Mike Rose is a podcaster, author, and podcaster who travels the country interviewing regular people who are making a difference in the world around them. In this episode, Mike talks about his new show, People You Should Know, which premieres in May.
00:03:58.060When I – and maybe four or five times you're going to bite it and it's going to be like that for the next 24 hours until your body finally sends some sort of message and the swelling starts to go down.
00:04:08.380But it is a – it's a horrible moment in your day when you start that crucible.
00:04:16.560There's nothing like that going down that journey, the D-Day of every bite you take and one of them is going to land – step on that hidden IED of a previously bitten inner lip.
00:09:43.440Like, I joked the last time I was at your pad in Nashville, it was like, I really felt like you had tapped into, like, a Wayne's World meets Charlie Rose, right?
00:09:55.220And so all those old ideas will come back.
00:10:09.000And he'd, like, want to impress my mom, so we'd ring up one of those telethons that we're on just to – he'd be like, hey, it's Randy, who's crippled over there.
00:10:17.140And they'd, like, tell you who's crippled or whatever, and he'd be like, put $30 on that one.
00:10:21.820Well, do you remember Jerry Lewis doing the telethons?
00:11:00.700And so you're just sitting there, like, this doll would be next to me, and her name would be Rachel, and she'd be dressed up like a tramp from Little Women or something.
00:12:42.780Well, you know, aren't we all just passing through, Theo?
00:12:45.280When you really think about it, this whole notion of permanence as it relates to porcelain dolls, I think that's something we can dive into to kill three, four, maybe five minutes.
00:13:11.700That's right, because when you get it wet, it swells up a little bit, like those nesting dolls in reverse.
00:13:17.020When you see that little Princess Diana Beanie Baby swell up like a tick, your heart's going to beat with anticipation and wonder about what could possibly happen next.
00:13:35.920I say cavity search because with the Beanie Baby, it's really your property.
00:13:41.140That's the beauty, especially the Princess Diana Beanie Babies because with a touch of royalty, well, they're dressed in purple too, the color of kings, Theo.
00:13:51.640And if you order right now within the next 44 seconds, both of these CIA Beanie Babies will be stuffed with pure polyester or gay cotton, as they call it in some circles.
00:14:02.440And for this week, just to mix things up a little bit, each one of these Beanie Babies, every one out of 100, will be stuffed with cocaine.
00:15:04.460I'll tell you a true story about this guy, Byard Winthrop.
00:15:07.00016 years ago, he sent me a sweatshirt in the mail because he saw me on Dirty Jobs getting the absolute crap knocked out of me.
00:15:18.400And he saw my clothes being destroyed right and left.
00:15:20.760He goes, this is an indestructible sweatshirt.
00:15:23.000It's 100% made in the USA, and Slate Magazine had just written a story called The World's Greatest Hoodie.
00:15:32.960So it wasn't cheap, but it was made from cotton that was literally picked, like, outside of Gaffney, maybe, or Middlesex, South Carolina, where their factories were.
00:15:43.220He showed me pictures of the employees who stitched it, you're right, the yarn, the everything.
00:17:07.180The problem that those guys have is there's a labor challenge because what's happening is they're competing, obviously, with China and with Vietnam and with a lot of other places.
00:17:21.080And those places, you know, they don't have the same regulations.
00:17:25.840They don't have the same requirements.
00:17:30.260They don't have the same conditions and factories.
00:17:54.960But it's crazy to think that when you think about – this is a misconception that I started to realize that I had, that when I travel around the country because we've probably – and I just said this recently, but we've – touring comedy, we've probably done the top 200 cities size-wise, right?
00:18:11.600Like some comedians, they go to 50 cities, right?
00:18:38.960And you think, oh, well, I'm sure there's always – when you're flying on an airplane, you're like, oh, I'm sure we're passing thousands and hundreds of thousands of factories that are making products and sweatshirts.
00:18:57.720Well, I mean it was – there's so many rivers up there and so the mills were by the rivers and so the factories were near the mills and the cotton was spun there.
