by themselves.
They're going to call and say, what are you doing?
Let's go watch a movie.
Hey, these are the people that, hey, let's go play basketball together.
You know, it's the guy that always knew how to put, let's go to the club.
Five of you roll up.
It's this one guy that, hey, I don't want to go.
It's like the guy that would come and say, bro, get out of your bed.
It's 10 o'clock.
Let's go.
What are you doing?
Oh, man, I'm tired.
Bro, put you, you're 20 years old.
You got plenty of time.
Everybody had that one friend, right?
That wants to be the team guy.
You know what typically happens with solo people?
Here's what happens with solo people.
Solo people, some early, some later.
Solo people eventually get to a point in their lives where they have to make a decision.
And here's what solo people have to make a decision.
They have to make a decision whether I want to do it all by myself because I'm capped being solo.
Solo's got a cap.
Because you can't take over the world by yourself.
You're cap.
Team people are not limited.
Solo people eventually, when they get to that point and make a decision to go work on a team, they need a team around them.
They tend to take their lives and their game to the next level.
What's my point I'm making to you here?
Working from home is solo.
Working from home is not necessarily a team thing.
Working from an office environment together, it's a whole team situation that you have.
Great point.
You kind of get a chance to sit down.
And even right here, there's a certain dynamic going on here.
I had a chance to meet his family last night.
I wouldn't meet his family.
Luis is who brought the whole family.
I had a chance to meet his family last night.
Last night, Luis.
We're working over here.
Sam and I, I had him, he took care of me a couple of times.
I said, Mario, I got to tell you, I like the way this guy takes care of us.
He's classy.
He's like a concierge service at the highest level, right?
You sit there.
I've had, how many times have I spoken to your mom, Kai?
How many times have your mom and I had conversations together?
I talked to his mom, and I got, I know it sounds weird, but I'm telling him his mom's happily married and I'm happily married.
But I've talked to Kai's mom multiple times and you sit here like, hey, family, what's up?
But if it's not here and you're walking past the desk, there isn't that opportunity to say, hey, how you doing?
Because it's at home.
So that deep additional connection of layers doesn't happen if it's not face-to-face in a group of people.
But doesn't it always just come back to culture?
You've created an emotional culture.
Yeah, it works.
It's a culture, but nobody emotionally gets attached to something that they work from home.
You can't get attached to something that you work from home emotionally.
And typically, when people want to run through a wall for a company or a message or an organization, it's got to be in a group environment.
So that's the thing when it comes down to this part.
So now let's talk about New York.
I mean, we've been taking a lot of shots at California.
Let's give New York some love because real quick, people.
Can I take a quick question break?
Speaking of Teamwork from Home, Jesus.
Can I make a quick wish to absolutely please do so?
Yes.
Sweetheart, if you're watching this, my wife was born on 9-11.
Yeah, Sheena.
So, babe, if you're watching this from the Bet David show, we wish you a happy, happy birthday.
Welcome to your 21-year-old birthday again.
Can't believe this is maybe your second time celebrating your 21st birthday again.
But yeah, she's excited about this day.
We have a barbie plan tonight.
But, babe, love you.
Happy birthday here at 9-11.
And congratulations to Sheena for being the chairman of the board.
My baby.
She's the chairman of the board of the field.
You know, it's amazing for her to go from where she was at, both of you guys, to where you are today.
So, okay, so let's talk about Manhattan.
Yes, Sheena, happy birthday to you.
I got something special coming your way, so be prepared for it.
See what you're surprised in.
So, Manhattan, Manhattan, New York, okay, had a record 15,025 empty apartments in August.
Ouch.
Let me say this one more time.
Manhattan had a record of 15,025 empty apartments in August.
The borough vacancy rate rose above 5% for the first time ever, according to a report from real estate from Douglas Element and appraiser Miller Samuel.
It was the highest level in the report's 14-year history during which Manhattan's vacancy rate has fluctuated between 1.5% to 2.5%.
Guys, let me say this to you.
To go from 1.5% to 2.5% to 5% is double.
This is not a small number here.
Over the past four months, the rate has made a steady and steep rise, hitting a record each month.
Adam, you see the stats with New York: 15,025 empty apartments in August, 5% vacancy for the first time.
What do you think about this?
You know, if you asked me in February, so every summer I tend to get out of my born and raised in Miami.
I live in Miami.
I can work remote.
If you asked, so every summer I try to go someplace different, I travel, what have you.
If you asked me this February, pre-COVID, what my summer plans would be, I'd say there's 100% chance I'll be in New York, chilling.
I love New York City, you know, rent an apartment for a month or two.
Nice.
I love it.
I put on some headphones.
I just walk all around the city.
There's nothing like it.
In Manhattan.
In Manhattan.
It's the bump.
Fast forward.
In the second city closest to New York City, Addison, Texas, is nothing more than it just shows what COVID has done.
It has taken the life out of New York City.
I mean, think about why you live in New York City.
Think about why you pay a premium to live in New York City.
And New York City, number two, most expensive place to rent, number one, San Francisco.
Median rent in New York for a one bedroom, 700 square feet, $3,000.
$3,000.
Unbelievable.
National average, you're looking at $1,400.
So double.
And then if you're talking, that's median, actually.
Average, actually closer to $4,000.
But you pay a premium for all the fun and amazing stuff you can do in New York.
The museums, the parks, the culture.
Going out to eat.
But if you can't do that and you're sitting at home, why the hell are you paying three, four grand, or if not more, to sit in your apartment?
Yeah.
There's no point.
So you pay a premium for fun and lifestyle, but if there's no fun and lifestyle and you're just sitting at home and you can work virtual.
That's actually a very good point you're making.
Why would you ever live in New York at this point?
So the benefit that New York offers, you're now not getting.
So why am I paying that kind of money to be in New York?
Very valid point.
That's the point of New York.
Very valid point.
Very valid point.
What do you think about that?
Yeah, the same thing too.
Back to culture.
That's the culture of Manhattan, the connections.
And the whole cycle, if businesses aren't operating to create the jobs and the jobs for people to make money, people to spend the money so business can still thrive so big and receive the money.
So that whole cycle is not happening right now.
So if the cycle is not happening, this is exposing that vacancy.
So this is the question to ask.
So when you think about right now with NFL game yesterday, we were watching Deshaun Watson against Pat Mahomes, right?
Shout out to Mahomes for just doing what he does.
And then Deshaun Watson, he lost a very good receiver.
We hope he gets something back because that guy's a talented guy.
But you're watching a game and they have some fans there.
They're expecting 17,000 people in KC.
Yeah.
A lot of these NFL stadiums, they're not selling any tickets.
But KC said yes.
So 17,000 people showed up to the game, right?
Give or take.
And they usually have what, 70,000 people?
They usually have 60,000, 70,000 people there, right?
So you watch the NBA, the bubble, right?
And you see what's going on with the bubble, and you're watching some of these games and people watching the games from their, what do you call it, their screens and their Zoom.
And you're like, okay, cool.
Let me see how this is going to work.
The question you ask with sports is and restaurants is the following.
Say because of COVID, NBA lost a million fans that are watching it.
I'm just throwing a number out there.
The question you got to ask is, how many are going to come back?
Okay?
So if you watch football and you watch it and say, I'm not interested like I was before, you got to have the fans, the screaming, the hollering.
Oh, you know, the Richter scale on the sound.
Oh, it's so loud right now.
Seattle, go a lot on.
You know what?
Seattle is known to be one of the loudest.
Oklahoma City is known as being one of the loudest.
Now you don't have that element, right?
I mean, if you're missing that 12 minutes, so are you going to watch a game the same way?
But the question becomes, how many are going to come back?
I think the biggest thing with this Manhattan deal is the following.
Fine, you're at 5%.
Yes, it's scary.
The question is, how many are going to come back to it?
That's a real question.
Because if it doesn't, Mayor de Blasio needs to be fired, ASAP, and Cuomo's got to get involved because one of his mayors is screwing the whole thing in New York.
And Cuomo's got to look at what things he's doing to take some responsibility and see what they need to change in the state of New York to not be losing people and to gain people back.
Because you remember the whole conversation we had a few weeks ago where the whole thing was, well, you know, AOC, you know, Amazon, why should we give you tax breaks to come to New York City?
Why are we giving these billionaires tax breaks?
Because they're moving their entire operation to a place that they're not used to.
And they're going to create 25,000 jobs at an average salary of $150,000 for your city that you lost.
Well, now that you're losing an audience and your apartments, 15,025 are empty, do you want those people back?
