Paid To Create Podcast
Fireside chats with some of today’s best and brightest Creators
Welcome to Paid To Create, a podcast that features insightful conversations with some of today's most successful entrepreneurs and small business owners.
Join us as we delve into the minds of coaches, consultants, agencies, and experts from various industries to discuss their experiences, strategies, and journeys to success.
Our guests have a wealth of knowledge and expertise in their respective fields and will share their insights on what it takes as a creator to build and grow a successful business.
Each episode is a chance to gain practical advice and inspiration from those who have been through the ups and downs of entrepreneurship.
Our goal is to provide valuable insights and actionable tips to help you take your business to the next level.
Paid To Create Podcast
S2E7 Election Chaos: Is Your Small Business Prepared for Policy Shocks?
As election season heats up, we’re breaking down how political economics could make or break small businesses in the year ahead. From proposed tax changes to corporate policies, we dissect the stark contrasts between Harris and Trump on business taxes, revealing what these shifts could mean for your bottom line. Drawing lessons from economic crises like COVID-19, we explore the tightrope small businesses walk between staying profitable and keeping teams afloat, highlighting how the next election could tip the balance.
What happens when political promises clash with business realities? We dive into the friction between rising minimum wage demands and the growing role of tech, discussing how small businesses can stay competitive amid changing labor laws. With real-world cases, including Apple’s tariff struggles with China, we uncover strategies for navigating unpredictable trade and labor regulations, showing how profit margins drive growth, jobs, and benefits.
And then there’s healthcare—will policy changes lighten or worsen the load on small business owners? We compare the American healthcare system with universal models, examining the pros and cons as California grapples with its own financial hurdles. Wrapping up with a fresh look at tipping practices, taxes, and cultural norms, we consider how the upcoming election could redefine everything from your payroll to your profits.
Listen to all episodes of Paid to Create at paidtocreatepodcast.com
Welcome everybody to another episode of Paid to Create. Today we're going to be talking about political economics specifically for small businesses. The election is right around the corner. It's just a few days away and you know there's different reasons to vote. People vote for different purposes and this is all about small businesses and potentially, the outcomes of the election will have massive effects on businesses, depending on which way it goes, what policies actually get passed and things like that. And so we just we're going to talk through some things and kind of expand upon potential benefits, potential risks, different things like that, cause we feel like it's very important.
Speaker 1:We've been discussing it quite a bit and we figured you, the listener, is probably also thinking about this stuff. So let's start with just tax policies. Arguably, harris has said that she's going to raise corporate tax, raising it up. Trump said he's going to decrease corporate tax Percentages. All those things are kind of irrelevant. One side is planning to tax people who make money, businesses more to kind of fund or distribute wealth back through the government, you know, to people, and then the other side is trying to give as many tax breaks from that. So, looking at it from that perspective, how do you sit with those different facts?
Speaker 2:Well, I think that the Trump said he was going to keep the corporate tax the way it was or try to reduce it more. That's probably not great for corporate owners. For Harris's way it wasn't great for corporate owners, but Trump's would be beneficial to me a corporate owner. Keep my taxes the way they are. I always pay my taxes on time. It's super great, love doing it every time. But if it went up then it would make me want to start to make cuts elsewhere because I don't want my profit to go down, but I also have my own salary right. It has to be considered, and so if I'm looking at like when they made that health care the law, it changed the way every business did things.
Speaker 1:Because, when you look at the reason to raise taxes, usually it's because there's new initiatives, new things that need to be paid for. With the economic situation, arguably people are in need of money more than ever. You know, people are struggling. But the problem is, in my experience with business, when you increase the cost of doing business, which a tax is an increase in the cost of doing business usually the owners which, if you're private, is obviously maybe one or two people, but a public company, a lot of these public companies, these are the big corporations that have the most amount of employees Typically those additional costs aren't absorbed by the board or the owners or the investors. They're passed through, and they're passed through either from a standpoint of we're going to increase our prices, so the end user suffers, and we've seen that like.
Speaker 1:We've seen that at the grocery store, we've seen that at the Like. We've seen. We've seen these things since, since, you know, 2020, everything, everything we all went through. We've seen different corporations, different businesses trying to make up for money. They lost during those times, those difficult times, and they did it by increasing prices, and the prices haven't come back down. Hotel rooms are more expensive, you know, flights are insane. Flights have gone up and never come down. So when you look at that you go OK, if we raise taxes, then to me I see that prices will go up.
Speaker 2:Creating more inflation.
Speaker 1:And then the other side of it is during these times when companies struggle to keep profit margins because, again, if you're a public company, you're not in business for the end user, you're in business for your investors, and if you don't show growth every quarter, your job's at risk. So the only way to grow is to increase profit. And when, even if you raise your prices, if profit doesn't go up, the next step they often take is decreasing workforce and firing employees. And so when you create an environment that makes it harder to make profit, you set it up that people will raise their prices and that people will lose their jobs. In my experience, on the flip side, when you lower taxes, well, essentially it's not even a tax issue, it's the cost of doing business.
Speaker 1:When it's cheaper to do business, companies will invest in people because and you see, at some of the very largest corporations, they hire thousands of people more than they need, because they just don't want the talent going to another company. They don't want to miss the opportunity that one of these people will have a breakthrough idea. But as soon as times get tough, they'll lay people off, and they'll lay people off in the thousands, right, which, clearly, if you can lay off thousands of employees, you don't really necessarily need them in the first place, right? They're essentially not essential. So on one side, you've got a situation that potentially will allow companies to be more profitable without necessarily changing much. On the other side, you're trying to get money for something, which I understand, but you set up a scenario where it could have a chain reaction where things get more expensive and people lose more jobs.
