The Glenn Beck Program - Ep 127 ｜ Supply Chain Crisis？ Not for This Company ｜ Bayard Winthrop

00:00:00.000 There's a verse in Proverbs that say, where there is no vision, the people perish.

00:00:04.480 It means if there aren't leaders offering real solutions or a better vision for the future,

00:00:12.460 things just naturally get worse. Somebody's got to stand up on a hill and go, look,

00:00:17.380 it's going to get better this way. When I talk to you, I warn you about all the ways things

00:00:24.180 are trending towards chaos. But I also want you to hear from people who are coming up with

00:00:29.780 real solutions, even if they're people that I may not vote the same way with. We have to look for

00:00:37.020 people with solutions. Today, I have one of those solution makers in the studio with me. He's a

00:00:41.800 businessman doing what we are increasingly told is impossible, making their products 100 percent

00:00:48.600 in the USA. He was not always like that. He was part of the just ship the jobs overseas. Let's make

00:00:54.340 money for a long time. Then something happened and he changed. Like all of us, he is watching the U.S.

00:01:01.140 global supply chain erode before his eyes and other business leaders make excuses. He is making plans

00:01:08.680 for a future that prioritizes domestic business. His message should be heard from coast to coast

00:01:15.180 because he's right. So I would like to welcome to stage 19 the founder and CEO of American giant

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00:03:03.500 Byron, it is great to have you on. Thanks for having me, man. You bet. It's a joy to be here.

00:03:08.560 Um, I don't, we don't know each other. I mean, we've spent what, 25 minutes together beforehand.

00:03:15.080 Um, and I, I, I don't know your politics. I know you live in San Francisco. Usually that's enough for

00:03:23.560 me to go, okay, but I don't want to know your politics. I don't care who you voted for, which

00:03:29.520 side you're on. I want to base this on principles because I think, you know, my, my staff was like,

00:03:37.880 I don't know if you should keep asking people this, but when you have a conversation and you

00:03:43.240 want to have a decent conversation where you're looking for solutions, you have to know the

00:03:48.380 principles of the people. And we have a real clear set of principles that we've, we're off of now.

00:03:55.500 Nobody's talking about, and there's the answers are all in there. So let me ask you the bill of

00:04:00.380 rights. Are you with the bill of rights? I'm with the bill of rights. Okay. I mean, it's a weird

00:04:05.580 question to ask, but you, I've read enough about you. I know you believe the world is changing.

00:04:12.040 We're at a tipping point and things do have to change, but what do you save and what goes away?

00:04:20.000 Yep. And too many people are just kind of skipping by, Hey, you know, that's a kind of an important

00:04:24.900 corner cornerstone. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think that, that when I think about American giant and

00:04:29.600 kind of why I started the business and, and, and when I unpack that all the way down to its

00:04:33.780 basic components, I think we've got to figure out a way to, um, identify and pursue the things that

00:04:43.780 bind us all together as a country. And for me, a root of that is, uh, jobs and manufacturing and

00:04:50.660 the making of things. And, you know, I had spent so much of my career being on the wrong side of that

00:04:56.320 conversation. I think, you know, moving businesses overseas and unwinding domestic manufacturing and

00:05:01.540 seeing the, you were part of that. Yeah. I mean, I, I had started off my career in, in finance on

00:05:06.440 wall street and got into manufacturing in the early nineties and kind of right away. Um, I sort of

00:05:14.260 accepted unconditionally all of this idea that you just, you move manufacturing to the cheapest place

00:05:18.640 you can go find things to make things. And I started doing that and did it in the beginning of my

00:05:23.240 career unthinkingly, but it's hard to avoid over time, the impact that has the decisions that have

00:05:30.520 and also the inconsistency of where we were taking the making of our things versus what we were holding

00:05:36.100 our domestic producers to. And I just wrestled with that for a long time. And eventually American

00:05:40.620 Giant came out of that. But, but I think that gets down to a really basic set of things about

00:05:44.440 what are we trying to do as a people, as a group of people that share a whole bunch of values and

00:05:48.480 beliefs. So I think we boil everything down to, and it's so weird as a, as a conservative,

00:05:56.140 I would always, people that don't know me would always say like, Oh, he's, he's for capitalism,

00:06:01.560 you know, and the bottom line and, uh, you know, consumerism. I hate the fact that we are all about

00:06:09.580 stuff and not about principles. Um, and I know you've recently talked about, um, getting to a place that

00:06:17.460 this actually COVID can help us by bringing the supply chain down that maybe we get back to quality

00:06:23.520 and not just stuff. Yeah. Well, so think about that for a second, right? So, you know, we have

00:06:27.840 a basic philosophy in our business that the closer we are to the people in places that make the things

00:06:33.620 that we sell, the better stewards we are of those products. We take better care of our farmers. We

00:06:38.440 take better care of the people that produce our yarns and our knits and all those things because we

00:06:42.580 know them and they're close and we're really integrated with them. Our, our quality, I say this all the

00:06:46.600 time. Our quality is so much more of the result of the men and women that are in our supply chain

00:06:51.860 than they are of some vision that we hold in our offices in San Francisco. And so getting closer to

00:06:56.780 things makes better things. There all, there's also a really important knock-on effect for the

00:07:02.060 communities that surround the places that make the stuff that we make. So, you know, when you go into

00:07:07.000 a factory of ours in Middlesex, North Carolina, the local restaurants do better when that factory is

00:07:12.400 doing better. There's good employers, there's good resiliency in the economy. There's people sitting on

00:07:16.480 school boards, there's people worrying about parks and the maintenance of those parks because

00:07:20.520 there's a vital community and economy there. And so I think it does start there, but what's been

00:07:26.400 interesting during COVID is that what's happened over the last 40 years is we have allowed our biggest

00:07:32.580 businesses to pursue the cheapest means of production all over the world. Most often in

00:07:40.600 conflict to the standards that we hold our domestic producers, meaning, meaning that you make shoes or

00:07:47.640 you make clothes, big companies have been incentivized to take the means of the, of production of those

00:07:53.940 things and pursue the cheapest labor, the lowest environmental standards, the worst worker safety

00:08:00.700 standards in the world. Actual slavery in many cases. Yeah. So that's, I mean, you're, you know,

00:08:04.680 I think this has come into focus with Xinjiang, right. And China, which is a part of China that

00:08:10.720 is by all accounts is using a forced labor of a minority Muslim population to produce clothing and

00:08:17.800 shoes and other things. We've allowed our biggest brands to do that. Um, at the same time that we

00:08:23.280 are holding our domestic producers to standards that are appropriate, I think good environmental

00:08:27.520 standards, good human rights standards, good safety standards. And so, you know, everyone talks about

00:08:32.760 level playing fields, but right now we're holding our domestic manufacturers to very high standards

00:08:38.000 while allowing our biggest brands to chase low standards internationally. And that's got to get

00:08:43.420 corrected. I think that's got to get rebalanced. I, I, I really don't like, um, this virtue signaling

00:08:51.060 from these companies because most of them, it's bull crap. You know, this, this whole, uh, build back

00:08:57.620 better stuff was started with the environment in mind, but that's not what it is. It's all about

00:09:03.020 money, you know, and control. And, um, but I do want to do business with companies that aren't jamming

00:09:11.860 stuff down my throat, but do stand for something. And we have these companies now saying they stand for

00:09:19.920 something or leading the way. And yet they won't speak out against China and we know why it's the

00:09:26.520 Instagram effect, right? I mean, I think it's the difference between walking the walk and talking

00:09:30.420 about it. And I'm with you a hundred percent. I think we are surrounded in our industry and the

00:09:34.780 apparel world of brands that are the first to Instagram about earth day or about celebrating pride,

00:09:41.580 uh, or any other social issue that happens to make them seem better to their customers, but they pursue,

00:09:47.580 uh, operational practices that are in complete conflict with those values. Um, so I, I, I think it's a,

00:09:55.280 I think it's bad. I think we've got to, we've got to hold brands and retailers accountable and

00:10:00.400 policymakers accountable for reconciling those things. And how do you, how do you do that?

00:10:04.000 Well, it's obviously a really complicated question. I think there's, there's a lot of

00:10:06.420 component parts and I think people tend to ask about go to consumer first. I think the consumer

00:10:10.280 actually is, is, is, uh, should be the least, uh, the last place we go. But I think it probably

00:10:15.340 starts with policymakers, um, trying to really dig into whether we are holding, uh, I think,

00:10:23.420 I think what we have to reconcile with from policymaking standpoint is, is it okay to do

00:10:29.040 business with countries that do not share our basic values? And you're talking, you're not

00:10:34.700 talking about, you're talking about not people that necessarily, uh, don't agree with freedom of

00:10:41.840 speech the way we do, but when they are really oppressive, I think when it's basic, do we, do we

00:10:47.820 have, is it okay to say that we're going to produce in countries that don't, uh, respect environmental

00:10:52.480 standards or that don't respect human rights? Um, do we pay a living wage to the people that

00:10:59.100 make or the things that we consume? I think we've got to, we've got to confront that question.

