Valuetainment - Millionaire Took Pay Cut To Raise Minimum Wage To $70,000 - Did It Work？

00:00:00.000 I was making a million dollars a year.

00:00:01.900 We had about a third of the employees at the company

00:00:04.540 making about $35,000 per year.

00:00:07.400 In order to raise that third to 70,000,

00:00:10.960 I had to lower my pay to 70,000.

00:00:14.120 That story goes viral.

00:00:15.880 500 million interactions on social media

00:00:19.160 with NBC's video becoming the most shared

00:00:21.800 in networks history.

00:00:23.320 The new kind of people that style themselves

00:00:25.880 as capitalists, they don't believe in competition.

00:00:28.360 They believe in using their money

00:00:30.600 and their superior positions of power

00:00:33.340 to stamp out competition.

00:00:35.900 Either you're a zero, which means a non-billionaire.

00:00:39.940 You don't matter.

00:00:41.200 Or you're a one, which means you're a billionaire.

00:00:43.720 You do matter.

00:00:44.880 That's not what I took from the book

00:00:46.220 when he said zero to one.

00:00:47.540 That's an exact quote.

00:00:48.740 So you're reading skills.

00:00:50.000 I know that.

00:00:50.920 How do your employees trust you 100%?

00:00:53.840 What we do is helping small businesses.

00:00:56.520 Even if I do turn out to, you know, go to the dark side,

00:00:59.520 as you say someday, like we'll all be protected.

00:01:02.840 I think taxation is forced.

00:01:04.700 I don't think it's choice.

00:01:06.060 We have been pushing millions of people into poverty

00:01:10.260 with our system as set up to reward

00:01:13.220 and not tax the people at the very top

00:01:15.840 and instead tax the people at the bottom.

00:01:22.560 My guest today did something a couple of years ago

00:01:25.260 that sends shockwaves through the debate

00:01:27.780 for capitalism, socialism, minimum wage.

00:01:31.440 Are we paying too much to people?

00:01:33.100 Are we paying too little?

00:01:34.460 Here's what he did.

00:01:35.380 You may remember this story.

00:01:36.700 I guarantee you high odds are against you

00:01:40.200 not having seen his story.

00:01:42.280 Dan Price is an entrepreneur running a successful business.

00:01:46.040 He was making at the time $1.1 million a year income.

00:01:48.860 One of his employees that was making $35,000 a year income

00:01:51.520 gets pissed off at him, says,

00:01:53.040 you are making too much money.

00:01:54.440 You're not, it's not fair.

00:01:56.040 Look what's going on.

00:01:56.840 I can't even have a regular life.

00:01:58.520 He can't sleep for three days.

00:01:59.980 Comes back, says, you know what?

00:02:02.200 I'm going to pay everybody $70,000, including myself.

00:02:05.200 That story goes viral into a tsunami,

00:02:08.960 500 million interactions on social media with NBC's video

00:02:13.260 becoming the most shared in network's history.

00:02:16.820 Aside from that, most read New York Times article of the week,

00:02:20.460 front page of Reddit for two days,

00:02:21.940 front page of MSNBC, ABC, Mashable,

00:02:26.060 trending article on Upworthy, BuzzFeed,

00:02:28.840 Twitter for two days, Facebook.

00:02:30.660 I can go on and on.

00:02:31.500 And he eventually got an offer to go have his own reality TV show

00:02:36.680 with Mark Burnett, who's the same guy that did Apprentice

00:02:39.040 with President Trump, to be the new Donald Trump

00:02:41.180 on a show called Billion Dollar Startup.

00:02:44.320 With that being said, my guest today, Dan Price.

00:02:46.700 Dan, thank you so much for being a guest on Valuetainment.

00:02:49.620 Thanks for having me.

00:02:50.860 So I got to tell you, I actually love the fact that you did this.

00:02:56.040 And let me explain to you why from the selfish reason.

00:02:58.320 I'll tell you why from the selfish reason.

00:02:59.880 I'm all about case studies.

00:03:02.080 You know, when you go to business school,

00:03:04.660 I didn't go to business school,

00:03:05.560 but I took a three-week something that Harvard was doing.

00:03:08.120 And I went there, we read through 100 different case studies.

00:03:11.240 And it was great seeing here's what Sephora did. 0.74

00:03:13.340 Here's what, you know, Ulta did.

00:03:14.900 Here's what these guys, here's what that guy did.

00:03:16.940 And it takes typically a few months,

00:03:19.960 if not a few years to find out if that, you know,

00:03:22.800 if that case study worked or not.

00:03:24.780 And for you, you kind of taught us, you know,

00:03:27.120 we're kind of watching to see how you did, whether it's the politicians,

00:03:30.120 the business folks, free enterprise or public.

00:03:32.860 Now that this has gone by a few years,

00:03:35.220 and there's both a lot of good and a lot of controversy behind it,

00:03:38.800 and it's all public, people can read about it.

00:03:40.700 How do you feel about that decision that you made a few years ago?

00:03:43.360 Yeah, I feel good about it from our standpoint at Gravity Payments.

00:03:49.420 I feel like it's made our company a lot stronger.

00:03:52.580 I'm grateful for it personally.

00:03:54.020 It's made my life better as well.

00:03:56.120 But I would say on our company, it's just made us stronger.

00:04:00.620 And I'll give you some proof points on that.

00:04:03.380 So we had prior to the $70,000 living wage announcement,

00:04:07.740 we had between zero and two babies born per year amongst the entire team.

00:04:12.160 And we've had over 60 in less than six years since the announcement.

00:04:17.020 So we had a 10x baby boom.

00:04:19.100 We also had a 10x boom in terms of people buying homes for the first time.

00:04:24.020 And I feel like that's so critical in some situations,

00:04:27.000 especially in a place like Seattle,

00:04:28.660 where the housing market just goes up and up and up to get that,

00:04:32.020 you know, get that locked in in terms of having a home that you can control.

00:04:35.900 So your rent's not going to be going up endlessly.

00:04:38.460 That was huge for us.

00:04:39.740 We also had 70% of the people at the company

00:04:42.780 announced that they had paid down debt because a lot of people felt like,

00:04:46.780 oh, with higher incomes, you can get more debt

00:04:48.720 and you can get yourself in a way more trapped.

00:04:51.280 And our team did exactly the opposite of that.

00:04:53.940 And lastly, we between doubled and tripled our savings rate

00:04:58.360 that people were using with the company 401k program.

00:05:01.520 So people are saving a lot more for retirement.

00:05:04.280 So I feel like it's been, it's been really successful for us

00:05:08.180 and it's been great to be a part of.

00:05:10.000 And do you mind unpacking?

00:05:11.280 I mean, I just gave like a brief intro.

00:05:13.840 So the audience kind of is probably saying, oh, I remember that story.

00:05:16.820 Maybe I didn't give all the details of the numbers.

00:05:19.720 You know, walk us through how the math works.

00:05:22.320 Walk us through when the decision was made.

00:05:24.940 Just kind of give us the details of it if you don't mind.

00:05:27.860 Yeah, yeah.

00:05:28.280 Great point.

00:05:28.860 Great point.

00:05:29.260 So we had about a third of the employees at the company

00:05:33.840 making about $35,000 per year.

00:05:38.000 And in order to raise that third to $70,000,

00:05:43.300 plus a few others that were working at the company

00:05:46.320 that were also under $70,000 per year,

00:05:49.380 it was going to cost us about $2 million,

00:05:53.020 which was 100% of our profitability at that time.

00:05:56.880 And, you know, it was one of these things

00:06:01.120 where it just seemed like a moral imperative,

00:06:05.900 especially because at that time,

00:06:07.740 I was making a million dollars a year.

00:06:09.680 So I took a million dollar pay cut.

00:06:11.540 Can I stop you right there?

00:06:11.640 Can I stop you just for a minute?

00:06:12.740 I'm curious.

00:06:13.380 So a third of your employees were making $35,000,

00:06:17.940 $35,000 per year.

00:06:19.540 Did you say another third was making less

00:06:21.600 or they were making, what was the right kind of guess?

00:06:24.380 They were making, so I don't know if it was quite a third,

00:06:27.640 but there was probably,

00:06:28.820 there was a third that was making more than $70,000 a year

00:06:31.580 and maybe like close to a third in the middle.

00:06:33.580 I got it.

00:06:34.220 So a third was making $35,000,

00:06:36.140 a third was making above $70,000.

00:06:39.140 What percentage was making, say,

00:06:41.320 above $100,000 or above $200,000 at the time?

00:06:43.720 Oh, you know, just a handful of us.

00:06:47.700 Okay, got it.

00:06:48.520 You know what I mean?

00:06:49.340 Got it.

00:06:49.580 You know, definitely there were a handful,

00:06:53.560 maybe a dozen at the most, but not more than that.

00:06:56.640 Okay, so that was,

00:06:57.340 let me bring you back to where it was

00:06:58.460 before I interrupted you

00:06:59.300 and let's continue,

00:06:59.800 because I want the audience to hear the whole part of it.

00:07:01.340 You said at the time,

00:07:02.360 in order for us to bring the third to,

00:07:03.840 from $35,000 to $70,000,

00:07:05.920 we would have to use our $2 million of profits that we had.

00:07:08.500 It would have been 100% of it

00:07:09.520 and you were making $1.1 million.

00:07:11.440 Continue from there before I interrupted you.

00:07:13.040 Please go ahead.

00:07:14.100 Yeah, yeah.

00:07:14.740 Okay, sounds good.

00:07:16.120 So yeah, we had the third making $35,000 a year

00:07:20.480 that they were really due to get their pay doubled.

00:07:23.840 And at the time we had about $2 million in profits,

00:07:27.480 plus I was making $1 million per year.

00:07:30.460 So it was going to cost us over $2 million a year

00:07:33.960 to make the change.

00:07:34.900 So I had to lower my pay to $70,000

00:07:38.380 so we'd have that savings,

00:07:39.980 plus put most of the company's profits at risk

00:07:43.900 to basically pay for the change.

00:07:46.020 But what that meant was

00:07:47.300 a third of the people working at the company

00:07:49.940 were not only getting their pay doubled,

00:07:52.220 but they were getting paid an amount

00:07:53.940 that was in line with what scientific studies,

00:07:57.820 including by Princeton,

00:08:00.260 a 2010 Princeton study said,

00:08:02.140 if you make less than this amount,

00:08:04.500 it's really harming your well-being.