Speaker 2:You and your logic, I don't know. Well, I mean, we saw that all through COVID. So you've got the grocery stores that are owned like Vaughn's company owns it, and so they have to have less employees staying this much apart. They can only service as many customers, so all of their costs went down, all their customer base went way down, so their profits went down. So then they had to raise their prices, and so now we've got the inflation. Yeah, if you tax them more, if you make it cost more to do a business, it's going to create that problem again, which is not what we want. Luckily, thousands got laid off on zoom and not webinar jam.
Speaker 1:That's true. That's true. We like to stay pretty lean, though that was always a choice of ours and there were situations where it felt like it'd be nice to have, you know, 20 more people. But I know at times when we had expanded without specific plan for each individual.
Speaker 2:Needing it necessarily.
Speaker 1:Yeah, or like just hiring for potential growth, not actual growth, right, like oftentimes that it would create issues. So that's something that is, you know, you look at as well with different companies. But you know, I think a lot of companies, when they have a lot of stuff in motion, they do need people, like I mean, look at, look at any company that delivers stuff, like Amazon, for example. Like during the holiday seasons, they have to hire more people because there's more deliveries. They can't keep those people hired when there's no deliveries, right. But again, go back to this whole thing If they're getting taxed more as a company, then they're going to expect maybe drivers to do a little bit more. They're going to try to operate with less drivers.
Speaker 1:But it's also going to be determined by how much money people are spending.
Speaker 1:And if people have less money because they don't have the jobs they had before, everything's costing them more. They're not going to be buying as much stuff and that's really like the key to success in the economy is people making money and then spending money or putting money into motion, like into investments, like you know, when someone spends money and they buy a house, you know, and then they rent the house out. Like, technically, what they've done is they took their money, they like they buy a house, you know, and then they rent the house out. Like, technically, what they've done is they took their money, they bought something, you know, and then they leveraged it to make more money but rent's cheaper than a mortgage. So the people you know and that comes to another policy, you know, when it comes to like, fixed rent and attacking, you know, these real estate moguls or companies and stuff like that. And yes, yes, maybe corporations are taking advantage, you know, like some of the bigger corporations buying, buying all the homes up because they can, because they have the money.
Speaker 2:Only five homes per company. You start another company and do it again five homes, so you just there's always a loophole.
Speaker 1:Exactly and I think that the the issue is is like even here in San Diego, where, where you know one of the most expensive places to live in america uh, when you look at like rent costs, like it's still cheaper to rent than it is to have a mortgage, so you can be mad that your rent is high, but why are you mad or upset at the landlord who is essentially giving you a place to live at a discount of what that home would cost you if you bought it yourself? That's a narrative that seems to be manufactured to take the pressure off of the banking system or the government to figure out how do actually people afford homes the banking system or the government to figure out how do actually people afford homes? Because when most people are paying half of their salary, if not more, for the home they live in, the argument could be that minimum wage is not high enough, which goes back to the economics of business. But I said this during inflation. You know we were talking about like end of year bonuses and things like that, and you know pay raises and all those things. Most of that stuff is about triple the price now, you know, not our self-worth, but like most stuff at the grocery store. You know like things have gone up. Yeah, either double or triple the price.
Speaker 1:If every business in America doubled or tripled the salary of every single employee to like match inflation right, I'm not sure we'd have many businesses that could survive. Because, yeah, there is some businesses that have 80% profit margin. You know, like a digital book publishing business, there's no hard, there's hardly any hard costs, but, like most businesses don't operate like that. Most businesses, if they're at 20%, they're considered very successful. And we have industries like the airline industry that operate at 1% to 3% if they're lucky. Restaurant industry, 1% to 3%. So how do you say that a business should be responsible for allowing If everything goes up? It's the business responsibility to make sure the the, the person on their team, can afford all that stuff at some point.
Speaker 1:There has to be something where it's that that is, you know, put into place to make sense of. You know, we can't raise minimum wage to 20 bucks an hour because you have what we have here where we have ai taking drive-through orders. Now to reduce workforce. We have computers that you put your order in to reduce workforce. We have self-checkout systems that outnumber the in-person checkout systems because, again, reduce of need for staff.
Speaker 1:So it's an interesting situation and on this point I'm not sure if I do see a positive of raising taxes unfairly to one group of people. I've always said I think of flat tracks across the board. No write-offs is the fairest way. But you never hear anyone wanting to do that. Because when you think about what this country was formed on and when you think about who made the rules like the super rich are the one who made the rules. So there's a reason.
Speaker 1:The first 80 pages of the tax code apply to the majority and the rest of the book that nobody really pays attention to. Where all the loopholes are is only known by the minority, which is the super rich, because these loopholes are in place so they don't have to pay taxes. And these are the same people who are funding these campaigns, who are putting all this money behind these candidates. And if they actually thought that, who really gets, who really gets taxed here it feels as if it's not really going to be the billionaires. Because again, you know, having, like you have stocks, I have stocks it's worth nothing unless you cash it out. It's not like you live on that.
Speaker 2:Oh, they're worth a lot less since COVID. But yeah, you know, but it did happen. When we did say, hey, every business has to. If you have more than five employees, you have to provide health care for all of your employees. It did happen. We did see inflation then and we did see businesses close or they'd cut people out and keep it under five people if they're a really small mom and pop or whatever but then they're going back to work you know, 60, 70 back to their I don't know dry cleaning business or something, because they don't want to hire out and then have to pay more for the same workload. It just costs more. But we did. Even while we implemented the healthcare change in our company, we're like, okay, it's going to cost this much more every month for all of our employees to have healthcare.