So Cuomo has to sit there and worry and say, how many of these are going to come back?
How many of them did we lose permanently?
How many of them did we lose permanently?
Because I left California to go to Dallas.
They lost you.
You know what the plan was when I left California to go to Dallas?
To go back to California, to go back to California.
But California's lost me.
California's lost me.
All my friends, family, everybody's in California.
You can close my eyes, put me in a car, open the window.
I can smell and tell you what street we're on.
I've driven on every single road in LA and California.
I mean, you can tell me, take me anywhere I know how to go to any place because I've been all over California, all over LA, right?
So now I come here.
I'm lost every other day.
I just know how to get to the office in the airport when I'm in Texas.
These meatways are very different.
Maybe home.
Yeah, exactly.
It's a U-turn.
So now you go to a different place, but that's a permanent person you lost.
This is not a temporary person.
You're a permanent person with jobs.
They created jobs.
You're okay losing temporary people.
For example, when hurricane happens in Florida, where do people go?
New York.
New York.
But it's temporary.
So Florida doesn't care because, listen, after the hurricane, they're coming back.
Of course.
When New Orleans hurricane hit, people left permanent, right?
So New York has asked me, is this a permanent exodus or is this a temporary one?
Because if it's permanent, New York's about to take a hit that we don't even know the aftershock effects of this.
You mentioned a few podcasts ago, a bunch of billionaires also departed.
Yes.
So not only the vacancies are happening, but you have job creators and innovators.
$336 billion of wealth left.
That's a lot of money.
You know who's going to have to do a lot of cooking?
Governor Cuomo.
Come back to New York.
I'll cook you dinner.
Well, you got cooking about 15,000, 16,000 people to cook dinner.
You know, I get people that give me a hard time and they say, Pat, I cannot believe you like that guy, Cuomo, and you say good things about Cuomo.
He's not who you think he is and all this other stuff.
Let me tell you what I've learned how to do.
A lot of you guys say stuff about Adam, okay?
Adam this, Adam that, Adam this.
Let me tell you, Adam gets along with everybody, okay?
Adam is homie.
Adam is chill.
He's thought Adam and I.
I met Adam eight years ago.
And when I met Adam, I'm like, you know, he would always approach me.
I'm like, I don't know this guy, but I like this guy every single time.
And then eventually, I'd see him once.
He was like, hey, you're going?
Yeah, I'm going.
Oh, cool.
And then we'd run into each other, run into each other, right?
You know, I just like this guy.
Politically, he can't, you know, stand Trump and he can't stand this.
And maybe I'm going to be on a different side when it comes down to policies and all this other stuff.
But the guy is cool, right?
Adam's cool.
You can call him Soy Boy.
You can call him whatever you want to call him.
The only guy on the show that has a nickname, right?
Soyboy.
I don't even have a nickname.
You got a nickname Soyboy.
My Soy Boy.
No, no.
Soy Boy is like Madonna.
Some people have just a name like Madonna.
Curtis.
He's walking down the street.
They're like, yo, Soy, yo, what up?
How are we doing?
The point I'm trying to make to you is.
Thank you, Valutaner.
Better than Tool Fu Boys.
The point I'm trying to make to you.
And by the way, you know what's funny is a lot of people are saying, you know what?
I got to tell you, I used to hate Adam, but I love him now.
I hate the fact that I have to say it, but I love him.
But you know that.
Thank you, guys.
The thing about Cuomo is I don't look at politics.
So the first thing I look at is I say, do I like this guy?
That's how I judge people.
First thing is I do I like this guy.
That's how people should operate.
At first you say, you know what?
I like this guy.
Who they are, not what they are.
Yeah.
And then what's his belief system?
And then why does he believe in what he believes in?
And then if it's, then, okay, you know what?
Cool.
I totally get why you believe in what you believe in.
Totally get it.
I understand the reasoning behind it, right?
But Cuomo's got his job cut out for him, man, because he needs to have an emergency meeting and figure out a way to keep it.
And by the way, I just saw the stats.
Kai, I don't know if you put it here or not.
New York's going back to 25% opening up.
Oh, there it is.
New York Cuomo announces indoor dining reopened to 25% capacity, but experts say it's not enough to save restaurants.
On Wednesday, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced the state would open that up as of September 30th, which is ended this month.
Most restaurants operate on razor-thin margins and barely eke out a profit even at 100% capacity.
Andrew Righi, the executive director of New York Hospitality Alliance, the business, told business inside of Cuomo's announcement came after 300 restaurateurs filed a class action lawsuit against Cuomo and Mayor de Blasio seeking $2 billion in damages and demanding that restaurants be allowed to reopen dining rooms.
What the hell is 25%?
Yeah, it's nothing.
I mean, how many waiters and waitresses do I get at 25%?
They said an example.
It was 75, the capacity of 75, they can only see 12 guests.
That's not 25%, by the way.
Yeah.
And then they needed six staff as well.
So they're 18 total.
Or they're counting the staff as part of the 25%?
Let me get this straight.
Wait, So if you have 75 capacity, you can only have 12 guests plus six staff, 18.
That's 75%.
72%, 70%.
That's pretty insane to be thinking about.
What is 25% going to do to save these restaurant businesses?
So the server's got to be the host, the bartender, the bus boy, so therefore they can have more tables to turn.
I mean, we go to this one restaurant, Greek restaurant by Preston Hollow.
We love this place.
It's a hole in the wall, but it's phenomenal food.
Their dressing, their salad dressing is, it's got something in there that's addicted.
I don't know what the hell.
I'm telling you.
I love it.
And by the way, they make the best Arnold Palmer at this place.
I'm an Arnold Palmer.
75, 25, 10.
No, 90, 10.
It's the best Arnold Palmer I've had in my life.
Don't you dare get that right.
The 90s iced tea.
We go there.
One time someone got this guy 90% lemonade, 10%, threw it in the guy's face, and get out.
Damn sour thing.
So it's actually a true story.
So what's it called?
Yeah, so we go to this place, and one day I noticed they're very busy.
I said, what's going on?
It's a Greek restaurant owned by a guy from Ukraine.
Okay?
So it's funny.
Ukraine guys own this Greek restaurant and they kill it.
They cook better than Greeks do.
So there's one waitress who is serving all the tables because that's what restaurant owners have to do today.
I can't have a lot of people being there because I got to pay the money for them.
So I'm opening up to lose money.
25% is open to lose money.
50% is open to lose money.
So I think this pressure New York's having is going to get to a whole different level.
So as much as they'd like to keep this thing dragged out for a little longer to help with the election, I think Cuomo is going to eventually cave in and realize he needs to satisfy his citizens and the people of New York and get things back to normal.
Maybe not fully.
You can still have the mask stuff that's going on, but get it back to fully.
So we'll see what happens.
Ask our audience, how many of them are in New York?
I know we asked our audience how many people were in California.
Yeah, how many of you are from New York?
And if you are in New York, if you are in New York, how are you feeling about the restaurants opening up at 25%?
By the way, if you're watching this and you're having a good time with this, put a thumbs up, share this, and hit the subscribe button.
I think we're about to crash 2,000 live in the next few minutes.
You were at 1781.
But, you know, so, you know, that's what you got going on with New York and Cuomo and 15,000 apartments.
Let me just say one thing about these razor-thin margins.
Most restaurants operate on razor-thin margins.
That's where you took that from, Kai, from this article.
You know, I did an interview one time for Sales Talks Money on my show.
I interviewed the number one hotelier hospitality guy in Miami.
And he said that, you know, think about a business that makes $4 million in gross sales as a restaurant.
He has to hope and pray that he can make 10%.
So net, net $400,000, and then after that, he has to pay taxes.
So you're talking about razor-thin margins here, your operating costs and everything after that.
You got to hope and pray for 10%.
I said, that's the number.
He goes, that's 90% is paid out.
90% paid out.
So you were talking about you're only at 25% capacity.
What a rough.
How do you operate like that?
What a rough business to be in.
This is why Cuomo is going to be cooking.
Yeah.
Cuomo is going to be cooking, but I think Cuomo has common sense.
I do believe Cuomo has common sense.
Because it's going to get trigger factors.
You did a poll.
California or New York, better place for entrepreneurs.
On Twitter, on 3,100 votes.
New York, California, 50-50.
50-50.
But on Instagram, 51,000 votes.
California, 59.
New York, 41% better for entrepreneurs.
What's the difference?
What do we got here?
Well, I mean, people give their arguments why they believe California is better than New York because New York is smaller, more condensed.
California is wider.
You can build out in more different areas of California.
Northern California has got business.