00:08:07.020 And so it was important for us as a company

00:08:09.860 to take our responsibility seriously

00:08:11.860 to not have a pay policy

00:08:13.380 to harm people's well-being.

00:08:15.600 And so that's why it was,

00:08:17.000 I call it a moral imperative,

00:08:18.720 meaning it was not something

00:08:20.640 that I felt like we should do.

00:08:22.240 It was something I felt like we absolutely had to do,

00:08:24.980 had to do, had to do, had to do.

00:08:27.020 And so we came out, we made the announcement,

00:08:29.280 and as you said,

00:08:30.320 there was a lot of initial positive attention,

00:08:32.440 but there was also quite a bit of controversy.

00:08:36.040 And there were seven or eight big,

00:08:38.480 you know, in our world,

00:08:39.700 felt big storylines about the controversy about it.

00:08:42.660 But the biggest one by far

00:08:44.440 was that conservative talk radio host,

00:08:47.600 Rush Limbaugh, had come out

00:08:49.200 and said that we were going to fail.

00:08:51.600 And he said we would be a case study

00:08:53.380 in MBA programs

00:08:55.000 about how socialism does not work

00:08:58.240 because the entire company

00:08:59.600 was going to go out of business

00:09:00.740 and he was predicting this.

00:09:02.700 And then when Rush Limbaugh

00:09:04.620 set out that big firestorm,

00:09:07.140 the New York Times did a story

00:09:08.860 largely on the fact that Rush Limbaugh

00:09:11.500 was trying to tank us

00:09:13.660 and centered around all of the challenges

00:09:17.140 that we were facing

00:09:18.260 with such a huge backlash.

00:09:20.160 In fact, the headline in the New York Times

00:09:22.100 that was, as you said,

00:09:24.480 the top red story of the week

00:09:26.340 was about a backlash.

00:09:30.000 The whole headline was about the backlash.

00:09:31.980 And then Rush Limbaugh came out with that

00:09:34.400 and put on his website

00:09:36.000 what Rush was right.

00:09:38.260 And he said that we were going out of business.

00:09:40.360 And he had my picture,

00:09:41.720 all of his website saying

00:09:42.920 we were going under.

00:09:45.500 And so fortunately, though,

00:09:48.900 it did become a case study at Harvard

00:09:51.300 that they are teaching right now.

00:09:53.620 In fact, I heard from a Harvard professor,

00:09:56.360 an endowed Harvard professor

00:09:57.620 just in the last week

00:09:58.880 that he's still teaching the case study.

00:10:01.940 And it's been successful.

00:10:03.980 It's a case study showing

00:10:05.200 how this sort of thing works.

00:10:07.280 And when you pay people more,

00:10:09.380 your company is going to be more successful.

00:10:11.520 I'd love to see that case study,

00:10:13.580 but I think it's also a little too early

00:10:15.420 to get all of it.

00:10:16.900 I think it'll take a decade or two to get it.

00:10:19.100 But again, I am in a selfish way

00:10:22.700 thankful you did it.

00:10:23.980 I'm thankful and selfish

00:10:25.280 what you're doing

00:10:25.760 because we're all learning right now.

00:10:26.980 Believe it or not, everybody's learning.

00:10:28.180 One person's taking this

00:10:29.200 and everybody else gets to kind of watch

00:10:31.060 and see how this works.

00:10:31.980 Now, I got two questions for you.

00:10:34.300 One is more business-wise.

00:10:36.060 The other one is philosophical.

00:10:37.420 So let's stay on the business side first

00:10:39.000 and then we'll go philosophical.

00:10:40.680 On the business end,

00:10:42.460 your top line revenue at the time

00:10:46.740 versus your top line revenue today.

00:10:48.980 I mean, obviously,

00:10:49.500 you've helped people have more sex 0.55

00:10:50.820 because you're saying it's 10x

00:10:52.040 how many babies people are having.

00:10:53.340 So your employees are definitely happy

00:10:55.280 when they go home,

00:10:56.020 they're making babies.

00:10:56.860 So kudos to you.

00:10:57.880 You're helping increase the population.

00:11:00.020 But top line revenue

00:11:01.400 from the moment you made the decision

00:11:02.900 to today, how much has it grown?

00:11:06.160 It's triple.

00:11:07.380 Okay, so three.

00:11:08.180 And when was it when you announced it?

00:11:09.540 What's the exact date?

00:11:11.480 2015.

00:11:12.220 2015.

00:11:12.540 So in six years,

00:11:14.540 your top line has tripled,

00:11:16.640 which respect to that,

00:11:18.640 your profit.

00:11:19.240 Yeah, and just to clarify too,

00:11:21.520 in our industry,

00:11:22.320 how we measure,

00:11:23.040 the most important metric

00:11:24.200 that people look at in our industry

00:11:25.980 because there are a few different ways

00:11:27.520 of looking at it

00:11:28.120 is merchant processing volume process.

00:11:31.120 So all the 20,000 small businesses

00:11:33.180 that use Gravity

00:11:34.360 for their payment processing

00:11:36.260 are processing triple

00:11:38.380 the amount of small business

00:11:40.540 payments acceptance

00:11:42.020 through Gravity's system

00:11:43.880 as they were in 2015.

00:11:45.980 Well, the one thing to give you credit,

00:11:47.840 this is not a business

00:11:48.880 you did to make money.

00:11:49.720 This was a cost-driven business

00:11:51.740 because you were not happy

00:11:52.760 about what Visa and MasterCard

00:11:53.980 were doing to,

00:11:55.220 you know,

00:11:55.520 the amount of fees

00:11:56.280 they were charging with them.

00:11:57.860 So you wanted to come,

00:11:58.500 you said,

00:11:58.740 as much as you guys are paying taxes,

00:12:00.520 what Visa and MasterCard

00:12:01.540 is doing is nothing close

00:12:02.880 to what taxes are doing.

00:12:04.340 So I want to make sure

00:12:05.320 the audience knows

00:12:05.900 that you did this

00:12:06.320 for the right reason.

00:12:06.940 But your top-line revenue

00:12:08.560 has 3x in 6 years.

00:12:11.220 How are you managing

00:12:12.360 your profit margin

00:12:13.340 as an entrepreneur

00:12:14.020 running your business?

00:12:14.920 How do you manage that?

00:12:16.360 So we get together

00:12:17.760 the whole company,

00:12:19.000 which we just did

00:12:19.880 since it was,

00:12:20.660 you know,

00:12:21.280 like the start of a new year

00:12:23.500 not too long ago.

00:12:24.760 Yeah.

00:12:25.080 We get together

00:12:25.720 as a whole team

00:12:26.780 and we decide

00:12:27.640 how we're going to

00:12:28.780 determine that,

00:12:29.680 you know,

00:12:29.940 for the next few years

00:12:31.560 because we kind of do it

00:12:32.940 somewhat on a rolling basis.

00:12:34.620 And out of the 200,

00:12:36.000 there's about 55 people

00:12:38.380 that either volunteer

00:12:39.800 or are nominated

00:12:40.940 by their peers

00:12:42.060 to basically make

00:12:43.500 those decisions.

00:12:44.700 And then we get together

00:12:45.640 for an entire week.

00:12:48.020 This year we did it

00:12:49.160 virtually on Zoom,

00:12:50.840 but we get together

00:12:51.560 for an entire week

00:12:53.400 and we have really long meetings

00:12:55.000 and we go through

00:12:55.820 and we try to figure out

00:12:56.980 how much profit margin

00:12:58.420 do we need

00:12:59.080 to be safe as a company

00:13:00.400 and how much can we invest

00:13:02.480 and, you know,

00:13:03.240 increase budgets

00:13:04.020 and those sorts of things.

00:13:05.120 So we figure it out

00:13:06.080 all together.

00:13:07.180 Have you come up

00:13:07.680 with a sweet spot?

00:13:08.620 Is it 5% EBITDA?

00:13:09.860 Is it 10% EBITDA?

00:13:10.760 Do you have a number for it?

00:13:13.600 You know,

00:13:14.620 sometimes we do.

00:13:17.200 It really,

00:13:17.960 it depends so much

00:13:19.220 on circumstances,

00:13:20.300 but I would say,

00:13:22.000 you know,

00:13:22.680 one of the things

00:13:24.200 that we think about

00:13:25.080 is managing for longevity

00:13:26.420 because we don't,

00:13:28.480 we don't want to lay anybody off,

00:13:30.360 which we never have.

00:13:32.020 And we also want to be there

00:13:33.800 for small businesses

00:13:34.800 when times are tough.

00:13:36.000 We want to be strong

00:13:36.940 when times are tough.

00:13:38.640 And so that,

00:13:39.700 that is normally

00:13:40.800 what causes us to say,

00:13:42.500 oh, you know,

00:13:43.100 we need to be making

00:13:44.260 some profits

00:13:45.040 so that we can,

00:13:45.860 you know,

00:13:46.100 stay strong

00:13:46.840 and build up our savings,

00:13:48.640 pay down debt.

00:13:49.360 Would you say 10%?

00:13:50.640 What number would you say?

00:13:51.480 5%,

00:13:52.280 10%,

00:13:53.240 20%?

00:13:55.020 Well,

00:13:55.980 it depends on

00:13:57.080 which number

00:13:58.120 you're talking about

00:13:59.300 because our,

00:14:00.220 our business

00:14:00.820 is kind of convoluted

00:14:02.100 and it,

00:14:02.580 it,

00:14:02.800 it might take a little bit

00:14:04.040 to kind of get into it,

00:14:05.160 but basically

00:14:05.780 just to kind of give you

00:14:06.920 like our numbers,

00:14:07.820 like we,

00:14:09.800 what we process

00:14:10.660 in payments,

00:14:11.940 you know,

00:14:12.840 is like roughly

00:14:14.620 like $15 billion a year

00:14:16.620 in round numbers.

00:14:18.140 And then from that,

00:14:20.180 what our small businesses

00:14:21.640 pay to us

00:14:22.520 to process those payments

00:14:23.940 is roughly

00:14:25.200 a little bit less

00:14:26.360 than $300 million.