00:11:03.480 And obviously I think we all intuitively understand this to some degree. We don't, we don't go to

00:11:07.180 North Korea to produce a bunch of stuff. Why? Because we think that's a horribly repressive

00:11:10.460 regime, but that's on a continuum with a bunch of other countries. China's behavior in Xinjiang

00:11:14.840 and my judgment is pretty close. And so at, and so at what point do we decide to say

00:11:19.940 it is unfair to our domestic producers to hold them to a much higher standard than we're holding

00:11:24.760 China. And by the way, along the way, a huge amount of capital is poured into China and

00:11:29.040 modernize that economy, modernize its manufacturing base in a way that we have not benefited from

00:11:34.020 domestically. And so I think it starts with policymakers. I think they've got to begin to

00:11:37.340 confront that in a pretty basic way. And then it goes on to retailers. I think a company like

00:11:42.160 Walmart has actually been a leader here where they've really taken a stand and said, we are going to

00:11:45.360 have 8% of the stuff that we sell be domestically produced. They've announced, I believe, a $350

00:11:52.140 billion initiative over the next 10 years. It includes textiles, but be a leader there.

00:11:57.360 There are a couple of other big retailers that don't do that. Amazon is one that appears, right?

00:12:03.340 That I think people are making a lot of money in places like that. And I think there has to be some

00:12:07.420 leadership on the retailer standpoint to begin to say, look, we've got to be a force for good here.

00:12:11.340 We have to be contributing to the domestic economy in a way that at least balances out some of our

00:12:18.800 international policies. So I think retailers have to follow. I think once that happens,

00:12:22.900 brands have an incentive at that point to begin to say, look, we're going to make socks domestically,

00:12:27.080 or we're going to make t-shirts domestically, something. It doesn't have to be everything,

00:12:29.940 but it's got to start. And then I think finally consumers, once that begins to happen,

00:12:34.100 I think consumers can have an informed choice about what they're buying. And by the way,

00:12:37.420 just to make the point, some of this stuff is about values. Some of it's about quality and

00:12:42.460 disposability. I think, you know, we, we obsess much more about the quality of stuff we make than

00:12:48.820 some kind of policy thing that we're trying to influence or impact. And I think you sort of

00:12:53.580 referenced this earlier. You know, we, we throw away a ton of stuff now, and we all know this.

00:12:59.780 We now buy things that feel like they just kind of fall apart after a year, after six months,

00:13:04.440 they're basically disposable. And so I think quality is a big part of it too, that when we

00:13:08.620 can stay more local in, in the, in the way that we source things, we become, we take better care

00:13:15.200 of the people in places that make things and we, and we produce better product that doesn't end up

00:13:19.980 in a landfill. And I think that's a, that's another piece of it. If you are tired of purchasing a

00:13:25.740 firearm or ammunition in the last year, if you've tried to do it, I mean, did you get the product?

00:13:32.400 There is an overwhelming demand from responsible citizens, ensuring that they are protecting their

00:13:37.820 second amendment rights. As crazy as things get in, uh, on at, in our own local towns, I mean,

00:13:46.020 a Christmas parade, a Christmas parade, you never know what is coming. There's another way to defend

00:13:53.100 yourself, uh, against guns. And that is ballistic body armor. And that has always seemed like a crazy

00:14:01.460 who has body armor. I do a job where I've had to wear body armor a lot of days without anybody

00:14:10.000 knowing. And it used to be extraordinarily expensive, extraordinarily hot and everything

00:14:15.820 else. I want to talk to you about a company, AR 500 armor. This is a way for you to protect

00:14:21.520 yourself and your family. God forbid you ever need to use it. But when it's happening in our own

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00:14:50.540 You know, we've, we've talked about the government. We talk about the manufacturing and the stores that

00:14:56.460 sell it, but there's another key thing that is bizarre. If you, if you were probably close to the

00:15:03.160 same age, I joke with my kids all the time. I said, you know, you leave those jeans with grandma and

00:15:09.700 she'll, she'll mend them for you because they spend money broken, you know, and, and, and repaired.

00:15:14.240 We buy t-shirts that look like we've owned them forever to places we've never been before. And we

00:15:22.600 are so hungry for authenticity and, but we're just, we're willing to buy, you know, those, the reason

00:15:31.940 why those jeans are cool when your wallet has a little outline in the back is because it shows

00:15:38.200 you've had them forever and you were working hard and it ripped and you repatched it because that's the

00:15:43.140 kind of guy you are. That's right. We accept fake authentic things. Yeah. Well, it's funny. You

00:15:50.280 know, when I started the business, uh, we started the business with a sweatshirt, the one that you're

00:15:54.060 wearing. Yeah. And, and by the way is high, high, high quality. Thank you. But, but we started on the,

00:16:01.100 on the idea that we were going to produce a great sweatshirt. We were going to pour our heart and soul

00:16:04.100 into it. We spent about a year and a half developing it. It's hard to get it made domestically,

00:16:07.740 but there's a funny story that came out of that, that a lot of the people in the supply chain

00:16:11.600 didn't buy the concept in the beginning. They were like, wait, wait, a high quality. I mean,

00:16:16.560 why, why are you, because the entire domestic industry, what we'd say in the textiles,

00:16:20.520 it's all gone to ton and gun. That means really cheap, really fast production stuff that gets

00:16:25.600 kind of just, is going to fall apart after three or four months, just a basic race to the bottom.

00:16:29.360 And we were saying, let's do the opposite of that. Actually, let's go back to the, to the,

00:16:32.240 the, the model of building jeans that the whole world wants that last forever, that, that patina with

00:16:36.760 age, that get better the more that you wear them. Right. And in our supply chain, the response to that

00:16:41.320 was no one's going to do it. And then eventually I found one guy going to page Ashby in South

00:16:45.020 Carolina, in a small town called Gaffney, who partnered with me to say, we're going to figure

00:16:49.100 this out with you. We'll, we'll help you get it done. And what happened? Customers noticed.

00:16:54.400 And I think that's the weird thing is that customers intuitively understand good quality.

00:16:58.960 They get it instantly. And the whole chase now in the textiles industry, particularly is over pennies.

00:17:05.040 I mean, you will have, you will find the major retailers, the major apparel brands will make

00:17:09.140 decisions about moving from, uh, let's call it say, uh, inland China to Bangladesh over five cents

00:17:17.740 in the production. They'll move whole production lines that way. And so it is all in this relentless

00:17:23.240 pursuit of trying to get cheaper and cheaper products. Um, but I believe that consumers are

00:17:28.960 in a different place. They're saying, I hate the fact that I'm throwing stuff away. I hate the fact

00:17:33.160 that I've buy stuff that I can't mend. You're not going to mend a, a t-shirt that you paid six bucks

00:17:38.000 for that is falling apart after 10 uses. So authenticity, I think comes back ultimately

00:17:43.340 to quality and to values. It's like a brand that stands for something that you believe in

00:17:46.960 and produces a product that you enjoy and that you can stand behind. And that's a fully pretty

00:17:50.680 basic script. I think when Levi's ran their ad that said, uh, we want to be the uniform of

00:17:58.220 the revolution. Uh, I grew up wearing Levi's. I always wore five on one. So I love them.

00:18:03.480 Uh, and, uh, but they're not the same, you know, um, I did my homework. They, the denim

00:18:10.880 was made here in America at cone mills. I'm sure you know, cone denim, um, and cone denim

00:18:16.740 was the best, absolutely the best. So I started a little company of just making jeans. This

00:18:23.260 was 15 years ago, almost impossible to keep everything domestic. If you make a baseball

00:18:31.040 hat, God bless you, at least 15 years ago, God bless you trying to get something of quality

00:18:36.380 from America. Um, and it, it was, there is something to, um, keeping the story alive and

00:18:49.200 keeping the people that people at cone, they cared about their product. You know what I

00:18:54.660 mean? Yep. They're now out of business. Um, and we're losing, we're losing way too much.