Southern California has got business.
Central has business.
So there's a lot of different places.
So New York is more New York City.
You don't hear upstate Buffalo.
You don't hear a lot of that.
Starting the business in Albany.
Yeah, I don't know if I've heard that unless if you're better.
I'm sorry.
Go ahead.
Go ahead.
What's better for taxes?
New York is ahead of California.
So California is the worst.
California is 50th worst out of 50 states.
Wow.
New York is 42nd.
So if you had the choice of moving back to California or moving to New York, what would you pick?
PBD?
I would move to Florida.
I love that answer.
But I also want to say there's a triggering effect here.
If you got this much empty apartments, you got restaurants barely staying in business.
They're under $60 billion loss.
What's another industry in New York that's about to implode or have a major setback?
Which is hotels and rentals?
Hotel TM.
Commercial real estate.
A lot of these landlords are going to have a tough time paying that mortgage.
CDC announced you can't evict anybody if they're not paying the rent until the end of the year.
CDC just announced that anybody that's renting, if they have a loss of a job and they're making less than $199,000, husband and wife together, their rent is forgiven until the end of the year.
CDC came out with this part.
So, you know, it's not a good time to be in commercial real estate.
It's not a good time to be in commercial real estate right now.
It's a very complete, very interesting time to make sure that you're going to be able to.
Portland becomes the first city to ban the use of facial recognition technology by government agency and private entities in public spaces.
Let me read this one more time.
Portland becomes the first city to ban the use of facial recognition technology by government agencies and private entities in public spaces.
Mayor Ted Wheeler said during hearings that Portlanders should never be in fear of having their rights of privacy be exploited by either their government or by a private institution.
Freelance journalist Kate Kay reported the ban also creates a legal right for people to sue private companies that collect their information in violation of the law and seek up to $1,000 in damages for each day of violation.
So Portland becomes the first city to ban the use of facial recognition.
Adam, what do you think about this?
You know, I don't know what to make of this because when I initially think of Portland, I think of every liberal city.
Yeah.
Right?
Like Oregon, liberal, Democrat.
So on the surface, I hear Portland.
I'm thinking liberal.
Then as I kind of unpack this a little bit more, I'm thinking this is more of a libertarian, like don't infringe on my rights.
And then I kind of gravitate to more of like a conservative, you know, let me do what I want to do, don't interfere.
Yes.
So I don't know what to make of the story.
Is this a liberal thing?
Is this a libertarian thing?
Is this a conservative thing?
Stay out of my bedroom.
Say out of my face, say that my race.
I don't know what to make of this.
But they're standing their ground, either one way or another.
Portland is standing up to facial recognition.
I guess this 5G is this part of that stuff?
Or this is a palantir?
What was that?
Palantir.
I don't think Palantir is linked to this, but facial recognition.
I mean, you got to.
Why would a private entity?
I get government because for police and law enforcement, but why would a private entity want facial recognition?
Is it for their own security?
Well, no, I mean, you got to realize this whole meeting that they're having at the house with Amazon, Google, all these guys is selling your data.
Of course, selling your data.
So a very big TED meeting that took place 10 years ago, they said, what is the best industry to be part of, to be a part of in the future, next few decades?
They said, data.
It's all about data right now.
Whoever's got the most data has the best access.
If you got data, you can retarget, target.
You can do a lot of things if you have the data on people, right?
So I understand why private agents, like why would private enterprises want to have facial recognition and government?
Yes, I get it.
But Portland, see, here's the thing.
You know how you sit down and you talk to somebody about politics?
Almost anybody I talk to about politics, and you don't ask them, are you Democrat or Republican?
You don't ask them that.
You just ask them basic questions.
You say, let me ask you, how comfortable are you sharing your privacy with others?
People say what?
No.
Okay.
How comfortable are you, an institution or an organization knowing about your family, you and your wife's sex life?
Zero.
Okay, how comfortable are you about the government or an institution knowing exactly about all your financial situation where you're at?
Absolutely zero.
Okay, how comfortable are you, an organization knowing everything about how you raise your kids?
How comfortable are you going to?
Okay, none of it.
Fair enough.
Not zero.
Let me ask you this.
Let me ask you.
None of your business.
Let me ask you this.
How comfortable are you allowing strangers to break into your car or your house without your permission?
Of course not.
You're not comfortable with that?
Are you comfortable with that?
Yeah, no.
Okay, if you were to choose to live in another country, Adam, you got three kids, you got four kids.
What are one of the first things you would consider before you want to move into another country?
What would it be?
What would that country need to offer?
Safety.
Safety?
Okay, you would education for your kids?
The First Amendment.
Okay.
First Amendment.
Okay, let me ask you a question.
If somebody comes into your house and decides to take stuff out, should you have the right to hit them upside the head with a baseball batch?
Should you have the right?
If not more.
But I'm asking a simple question.
I'm not asking politics.
If somebody breaks into your house and they want to steal all your belongings, should you have the right to own a gun and tell them to get the hell out of your house?
Should you have the right to do that?
Yes or no?
Sure.
Okay, so let's just say you're upset about somebody that is going against you in politics.
Should you have the right to call a meeting and bring your 50 friends and family members to your place and say, look, here's what we need to do.
Go up against the mayor.
Should you have the right to have a meeting with 50 friends and relatives locally?
Okay, so this is everything I'm saying.
Okay, so let's just say you go out and you work your tail off.
You work 60 hours in a week.
You miss great memories of your kids and you have to work that one weekend.
Maybe even you're working on Christmas weekend because you are in retail.
You have to work on Christmas, right?
How much of your dollar you make are you comfortable giving to the government?
The very least is possible.
How much is that very least?
What are you comfortable without getting upset, without getting irate?
5%.
You make a buck.
I'm actually being serious.
You make a buck.
What are you willing to give?
What are you willing to give?
Five cents.
Five cents?
What are you willing to give, Adam?
I mean, I want to pay his least taxes.
But give me the number.
What are you willing to tell?
So what's your question if I tell you?
Well, according to my tax bracket, 39-something percent.
No, I didn't say what your tax bracket is.
I'm asking you what you're comfortable.
I'm not comfortable paying shit.
Okay.
Well, it's not about comfort.
I got to pay it.
But watch this.
But say I come back to you and I say, okay, fine.
You don't want to pay shit?
You say, no, I don't want to pay shit.
Okay.
So is it fair to say that the roads are on you?
Right.
Did you go to public schools?
I did.
So you pay for all public schools.
Your own roads.
Your own cops.
So meaning you would like to pay some taxes.
You say yes.
What portion of your dollar that you work your tail off would you like to give to me?
15% flat tax.
Fine, 15%.
Are you being sarcastic with me?
No, I'm not.
Now that you're saying the left-rolling.
The point I'm trying to make to you is I agree with the people of Portland.
What the hell do you mean you want to have facial recognition?
You know, first of all, facial recognition everywhere?
No.
I don't want you to do any kind of facial recognition to me.
Are you a spy?
Are we going back to these?
And just the fact that it says Portland becomes the first city to ban the use of facial recognition.
Here's a real question.
Who's really how many people are listening to the same?
So if they're the first city, this means all the other cities are recognizing my facial based on anywhere I go.
To me, it's not even Portland being the first.
It's like you don't want to use your face ID anymore.
And by the way, I know some people are going to be like, well, Pat, you know, Portland is this and Portland is that.
I've been to Portland.
Believe me, I know what Portland's like.
I had an office in Portland in 2010.
I'd go to Portland every other month.
I had to go to Portland in 2000.
Yeah, regularly.
And it's definitely weird.
It's qualified.
I've never been to Portland.
What's going on in the Northwest?
Have you ever been to Austin?
Have you ever been to Austin?
I've been to Austin.
Austin is weird.
That's their moment.
But Austin's got nothing on Portland.
Really?
Qualified weird.
Wow.
Qualified weird.
They take it to a whole different level, Portland.
But I get along with weird.
I don't have a problem with the people.
I get along with weird people.
You get along with everyone.
I get along with everybody.
But the point I'm trying to make to you is: how is the weirdest city in America today banning facial recognition?
That was my point initially.
It's like, I don't know if they're liberal.
What do you think about it, Kai?
It's still early.
So I just think they're ahead of the curve.
So do you think other people are going to do it as well?
I think so.
Yeah, I think so as well.
Within this law, obviously, like the facial recognition on an iPhone isn't included because that's something you willingly comply to.
To open up your iPhone.
Yeah.
Kai, you might need a mic, buddy.
Yeah, very soon.
Very soon, he'll get a mic.
That'll be a promotion for that guy.