00:19:07.260But this guy Byard, he's actually become a friend of mine and he's on a mission and like flannel, like hand-dyed yarn in flannel was something – like those old thick flannel shirts that we grew up with.
00:19:53.940But if in general, he gets manufacturing reinvigorated in this country, then there's going to be a challenge that like a lot of people aren't talking about, which is labor.
00:20:07.220So there's – in January, there were 482,000 open positions in manufacturing in this country, right?
00:21:10.580And I know you have a new show that's coming out on your YouTube on May 2nd where you went and met with a lot of just workers on the ground, right?
00:21:35.780From my perspective, after traveling around the country, I don't know how else you're going to get jobs back here because it just – there's a lot of towns that are boarded up.
00:21:42.540There's a lot of small cities that are boarded up.
00:21:55.060But there's nothing – and that's one of 40 probably cities that we've seen that are like that.
00:22:00.120So I'm just thinking what's going to come and save these cities if something needs to?
00:22:04.780And so then you start to see Trump put these tariffs on, and then you start to get the idea, well, it's to bring jobs back so we have jobs here so it keeps cities busy.
00:23:04.180I think about – well, hell, I think about slavery in 1870, right?
00:23:10.160And I think about the conversation that was going on in the country and a big part of it was, wait, if we get rid of this, do you have any idea what it's going to do to the economy?
00:23:20.540Not just for the south, which would collapse, but for the north.
00:23:46.080But if you fundamentally were to make the slavery decision based on nothing but whether or not it was good or bad for the economy, well, we'd still have slavery.
00:24:23.000But I do think that the reason people are talking past each other with the tariffs is because some people are saying, look, it's a tax, period.
00:24:30.740It's not good for global trade, which is true.
00:24:33.700But if there's this other – if you're trying to transform Jackson, Mississippi, then you at least have to elevate the conversation to these – this other set of consequences that might happen if you shake the whole thing up.
00:24:47.680Now, again, I put a big like asterisk on that, i.e. I don't really know what I'm talking about.
00:24:54.460But I do believe that there are unintended consequences and intended consequences.
00:25:00.960And the consequences of messing with the tariffs are probably both.
00:25:07.560But do you feel like – do you think Trump, his intentions are good?
00:25:31.300Oh, that's me in a cap and gown sitting there without any pants on as if to indicate optically that even though I have my degree, I'm not actually trained for any of the opportunities that currently exist.
00:25:41.480Oh, you look like you just graduated from San Francisco.
00:26:14.080If you click on scholarship right there up at the top, yeah, it'll take you to a, well, that's me and a bunch of people who got the scholarship.
00:33:54.500They've got over $50 billion in an endowment.
00:33:58.460Yeah, that might not even have an effect.
00:34:00.640Well, I mean, look, colleges, especially the top tier colleges, have an awful lot of money.
00:34:08.180And they have a steady stream of customers because in our society, we have completely bought into the notion that what you're purchasing in these schools is an education, which you're actually purchasing as a credential.
00:34:24.200Whether or not you're educated or not, your experience may vary.
00:34:27.900Look, dude, I'm looking at my iPhone right here.
00:34:30.460If you've got an internet connection, well, you have access to 98% of all the known information in the world.
00:34:36.580How you process it and how you utilize it, that's up to you.
00:34:41.200So I'm not – it's not fair to say that you can get a liberal arts degree on your iPhone, but you can.
00:34:46.960It's not fair to really compare, you know, lying in your bed like I did two weeks ago watching a free lecture at MIT and saying, you know, it would be the same experience if I were there in the classroom.
00:34:59.400But it's close enough to say, well, wait a minute.
00:35:02.860If the first one cost me $0.0 and the second one is going to keep me in debt for over 20 years, what am I doing?
00:38:10.500And so that's how the needle starts to move, and that's part of what has to happen.
00:38:15.720So you're saying that if the tariffs work, right, part of that is going to have to be that we're going to need people who can do the jobs, do the manufacturing jobs here.
00:38:23.360We're going to need those skilled labor workers, right?
00:38:51.520Yeah, bring up ethos and tell us and all these Greek words.