Speaker 2:Most of our employees are not in the US, so we didn't have that. We didn't feel it too much when we got the numbers together for our US staff. We could either cut some US staff or we could either cut some of that staff or we could make the insurance policies. What are we going to? Let them even pick? And I went to we covered, you know, a certain 50% or whatever, and then we've actually gone up from there. Now we cover more and we've had the big profit years. Now we're more generous with our profits, so it's a lot of what was spent. When you make profit as a company a small company, I don't know, we're probably smallish medium- we're considered small still 150 people is, you know, I guess that's pretty small.
Speaker 1:I think small business is like when you have less than like a thousand people technically.
Speaker 2:Oh well, then we're itty bitty. Okay, well, we did. Once we had the profits, we were more generous to our employees and we were spending it and went back into the economy. We saved them their health insurance money coming out of their paycheck and they had more to take home and more to pay taxes on and more to spend. Yeah, and that brings up Kind of down the rabbit hole. Work itself out eventually, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that's the other, like the policies on the labor law and the employment laws, you know, harris, seems like it would be more strict. There'd be more regulations in place, more limits on how, what's the expectation of working, you know, and some of those things like I think you mentioned the other day, like a salaried employee like doesn't get overtime unless it's over what?
Speaker 2:80. Hours.
Speaker 1:So like double what most people work.
Speaker 2:If your salary over 80 hours, you do not have to pay on them or on.
Speaker 1:Double pay right.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you just pay regular.
Speaker 2:Yeah For the overtime, which is wild 80 hours is insane.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so there's obviously some regulations in place that don't really make sense. But at the same time, again, if you create and I think Australia just did this where they put in a law that, like you cannot contact an employee outside of their work hours, which is a little weird too, because what if you have an employee in a position where, if your software goes down, you have to call them to come and help?
Speaker 2:you know, make sure it's okay. Like in dev, it can be two in the morning. We're getting them up because the software's down.
Speaker 1:It affects, you know, tens of thousands of customers, and that was one of my thought process, like we've had those situations where, you know, I've been like, depending on what your product or service is like for us. People use our platforms to make money. They're running promotions, they have advertised, running to their websites that are selling things.
Speaker 2:When our website goes down, motions are high.
Speaker 1:Because you know it's like, especially if it's on the day of their promotion, right, and all of a sudden, like you know, know they've sent a thousand emails out and the landing page isn't working because the software is down. So you know it's an all hands on deck situation and there's emergencies that require that think about police and fire and like things like that. When there's like serious emergencies, like it's not a work and not clocking out because it's the end of the shift, like some of these people are working double shift and they're exhausted but they do what's necessary. And so when I saw that and again, I haven't looked into it too much with the Australia, I just read one article but when I saw it I thought to myself you know, what's going to happen is is you're going to, you're going to get people who use that to their advantage, like you know, can't contact me, can't do this, can't do that and then you're going to have other people who see it as an opportunity and they'll be like well, I'm going to be the guy that always shows up, I'm going to be a guy that stays late, I'm going to be the guy that answers my phone, and they're going to move up the ladder and then people've agreed to execute on and you get paid for that. Where in that equation equals, I should give you more money for this job.
Speaker 1:And the reason I say that and a lot of people will probably hear that and disagree with me, which is fine but the reason I say that is because the truth is is most jobs, you can replace somebody and you don't actually lose much. You know there's certain roles that, yeah, there's a level of education they gain over the years, but most roles are pretty quick to learn and so, yeah, if they're highly skilled, you got to replace them with another highly skilled person. But the reality is is like, let's take support or something like that. Like, once they're trained up, you know if they have the skills already because they're coming from somewhere else, it's not that difficult to replace people. Um, um, you know, I think a lot of people overvalue themselves, even even at our level.
Speaker 1:You know, as owners of companies, you can overvalue yourself and what you actually bring, and sometimes you have to think about it and say, okay, yes, I can say I'm worth this or I can say that you know the value I bring is that. But the truth is it's kind of like diamonds, it's only worth what people will pay. You know if suddenly, but if there was suddenly a flood of diamonds on the market, the price would drastically drop. Scarcity, yeah, and it's the reason. You know, luxury automotive companies only make five supercars at three million. Well, first of all, there's not that many people who are going to drop that money. Second of all, if you make it limited, people who get it have a, so there's an incentive to them to have it because it's limited. If there was, you know, as many as people wanted made, people wouldn't be willing to pay the same price, and I think that that's something. Supply and demand.
Speaker 1:That's something when we look at it, you go okay, so if we're going to force certain rules in place and we're going to raise the costs again, raise the cost for a business to do business, and it's and again, not that everything we have now makes sense. There is things that definitely seem unfair, but I mean I saw headlines from 50, 60 years ago. They were exactly the same as the headlines are today, that that the owners make too much money and the employees don't make enough and the owners are greedy and we should tax the owner. Like this is narrative has been going on since the start of business. And it's like what's the incentive to do business if you just start taking all the money away? Like, why would you be an entrepreneur if the headache and the hassle you go through doesn't have a reward?
Speaker 2:If I have to pay more, I'm going to cut costs or I'm going to figure out how to make more profit, raise my prices. There's. No, I'm not going to. Oh, I have to pay more, I'll just take less. No, I'm in business to make money and I'm in business to make money for shareholders, family, et cetera. And some people go to work.
Speaker 1:They have a job they're going to go get a second job or have to work harder, find a higher paying job. So you have to just go round and round. Yeah, I think that's the thing Like people are going to figure out how to make more money regardless. But if you do it where you take it from the business and the owners of the business, like they're going to find more money in their business and they have only a few ways to do that, which we mentioned earlier raising prices, cutting employees. You know one of the policies that— Delivering via balance.
Speaker 2:That's our next product. I'm just kidding. She was she's brilliant.