Okay.
All right.
So there you have it with these.
So let's talk about the next company, a company that Adam has never gone to because Adam is team coach.
Adam is team coach.
Adam has never bought one of his girls a Louis Vuitton bag.
Oh, never.
I wish that were for a controller.
Yeah, so Adam is a team coach.
Adam is team Michael Kors on discount on Thursdays.
Oh, I wish that my lady friends would take a class.
You have no idea how many arguments I've had over purses.
Over purses.
But let's get to the topic before I go on.
Hold it together.
Hold it together.
So Tiffany sues Louis Vuitton.
Yesterday, U.S. jeweler Tiffany sued French luxury giant Louis Vuitton in Delaware after Louis Vuitton tried to back out of a $16.2 billion acquisition of Tiffany.
Amongst other things, that in the light of the threat of heavy additional tariffs upon French goods by the U.S., France's Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs recommended a letter that Louis Vuitton delays proposed acquisition of Tiffany until after January 2021.
Tiffany itself has also backed Louis Vuitton to postpone the closing of the merger until December 31st.
However, under the terms of the merger agreement signed by Louis Vuitton and Tiffany in November of 2019, and closing cannot be extended until beyond November 24, 2020.
Louis Vuitton said its board has decided to adhere to the conditions of the agreement.
What do you think about this whole thing between Tiffany and Louis Vuitton?
Since you have a special place in Louis Vuitton's, Louis Vuitton has a special place in your heart.
Why don't you tell us what you think?
The best part of the story is how you pronounce Louis Vuitton.
Oh my God, the French Pantric Pet Devi.
Oh my goodness.
Wee wee.
So let's just unpack this for a second.
LVMH, Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy.
Do you know what brands this company owns?
Let's just talk about LVMH, Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy.
It's owned by Bernard Arnault, your French friend.
You know what number he is in the world rankings of wealth?
Interesting.
Do you know what I mean?
I don't know.
Number three.
Really?
Number three.
You got Bezos.
You got Gates, and you have Arnaud.
This guy.
Number three, France.
Right.
And then you're thinking, what?
I mean, so let's just, what brands does LVMH own?
Let's just luxury brands.
Don Perrion, Moen Hedesi, hello.
Bulgari, Sephora, where all my girls like to get makeup.
Given Che, Diol, Fendi, DKNY.
The list goes on and on.
They own it all.
Wow.
So unfortunately, I've had to buy a lot of those types of gifts for lady friends.
Buy and drink them.
Yeah, buy and drink them.
Whatever this lawsuit is, I couldn't even read this.
I'm like, I have to spend so much stupid money.
So the thing about me, my friends, everyone out there, I don't mind spending money on ladies that I'm with.
I don't spend anything on myself.
That's my whole thing.
It's like, I don't have a car.
I bought a girl Alexis.
I don't wear jewelry.
I've bought in a girl Tiffany medallion.
I don't rock anything.
I've bought in a girl Louis handbags.
So I've spent a lot of money on these types of products.
But I'm a simple guy.
I'm a simple guy.
So I don't know.
You're a Louis guy or what are you?
Oh, Ricky's a big Louis guy.
Ricky's all Louie.
Ricky's underwear is Louie.
Ricky's mask is Louis Louis.
This guy has a Louie mask.
Yeah, Ricky's mask.
I didn't know Ricky that well, and he put it on.
I thought he was joking.
He's like, buddy, if I'm going to roll out, I'm ruining a Louis face mask.
Buddy, I'm like, can you even breathe?
They just bought a Rolls Royce as well.
They just bought a Rolls Royce.
Is that legit?
I thought it was the ghost.
They just bought it.
They just had the Lambo announce the Rolls.
Yeah, he's doing his thing.
What's your take?
What's your take on this?
I'm wondering what the power move is.
I get the move.
It's a tax thing.
It's a terror thing.
But in your book, is there a power move here that we haven't?
They're just wanting to make a timely decision based on the money that they're doing.
I actually don't think this is a power move.
I just brokered a deal yesterday, and half the battle about the broker in the deal was about how to minimize taxes.
That's what it is.
Yeah, I think this is purely a tax thing.
And I think they got to work with them.
I know this whole November 24th thing.
Give me a break.
I mean, if they want to do that and you extend it for a month and a half to get the deal done, just do it.
In January.
Yes.
But I also understand what it is that if you had an agreement on a contract and they refuse to do it, they don't have to do it.
So we'll see what's going to happen.
We hope it doesn't get too ugly because both of these brands have been historically very prestigious, and we hope they stay that way.
Well, maybe some people hope they don't stay that way.
So there's a discount for it, but it is what it is.
some of the bigger questions is with everything happening with covet around the world the rich are getting richer the poor are getting poorer are these brands are the manufacturing stuff right now and selling them i'm that's right Are they manufacturing stuff?
Meaning, is there a market for these brands still?
There's no question there's a market for these brands.
I mean, I happened to peek into your conference room the other day, and there was gift bags, Louis Vuitton bags, and Dior Gucci bags.
Versage.
And that was just a weekend at the PVD house.
Yeah.
You did give those away too.
We did give away, I don't know what the number was.
50,000 stuff?
We gave a lot of stuff away.
So, okay, so that's that part.
Let's go to Amazon.
Amazon added the ex-NSA spy chief who presided over the Edward Snowden scandal to its board.
Thursday, it has elected former national security agency Chief Keith Alexander to its board.
Alexander presided over the NSA.
When the Edward Snowden scandal broke, Snowden reacted to the news of Alexander hiring to Amazon saying, It turns out, hey, Alexa is short for hey, Keith Alexander, which is worthy powerful.
General Keith Alexander presided as director of the national agency from 2005 to 2014, after which he founded his own cybersecurity company, Iron Net Security.
Is this something deeper than what it is, or is Amazon just trying to protect themselves against a cyber attack?
Well, he was the first, General Keith Alexander was the first commander of the U.S. Cyber Command.
Okay.
So if there's anybody that knows anything about setting up and establishing, it's him, KBM.
I think this is just a smart addition to the board.
You just recruited a guy that can provide a lot of value, relationships, and insights that people are trying to come after your company.
Are you reading into this, Adam, or no?
No, anytime that the word general is in the sentence, I just throw it over to Sepala.
You take this one, Matt.
General Mattis, General Keith Alexander.
You know, the story that I have here is regarding Edward Snowden.
And this is where my problem with the media is.
Is Edward Snowden a good guy?
Is he a bad guy?
Is he anti-American?
Is he pro-American?
This guy, I don't know.
This guy's name has been out there for so long.
He's a guy that just doesn't want to be infringed on.
He wants his privacy, right?
Just leave it.
That's what it would seem.
And he was the why can't I think of the word?
The when you whistleblower, thank you, Kai.
Whistleblower for everything that was happening.
This was during 2010, I want to say, maybe before that.
Point is, this Edwin Snowden guy, Edward Snowden guy, seems like a legit guy, but the media has portrayed him to be sort of a bad guy.
I mean, what's your take on Snowden?
I mean, who did he expose?
Give me the name of who he exposed.
He exposed the government.
Okay, who?
Who was in the government when he exposed him?
I want to say Bush.
Okay, who else did he expose?
Who else did Snowden expose?
NSA.
Who else?
Okay.
Who else did he expose?
I mean, everybody.
Obama?
I don't know who he was doing this year.
Everybody.
Hillary.
Everybody.
Put it out there.
Yes.
And it was everybody.
So when they do that, you know, you're going to have the government that's going to call the media saying, hey, listen, you guys got to kind of cut this part out, and this is a little bit too much.
And, you know, I'm not happy about this.
And, you know, sometimes, like what he's saying, hiring somebody like that, you know, you're really hiring his Rolodex.
Amazon is hiring Keith Alexander's Rolodex.
It's the contact.
You talk about from 2005 to 2014, that's nearly 10 years.
Okay.
What's his Rolodex look like in the space of cybersecurity?
And is that the Rolodex that Jeff Bezos wants?
Of course.
Of course he wants that.
He wants that Rolodex.
So he wants to call those contacts that he has with Amazon.
I think, you know, on Bezos' move, good for him for getting it.
I also understand why the media would turn this into a story.
It's probably something you got to write about because it's always interesting when things like this take place.
Like when Huawei, when a UK in one of the scenarios hired somebody, a former executive from Huawei, a little bit strange.
When you get some of these companies that are hiring former cybersecurity from China, I mean, this happened just last year.
You've got to pay attention to it, but I don't think it goes much more than that with Bezos.
Are you a Snowden fan, anti-Snowden?