00:38:55.580You know, the Aristotelian definition of a tragedy, anagnoresis and peripatia, a characteristic of spirit, a culture, era, or community is manifested in its beliefs and aspirations.
00:39:37.240I mean, when I was a kid, like the first time I had to raise my hand – well, the first time I had to take a pledge, it was the pledge of the flag.
00:40:21.500On my honor, I will do my best to do my duty to God and my country.
00:40:26.100Like wait – that's just the first sentence.
00:40:29.200Never mind whether you like it or agree or disagree.
00:40:32.540Challenging kids to take an oath and to make a pledge.
00:40:37.620My foundation has a thing called a sweat pledge.
00:40:39.780You have to sign it if you're applying for the particular pile of money that I've accumulated through donations, and I'm super stingy with that money.
00:40:47.820Well, AA has a – they have a pledge in the beginning that you do as a group.
00:40:51.160There's something about doing something as a group that makes you feel a part of a group.
00:41:31.780Trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent, combined with these really old school affirmations around things like gratitude and delayed gratification and personal responsibility and work ethic and aversion to debt.
00:41:53.540I actually have something on the sweat pledge that says I would rather live in a tent and eat beans than pay for things I can't afford.
00:42:53.600But when I get calls from parents or teachers or kids who are going through this application process and they say, look, I'm not really comfortable signing this.
00:43:03.180Then I say, well, then this particular pile of free money might not be for you.
00:44:17.420And he was saying that one way to look at AI is that everyone will kind of level up, right?
00:44:24.020It's like suddenly kind of robots or computers will do a lot of the more menial tasks.
00:44:30.980And you'll – everyone will kind of be a manager.
00:44:33.860And it's interesting because if you say that to me or your generation, our generation kind of that, people would be like, well, I don't want to just be – I don't want to be the manager of five robots and I sit in a small dark room all the time and, you know, and that's my life.
00:44:49.700And maybe I get four-day work week instead of five.
00:44:53.040But if you told my nephews that, hey, you get to be the manager of five robots, you just sit in this room and control them all day, they would think that's awesome.
00:46:06.500So he's taking kind of a victory lap right now.
00:46:08.820But his big point would be you would have to see the enthusiasm among his group of workers when they created a sweatshirt that became the greatest hoodie ever made.
00:46:22.800And you can look at that and go, it's a freaking sweatshirt, dude.
00:48:53.440And you can find it on the site there.
00:48:55.180They're hiring over the next nine years 140,000 welders, steam fitters, pipe fitters, electricians, all of the construction trades, plus all kind of electronics and technical stuff.
00:49:09.880Very, very few of those positions require a four-year degree.
00:55:13.660And then around the corner, he's like, yeah, we did that one, too.
00:55:15.800And see over here the way this – that one took.
00:55:19.620And as he was talking, like, his eyes were filling up.
00:55:23.380And he was driving past his life's work.
00:55:28.540And it was there on display to be seen.
00:55:30.780And I was very happy for him to be able to have that but also very mindful of the fact that you can see the same wonder in the sewer, right?
00:55:41.020Like the architecture down there and the technology.
00:56:42.580And they're like, well, we just think it would be great if somebody were paying attention to the fact that we've been doing this for 100 years and that there is no automotive industry without us.
01:00:14.980Valor Recovery helps men to develop the tools necessary to have a healthier sex life.
01:00:20.280Their coaches are in long-term recovery and will be your partner, mentor, and spiritual guide to transcend these problematic behaviors.
01:00:28.040To learn more about Valor Recovery, please visit them at www.valorrecoverycoaching.com or email them at admin at valorrecoverycoaching.com.
01:00:47.520Well, let's talk about like the workforce a little bit, then let's talk about some issues that they face for a few minutes, and then I'm going to talk about your new show.
01:00:53.240Last time we spoke, we talked about minimum wage, right?
01:00:57.420Last time we spoke, I said there was no justice if you didn't put spunk minions on a hat.
01:01:03.960I told you a story of artificial insemination.
01:02:24.280He talks about how men aren't leaders in their communities anymore.