Speaker 1:But another policy which actually I would side with Harris on, versus Trump, is the regulation. You know, in terms of like deregulation or regulation, right, harris is more for more regulation and Trump's for less regulation, and he plans to make money with the tariffs and stuff like that and bring companies back by giving it, giving them breaks on terms of, like, certain things. Now, he hasn't specifically said this, so this is just my assumption, you know, based on Elon constantly complains about regulations and and stand and get, you know, get in trouble for doing different things that he feels shouldn't. You know, and again, he's done some things. Well, I mean, most people do. But the argument that, like these regulations don't exist in China or some of these other countries, that countries that companies have outsourced to for cheaper labor or cheaper things like that. Therefore, we should probably do away with the regulations so that we can bring that labor back. That has bigger consequences, like it will improve the economy, in my opinion. So, like positive is like with that policy, like trump's thoughts on that, in my opinion, the the economy is going to get strengthened from it now.
Speaker 1:But in terms of the environment, the effects of the environment, pollution, things like that, when you hear stories that you know they essentially shut factories down when biden went to china so that the air was clean, and that, like when, um, you know the chinese I don't know if they call him a president or general or leader, I'm not sure what his president, okay, when he came over here to san francisco, like we cleared the streets of the homeless and cleaned everything up, like it makes no sense. But it's also very concerning because if you have to do that to appear like you're green and clean, like what does it look like normally? What are the effects to the people? Because I think, while there are some serious concerns with the environment, when you look at what peter de bondis has put out and the groups he works with, like we're actually getting better, like we're actually polluting less, we're causing less damage to the environment because we are more aware of it, so we're not just dumping all our waste into the ocean. Now are other countries still doing that? Yeah, but the old saying of well, he did it, so why shouldn't I? That's kind of an immature thought process if you consider the benefits of doing business in the way that we have over here.
Speaker 1:Now are there regulations and rules in place that probably are ridiculous and could be wiped to the side.
Speaker 1:Yes, you do need labor laws and you can't eradicate this stuff.
Speaker 1:Like you said earlier, there's certain things that it is good to have in place and protect people because, let's be real, in any position, any role, any, there's all good people and there's people who would take advantage of others, right and, uh, arguably entrepreneurs.
Speaker 1:There's more people who then, in general that that fall into entrepreneurship who are good at taking advantages of others. It it does tend to have a lot of people that you have to work through, but maybe that's just because you're more aware of it, because they have something to sell. You know, when you're working alongside someone like that, you know at a job you don't necessarily get that interaction. But my point is is that it does seem that the potential on one side is, you know they're going to make it real easy to do business, but in doing so they're not going to worry too much about the environment or labor laws or things like that, and then the other side, it seems like it's going too strict the other way. So it's kind of like I'm not sure I'm in agreeance with either of them on those policies.
Speaker 2:But what country doesn't have labor laws? That aren't the communist countries, that their taxes are ridiculously high? They don't get to live on much? Yeah, I don't, but they don't have rules regulations.
Speaker 1:They can make more product for us, for their country, but not themselves yeah, when you look at like, well, let's just say sweatshops, which you know, a lot of these things aren't. We have zero of those. We have, yeah, yeah, but there's I don't believe there's any in in the us, although you know, I do know that like they use, like in the prison system. There's a lot of talk about that being a sweatshop system. There's a. There's a lot of talk about other things as well, like these places that have bring in people with disabilities to do that kind of work. You know, arguably that's not necessarily like the best and arguably that's not necessarily like the best, like treatment of employees.
Speaker 2:I saw it positive because we had one of my neighbors who was sometimes our like ride to church or school. She had this one lady living with her. That was very, very, very special needs and she would take her to her job with her packed lunch and she would go and like, sort, like gadgets like this goes here, this goes here, orange goes here, blue goes here, or something, and she loved it. It was like some playtime for her. She's like I get to go to my job, I'm going to, I'm going to work hard, I'm going to get a paycheck and go get like a toy or a present from, you know, the person taking care of her. So for her it was a big positive. And then she got paid and that you know the government was paying, mrs.
Speaker 1:Smith to take care of this lady, but she was having a great life. So like there are ways you can do it right, but it's harder. Yeah, I think when you have good people running things, good things happen, and that's the. That's the. The issue I see that America's faced with here is that the candidates that are both running, or the party policies, because I'm not really sure. A lot of this stuff is just a candidate right. They have to run on behalf of the party, and so there's it's on the candidate.
Speaker 2:Yeah, some of it seems a little unsighted.
Speaker 1:When you look at it, it's like in this instance, you know, I'm not sure either direction is right or wrong. I think that that's kind of some of the issues here is it's like it seems like we're one extreme or the other, when it doesn't necessarily need to be, and going back to like labor laws and stuff. You know, one of the things you know the Democratic Party has been pushing for for a long time is this universal health care. You know, whereas you know I think Trump is probably going to not have anything to do with that, although he did say he was open to it.
Speaker 2:He tried to take it away and he couldn't. But you know it's also you can't. How much can a president do and make change happen? It has to go through Congress, has to go through the House, has to go through a lot more things. You can't just say I'm going to do all these things if the other sides of the government doesn't agree you, if the other sides of the government doesn't agree you can't do it.
Speaker 1:I just listened to an interview of someone who basically said it's very hard to get a lot done. Like they try to get as much done as possible, but like it's very hard to actually do everything you want to do. And it's set up on purpose like that, so that you know Checks and balances. Yeah, because essentially we just have two parties that have to get, like they work together. It's not like it's not like one party wins and the other party packs up and waits four years to get a chance. Like they're still in the senate and the house and you know they're still working in the supreme court and they're still meeting and they're still having that.