00:19:02.520 Yeah. Well, not just that. I think that there is a, you know, we have a, we make, we make,

00:19:07.760 uh, denim, uh, we make a, a stretch canvas pant called the roughneck. Those are made in factories

00:19:14.300 that used to produce Levi's and Wrangler products. Um, and I think from our perspective, one of the

00:19:20.240 things that has been really interesting for me, and I've been in the textile world for a long time

00:19:24.520 now and, uh, going into these facilities and sitting down with, uh, uh, businesses that have

00:19:31.440 been multi-generational, have been in the hands of parents and grandparents are now being run by the,

00:19:35.600 the, the, the grandchildren is getting close to the craft that's underneath it. And that,

00:19:41.900 that, uh, that, that too is we're getting close to losing that, this sort of generational ability.

00:19:48.980 I don't know if, if you followed our story to produce a domestic, uh, flannel, a yarn dyed flannel,

00:19:53.740 but it was, well, so, uh, when I started the business, I knew I wanted to make an iconically

00:19:59.780 American product to launch behind. And the things I thought about were a t-shirt, the kind of classic

00:20:04.660 American t-shirt, a sweatshirt, the one you're wearing a blue jean, sort of just like you and I

00:20:09.140 were talking about the same thing for me. I remember my first pair of blue jeans. I remember

00:20:11.740 getting him and thinking it said something about me. Yeah. Something about me. I was,

00:20:15.520 I wore blue jeans. It was a different thing. I remember when I moved from the, I grew up

00:20:19.460 on the West coast. I moved to the East coast and the East coast didn't wear 501s. You know,

00:20:24.860 that was not their gene. And I was like, well, that says something about you.

00:20:28.900 That's right. And it wasn't a brand thing. A hundred percent. It was, it was the difference

00:20:33.640 between the button fly and the zipper fly. That's right. And I remember that moment for me

00:20:37.620 sort of feeling like I was beginning to sort of define myself and kind of come into my own

00:20:41.420 who I was. And the fourth thing was, it was a classic yarn dyed flannel. And you'll remember

00:20:46.620 this and you'll understand intuitively that great flannels, the kind that you took out

00:20:50.680 of your dad's closet and were soft and were 20 years old and they looked better 20 years

00:20:55.780 later than when you bought them.

00:20:56.980 And they weren't thin.

00:20:58.200 Yeah. Just beautiful products. So those are the four. And I was a guy with an idea. And

00:21:04.100 so we ended up doing the sweatshirt because I thought it was substantial enough to make an impact,

00:21:07.640 but not so hard to do that. It was going to kill me trying to make it. But in the back of my mind,

00:21:12.640 it always been this idea of doing a yarn dyed flannel. And about three years ago,

00:21:15.640 we got serious about that idea. And I started to tap into the whole textile industry that is still

00:21:23.320 domestic and it's still robust and healthy and interesting and a tremendous amount of knowledge

00:21:27.460 there still. And little by little, I began to get an assemblage of people that thought they could

00:21:32.860 pull together a yarn dyed flannel, which we launched three years ago. And it was an amazing

00:21:37.840 thing. I mean, we can't keep that product in stock. It is just, it is something that whenever we get

00:21:41.800 in, it sells out immediately. But that had almost, that capability had almost been lost entirely.

00:21:49.000 I'd almost all gone overseas. And it was a similar thing that it, we were almost calling people out

00:21:55.560 of retirement, these gray hairs coming out and saying, I'll show you how to do this. There's,

00:22:00.540 there's this big surprise. There's this huge amount of competitiveness and pride when someone

00:22:05.680 says, let's give this a shot. And so I think that's the other, I don't know, irony or frustration

00:22:11.960 about the apparel world is there is so much capability in textiles and apparel domestically

00:22:18.080 still just waiting to kind of come off the bench and go. All it needs is a little bit of support from

00:22:24.080 DC, a little bit of support from brands and retailers. And that part of the industry.

00:22:28.980 DC. I mean, I don't, again, I don't want to get into politics, but I am a, I'm a guy who believes

00:22:35.520 the less government does the better.

00:22:38.280 Yeah. I think, I think let's get up to a very high level and ask a basic question to frame that

00:22:42.220 question for me anyway, which is, do we believe that having a, a diverse and, uh, and layered

00:22:49.200 manufacturing component to our economy is important or not?

00:22:52.220 So I will tell you, I think a lot of people's minds were changed. I, this America first thing

00:22:59.760 bothers me the way some people frame it, which is we're the best at everything. And we're going to

00:23:06.060 nationalistic nationalistic, but, but when we don't make our own medicine, when we can't make the things

00:23:14.600 that keep us alive as people, that's a problem.

00:23:19.340 Yeah. That's a problem. And I think that you framed it exactly right, which is this gets like

00:23:23.420 everything. It gets just, it gets pantomimed into it. Either it is nationalistic and rah, rah,

00:23:29.320 or it's nothing. And I think there's, I think that the question that people have to wrestle with a

00:23:33.680 little bit is, is it healthy to have an economy where at every level of the economy, let's look at

00:23:37.640 manufacturing as a piece of it. You've got vibrancy from basic level manufacturing to heavy

00:23:42.900 manufacturing, to pharmaceuticals, to everything. Is that, does that make a healthier, more stable

00:23:46.880 economy or not? I am firmly in the camp that it does. I think there's knock on benefits to

00:23:51.760 communities and to people and entry-level jobs and the opportunity for people to work their way up

00:23:56.040 through their professional careers and to stabilize towns all across the country. I think it's,

00:24:00.780 have you ever done any, have you ever read about Cadbury? No, the candy company? Yeah, you should

00:24:06.580 back in the 1800s. I mean, I think they were all socialists and everything else, but their idea

00:24:12.760 was instead of just being a factory that you go to work, let's build a town. And so they actually

00:24:22.460 built the houses, the town, churches, the stores, everything, the schools, the hospitals, and they

00:24:30.060 were way above. And it was a private company just saying, you don't have to live here, but if you

00:24:36.980 work here, this is one of the perks. Yeah. And it was a great little town. Yeah. Yeah. Well,

00:24:42.000 so back to your question, I think there's, what can DC do at a basic level? I think we just sort of

00:24:48.600 state it as plainly as I can. We've got, let's say a yarn producer domestically, right? Great yarn

00:24:54.360 company. They are held to different standards than their international competitors. International

00:25:00.140 competitors are held to much lower environmental standards, much lower human rights, much lower labor

00:25:05.040 standards, safety standards. Is that fair trade or not? So in other words, level one government to

00:25:10.540 level it. Yeah. You either bring them up to their standards or you, every single factory that we

00:25:16.000 work with will stare you in the eyes and say, I'll compete toe to toe with any international provider,

00:25:21.540 as long as we are competing on a level field and we are not today. And that's valid. We will,

00:25:26.520 some of those manufacturers won't be able to hang in there and they'll, they'll fade. Others will be

00:25:30.820 able to compete and outcompete. And so I think that's, we just have to do that at a basic level.

00:25:34.660 So the, the, one of the biggest things that has been the, the crux of this issue, at least in my

00:25:43.120 head, watching from a distance has been the, the compensation here is just so much higher. And I

00:25:52.060 like that, but it's so much higher and I'm not talking about slaves. I'm talking about good wages

00:25:57.580 in other countries, living wages, but they're not. Yeah. But their costs. Yeah. Yeah. So let me just say

00:26:02.580 that back to you. It is not to say that, that, uh, that a country that is on the upswing of their

00:26:08.700 modernization process is going to play, pay a minimum wage, like 11 or $12 an hour. Correct.

00:26:12.940 That's not going to happen. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But, but let's benchmark that to the local

00:26:15.380 economy, have a living wage standard. Sure. That's it. Okay. That's it. But is that you,

00:26:19.280 cause you can't erase that. Yeah. I'm getting the impression that that's not the biggest problem.

00:26:26.140 Well, it's so back to my 11, my 11, five, 11 cents of changing from one country to another.

00:26:31.120 The reality is, is that, is that staying close to your supply chain, and I'll just talk about

00:26:34.820 textiles. It, there are some costs that you incur to do that higher labor rates, for example,

00:26:39.000 but there are also real benefits, time to market transportation, inventory levels that you have

00:26:44.240 to carry in terms of your ability to be responsive to a marketplace. I believe that the, that the,

00:26:49.160 if, if we had a true commitment to domestic textiles, where you could actually modernize those

00:26:55.660 facilities and unlock the opportunity for carrying lower inventory levels with closer supply chains,

00:27:01.620 you mitigate in large degree, the offset, not completely, but in large degree. And so I think

00:27:06.540 that there's just a, there's a whole component about responsiveness and closeness to your customer

00:27:12.260 that unlocks a lot of dollars that are not currently being unlocked. And we can get into that if you

00:27:16.620 want, but they're not currently getting unlocked in the textile world domestically.