01:02:27.660You know, they're not doing Boy Scout troops.
01:02:29.480They're not teaching in classes anymore.
01:02:31.400So we're losing this male-to-male connection piece that is part of what keeps our desire to be, like, performing humans, human males, you know?
01:02:40.600Like, so we talk about this kind of stuff a lot.
01:02:43.840And maybe there's a way we can figure out something to do where we could – you know, where I can – we would love to donate and then just continue to help send people your direction, too.
01:02:51.480Well, look, man, I'll never say no to a couple bucks, but I don't need it.
01:02:55.340What I need is what you're doing, right?
01:02:57.840I mean, what I need is for the people listening to – like, if they're serious about what you just framed, the book to read is called Men Without Work.
01:04:34.320And I had so much fun talking to you that, you know, I took a deeper dive and one night just was scrolling through and I watched you sit here or maybe you were in Nashville.
01:04:48.560But somebody called in and they told you a story and it was a common story but it was a sad story.
01:04:55.340And it was a combination of addiction and struggling with that and a kind of hopelessness and this kind of desperation that my friend Nick writes about, you know.
01:05:06.920And what you did, you did two things that were really interesting to me.
01:05:13.860The first thing is you sat and didn't say a word.
01:05:18.340I've never seen – I've never seen anybody do that before.
01:05:21.920You just sat and looked at the camera like you're looking at me, like you actually listened.
01:05:28.140And then you talk for about three minutes in about the most empathetic way I had ever seen.
01:05:33.860I took that clip and I sent it to my little network and I said, look, man, this war is going to be fought on a lot of fronts.
01:05:43.160It's a war of public opinion to your point.
01:07:20.320Like if it doesn't work, what the fuck – what do we lose?
01:07:23.340Because we're at a – I believe that we are at a severe crossing point right now where if it gets – if another generation without like a sense of purpose, it's not going to matter.
01:08:46.860I mean the idea of getting rid of that in 1860, right?
01:08:54.540It was – so many otherwise rational people who were walking around, influencers of the day with columns and people giving oratories and speeches, really smart people were saying, we can't do this.
01:10:07.520And he has been on China hard for 20 years and he believes one of the greatest untold stories right now is the fact that 60 to 100,000 human organs are being harvested from prisoners in China every year as we speak.
01:10:32.340They're called the Fulongong and they were – 70 to 100 million of these people have been persecuted forever.
01:10:44.020When you look at the number of prisons in China that have hospitals built right next to them, you have to go, well, what's up with that?
01:10:53.900And when you talk to these people and there are countless examples who are scheduling open heart surgeries, they're scheduling kidney replacements, right?
01:11:17.020That's right because you can't take a heart from a cadaver.
01:11:20.020You have to take it from a living but doomed person, right?
01:11:25.220And so cutting that line is about the rudest thing, right?
01:11:30.140I mean that's a line you don't want to cut.
01:11:31.800My sister got a liver transplant and we had to wait and they called us over and we'd get over and they'd be like, no, the guy's going to stay alive.
01:11:38.280And we're like, well, don't call us then.
01:11:41.640I can't even imagine what that is like but I can tell you this, the organ industry in China is a $9 billion industry and people are – they're making appointments for livers.
01:11:55.400They're making appointments for hearts.
01:11:57.120Based on knowing when the guy's going to die or they're killing them?
01:12:05.480Because they kill him and what they tell you is, well, look, he's on death row anyway and so like they tell you a lot of things and you'll go, OK, OK.
01:13:18.540Please don't make me shoot the cow in the head.
01:13:22.500I did that on season three of Dirty Jobs.
01:13:24.540I slaughtered a cow and butchered it with a mobile butcher just to show viewers where their food comes from and what it takes to make a porterhouse, what it takes to get a sirloin, difference between all these different things.
01:13:37.120People's heads exploded because the truth is, man, they don't want to see where their food comes from.
01:13:42.060They prefer to think it's growing on a hamburger tree and we really don't want to know the truth about a lot of this.
01:13:49.160I mean, look, we're joking about this, but you really want to know what's in this little creamer?