Speaker 1:There's still a lot of deals have to be done between the different people, especially states and things like that. So it's not as if the this us versus them narrative continues, like at some point. Publicly it might continue, but professionally they have to put their differences aside and and come up with things that they can both agree on and and move forward on. But when it comes to healthcare, you know, like when the healthcare laws changed before, having full coverage for a family of four out of your own pocket is not worth like it's bearing a catastrophe right Like a serious accident or something, where there's just millions like the cost is just astronomical but like it's cheaper to just pay as you go for like doctor's visits and stuff than it is to have health care insurance. It is insane.
Speaker 2:Until a certain age, when something's going to go wrong. It's going to be expensive. Exactly but then that costs the insurers more than they want. So you have to be in it when you're younger.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but like to have your whole family covered. You know you're looking at over a thousand bucks a month, over 2000, depending on what coverage and all of that Like. And we're talking about a situation you know if you're here in California and you have a family, your rent is the cheapest you probably got to rent for is 2,300 bucks and like I'm like that's like very hard to find here in San Diego for a house for kids. So so like you like an apartment maybe, but like so let's just say 2,300, then you tack on insurance for another thousand. You're at 3,300 bucks for just right there, then SDG&E with our electricity and whatnot.
Speaker 1:I just went up as well, that bill is like five to 800 a month for most people if they have AC. Uh, so if you have to keep that off, you know, maybe keep it three. But like you're looking at like four to five thousand dollars in expenses before you even start to buy food or do those things. So to be here and have a family, like you have to have two jobs or make a lot of money, or like both parents have to work, you know, and and for what? And I think that's kind of the.
Speaker 1:The struggle people have when they look at all these things is this promise of free health care has been floating around for a long time and it just doesn't really exist. And then for the people that do have like state health care, which is which is free you know it's paid for by the tax players but it's free to the person who's getting it um, the the quality of what they receive makes them not want to do the free stuff it's like, but but it's, they're forced into it. But they're forced into something that they don't necessarily get good treatment for. So they kind of don't get better or don't fix the issue, you know. So it's very controversial, it's difficult to really know what will happen, but when you look at it it's like I grew up in England. You grew up in Canada. Well, you lived in Canada for a very tiny period, but you know, we had, we were a board of kids. We went back and forth a lot. We have free health care in England, yeah, and what happens is is people with money just skip the line.
Speaker 1:So, like my nan she's passed now, but she like fell and hurt herself and she had to wait like six weeks to get in to get an MRI or something crazy like that. And then when she did it, she had to wait another amount of time to get like even an operation. It was insane and I was like, oh, they would have took you the first day and done it all within 24 hours and you'd be out the door over here and they just give you the bill, you know, but for her, because of her age, she wasn't considered. Because she's older, older, she got even worse treatment because it's like in their mind it's like, oh, she's old, she doesn't, she doesn't have a job.
Speaker 1:She's like, yeah, so you get, you get put on this list and people just jump over you based on criteria or if they can pay for it. So you know the people it's supposed to help. My point is the people it's supposed to help. I'm not sure it actually ends up really helping. Um, I imagine it does help in those catastrophic situations where you know someone gets in a car accident and they have to be life flighted and then they're in a hospital for you know, weeks on end.
Speaker 1:That's different, that that helps, because that would just be crazy. But in general, their general, their general doctors, the people they see regularly for issues, you know, like just getting an appointment and it takes them like a month to go be able to go see a doctor because there's so many other people waiting to see a doctor. And you know, anybody who goes to a doctor knows there's your appointments at two and you get, if you, if you get there early, you have to fill out paperwork and then you sit there and at three you go into the back room and you're like finally, and then an hour later the doctor finally walks in. It's like it's like the same as someone coming out to your house and say I would be there between 10 and four. Okay, that's a large window. Like you know, recoachable company. It's like do you not think anybody else works? Like how many people do you think stay at home nowadays?
Speaker 2:Well, it's funny, you have that experience because you're from England. But you know, my mom had my oldest brother in Canada and then she was like that was awful, because we'd never want to do that again. So every kid was born in the States after that.
Speaker 1:So free versus paid versus paid.
Speaker 2:But if you don't get good service. You usually hire a private insurance, so then you do like kind of skip the line or whatever. But my mom's favorite thing to say is hey, how much do you love the DMV. Well, that's a state service. That's what your hospital will be If it's universal health care and nobody's paying for anything. That becomes DMV workers, become your nurses and she's like here's your shower schedule, get up.
Speaker 1:And it's just a whoa, whoa, whoa. Yeah, I think that is a very good point, because when you look at government, we did talk about customer service and customer experience.
Speaker 2:Go ahead and flip it to universal healthcare and it won't be an experience. It'll go much lower.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the DMV is one of those things everybody's interacted with and you don't really ever I don't ever like I'm not sure why there's not Google reviews and B&B reviews. Right, because I guess because it is government, but like, yeah, I can't see them getting good Better Business Bureau reviews or getting a five star on Google.
Speaker 2:But they got one star. Who cares? You got to go to another DMV. That's still one star too. There's not a five star you want to go to. It's the same government, different building, different workers. Yeah.
Speaker 1:And the way around it is there's these little places that can go on your behalf and so you pay them money and they go through all the hassle for you. Yeah, yeah, I did it when I was in, when I moved to Vegas, and I had to do all that. There was just like a little place you go to and they go stand in the line and they do everything and they get your tags. They can, because you know, like, if you're a dealership, a car dealership, and you like acquire cars, you have to go to the DMV and like register and we'll do all these things. So they're like it it's other people can go on your behalf. Basically you know what, um, but again, it's a paid service. So, like you, you can technically skip the line because you just pay someone else to do it for you. Oh, triple a does it as well, okay they do some like changing um title registration.
