Order of Man - ANSON FRERICKS ｜ How DEI and Bud Light Died

00:00:00.000 Man, I recorded this podcast with Anson Frerich's former Anheuser-Busch executive about a month ago, even before Trump took office and began putting the final nails in the coffin of the quote-unquote diversity, equity, and inclusion initiative, also known as DEI, at the federal level.

00:00:18.680 But even before that, we saw the decline and predicted the ultimate downfall of DEI initiatives with very notable cases such as the Bud Light fiasco and the subsequent boycott.

00:00:32.220 Now with Target, Amazon, Harley-Davidson, and more notable companies are all dismantling these dangerous and destructive ideologies.

00:00:42.680 Today, Anson and I talk about why we've seen such a huge cultural shift against these policies, why companies truly started these policies in the first place, and believe me, it was not out of the goodness of their hearts, how consumers can take back culture through their purchasing power, and why DEI needs to die once and for all.

00:01:03.800 You're a man of action. You live life to the fullest. Embrace your fears and boldly chart your own path. When life knocks you down, you get back up one more time, every time.

00:01:14.620 You are not easily deterred or defeated, rugged, resilient, strong. This is your life. This is who you are. This is who you will become at the end of the day, and after all is said and done, you can call yourself a man.

00:01:28.860 Gentlemen, welcome to the Order of Man podcast. My name is Ryan Michler. I'm the host and the founder of this movement, and of course, this podcast.

00:01:39.000 I'm very excited to be joining you today. My goal is to give you the tools and resources and conversations you need to thrive as a husband, father, business owner, and leader in your community.

00:01:49.980 Before I get to the conversation with Anson today, I want to mention my good friends over at Montana Knife Company.

00:01:57.320 I am looking forward to this weekend. I'm heading to South Carolina to meet with my friends over at Soren X.

00:02:05.080 Some people, including Brandon over at Montana Knife Company, are going to be there. We're going to be doing some podcasts.

00:02:12.640 I love this company because they are making American-made products, and specifically products I like. Knives. That's it. Knives. I like knives. I like having a tool.

00:02:24.280 I think every man needs to have a knife on his person at all times, and if you're looking for something that's made in America from good people doing good things, then look no further than Montana Knife Company.

00:02:36.900 I don't care if you're walking around urban environments like downtown Manhattan, or you're out in the sticks in South Carolina, or you're on a hunt in Africa.

00:02:47.320 You need a good knife, or maybe you're even in the kitchen making food for your family. A good knife goes a long way.

00:02:53.760 Check out my friends over at Montana Knife Company and use the code ORDEROFMAN at checkout.

00:02:59.660 You'll save some money, and you'll also be letting them know you heard about them here.

00:03:04.340 MontanaKnifeCompany.com. Use the code ORDEROFMAN at checkout.

00:03:08.840 All right, guys. Let me introduce you to Anson. He is the founder of Athletic Capital, also the co-founder of Strive Asset Management with Vivek Ramaswamy.

00:03:19.100 Prior to finding Strive, he led finance, sales, and marketing operations as president of Anheuser-Busch Sales and Distribution Company.

00:03:27.340 And having seen the ins and outs, Anson, excuse me, is well-versed in what makes a successful company and also what breaks it.

00:03:37.680 He received his bachelor's from Yale's and his MBA from Harvard and as a newly published author with his first book, Last Call for Bud Light, The Fallen Future of America's Favorite Beer.

00:03:49.140 Anson adds to his resume as a man who understands and applies the protect, provide, and preside motto in his life.

00:03:59.020 Enjoy this one, Jens.

00:03:59.860 So you were telling me you're a Black Rifle coffee guy. 0.58

00:04:06.320 You know, what's funny is I tell people it's the one company I believe the most in that I actually do not use their product because I do not drink coffee.

00:04:15.380 Well, I'm a decaf coffee guy usually, but, you know, one thing you probably do use in their products is their marketing because I can't think of a better, more authentic company over the last couple of years, which says that, you know, our mission is to serve coffee and culture to such like people who love America.

00:04:30.740 It's first responders.

00:04:31.780 It's military.

00:04:32.560 It's police.

00:04:33.580 And I think their videos and their content and their marketing is probably better than any other company that's almost out there right now.

00:04:39.260 It's amazing.

00:04:39.760 I, uh, I think that's exactly right.

00:04:43.440 You know, they, they know who their demographic is.

00:04:46.060 They know who their audience is and it's not a gimmick.

00:04:48.980 It's not a game because you can tell when corporations do that.

00:04:51.820 Like we're going to, we're going to game the system to go after this niche.

00:04:55.540 But the, the, I think the reason why it feels authentic is because it is, these are veterans.

00:05:03.400 These are special operators.

00:05:04.780 These are people who are doing the exact same thing that the people they're serving are doing.

00:05:10.480 And there's, it's just something refreshing in modern times about being able to connect authentically with your audience.

00:05:17.860 That's it.

00:05:18.320 I mean, you're a hundred percent right.

00:05:19.340 Like, you know, I love the fact, not only, yes, are the veterans and they're in the military, which give them the authenticity to go and, you know, blow things up and put like, I don't know how it's or guns on Tesla's, but they're also like dads and fathers and moms.

00:05:31.140 And so, you know, they show what the, how they're using the products and their civilian real lives as well.

00:05:35.660 And they bring sort of a lot of the, I'd say probably some of the, the, the military inside jokes or military slang into civilian life as well.

00:05:44.760 And I don't know, Ryan, like I'm one of these guys that probably my biggest regret in life is that I never served time in the military.

00:05:49.940 You know, I wish I had at some point.

00:05:51.420 So I don't know, sometimes when I drink a black rifle coffee company, at least, you know, allows me to have, I don't know, maybe a little bit of stolen valor.

00:05:57.320 I don't know that, you know, I feel like I could have done it, but anyway, it's a, yeah, great company.

00:06:03.000 Great cause as well.

00:06:04.220 I mean, Evan's done an amazing job giving back to veterans, making the pledge to hire 10,000 veterans when Starbucks was trying to hire 10,000, you know, immigrants or whatever the deal was.

00:06:14.480 Um, so they've just, they've just done an amazing job of connecting to that loyal base and being authentic to it.

00:06:20.120 And especially the last couple of years, I mean, when like the wins, especially the political wins, you know, we're asking to defund the police and not support the military.

00:06:27.360 And, you know, these guys just, you know, they doubled down and they said, guys, this is what we do.

00:06:31.020 We believe in this and we don't believe in this sort of short term or like, you know, that the current thing is, um, is to, you know, be against some of these, these, these, you know, force that made the U S wonderful in what it is.

00:06:42.460 But I think long-term the wins will blow back.

00:06:44.400 And I think these guys were right.

00:06:45.840 And, uh, you know, now people want to get and support the military and police and others.

00:06:48.880 And I think they will for generations to come, because it's one of the things that allowed this, uh, this country to thrive over the last, you know, 250 years.

00:06:55.900 And hopefully have another, at least 250 years out of us.

00:06:59.060 At least.

00:06:59.840 Yeah.

00:07:00.300 I'm, I'm actually really curious.

00:07:01.980 We got a lot to talk about today, but I'm really curious what you have to say as a, uh, the president of a, of a major, major corporation in America.

00:07:11.500 Uh, I'm very curious what you have to say on that same vein about Mark Zuckerberg's latest comments regarding censorship and how he, I'm, I'm trying not to preface the question too much, but he literally said that the only reason he's doing it is because there's a cultural tipping point.

00:07:29.540 He's not doing it out of principle.

00:07:30.780 He's doing it because there's a cultural tipping point.

00:07:33.220 And I, again, I don't want to project too much before I hear your answer, but I am very curious what you think about it.

00:07:39.860 Yeah.

00:07:41.120 You know, I think that, um, a lot of companies lost their way over the last 10 years and a lot of companies lost their way because they didn't have solid values and solid foundations.

00:07:50.560 And I think that if Mark Zuckerberg was really committed to free speech from the beginning, then we wouldn't have had this issue where he had to issue this massive mea culpa where he essentially said that we censored America, that we hired these people.

00:08:02.680 And we put, they were from San Francisco and they were, had more of a leftist bias tent to them.

00:08:07.660 And we had them going out there and censoring content on the internet.

00:08:11.040 And if you were, if it just never should have happened in the first place, I think that's where we're going to get this longer with corporate America just going wrong.

00:08:17.500 Like a lot of companies didn't have solid foundations, solid values that they could go back to with their customers and their employees and their suppliers and say, we believe in X and this is why we're not, you know, doing Y.

00:08:29.300 I think specifically, um, think about all the political issues that companies got involved with over the last couple of years.

00:08:35.560 Certain companies were asking to defund the police.

00:08:38.000 Certain companies were asking to do racial equity audits.

00:08:40.880 Certain companies were asking to overturn election integrity laws.

00:08:44.220 I mean, think about the number of CEOs when Roe v. Wade was overturned and all of a sudden they were talking about, you know, how bad this was.

00:08:50.780 And I think a lot of people were confused.

00:08:52.280 Like, wait a minute, why are all these companies getting involved in a lot of these social and political issues?

00:08:56.180 How do we get to this point?

00:08:57.800 You know, what does, I don't know.

00:08:59.080 I remember living in Atlanta, Georgia in 2021 when Coca-Cola got involved in the, you know, voters need to have an ID to vote.

00:09:05.620 And they said, we're against this law.

00:09:06.800 And it's like, wait a minute, what does Coca-Cola know about voter laws?

00:09:08.800 And, you know, I was one of these people that voted for, I don't know, you have an ID to vote.

00:09:11.940 I need an ID to drive.

00:09:13.740 I need an ID to buy beer.

00:09:14.720 Like, I should have an ID to vote.

00:09:16.540 You know, it's kind of crazy.

00:09:17.640 And how did we go so wrong?

00:09:18.720 And I think it's just because there weren't core values, solid values, and time-tested values as well.

00:09:23.960 And when you don't have sort of like time-tested values to stand on, it's the old saying, you know, if you don't stand for anything, you'll fall for nothing.

00:09:31.860 And I think a lot of companies, they fell for, call it like the current thing or the current political wins.

00:09:37.060 And whether you have Democrats or Republicans in office, like, you know, there are certain values that should just be timeless and lasting.

00:09:43.620 I think free speech, meritocracy, capitalism, open debate, dialogue.

00:09:49.560 These are just time-tested classic virtues that regardless of who's in office and who's in power, we should stand behind it.