01:13:53.360You really want to know why this thing can sit on the shelf for years?
01:14:04.680So, look, we're ostriches and we got our head in the sand on a lot of different things.
01:14:09.380And a lot of parents, you know, to bring it back to kind of where we started, they don't want to see that that 200 grand they invested in that college degree can't get their kid a job in his chosen field.
01:14:23.880We don't want to look at 37 trillion in debt.
01:14:27.280We don't want to look at the fact that our country is making only 2% of the clothing that we wear.
01:14:33.980Dude, we have in this country, a third of the United States is covered with timber.
01:15:16.760It's a weird combination of virtue signaling and head in the sand.
01:15:22.560Well, and also I think our media is probably a lot of it has been under control of people who don't want to champion America.
01:15:30.640Maybe, you know, I don't know if that's true or if it's just the fads and the way that things have gone.
01:15:35.600But it's just it's always it seemed like things have gotten like anti-American somehow in the past even 10 years, like the American flag even became like kind of a right wing symbol as opposed to the symbol of our country.
01:15:47.580And whoever's people think that things just happen.
01:15:50.220I believe that there's strategy behind a lot of stuff that's out there.
01:15:53.020I want to switch to a topic of so we but we talked before about minimum wage.
01:15:57.940I don't think people can survive on minimum wages these days.
01:16:00.620I just don't think that they can do it.
01:16:02.220And Bernie Sanders talked about how, well, if a company makes more money because they start using AI or for whatever reason, that shouldn't that minimum wage go up within that company for the workers, you know?
01:18:21.520That doesn't address the fact that somebody busting their ass with inflation being wherever it is and the cost of goods being wherever that is, can't afford to feed their family on that salary.
01:18:32.380Now, the other side is going to say, yeah, why did you have a family?
01:19:30.260And now it's easy to forget that these are two sides of the same coin because we always pit them against one another and then people wind up in interviews like this or any one of a thousand other conversations and they're going to get tagged as one or the other.
01:19:45.100So my hope is in an organization called Opportunity Works.
01:19:53.480And I learned about these guys pretty recently.
01:19:58.280Two years ago, a company called Groundworks, who you'll love, hired me to give a speech in Virginia Beach when their CEO turned 5,500 of their frontline workers into owners.
01:22:22.400Let's say you've had it for 25 years and let's say you'd like to retire but you really can't and you got 30 employees and you love them and it's their job and so forth and so on.
01:22:34.480And so the industry consolidates when private equity comes in and says, wait a second.
01:22:47.600And you'll be able to retire because you've worked hard and your people will – well, we're going to do – in some cases, it's good for the workers.
01:22:58.400In other cases, it's not so good because in the name of efficiency, you can gut a company.
01:23:02.900So that's the negative wrap on private equity has been that.
01:23:08.820But now what's starting to happen, at least in these home services businesses, is that this ownership works element.
01:23:16.620This guy, Pete Stavros, who works for KKR, has done this ground works deal.
01:24:21.880And I've seen – like you guys should take a deep dive if you want, but look at some of these videos where – like I saw one the other day, a company.
01:24:32.700I think they were outside of Chicago, Nucor maybe.
01:24:36.620It's another one of these companies you would never think about.
01:24:38.420It's like Moog and their ball bearings and what is that?
01:24:41.300Well, all of a sudden, like you've got truck drivers in these companies who have been there for 12 years and when this scheme goes into place, they leave this gathering with a check for $400,000, $500,000, $600,000.
01:25:04.800There is a way forward that doesn't keep us stuck in the binary of labor and management.
01:25:12.120And I think we have to – you have to realize – like I start thinking like the only way to compete with big business is you have to start a new way to do big business that – like I wanted to sell like a water, right?
01:25:24.660I thought like so many people are in recovery and so many more people are headed into recovery for drug addiction, sex and pornography addiction.
01:25:31.780Like that's one of the biggest epidemics that's coming right now is pornography addiction, right?
01:25:59.980But yeah, it's like you have to fight fire with fire and you have to fight it with more compassionate and empathetic fire.