00:27:18.900 Yeah. This, what bothers me so much is just the, I don't know, the circus or the play that has been

00:27:28.220 written that we're all in and don't recognize it. I mean, I believe in global warming. I believe it's

00:27:34.040 insane to think that we don't have an effect on the planet. I want to plan it for people to be around.

00:27:39.320 I want to be as clean as we can, but I don't necessarily agree with all of the crazy stuff

00:27:46.040 that is going on. And we, we take our standard of living and dive it down that millions of people

00:27:52.780 will, will suffer from that. The supply chain is a really good example. It's a huge part of it. I

00:28:00.000 mean, I think, you know, that, that point, do we believe in protecting the planet and do we believe

00:28:06.740 in global warming? And if you do, one of the places you would start is looking at how you make

00:28:11.160 things. You'd start there. Um, and you wouldn't allow brands to Instagram about earth day while

00:28:16.860 they were pursuing supply chains that were not helping the planet. Right. And so I think that,

00:28:21.700 that is, that's the play part of it in my mind. Anyway, it's that we are in this dance where we

00:28:26.840 allow people that are getting fantastically wealthy by exploiting lower environmental standards to pick

00:28:32.400 one, uh, and producing the means of production, pursuing the means of production, wherever it takes them.

00:28:36.740 But Instagram, that's something totally different. I mean, you know,

00:28:39.280 So, but is that, so is that the, is that the responsibility of the consumer? I mean,

00:28:43.080 I see people talk about global warming on their private jet or arriving in their private jet,

00:28:48.020 or even just as simple as I'm sitting here with Fiji water.

00:28:51.540 Yeah. Yeah. What? Yeah. Um, I don't think it's the responsibility of consumers. I think it's

00:28:56.700 the responsibility of policymakers first and then brands and retailers second and consumers third.

00:29:00.540 I think that policymakers have to penalize, uh, supply chains that are exploiting values and

00:29:07.480 standards that are inconsistent with our own. I just don't think that we, we can't, we can't

00:29:12.460 justify. I'd like to hear the case, why it is okay to allow our biggest, uh, brands to be producing

00:29:19.120 stuff in a place like Xinjiang, China. Explain that to me. Explain, explain it and reconcile that. If you

00:29:24.320 care about the things that I care about, human rights, uh, the environment, worker safety, explain it,

00:29:30.100 you reconcile those two things to me.

00:29:31.340 But again, I am, I mean, I've been talking about the Uyghurs since before anybody knew what the Uyghurs

00:29:38.780 were. And I believe deeply, I mean, the state department just has come out two times and said, we know

00:29:44.880 genocide is happening. So it doesn't get any more clear. Um, we all know it yet. I still, and I

00:29:51.500 believe just to clarify that, I believe that's the state department that was under the prior

00:29:54.660 administration and this, and this very few policy things is actually translated through the first

00:29:59.900 from that administration to this one. Correct. And the Latin, the one before that, yeah. And yeah,

00:30:04.400 but, but I still have an iPad. Yeah. I still buy an Apple product. So how do you break that?

00:30:12.840 Cause it, that is the consumer. Yeah, no, that's right. And it's, and I think that there is,

00:30:16.800 this is not, I mean, we do this right with, with things like, like look at how we incentivize

00:30:21.480 electric vehicles, for example, right? We have a fairly active role at the federal level,

00:30:25.560 incentivizing the changing of, of consumer behavior for goals that we believe that we

00:30:30.000 share nationally. And so I think that there is, that's the policymaker part in my mind.

00:30:34.500 I think we've got to begin to say, look, we we'll, we'll trade with any country out there

00:30:39.100 that plays by a basic set of values and rules that we as a country have codified into law.

00:30:44.720 I think that's the basic idea is let's just get us to a place where we are making things in

00:30:50.020 countries that share our basic values. That, I mean, this whole thing right now with,

00:30:53.640 uh, paying, I don't know how you say our last name, Shui, the tennis player and the NBA is two

00:30:58.540 contrasts. That's a really good one, right? It's like, I think we believe very much in,

00:31:03.820 in what the WTA is doing. It's like, let's, let's, let's find out what's going on here.

00:31:08.180 And by the way, if it's as nefarious as maybe people think it is, let's have the courage to take

00:31:13.800 a stand on that. And that is something that needs to go through our general policies and our

00:31:18.740 industry is about what do we believe? And it's not enough for, to the great, in my judgment,

00:31:23.520 anyway, the great credit of the WTA to take a stand and say, uh, this woman deserves the rights

00:31:29.280 and the protections of the modern world. And if she's not going to get them, we're not going to

00:31:33.260 participate. I agree. Yeah. So we shouldn't be doing the Olympics in China. Well, I, and I think

00:31:38.180 that just in general, we've got to reconcile what we believe with what we do. Right. Just that simple.

00:31:42.580 Just walk the walk or not. I mean, John Kerry just came out again. I don't want to make this

00:31:47.380 about politics. So anyway, John Kerry just came out and he said, you know, we're, uh, not

00:31:55.380 doing anything about the genocide. How are you reconciling this? And China's not doing anything

00:32:00.940 on global warming. And he said, right, we do recognize that genocide is happening, but we

00:32:06.620 have to prioritize and global warming. We have to get some movement there. So, I mean, I mean,

00:32:13.600 I can't believe genocide is in this conversation, but how do you, I mean, there's, it's, it's,

00:32:21.600 it's everywhere in power structures. And I don't mean just government. I mean, well, any

00:32:29.240 of the big power players. Yeah. I think a couple of things. I mean, I, I, my, my take, obviously

00:32:33.140 for American giant, it is about just doing it, just, just, just providing alternative examples.

00:32:37.880 So I think that's, that's part of it, right? Is that just to have, um, individual, uh, brands

00:32:42.720 and, and, uh, and people trying to do it a different way. But from a policy standpoint,

00:32:48.160 I think that you, you've got to look at a progressive ratchet that just over a multi-year

00:32:54.100 period says we have to begin to rebalance the way that we're thinking about our trading

00:32:57.760 partners. And it doesn't happen overnight. It's not yanking the wheel, but it's generally

00:33:01.580 beginning to say, we've got a set of standards with whom we will do business with. And over

00:33:06.780 time, you've got to comply. And I think that's not that complicated, actually. I think, you

00:33:10.960 know, we figured out a handful of things that are standards that we hold domestic producers

00:33:14.040 to and say, we've got to have a mirror of that with our domestic or international partners.

00:33:18.140 You want the access to the American market. You got to comply. If you don't, it's okay,

00:33:21.920 but you can't participate. And, you know, I think with the Apple example, I think fair enough,

00:33:27.340 but, but Apple's also sitting on a lot of cash and they can invest in a lot in, in alternative

00:33:31.880 means of production that don't necessarily need to be in places that don't necessarily share our,

00:33:36.000 you know, there's lots of places to make those products. Yeah, that's right. And places that

00:33:41.140 maybe are more consistent with our, with our value system and the rest of, in the rest of the world

00:33:45.400 that shares that value system. So I just read a study about 75% of CEOs think that their wokeness

00:33:55.340 positioning from them is effective. And only 35% of Americans even want to hear it. How do you,

00:34:06.700 what's the difference between wokeism positioning and actually doing it? And how does the consumer

00:34:16.200 figure out which is which? Yeah. I mean, I think consumers that are paying attention,

00:34:20.020 I think intuitively understand the brands that they support and what they do, you know,

00:34:25.200 from our perspective at American giant, it's just doing what we believe, you know, we believe in,

00:34:29.460 I think at its very basic level, we believe that, you know, in the United States, you've got the benefit

00:34:33.860 of really strong environmental standards, really strong worker standards, safety standards,

00:34:38.640 great quality, best in the world. And that's, that's worth something. And we want to operate

00:34:43.300 within that. And, you know, I tell this story that when I founded the company, my, my, my oldest

00:34:47.140 daughter had just been born. She's now 10. And, and I, it sounds corny to say it, but I was thinking

00:34:51.700 a lot about the legacy I wanted to leave. And, and I didn't want to leave a legacy of, of trying to

00:34:56.940 produce things wherever, you know, the pursuit of cheap took me. I wanted to do something different

00:35:00.640 than that. And, and I wasn't sure at the time, whether that was going to be a big business or a

00:35:03.960 small business, but it was a business I wanted to build. And it was a business that I was going to be

00:35:07.580 proud of. So I think it comes down to that. It's, it's, you know, I don't even know what

00:35:11.660 wokeness means. I just think people have got to decide whether they believe in their values enough

00:35:15.900 to actually live by them. And that includes the way you make stuff.