I am all for anybody that whistleblows on the government who's trying to manipulate against the people.
What I'm not against is when whistleblowers whistleblow against a country's plan of attack or strategy.
I don't think that's healthy for the people because the enemy knows what they're going to do next.
But if you're going to whistleblow somebody on what they did 10, 20, 30 years ago or even in emails when Clinton or some of that stuff, I'm with that.
We need to know what's going on there and the manipulation part of it.
So, yes, I'm with that part.
So, next, next, since we're talking about this, by the way, we're talking about the NSA and if there's any kind of link with some of these other countries, what they're doing with a Snowden and whistleblower.
A documentary was sent my way.
Okay.
And the documentary is titled Covert Cash.
I don't know if you've seen it or not.
Covert Cash.
I haven't seen it.
I sent it to you.
If you get a text from Pat at midnight on a Tuesday saying, watch this, you freaking watch it.
We all get me, Kai, and Mario.
Sorry, Mario, Kai, and I. Let me use proper English.
Kai and I. Text that.
I watch it immediately.
What did you think about when you watched this document?
First of all, why don't you tell people who are listening to this?
Okay.
What was the documentary about?
So I'll try to do it justice.
The documentary was basically about, I've said she was the lead person, main storyteller here.
Covert cash, what U.S. universities don't want you to know about their foreign funding.
So let's talk about foreign funding.
And they highlighted basically a handful of countries.
Number one, China, number two, Russia.
Number three, Saudi, number four, Qatar, amongst a handful of other countries that are basically, it's a pay-for-play thing.
Kai used the great word prostitution, where these universities are accepting a boatload of cash to indoctrinate their philosophy.
So the Confucius school, China sets up Confucius schools in certain.
So it's sort of like soft power.
If anything we've learned about China is they're not going to go attack you.
They're going to sort of soft power their way, weasel their way in, whisper their way in to say things about you.
But it was actually shocking how much these universities would accept.
And then when China says, don't say nothing bad about us, they say, yes, sir.
Yes, sir.
To the point where, I think the story was, oh, they talk about the leader of Saudi Arabia, what is it, MBS, Mohammed Bill Salman.
He goes around to these universities and they're just like bowing down because he gave them, you know, a couple billion bucks.
So the most poignant part of this episode, of this story, was Qatar sued Texas AM for talking about certain things they shouldn't be talking about.
This is a public university in the state of Texas.
Yeah, Texas.
Come on now.
Can you get more American than that?
Don't give them back in Texas.
And they sued him to shut up and talking about things.
And you know what Texas A ⁇ M did?
They shut their mouth.
No.
So that was the craziest thing.
They wouldn't release their records.
They wouldn't talk about it.
Get the money back.
It was a very, very shady pay-for-play type of move.
What?
So let me give you some stats.
Let me give you some stats.
Harvard leads all U.S. colleges that's received a billion dollars from China.
This is from Bloomberg, by the way.
I'm not quoting you anything else but Bloomberg.
And Bloomberg is Bloomberg.
He just ran for president.
On the left, he dropped out to support Biden.
This is not political stuff, by the way.
This is not left.
This is not political.
This is all about the green, as I said.
Harvard leads U.S. colleges that received a billion dollars from China.
First of all, why are you receiving a billion dollars from the United States?
And let's just say you do receive a billion dollars from China.
For what?
If anybody receives a billion dollars from somebody, what do you owe them?
Yeah, exactly.
Something.
What do you owe?
Something, right?
A go-free lunch.
Yeah.
You owe them something.
Three egg girls.
Yeah.
So what do you owe them?
You owe them a favor.
You owe him to protect them against what?
You owe him to change the way a certain thing is being said in schools.
You know, a couple weeks ago, not even a couple of weeks, but I think it was this week's podcast when we talked about how China is changing the way you think about anything.
They want you to think about them in a very positive way.
The movie Mulan, right?
Where they said, hey, the main actress and Jackie Chan, you got to say good things about CPC, communist, what is it?
CCP?
China, come as part of the community.
Why would I say good things about you?
You got to say good things about it.
Half a billion dollars.
Say good things.
Okay.
Yeah.
But a billion dollars was given to China.
Then the other countries you look at was Russia, was Qatar, was Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Pakistan, Palestine, Syria, Turkey, Venezuela.
Taking money from our enemies.
But out of all of these countries, these are all enemies you're taking money from.
What are you doing taking money from these enemies?
Universities.
You know, for me, it becomes even more concerning because, so every university gets started with a good intention.
I think whoever starts a university, there's a good motive behind it.
You want to add your own method of teaching.
You want to add your own style.
And most of these schools are named after somebody.
Harvard was somebody.
Howard, somebody.
You know, Yale, it's a name of somebody, right?
That when the school goes.
Bring them young, BYU.
Yeah, B-Y-U, LDS, somebody, right?
In Utah.
But to take money from China, and now you're going to teach my kids a certain way of thinking.
And my kids are going to spend more time with you.
And by the time they're 18, I lose them to you.
And now you own them because they're going to say things like, and we're supposed to, as parents, telling our kids, what?
Listen to your teachers.
Listen to your teachers.
So your kids are growing up saying, well, mom, you told me, listen to your teachers.
Study your subject.
James.
But here's a question.
How many who says more than this?
Watch this.
Who says more?
Do parents say more, listen to the teachers?
Or do teachers say more, listen to your parents?
No, parents say, listen to your teachers.
Parents say more, listen to your teachers.
Teachers don't say listen to your parents.
This is a monopoly here.
Parents are taught to tell their kids to go listen to the teachers, but teachers are not taught to tell the kids to go listen to the parents.
So you want me for 18 years to tell my kids, listen to your teachers.
And then you want me to send them to a school that got a billion dollars from China.
And you want me to have China teach the history of China from the perspective of China that gave you a billion dollars to say, take those three sentences out of your textbook because we gave you a billion dollars, wink wink, or what nah.
You know what?
No.
No, I'm not good with that.
In my mind, I think there's somebody from China that goes to that school and edits all the material and infuses into the curriculum what they need to learn, what they need to censor or need to take out.
That's what I'm envisioning right now.
If you take this check, we're going to have a team of people come to your school, university, into your curriculum, and here's what you need to teach everybody.
That's what I'm visualizing right now.
All these countries.
Yeah.
I just realized something, by the way, as you were speaking.
Now, because obviously you're looking for schools for your kids in certain places.
And you're always asking, what does this school believe?
What's their principles?
Always, what do you know about this school?
I'm realizing now, because they're going to be around these teachers.
They're going to be around these influential people.
And you want to make sure that your kids are being taught what they should be being taught, not what someone paid for them to be.
And their fellow students are being taught the same thing.
Let me say, Yagit Ertem, we see you, just so you know that.
He says, Turkey is a nation of NATO.
Mario, whoever you can keep that guy going.
I'm not uncomfortable with that.
He can be on there.
This is fully fine.
But, you know, a nation of, yeah, no spamming, please.
I understand.
But we saw him for saying things like that.
We don't want to see spamming.
But Turkey is a part of NATO, but just because you're part of NATO doesn't mean you're a full-on ally, 100%.
America walks very carefully with Turkey because Turkey is the most powerful, has the most powerful military in the Middle East, and you have to be good with them.
This is why the Armenian genocide hasn't become official by the White House, but it did by Congress and Senate because you have to be very careful with Turkey because U.S. still owns three bases in Turkey.
And if you do say Armenian genocide, Erdogan has said that he's going to kick those three bases out, and America needs those three bases.
And so there's a whole story behind it.
I don't want to get a little bit more technical, but I understand that Turkey is a part of NATO.
What's the relationship between Turkey and Iran?
Allies?
No.
Agitators?
No.
What's that relationship?
I think Turkey kind of holds their guard with U.S. saying, if you screw me, I'm going to become a friend with the people that are your enemies.
I think that's the angle that is.
You got to always be careful.
You know, sometimes you have people that are close to you and you watch them.
You know, the people that work close to you, but they stay close to your enemies.
I'm always worried.
Like, I have somebody that's working with me.
Why are you following my enemies?
What's your motive of following the enemies?
Why are you befriending the enemies?
Those guys don't have a long lifespan with me because if you're doing that, what is your motive?
What are you doing here?
You can't play both sides.
Yeah, what are you doing there?
If you're in, you're in.
If you're not in, then go do whatever you want to do.
This is not no dictatorship for you to have to be here.
But you got to be careful.
You got to be careful what's going on.
And with the schooling, if anybody's listening to this, if you're a parent, ask more questions.