01:26:07.560I was like, well, what if we sold a water where the proceeds of it went to put people in rehab, right?
01:26:11.920So then it would be really hard, especially these days where so many people, all they have left is how they feel kind of because a lot of other things have been taken away from them.
01:26:21.260It would be hard to say, okay, I'm not going to buy this.
01:26:23.160I know this is going to help somebody get better, right?
01:26:26.460It's like I think you have to start thinking beyond like this circle that we've been in of just like profiteering and of like combining everything.
01:26:37.540Everything is just like these – what do they call it when they all get together but it's one owner or whatever?
01:26:45.460Co-op or like – because a lot of the stories that I heard, this is – I just thought about this.
01:26:52.160A lot of my friends' stories were that their dads got laid off after working at a place for 20 years and 25 years or their grandfather.
01:27:01.900That was the story that I heard where I bet a generation earlier was my grandfather got a big severance thing and he got this and that and he was like the pride of the company.
01:27:10.620A lot of the other stories became my dad got laid off after 22 years.
01:27:14.900They didn't get – and I think a lot of that happened because like you're saying, umbrella companies came in.
01:27:55.300Let me tell you what Mark did for me just so you get a – I mean there's just endless things to say about the guy.
01:28:02.640I'm fascinated to get to spend time with him.
01:28:04.380Well, I wouldn't be here without Facebook.
01:28:09.220I know it's crazy because I – there's clips of me out there telling Jay Leno I'd rather have hot needles stuck in my eyes than book a face or send a tweet or whatever that was.
01:28:54.200So six years ago, Mark invites me down to Facebook and he talks about this thing called Watch, Facebook Watch.
01:29:06.860And the thought was who are we going to be, you know, 10 years from now and who are we really going to compete with and how is that going to work and could we be Netflix?
01:29:27.860You green light a couple of shows and they did something called Ball in the Family, some famous basketball player.
01:29:35.120They did something with Jada Pinkett Smith and they did something with me.
01:29:39.160What they did with me was a show called Returning the Favor.
01:29:42.520Returning the Favor, I think you would dig.
01:29:44.940Basically, I would look for and Facebook would tell me about people in these little towns that you probably couldn't find on a map that were doing something super cool in their neighborhood in a totally selfless way.
01:30:01.800So it's like bloody do-gooders running amok, right?
01:30:05.480And so we would go in there and we'd meet these people and we would tell them, like, I'm not there at this point.
01:30:12.120I would send the crew in and they'd say, hey, we're working on a documentary about your town.
01:30:16.540We understand you're doing some good work, maybe with foster care, maybe with PTSD, right?
01:30:21.780And we would love to talk to you about that.
01:30:24.800So meanwhile, they're filming that and I come in later and parades are arranged and we free up a big chunk of money,
01:30:34.320sometimes $100,000 to maybe build something that allows them to do more of what they're already doing.
01:31:40.660But what happened at Facebook was they decided after four seasons that this whole watch platform,
01:31:47.720they're just not going to compete with Netflix.
01:31:50.160So no harm, no foul, but it was – we had two million people on a Facebook page who would watch that show like on the edge of their seat
01:32:01.980and it was a giant community of people who really gave a shit and they were super interested because remember, not so long ago, in fact, today,
01:32:10.260the country is so divided and there's so few things everybody can agree on.
01:32:16.380You know, this show was, I think, one of them.
01:32:20.380It was just a celebration of the neighbors you wish you had.
01:32:24.120I don't own returning the favor, but we're relaunching it next week, May 2nd, under a new title called People You Should Know.
01:32:33.900And, dude, I'm not like overly earnest.
01:32:38.800I get all my sentimentality is taken care of in my foundation.
01:32:42.820But this thing, I mean, whether it's addiction or – you're going to meet a guy on this show called Steve Hotz.
01:32:51.060He runs something called the Black Horse Forge down in Fredericksburg.
01:32:54.800The PTSD thing, you're up to speed with how bad that is?
01:34:23.060He's just – it's everything he loved is upside down.
01:34:28.260And he starts making knives in a forge and realizes that when you're forging, the only thing you can think about is really what you're doing and don't burn yourself.