00:35:19.900 How scary is that for the average person, a businessman to, to do that, to do that?

00:35:25.820 It, it hasn't been for me. It's been inspiring. I mean, I think that the, the, the, the irony about

00:35:30.300 American giant is we're now we're getting bigger and bigger every year and we stand in really stark

00:35:34.760 contrast to what the narrative is about apparel out there. And, you know, on top of all that,

00:35:39.760 I get the privilege to work with women and men all across the U S that are, that are growing

00:35:44.200 cotton, that are spinning yarn, that are, that are finishing textiles and they're amazing. And

00:35:49.180 you get to be a part of that. I'm leaving in 10 days to go through the Carolinas to do a big

00:35:53.900 factory tour where we, we basically give back a bunch of hoodies to the men and women that make

00:35:57.620 stuff in the Southeast. It's inspiring. It's been great for me. And we're, you know, the, the

00:36:02.020 consumers are responding and it's beginning to put real pressure, I think on the brands that tell you

00:36:06.500 it can't be done. So it's a great feeling, isn't it? It's a great feeling. Yeah. Yeah. And it's a

00:36:11.220 great feeling that I think it's just, you just get to, it's also intuitive once you start to do it

00:36:15.400 because you're around these amazing people that are, that are, that are sharing in your success.

00:36:18.680 So, and you, we haven't, we have a, an opportunity right now where America knows it. Most Americans

00:36:28.380 know because of COVID. Yep. That's right. They know this is not good. Yeah, that's right. And

00:36:33.940 you know, the, the, you know, parts of the government tell us that this is, you know, just temporary.

00:36:40.760 Yeah. You know, I had dinner with, um, the, uh, former, um, the president and CEO, uh, and COO of

00:36:49.440 Toyota motor corporation. He explained the just in time, you know, how that's not something you're

00:36:58.580 going to untangle quickly. Right. Well, I mean, so I think that is so interesting what's happening

00:37:02.840 right now, which is for the first time ever supply chain is something that living rooms,

00:37:07.540 people in their living rooms we're talking about, people understand intuitively that we have built

00:37:10.920 this incredibly complicated supply chain that turns out is very fragile, very subject to massive

00:37:17.920 disruption. When you are, when you are down to, as he says, 12 minutes from arrival to installation,

00:37:24.840 right. Just the algorithms that run that should say, right. Gosh. Yeah. Yeah. And it has all been by

00:37:33.020 and large, and I'm oversimplifying, but it has all been to unlock the cheapest possible means of

00:37:38.540 production, wherever that is, whether it's Bangladesh or China or some other place. And so the instability

00:37:43.860 of that supply chain and warehousing and containers and container ships and all that infrastructure and

00:37:49.220 everything else. And I think when that, when there's a, whether it's the, the Evergrande Suez Canal

00:37:54.600 fiasco or COVID, they expose the fact that, Oh boy, we not only is this very, very fragile,

00:38:00.760 but we've lost real control here. And I think if you let, if you just sort of let your mind wander

00:38:05.920 a little bit and say, you know, just as an example, we don't make penicillin in the U S

00:38:09.240 anymore. Basically, it's basically all made overseas. Is that, and if we do, we make it from

00:38:15.120 the basic chemicals that are made overseas. And so is that something that we ought to be concerned

00:38:19.900 about or not? Should we, should we use this opportunity? I think we should to, to see the

00:38:24.460 fragility of the supply chain and ask some simple questions about how important is it that we've got

00:38:28.560 the ability to make things here still and beyond just pursuing the cheapest, most disposable

00:38:32.800 items out there, is it important? And if it is important, let's start to work towards that outcome

00:38:37.360 as consumers, as brands, as manufacturers, policymakers, anybody on a, on a, a national scale

00:38:43.440 and not asking for names, but do you see anyone in power actually? I'll tell you this. So, so we're based

00:38:51.560 in San Francisco and, and I'll tell you that there are a handful in the apparel world of apparel brands

00:38:57.580 names you'd recognize, um, that are genuinely interested in addressing this question. And I

00:39:03.320 think that inside the walls of, of these brands, there is a real desire to be part of the solution.

00:39:09.420 They're in a tough spot. And so they're looking for ways in my judgment, at least a handful of ones

00:39:14.100 that have come through our supply chain, have seen our, our domestic partners to figure out a way to

00:39:19.100 begin to be a part of the solution. And so I'm actually really encouraged about in, in the apparel

00:39:23.440 world, because I think, you know, we're purists about it, right? Glenn, we've got, we, we buy

00:39:27.780 everything down to our cotton and our fibers domestically. You don't have to be purist. You

00:39:32.500 don't have to, you don't have to be so maniacal about it the way we are. You can just say, I'm

00:39:35.720 going to buy socks domestically. I'm going to, I'm going to produce something that's more automated

00:39:39.360 in textiles, particularly, specifically underwear, towels, hats, socks, they, they can be highly

00:39:45.440 automated. Just movement there to say, I'm going to have 1%, 2% of my production coming

00:39:51.480 domestically. So I think there is, I think there's movement for the first time. And I

00:39:55.620 think it's motivated by money. Ultimately, I don't mean that pejoratively. I think that

00:39:59.100 the supply chain thing is expensive for brands. This has been a horrible situation for most

00:40:03.760 of them. And I think they're seeing the fact that in our case, we're in stock, we don't

00:40:08.120 have supply chain disruptions. And so there's motivated by, there's an opportunity here to be a bit

00:40:12.260 more resilient to have some insurance in place by having a domestic source. So I think it's brought

00:40:17.380 it into the, into the front of their minds. But I think there is a genuine desire to begin to make

00:40:21.600 a change here. And it's an, I hope he sees it because it's a moment where I think we can begin

00:40:25.400 to say, okay, let's begin to address this again. It's got to be throughout the, you know, policymakers

00:40:30.040 all the way down to consumers, but to begin to address it and make a change.

00:40:33.180 There was an article in Bloomberg, I think, recently that said, Americans need to learn to live

00:40:39.520 more like Europeans. And yeah, yeah, yeah, I know. So I think I'll, I'll give you my version.

00:40:47.380 All right. If I can interrupt. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, I grew up in the seventies and eighties. I

00:40:52.800 started off in finance on wall street and I totally subscribed to libertarian economics. It was like

00:41:00.580 unfettered capitalism all the time. And I, as I said earlier, I pursued manufacturing decisions in the

00:41:06.400 businesses that I was running. That was taking me overseas. And over time, you begin to see the

00:41:12.180 implications of those decisions. You begin to see the towns that begin to kind of close down and the

00:41:16.020 jobs that leave and the manufacturers that leave. And, and I think that we have, we made a decision

00:41:21.580 to oversimplify it starting about 40 years ago that said, we're going to have, uh, uh, open and

00:41:28.000 unfettered trade in every instance. It's good for everybody. And the result's going to be flat screen

00:41:32.060 TVs that are going to get better and better and cheaper and cheaper. And all that's true,

00:41:34.780 but there have been costs that have come along with that in terms of quality of life and in

00:41:38.700 terms of communities and in terms of resiliency that I think people didn't really think about

00:41:42.500 very much. And so I don't know what I totally believe anymore. I, I believe in capitalism.

00:41:47.400 I think, I think in the problem though, that we currently live in a world I've never seen before

00:41:53.620 where there is no nuance. You are either all of this or all of that. And that is not doable.