00:09:55.720 And so you don't have to offer an embarrassing, you know, apology that your company, you know, wasn't as committed to free speech as you thought it was or didn't protect openness in the internet as much as you thought it was.

00:10:06.520 But I think we learned a big corporate lesson.

00:10:08.020 I mean, that's, you know, frankly, the book that I just wrote, you know, talks a lot about these classic timeless virtues that we need to be bringing back in America and not necessarily blowing in the political winds every, you know, four or eight years.

00:10:23.600 Yeah, it is interesting.

00:10:24.600 I remember there was a very pivotal moment in my life about maybe about four years ago.

00:10:31.120 And it seems, it seems like it's unimportant, but it was pivotal for me.

00:10:35.840 And I was in Maine at the time.

00:10:37.960 My family and I were living in Maine and I drove to the gas station.

00:10:40.840 I needed gas.

00:10:41.500 So I pulled in the gas station and it was during pride month. 1.00

00:10:44.900 I don't know what month is pride month, but it was, it was that time of year. 1.00

00:10:48.140 And I pulled in and I went to pump gas and there was this huge banner, this rainbow banner about why gay pride and LGBTQ and all that kind of stuff.

00:10:59.240 And I'm like, I don't need my gas to be gay.

00:11:01.440 I just need it to give me gas mileage and keep my engine clean. 0.58

00:11:05.680 That's, that's literally all that I need.

00:11:08.780 But it seems like these major corporations up until there's obviously a huge cultural shift in the past, even 30 to 60 days.

00:11:18.960 These corporations feel like they need to interject themselves.

00:11:22.260 Dude, just sell me gas.

00:11:24.080 And in your case, just sell people beer.

00:11:26.460 Like we don't need the messaging behind it.

00:11:28.560 People want to get drunk.

00:11:29.860 People need to put fuel in their cars.

00:11:31.820 That's it.

00:11:33.140 That's it.

00:11:33.700 I mean, like you hit like the nail on the, on the, on the head.

00:11:36.540 And I think this is where, you know, you, you, four years ago you started noticing this.

00:11:41.120 And I think a lot of people did.

00:11:42.100 We can talk about this.

00:11:43.120 You know, I think the COVID time period for a lot of corporations, like, you know, really ignited this view that they had to be more expansive beyond, you know,

00:11:51.940 selling gas or selling beer or selling, you know, Coca-Cola or whatever it is, and now have to have opinions on every single social or political issue.

00:12:00.900 We can get into a lot of the reasons what that is.

00:12:03.500 But I think most importantly is now over the last couple of years, like we've seen what was wrong, what went wrong when this happened.

00:12:09.260 Because one, it alienated a lot of customers like yourself, because especially specifically something like gas and gas is a commodity.

00:12:15.640 And, you know, if there's a dip, there's a choice between, you know, on one street, you have a gas station that's, you know, whether, and I don't care what it is,

00:12:21.780 whether it's gay rights, whether it's abortion issues, whether it's, you know, immigration, whatever it is, like, you don't care. 0.51

00:12:27.660 You don't want that from your gas station.

00:12:29.100 And if there's a gas station across the street that says we just buy gas, I bet that station that just does gas is going to do a lot better because that's why people are there.

00:12:36.740 That's what they trust that company to do is to sell you gas, not necessarily a social agenda.

00:12:41.700 So I think that getting involved in politics is going to be bad for those individual businesses.

00:12:45.160 But then, you know, it's also a lot of times like bad for the country that we live in, because a lot of these very politicized issues, we tend to solve them through the democratic process.

00:12:54.920 Like each individual should have a vote, but especially in large, major corporations with billions of dollars in either assets or funding.

00:13:03.060 If those CEOs of these businesses are really like advancing an issue, not necessarily like, you know, using their own money, because a lot of times the CEOs, they own, you know, an infinitesimal amount of the business.

00:13:16.020 But I'm going to give a good example, like, you know, Mark Benioff, a guy who's the CEO of Salesforce, and he was using hundreds of millions of dollars of the company's capital, of investors' capital, of shareholder capital to advocate to like defund the police and overturn election integrity laws.

00:13:31.140 You're like, what are you doing? And then all of a sudden, like, you know, you almost feel like you're living in this, like, I don't know, like European monarchical society where it's like, wait a minute, why is this like the CEOs, you know, that represent all types of employees and customers and others?

00:13:45.140 Why are they just imparting their view onto everyone and then using, you know, really shareholder money and shareholder capital to be able to like advance these views?

00:13:55.300 That's not good for their business. And also, it's just not good for democracy that we live in.

00:13:58.800 So anyway, it's been it's been a weird couple of years. But to your point, you know, I think the last 60, 90 days, things are swinging back.

00:14:05.880 But I really, I mean, put this back to like what happened with Bud Light, because that's when for everybody, I mean, everyone's eyes were wide open.

00:14:12.800 It wasn't just like your gas station, but it's like, wait a minute, Bud Light, like the most like working class, like American beer, is now all of a sudden getting involved with like very, you know, radical, 0.99

00:14:23.780 controversial, controversial, transgender advocates that are at the Biden White House advocating for gender affirmation care with for young kids.

00:14:31.440 Like, wait a minute, like what is going on here? Like, you know, I drink Bud Light because, man, they were about football and sports and backyard barbecues.

00:14:38.480 Like, that's what I trusted. It was like great times, good beer, hanging out with my buddies.

00:14:42.480 But now it's like the Ben and Jerry's of beer where, you know, what's next? Like, you know, just like Ben and Jerry's, are they going to be, you know, also given money to try and reclaim Native American lands?

00:14:53.020 Like, like, what am I getting into here? You know? Yeah. I mean, that's it's it is a good point.

00:14:59.140 You you left Anheuser-Busch, what, in 2022, right before the whole Dylan Mavaney fiasco.

00:15:07.000 And you talked about gender affirming care and everything. Let's just call it what it is.

00:15:10.440 A guy, a man who thinks he's a woman and not only a woman, a minor, like a prepubescent female, like that's repulsive. 0.99

00:15:20.240 That's disgusting. And it's actually completely antithetical to the bulk majority of not only Bud Light, but Anheuser-Busch's customer base. 0.96

00:15:31.580 I don't understand the complete lunacy and ignorance of making a decision like that.

00:15:39.980 Yeah. I mean, there there was there was no thought behind it whatsoever.

00:15:43.260 And I think there was, though. I think there was. Tell me if I'm wrong.

00:15:46.480 But I think there was because you can't say there was no thought behind it at all.

00:15:50.140 Like it was calculated, right? Well, and I think what this is kind of like part of the problem with what happened with Anheuser-Busch and corporate America at large,

00:15:57.600 where they got very politicized. And for most brands, they were asked to be doing things like DEI, diversity, equity and inclusion, ESG, environmental, social governance.

00:16:09.360 These movements became very politicized. And what was like, you know, like all things here, Ryan, it's like, you know, you trace like what was the cause of these.

00:16:16.240 It all comes back to money. And, you know, if you take a look at some of the largest shareholders in Anheuser-Busch and corporate America at large,

00:16:22.500 you have these large asset management firms, BlackRock, State Street, Vanguard. They control 20 trillion dollars worth of capital.

00:16:28.940 It's the bigger than the GDP of the entire United States. They're the single largest investor in 95 percent of the companies in the United States.

00:16:35.920 And they're using, I mean, frankly, like your money, my money via your 401ks, your investment savings to invest into the largest companies in the U.S.,

00:16:43.860 usually via index funds, S&P 500 funds, you know, large cap value funds, growth funds and all of those funds,

00:16:50.500 all those big firms I just mentioned, a lot of their capital comes from very progressive European sovereign wealth funds,

00:16:56.900 like the sovereign wealth fund in Norway. It comes from progressive states like California and New York,

00:17:01.440 which have some of the largest pension funds. And those organizations have really pushed these large asset managers in the United States

00:17:09.060 to say, hey, companies now need to get involved and do what they perceived was the failure of government to get involved in existential crises,

00:17:18.560 whether these were things like climate change, systemic racism, COVID was one of these things.

00:17:25.840 And they said, you know, companies now need to solve all these issues, not governments.

00:17:29.480 The problem with it is that this became just like a very progressive ideology where companies were now being forced to insolve all of these sort of like invisible enemies.

00:17:38.260 I can get back to a little bit of the rationale as to what happened.

00:17:40.760 And it's like Anheuser-Busch every year to make these large asset managers happy.

00:17:45.320 And they have these funds called ESG funds, environmental social governance funds, that they would sell to investors.

00:17:50.400 These funds, what they would do was they would you would only get included in these funds if you had sort of a certain amount of your advertising that was representing.

00:17:58.980 It was like a score, right? There was some sort of a score, a calculation or something like that.

00:18:02.760 It was an index. It's called the human rights campaign.

00:18:05.300 And of course, like, you know, that sounds like, you know, nice, fun, but like what this was is like they would say, OK, to get a perfect 100 percent score from this organization,

00:18:13.340 you have to do so many advertisements to support the LGBTQ plus plus plus community.

00:18:19.700 Hey, for your employees, you have to offer access to abortion care. 1.00

00:18:24.080 Hey, for your employees that are transgendered, you have to offer them transgender surgery care or for their kids. 1.00

00:18:30.420 And so it became like a very aggressive and progressive organization. 0.98

00:18:34.540 But this organization, like they would basically, you know, it's a damned if you do, damned if you don't.

00:18:38.760 If you didn't sign up for these things, you wouldn't have 100 percent score for the human rights campaign index.

00:18:43.980 Well, if you didn't have 100 percent score, you couldn't have a good ESG score or a good DEI score from BlackRock, who was one of your biggest investors.

00:18:52.460 And if you didn't have that 100 percent score, they wouldn't include you in funds.

00:18:55.380 And therefore, you would sort of like lose investors and lose lose dollars.

00:18:58.520 And also those funds, by the way, they would usually charge people two to three times the amount of money of a regular non-ESG fund.

00:19:06.580 So that's why they were pushing companies to get more involved in this progressive piece.

00:19:10.680 And because they controlled a lot of money from, again, European sovereign wealth funds, state of New York, state of California,

00:19:16.020 that were all pushing this very aggressive, progressive agenda into corporate America.

00:19:21.580 And, you know, this it kind of goes back like a real philosophical difference.

00:19:25.500 I mean, you know, you ask the question of, you know, why did Anna's Bush act the way they did?

00:19:30.300 Well, there's really like two schools of thought about what a company should do.

00:19:34.760 What's the purpose of a corporation?

00:19:36.240 Is this what it all goes back to?