Speaker 2:Unless it's an out-of-state car gotcha, then they don't. So the truck I brought my daughter not triple a I gotta go. Yeah, it'd be my favorite least favorite thing, favorite thing.
Speaker 1:But to your point, like that's the difference. And I think if you go through and look at all of the things that you've experienced as a listener, you've experienced that, were you know government versus private, that you'd be hard pressed to find a private experience that is as bad as a government experience. And what the reasoning is for that I really don't know, other than just lack of organization, lack of funding, whatever it could be. But you know, just look at private school versus public school. Like where would you kids, where would you rather send your kids? If you had a choice, right and you can go, private flights versus public flying, right, where would you rather? Fly? Right, everybody would rather fly private. So not that everybody can afford it and there is need for it. Like you can't just eradicate it and say, oh, like no, everybody has to pay, because then you end up in a situation. But the reality is is that I think people think that they're going to get something for free and there's no such thing as free.
Speaker 2:Nothing is free. Money's got to come from somewhere to pay for it.
Speaker 1:Someone's paying for it. It's coming from someone and you risk taxes, but you risk huge resentment too, right, like when someone's working as hard as they can. And there is people that have ridiculous amounts of money who aren't good stewards of it. But in general, like most of the people, most of the progress we've made in terms of in terms of environment, in terms of health care, in terms of world health, and in terms of poverty, in terms of aid, in terms of, you know, research and development, most of that is funded by super rich people that either have a desire to be, to give back, their motive to give back. Who knows, it may be a tax cut, it may be to do good.
Speaker 1:I think you often see a lot of people. They get to a point and they feel like, well, what's this all for they? They, they get to the question the meaning of life, right, and they come down to it and they go, oh, I should be helping people, and so they shift because they're not driven to grow a business anymore. They're like on the next phase of what's next for me, and whether what they do, we agree, is good or not good, like they believe they're doing good and they believe they're helping people. And so when you look at that, if you take that away, who is going to be those people? Like, who's going to fund these organizations?
Speaker 1:Because, let's look at it in a global perspective, like the US funds most stuff around the world. Like we are trillions of dollars in debt and we're giving billions away to other countries, how I can't get, like, if I have debt at the bank and I write a check, they don't cash the check for the other person and then just add it to my bill. I don't understand that either. So, so like, as a country, who's our investor?
Speaker 1:We're the rich country and we're giving money to the poor countries and I'm not really sure most people think this is a good thing, you know, because when they look around they well, wait a minute. Like, I understand helping people when you can help people, but when you're, when you're in a situation like if you're if, what do they say on the plane, put your mask on before you put your kid's mask on. That's your kid and they're they're even saying you've got to put your life before you put someone else's. Like, so shouldn't we put our country first and then, with the surplus and the extra, help these other places, because what we seem to be doing is trying to help people from an empty bucket. I'm not sure you can help people like that.
Speaker 2:Well, it comes down to politics too. And you look at their country and they can't feed their own people. What's happening at the top? Where is their money coming from or going? Where is there usually war and poverty issues? You have to solve those or it's going to continue just to need money all the time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, if the government official is living in a mansion and then you get a question is that money getting passed along the way it should? And I've heard horror stories about aid that gets sent to countries and then it's just put in warehouses. It's not even given out. So we don't have these problems over here. A lot of the things we talk about are such like advanced issues of an advanced society that it's like you know if they went and spent time in, like India or, like you know, africa, like with these tribes, they don't even have clean water, yet you know they have to like go to a river and scoop the water.
Speaker 1:It's like miles away, no-transcript, and I think this is kind of where business mind may not be such a bad thing to run the country is. When you look at most of the relationships we have with other countries, it's all through trade. So when we look at tariffs and policies there, trump's big on tariffs to replace a lot of the expenses that taxpayers pay for so he can reduce taxes, and when you look at it you go well, yeah, if they're charging us to sell there, why would we let them come here for free? And a lot of it has been for various reasons, but a lot of it's because American companies are the one who has gone and built in these other places and they're importing their product back to America.
Speaker 2:Well, how could the president make that change? It still has to go through Congress and the House, do you?
Speaker 1:think that would be voted Well, didn't they have the tariffs before? They all voted for it and then Biden came in and removed the tariffs. I could be wrong on that, but I mean I think some things trade and stuff like that. It seems like the houses, or whoever is, the final votes on that seem to be in. They seem to go either way.
Speaker 2:Well, we have done tariffs to a country we're punishing, we're giving them. You know you're not following all the rules, so you get some tariffs or whatever, like we do. Do that.
Speaker 1:Whether this is true or not. You know that plant that was being built in Mexico like the biggest car plant or whatever. You know they stopped production because Trump said he was going to charge such high tariffs. And what he's saying is I want them to build their factory right here in Detroit. You know, like I want them to bring that business here, not build it in Mexico so they can make it cheap and then drive it across the border. So I like that thought process. I like that thought process. But then I heard on a different, you know, interview that Trump did that.
Speaker 1:You know, tim Cook of Apple called him up because they had the tariffs for China, right, and he's like, hey, we import that from China. And like we can't afford these tariffs. If we do this, like our price is going to go up and it's just going to, it's going to kill the business. And he's like oh, well, here's, here's a special, you know, pass, you don't have to pay it. So a company that is a trillion dollar company Can't afford it.
Speaker 1:One of the few trillion dollar companies is saying, oh, we can't afford it, but I'm not sure if it's, they can't afford it as much as it's like well, we don't need to like lower profit. Yeah, we can keep money in other countries, like we don't need to bring a money back into America. And you know, like I believe Apple's like headquarters for, like technically is is Island, because something like that, because and I could be wrong on that Haven't done the research to really understand the entity structure, but I believe that the like you know, know, even google has like they get sued by the european but it's like it's like a subsidiary of, it's like google's own company over there. And I know like we were talking about that with like one of our entities in a foreign country. It's technically not actually the same company. It's like to us it's the same company but to them, like we're a different company in that country and we're not treated as if it's an American company, we're a company from that country.