00:42:00.580 That's right. Yeah. And it's also just, it's a, that too is part of the play. It's like,

00:42:04.140 you know, I just wrote in our catalog, you know, we spend so much time as a country looking at all

00:42:09.320 the things that divide us and I don't buy it. I think that, I think that if you travel America,

00:42:14.540 you know, and I just, you know, I spend half of my time in, in factories in places like Texas and

00:42:18.980 South Carolina and North Carolina and half my time in the Bay area. And that contrast really instills

00:42:24.640 a great sense of hope in the country and in the people. It's the people that are, you know,

00:42:29.720 that are trying to divide us to further their own careers that are the problem. And I just,

00:42:34.240 I think that's, you know, we've got to throw that off. We've got to stop. We've got to stop that

00:42:38.340 nonsense because it's bad. And it's a, just, it, it undermines who we are as a people and all the

00:42:43.420 things that bind us together. So, and to your, to your point about Germany, there is some truth to

00:42:48.540 that, right? That there is in some ways, Europe has almost become a more free market than the United States

00:42:53.620 has because it's got a much more varied economic structure. I mean, yeah, the trades and the

00:43:00.300 manufacturers are highly valued in places like Germany, you know, and, and the quality of life

00:43:05.200 comes through. I tell you, there's, I'm a big watch freak and I'm a watch freak because I love the fact

00:43:13.720 that it might take one guy a year to make that watch. You know what I mean? And that that has been

00:43:19.820 passed on to his grandson who's now doing it, you know? Right. I just love that. And if you look

00:43:26.320 for instance, at the old Soviet union, when they went against the entrepreneur, they, the watch

00:43:35.460 factories, they left if they could, or they were killed. Russia had a hard time as a Soviet union

00:43:44.120 doing things because they couldn't keep accurate time for a long time. And you, you, you just, there is

00:43:54.040 something about, um, there is something not just almost mythical or fable like that you look at an

00:44:04.820 entrepreneur and go, that is so cool, but there is something essential that we have. And we support

00:44:12.200 these people who are, Oh yeah. Yeah. That's my point earlier about what's been so inspiring about

00:44:17.640 American giant is that you come with me through our supply chain and you meet these men and women

00:44:21.320 that have been doing this for a generation or two and their knowledge of cotton fiber or of knitting

00:44:26.220 or finishing is totally inspiring. And that there's so much value in that, in the industry that, that

00:44:31.820 is not, that is let go when we abandon it. So I, I mean, it is, there is, there is, uh, it's there

00:44:40.020 waiting to get unlocked. I think we've just gotta, you know, we've got to modernize and invest and

00:44:44.640 believe in and commit to in a way that just, we haven't for the last 40 years, we've just got to

00:44:48.120 change course. And I, I'm not in the camp of saying it's impossible to do. I think it's just

00:44:51.980 takes some, some vision and some commitment. So you may not know the answer to this. It has nothing

00:44:57.540 to do with, well, I guess it does kind of, it's a supply chain thing. I was driving home yesterday,

00:45:02.740 driving home with a friend and, and we're, we're driving and he said, man, these trucks are

00:45:09.900 everywhere. When did we have so many trucks on the road? And I said, two things. One, that's a good

00:45:17.140 thing. Two, I don't think there are more trucks on the road. I think we've just gone for 18 months

00:45:23.660 without any trucks. And now it feels, are there more trucks on the road? I don't know the answer to

00:45:29.540 that. What I have heard is that to your point earlier about unlocking the supply chain challenge

00:45:34.040 that we're in the middle of right now, that one of the challenges is the infrastructure and

00:45:37.680 container ships, trucks, those things take a long time to increase capacity there because those two

00:45:43.240 are sort of tuned around a just in time inventory process. And so what I've heard is that there is an

00:45:48.120 increased capacity. I think you're probably right, which is that part of the supply chain is winding

00:45:52.440 up and trying to hustle to kind of get to address some of the things that are kind of holding

00:45:55.600 everybody back. But I don't know. It's an interesting observation.

00:45:58.040 The only reason why I found it interesting is because it doesn't take very long to forget.

00:46:05.620 Yeah. You know what I mean? It seems foreign to have that many trucks on it. And I think we

00:46:10.960 probably have about the same amount of trucks on the road right now. And that brings me to

00:46:16.380 the thing that I worry most about. John Huntsman Sr. was a good friend of mine. And he was,

00:46:24.820 he's the guy who came up with the styrofoam, you know, McDonald's containers and stuff. He was a

00:46:32.260 petrochemical guy. And at one point when he was trying to make that mold, he was broke. And he just

00:46:39.700 knew that those would be huge. And he had to come up with a way. Sitting in his office one day, and there's

00:46:46.280 a gold record on the wall. And I said, John, I'm trying to piece together. Did your company make

00:46:55.040 the vinyl for albums? What? And he said, no. He said, I was down on money. I had this idea.

00:47:01.100 And he said, so I thought, how can I make a bunch of money quickly? He said, before there was K-Tel

00:47:07.740 records, you'll remember that. He said, I was the first one to come up with a compilation album

00:47:12.580 for Christmas where I just put all these different artists on. And he said, I made a fortune. And I

00:47:18.200 put it into buying the molds. Yeah. And he told me towards the end of his life, he said, I don't

00:47:25.380 think we have to worry yet about China eating our lunch and business. And I said, really? And he said,

00:47:32.900 my friends in China tell me over and over again, we can clean your clock everywhere except for that

00:47:44.200 entrepreneurial. Innovative, optimistic. I can do it. Yeah. Totally. And back to the trucks on the road.

00:47:50.860 Yeah. It doesn't take us long to forget. Yeah. And I'm so concerned about everybody saying you can't

00:47:58.960 do it. Oh, yeah. All of this crap. Come on. It's crap. I mean, I say this to everybody. Come

00:48:03.720 travel the supply chain with me. You get through our supply chain from the gins to the yarners to

00:48:08.900 everybody. You realize really quickly that optimism and entrepreneurial spirit is alive and well.

00:48:12.840 I think the risk is that you stifle that enough so that those businesses move overseas. Those towns

00:48:19.460 kind of wither on the vine. There isn't vitality there anymore. And there's an entrepreneur in waiting

00:48:24.500 in every small town across the U.S. They just need the right infrastructure, the right school system,

00:48:29.800 the right opportunity to go unlock it. And so what I worry about is that I think that if we buy into

00:48:34.520 this narrative that we don't need to make things in this country anymore and we don't need to invest

00:48:38.660 there, I think that has much broader implications beyond just where stuff is coming from. It's got

00:48:43.180 implications in towns and communities and that entrepreneurial optimistic drive that I think is so

00:48:47.040 inherent in this country. Oh, yeah. So I don't buy it. It's there. But I do think we have to start

00:48:52.280 paying attention to it and start to address it. Because if we let it go for another 10, 15 years,

00:48:57.620 I do get worried about it. I think that you begin to take away that vitality and that entrepreneurial

00:49:01.400 spirit. That is America. That is America. That opportunity and that ability to do something and

00:49:08.340 have an idea and pursue it with vitality. And I worry that the more that we deaden all the towns and

00:49:16.440 communities all across the country, the more worried I get about that. So I think that's something that we

00:49:20.440 do need to begin to confront. Do you think COVID... I mean, look, at the beginning, I think everybody

00:49:26.140 did their best. Everybody was just like, we don't know what it's... It was scary. We have no idea.

00:49:31.740 They're welding people in their homes in China. Now it's a different story. But we put so many people

00:49:40.260 out of business. And I thought, you know, if you're somebody who was born in 2000, you were eight,

00:49:45.640 and you watched your parents struggle because of the banking crisis. Then they maybe built it back

00:49:52.440 and then they were put out of business because of this. You can very easily see a 20, 25 year old

00:49:58.900 going, this system doesn't work. Yeah, right. That's right. Well, that's that. And that's part

00:50:02.500 of the problem too, right? Is that loss of faith. Right. And I, but I think, you know, I'll just give

00:50:06.600 you a contrast to that. So we, if you can remember, if you can rewind back to March when,

00:50:11.760 when a year, year and a half ago. Time does it. Yeah. Time is weird now, isn't it? When the

00:50:16.660 pandemic hit, we got a call from our, a part of our supply chains, an important yarn supplier in the

00:50:24.400 U.S. who had gotten a call from the White House saying, we need masks. We got to get masks into New

00:50:29.120 York City. Hard to remember this, but there was a period there in March and April where frontline

00:50:32.980 workers, ambulance drivers, nurses, doctors couldn't get masks in New York City. They're

00:50:39.600 getting overwhelmed. And call went out and it was, we got the call, six other producers in the, in the,

00:50:47.060 in the U.S. got the call. Haynes, Fruit of the Loom, San Mar, a bunch of others. And Glenn, in,

00:50:54.680 in, I don't know, 10 days, we had come together. We converted our facility in Middlesex, North

00:51:01.440 Carolina to making masks. And I think it was, it took us 10 days to do that. And we were producing

00:51:08.160 collectively millions of masks within two and a half weeks. And we don't make masks. We make

00:51:14.320 t-shirts and sweatshirts. But that happened through this remarkable, innovative, collaborative effort

00:51:22.500 that went across an entire industry, many of whom were competitors. And it, I have to tell you, it

00:51:27.680 was one of the more inspiring, revitalizing things I've been through in my career. And, and just seeing

00:51:33.600 the, from a big surprise from the White House down to first year employees in the factory floor,

00:51:40.940 doing everything that was required to get masks made and moving. And so I think that that optimistic

00:51:48.140 entrepreneurial spirit is just, oh, and it's waiting to get unlocked. It's just sitting

00:51:53.620 there. It is just sitting there. And our economic problems are so unleash the American. Yeah. And

00:51:59.300 it's also, it's to your point, it's the people saying no. And in my judgment, that starts in DC.