00:14:29.060 And then

00:14:30.180 most of that

00:14:31.840 is interchange

00:14:32.760 that goes to Visa

00:14:33.960 and MasterCard

00:14:34.720 and that's the money

00:14:35.760 that the card

00:14:36.640 that issued

00:14:37.320 the bank,

00:14:37.800 the bank that issued

00:14:39.600 that bank card,

00:14:40.560 they get that money.

00:14:42.580 And so that takes us down

00:14:43.960 to about like $45 million,

00:14:46.320 something like that.

00:14:47.780 And then from that,

00:14:49.180 you know,

00:14:49.520 we try to eke out

00:14:50.780 like a profit

00:14:51.780 of, you know,

00:14:52.560 $4 or $5 million

00:14:53.700 to basically,

00:14:55.640 yeah, yeah,

00:14:56.400 like pay.

00:14:56.940 So it's 10%

00:14:58.900 of the net number

00:15:00.140 or another way

00:15:01.740 to think of it

00:15:02.180 is like 2%

00:15:03.240 of the gross number.

00:15:04.460 Just so you know,

00:15:04.980 I fully know

00:15:05.540 your business model.

00:15:06.340 You're an ISO, right?

00:15:07.260 You're an ISO.

00:15:07.960 So yeah,

00:15:08.440 I had a merchant

00:15:09.460 account company years ago.

00:15:10.600 I'm very familiar

00:15:11.100 with the model,

00:15:11.660 how it works.

00:15:13.660 And so,

00:15:14.720 okay,

00:15:14.960 so on the top line,

00:15:16.680 let's just say $45 million,

00:15:18.420 you're netting $4 million.

00:15:19.580 So that's about 10%.

00:15:20.480 What do you guys

00:15:21.180 do with that for?

00:15:21.840 Do you just sit on it?

00:15:22.720 Do you wait

00:15:23.040 for other projects?

00:15:24.400 Does it kind of

00:15:25.020 make the company stronger?

00:15:26.180 So if we want

00:15:26.660 to bring more people on,

00:15:27.720 how do you guys

00:15:28.200 use that $4 million?

00:15:30.680 Yeah,

00:15:31.140 basically all of those ways.

00:15:33.580 We did have

00:15:35.100 a company approach us

00:15:36.820 in Boise

00:15:37.380 and they were called

00:15:39.520 Charge It Pro

00:15:40.180 and they said,

00:15:41.800 well,

00:15:42.120 if we sell

00:15:43.460 this company

00:15:44.280 Charge It Pro

00:15:45.040 to anybody else

00:15:46.680 in your industry

00:15:47.460 or to any investors,

00:15:48.500 they're going to

00:15:49.720 lay off our employees

00:15:50.820 and consolidate

00:15:52.040 a lot of that work

00:15:53.160 into a larger company

00:15:54.540 and all those employees

00:15:56.460 in Idaho

00:15:57.120 at the time

00:15:57.700 they had 40 employees,

00:15:59.460 those employees

00:16:00.280 are going to get laid off

00:16:01.360 and they're going

00:16:01.900 to lose their job.

00:16:04.480 And so the owners

00:16:05.220 of that company

00:16:05.880 came to us

00:16:06.420 and said,

00:16:06.920 hey,

00:16:07.380 we really feel like

00:16:09.380 you would be

00:16:10.580 the right ones

00:16:11.420 to take this on

00:16:12.880 because we know

00:16:13.600 that you all

00:16:14.160 are in it

00:16:14.520 for the long haul

00:16:15.460 and we know

00:16:16.000 you believe

00:16:16.480 in taking care

00:16:17.100 of employees

00:16:17.580 so we can trust you

00:16:19.440 and you're literally

00:16:20.320 the only buyer.

00:16:22.320 So I don't know

00:16:23.800 what I have to keep

00:16:24.840 private for them

00:16:25.660 or whatnot

00:16:26.060 but it was still

00:16:27.200 a substantial amount

00:16:28.260 of money

00:16:28.620 that we needed

00:16:29.280 to pay

00:16:29.660 to make all that

00:16:30.740 happen

00:16:31.120 and integrate

00:16:31.780 the two companies.

00:16:33.540 And then secondarily,

00:16:34.520 that company,

00:16:36.720 their median wage

00:16:37.660 was $25,000

00:16:38.800 a year.

00:16:40.920 And so we had

00:16:42.640 to triple

00:16:43.240 the pay

00:16:44.020 of over half

00:16:47.220 the employees

00:16:48.200 after the acquisition

00:16:50.720 and whereas

00:16:51.520 like our competitors

00:16:52.360 would be thinking

00:16:52.920 about laying off

00:16:53.720 all those employees,

00:16:55.220 we literally

00:16:56.000 were working

00:16:56.880 on tripling

00:16:58.100 more than half

00:17:01.060 of the employees

00:17:01.560 pay.

00:17:02.700 But that was

00:17:03.320 like an example

00:17:04.040 where we took

00:17:04.640 on some debt

00:17:05.600 to the seller

00:17:06.700 and so a lot

00:17:07.860 of that profit

00:17:08.560 for a number

00:17:09.260 of years after

00:17:09.980 that went

00:17:10.560 to pay down

00:17:11.260 that like debt

00:17:12.180 to that seller.

00:17:14.100 So that's an example

00:17:15.320 and then another

00:17:16.740 example would be

00:17:17.580 savings

00:17:18.480 and taxes.

00:17:20.500 Got it.

00:17:20.820 Okay,

00:17:21.100 that makes sense.

00:17:22.140 So going back

00:17:23.480 to the question

00:17:24.840 with business,

00:17:25.980 let's stay

00:17:26.260 on business still.

00:17:26.980 currently right now

00:17:29.520 your org chart

00:17:30.720 if we were to look

00:17:31.620 at your org chart

00:17:32.520 on what it was

00:17:33.680 in 2015

00:17:35.220 when you announced

00:17:36.040 this versus

00:17:36.580 what it is today

00:17:37.300 I asked you

00:17:38.060 how many people

00:17:39.080 did you have

00:17:39.480 making over $100,000

00:17:40.620 or $200,000

00:17:41.560 you said maybe a handful

00:17:42.620 you were making 1.1

00:17:43.980 did you have anybody

00:17:45.460 as a second highest

00:17:46.760 over 200

00:17:47.480 how many did you have

00:17:48.320 over six figures

00:17:49.100 and what happened

00:17:50.380 to those

00:17:50.880 C-suite executives

00:17:53.180 that you had?

00:17:54.380 Yeah,

00:17:54.720 so

00:17:55.060 I believe

00:17:57.700 all of them

00:17:59.360 stayed for

00:18:02.620 at least quite a while

00:18:03.440 and I think

00:18:03.920 the majority

00:18:04.400 are still there

00:18:05.320 I mean

00:18:05.820 I'd have to

00:18:06.260 kind of like

00:18:06.740 think through

00:18:07.400 like

00:18:07.900 How many employees

00:18:08.880 do you have

00:18:09.140 by the way?

00:18:09.400 How many total

00:18:09.900 employees do you have?

00:18:11.060 A little under 200

00:18:12.400 we're

00:18:13.320 doing a hiring push

00:18:15.520 right now

00:18:15.980 that'll get us

00:18:16.660 over 200

00:18:17.380 When you say

00:18:19.040 you have to check

00:18:19.720 to see if they're

00:18:20.240 with you

00:18:20.760 did you have

00:18:21.820 any C-suite

00:18:22.440 executives then

00:18:23.200 or you didn't?