01:37:22.080And, you know, when they go to your site, maybe they'll get a sense of who you are and what you've done and how many jobs you've created and so forth and so on.
01:38:23.140You have to think that like in this conversation, typically Walmart is the devil because, you know, the rap is, oh, well, they're buying stuff super cheap because people need it super cheap.
01:38:35.560And that's what Walmart is and whatever.
01:38:37.480The thing people don't know, and I, and I don't work for Walmart, but I'm, I'm just telling you, I, I know them pretty well.
01:38:44.260And they have spent, uh, nearly $700 billion on U S supply chain.
01:38:59.740And this is what your audience needs to understand.
01:39:02.780And this is why it's really hard to get, you know, good guys and bad guys with black hats and white hats.
01:39:08.680It's not that simple you, so you got a company like American giant who makes a great t-shirt and it says like, you know, American made on the front.
01:39:23.180Now most people can't pay 75 bucks for a t-shirt no matter how rad, right?
01:39:27.780You just can't, it's just, it's not in the wood.
01:39:29.480But what happens if a company like Walmart, the biggest retailer in the world, sets aside a real chunk of money and calls a company like American giant and says, I tell you what, we love that shirt.
01:39:42.980If we order a million of them or even half a million, as opposed to the normal 5 or 10,000 IPO you might get, if we blow this thing up, what kind of price could we actually get at that level?
01:40:02.720And then the price starts to come down, 15, 20 bucks.
01:40:07.440You know, under $20, you can get an American made t-shirt.
01:40:12.880It's not going to happen with the current way of thinking.
01:40:16.700The problem is if I go out in the world and tell that story, there's a whole long list of union people who are going to say, Mike, you don't understand.
01:40:25.980Walmart's the devil because this, this, this, this, and this.
01:40:36.240But it's back to that tier two, tier one conversation.
01:40:38.900You don't talk about tariffs like it's only an economic thing or you want to talk about it up here.
01:40:44.160If you're going to talk about it up there, you can't just look at Walmart as the devil because you've been told they're the devil.
01:40:50.200And you can't look at American giant as a small scrappy US company that makes things that are too expensive because they're doing the best they can with the way the table's been set.
01:41:00.160But if you get these two guys together and all of a sudden you get a different kind of investment in a supply chain in our country in a different way, and that's how a T-shirt can be made in this country for a price most people can't afford.
01:41:14.880And that's a story that, look, that can happen with knives.
01:41:20.500Imagine like a QVC type of thing, right, where it's like this is American made and it's awesome, right?
01:41:25.400You would like make sure that the products were good and that they had enough of a supply chain where they could sell or maybe they could only make 50 this month.
01:41:33.320And then you have like something that's a real person made it.
01:41:35.840And then when you're walking around with something on your back, this is like you're not just carrying – you don't just have a shirt on your back that makes you look cool.
01:41:42.260You have somebody's well-being and their purpose on your back, you know, and so now you're carrying something together.
01:41:50.020You know, once you're both carrying purpose, it takes a lot of – it's pressure if it's just you.
01:41:54.380But if you put the same weight on two people, that's purpose, man.
01:41:57.160Well, look, man, that's rod busting 101.
01:42:37.180Right, so it's like the whole – it's really a great metaphor because when you're humping the iron up to the top of the skyscraper,
01:42:43.540you're stepping through a grid of rebar that's already been laid.
01:42:46.860And if you trip and you go down, you take everybody with you.
01:42:51.080So it's an incredible metaphor for teamwork, consequences, stakes, working together, right?
01:42:59.260And to your point, there are other ways to get the rebar to where you need to set it but this is the best way and it really does take a different way to think.
01:43:13.960And then ironically of course, have you ever seen a bridge before they pour the concrete where it's – the whole thing is just like a skeleton of steel?
01:43:36.380And that's just on the floor but when you see like an overpass being built, it's like some kind of a dinosaur and it's all done with hundreds of tons of iron.
01:43:50.660And like the guys who do this work, there you go, that kind of thing.