00:52:04.060 It's that you have a bunch of careerists there that are not interested in my judgment of really

00:52:09.900 thinking about how do we find the things that bring us together and invest in the things that are

00:52:14.920 going to make the country healthier with better educational systems and better opportunity and

00:52:19.700 level playing fields for people. They're more interested in getting us to separate.

00:52:23.940 So I, you know, it's interesting that you bring that up about the masks, because I think there's

00:52:27.240 two points on that. The two, two other side stories to that, that tell you everything. First,

00:52:34.960 the fact that they said masks aren't good, so you shouldn't wear them instead of saying, look,

00:52:44.620 we have a shortage of masks and we want to get to a place where everybody, but we need them here and

00:52:49.900 trust that the American people, because I did, I took the masks that I had and I brought them to

00:52:55.080 the local hospital. And I know tons of people who did that. Trust the people. Then the next thing was

00:53:03.160 everybody was screaming at the president to invoke an executive order to force these companies to do

00:53:11.320 it. I was talking to a good friend of mine. He wrote a book called American Forge. And it's the story

00:53:18.740 about how America was literally training with broomsticks in 1938 because we didn't have guns. Okay. Yeah.

00:53:28.240 To 1942, we're starting to overwhelm Germany with planes and industrial might, okay. And it happened

00:53:39.700 because companies weren't forced to, they just decided I want to be a part of it. Yeah. I mean,

00:53:45.200 that's sort of a, it is a, it is a, it is a, an appropriate analogy to the mask. I don't mean

00:53:49.200 any way to suggest that we were similar to that, that effort, but, but it was a, it was a remarkable

00:53:54.700 thing to watch. And in a very short period of time, people from big companies like Hanes doing

00:54:00.380 everything in their power to help our sewing floor get stood up and producing. And it happened at

00:54:05.260 lightning speed. And so I just think that's, you know, that is, that is, that's the country,

00:54:09.960 right? That's the country in the coasts, in the middle. And, and, and I mean, strip it all down.

00:54:13.840 We all want to raise good kids, build a good life for ourselves, do good along the way. And I just

00:54:20.000 think that we've got to figure out a way to unlock that a little bit and believe it and trust it a little

00:54:23.240 bit. So he, he said, this author said to me, and I'd like to hear your opinion. He said, Glenn,

00:54:30.460 I was asked by the Pentagon, this is five years ago, I was asked by the Pentagon to come in and talk

00:54:36.560 about that time period. And they asked me, do you think that spirit still exists? He said, I think it

00:54:47.040 does, except we have companies like Google and Facebook or Microsoft that are not, they, they,

00:54:59.220 they are looking at their own interests and they, they kind of distance themselves from the United

00:55:05.600 States, you know? And he said, I'm not sure if that would take hold the same way. I'm not sure about

00:55:14.840 those companies, but I am sure about pretty sure about the rest. Do you agree with that or not?

00:55:20.520 I think, uh, yes. I, let me tell you what I think. I think that, that the, the, the challenge for

00:55:25.900 these big public companies that are making lots and lots of money is they are incented to look at

00:55:29.500 quarterly financial reports and to drive bottom line performance. And they've allowed themselves,

00:55:34.060 and we maybe can be critical of that, to not engage fully in anything much beyond that,

00:55:38.700 right? That I'm just going to look at, at, at, at becoming, you know, more and more profitable.

00:55:42.180 And so I do think that there's a lot of decisions that are being made by the big companies, maybe even

00:55:46.300 particularly the big tech companies that are not always in the best interests of, of the broader

00:55:50.260 country. Well, I would, I would put the NBA and, and everybody else into that category or you are

00:55:57.120 offending your national home and, and you, and you're taking a side against that and you won't,

00:56:07.020 you won't say you speak out against China cause that's a bigger market. So let's, let's may spin

00:56:12.160 the politics a little bit, you know, president Obama got a lot of heat for saying, I even forget

00:56:17.100 the context, but saying you didn't build that, right. That you, and I, he, he got knocked around

00:56:21.480 a lot on that. I choose to take that in the best way, which meant you had the benefit of, of coming up

00:56:27.940 and starting a business in the con in the construction of the United States that provides all of these

00:56:32.000 things, including values, including, including worker safety and environmental protections. And I

00:56:36.580 think that he's right in that regard, that, that you have the great privilege to start a business

00:56:42.560 in this country. And maybe if you're lucky to get wealthy doing it, but you've got to honor, I believe

00:56:48.500 that infrastructure somewhat by at least, and I think this gets back to your point, but the NBA,

00:56:52.660 the NBA versus maybe the WTA that, that part of that is you are the, uh, in some degree, the steward of

00:57:00.460 those values. And it is not okay. In my judgment to get very, very wealthy by ignoring those values.

00:57:08.380 And, and I think that's, uh, that's where, um, and so, so I think that's, I think that's, that's the

00:57:15.640 difference in my judgment. I do think that the, the rest of us are sitting here, um, very much wanting

00:57:23.080 to, uh, be together and to, and to pursue that entrepreneurial spirit. I don't, I think that I don't, I'm not

00:57:29.540 negative about that. I disagree with your, with your, with your friend in that regard. I think it's still

00:57:33.540 very much there. So I, I, um, uh, it's an interesting thing. I was talking to my daughter. Um, I'm a big,

00:57:41.260 how old is she? Uh, she's 30. Yeah. Okay. And, uh, she said, um, we, we share a lot in common in music and, um,

00:57:49.620 we're both enamored with, um, Billy Eilish and her brother, Phineas. The parents are amazing. Yeah.

00:57:58.160 They don't agree with anything politically, but I would love to sit down to the, with them

00:58:03.340 because they produce two amazing children. Yeah. And, um, and so Phineas just came out with his

00:58:09.260 own album and I found myself, it's very political issue. And I found myself listening to it and I'm

00:58:15.300 like, I know his politics, but these lyrics speak to me. And I said, I called her up and I said,

00:58:23.660 or I texted her and I said, what, how do you, what do you, how do you take these lyrics? And she said,

00:58:30.280 dad, I think he's just recognizing his privilege. And, uh, I text back, what the F does that even

00:58:39.920 mean? Recognizing privilege. And we talked about it and, um, I don't think there's a different,

00:58:48.200 we separate ourselves, but I'm not recognizing my privilege to the mob, but I, I feel a responsibility

00:58:57.760 of looking to my God and looking to history and recognizing I won the lottery by being born here.

00:59:07.820 I won the lottery. And so when I make a mistake, I will admit it and learn from it. I want to include

00:59:15.700 everybody I possibly can, but I recognize my privilege to my God and through my actions.

00:59:23.360 Yeah. And there's another part of that too, which is just because, I mean, you and I,

00:59:27.700 I'm sure disagree on a bunch of things. That doesn't mean we can't have a lot of things that

00:59:33.260 we agree on and find commonality. We have good discussions about stuff. Of course,

00:59:36.640 way more in common, way more in common than our politics. And I think that we've lived,

00:59:41.020 we're in a time now where that piece is broken. And I think that, I think that's where at least

00:59:46.100 some of the tech companies are playing are not a force for good. I think that that's, um, I think

00:59:50.940 that it's allowing us to distill down our differences as if it is everything. And if we disagree on

00:59:55.540 something, we got to disagree on it all. And I just think that's terrible. I'm glad, I'm glad to hear

01:00:00.820 your daughter's texting you that. She's keeping you on your toes.

01:00:03.460 Yeah. Oh yeah. That's good. And I like that. I mean, I've always hired people that I don't

01:00:08.420 want to be the smartest guy in the room. And I don't also want to have a bunch of people agree

01:00:12.400 with me. That's right. You know, that's great. Um, let's talk about you personally for a bit.

01:00:16.820 Um, you know, Tony Robbins. I it's well, I'll tell you a funny story about that. I don't,

01:00:22.420 I, but I've, I have become an admirer of his cause I watched documentary. I'm reading very

01:00:25.480 little about him and found myself. I'd sort of just diverge for two seconds. Uh, Tony Robbins

01:00:32.940 and Stephen Covey's book, seven habits have been things that have been on my mind a lot during the

01:00:37.540 pandemic because I've been thinking a lot about how amazing the team is an American giant and how much

01:00:42.100 potential has been unlocked over the last year and a half. And I had pantomimed both of those people

01:00:46.760 as, you know, self-help gurus that I never took seriously. And my opinion about both of them has

01:00:51.440 changed a ton in the last 18 months. So, um, so Stephen Covey, I had personal experience with him

01:00:58.040 for a long time and knew he was solid, but Tony Robbins, I was the same way. It's kind of like,

01:01:04.040 you know, some of those preachers like, really? Um, and he's so over the top. Um, but, uh, uh,

01:01:12.680 we become friends and talking to him. I mean, he has gone through amazing illnesses right now,

01:01:20.620 right now. No, I didn't know that. Oh yeah. Um, and he is mind over matter. And when I saw that you

01:01:27.400 get up every day and take a cold shower, he goes in a plunge pool. I saw that in the documentary and,

01:01:32.940 and he, that's real by the way, real. Oh, I know. No, no, but it's real. The cold thing is real.