00:18:24.000 Not really

00:18:24.760 I mean

00:18:25.180 well

00:18:25.440 okay

00:18:25.720 yes and no

00:18:26.440 so

00:18:26.840 it's hard to say

00:18:27.960 because

00:18:28.620 a lot of the people

00:18:30.400 that are in

00:18:31.220 kind of top leadership

00:18:33.120 positions at Gravity

00:18:34.160 they've been there

00:18:35.320 their whole career

00:18:36.080 they started

00:18:36.720 their career

00:18:37.280 at Gravity

00:18:37.760 and so

00:18:39.260 we all kind of

00:18:40.180 work

00:18:40.520 more like

00:18:41.640 as a team

00:18:42.380 and we've had to

00:18:43.340 like get more

00:18:44.280 clarity on things

00:18:45.200 like org chart

00:18:45.820 and everything

00:18:46.200 mostly just

00:18:47.000 for people

00:18:47.740 from the outside

00:18:49.020 coming in

00:18:49.740 so they can be

00:18:50.340 more comfortable

00:18:50.920 and feel

00:18:51.920 more of a sense

00:18:52.900 of transparency

00:18:53.980 that they understand

00:18:55.040 who to talk to

00:18:55.800 and what's going on

00:18:56.640 but that was

00:18:57.440 very unnatural

00:18:58.200 for us

00:18:58.840 because

00:18:59.180 you know

00:19:00.340 I started

00:19:00.900 building this

00:19:01.440 company

00:19:01.760 when I was 17

00:19:02.640 I

00:19:03.740 I came from

00:19:05.140 rural Idaho

00:19:05.800 I grew up

00:19:06.700 literally

00:19:07.140 down the street

00:19:07.920 from a dump

00:19:08.560 and so

00:19:09.540 I didn't

00:19:10.420 I knew

00:19:11.020 some of those

00:19:11.640 things

00:19:11.980 but I just

00:19:12.580 liked the feeling

00:19:13.420 of basically

00:19:14.220 helping small

00:19:15.080 businesses

00:19:15.600 and I really

00:19:17.080 enjoyed that

00:19:17.700 so I did that

00:19:18.300 like 17

00:19:18.960 18 and 19

00:19:19.860 then I launched

00:19:20.700 officially

00:19:21.420 Gravity at 19

00:19:22.540 and then it was

00:19:23.860 more just like

00:19:24.700 finding people

00:19:25.460 that liked that

00:19:26.560 just as much

00:19:27.140 as I did

00:19:27.860 and so we were

00:19:29.400 kind of all

00:19:29.980 doing it together

00:19:30.760 so a lot of

00:19:31.560 those folks

00:19:32.340 you know

00:19:33.180 are still at the

00:19:34.080 company

00:19:34.460 and some are

00:19:35.560 in leadership

00:19:36.000 positions

00:19:36.500 some have been

00:19:37.220 in leadership

00:19:37.700 positions

00:19:38.220 but then

00:19:38.800 found that

00:19:39.600 they actually

00:19:40.000 preferred

00:19:40.600 being in a role

00:19:42.040 where they just

00:19:42.580 can help

00:19:42.960 customers directly

00:19:43.940 because that's

00:19:44.500 what originally

00:19:45.020 attracted them

00:19:45.760 to the company

00:19:46.340 so we have

00:19:47.240 people that have

00:19:47.840 been executives

00:19:48.560 at the company

00:19:49.320 that are still

00:19:50.040 at the company

00:19:50.660 that are not

00:19:51.300 executives today

00:19:52.240 and are much

00:19:53.000 happier not

00:19:53.760 you know

00:19:54.080 being in a

00:19:54.640 position that

00:19:55.380 suits what

00:19:56.400 they like to

00:19:57.020 do better

00:19:57.460 so that's why

00:19:58.800 it's like a

00:19:59.420 little bit hard

00:20:00.080 to answer

00:20:00.640 like with

00:20:01.200 precision

00:20:01.680 but I will

00:20:02.680 say that

00:20:03.400 it also tends

00:20:06.040 to be a bit

00:20:06.560 of a rotating

00:20:07.360 role sometimes

00:20:08.620 and I don't

00:20:09.300 know why this

00:20:10.020 is but

00:20:10.660 we do have

00:20:12.000 a lot of

00:20:13.060 people at the

00:20:13.660 company who

00:20:14.240 are first-time

00:20:15.040 managers

00:20:15.640 first-time

00:20:16.680 leaders

00:20:17.100 and and

00:20:19.280 and then we

00:20:19.860 have a lot

00:20:20.340 of people

00:20:20.700 at the

00:20:20.980 company who

00:20:21.660 have been

00:20:22.180 in those

00:20:22.500 management

00:20:22.880 and leadership

00:20:23.380 positions but

00:20:24.220 found it was

00:20:24.800 not really

00:20:25.400 anything that

00:20:26.500 they enjoyed

00:20:27.000 too much but

00:20:27.660 they wanted

00:20:28.160 to stay at

00:20:28.780 the company

00:20:29.300 as an

00:20:30.720 individual

00:20:31.140 contributor

00:20:31.740 so it's a

00:20:32.840 bit of a

00:20:33.580 it's a bit

00:20:35.480 of a spaghetti

00:20:36.180 salad for you

00:20:37.140 yeah you know

00:20:38.660 you just took

00:20:39.580 me to a whole

00:20:40.040 different place

00:20:40.740 when I'm

00:20:41.120 thinking about

00:20:41.620 your your

00:20:42.260 business model

00:20:43.120 is how do

00:20:45.100 you sell

00:20:45.500 the vision

00:20:45.960 like when

00:20:47.380 you say hey

00:20:48.180 you know one

00:20:48.900 day we're

00:20:49.460 going to be

00:20:50.360 what one

00:20:51.460 day hey

00:20:52.300 Johnny I

00:20:53.820 want you to

00:20:54.140 work on

00:20:54.480 yourself in

00:20:54.920 these areas

00:20:55.400 because one

00:20:56.100 day you're

00:20:57.340 going to be

00:20:57.660 able to

00:20:58.320 what is that

00:21:02.340 one day I'm

00:21:03.160 going to be

00:21:03.420 what sell me

00:21:04.100 the vision how

00:21:04.700 do you sell

00:21:05.140 me the vision

00:21:05.560 when I'm in

00:21:05.940 the meeting

00:21:06.200 with you or

00:21:06.740 is it the

00:21:07.720 complete opposite

00:21:08.460 where you say

00:21:09.160 who cares about

00:21:10.320 a nice car who

00:21:11.100 cares about a

00:21:11.760 nice house who

00:21:12.360 cares about having

00:21:12.980 a million in a

00:21:13.580 bank who cares

00:21:14.480 about being rich

00:21:15.280 who cares about

00:21:15.860 going to Hawaii

00:21:16.440 who cares about

00:21:17.020 going to Europe

00:21:17.520 who cares how

00:21:18.500 do you sell the

00:21:19.180 vision of where

00:21:19.940 the individual is

00:21:20.760 going and where

00:21:21.160 the company is

00:21:21.680 going yeah

00:21:23.240 yeah I hear

00:21:25.340 what you're

00:21:25.660 saying and the

00:21:26.420 way I would

00:21:26.900 think of it is

00:21:27.800 like do you

00:21:29.320 tell somebody

00:21:30.280 that they should

00:21:31.740 want lots of

00:21:32.740 money or do

00:21:34.020 you tell somebody

00:21:34.760 that they should

00:21:35.380 not want lots

00:21:36.400 of money and

00:21:37.140 my answer is I

00:21:38.040 don't tell people

00:21:38.760 what they want

00:21:39.460 they decide what

00:21:40.440 they want and

00:21:41.860 so I don't

00:21:42.640 really I

00:21:43.600 don't it's

00:21:44.780 up to them

00:21:45.440 I know in

00:21:46.840 general what the

00:21:48.000 social science

00:21:49.000 says about

00:21:50.060 human beings

00:21:50.880 which is the

00:21:52.060 way people are

00:21:52.760 motivated at the

00:21:54.220 highest level and

00:21:55.360 the way the the

00:21:56.200 people that make

00:21:57.020 the most important

00:21:57.900 achievements get

00:21:58.920 find their

00:21:59.460 motivation is

00:22:01.380 through internal

00:22:02.480 drive they call

00:22:03.340 intrinsic motivation

00:22:05.200 as opposed to

00:22:05.880 extrinsic but

00:22:06.660 basically autonomy

00:22:08.460 mastery purpose

00:22:10.260 and social

00:22:11.060 connection are

00:22:12.300 the four

00:22:12.820 strongest

00:22:13.440 motivators on

00:22:14.340 earth but

00:22:15.020 something like

00:22:16.300 money or title

00:22:17.400 or prestige is

00:22:19.300 a much more

00:22:19.880 common motivator

00:22:20.920 because if you're

00:22:21.960 motivated by money

00:22:23.000 or title or

00:22:23.840 prestige or

00:22:24.600 power then you

00:22:27.260 tend to get

00:22:28.460 those things and

00:22:29.540 you tend to use

00:22:30.600 those things to

00:22:31.420 control other

00:22:32.220 people and also

00:22:33.360 just human nature

00:22:35.060 money prestige power

00:22:37.060 those more

00:22:37.640 competitive type

00:22:38.900 motivations they

00:22:40.900 are they're very

00:22:42.180 enticing to people

00:22:43.500 they're alluring to

00:22:44.560 people but they're

00:22:45.720 not as strong in

00:22:46.960 terms of actually

00:22:47.800 causing people to

00:22:48.820 do good work

00:22:49.660 they're short-term

00:22:50.680 positive motivators

00:22:51.780 but in the long

00:22:52.520 term they tend to

00:22:53.940 make people in

00:22:55.720 general not every

00:22:56.700 person there's

00:22:57.440 certainly exceptions

00:22:58.200 but in general they

00:22:59.800 tend to make people

00:23:00.760 kind of miserable

00:23:01.660 and unmotivated and

00:23:04.040 so what we do is

00:23:05.480 instead try to

00:23:06.540 create a platform

00:23:07.500 together whereby

00:23:08.620 all of us myself

00:23:09.900 included can do

00:23:12.320 things that make us

00:23:13.740 feel alive can do

00:23:15.160 things that make us

00:23:15.980 feel meaning and for

00:23:17.160 us what brings us

00:23:18.980 together originally

00:23:20.100 was helping small

00:23:21.560 businesses but

00:23:22.480 secondarily what when

00:23:24.260 we said well why why

00:23:25.640 do we love helping

00:23:26.520 small businesses so

00:23:27.580 much is because we

00:23:28.700 like the little guy

00:23:29.740 we want to help the

00:23:30.960 little guy and that's

00:23:32.180 what motivates us

00:23:33.420 but and so I do

00:23:34.940 what though help the

00:23:35.860 little guy do what

00:23:36.760 because I'm a little

00:23:38.140 guy started off as a

00:23:39.160 little guy so this is

00:23:39.940 a guy like I grew up

00:23:41.700 in a divorced family I

00:23:43.480 lived at a refugee 0.99

00:23:44.160 camp in Germany 10

00:23:45.200 years Iran so I was a

00:23:46.220 one-pointed GPA kid I

00:23:47.400 went to the army I was

00:23:48.480 a welfare kid I don't 0.97

00:23:50.100 have a four-year degree I

00:23:51.160 don't have a two-year

00:23:51.800 degree I didn't have

00:23:53.120 anything I'm the guy

00:23:54.180 that had a lunch ticket

00:23:55.060 going to school from

00:23:55.820 seventh grade to

00:23:56.660 12th grade and I've

00:23:58.460 never taken English

00:23:59.380 101 it's always been

00:24:00.480 ESL my entire life I've

00:24:01.900 only taken ESL so

00:24:03.260 define what is

00:24:04.560 helping the little

00:24:05.520 guy what is helping

00:24:06.400 the little guy mean

00:24:07.060 to you well so the

00:24:12.760 way we got there was

00:24:14.080 you know these small

00:24:16.000 businesses were

00:24:16.880 obviously being bullied

00:24:18.520 by the system overall

00:24:21.500 by Visa and MasterCard

00:24:22.940 they set the rates

00:24:24.520 that the small

00:24:25.140 businesses pay and

00:24:26.880 like twice a year they

00:24:28.540 raise the rates on the

00:24:30.140 small businesses and

00:24:31.440 there's no competition

00:24:32.480 it's not like the

00:24:33.960 business can be like

00:24:34.800 okay I'm gonna stop

00:24:35.580 taking Visa or I'm

00:24:36.560 not I'm gonna stop

00:24:37.320 taking MasterCard and

00:24:39.100 so the small businesses

00:24:40.220 basically have to take