00:19:37.780 And in the United States, it's the 1970s.

00:19:40.140 There's really been this train of thought that Milton Friedman wrote this this op ed in the in the New York Times in 1970s.

00:19:47.120 It said the purpose of a corporation is to serve its shareholders.

00:19:50.340 That's sort of the shareholders are paramount.

00:19:52.420 And if you do well by your shareholders, you're doing well by everybody else.

00:19:55.200 How do you do well by your shareholders?

00:19:56.400 Well, you focus on your customer.

00:19:58.020 You give them great products and services that allows you to bring in more customers.

00:20:01.540 It allows you to hire more people, generate more revenue, pay more taxes, all the things that corporations do.

00:20:07.760 Separately in Europe, there was Klaus Schwab.

00:20:10.660 He was an economist in Europe who runs the World Economic Forum,

00:20:13.740 which has become like a very globalist organization that tries to impose sort of its, you know, a little bit of like its own world order across the globe.

00:20:21.240 And he said that we believe in Europe that we should follow this idea of stakeholder capitalism.

00:20:27.200 And the purpose of a corporation is to serve all stakeholders equally without really defining who those stakeholders are, who you should put first.

00:20:34.860 I mean, think about in the way it's like, you know, the U.S. basically said, you know, corporations have one God, shareholders.

00:20:38.900 You know, you can serve that God.

00:20:40.100 We can get that.

00:20:40.860 We understand that.

00:20:41.900 The stakeholder piece is like you have tons of gods and all the gods are equal.

00:20:45.600 And we're not going to tell you which ones to serve or how to serve them.

00:20:48.400 But corporations should work with society and all of these stakeholders to maximize value.

00:20:53.500 And then over the next sort of 40 years, I mean, you kind of saw how these two systems played out.

00:20:57.560 In the U.S., we created the most, you know, incredible economic growth.

00:21:01.340 We had our stock markets outperformed Europe by 200 to 300 basis points per year on average.

00:21:06.040 In terms of every single broad-based prosperity metric of GDP growth, per capita income, unemployment rates, inflation rates.

00:21:12.640 The U.S. trounced Europe on all of these metrics by adopting sort of this American free market shareholder capitalism system.

00:21:20.780 Yet, you had a lot of folks kind of after the Great Recession and the financial crisis and kind of the 2008, 2009 timeframe, Occupy Wall Street.

00:21:30.380 All of a sudden, they decided like, well, you know, maybe that system didn't necessarily work.

00:21:33.900 So maybe we'll try this European model, even though the European model didn't really work.

00:21:38.080 And all of a sudden, like this is what sort of led to this philosophy over the last really 10 years of businesses supposed to be getting more involved in politics, social issues.

00:21:49.680 Anheuser-Busch, for many reasons that we can get into, kind of more adopted this stakeholder capitalism philosophy at a very, very high level.

00:21:57.640 And then they started putting in a lot of these ESG, DEI initiatives into their corporate governance.

00:22:05.900 And they attracted a lot of people.

00:22:07.360 Like they moved their headquarters from St. Louis, Missouri, which was, you know, heartland, center of the country, understood their business, to New York City.

00:22:14.980 Started hiring people, you know, from the coast.

00:22:17.320 Worked a lot of agencies in New York City.

00:22:19.060 Started looking at the lens of the United States.

00:22:21.360 I mean, literally through like, you know, Chelsea and New York, which is not how the U.S. really operates.

00:22:25.880 And even the girl, Alyssa Heinerschnite, who was running Bud Light at the time, you know, I mean, she's from New York City, went to, I think, Harvard for undergrad, Wharton for business school.

00:22:36.200 Had probably never drank a Bud Light in her life.

00:22:37.880 Like, didn't really know anybody, you know, either.

00:22:40.800 And but she had more of a philosophy of like, oh, Bud Light's now mission is to, you know, become more involved in politics, become like Ben and Jerry's because we need to solve all these other societal issues.

00:22:50.040 And we need to like make our, you know, the Black Rocks of the world happy.

00:22:53.620 So it's just like a fundamental difference.

00:22:55.920 And I think it was a flawed difference.

00:22:57.340 It was what we got back to the beginning.

00:22:58.820 It was the current thing.

00:23:00.080 It was the same way that Mark Zuckerberg, the current thing was the censor speech.

00:23:03.360 You know, the current thing over the last couple of years was for companies to get involved in these progressive issues.

00:23:07.240 It wasn't the right thing to do.

00:23:08.580 And unfortunately, because Anheuser-Busch wasn't built on like really strong, solid foundations, they kind of allowed those foundations to get shaky over the last couple of years.

00:23:16.460 It ended up becoming the poster child of what went wrong with this whole stakeholder capitalism movement.

00:23:21.140 And now hopefully we're swinging back to, you know, kind of American free market shareholder capitalism, like folks and shareholders do what's right.

00:23:27.020 And hopefully that's where the company gets to moving forward.

00:23:30.520 Yeah, I mean, we will. 0.99

00:23:31.700 Yeah, at this point and not even at this point, we knew all along if you're in if you're buying into this, you're either malicious or dumb. 0.97

00:23:39.320 And both of those are meant as an insult, like there's there's no way around it. 0.79

00:23:43.240 You know, this woman who went to Harvard and Wharton Business School or whatever, I'd run circles around her when it comes to business.

00:23:50.840 And I went to one semester of college because I've been in the trenches working on my business.

00:23:57.040 She couldn't run a small business to save her life. 1.00

00:24:00.140 The only reason she was in the position she was in is because she had the degree that she had and she had the financial capital to absorb some of her idiot ideas. 1.00

00:24:10.040 And that's the reality of it. 1.00

00:24:11.580 I just it's it's so frustrating.

00:24:14.400 You know, these people that that don't understand, for example, this shareholder ideology, what they think is that, oh, if we're just supporting shareholders returns, then that comes at the expense of their customers.

00:24:29.420 But the reality is they don't understand free markets because free markets are about voluntary exchange.

00:24:34.840 So if I'm a shareholder of an organization, whether it's Anheuser-Busch or something as simple and lowly as order of man, it's in my best interest to serve my clientele in the best way possible.

00:24:47.660 Provide maximum value for lowest out of pocket cost.

00:24:51.040 If I can do that, shareholders win.

00:24:53.320 That's it.

00:24:53.900 No, 100 percent.

00:24:54.780 And, you know, this was even like, yes, like the marketing partnership is a disaster.

00:24:59.440 It never should have happened.

00:25:00.780 But even the corporation's response was equally as bad and equally inflamed the issue, I think more so inflamed the issue than the ad itself.

00:25:09.200 And I think this is the point that if you had like really strong values and really strong leadership, they could have immediately shut down.

00:25:14.980 It came out with a very strong response that said this was the wrong advertising campaign.

00:25:19.560 This campaign was a mistake.

00:25:21.260 Never should have happened.

00:25:22.260 We fired the person in charge and the story would have been over.

00:25:25.580 I mean, but that's not the position they took because they were kind of in this like rock and a hard place where they had made all these commitments to DEI and the ESG and to the Black Rocks and state streets and vanguards of the world that they were going to get more involved in terms of like political and social issues.

00:25:41.680 And so therefore, I don't know if you remember this, but the advertisement actually dropped on April Fool's Day of 2023.

00:25:49.880 That's when the advertisement came out.

00:25:51.440 I knew it was in 2023.

00:25:52.540 I didn't know it was April 1st, though.

00:25:54.320 It was April 1st.

00:25:55.340 And it was actually like very like highly politicized, contentious times.

00:25:59.200 You'll probably remember that week before that there was the transgender person that shot up the Christian school in Tennessee and killed a lot of people in Tennessee that week before. 1.00

00:26:11.000 So these were very contentious issues.

00:26:13.180 This was also the time when there were a lot of ballot initiatives.

00:26:15.680 I think half the states in the country at this time had should biological males be able to compete against biological women in sports like on the ballot, which is like, you know, silly enough to talk about. 0.99

00:26:26.460 But this was becoming like a big ballot issue.

00:26:28.100 There was like gender affirmation issues on the ballots.

00:26:30.360 Like this is a very contested political issue.

00:26:32.780 And then the school shooting was heightened very much in flame.

00:26:37.400 So the timing of this happening on, you know, like April Fool's Day, a lot of people really thought there was like an April Fool's joke of like Bud Light, like literally like being like April Fool's Day.

00:26:45.680 Which would have been funny.

00:26:46.780 Like that actually would have been funny.

00:26:48.240 It would have been clever.

00:26:49.180 Yeah, it would have been clever, you know.

00:26:50.480 And if you remember, it's like one of like the most iconic Bud Light ads of all time.

00:26:54.120 I don't remember this.

00:26:54.760 Like during the 90s, they had these ladies night ads.

00:26:57.780 I don't know if you remember this.

00:26:58.960 And it was like biological guys, you know, men were dressing up as ladies just to get beer specials at the bar. 0.62

00:27:04.840 And it was like, I think I do remember that light.

00:27:07.240 It was like really, really funny.

00:27:08.640 And it was all like ladies night, you know, like some people thought that's legitimately like what this was like rehashing ladies night or something.

00:27:14.940 You know, it was just people like that.

00:27:16.280 So they wanted to get Bud Light was like acting like ladies. 1.00

00:27:18.360 That would have been an unbelievable commercial.

00:27:19.880 And like people would have thought it would be really funny.

00:27:22.060 But then when they realized that this was, you know, like a real commercial, people were like, wait, what's going on?

00:27:25.500 And, you know, you had the whole Kid Rock issue, you know, like shooting up Bud Light cans.

00:27:29.080 And, you know, then 15 days later, like Bud Light went dark.

00:27:32.560 You know, essentially they were like, wow, like what's going on?

00:27:34.560 They're losing sales.

00:27:35.960 Sales are plummeting.

00:27:37.000 People are talking about this big problem.

00:27:38.480 And, you know, then two weeks later, their CEO puts out this like complete nothing statement.

00:27:44.980 He's like, you know, we at Anheuser-Busch didn't mean to be involved in anything.

00:27:49.920 And they had this like patronizing video of like a classic.

00:27:53.380 And, you know, the thing is like if you want to, I was like Americans like very forgiving.

00:27:57.760 But the thing is like, you know, is like to get redemption with your customers, it goes through forgiveness.

00:28:03.500 And to get forgiveness, though, you have to admit there was some sort of mistake.

00:28:06.880 Yeah, it's the repentance process.

00:28:08.640 You have to go through the entire thing.

00:28:10.760 You have to.

00:28:11.460 You have to.