When you go interview a school, ask them.
Like I asked the schools the following question.
Let me ask you, what do you guys think about capitalism?
I ask the question.
What are your thoughts on capitalism?
What do you guys think about rich people?
What do you think about entrepreneurs?
What do you think about politics?
How do you think the president's doing?
How do you think about this?
How do you think?
Oh, yeah.
What do you think about that?
Oh, you know, like I went to one school and we sat down and they said, we are known as the number one most progressive school in all of America.
And we fully believe in climate change and going green.
And we teach our young kids about being progressive.
For $35,000 a year?
Yeah.
No.
Not going to send my kids to your place.
I'm not going to send them to my kids to your place for them to be told how terrible rich people are, entrepreneurs are, and capitalists are.
No, we're not going to do that.
I had my daughters wear a capitalist shirt.
I have a shirt.
It's called Capitalist.
Yeah.
And we're to their high school.
Says, how much crap did you get today?
So nothing from the students, but I got some teachers.
Yeah.
Teachers.
Why are you wearing that shirt?
What's up with that shirt?
Why are you wearing that shirt?
I remember one time we were sitting with Ayoki, Steve Ayoki, you know, the DJ Steve Ayoki.
And Nancy was wearing a shirt say, I love capitalism.
And he walks in.
She walks in and Steve looks at her and says, I love capitalism.
What kind of a shirt is that?
She says, oh, we're an entrepreneur channel.
Okay.
So he was uncomfortable about it.
Why is capitalism a bad word?
For some people, it is because capitalists are seen by these cartoons that a lot of us were raised on as these big fat men who take money away from the skinny people.
That's what the cartoon characters show.
You ever seen the cartoon characters with big fat capitalists?
Yeah, yeah.
A capitalist is always painted as a big fat.
A fat cat or a pig.
Yeah.
Big fat pig that takes the money away from everybody.
What are the socialists painted as?
Oh, loving angels.
You know, wings, Gabriel-esque, you know, Michael Angels.
You know, he's so lovely.
That would flow.
Because they have a great track record.
So much.
You know, you're so incredible.
You know, by the way, this leads me to a feud that took place between Elon Musk and Reich.
Oh, there we go.
Robert Reich recently.
Let me read this tweet.
If you have this tweet, pull it up.
Oh, you got it?
Okay.
Here we go.
There it is.
Tesla Robert Reich, who worked under the Clinton administration.
He worked under the Obama administration, I believe.
And he also worked under Gerald Ford.
We have to say that as well because he's been around for a long time.
He's got a couple of documentaries on income inequality and saving capitalism.
Yes, he does.
But his saving capitalism is not really saving capitalism.
It's really taking shots at capitalism.
It's a negative spin on capitalism.
So Robert Reich says Tesla forced all workers to take a 10% pay cut from mid-April until July.
In the same period, Tesla stocks skyrocketed and CEO Elon Musk's net worth quadrupled from $25 billion to $100 billion.
Elon Musk responded.
And then he says on the bottom, Musk is a modern-day robber baron.
Elon Musk responds: All Tesla workers also get stocks, so their compensation increased proportionally.
You are a modern-day moron.
You know, here's a story with this guy, and they're having a battle.
And I sent out a tweet myself yesterday as well.
If you can type in Kai Robert Reich Guardian, just go up there and up there, top.
No, no, go, Robert Reich and Guardian.
Robert Reich, Guardian.
G-U-A, Guardian.
There you go.
The first one that came up.
Just click on that.
And then go up there and type in, go up there and type in China.
China.
It's an article.
Click on that one.
Okay, watch this.
It says an article he wrote last year.
Forget China.
It's America's, go up a little bit.
It's America's own economic system that's broken.
Okay, so you're American, apparently.
Keep going lower, keep going lower, keep going lower.
Look what he says.
The American economic system is focusing on maximizing shareholder returns and it's achieving that goal.
On Friday, the SP notched a new all-time high.
But average Americans have seen no significant gains in their incomes for four decades.
Adjusted for inflation.
China's economic system, by contrast, is focused on maximizing China.
The government.
And it's achieving that goal.
40 years ago, China was still backward and agrarian.
Today, it's the world's second largest economy, home to the world's biggest auto industry and some of the world's most powerful technology companies.
Over the last four decades, hundreds of millions of Chinese people have been lifted out of poverty because of capitalism.
Because of capitalism.
That's why.
See, you got people like this that are in America that are on the payroll of people from China.
They're on the payroll of people who don't love America.
It goes back to my thing.
Where's the little money from?
Yeah, let me give you some money and buy you.
You know, I had a conference call this week on the Dream Team call on Tuesday.
And here's what I said.
I said, you know what kind of people when you're young and even if I ask you, okay, when you're younger and naive, how can you be bought?
So you're a woman.
You're attractive.
Let's just say you're dropped dead attractive.
How is an 18-year-old girl bought by a 32-year-old guy?
How is she bought?
Give me the words.
You probably ask me.
Outside of gifts, how do you do it?
You're at Estee Lauder.
You're at a counter of Foot Locker.
Girls work in there.
Beautiful.
What do you say?
What lines?
Give me some help.
You're not going to give you all my lines, Pat.
Why are you working here?
You don't have to work here anymore.
Yeah.
You don't have to work anymore.
Oh, my gosh.
I would have gorgeous.
Not that I know that.
That's right.
Well, the one thing about all of us here is the two of us, we've only kissed one girl in our lives.
we're Christians yeah so but the line is one girl he's got three but the but the I didn't say it that loud but you did say it right down you know what what what what what I'm just doing some math here.
I got it right now with Sheena.
I got my life right here.
Happy birthday, Sheena.
I got my life right now.
Happy birthday, Sheena.
Oh, that was just.
That was a good shot.
Yeah, that was a good shot.
But it was.
But what's the line you think about?
Oh my gosh, you're so beautiful.
Let me ask you: does your man take care of you?
Man, if I had somebody like you, I'd be focused on you 24-7.
What does he do?
He must take care of his car more.
Does he focus on his body more?
I'd be focused on your body more.
This kind of stuff's ready to go.
This kind of stuff you say, right?
If I were you, I would do this to you.
You know, if I was your man.
Okay.
So the 18-year-old's like, oh, my God.
I want to be with this guy.
And then you fall for it, right?
Okay.
As you age, you know, and a couple people screw you over, okay?
Men and women, you learn what kind of women you don't want to be with.
Women realize what kind of men they don't want to be with.
So, and then when another person uses that same script and you fall for it, you're a qualified moron.
Okay.
Because that script's been used on you in the past before, right?
And women use that line as well.
You know, man, if you were my man, every time you woke up in the morning, I wouldn't let you leave the house.
Yeah, all this stuff.
I've heard this line.
I've heard that break.
Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.
No, no, no.
The way you say this, you've heard my line before.
It says, fool me once.
If you fool me, if you, well, you know what I'm talking about.
Have you heard that J. Cole song?
That's where he uses that?
Oh, my God.
It's amazing.
In the middle of a hip-hop rap song, he plays that.
That's it, really.
Fool me once.
You can't be fooled again.
You know what I'm trying to say?
Yeah.
But I mean, listen, that's why he got re-elected because people just liked it.
So going back to that, going back to this, as you age, if you can be bought by money and compliments, there's character flaws there.
You're cheap, man.
If you can be bought, if loyalty can be bought through money and compliments.
And here's what I mean by compliments: flattery.
If you are so desperate for flattery and compliments, that's a stranger or somebody you don't have a deep relationship with can come and tell you how special you are, and you they butter you up and you fall for it, there's deep insecurities in you that needs to be addressed.
Okay.
If somebody says, oh my gosh, let me tell you.
And by the way, and I'm talking pure flattery from somebody that doesn't have a long-term relationship with you, that's not done anything with you, that's not experienced anything with you, but they tell you something like how special you are, how amazing you are, right?
PBD, I get that in the insurance industry.
I got guys in insurance.
Hey, why don't you come work with us?
We have a 100% contract, 125%.
We'll give you leave.
You know, Patrick doesn't know what he's doing.
You'll have a much better life over here, much, much easier for you.
You don't have to work so hard.
I get that all the time.
Yeah.
All the time.
And our guys get it all the time.
Yeah.
But that's just everything.
So, how do we get to this message here, Robert Reich?
Okay.
If another country wants to buy you today, how do they buy you?
I mean, you saw how some people try to buy us with $600,000.
Hey, come do this and come do that.
And by the way, please understand this.
I am not saying, hey, if a person sells their business, you are, what do you call it?