00:24:42.540 whatever these big huge

00:24:44.540 companies say that they

00:24:45.780 have to take and it's

00:24:47.740 really wrong and you 0.75

00:24:49.460 know in a place like

00:24:50.420 Idaho where I grew up

00:24:51.620 you know you see the

00:24:53.060 impact of that on those

00:24:54.300 small businesses far away

00:24:55.760 from that boardroom in

00:24:56.900 New York City where they

00:24:58.540 decided we can increase

00:25:00.900 our share price by

00:25:03.040 charging these small

00:25:04.760 businesses that can't

00:25:05.960 afford it a bunch of

00:25:06.800 fees for money that we

00:25:08.200 don't need to run our

00:25:09.020 business that we're then

00:25:10.840 going to use to inflate

00:25:12.340 our stock with stock

00:25:13.600 buybacks so that we can

00:25:15.640 pay executive bonuses and

00:25:18.260 so I was seeing that as a

00:25:19.900 17 year old and there was

00:25:21.720 a coffee shop named Moxie

00:25:23.740 Java Caldwell in Caldwell

00:25:25.460 Idaho and there was a the

00:25:26.760 owner Heather Hempel she

00:25:28.480 was explaining to me how 0.97

00:25:30.400 she was getting screwed 0.97

00:25:31.520 over and she didn't 0.95

00:25:32.340 necessarily know all the

00:25:33.380 backstory of like how it

00:25:34.640 all works behind that but

00:25:35.920 she was explaining to me 0.97

00:25:36.840 she was getting screwed 0.95

00:25:37.640 over and she introduced 0.95

00:25:39.240 me to some of her friends

00:25:40.420 that said the same thing

00:25:41.660 so it's like how do we

00:25:43.080 fight against this how do

00:25:44.420 we hold these big

00:25:45.420 companies accountable but

00:25:47.300 the name of the game right

00:25:49.540 now in business and in big

00:25:51.500 tech and big companies and

00:25:52.700 big Wall Street is

00:25:54.060 captured in the work of

00:25:56.060 Peter Thiel the book zero

00:25:57.280 to one where he wrote

00:25:58.260 competition is for losers

00:25:59.700 so what the new kind of

00:26:02.160 people that style

00:26:03.080 themselves as capitalists

00:26:04.320 actually believe they

00:26:05.640 don't believe in

00:26:06.240 competition they believe in

00:26:08.040 using their money and

00:26:09.660 their superior positions of

00:26:11.420 power to stamp out

00:26:13.740 competition and the entire

00:26:16.880 economy is starting to line

00:26:18.780 up with that philosophy and

00:26:21.060 you see it in the book zero

00:26:22.260 to one you thought that

00:26:23.780 yeah it was saying in the

00:26:24.780 book that's not what I

00:26:25.860 took from the book when he

00:26:26.760 said zero to one well he

00:26:29.180 he's he that's an exact

00:26:30.920 quote so you're reading

00:26:32.280 skills maybe we're back

00:26:33.580 I know that I know that

00:26:34.420 but I think what he was

00:26:35.380 trying to say is have you

00:26:36.360 read blue ocean strategy

00:26:37.500 yeah yeah I think that's the

00:26:40.280 direction where he was

00:26:41.160 going like create a market

00:26:43.160 where there is no

00:26:44.900 competition like you know

00:26:46.140 where you're where you're

00:26:47.780 going into a place where

00:26:49.340 you're the you know first

00:26:50.440 one to go out there and do

00:26:51.420 it you don't have anybody

00:26:52.320 else to compete against

00:26:53.140 versus go destroy everybody 0.66

00:26:54.700 and dominate the entire

00:26:56.460 market well well that's

00:26:57.820 what Theo was talking

00:26:58.680 about let's look at the

00:27:00.580 weight of the evidence to

00:27:01.760 see if what your your

00:27:03.960 your posit is correct or

00:27:05.500 mine so he made two other

00:27:07.580 big points the two biggest

00:27:09.760 points in the book actually

00:27:10.860 that contextualize the

00:27:12.060 statement number one if you

00:27:14.520 really want to be

00:27:15.280 significant if you really

00:27:16.380 want to matter you need to

00:27:17.680 be a billionaire that was

00:27:21.720 his first point in the book

00:27:22.920 and that's very much in

00:27:24.880 line with zero to one it's

00:27:26.880 binary means by that do you

00:27:28.580 know what do you mean let me

00:27:29.480 let me finish and then and

00:27:31.040 then I'll and then I'll see

00:27:32.480 what yeah I do know what he

00:27:34.060 means I think I do tell me

00:27:35.720 yeah yeah either you're a zero

00:27:39.040 which means a non-billionaire

00:27:42.280 you don't matter or you're a 0.68

00:27:47.500 one which means you're a

00:27:49.600 billionaire you do matter

00:27:50.740 that's the ideology that

00:27:54.640 regular people all over are

00:27:57.700 seeing and it's one thing for

00:28:01.420 us to say well I want to keep

00:28:03.320 that intact because I want to

00:28:04.640 get there I want to climb that

00:28:05.960 ladder but if you look at the

00:28:07.940 social mobility statistics that

00:28:10.020 are out there right now having

00:28:12.020 a ladder like that isn't

00:28:14.220 climbable and here's why it's

00:28:16.200 his second point so that's his

00:28:17.900 first thesis point but he has

00:28:19.620 two parallel theses in that

00:28:21.240 book how do you become a

00:28:23.380 billionaire how do you become

00:28:25.460 somebody that matters he asked

00:28:26.880 that question and he says that

00:28:30.520 the only way to become a

00:28:32.140 billionaire is to have a

00:28:33.960 monopoly and the reason why is

00:28:36.520 because if you have a monopoly you

00:28:38.900 can act with impunity there's no

00:28:40.860 accountability and he uses softer

00:28:42.980 language than that but if you

00:28:44.660 think about the implication you

00:28:46.820 can lay off employees with no

00:28:48.840 consequences you can go be like

00:28:51.740 uber eats and you can get cardi b

00:28:55.440 and dana carvey to do some kind of 0.99

00:28:58.540 wayne's world commercial and spend

00:29:00.740 10 million dollars at the same time

00:29:03.940 that your business model is trying to

00:29:06.580 extract maximum value from local

00:29:09.620 businesses and you do a commercial

00:29:11.060 claiming that you're helping local

00:29:13.020 businesses at the same time you're

00:29:15.720 laying off employees at the same time

00:29:18.280 you're paying huge executive bonuses

00:29:20.020 and at the same time that you're buying

00:29:22.440 out competitors i mean this is what

00:29:25.320 people on reddit that some people would

00:29:27.900 call are crazy think of as late stage

00:29:30.620 capitalism because it's like where can

00:29:33.560 you actually take things after this like

00:29:35.960 where do you go next and basically

00:29:38.600 since the 1970s or the 1980s so much of

00:29:43.040 our success in business has been about

00:29:45.440 squeezing people about exploiting workers

00:29:48.760 that's been the that's been around the

00:29:50.840 economy but now it's becoming just more

00:29:54.320 and more scammy throughout and if you

00:29:55.920 think about your own life just when you

00:29:58.480 go out and live your life how many scams

00:30:01.320 are you subjected to on a daily weekly or

00:30:03.720 monthly basis now or how many times are

00:30:06.280 you kind of slightly mistreated and it

00:30:09.200 could be little things like getting the

00:30:10.860 text to lose a hundred pounds with a diet

00:30:13.180 pill i'm looking at you you definitely

00:30:14.820 should not lose a hundred pounds that

00:30:16.460 would be a bad thing it could be the the

00:30:18.920 scam phone call claiming to be social

00:30:21.540 security administration it could be it

00:30:24.660 could be the fact that you know you used

00:30:27.120 to check into a hotel and whatever price

00:30:30.060 they told you the price was was the actual

00:30:32.000 price and now there's a $50 resort fee or

00:30:35.180 you go into an airline and you can pay the

00:30:39.180 yeah the rate that they advertise but to

00:30:40.980 do it you're going to sit in the middle

00:30:42.140 seat by the bathroom and so so much more

00:30:45.600 of our economy now is designed to extract

00:30:48.380 maximum resources engineer use those

00:30:52.560 resources to marshal to marshal you know

00:30:56.100 engineering um capabilities and then engineering a

00:31:01.280 space away from competition or away from actual even customers i mean we have

00:31:07.740 examples of businesses like uber eats that will claim that they're advertising for a local

00:31:15.840 company and then be redirecting that company's customers to a different company and it's a complete scam and it's legal and so going back to peter thiel

00:31:25.280 with his second point of how do you become a billionaire he said the only way to do it really is to become a monopoly so that you can act with impunity so what i'm sharing to you about heather and other people like you

00:31:40.460 people like you that didn't start out from much they're being held down more than you realize

00:31:46.780 by this system that we're all supporting and yeah it's true that we have individual examples

00:31:52.860 like yourself that show the way and show wow somebody can be successful

00:31:58.140 but what those examples do and i'll actually point the finger at myself more than anybody else

00:32:03.180 but what those examples do is they kind of lie to us they make us think that the system

00:32:09.580 does promote and allow people to get ahead when actually the fact that

00:32:15.500 that we get held up you and i get held up on pedestals proves the opposite it proves that we are the exception

00:32:21.980 and it proves that most people don't reach that and just for myself

00:32:25.900 you know you pointed out how 500 million people had seen my story and how people were so enthusiastic

00:32:33.020 about it how low is the bar when somebody who basically says the people actually creating the

00:32:40.220 value should get it they should have autonomy and we should work together to help small businesses

00:32:47.660 gets that kind of attention how much does that prove how low the bar is because

00:32:52.940 everything that i did you can't find a single thing i did that a nice eight-year-old wouldn't do

00:32:59.980 and yet that was the response yeah so i think it shows everything about where we are right now

00:33:05.100 no i i think i think the reason why that story went viral is because a younger generation relates to a ton

00:33:12.540 and they're coming out of college and they're more in the state of rich people are bad people capitalism

00:33:18.380 sucks because that's what the university is doing that's what they're teaching them

00:33:21.900 and then all of a sudden they see a story like you and they're going to share the hell out of it and 0.82

00:33:25.420 i'm glad it got the exposure because we need to have this discussion here's my question for you your

00:33:30.780 company is doing four million a year okay net four four and a half million years what the number is

00:33:36.460 let's just say four and a half million a year ten percent is the number let's say that just so you

00:33:40.940 know ten percent is relatively what the average merchant account company does it's about it's a very