00:28:11.980 You just can't like, it's like they kind of stand aloof of like, oh, we don't know what's happening.

00:28:16.580 And, oh, we don't know why people are dropping our product.

00:28:18.580 And, oh, yeah, we don't know.

00:28:20.360 You know, we never meant to be in this issue.

00:28:21.800 It's like, well, you're in the issue.

00:28:23.040 And if you're in the issue, there's obviously a problem.

00:28:24.980 And there was some sort of a mistake that was made to redeem yourself.

00:28:28.040 Like you have to be forgiven.

00:28:30.000 And to be forgiven, you have to admit what, how do you screw up?

00:28:32.900 And they had like two or three other chances to do this.

00:28:35.380 There was a month later, there was another response where it was kind of a nothing statement.

00:28:39.740 And then there was a the first time their CEO actually went on air live.

00:28:44.160 It was a CBS interview heading into July 4th weekend.

00:28:48.080 So a couple of weeks or a couple of months after this had happened and sales were still down 30, 40 percent.

00:28:52.640 Yeah, big weekend.

00:28:53.380 Number one beer selling weekend of the year.

00:28:54.500 I mean, this was like this was like the chance to redeem yourself going to the biggest beer selling weekend of the year.

00:28:59.820 And the guy essentially struck out.

00:29:01.620 Um, he was asked twice by the host of CBS, like, hey, you know, you're the CEO.

00:29:06.540 Sales are down massively.

00:29:08.340 You know, knowing what you know now, was this campaign a mistake and would you do it again?

00:29:12.940 And and gave a huge wishy washy, mealy mouth answer.

00:29:15.840 Didn't answer the question.

00:29:16.660 And then the person came back and said, to be clear, like, this is the reason you're in this situation.

00:29:22.300 You know, you didn't answer my question.

00:29:23.880 So let me ask it again.

00:29:24.900 Like, was this a mistake?

00:29:26.880 Would you do it again?

00:29:27.920 And again, got nothing out of it.

00:29:29.640 And the reason that they couldn't give that that, you know, the answer either way is, again, because they were caught between this on one side.

00:29:36.680 These commitments to ESG and DEI and and everything else.

00:29:41.600 And or do you just have like, you know, try to or and then the other piece was they got copies of their customers and their customers said, wait a minute.

00:29:46.940 Like, I don't want all this like political stuff like I don't want, you know, hear about, you know, Dylan Mulvaney, transgendered issues from Bud Light.

00:29:54.240 Like, I just want cold beer.

00:29:55.600 Like, that's why I choose this.

00:29:56.900 And like, unfortunately, they tried to walk this middle ground and they ended up getting shot.

00:30:01.180 I mean, you know, you know this like in the military, you walk in the middle of a battlefield like you get shot at from both sides.

00:30:06.480 And to this day, I mean, the company still hasn't recovered.

00:30:08.780 Sales are still down.

00:30:09.980 And they're one of the very few companies that hasn't walked back a lot of their commitments on DEI.

00:30:14.540 I mean, think about Walmart and McDonald's and Tractor Supply and like other ones have realized how controversial and how problematic like a lot of these philosophies were.

00:30:23.940 And, you know, to this day, and as Bush and Bud Light, they still haven't walked back.

00:30:27.980 One of the issues they're now owned by a European company called InBev.

00:30:32.260 And over in Europe, again, they have this different philosophy of stakeholder capitalism.

00:30:36.680 And that's what's like ruining their business here in the U.S.

00:30:39.560 And hopefully they figure out a way to get it back.

00:30:41.340 Men, I'm just going to step away from the conversation very quickly.

00:30:46.400 As you may have already heard, we've got a very, very incredible event in May.

00:30:53.240 May 1st through the 4th.

00:30:54.640 It's called The Men's Forge. 0.81

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00:31:03.280 and also Matt Vincent with Not Dead Yet on this event.

00:31:09.440 It's going to be an event like any other, unlike any other, I should say.

00:31:15.080 And we're going to be doing not only your conventional style conference slash conversations slash lectures.

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00:31:34.140 but most important, forge strong bonds to help you take the information that you learn at the event and apply it to the rest of your life.

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00:31:46.620 Typically, you go to a conference center and somebody yaps at you for three to four days,

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00:32:26.740 We'll see you there.

00:32:27.340 Why do you think – I mean, yeah, hopefully they find a chance to correct it, but if they're not going to correct it, I would just assume they go under.

00:32:37.380 And I know that hurts thousands, literally thousands of American citizens.

00:32:41.760 I know that.

00:32:42.280 I'm fully aware of that.

00:32:43.640 And then I see guys like Dana White and Kid Rock walk back some of their statements and start getting on board and put together huge contracts with the UFC.

00:32:51.940 And I actually really respect Dana White.

00:32:54.640 I don't know much about Kid Rock other than I liked his music when I was 20 years old.

00:32:58.780 But I don't understand why all of a sudden it's like we've lifted the boycott on Bud Light.

00:33:04.360 Like there's a financial incentive.

00:33:07.100 Is that the only reason?

00:33:08.260 And then that gets me questioning nothing's changed on Bud Light's part, and now we've got Dana White, Kid Rock, and these others who are adamantly against it.

00:33:16.980 All of a sudden now they're on board, even Trump, who I like, is on board.

00:33:21.180 It's infuriating to me.

00:33:22.940 Well, it is, but this is what's interesting.

00:33:24.580 There's a reason these guys came back around.

00:33:26.760 And Kid Rock, he was actually on Joe Rogan talking about this.

00:33:29.680 And one of the reasons that Kid Rock came back around is actually like Anheuser-Busch executives like flew to Kid Rock, met with Kid Rock, and Kid Rock got an apology.

00:33:37.240 I mean, essentially, like they told Kid Rock, like, we screwed up.

00:33:39.120 He doesn't need an apology.

00:33:40.580 They need to apologize to the public.

00:33:42.660 Like, who's Kid Rock?

00:33:43.860 Like, that's the problem.

00:33:45.320 I don't care if Kid Rock got an apology.

00:33:47.440 Give an apology to all the people that you hosed over. 0.94

00:33:51.440 100%.

00:33:51.800 Like, that's the whole point of this.

00:33:53.360 Like, guys, like, great.

00:33:54.320 You did it with Kid Rock.

00:33:55.440 You gave Dana White tens of millions of dollars, you know, and so, like, he feels good about it.

00:34:00.400 But, like, what about your everyday customer?

00:34:01.760 I mean, what about, like, Joe Sixpack, you know, that's, like, working hard 9 to 5 and is, like, drinking Bud Light.

00:34:07.680 He used to love Bud Light.

00:34:08.940 Now he can't drink it anymore because all his buddies are, you know, making fun of him any time that he has a Bud Light.

00:34:13.760 And, like, the worst thing that could happen is, like, man, this company goes under.

00:34:16.420 That's the worst thing that could happen because there's, like, a ton of good, not only that Anheuser-Busch has done historically in a bunch of different ways, but also they have hundreds of distributors.

00:34:25.620 And these are independent family-owned businesses across the country.

00:34:27.760 That I agree with.

00:34:28.620 I can see that for sure.

00:34:29.660 And they have suppliers. 1.00

00:34:30.600 And there's been tons of people, I mean, thousands of people have lost their jobs over this just, like, you know, stupid marketing mistake and the stupid aftermath. 0.99

00:34:39.000 And, like, from my standpoint, like, I think the company, like, they're kind of at this, you know, kind of fork in the road. 0.98

00:34:44.920 That either that they have to realize that they screwed up, they have to figure out how to make the apology, they got to do it in a big, you know, important way.

00:34:51.020 Like, the Super Bowl's coming up.

00:34:52.400 You know, that's a great time to say, hey, guys, we screwed up, you know, but, hey, now we're back.

00:34:55.420 Or, like, otherwise, if they're going to be just owned by sort of, like, you know, this European group that believes in, you know, more of the stakeholder capitalism idea and companies should get involved in politics and everything else.

00:35:05.040 I actually think that they should just sell the U.S. business and they should sell the U.S. business back to Americans. 0.96

00:35:10.080 You know, sell it to either, you know, like, I don't know, Berkshire Hathaway, sell it to Buffett, sell it to a bunch of private equity firms.

00:35:15.540 And then you could go on an unbelievable kind of PR campaign where you say, hey, guys, we're back in U.S. hands.

00:35:21.900 We're all of a sudden, you know, focused back on core American values that we always once had.

00:35:26.220 You know, this business was built on meritocracy.

00:35:28.180 This business was built on hard work.

00:35:30.160 This company was built on, you know, fun and humor and sports.

00:35:33.580 And this is what we're about.

00:35:34.820 And you're about to see, like, the greatest, you know, the greatest American comeback story of all time.

00:35:38.380 And there's nothing that Americans love more than a comeback.

00:35:40.860 You know, like, people love a comeback.

00:35:42.780 But again, you're never going to get there.

00:35:43.800 Underdog, the comeback.

00:35:45.040 Love it.

00:35:45.660 You know, I mean, I don't know.

00:35:46.860 Like, I use this story sometimes.

00:35:48.160 It's like, maybe it's not the right analogy or not.

00:35:50.460 But I was at the 2018 Masters, like, when Tiger Woods won it.

00:35:54.540 And, like, I've never seen, like, so many people fired up for Tiger Woods, you know, like, seven or eight years after the fact.

00:36:00.920 When, like, you know, his marriage fell apart.

00:36:02.560 He had all of the affairs that he was doing.

00:36:05.740 But, like, one of the things the guy did was, man, he, like, went on national TV.

00:36:08.520 And you've got to give the guy credit.

00:36:09.500 Like, literally sat there, apologized, how he screwed up, how he let people down, how he was going to rehab.

00:36:14.920 All the things that he was doing.

00:36:16.320 And then, like, you know, until you get that, like, you're just not going to be able to have that comeback arc.

00:36:20.900 And then, man, then when the guy went out there and won the Masters after all the issues that he has had, never seen, you know, a crowd that excited my entire life.

00:36:29.360 I think there'd be tons of people who would love to see Anheuser-Busch.

00:36:31.740 Like, one of the greatest American companies of all time.

00:36:34.080 Eagle is a logo and works with the military.

00:36:36.880 I mean, like, during World War II, these guys were, like, you know, building all types of military stuff, survived Prohibition.

00:36:42.640 I mean, there's a company that for 10 years, like, couldn't sell beer and survived by being, you know, very, having a lot of ingenuity.

00:36:49.520 At the time, they were making, like, non-alcohol products.