Speaker 2:So yeah, that's where the idea came from. If you've got companies coming here and building their factories here, then you can say, oh it's, you know, now it's American dollars or whatever, and then America keeps a lot of the money. That's just what we do with some of our employees in our country is we have to start a company there and it's that country's company. It's not the same, you know, for us. We have to keep some of our cash that we make profit wise from our company there, because we hired some people there, which is really really hard to do and it makes it so, of course. That's where that company or that country is getting extra money from us. Besides that, we hired those people as employees and they pay taxes already.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's one of the things in the digital world that's been it's been amazing for so long like there's been very little regulation in terms of like where you sell, like if you have a digital, if you have a digital product, you pretty much can sell it anywhere in the world and you're not paying, like, the taxes locally. Exactly that's my point. Like all these things, all these regulate because they're realizing, oh wait, we're losing a lot of money here, like there's a lot of money, there's a lot of business being done that we didn't pay attention to. They're going back and they're going back five years and being like oh, you sold, if you sold more than 100 units in the state of Texas, you owe us taxes. And you're like wait a minute, the company's not in Texas.
Speaker 2:We have made sales in Texas.
Speaker 1:Exactly.
Speaker 2:It's a digital product Like oh man.
Speaker 1:So I think that that's something where, like, it may even not be in the future cheaper, and I think that's what trump's trying to get to, where it's like, hey, you can make your cars in you know wherever you want, but you're actually going to not be able, you're not going to be able, to import those cheaper than you could if you just made it here, and by doing that, I think it will bring business back to this country. The only downside to that and this is, you know, I haven't heard harris really talk on this point about I don't believe she plans to do tariffs, but I haven't really heard a talk against the tariff, so I don't know her standing on that, so I can't comment. But just from what I've seen with the democratic party and their kind of globalistic mindset, um, you wouldn't want to take business from another country because you're going to be hurting their people, because they don't see them necessarily as separate right? So, like I, I don't think they want to hurt another country's economy. Um, you know, which is? I'm not saying it's going to happen, but it is a potential issue if you're saying that you can't like if we're, if if america is putting up essentially a wall and saying we're not going to let any outside products in.
Speaker 1:Those that come in are going to kind of like, if you go to the grocery store, they have that international aisle and it's like the same food. Like I love it because I can get food that I could get in England, but it's like premium Like it's like $10 for like something that's worth like two bucks right, bucks right. You're paying a premium for it. Those companies aren't really that interested in trying to get their products over here. You know, like there's not an incentive to that. So we lose some of the international trade, some potentially, which is opportunities that we don't necessarily have.
Speaker 1:Also, from a manufacturing standpoint, I don't know if we have machinery over here. I don't know who makes the machinery, because, like you might say, oh, we've got to build a factory over here. But if all the machines Chinese machines because that's the only country that's been doing this for the last 20 years we're still going to have to buy the machines from China. So it's not going to make it. I don't think they'll be sharing those for free, right. So the game goes both ways is what I'm trying to get at. I'm not sure the tariffs are necessary. They're a good solution to make us money. They're a good solution to incentivize companies to come back, but I didn't see a ton of people flooding back to America the last time Trump was president, when we did have these policies and stuff.
Speaker 2:So now, if I have a country, I've got a couple employees that now are charging me, you know 25% more just to start a company over there and they'll hold a bunch of cash of the companies I own over here. It's like, well, I'm just I'm going to hire in America, even though it was affordable to hire someone from another country, that their money, they need less right To live on a good income. But now I'm looking at the US again, going, hey, shoot, you know, I'd like to just hire people here. I guess We'll pay more here instead of having problems and contracts and different labor laws over there, like I have to follow those now, which is awesome I do.
Speaker 2:We are very careful about where we hire and making sure we follow all of their. Do they get a break, do they get a lunch? All those things that we do do for the employees that we have. But it's easier if they're all in the US at this point, because it's getting harder and harder to hire in different countries. Out of all those regulations you have to be super aware of or you're in trouble and get fined.
Speaker 1:You know, I think that when you don't, when you're small and you're hiring like a couple of people, it's attractive because it's so cheap, yeah, of people it's attractive because it's so cheap? Yeah, but that's a little like in the grand scheme of things. It's a little delusional because we were talking and I'm not going to specifically say, uh, who, what, what countries, but we're talking about certain employees in certain countries and how, with all of the changes, it's actually not cheaper anymore. Like they're not getting. They're not getting paid what necessarily an American would get paid, but the cost of that employee to the company because of all the additional expenses now, with HR departments having to be there and, like you said, money having to be there and taxing. You look at it and you go wait, it's actually be cheaper.
Speaker 1:Like a lot of these international hires are like super enthusiastic, like so grateful for their jobs, really really good at specialty sales. They have a lower. They have lower expectations in terms of entitlement, right, they're not, they don't. I'll give a really good example here Year-end reviews US people they're like, they expect they want like 50 to 20% raise, like international people. Like you give them, you give them a standard living raise of 3%, then maybe a couple percent bonus. Maybe they get a 5% raise and they're like so grateful for it because they didn't have a sense of entitlement. But I also believe that's probably because the cost of living in their country and the money they make is what it used to be here.
Speaker 1:It's what it used to be here, and we've seen that shift over the years. We obviously had employees in lots and lots of countries countries we've cleaned that up a little bit so that's not as many countries because of the rules and regulations we had to cut back and because of always we had to form an entity in every single one of these countries. But like there is a difference between countries in terms of entitlement and expectations, now, and especially in countries that america has used for a long time, they want to be paid what the Americans are paid because in their mind they're doing the exact same job, so why would you not pay them that? And so there is an acceptance for less money because it's worth more to them. But the entitlement is growing in certain countries as we get more connected. It's coming.