00:33:46.220 small margin merchant account is not big margins you don't make a lot of profit on merchant

00:33:50.220 accounts there are some that abuse it back in the days in the 90s where they would sell the equipment

00:33:54.300 for financing if you remember for 199 well you weren't around at that time but they would sell

00:33:58.780 it for 199 36 month period and people were making money but nowadays machines are generally free it's

00:34:05.340 more on the fees that people play around okay so you're making the same amount of profits that the

00:34:10.300 average merchant account company is making are you the hundred percent owner of the company or is the

00:34:15.340 company shared with everybody the equity i own the company okay so so if you own 100 the company

00:34:22.140 that means you're probably worth 100 to 200 million dollars because in in the world of merchant account

00:34:28.380 the x is higher you know it's a 20 to 40 x type of a number you and i know this would you would you feel

00:34:33.980 confident or comfortable giving your 200 employees a half a percent of your company to make it fair that

00:34:40.220 everybody owns a piece yeah i think that's a good idea so we've we've had a lot of internal discussions

00:34:46.620 about that over the years and i'm open to it um the the reason why it hasn't happened so far is

00:34:56.380 there's a there's a belief amongst the team that if you kind of buy into the shareholder supremacy model

00:35:04.860 that you're kind of pitching me right now and the idea that shareholders um should maximize like what

00:35:12.060 they get which is kind of what your question is predicated on if we have shareholders then we will

00:35:19.580 have to behave in that way as the concern and i think that there is a legal defense and a legal basis

00:35:26.380 to say that no that's not the case but it could be tricky especially if somebody is in a situation where

00:35:35.820 if we started acting in accordance with these principles that you and i disagree on about

00:35:41.340 peter thiel where i don't want to do that i don't believe in screwing people over i don't believe in

00:35:46.940 screwing over those small businesses he didn't say screw people over peter thiel never said screwing

00:35:51.260 people oh well peter thiel said a monopoly and to have a monopoly you and i both know in order to have

00:35:57.740 a monopoly you need the government to do a monopoly he never said screw people over to be a billionaire

00:36:02.140 that's not his words but i do know what you're saying you said number one is to matter is to be

00:36:07.500 a billionaire and then you know the other part when you said is to have a monopoly yeah he did say that

00:36:13.100 and i recall in the books i've read it multiple times yeah well and that informs what he meant when

00:36:19.180 he said competition is for losers because in his mind loser and non-billionaire are basically the

00:36:26.380 same they're very close no you you just said right now to screw people over like peter thiel said i want 0.66

00:36:33.260 to make sure i differentiate those two because i don't remember him saying make your money by screwing

00:36:38.540 people over that's just your belief system that you think screwing people over well i don't think it's

00:36:44.620 that much of a leap okay so let me go back to the question i asked the question i asked you

00:36:50.940 you thought i was asking it from the standpoint of maximizing shareholder profits that's not what

00:36:56.780 yeah so the way the way we the way we run the company that the it's not worth that much no no

00:37:02.460 that's not what i was asking about my question was yeah less about if you if you feel everyone's

00:37:08.380 making 70k you're making 70k why not share the equity company with everybody why own 100 of it

00:37:14.620 because you're sitting there worth a couple hundred million why not have them have a few hundred

00:37:18.220 thousand dollars of net worth added to them yeah so it's because the the the the shares currently

00:37:28.060 like we're not public like so the shares aren't you can't like go sell them you know what i mean oh but

00:37:35.100 you can give a uh a stock options where the individual can invest over a five-year period

00:37:41.420 and there are a lot of people that work for companies who are not public that give shares

00:37:45.580 that allows the individual to build up their network because right now your employees don't

00:37:49.660 have a high network you do so although you are being very noble on the area of giving everybody a

00:37:55.260 seventy thousand dollar your salary i'm thinking if you're gonna go that why not go fully and give

00:38:00.140 everybody a piece of the company so it's equally shared with everyone

00:38:03.340 spec because if you do that then that takes the case study again remember i'm coming from

00:38:07.980 a selfish place because i want to see how this thing works long term on the case study so if you

00:38:12.700 did 200 employees get a half a percent and you put a five-year vestment period that they have to stay

00:38:18.780 there would you consider doing that yeah absolutely i think it's a great idea but i'll say i'm not sure

00:38:25.260 that i'm really able to to connect with you or explain to you like like what some of the danger

00:38:31.740 and downside would be to doing it but i still think it it's it's it's something good that we

00:38:36.460 need to consider either way yeah i said but i i think but i think that it's so hard i think i could

00:38:44.060 be wrong but i think it's so hard because we're so deep in the system the economic system it's so hard i

00:38:53.740 think for somebody that's like working at that deep level in the system to understand a world divorced

00:39:00.620 from shareholder supremacy and i think that i think that if you could understand like a a world

00:39:09.340 other than shareholder supremacy i think it would make the way that you're thinking through

00:39:15.980 and analyzing the issue very different yeah the only way i'm thinking about it is i'm thinking

00:39:20.140 about it in a way of uh hey this is the amount of money that came in why don't we take the money that

00:39:26.220 came to la district county and let's get the money to do so if you have equity you because you you're

00:39:32.300 you're in a very you're very let me try to explain it to you i i feel like i feel like you're i feel like

00:39:37.580 you really want to understand so let me try really hard to explain it to you i don't think i want to

00:39:42.060 understand let me explain to you my question i think you got to understand my question here's my

00:39:45.340 question my question isn't like i want to come we don't think that way right so you're saying how

00:39:50.380 come you guys don't think the way i think no it's not and i'm like i don't think the way you think

00:39:55.740 i don't yeah what you think well yeah so i don't know how to answer the question then because i'm

00:39:59.900 saying to you is if you're worth 200 million why don't you give equal amount of shares to your

00:40:03.980 employees so they also i'm not worth 200 million say 100 million whatever i'm not worth 100 million

00:40:10.460 i asked you earlier if you're doing four and a half million ebitda they pay you 20 to 40 that's

00:40:14.540 about 100 million dollar network no no it no it isn't how is it not okay if a person wanted to buy

00:40:23.180 if i if i were to right now you're a pretty transparent guy that's what made you unique

00:40:27.340 what made you unique is the fact that you were willing to be transparent you were very much about

00:40:31.820 my income's 1.1 yeah yeah i mean i would love to explain it to you i don't know if i'm going to be

00:40:36.460 able to but i'll try if you want i'm all ears tell us okay so currently the way the economy works

00:40:46.700 as i understand it is the the the most important thing that drives the companies

00:40:54.620 is this thing that this guy milton friedman came up with right shareholder value

00:40:59.420 and basically the companies are currently run in general with what's going to enhance the stock price

00:41:09.820 at some time horizon and then the the there's something that the compensation experts do called

00:41:18.460 alignment incentive alignment and basically what they do is they take those stock price targets

00:41:24.460 and things that the corporation wants to achieve like a higher stock price and they set up incentives

00:41:33.820 for the executives and employees and stuff like that so that it creates what the what the experts call

00:41:41.180 alignment between the shareholders who are kind of set up as the primary beneficiary of the of the

00:41:51.340 scheme and it creates a harmonious it purports to create a harmonious relationship between them

00:41:58.620 and quote unquote management or top executives so that they'll be aligned so that the executives

00:42:05.660 when they have to make a really tough decision that's going to prop up the stock price

00:42:12.780 that incentive is designed to make sure that the executives make the decision that's good for the

00:42:19.340 good shareholders good for the stock price and the value the multiples that you talked about

00:42:25.820 are predicated on having a management team that and and a setup of a company that's run in this matter

00:42:34.940 if you took the exact same metrics but you told shareholders they can never

00:42:43.500 layoff employees ever if you took the exact same metrics and you told employees you can never

00:42:52.540 raise customer prices in a way that's an unjustifiable money grab

00:42:59.100 if you told the investors they were no longer allowed to do those things and they wouldn't be able to

00:43:06.380 expect any type of liquidity event from the company really ever but not on any specific time horizon and

00:43:14.300 they couldn't create it then the value of those shares would be depressed significantly and it would

00:43:21.900 basically create a situation where it was a fraction the company would be worth in that scenario a

00:43:28.220 fraction of what it's otherwise worth so in a world in a world where we're planning to join this kind of scam

00:43:38.060 that everybody can see that i think you may you know you may be bought into a little bit

00:43:44.300 if we if we decide that we're willing to participate in that scam and just to just to have the rubber meet 0.92

00:43:51.580 the road for you because i think this one will really land with you i had a gentleman come up to me who

00:43:57.020 who i've known for for close to two decades been a mentor of mine been a ceo of multiple successful

00:44:03.180 companies in our industry and run multi multiple multi-billion dollar companies in our industry

00:44:09.660 and he came up to me and said dan i could come join gravity or somebody like me and i could turn this

00:44:19.260 into a multi-billion dollar company within a few years because if we unwound this and that you know

00:44:27.820 like not doing layoffs in the pandemic when our competitor toast used it as an excuse to laugh 50

00:44:33.660 of their employees when their value is going from 5 billion to 8 billion dollars not doing a 100

00:44:41.020 price increase in the pandemic to small businesses like our competitor heartland that's owned by global

00:44:46.220 payments a public company these are the the playbooks and the models in our industry and the value that

00:44:52.380 you're putting out there is it is based on the idea that you're going to play ball in this way and obi was

00:45:00.860 saying that and i was like you know what i don't think the world needs another billionaire and i don't even

00:45:07.260 know that the world needs like a whole lot more like multi-millionaires out there i think what we need

00:45:14.060 is a company that's willing to stick up for what's right stick stick up for these principles and the

00:45:20.860 way we run the organization currently when we get together and make decisions is we do it as if

00:45:28.140 shareholders don't exist so we we consider shareholders at zero when we're considering how to

00:45:34.460 run the company all of a sudden if we create the type of incentive alignment that somebody who's like

00:45:40.140 a hardcore capitalist like an unapologized unapologetic unapologetic capitalist would yeah would would

00:45:47.100 would try to get us to do are we still going to run the company in the same way after that right and

00:45:53.980 the answer to that is maybe not and i would like to think that we're all such good people that we would

00:45:59.980 turn away from the opportunity to make more money to stick up for what's right to stick up for our values