01:01:37.280 Yeah. I mean, I really, I want, and the other thing is that there's a, you, you get a sick

01:01:42.680 dedication to it. Cause at a certain point right now, the water's getting really cold right now.

01:01:46.400 It's particularly tough. So I want to ask you about that because he does it. He said, I tell my

01:01:52.700 body, my mind tells my body, I don't care. I'm in charge of you. That's exactly right. Is that

01:01:59.640 what you do it? Well, yeah. So there's that part of it, which is, I say this a lot, which is it

01:02:03.840 happens every single morning for me and it's dark out when I get up and, and I say to myself, I

01:02:08.120 really don't want to do that. It doesn't feel good getting a freezing cold shower, but I said,

01:02:12.020 do exactly. You don't get it. You don't have a say in this. That's what we're doing. But the more

01:02:16.300 important thing to me is that I start my day with doing something hard. And so everything from that

01:02:21.380 point forward feels like I can tackle whatever the day has got in front of me. It's great. You got to try

01:02:25.600 it. Just try it. Just try it. Do this. Do I look like a disciplined man? Of course you do. You

01:02:33.460 need, you got to give yourself 30 days. Just say for 30 days, I'm going to do it. You can do anything

01:02:37.700 for 30 days, do it for 30 days. And I think by the end of that, I mean, there's a reason why,

01:02:41.920 by most ancient traditions have versions of hot and cold plunges. Right. Right. I really do think,

01:02:47.800 I mean, so what have you gotten out of it? What, what does it, I think the most, how long have you done

01:02:51.660 it? Oh boy. Years. Why did you start doing it? I started because I, I'm super interested in,

01:02:58.980 this is not interesting, but I, but I'm super interested in sleep and, and energy levels.

01:03:03.440 Yeah. I'm really interested in all those things and kind of how, and how you unlock

01:03:06.540 your maximum effectiveness. And I read some articles about, um, uh, the impact on, uh, cold plunges

01:03:16.080 or cold showers on, uh, um, mood and sleep and energy levels. And so I just tried it. Um,

01:03:24.840 and I had spent some time in Japan and some of my previous careers and, and been in impossibly

01:03:31.180 cold plunges and impossibly hot plunges there and seeing these vital men and women that were doing

01:03:37.020 it. And so I got inspired to try it. Have you, have you seen the, what is it? Cryo freeze?

01:03:41.780 I've seen them. I've never done that. I've done that once. Uh, that seems a little

01:03:45.800 miserable to me, but I've never done it. See the shower seems more miserable to me.

01:03:49.920 It does. You got to try it. But so, so let me just tell you, let me give you the pitch

01:03:53.440 on it for two seconds. So, so, so the reason why I think it's interesting is that a, it does

01:03:57.740 get this, you get this mindset for me anyway, that feels like I've done something tough to

01:04:01.580 start my day. And so now I can kind of tackle anything. So that's a nice kind of psychological

01:04:05.000 boost, but there's also an endorphin rush that happens when I kind of come out of that

01:04:09.100 shower. I just feel I can have had the worst night's sleep and I feel up.

01:04:15.800 I mean, I feel honestly like my mood, seeing my kids get up in the morning. I'm just can't

01:04:20.840 wait to see them. It just starts my day. Well, wow. I really think it's kind of like the near

01:04:25.920 death experience. And I'll tell you the way I do it, which is not the way everyone does

01:04:31.420 it. It's not the way Tony Robbins does it. I start my shower hot and then I, you know,

01:04:35.880 I'll be in there for a few minutes hot and then I go dead cold for the last like five minutes.

01:04:40.420 And it's only bad for the first 90 seconds. You can do that. Cause you go numb. You basically

01:04:47.400 do. And after 90 seconds, you get out and it's great. Right. But one other thing I'll

01:04:52.260 tell you, Jimmy Carter, I have heard who is at 97 and fighting off brain cancer and everything

01:04:58.100 else. I have heard he is taking cold showers basically his whole life. And I watched him

01:05:02.400 speak once and whatever you may think about his politics, that guy is sharp as a tack at 96, 97.

01:05:09.200 And I saw that and I said, okay, he's doing something right. Let me figure out what he's

01:05:12.700 doing. Well, I will tell you that, you know, I saw Tony, I was in Los Angeles and I saw him

01:05:16.700 backstage. I went to one of his things and I was with him backstage and he was on a trampoline.

01:05:23.960 Yeah. I've seen that. Okay. And he's just jumping, jumping, jumping. And I know what he was

01:05:29.960 going through. He's he ate fish every day and I think he got too much mercury. Yeah. And he had

01:05:38.380 toxic levels that he should have been dead and it takes a long time to get that back in. And he had

01:05:46.220 been suffering from it for about a year and a half and could barely function. And, um, and I was talking

01:05:55.760 to him backstage and I'm like, how are you doing this on stage for three solid days? And he said,

01:06:02.900 yeah, starts with the plunge. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, mind, body, spirit, right? I think it's just sort

01:06:07.960 of, you get those three things kind of functioning correctly. You can do a lot. So I'm a real believer

01:06:12.320 in that. You called yourself recently a belligerent optimist. What does that mean?

01:06:18.140 I just think that, um, our best days are in front of us and I can't stand naysayers. I can't stand,

01:06:24.040 I was told by so many people about American giant, you can't do it. And, uh, I just don't

01:06:29.080 listen to that stuff. I think, uh, you know, I, I, when I was a young kid, I lost a lot of weight

01:06:34.420 and it taught me that you can overcome things and you can, uh, um, I think that was an important

01:06:40.180 lesson for me to learn that, you know, hurdles can seem big, but you just got to get after them

01:06:44.040 and get over them. I think, I think, you know, it just is, uh, it's the way to live your life.

01:06:48.740 Yeah. Uh, somebody called me once a, uh, optimistic catastrophist because I, I see catastrophe like

01:07:00.240 you don't want to be with me on the Titanic from the time we leave to the iceberg. Cause I'm like,

01:07:10.540 have you counted the light folks? Something goes wrong. But the minute we hit, I'm like,

01:07:15.880 we're going to be fine. We're going to make it. Come on. Let's all pull together. You know,

01:07:19.100 that's great. It's this weird thing that I have. Uh, and there is, there is a great need

01:07:27.380 for people like you that when we hit the iceberg, which I think we've already started to hit the

01:07:33.500 iceberg that they say, let's go, let's go. Cause I really believe our problems come

01:07:42.660 from us being so blessed. You know, we are not, we lack gratitude, humility. Um, and we have forgotten

01:07:56.180 who we are. And, you know, we saw it in, um, uh, what is it? It was Shaga. Uh, no, how do you say

01:08:03.480 the name in Waukesha? Um, we saw that in Waukesha. It could have gone violent. It didn't. Everybody came

01:08:12.000 together and that's who we are. That's when we're at our best. Yep. I agree. You are a delight.

01:08:19.220 Thanks Glenn. I'm thrilled to have met you and to still not know how you voted.

01:08:25.760 I'm glad you had me on Glenn. Thanks. It was a pleasure. Thank you. God bless.

01:08:34.000 Just a reminder, I'd love you to rate and subscribe to the podcast and pass this on to a friend so it

01:08:40.480 can be discovered by other people.

01:08:41.900 Bye-bye.

01:08:42.240 Para.

01:09:02.320 Bye-bye.

01:09:04.640 Bye-bye.

01:09:05.760 Bye-bye.

01:09:06.120 Bye-bye.

01:09:06.820 Bye-bye.

01:09:07.480 Bye-bye.

01:09:07.780 Bye-bye.

01:09:08.180 Bye-bye.

01:09:08.440 Bye-bye.

01:09:08.860 Bye-bye.

01:09:09.040 Bye-bye.

The Glenn Beck Program - December 04, 2021

Ep 127 ｜ Supply Chain Crisis？ Not for This Company ｜ Bayard Winthrop ｜ The Glenn Beck Podcast

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