You are a, because we just had a conversation with a guy yesterday that sold his business.
So you are a sellout.
No, you build a business, somebody wants to buy it.
You have an extra strategy.
I'm talking about if somebody, an enemy of mine, called me.
Perfect example.
I got a call from one of my enemies.
And he and I talked.
That's the only person in the world who says that sentence.
I got a call from one of my enemies.
And we know what it is.
Right.
And we spoke.
Let me reap.
A competitive moment.
Okay.
Gotcha.
I know what you're saying.
And we talked, right?
And we talked, and we had an hour and a half conversation together.
And that's another line you'll never know.
Yeah, right.
And he calls me and we're having a conversation together.
This person knows my position.
And he knows who I am, and he knows how my position is with him.
But he calls me.
Every once in a while, he'll call me.
And he calls me, and this one day we had a very good conversation together.
And he had some things he was sharing with me that he was frustrated with.
So for me, I naturally will give counsel.
I don't give counsel based on manipulation.
I don't give counsel based on, you know, trying to brainwash it to hurt you.
I'm going to give the counsel to you because that's how I win my loyalty.
Even if you're my enemy, till today, I have the darkest secrets about people who have screwed me over that no one knows about.
Darkest secrets about people who screwed me over that I'm not telling anybody about.
My wife doesn't know about this stuff.
My wife doesn't know about the darkest secret I know about people.
But if I know something about my wife's, my wife needs to know because it has to do with my wife.
But if I know something, you're confiding in me and you're telling me parliamentary what happened with me and XYZ.
I'm keeping it because I want that reputation to be, here's how Pat is, if this happens with them, right?
He calls me and he says, well, you know, in the industry, this is what's happening.
People are leaving and people are going here and people are going there.
And what do we do to get people locked in?
I said, here's what I do know.
I said, if you take care of your people genuinely, you genuinely take care of your people, and they leave you, one, it's a character issue.
Two, you never had them in the first place.
It's that simple, okay?
You never had them in the first place, and it's their loss.
I said, but if you do you right, you treat people right, you go out there and deliver on your promises to the best of your abilities, eventually you build a reputational marketplace.
And guess what people who are mature say?
Marketplace is not filled with people that keep their word.
Marketplace is filled with a lot of people that are flattery.
Marketplace is filled with a lot of people that are entertaining.
Marketplace is filled with a lot of people that tend to tell you what you want to hear.
But the marketplace is not filled with people that keep their word.
If you find somebody that does that, you lock on to them, right?
People like him are for sale.
People like him, you have to be very careful with because you're going after bashing an entrepreneur for what?
This guy's created jobs.
He's put all these things on the line.
The guy's got five kids.
He's spending more time creating his businesses that's making the world a better place and you're upset about it.
Now, listen, I'm not sitting here saying Elon Musk is Jesus.
I'm not sitting here saying Jeff Bezos is, I know Jeff Bezos is powerplace and what he's trying to do and all this other stuff.
And I know where this guy's at.
He's got these crazy imagination things that he wants to do.
But he has made the world a better place.
How has Robert Reich made the world a better place?
And Elon.
Right.
And Elon Musk is right to call him a moron.
You know why?
Because Robert Reich's never ran a business.
He's never created an invention.
He's never ran three, four business all at the same time.
Simultaneously.
Right?
So he's right to call him a moron because he's never been in the trenches of an entrepreneur.
Robert Reich represented an organization that told Elon Musk it'll take 13 billion.
No, what is it?
It'll take $6 billion.
What was the number, Kai?
$6 billion in 13 years to go in space.
And that was NASA.
And Elon Musk did it in six years with less than a billion dollars.
So your organization cost God knows how many more times versus Elon Musk did.
So Elon Musk saves money.
You cost people money.
And again, I think it's important for people to realize when a guy like Elon, when the job creators, like here's what I said the other day.
I sent out a tweet.
Kai, I don't know if you can go on my Twitter profile.
If you can get there fast, try.
If you can, I'll just read it off here.
Here's what I said.
I got to say, Kai is on fire today.
Spelling everything correctly, pulling everything out.
Okay, there you go.
That was my tweet.
Right there.
Right there.
I said, job creators, I favor we're politicians.
One risks everything to start a business and which helps create jobs for others.
The other wakes up every morning finding a way to hold job creators hostage by threatening them with new regulations.
I choose job creators 10 out of 10 times.
Exactly.
It's that simple.
Exactly.
And I feel bad when job creators are bullied.
I don't like when job creators are bullied.
I don't like when entrepreneurs are being bullied.
I don't like it.
I don't like when that's taking place.
And I think sometimes these politicians throw their weight around just because you can go make somebody's life a living hell with regulations.
I think sometimes we've got to protect our entrepreneurs.
Oh, we're at 2119.
We've never been at 2119.
It's very cool if you're on the show.
The podcast, put a thumbs up and share this podcast.
We're coming to the tail end of it.
I think we got 14 minutes here before we wrap up our 10 o'clock.
I know you got to fly that 12 o'clock to yourself as well.
But let's see what else needs a favor from you, Pennsylvania.
Yeah, we might have to wrap it up at 9:59.
Let's see what we got.
Oh, let's which one you guys want to hit up?
You want to hit up Citigroup, new female CEO?
You want to hit up board challenge, U.S. black directors, or Germany putting pressure on Russia or hacking an election, Russia, Iran.
Let's go to the board challenge.
Let's go to board challenges.
You want to go to the board challenge?
Let's go to the board challenge.
All right, so let's go to the board challenges first and then we'll go to the citigroup.
So, board challenge: U.S. firms add a black director to board within 12 months.
9% of Fortune 500 companies board members are blash.
Let me say that one more time: only 9% of Fortune 500 companies board members are black.
66% of Fortune 500 board members are white.
18% of Fortune 500 board members are white women.
Statistically, 72% of directors have previously board experience, and half are current or ex-CEOs per hydrake and struggle.
So, 9% of board members are black, Fortune 500 companies, 66% are white men, and 18% are white women.
What do you have to say about this?
You know, it's interesting because I'm looking up here the percentage.
The black population in America is 13.4%.
Yep.
So there's a large percentage there that is not addressed in corporate America.
You're going to look at 9% of Fortune 50, 500.
We're only looking at 500 companies.
And when you're looking at this, you know, one of the speaking about job creators, because of the business we've created here, PBD, I've been able to reinvest my money.
My wife and I have been able to invest our money into other job creators.
And we've created an investment in the company.
It's a fastest-growing whiskey company right now in America, ran by a black woman.
And it's the only multicultural board in the liquor industry that is run by a multicultural board.
And so we're looking at these things and saying, you know what?
I can't say, hey, you got to do this, you got to do that.
The only thing I can say, listen, we need to take charge on our own and control what we can control and call this out where it needs to be called out and address the things that need to address.
But at the same time, the challenge also is within us.
Let's us create the businesses to create us, the next Fortune 500 companies.
So therefore, we can appoint our boards.
I know it's going to take a minute, but that's why podcasts like this exist.
That's why the information and the awareness needs to create.
But I think corporate America can do a lot better.
But you're looking at two multiculture guys here with no college degrees creating a company.
That's our answer.
It's how we go about our business.
That's how we handle that.
Adam, what do you say about that?
You know, instinctually, just how I am when I see only 9% of Fortune 500 board members are like, I said, this is fucking ridiculous.
We got to do better than this.
Like, that's what I have in my heart.
But I've realized, don't just jump to conclusions.
Start looking at some numbers.
Matt brought up a great stat.
13% of America is black.
Okay.
17% Latino.
61% white.
5% Asian.
2% multicultural, multi-racial.
1% Indian.
A lot of amazing Filipino people here as well.
I don't know where they're at.
They're rising up.
They're rising up.
They're in the hospitals.
Instinctually, what's my point?
Instinctually, I'm thinking we got to do better.
We got to do better.
So I guess my answer would be: we need to do at least 4% better.
We need to at least mirror what's in the population.
So, two points here.
Number one, I'm all for hiring the best person for the job.
Correct.
Right?
So like I know that we've talked about when Biden sort of pigeonholed himself where he's like, I'm going to select a black female.
Okay, respect.
I feel you on that.
I'm good with that.
But is that the best person for the job?
So I'm sort of conflicted.
I want you to hire the best person for the job.
But at the same time, I'm all for giving people a shot.
So there's been many years where I'm sure that it was way less than 9% that African Americans were on the board of a Fortune 500 company.
I'm sure 10 years ago it was 5%.
And I'm sure 25 years ago it was 2%.
So as long as we're doing better and as long as that we're an inclusive society, but as long as it's still the best person for the job.