00:46:05.900 but currently we just do it by basically taking all of that money and and basically considering

00:46:13.100 it to be money that's really most rightfully you know uh considered uh as as an asset for clients

00:46:20.780 small businesses employees how can we use these resources to help and all of a sudden if we created

00:46:26.940 that kind of incentive alignment structure it would it would really take us and make us less of what we are

00:46:34.540 and more of what companies that you're used to seeing i gotta tell you i understand what you're

00:46:39.260 saying i listen to every word you said very good explanation i understand philosophically where you

00:46:44.220 stand where it's hey pat i don't think my company's what you think it is because if i were to sell it

00:46:49.420 which i never will i would have to go by the new buyer's guidelines of having to sell in the future

00:46:53.340 which i wouldn't want which means a person that would buy today i don't think the margin is going to

00:46:57.420 be 20 to 40 times which i wouldn't agree to but still you're a hundred percent owner and this is the

00:47:03.020 risk where i see and i want to kind of tell you this and and try to destroy my argument say you're 1.00

00:47:08.780 you're you're a fool you have no clue what the hell you're talking about destroy do whatever you 0.99

00:47:12.140 want to do with it because i want to i want to kind of get your perspective so if i work for you 1.00

00:47:18.860 and i'm one of your seventy thousand dollar your employees of the 200 that's doing 45 million top line

00:47:25.500 revenue that the company's keeping four and a half percent four and a half million ten percent net

00:47:29.500 profits and which you own a hundred percent of i have to almost believe you are jesus or god or

00:47:37.500 somebody of such power to trust a hundred percent that you will never flip i have to almost trust

00:47:44.780 you 100 which then you become like a god figure and that's a lot of pressure yeah because most people

00:47:51.260 who are human beings like you and i i'm not sure if you try to walk on water i've tried many times i

00:47:57.420 fail every single time maybe you have i can't so then then i have to sit there and say why don't

00:48:03.100 i don't trust a hundred how do your employees trust you 100 do they kind of see you as a god or how how

00:48:10.380 do they see you like a prophet how do your employees see you yeah well a couple things um

00:48:18.380 because i want to i want to answer your question very specifically about us but then i want to make a

00:48:22.700 broader point about how i think it relates to your you know you and and other people out there and

00:48:28.380 people watching us right now so

00:48:34.380 i think it just shows again my main point about how low the bar is because we assume and frankly pretty

00:48:45.580 much correctly so that everybody out there that has ownership and power and those sorts of things

00:48:53.260 is going to flip and basically trade the things that matter in life which are relationships care

00:49:03.020 love trust integrity for the things that don't matter in life uh or don't matter as much once you

00:49:11.100 have enough so money really matters it buys happiness but it doesn't buy happiness once you're

00:49:16.780 making a 100 or 150 or 200 000 a year it doesn't buy happiness certainly when you're making three or

00:49:22.860 four hundred thousand a year if you make more than that that's not in general for most people going to

00:49:28.780 help them and so we assume that we are all so greedy and power hungry and that might be a safe

00:49:35.500 assumption that might be a safe assumption and that might be a safe assumption about me but if it is

00:49:41.980 then what we need to do is so clear we need to have a very high tax rate with wealthy people and we need to

00:49:54.220 set rules because soon with ai and robotics and all that being private we're going to have these private

00:50:01.820 armies of security we're going to have these people that control a level of power over all of us

00:50:10.300 and when you think about automation when you think about the fact that so many jobs are going to be

00:50:15.020 eliminated something like ubi universal basic income these are the types of uh solutions that we need to

00:50:22.860 institute and what i'll say is here's here's my big failing here's where i really do think i failed

00:50:29.020 i've allowed myself to become an excuse for the current system and perpetuating the status quo because

00:50:35.500 people can point at my story and say hey this guy came from very humble beginnings grew up in idaho

00:50:42.380 look at what he did but the reality is you're exactly right because zero big companies have followed suit

00:50:49.500 and as a result we have we have been pushing millions of people into poverty with our system

00:50:56.780 as set up to basically reward and not tax the people at the very top the millionaires and billionaires

00:51:03.900 and instead be predatory scammy and tax the people at the bottom so if we all work together in unison with

00:51:12.060 one voice to reverse that system that's really our last line of defect of of protection overall

00:51:19.340 and in my company we should institute some of those rules so that even if i do turn out to you know go

00:51:26.300 to the dark side as you say someday like we'll all be protected yeah so a couple things one i agree i

00:51:34.060 think we do need a flat tax it sounds like you're pitching a flat tax right now where everybody gets taxed the

00:51:38.460 same exact i'm pitching i'm pitching over 10 million i would be super comfortable with the 50 60 or even

00:51:44.540 70 percent maybe even 80 90 tax rate i think we need to get the where has that worked dan what what

00:51:52.540 countries has a 70 80 90 tax rate ever worked the united states for one when we implemented this in the

00:52:01.100 in the 40s and 50s we had two periods in a row that were about a decade at each where median

00:52:07.980 incomes doubled after we did it so it's worked right here in the united states but currently

00:52:13.580 it's working very well in places like costa rica in denmark in norway 90 percent over over a huge

00:52:22.140 amount yes yeah yeah but i think you're not talking about income you're talking about the elizabeth

00:52:27.500 warren if you're worth over 50 million that's a wealth tax you're talking about i think we need

00:52:32.060 both i think we need both let me go back to this so yeah i think uh one on them trusting you 100 i

00:52:38.780 think you ought to consider giving 100 your equity to all your employees i think you ought to consider

00:52:42.540 doing that and then also writing it down and saying in the constitution before i give the shares to you

00:52:48.300 if we ever sell and anybody who buys the company has to be agreeing to the constitution the profits

00:52:53.820 goes to you but you cannot philosophically change the following bylaws so if i'm coming to buy

00:52:58.620 i may not pay you 40x but i'll pay 10x and all the employees that own some of the shares

00:53:03.500 they'll get profit so i think you ought to consider giving out to you let me but let me just say

00:53:07.260 if you end up coming to work at gravity payments at any point your opinion on this will will it

00:53:13.660 already matters and i'll already listen what you say and think about it but if you worked at gravity

00:53:18.300 and you wanted to talk to employees about this idea and see like do you have support i'd be super

00:53:24.860 excited about that by the way i'd love to come talk to your employers i'm being that serious with you

00:53:29.020 i'd love but i mean you have to be working there for a while first and gain their credibility if

00:53:33.420 you want me you don't want me to talk to 200 employees it wouldn't be good you don't want no

00:53:37.660 no i wouldn't i wouldn't mind it's just i have to yeah no but i think i think that there's such a

00:53:45.340 disconnect with how you see the world and how we see the world that i feel like in order for your

00:53:50.380 message to really land i feel like there's a certain amount of like i'm dangerous you see for

00:53:57.100 me i like to talk to guys i don't think you're dangerous i see i don't think you are either but

00:54:01.820 you yeah so the one thing that i can say almost everybody that i know who has strong opinions about

00:54:09.420 the opposing side they also make assumptions you've made a lot of assumptions you yourself even in this

00:54:14.780 recording if you go back and listen to it you've made the assumptions of whether how wealthy

00:54:20.060 people are how billionaires are whether you've said people that make over three hundred thousand

00:54:24.780 dollars they're not as happy as i would assume i said in general this the science proves that

00:54:30.860 no no no so an assumption let me let me parse this out for you so an assumption would be to say about

00:54:36.540 one person as an individual yeah but the scientific studies say this is true for people in general

00:54:44.380 you can't pull out one person from that that would be an assumption i'm going to call the assumption

00:54:49.100 cops to come and audit both of us i'm going to say to all the assumptions cops out there to all the

00:54:53.980 assumptions cops if i made assumptions comment below give me the minute if dan made assumptions

00:54:59.260 hold us accountable put it below i'm willing to say if i made assumptions as long as my buddy dan is

00:55:03.900 also willing to commit to if he made assumptions and everybody can do that survey and we'll talk about

00:55:08.860 that you and i afterward so so dan question for you i'm i'm very curious in the way you were

00:55:14.860 raised how's your relationship right now with your family how are you with mom dad your brother your

00:55:20.060 sister how's the family relationships oh i mean i i don't want to get into that too much just to

00:55:26.540 protect everyone's privacy but i love my family so much and i'm so grateful for them the reason why

00:55:31.260 i say that is because of one thing that's so interesting about you you were a bible memorization

00:55:37.260 competition in fifth and sixth grade i mean that's crazy to me dan like i have a hard time remembering

00:55:43.820 john 3 16 you're talking about memorizing bibles he was raised as a conservative christian family

00:55:51.340 where he and his siblings took turns walking waking at 5 a.m to make breakfast before bible readings

00:55:57.500 you know and i mean are you still do you still subscribe to any of the christian evangelical

00:56:03.260 philosophies or no i would say my belief about those things is um is a constant uh

00:56:13.420 growth and the way i would the way i would uh answer specifically is like there was a actually a

00:56:19.900 christian pastor that i was talking to one time and i said paul and i wrote about this in my book

00:56:26.380 so it's it's it's out there but i said paul like don't you lose sleep worrying if maybe this stuff

00:56:34.380 isn't true and he said no i never lose sleep over that and i was like why like i'm like so worried

00:56:40.460 about it you know what i mean and he was like dan i just i focus on growing and open up my mind and

00:56:48.540 trying to learn everything i can but our beliefs evolved so fast and even christianity means

00:56:56.140 something totally different today than it did 20 years ago and so his his philosophy which i i

00:57:03.100 to you christianity means something different than 20 years ago or to the world i would say to the world

00:57:08.220 there's the contours have evolved in the last 20 years but you know assumption that could be

00:57:12.460 categorically an assumption right there we found one right there dan uh how is it an assumption you're

00:57:19.020 assuming it's different 20 in the last 20 years what's changed in the last 20 years with christianity

00:57:23.420 i'm curious well um you're speaking to a 25 year atheist so just just assume i'm being serious with

00:57:30.460 you yeah 25 or eight years right well that might explain why it's coming across differently than i intend

00:57:36.620 because you know growing up studying theology for an hour every day which i did for a long time

00:57:46.940 and in particular christian theology which is where i spent the majority of my time

00:57:52.780 the the the kind of what we call the canon of christianity like the center of christianity