00:36:51.560 They were making refrigerated cars.

00:36:53.220 They were making, I mean, all types of crazy stuff just to stay in business.

00:36:56.300 Really?

00:36:56.440 They've got, like, you know, like, a great history of coming back.

00:36:59.040 Like, make this a comeback story.

00:37:00.760 And so, I don't know, I'd love that to happen at some point, so.

00:37:03.860 Yeah, well, I'm glad you talked about the distributors because I think when I said, you know, the people that you hosed over,

00:37:10.260 I'm not talking about the American public, like, you really don't owe an apology to anybody.

00:37:14.360 You make your decisions and who you're going to serve and whether they like it or not, that's the deal.

00:37:19.680 Like, there's people who I'm sure I've alienated over the past 10 years and I don't make any apologies about it.

00:37:24.600 It's part of my business model.

00:37:26.240 I think what the company owes an apology to is the distributors that believed in the mission,

00:37:32.500 that believed in the virtues and the values and the core beliefs that got the rug pulled out from under them.

00:37:37.600 And these are mom-and-pop shops.

00:37:38.860 These are family-owned businesses.

00:37:40.520 And now, all of a sudden, you've got tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions of Americans who now hate them

00:37:46.600 because they're associated with an organization that they had no say in the matter.

00:37:52.140 That's it.

00:37:52.800 I mean, you're 100% right.

00:37:53.880 Like, you know, these guys had no ability to change it.

00:37:55.940 And all of a sudden, they saw, you know, 30% of their sales just evaporated.

00:37:59.920 You know, a lot of these guys had 90-plus percent of their business was Anheuser-Busch, relied on Anheuser-Busch.

00:38:06.660 And the biggest brand that they had was Bud Light.

00:38:08.820 I mean, in a lot of cases, Bud Light was 30%, 40%, you know, percent of their sales.

00:38:12.620 And all of a sudden, when you have that brand off, by 30% or 40%, plus, it wasn't just that.

00:38:17.540 I mean, Budweiser was down 20%.

00:38:19.600 And Michelob Ultra was down.

00:38:21.060 And, I mean, everyone walked away from almost their entire portfolio.

00:38:24.320 And for the most part, that hasn't come back.

00:38:26.000 You know, this, again, it happened in 23.

00:38:28.520 The year of 24, like, they're still down in most cases in tracked information that you can see.

00:38:33.700 And it's just something that just didn't have to happen.

00:38:35.900 And I think that – I don't think that they've gotten a good explanation.

00:38:39.140 I don't think they've gotten a good example.

00:38:41.660 And I think most importantly is that they haven't really seen any changes either.

00:38:45.440 You know, their management is basically still the same.

00:38:49.180 They've tried to change some of the marketing.

00:38:50.840 I love they brought in Shane Gillis.

00:38:52.600 You know, Shane Gillis is like the perfect Bud Light spokesperson.

00:38:54.740 The last commercial they did was actually pretty clever.

00:38:59.380 I think it was, like, him and maybe at a rock concert, and he got switched or something.

00:39:03.500 And I watched him like, okay, that's actually a pretty clever commercial.

00:39:06.800 Like, that's a good job.

00:39:07.980 Do that more.

00:39:09.120 Yeah, like, but what happened?

00:39:10.180 Like, that's what they should have been doing all along.

00:39:12.500 And that's what was sort of, like, missing.

00:39:13.800 Because, man, like, you know, like, Bud Light just always had iconic.

00:39:16.920 Bud Light and Budweiser, you know, a lot of times people think of them as sort of the same brand.

00:39:20.140 But, like, I think we're from the Budweiser Frogs and the Real Men of Genius.

00:39:23.080 And, like, you know, the ladies' night commercials.

00:39:25.300 And, you know, I mean, Spuds McKinsey.

00:39:26.620 Like, when Spuds McKinsey, like, when Bud Light launched, like, he was the original, like, you know, party animal, fun guy, going out, knew all the jokes.

00:39:32.980 Like, that's what they should have been doing all along.

00:39:35.020 But it's crazy that it took them to lose 30%, 40% of their customer base to realize that, like, that's just what they needed to do.

00:39:40.840 And, you know, there's a long arc that we can get into if this happened.

00:39:46.020 But, you know, I mentioned that the company was, Anheuser-Busch, was bought in the year 2008 by this European kind of conglomerate called InBev.

00:39:56.000 It was kind of a roll-up of, like, South American beer companies, European beer companies.

00:40:00.000 And then they bought Anheuser-Busch in 2008.

00:40:04.720 And there was just, like, two very different cultures.

00:40:07.180 Anheuser-Busch was incredibly good at marketing.

00:40:08.780 Like, that was their firepower.

00:40:10.400 They had almost 50% of the beer category.

00:40:12.600 They won the Super Bowl Ad Meter Award every single year.

00:40:14.720 Like, they got the pulse of the American consumer.

00:40:16.460 Whereas, like, the InBev company, they were better, I would call it, like, financially and business-wise.

00:40:22.140 Kind of, like, managing the bottom line, cost-cutting, those types of things.

00:40:25.400 And theoretically, if you could put those two business together, there should have been a ton of shareholder value created.

00:40:30.640 You know, I kind of joined the company around that time because the company at that time was talking about we're a meritocracy.

00:40:35.980 And, you know, we're going to manage the bottom line, but we do that to reinvest in the marketing campaigns.

00:40:39.800 And, you know, I'd say for probably the first at least, you know, five, six, seven years that I was there, the company did an amazing job.

00:40:44.720 But sort of starting in the 2017, 2018, 2019 timeframe, both internally and Anheuser-Busch on a micro level, the company kind of ran out of companies to buy and to integrate, took on too much debt from this purchase of S.A.B. Miller.

00:41:02.560 And so needed to figure out how they were going to get back to more top line marketing brand growth.

00:41:08.140 And at the same time, that's when you really saw this stakeholder capitalism sort of philosophy, like, really take hold in America.

00:41:16.300 It was really when Trump came to power in 2016.

00:41:19.680 There were a lot of organizations, and he pulled out of things like the Paris Climate Accords, where he said, like, you know, the U.S. is not going to sign up for certain climate emissions reductions if China's not going to and if other people aren't.

00:41:31.260 It just doesn't make any sense.

00:41:32.240 It's not in our best interest.

00:41:33.080 It's not sort of an America first policy.

00:41:35.520 And then you had, you know, again, a lot of these sovereign wealth funds in Europe, like in Norway, progressive pension funds that said, OK, well, you know, if Trump or, you know, the U.S. is not going to solve these existential issues, then all of a sudden, like, we need companies to do it.

00:41:49.540 And then they started putting pressure on the large asset managers that own the companies, again, BlackRock, State Street, Vanguard, to say, you guys need to start putting in policies that are going to start affecting.

00:41:59.980 Who put that pressure on?

00:42:01.220 Governments or what you're saying?

00:42:02.620 Because a lot of people use the word they.

00:42:04.720 And I always push back on because you said they put pressure on.

00:42:08.260 Who are you referring to?

00:42:09.400 You follow the money.

00:42:10.520 So you have, like, Harvard University, Yale University, pension funds in New York, pension funds in California, Sovereign Wealth Fund of Norway, all of these more, like, progressive institutions that adopted more progressive values.

00:42:24.620 They control billions, if not trillions of dollars of capital.

00:42:29.080 And they usually have large asset managers like BlackRock, State Street, and Vanguard manage that money.

00:42:35.180 They manage that money by having, like, if you can see, like, your 401K, you'll probably have, like, a large cap value fund or portfolio.

00:42:43.320 Well, so those companies are investing into corporate America.

00:42:46.380 When they invest in the corporate America, they have ownership in those businesses to the point that most of those, like, those three companies mentioned, BlackRock, State Street, Vanguard, they own almost 20% of every single company in corporate America, in the S&P 500,

00:43:00.700 which gives them the ability to vote for shareholder proposals and also gives them the ability to interact with management and kind of work with management on certain policies.

00:43:12.900 So every year, Larry Fink, in 2018, wrote this letter to all the CEOs of corporate America.

00:43:20.320 And in his annual letter, he essentially said that now we're evolving the purpose of a corporation to not focus on shareholders but on stakeholders.

00:43:29.120 And he was also talking about how he's –

00:43:31.920 Anson, can you define a stakeholder for me?

00:43:34.180 I mean the way I understand it is somebody who has some sort of interest in the company, whether it's a consumer or a citizen of a country that that business operates in.

00:43:43.920 It's so loosely and broadly defined.

00:43:45.960 Am I missing it though?

00:43:47.200 No, that's the problem.

00:43:49.000 It's loosely defined.

00:43:49.800 So it's not only like the shareholders of the business but it's also like it could be like government employees.

00:43:53.760 It could be activists.

00:43:55.080 It could be nonprofits.

00:43:56.400 It could be suppliers.

00:43:58.100 It could be – you know, there's a whole – it could be basically anybody.

00:44:00.360 Like a stakeholder can be almost anything.

00:44:02.460 And this is sort of the problem is like when it's not defined who a company is serving, then all of a sudden like all these interests come in and start exerting pressure on the business.

00:44:09.820 So like a very clear example is – so BlackRock says – writes this letter to all the CEOs, says companies need to earn their social license to operate.

00:44:18.480 And to earn their social license, they now need to start abiding by these environmental social governance, ESG, and DEI policies that BlackRock is going to implement into the companies.

00:44:29.680 He gets a lot of like 200 sort of CEOs in the U.S. to sign on to something in 2019 that the Business Roundtable did that also evolved the purpose of a corporation.

00:44:38.260 And this sort of set what I call sort of like the kindling for really like this COVID bonfire that then emerges.

00:44:44.460 So COVID pops up and COVID becomes this sort of like existential threat to humanity.

00:44:50.980 And, you know, to some degree like, you know, what was in the news at the time was it was this existential threat that, you know, we're going to – millions of people are going to die and hospitals are going to be overrun and we all have to band together to fight COVID.

00:45:02.800 I mean, that was the initial deal with COVID.

00:45:04.500 And as you remember, there was this whole deal to like flatten the curve.

00:45:07.320 And it was like, you know, keep people out of hospitals.

00:45:09.440 That was the original idea.

00:45:10.260 Yeah, 15 days.

00:45:10.740 Do 15 days.

00:45:12.060 And if you remember it, like all of these corporations were all of a sudden like compelled to help flatten the curve.

00:45:18.100 You know, even like Trump at the time, he didn't want to do this but was compelled by all these sort of like Democratic congressmen from New York who saw a bunch of people dying in New York.