Okay, so I got some data for you.
How about that?
Is that okay with you if we do some data?
I like data.
Okay, I got data for you.
Here's my data for you.
I understand what both of you guys are saying and I'm with you.
But here's what I did.
I went online and I got the following percentage.
So the percentage you got is what percentage of Americans are African American, which is 13.4%.
What percentage are Latinos?
18.5%.
And then what percentage are white?
Population-wise, there's roughly 42 million African Americans in America.
There's roughly 52 million Hispanics.
And there's roughly 234 million whites.
So let's do whites and blacks, specifically because we're not talking Hispanics here.
So there's total 234 million whites in America, 41 million, 42 million blacks in America.
Okay?
Whites, blacks, population total.
Then when I pull up the data here from the government, nce.ed.gov, it says degrees conferred by race and ethnicity.
Oh, check this out.
This is pretty interesting.
Yeah, so now you go to bachelor's degree for whites, for whites, percentage-wise, versus blacks, what percentage get degrees, right?
Total population in America, whites, 1.21 million is the degree, a college degree.
This is during that year.
Blacks was 192,000, okay, for that specific academic year.
So whites to blacks was six plus times more.
By the way, Latinos got more bachelor's degrees than African Americans.
Latinos was 217,000 versus African Americans, 192,000, which is not a big deal because there are more Latinos than Hispanics, than African Americans.
So that part makes sense.
What are the Asian numbers of the show though?
Asian numbers.
Those numbers are usually off the chain.
The Asian numbers are not, Asian numbers right there.
133,000, actually lower than Latinos and blacks, but the population of Asians is not that big.
So look, here's where I'm going with this.
Here's where I'm going with this.
If you want to be in the board of a Fortune 500 company, what do most board members have in common?
They have degrees and they went to fancy schools and they have experience.
I'm not on a Fortune 500 company board.
And I don't have a four-year degree.
I don't have a two-year degree.
So it has also a lot to do with hiring qualified people that go and get degrees.
If you want to be on a board, you've got to hire a qualified person.
Go be on a board that has to do with having the right education.
Sheena sits on our chairman of the board, right?
Your wife is a chairman of the board of the field.
Prior to you guys getting married, what was Sheena?
She was a salesperson for a striker, and she got a college degree at University of Pitt.
University of Pitt.
And she was a softball player.
She played pro.
She got full-right scholarship.
She was a rock star, right?
But she's got a degree from University of Pitt.
Right.
And she's half white, half black, and she's the chairman of the board.
So you have a black single mother, you know, but has a degree that brings value.
She's the chairman of the board.
That's just anybody.
So I think these numbers are, obviously, you sit there and say, well, we have to, because it's 13.4%, we have to have 13.4% of all the board members being black.
You can't say that.
It's got to be the percentage being made based on how many are getting degrees that are getting results.
It's not just about color.
You know, at our home office, if somebody comes here, they would say we discriminate.
Why do we discriminate?
We have more black workers here than any other ethnicity.
Somebody could say we discriminate.
Somebody could say, well, Pat, you're racist against white people.
You have more blacks than whites here.
It's not about that.
I feel very uncomfortable.
I'm the only white person that's going on.
But when you look at the environment, all I'm saying to you, all I'm saying to you is, in many circumstances, I do agree.
Nike has to have black board members on there because their product and their consideration are athletes, NFL, NBA.
Yes, that does make sense.
But they also have to have soccer because now they're getting more into the soccer side.
I think Adidas needs to get Kanye West on there.
I do agree with that.
And if he bought Gap, he needs to be on there as well.
There needs to be an element of that, that there needs to be some cleaning up to do.
But I don't think it's as crazy and as astronomically, oh my gosh, America is a racist nation.
They don't want any black board members.
I don't agree with that either.
I'm just curious, how much of those college degrees are actually from Ivy League schools that are board members?
I wonder if what the potential breakdown of that is.
Well, you know, if you went to XYZ Texas AM versus Harvard, does that have any play?
Depends on the state.
Depends on the state.
So if a company is a Texas company, they're going to want Texas universities to be there.
It's a lot of pride in Texas.
They want Texas universities to be there.
But if you look at private equity, for example, the private equity world, you saw yesterday when you and I and Ian were having a meeting together.
All the private equity guys right now we're dealing with, there are all of them are Ivy League.
All of them.
The golden ticket, he said.
Yeah, it's the golden.
You get an Ivy League degree.
You go become a private equity guy.
You do deals with private equity guys, are from Ivy.
You're making your $2 to $10 million year income.
Crazy.
And private equity.
Dart myth.
But if you went to an elite school like me, Glendo Community College.
Thanks.
I won't tell you guys.
When you go to Glendo Community College and you have the kind of letters that I got, letters of acceptance.
When I got my letter of acceptance from GCC, I mean, it was celebration.
We went to Sizzlers on the Roller 910K job.
Man, it was celebration time when I got my letter of acceptance from GCC.
So now let's talk about Citigroup because I'm assuming you got something to say about our friend here at Citigroup.
Citigroup's new female CEO, first woman, CEO of Big Wall Street Bank, Wall Street Giant City, announced Thursday that its CEO, Michael Corbett, will retire after an eight-year tenure as CEO.
He'll be replaced by Jane Fraser.
Where'd she go to school?
Can you put her copy?
I got it.
She went to Harvard.
No kidding.
She went to Goldman for a while.
She worked for McKinsey.
Is that the consulting group?
The biggest one.
Right.
So she has pedigree and she has a track record.
So it's good for her.
This woman, Jane Frazier, is a certified G.
And this is not a small story, by the way.
You mean, think of the major banks in America.
This is the first female CEO ever of a major Wall Street bank, Jane Frazier.
So this is historic.
I think this is a wonderful role model for women.
I don't have daughters.
I know that you have a daughter.
I know that you have daughters.
I think if they want to be entrepreneurs and they want to be in the business world and they want to succeed, they're going to be saying, well, what CEOs have run major banks?
Take a look at Jane over here.
In addition, I have Pamela Yellen, the former Federal Reserve chairman, too, as well.
When you're looking at this stat, I remember there was a study in 2010 that 60% of all wealth in America shifted into the control of women in 2010.
I was doing seminars and doing seminars about that.
It's funny that some guy said, well, shoot, when I got married, my wealth in my house shifted in 1995 in 2010.
But more women today are graduating college than men.
More women today are in politics.
More women today are non-profit for-profit organizations, running executive directors of companies, CEOs of companies.
But to see finally now a woman lead a bank, breaking the good old boy circle, and now a woman has influenced him.
Because listen, in my house, PBD, in your house, I know you have a very stringent conversation with Jennifer about money.
But in the clients that we serve, a good majority of the conversations of kitchen table conversations is, I'm the man of the house.
I'm a man of the house.
Right, babe?
Right, babe?
I can say that.
As it relates to money.
Right?
I make financial decisions.
Right, babe?
It's an interesting conversation.
I mean, your wife is CIO of PPE.
VP of Operations.
VP of Operations.
Yes.
Your wife is chairwoman of the board.
You guys are married to certified Gs.
So it's, you know, the ladies are getting their.
I will tell you this.
I am very surprised.
This is the first woman CIA in Australia.
I'm very surprised by the fact that, because women get the degrees, women go get educated.
You know, women take education very seriously.
So I'm surprised that part's not taking place yet.
But congratulations to Jane.
Shout out to her for doing what she does.
By the way, for those of you guys that are watching today's podcast, a couple things.
We're coming to the end here.
If you haven't yet subscribed to the channel, please do so.
Put that alert button as well.
Click on that as well and put a thumbs up.
And if you enjoyed our brother here, Matt Sopala, that joined us.
Kai, if you can put his channel, Seven Figure Squad, in the comments section.
Matt's got his own channel as well.
Maury's already done it.
Mario, do it again if you can for people.
You can go follow Matt.
Matt's content.
Thank you.
We'll put his Instagram account.
Matt's one of the coolest cats you'll ever meet in your life.
The grooves.
Hands down, one of the coolest cats you'll ever meet in your life.
But if you do hang out with him, I do want to prepare.
You will have a cigar if you hang out with them.
There's no question about it.
Or two.
Or two.
That is true.
Or two.
Shout out to Chamberlain.
Having said that, do we have the dates for the next one yet, Kai?
Is it going to be next Tuesday or Wednesday?
Is it Tuesday?
Next Tuesday, 8 o'clock.
We'll be back at it again.
Have a great weekend, everybody.
And I love it.
Salutes.
Bye-bye.
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