00:58:00.140 most christian scholars believe that it's a combination of things including tradition

00:58:06.300 including culture and the apostle paul who's one of the most famous authors in the bible or

00:58:13.180 supposed authors depending on what you believe there the apostle paul when he would write letters

00:58:19.020 to different churches he would tell one church something that i think is inexcusable but you know

00:58:26.220 i'll just use an example he would say like oh with this follow these sets of rules and then for another

00:58:32.540 church he'd say follow these sets of rules and peter came who was you know the high apostle to jesus and

00:58:40.060 peter came and he and paul was leading this church where he wasn't following all the rules about what you

00:58:46.220 can eat and what you can't eat and paul was explaining to peter that he believes that christianity is

00:58:55.260 it's an interaction between their faith and the culture and the people of that day does that make

00:59:01.900 sense and so he was explaining to peter how like those things and peter and him had a fight and this

00:59:09.900 was going to be a big problem you have your two most powerful leaders in your church and they're having

00:59:15.900 uh like a a knockout fight and peter had a dream where there was a big cloth and it tore and this

00:59:24.780 was the most important cloth in the world and there were all these animals that paul was saying they

00:59:31.740 could eat that all of a sudden peter had this sense from his dream that they were okay now so that was like

00:59:39.420 a moment like in the canon of christianity where like the the the the religion evolves but i mean

00:59:49.420 most i don't want to say all but the vast majority of theologians and the vast majority indeed of

00:59:56.940 christian theologians specifically it it they this is just an accepted fact for them that the church is

01:00:05.740 constantly kind of changing because initially it was like an oral tradition where things would be

01:00:11.820 passed down from generation to generation and now you can have a situation where you know the bible

01:00:20.220 still holds up as the most talked about issue caring for those who don't have enough making sure people's

01:00:28.700 basic needs are met that's the top issue in the bible it's the top sin that's discussed people not having

01:00:35.180 their basic needs met and it's the top positive thing that's discussed in the bible people having

01:00:40.380 those basic needs met and equality is part of that discussion but sometimes some of the more divisive

01:00:48.300 and political issues of the day end up being the one that the church grapples with more and and so the church

01:00:59.020 sometimes has a situation where you know the bible didn't change so the bible is still talking about

01:01:05.980 feeding people that are hungry but the church may be talking about any number of issues that are a

01:01:12.300 little bit more of like the hot button issues of the day and the and the things evolve so the most the

01:01:18.780 largest christian church in the world is the roman catholic church and for example they had something

01:01:24.220 called vatican ii where they said oh now we're not going to do our services in latin anymore we're

01:01:31.660 going to do them in the local language so to say that like the church has evolved over the last 20 years

01:01:39.180 for somebody with my background it doesn't sound like an assumption but i can understand where you're

01:01:44.860 saying it it does come across to you like an assumption no it's just to me is to say it's changed 20 years

01:01:50.780 it could in your eyes and your lens but to others it may be the same it is today as it is 20 years ago

01:01:54.780 40 years ago but by the way everything you said it's a level of skepticism i have myself who sits

01:02:00.860 there and looks at it i was raised in a similar kind of an environment uh christian family in iran

01:02:06.220 where we got bombed 167 times in a day i'm wondering if god really loves why are we getting bombed 167

01:02:11.900 i had a lot of my own challenges when i went about it but thank you for sharing that yeah you know when you

01:02:16.940 say uh uh the the basic uh needs being met i fully agree i think the part about it that it's by choice

01:02:24.460 not by force one of the challenges i see happening too many times with men with us and you obviously

01:02:30.380 you're you're smart you're you're a processor i'm very curious about the way you think we may not agree

01:02:35.580 on uh on a lot of things but i really enjoy this conversation i think the challenge that happens with

01:02:40.460 god with people about 12 years ago i started adding one thing to my affirmation list and it was

01:02:46.300 stop trying to be god that job's already taken you're not god let somebody else do that you don't

01:02:51.020 need to do that i think too often man uh and women we try to act like god to force our philosophies 1.00

01:03:01.260 upon others and i think taxation is force i don't think it's choice and it drives a lot of the

01:03:08.220 innovators insane when it's not by choice the last you know you know they asked jesus about that

01:03:14.220 in the bible so they said because there was a debate at that time and they they went to jesus

01:03:20.940 and they said jesus help us solve this debate because you have half the people saying taxation

01:03:27.260 is theft taxation is force which i think is what you believe i think by force it is yeah i do

01:03:35.820 and then on the other side they were like well you know it's really bad if we don't pay taxes

01:03:42.300 because look at what happens and so there was a group of people called the zealots who were basically

01:03:47.660 saying don't pay taxes they were trying to get everyone to not pay taxes i don't think we don't

01:03:51.100 pay tax just so you know i'm not yeah yeah i know i know it's a third i'm a third i'm a third is where

01:03:55.500 i'm at just so you know go ahead so jesus said well let me see that coin that you have your money

01:04:06.060 who's on it you know what they said caesar i've heard this a million times yep and so that the idea

01:04:14.780 that we have a financial system is something that is owned and protected by the common good so we've

01:04:25.420 gone to war for it i i don't i don't defend us going to war for it in in every circumstance obviously

01:04:32.460 and that's a whole nother topic that i you know i'm don't like war in general but you know people

01:04:38.860 have been drafted in our history and then also if you look at you know what happened with native

01:04:47.500 americans when we came here if you look at you know the history of slavery and how we got it's really

01:04:52.860 hard with all of that context to think oh this money all belongs to me and i should be able to keep how

01:04:58.700 much i want because i know the history of how how this became the way it is and i think the responsibility

01:05:06.060 that's there is to do things like pay high taxes so that that money can go back to making some of

01:05:14.620 those injustices trying to right some of those wrongs and i can't we can't look we can't go back and

01:05:21.820 change what you lived through as a kid right now we can't but what we can do is we can create

01:05:28.220 hopefully a future where fewer people will will be exposed to that because that is that's heartbreaking

01:05:34.780 that you went through that if we did an audit on your money last year what percentage your money

01:05:38.860 was given to charity oh i i i'm i i think charities like uh especially on the top end is kind of a a pr

01:05:49.100 scam for billionaires no no no i'm not talking about building i'm talking about you specifically i'm

01:05:53.740 talking about like you oh what portion did you give to charity or or how much money did you contribute

01:05:58.860 with time and money last year 2020 oh i'm i'm not i i'm not i i don't want to sign up for an audit

01:06:05.420 with you i might i mean i might like do that if i thought about it the only reason i'm asking that

01:06:09.900 question is because yeah typically the people that impose being the most noble don't do a lot of it

01:06:15.580 themselves and and that is a form of judgment and what i mean by judgment by that is let the other

01:06:20.700 person sit there and make their own decisions when you're talking about the money side i fully agree i

01:06:25.420 didn't sit there and see all those events that happened were uh great i grew up in a family where

01:06:29.900 my my dad was a 99 central cashier i don't know what it is to be well i've never lived in a house

01:06:34.220 i've lived in an apartment one bedroom we don't have a clue what it is to have money growing up as a

01:06:38.700 kid so i understand what it is to be that person last part of this interview again this is probably

01:06:44.220 going to go down as my top 10 favorite interviews of all time talking to you sincerely i want you to know

01:06:48.700 this sincerely when it's not enough and and the reason why one i applaud you that you agreed to

01:06:55.500 do this interview kudos to you salute to you for willing to do this because a lot of people say no

01:07:00.540 and uh secondly to be able to willing to have that discourse i think the audience won today

01:07:05.660 i think who won today is the audience that's sitting there saying okay this was great can we have more

01:07:09.500 of this and we're still laughing and joining each other's company and we're probably going to get

01:07:13.580 off and having a relationship together last part totally i'm going to give you a name uh tell me

01:07:19.100 what comes to mind and if you want to pass just say pass you don't have to say anything but if i put

01:07:22.860 a name out there tell me the first word that comes to mind um milton friedman

01:07:30.540 shareholder okay adam smith

01:07:35.100 uh misunderstood carl marx

01:07:37.900 um direction okay elon musk sad your favorite peter thiel

01:07:53.180 anger

01:07:56.380 bernie sanders um

01:08:01.580 consistency i agree he is for decades aoc

01:08:08.140 um future

01:08:12.140 type bill gates

01:08:15.980 i'll pass i i there's a word but i it's going to take me like an hour to come up with what it is

01:08:21.180 fair enough bezos 0.99

01:08:24.700 um

01:08:27.820 the worst really okay biden

01:08:30.860 please

01:08:34.780 did you say please like pleasing everybody please okay and last but not no no i didn't mean it that

01:08:40.300 way i meant i'm like saying please bro okay i got it okay

01:08:46.380 like please please i got it biden please and then last but not least donald trump

01:08:52.940 um

01:08:59.420 who okay fair enough well uh uh for the audience if you've stayed with us the entire time which i think

01:09:07.100 many of you have because this was very interesting the book worth it is a book that our friend here dan price

01:09:14.940 wrote how a million dollar pay cut and a 70 million dollar minimum wage revealed a better way of doing

01:09:20.380 business his book came out last year you can go order on amazon we're going to put the links below

01:09:24.780 and to get a hold of him if you want to give him any feedback if you caught any part that he made any

01:09:30.780 assumptions or i did let us know on twitter his handle we're going to put up right next to him and

01:09:36.140 my handle is going to be right next to me send us a message and tell us what you took away from this

01:09:41.260 interview dan price thank you so much for your time i really enjoyed it thanks pat really nice to be

01:09:46.220 with you you got it buddy so if you enjoyed today's interview i want to hear your thoughts there's a

01:09:51.100 lot of different discourse debate philosophy some of you guys that follow him are probably here

01:09:56.700 trashing this video i want to hear it all if you agree with me disagree with me agree with them

01:10:01.820 disagree with them comment below and if you enjoyed this interview some tells me you're also going to

01:10:06.460 enjoy my interview with professor leading socialist professor according to forbes magazine richard wolf

01:10:14.220 another one where we had a great time debating click over to watch that with that being said thanks

01:10:18.620 for watching everybody take care bye

Valuetainment - April 09, 2021

Millionaire Took Pay Cut To Raise Minimum Wage To $70,000 - Did It Work？

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