00:45:25.560 He signed something called the Defense Production Act, which can compel companies to stop what they're doing and for national defense purposes do something else.

00:45:35.380 So, for example, it was like –

00:45:37.220 Use their resources, their manufacturing, et cetera, et cetera.

00:45:40.200 Yeah, you know, it was like General Electric now has to make ventilators because like, you know, we're going to be overwhelmed with ventilators.

00:45:45.180 3M has to make more masks.

00:45:47.160 But then every other company in sort of corporate America got on board.

00:45:50.020 Like Anheuser-Busch starts making hand sanitizer.

00:45:52.580 You know, Delta Airlines is all of a sudden flying medical supplies all over the place.

00:45:56.220 And, you know, to some degree, like within a month, like the U.S. had flattened the curve.

00:46:01.080 You know, like hospitals weren't overrun.

00:46:02.640 There, you know, weren't like millions of people dying.

00:46:04.860 It wasn't like, you know, as bad as people had predicted it.

00:46:07.740 But like then the problem was like so all these companies now had like deviated from their mission during the COVID time period.

00:46:14.040 And all of a sudden, like we had, you know, so-called defeated this like, you know, invisible enemy of COVID.

00:46:18.720 But then right on the heels of that, this new invisible enemy pops up.

00:46:22.140 You know, you remember this was now May of 2020.

00:46:24.700 You have George Floyd dies.

00:46:27.480 George Floyd gets murdered.

00:46:28.880 And when that happens, all of a sudden you had all these protests and all the calls for Black Lives Matter.

00:46:34.200 And now all of a sudden, like companies are being told and compelled that they now have to solve this problem of systemic racism.

00:46:40.360 That was like the next big problem that now companies are supposed to solve.

00:46:44.360 And because there was this whole, this stakeholder capitalism movement that has popped up.

00:46:49.420 Now, and BlackRock is telling companies, okay, guys, everyone got involved in COVID.

00:46:55.240 Now the next thing is let's figure out how we're going to solve this systemic racism issue.

00:46:59.400 And this is where like it gets interesting, right?

00:47:01.280 Of, you know, so how does this really work in corporate America?

00:47:03.540 Well, if you're a stakeholder, like one of these stakeholders being a big activist.

00:47:07.020 And if you're an activist and you're a nonprofit organization, you, if you buy $25,000 of any company stock, you have the ability to put up a shareholder proposal at that company every year.

00:47:20.320 And the shareholder proposals can be things like, hey, you know, I want the company to have, you know, different boards of directors, or I want the company to, you know, do different innovation.

00:47:31.140 But they become very politicized proposals that were put up at companies, especially in the wake of the George Floyd winners.

00:47:38.500 Companies like Apple, there's an activist organization called Color of Change.

00:47:42.660 And their, you know, whole mission is to stamp out systemic racism in the United States.

00:47:47.240 Like, okay, fine, you're a nonprofit, you can do that, fine.

00:47:49.260 But like they bought 25,000 shares worth of Apple, and they put up this proposal that said, we want you, Apple, to conduct a racial equity audit to figure out how you contributed to systemic racism and white supremacy historically in the United States.

00:48:03.180 And what are you going to do to fix it moving forward?

00:48:07.200 Yeah, we want this result, and we want you to come up with a quote-unquote scientific method to validate the predetermined result that we've identified.

00:48:17.980 A hundred percent, that's it.

00:48:19.860 And like, what's interesting is like, even like Tim Cook, like Tim Cook is like a progressive guy, gay guy, and he's the CEO of Apple.

00:48:27.300 He recommended against this.

00:48:28.760 He said, guys, like, you know, like, we're Apple.

00:48:30.860 Like, our mission is to make magical devices at unbelievable prices, and like, that's what we do.

00:48:35.280 You know, like, yeah, I understand, like, this other stuff's important, but like, that's just not what we as Apple do.

00:48:39.080 So, like, they recommended against this racial equity audit.

00:48:42.880 Yet, this racial equity audit, when it went to the so-called shareholders, it ends up passing 52 to 48 with BlackRock being the second largest shareholder of Apple after Warren Buffett, who, of course, voted against this. 0.59

00:48:54.240 He was like, no, this is totally silly.

00:48:55.540 But when you got on, like, BlackRock and State Street and Vanguard and others that collectively.

00:48:58.780 Yeah, you can't compete.

00:48:59.940 You can't compete.

00:49:00.740 So, now, all of a sudden, like, in the year 2021, Apple's doing a racial equity audit conducted by, like, you know, Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch, and, you know, asking, essentially, like, how they contributed tens of millions of dollars of dollars being spent.

00:49:13.920 And this is now ending up in, like, Apple implementing, like, you know, quota systems and, like, all these other DEI policies and talking about, like, the percentages of people from various backgrounds they're going to hire.

00:49:24.740 And this is happening across corporate America.

00:49:27.200 It's not only the things that create records.

00:49:28.540 It's, like, defund the police initiatives.

00:49:29.860 It's all of a sudden, like, oil and gas companies were being told to not produce oil and gas to solve climate change.

00:49:35.740 And just numerically, before sort of the COVID time period and this adoption of stakeholder capitalism, less than 5% of these so-called ESG and DEI proposals that were being put up at companies passed.

00:49:48.980 Yet, in the year 2021, you were having BlackRock, State Street and Vanguard voting for almost 40%, almost 50% of these things were being voted on.

00:49:57.560 And in a lot of cases, in many cases past, in corporations.

00:50:00.700 So that's why you start to see corporate America get very politicized during this time period on very – on a bunch of different initiatives.

00:50:07.280 And not only was that bad for companies, but also it ended up becoming bad really for, like, democracy because, like, a lot of, like, policies were being implemented in corporate America that the vast majority of people disagreed with.

00:50:18.860 But it was, like, a really small number of, like, asset managers that were, like, forcing this political agenda onto corporations.

00:50:25.040 I mean, this makes so much sense.

00:50:26.700 I don't think I've ever heard anybody describe it this way where it actually starts to resonate with me.

00:50:30.960 You're talking about following the money.

00:50:32.480 And then I just think about basic human psychology.

00:50:35.760 If we can say, you know, if the thief says, hey, look at that guy.

00:50:40.040 He's the one that stole your stuff.

00:50:42.740 And then all the attention gets drawn on that person.

00:50:45.700 This is gaslighting 101 from BlackRock, from, what did you say, State Street and Vanguard as well.

00:50:51.080 Is they're uniting us against, to use your verbiage, an invisible enemy in order to milk us for billions if not trillions of dollars utilizing our own fears and emotions against us.

00:51:10.020 That's it.

00:51:11.120 No, you got it, like, 100%.

00:51:12.560 And people became, like, paralyzed in corporate America to do anything that was sort of, like, against this very progressive ideologies and all of these, again, shareholder proposals and all this pressure to, you know, again, like, you know, support progressive causes.

00:51:28.520 I was seeing it outside of, you know, outside of Anheuser-Busch and also inside.

00:51:32.760 I mean, outside of Anheuser-Busch, I mentioned earlier the, you know, I was living in Atlanta, Georgia at the time.

00:51:36.920 And Coca-Cola, you know, and Delta and others, they really got involved when citizens of Georgia voted for representatives that you need to have an ID to vote.

00:51:47.540 I didn't think that was that crazy.

00:51:48.740 But, like, BlackRock, one of the very first companies to come out and say, hey, we're against this law.

00:51:52.480 You know, we're going to push back on it.

00:51:53.920 Other people should as well.

00:51:55.420 And, again, lo and behold, all these sort of Georgia-based companies, Coca-Cola, Delta, Major League Baseball canceled the All-Star game over this issue, if you'll recall.

00:52:03.360 I remember this.

00:52:04.360 Yeah, I remember this.

00:52:05.180 I remember, like, you know, this is sort of, like, crazy what's going on.

00:52:08.220 And then, you know, internally at Anheuser-Busch, I'm also seeing a lot of, like, art policies change.

00:52:12.760 Like, meritocracy was always the word that we used at Anheuser-Busch when we recruited people, we promoted people.

00:52:18.320 And then all of a sudden, like, that got replaced as one of our principles as, you know, now all of a sudden you got promoted based off the diversity of your teams.

00:52:26.000 And it was, like, very clear what that meant.

00:52:27.440 I was like, that just doesn't make any sense.

00:52:29.320 A lot of our marketing was starting to change at Anheuser-Busch at the time.

00:52:32.280 We used to try and win the Super Bowl Ad Meter Award every single year.

00:52:35.300 Like, that's what, you know, basically was the pinnacle of did you get the American consumer.

00:52:39.680 We started trying to win these con line awards, cons of city in France that, you know, has, like, very European view.

00:52:45.380 And you'd win those awards by having your ESG DEI sort of proposal.

00:52:48.120 So I'm seeing a lot of these products materialized.

00:52:50.580 And then, you know, really the start to break the camel's back for me is I want to do a partnership, a distribution agreement with Black Rifle Coffee Company.

00:52:59.540 You know, if you think about, like, Anheuser-Busch, they've dropped off Bud Light and Budweiser at every single gas station and grocery store and, you know, bar and restaurant across the country.

00:53:08.440 And at the time, Black Rifle Coffee Company was coming out with their first sort of, like, canned coffee and ready-to-drink coffee.

00:53:14.580 Yeah, their espresso and everything.

00:53:16.220 I've seen them.

00:53:16.620 I see them all the time in the grocery or in the convenience stores.

00:53:19.280 Yeah, all the time.

00:53:19.980 So, like, they were already in, like, Walmarts and, you know, 7-Elevens.

00:53:22.640 And we thought, I thought it made a ton of sense of, like, man, like, by the way, the guy who's drinking, like, Budweiser at night, a lot of times he was drinking Black Rifle Coffee Company in the morning.

00:53:30.180 You know, and I was like, if you put these things on the same truck, go to the same places, it'll be a great deal for them.

00:53:34.860 It'll be a great deal for us, great partnership, and we have a, like, a corporate social responsibility team that was, like, based in New York City that killed the entire deal.

00:53:45.500 And they said no.

00:53:46.460 Were you the president at the time?

00:53:48.420 Like, you were the president of Anheuser-Busch.

00:53:50.220 Is that correct?

00:53:50.960 I was the president of Anheuser-Busch Sales and Distribution Company, yes.

00:53:54.460 Which is crazy to me because it seems like you'd have so much weight and pull, and yet you're getting all this pushback.