01:43:55.900It's just mind-boggling and then when they come, like the concrete guys come and they bury it, man, forever.
01:44:02.940However, no one ever sees the artistry, no one ever sees the work of the iron worker.
01:44:32.680The toughest part then is I've found in my own life when it is – if I – and it's not like you're playing the victim but sometimes you're the person that gets affected by something but you also have to be the person to be a part of fixing it.
01:44:45.700And that's the toughest thing because there's a part of me that always wants to be like this isn't fair.
01:46:28.380But it's like, okay, so the iron workers we were just talking about.
01:46:32.760Yeah, that was a cheap question to me to just fling at the end.
01:46:35.180Well, look, my own problem is – first of all, 2,200 people through Microworks, I'd say maybe 20, 25 percent of them are working through a union shop.
01:46:46.660Most of them are electricians, some plumbers.
01:46:50.680But by and large, the percentage in my cohort of scholarship recipients and workers is – it's actually bigger than the – I think the national right now, 8 percent of workers are in a union or something like that.
01:47:06.440You check and I'm not sure, but it's close to that.
01:47:08.200So, yeah, I don't want to paint with too broad a brush, but the thing – it's like tier two and tier one with tariffs.
01:47:16.900If you're going to have a conversation about how best to negotiate between labor and management, there you go, 10 percent in 23, 11.2 in 23, 6.7 private – that's really what you're asking.
01:47:33.740Look at that, 6.7 percent in 2024 in the private sector like iron workers or plumbers, 35.7 percent in the public sector.
01:48:48.960And he's also an owner of the company.
01:48:51.280So now all of that other pride of ownership, all of that other code-driven integrity thing, right?
01:48:58.380You can start to see how you might be able to build a cohesive unit around something other than a paycheck.
01:49:07.500And that's not an excuse to say the paychecks couldn't be better.
01:49:10.700I'm just saying that if you only look at the economic ramifications of a tariff, that's not much different than only looking at whether or not you like your job based on what your paycheck says.
01:49:24.460And if you take the bait on that, the next thing you know, you're going to be having an argument about UBI, universal basic income.
01:49:31.300And you're going to get sucked into this whole conversation about, well, what are people going to do if there is no work and we ought to just pay them not to do anything?
01:49:39.100And then you've got all kinds of moral and ethical questions and it never stops.
01:49:44.780If at a certain point – at a certain point, you have to invest in your own country, in your own people, the spirit of your own people.
01:49:50.040And I can't understand how that's not extremely evident right now.
01:49:56.060And if UBI, if universal basic income helps people to get by for a couple years or five years while these – while like things adjust from going from let's try to build stuff here in our own country and make people feel empowered and if they're – as if they're part of an assembly line of humanity and of purpose and of a nation and of a group think of a moral code, then I don't – I think that that's totally fine.
01:50:23.080Let's stop giving money to other places who have enough money right now and help our own people out for a little while.
01:50:30.460And I know I'm opening up bigger cans of worms but it's just – I am all in because if you don't do it now, it is – to me, it appears like it's kind of going to be a wrap.
01:50:42.260And – but I still believe that there's that human spirit, that there's that team spirit, there's that like – that whatever made those people – whatever that thing is to be an American, even if it's not even real, but that we believe in it, there's still that inside of us that makes me believe that we could turn it around.
01:51:02.840That guy, Bayard, who you brought up, he's a Wall Street guy and 16 years ago, he said, no, I've just – his family came over on the freaking Mayflower, just so you know.
01:51:14.980That's who this guy is and he said, nope, redo.
01:51:18.320I'm going to build a company called American Giant and I'm going to prove that this country can still make quality clothing.
01:51:25.660Now, that's a very personal mission that could only be embarked upon by a genuinely hard-headed dude, okay?
01:51:33.380But 16 years later, they're still standing and they're doing it.
01:52:00.120It's every great accepted truth today began as madness.
01:52:07.840It was dismissed and then it was grudgingly considered and then it was slowly accepted as fringe and then it was more widely believed as possible and then it got a consensus and then it became the truth.
01:52:22.780And then it became the self-evident truth.