00:54:01.640 Like, I don't understand corporate America, obviously, to the degree that you do, but it seems wild to me that with your influence within the organization, you're still getting, like, no, we're not doing that, and you're getting pushed aside for something else.

00:54:15.460 I mean, a lot of people, they were hamstrung by, like, you know, your legal team or your HR team or your, you know, social responsibility team is essentially saying, like, there's too much risk.

00:54:24.180 You know, ooh, Black Rifle Coffee Company, like, you know, like, they support, like, the military and, you know, and veterans and police and, like, there's just a lot of heat right now with, like, you know, the police and, you know, like, anyone that's, you know, supporting the police, that seems, you know, you know, persona non grata.

00:54:42.380 And, you know, there was, like, I don't know, issues.

00:54:45.640 There was something silly as well.

00:54:46.900 It was, like, you know, Kyle Rittenhouse was, like, the guy that, like, you know, killed a protester, I think, up in Wisconsin, but, like, he was wearing a Black Rifle Coffee Company, like, shirt or something. 0.72

00:54:55.380 Oh, that's right.

00:54:56.220 You know?

00:54:56.540 Yes, that's right.

00:54:57.300 I forgot about that.

00:54:58.120 And I was, like, guys, like, I mean, come on now.

00:55:00.780 It's, like, think about, like, everyone who was part of Antifa, like, burning down buildings and shooting and killing.

00:55:06.380 Like, they were wearing Nike shoes, you know, and they were wearing God knows whatever else.

00:55:10.400 Like, what do you mean?

00:55:11.640 Like, people do partnerships with Nike and other things all the time.

00:55:14.300 And nobody's, like, Nike's not to blame for that.

00:55:16.980 Nike's not to blame for that.

00:55:18.160 You know, like, the guy happened to wear a Black Rifle Coffee Company, like, you know, shirt.

00:55:21.940 Like, you know, I don't know what to tell you, you know?

00:55:25.180 But, like, the company, though, like, its mission is to support veterans and serve coffee and culture, all these people.

00:55:29.940 And, by the way, you know, they're already being sold at, like, Walmart and 7-Eleven and others.

00:55:34.320 Like, those people are fine with it.

00:55:35.980 Like, why wouldn't we as an organization be fine working with, like, this great company that, frankly, like, used to share, you know, or shares what used to be our values?

00:55:44.840 And, you know, Budweiser had done tons of great partnerships with the military and Folds of Honor and others.

00:55:48.740 Like, what do you mean?

00:55:49.940 You know, so, like, but this was going on, like, at large scale across corporate America where, I mean, you literally couldn't do partnerships with certain companies or have a certain viewpoint.

00:56:00.020 You know, we opened up this show talking about Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook.

00:56:02.860 You know, like, companies that couldn't put out certain messaging because you couldn't be, you didn't want to be deplatformed from Facebook or Instagram or others where a lot of your people were.

00:56:11.600 So, that was the era that we were in.

00:56:15.380 You know, I'm hoping that as we move forward, we get back to an era of, like, you know, free speech, open debate, dialogue, and, like, letting the consumer decide.

00:56:22.460 And not necessarily censoring views, censoring voices, censoring products, because that was a real bad era that we were in over the last couple years.

00:56:29.020 I mean, the reality is it'll change until it changes, you know, like, Zuckerberg and these types, they're not principled people.

00:56:36.760 They're only worried about the bottom line, and so they'll do whatever they need to do, and to preserve themselves as well. 0.98

00:56:42.300 Zuckerberg's a coward. 1.00

00:56:43.620 I'm not dismissing his intelligence or his ability to create these incredible systems that have literally transformed the world, but he's a coward. 0.99

00:56:51.000 He's a moral, unprincipled coward, and as soon as the culture changes, then he'll change his tune because he's not based on a principled background.

00:57:04.100 But that actually leads me into the question of Trump because, you know, as of the recording of this, it's January 9th, and, you know, Trump will take office in the next couple of weeks, a little less than two weeks.

00:57:16.460 And we're already starting to see major shifts in Zuckerberg's, the way he's showing up, and other organizations, and we're seeing world leaders come to the table, and we're even seeing entertainment and media starting to change some of their tune.

00:57:34.160 Like, how does this change under a Trump presidency over the next four years?

00:57:38.240 I mean, I think, like, we're just getting back.

00:57:41.220 I hope the pendulum is swinging back, like, at least in the corporate world, that we're going to be able to, like, separate sort of, you know, church and state.

00:57:47.740 Hopefully there's no longer this world that we were living in were, like, tech companies, you know, were essentially, like, Facebook and Meta and Twitter and others were essentially, like, you know, voices of the government.

00:57:57.600 I mean, you know, it was amazing that Elon bought Twitter, unrolled a bunch of logs, turned over a bunch of logs, and showed that there was, like, legitimately, like, the government was working with Twitter to censor voices.

00:58:06.540 And I think what we're trying to do is, like, just break that apart, and I don't think that this is necessarily, like, you know, partisan-type issue.

00:58:12.680 Like, this is just common sense, that I don't care if, you know, I don't want Trump, or I don't want the Republicans, you know, telling the spying on Democrats or censoring Democrat speech or something.

00:58:22.920 Of course.

00:58:23.460 Like, I don't want it happening, you know, either.

00:58:24.900 Like, what I'm hoping that we're getting—

00:58:25.500 Well, it's like the Patriot Act.

00:58:26.640 I mean, it was one of the worst, most atrocious things that could have happened to us in our privacy as American citizens under conservative leadership.

00:58:35.300 So, yeah, I don't like it coming from any side of the table.

00:58:39.860 Any side.

00:58:40.440 That's it.

00:58:41.000 So, like, what I'm hoping is, like, we just break apart this sort of, this, you know, government and corporations sort of, like, collusion that was going on.

00:58:47.580 Like, you know, people don't like that.

00:58:49.500 You know, employees don't like that.

00:58:50.960 Customers don't like that.

00:58:52.040 And it caused all these problems in retrospect.

00:58:53.840 So, what I'm hoping is, like, that's what we're getting back to, like, getting back to, like, principled approaches.

00:58:58.440 Like, let's have the rules of the road, whether you're a Democrat, you're a Republican, whatever, gay, straight, black, white, like, don't care.

00:59:04.580 But, like, there are certain principles we're going to stand on.

00:59:06.200 Free speech is, like, something that we're going to stand on now.

00:59:09.480 We're going to stand on that.

00:59:10.400 We're going to break apart sort of, like, government collusion with organizations that shouldn't be happening.

00:59:15.320 Let's be, like, affirmative about our belief in American free market shareholder capitalism.

00:59:19.640 Like, focus, again, business just on your shareholders.

00:59:22.580 Like, these are things that, like, should be sort of, like, you know, baseline that should just be, like, fundamental principles.

00:59:27.940 Like, we as Americans just all share, again, regardless of who's in office.

00:59:30.880 And then so, you know, even someone like Zuckerberg.

00:59:33.820 I mean, hopefully, you know, Zuckerberg 1.0 is more the, you know, coward, blows in the political wind.

00:59:38.660 I'm hoping Zuckerberg 2.0, like, you know, if the ghost of Joe Biden shows up as the next, you know, president for,

00:59:44.320 God knows whatever reason, but, like, you know, he's not going to go back to coordinating with the government.

00:59:48.600 He's going to say, you know what?

00:59:49.200 Nope.

00:59:49.720 We're going to stand for, you know, free speech on our platforms.

00:59:52.400 We're going to let the people decide.

00:59:53.600 We're going to have community notes.

00:59:54.500 We're not going to be doing censorship.

00:59:56.200 And hopefully it goes for, like, broader corporate America as well.

00:59:58.760 Not necessarily just blowing in the wind, but having strong tried and true principles, showing up, believing in their mission,

01:00:04.460 being very clear and explicit about what the mission of the company is, and being able to stand tall.

01:00:09.220 And, you know, you know, one of the guys I give a lot of credit to is Brian Armstrong.

01:00:14.580 He's the CEO of Coinbase.

01:00:15.940 And he was one of the very first CEOs.

01:00:18.320 And at the time, it was a very contrarian position.

01:00:21.380 This was in the end of 2020 when a lot of his employees, they wanted him to speak up for BLM.

01:00:27.220 I remember this.

01:00:28.820 And he said, guys, like, we're not going to do that at Coinbase.

01:00:31.840 Like, we are a mission-driven company.

01:00:33.620 What we're going to focus on is bring crypto to the masses.

01:00:35.960 That's what we do.

01:00:37.700 And we're not going to get involved in any other issues.

01:00:40.060 If there's an issue related to crypto, yes, we will have an opinion on it because it could be existential to our business.

01:00:44.900 But otherwise, we're not.

01:00:45.920 And, oh, by the way, like, if that doesn't, you know, fit your outlook on life, you can leave.

01:00:50.820 And he had, like, I don't know, like 50 employees, like, leave or something like that.

01:00:54.900 I remember this, yeah.

01:00:55.680 5,000 applications of people like, oh, my gosh, like, how amazing would that be to come to an organization where, like, I don't have to be indoctrinated every single day about, you know, my white privilege or about my biases or about my whatever else.

01:01:08.280 And I can just, you know, work and, you know, hang out with people that I like.

01:01:12.300 So I think that's what we're going to get back to.

01:01:13.900 And then, you know, I think Elon, you know, a great personal sacrifice to himself.

01:01:17.320 I mean, think about, like, what that guy's done over the last couple of years of just sort of bringing back and, you know, buying Twitter.

01:01:24.460 I mean, potentially losing billions of dollars on Twitter, but to restore free speech in this country.

01:01:30.100 So I think that, you know, there's, you know, we talk a lot about, you know, fear is contagious.

01:01:36.040 And there was a lot of fear, especially four or five years ago.

01:01:38.380 But courage is contagious also.

01:01:40.660 And it just takes sort of like a couple people to stand up and to, you know, have principles, do what's right.

01:01:45.720 And then a lot of other people will follow.

01:01:48.240 Yeah.

01:01:49.220 You know, I mean, I think another guy that I like, I at least respect a lot is Palmer Lucky.

01:01:54.980 You know, Palmer Lucky, who I'm not sure you're familiar with him, but he got a start by he sold Oculus.

01:02:02.040 Oculus was the virtual reality headset that he sold to Facebook.

01:02:06.240 And then he was a Facebook employee.

01:02:08.160 He was kind of run out of Facebook in 2016 because I think he was like part of the 2% of employees that gave to Trump and not to Hillary.

01:02:16.760 And after that, he left Facebook and started a company called Anduril.

01:02:20.980 And Anduril now is one of the defense tech companies.

01:02:23.860 But they're doing a lot of the autonomous drones and a lot of the weapons that are going to be sort of the next 21st century rapidly to protect here in the U.S.

01:02:32.300 And when he did it at the time, he was being called that he was like supporting the military industrial complex and he's, you know, supporting the killing of people.

01:02:41.440 And, you know, like, I mean, literally, you know, was so had so many bad things thrown at him.

01:02:47.120 And he was on a great all in podcast recently and like ended up like eviscerating a lot of these guys by reading all like the mean things that were said about him.

01:02:55.100 Because when he started this company, he was like, listen, like, you know, I realized like China was a threat and us just having like $35 billion, you know, planes or like large tankers.

01:03:04.400 Like that wasn't going to be the next iteration of war.

01:03:06.260 Like the next iteration of war was going to be, you know, drones and bots and swarms.

01:03:10.040 We were like very behind in the U.S.

01:03:11.640 And so, like, therefore, I started creating this company and all of a sudden, like when Russia invaded Ukraine, all of a sudden, like the narrative on him had totally shifted because he all of a sudden was like, you know, selling drones to Ukraine and, you know, helping on like the Ukraine front.

01:03:27.460 But he was sold as he's like this defender of democracy.

01:03:29.960 And he's like, listen, like nothing about me had like changed.

01:03:32.880 Like my principles were the same.

01:03:34.240 Like I was doing this company to defend this country and be able to defend like the country and our allies.

01:03:39.400 And all of a sudden, you know, a day ago, I was persona non grata in Silicon Valley.

01:03:45.120 But now after like Russia invades Ukraine, now like I'm being held up as this like great American hero.

01:03:50.080 Like, no, no, like that's not the way we should operate.

01:03:52.280 We need to operate on fundamental principles of, you know, principles of sort of like American values, protecting American interests, protecting democracy, protecting our freedoms.

01:04:00.620 And these are things that, you know, can change in one lifetime if we don't.

01:04:04.740 And it's like these are some of the values that I think that, you know, not only, you know, individuals, but even like corporations need to like dig deeply about what it means to be an American and what it means to be an American corporation, what it means to have that privilege.

01:04:16.640 Do right by your shareholders.

01:04:17.800 Do right by your customers.

01:04:19.340 That's what's unleashed the greatest economic miracle in the history of the world here in the United States.

01:04:23.080 It also allows our democracy to stand strong.

01:04:25.220 And again, I hope those principles are what comes back and sort of this next administration.

01:04:29.020 And those principles remain no matter who's in office for the next, you know, at least my lifetime.

01:04:34.340 I mean, I, I have my reservations, but I certainly hope that you're right with Zuckerberg and his change of tune and some of these other individuals.

01:04:44.700 You know, and I know even with you, your business partners with Vivek Ramaswamy, who's obviously, you know, co, I don't even know what the, what the term or the title is with Doge.

01:04:56.540 Yeah, I don't know.

01:04:58.540 I don't founder, president.

01:05:00.280 I don't, I don't know what the term is, but I love to see collaborations like this happen.

01:05:06.660 I love to see individuals who believe in the American spirit, who believe in individualism, meritocracy, you know, partnering up, banding together.

01:05:14.420 And you said something interesting.

01:05:15.780 You said it could change in a lifetime.

01:05:17.600 You were talking about the negative side, but I, I'm beginning to see how rapidly under the right leadership, how quickly things can change in a positive direction as well.

01:05:29.140 A hundred percent.

01:05:30.260 I mean, it's just been amazing to see the vibe shift that has happened where all of a sudden, like, you know, you think about like, I mean.

01:05:36.240 In like 12 months, less than 12 months.

01:05:38.640 I mean, even the last 90 days.

01:05:41.240 Yeah.

01:05:41.440 I mean, just think about it.

01:05:42.460 Like, you know, 12 months ago we had rampant inflation.

01:05:44.620 We had this people pouring over our borders that we didn't know, you know, who they were. 0.97

01:05:48.880 We had, you know, biological men competing against, you know, biological women in sports and people not even questioning it. 0.92

01:05:54.840 Or if you did question it, you were called, you know, a bigot or you were ostracized.

01:05:58.880 A foe of some sort.

01:06:00.040 Yeah.

01:06:00.640 You know, I mean, just like, you know, like the crazy thing that was going on, you know, speech was being censored.

01:06:05.380 And it's just like amazing to see now the vibe shift where like, once again, I think we're going to this golden era.

01:06:10.360 You know, I think more speech is better.

01:06:11.780 Like, let's debate ideas in the open.

01:06:14.240 You know, let's not be afraid.

01:06:15.600 Let's not, like, let's move beyond cancel culture. 0.91

01:06:17.940 Like, you know, let's just respect ourselves as kind of co-equal citizens that we are.

01:06:22.300 We might not agree on everything, but at least that we can have, we can share our opinions freely and openly.

01:06:28.100 I don't know.

01:06:28.520 I mean, I hope that's the vibe that we're going to.

01:06:30.440 And that's where there's a lot of optimism.

01:06:31.380 And I think also, if you look at the markets, I mean, the stock market's been on a tear since, you know, Trump's come into office.

01:06:38.120 And a lot of that's because.

01:06:39.220 He's not even in office yet.

01:06:40.480 I mean, that's the crazy thing.

01:06:41.880 That's the thing.

01:06:42.560 You know, not even in office yet.

01:06:44.680 And we have all these other countries that now want to talk to us again.

01:06:47.940 And now are, you know, trying to get the war in Ukraine and try to figure it out in the Middle East.

01:06:51.180 Like, you know, because now all of a sudden we actually have like adults back in the, you know, back in the room.

01:06:55.680 And we have people with, you know, clear policies going back to like, what do we stand for?

01:06:59.600 You know, and I think America first is like a very clear policy.

01:07:03.200 Like, we're going to put America first.

01:07:04.660 It's very simple to understand.

01:07:06.200 We're going to act in the best interest of our country.

01:07:08.760 You know, here in the U.S., like we're believers in sort of like the American dream, the American spirit, the American constitution.

01:07:14.560 You know, the American revolution is something that this day is like very radical in a lot of countries.

01:07:18.500 You know, the fact here in the United States that you can own a gun or that you can speak freely, you know, or that you can choose whatever religion.

01:07:24.920 Like, these are like rights that are in a lot of – like very radical in very many other countries.

01:07:30.420 And we should continue to stand up for these – to stand up for these rights that have created the most prosperous and free country of the last 250 years.

01:07:38.000 But unless we continue to do that, you know, that can collapse in a generation.

01:07:43.080 Yeah.

01:07:44.200 Well, Anton, I appreciate our discussion today.

01:07:46.700 Let everybody know where to connect with you.

01:07:48.600 Obviously, you've got the new book, which is Last Call for Bud Light, and it's more than just Bud Light.

01:07:55.360 It's a cultural phenomenon in both a negative direction and hopefully some optimistic outlook for the future.

01:08:02.820 Tell us where to connect more with you.

01:08:05.040 Yeah.

01:08:05.720 I really appreciate you having me on the show here first, Ryan.

01:08:08.140 And, you know, first you can buy the book starting February 4th.

01:08:10.880 It will be available online and audio, et cetera.

01:08:14.400 And then for myself, you can connect with me.

01:08:16.040 You can find me on – you can find me on Twitter, Anson D. Frerichs.

01:08:21.460 You can find me on LinkedIn, Anson Frerichs.

01:08:23.460 You can find me on Instagram social.

01:08:25.360 So I'm always happy to connect with people, happy to share my thoughts.

01:08:29.460 And, you know, most importantly, I think with this book – you know, we talk about this.

01:08:32.800 This is like the next time that all of a sudden corporations start blowing in the wind.

01:08:36.840 It's a reminder for broader corporations.

01:08:38.700 They stick to your values.

01:08:39.980 Be true to those values.

01:08:40.940 Be true to your customers.

01:08:42.280 That's the most sustainable thing that an organization can do.

01:08:44.660 And then also I think there's a hopeful – I'm hopeful that Bud Light can turn around as well.

01:08:48.540 Like I said, Americans love a great comeback story.

01:08:50.740 I gave them a little bit of a roadmap in there about how to get there.

01:08:53.520 Hopefully they follow it and hopefully – I don't know.

01:08:56.520 At some point I'll be drinking a Bud Light with you in the future, Ryan.

01:08:59.560 We feel good about doing it.

01:09:01.400 You know, we'll see.

01:09:03.260 The reality is you reap what you sow and right now you have not done well.

01:09:08.680 But my hope is that things can change too.

01:09:11.220 Like I don't want to see companies go out of business.

01:09:13.300 I don't want Americans to lose jobs.

01:09:15.400 I just want companies to do the right thing.

01:09:18.060 And I think you're a part of that solution.

01:09:20.040 So I appreciate you and being on the show today.

01:09:22.340 Thanks, Ryan.

01:09:22.940 Really appreciate it.

01:09:25.420 And there you go, my conversation with Anson.

01:09:27.860 I hope you enjoyed it.

01:09:29.980 Obviously sharing a lot of things that have been going on in popular culture.

01:09:34.600 We talked a lot about the DEI initiatives.

01:09:37.500 We talked also about the whole fiasco with Bud Light and Dylan Mulvaney.

01:09:47.160 We even talked about some of the concepts of the ESG movement, environmental, social, and governance policies that are dictating a lot of what's going on in big corporate today and why these things need to be done away with.

01:10:02.100 If you're interested and want to support what Anson is doing, head over to Amazon, pick up a copy of The Last Call for Bud Light.

01:10:10.240 And in addition to that, make sure that you check out our brand new event coming out May 1st through the 4th.

01:10:17.160 It's called The Men's Forge. 0.81

01:10:19.000 You can do that at themensforge.com.

01:10:22.480 All right, you guys, those are your marching orders.

01:10:25.940 We will be back tomorrow for our Ask Me Anything.

01:10:28.840 Until then, go out there, take action, and become the man you are meant to be.

01:10:36.900 Thank you for listening to the Order of Man podcast.

01:10:39.880 If you're ready to take charge of your life and be more of the man you were meant to be, we invite you to join the order at orderofman.com.

01:10:52.480 Thank you.

Order of Man - February 04, 2025

ANSON FRERICKS ｜ How DEI and Bud Light Died

Episode Stats

Summary

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Order of Man - February 04, 2025

ANSON&#xA0;FRERICKS ｜ How DEI and Bud Light Died

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript

ANSON FRERICKS ｜ How DEI and Bud Light Died