Speaker 2:We did have a team leader in the Philippines who's super great, took different different hours. He could talk to us when we're awake and then talk to his team when they're awake and uh, he was like we paid him really well for the philippines and he was so excited he goes. I'm the guy with like the cadillac and like the levi's. We're like whoa, I guess it's like a big deal there.
Speaker 1:So I'm like okay, great, well, well done yeah, oh, and you know you can't really overpay for a good employee if, if they, because the value of an employee is is like roi, right, it's a return on investment.
Speaker 1:What's the return on investment when I know who you're talking about is overseeing a whole team of people and it's hiring and like make sure everybody's taken care of and and then the production from that team, what they produce and how much sure everybody's taken care of, and and then the production from that team, what they produce and how much money we were making off of what they were producing, because they were producing a lot of sales assets that sold product.
Speaker 1:You know vs video, sales letters, and you know images and graphics, things, that the things that we used, um, you know it. It's it a little bit of you goes oh, we were overpaying, but then a piece of you's like well, we're not really, we're kind of underpaying because if we had to hire a us person to do that, that would be a huge cost. So again, it's like in those situations, you don't as a business, we don't. We didn't tend to talk about that because it was like it didn't, it wasn't like an issue. You know, it was only an issue when the performance changed and then it it's like wait, how much are we paying for this? Like, oh, my gosh.
Speaker 2:Like, oh, okay, like now we're or one of us your fines and laws come in and then you're like shoot, it's going to cost me so much more now. It just doesn't make sense anymore.
Speaker 1:Yeah the risk, right the risk, and have campuses with 5,000 employees working right there, Like ah, I understand it's like rules and regulations and things like that, so it is very interesting, but I feel as if when companies do better, employees do better. That seems to be what I've witnessed. That seems to be what I've witnessed. You know, like it's very rare that a company is making a ton of money and simultaneously trying to not pay their employees, like nowadays, like because everything is so easy to find out. You know, like employees talk to each other all the time, you can't pay one person one thing and someone else a significantly different amount.
Speaker 2:You can't call them out to talk about it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you're not allowed to. Legally, you're not allowed to. Legally, you're not allowed to. And they do, and they talk to each other and for sure they don't.
Speaker 2:If one is coming from this area over here and they're Georgia, they need to make $11 an hour and we've hired them for $15. But in California we have to pay $20.
Speaker 1:It's like, well, yeah, they over there, happy over here, makes it harder, all right. So, as a small business owner yourself and and for those listening like, how do you navigate changes that come?
Speaker 2:as they come. You don't know everything. When you're starting a business and you start a paper out, you're like, okay, got the papers figure out, they're going to deliver into my. They want them in the mailboxes by noon. Which mailboxes counts? You draw yourself a little crown map or whatever. When we were little we had to figure out which mailboxes got a paper when we were on a paper route. And you figure it out as you go and you're like, oh, I got a paycheck for taxes.
Speaker 1:You know when you're go Like either way. We don't know what either way would result for you as a business owner, right? Even if it doesn't matter who's elected. Technically it doesn't start till next year Like. So there's time. So at what point do you start looking at, maybe, your pricing strategy? So there's time, so at what point do?
Speaker 2:you start looking at maybe your pricing strategy, your number of employees, like your policies, like your international. Like how do you prepare for uncertainty with the? Each candidate is saying you can take what Kamal and I are saying about raising corporate taxes and you know that that is probably going to happen if she's elected. So then you start looking at all those things Like is it less employees needed? Is more AI for support needed? I don't want that. I like the customer experience being really high.
Speaker 2:But if it is going to be a huge chunk of profits out of nowhere, I'm like, shoot, I should actually prepare for that and think of that. Right, a huge chunk of profits out of nowhere. I'm like, shoot, I should actually prepare for that and think of that, right. Same thing if we get the corporate taxes going down or staying the same, then I know what my profit margins are staying or getting better. So would I like to expand? Would I like to hire more people? Would I like to start another company? Because it's going so well? The money is still going out, whether you have stocks, whether you're starting companies.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that you should always be planning for all things. So when you look at it, it's like you're going to be in trouble if you don't know your margins, if you don't know your numbers, if you don't know your P&Ls, if you don't know your operating costs, if you don't know where you can save money, where you can't save money, if you don't know what excessive software you have. Like one of the things you always did was go through all the softwares that we used internally and say, hey, you guys still using that, because oftentimes we do a trial, we'd use it for 90 days and then it would get forgotten about. And here comes later as an annual rebill, and you're going wait a minute, are we still using this? Are we still using this? So I think there's a lot of waste, right. So like waste, right. So like if you, if you're running a company and you can't, like you don't specifically know where all the money goes, you don't specifically know what everybody does, you don't know the production, because you don't know how long it takes to do things, I like use an article, like to write an article, someone writing an article, you know, I I heard a thing like I think it was buzzsprout or one of these online, maybe digcom, like they're're as a writer.
Speaker 1:Their task was they had to write one article a day. That was it. That's all they had to do is one article, uh, I think like a thousand to 1500 words. But you know, they had to do research, they had to, like, it had to be a good article, but they had to do an article a day. That was when they did their article. They could go home.
Speaker 1:Well, you do that with AI and you're going to be done within two hours, right? Do you get paid for the day? Well, that's the thing. As a business owner, are you paying for production or are you paying hourly? Right? Because and that's the difference with employees right, some employees are hourly, some people are salaried, so you need to understand the difference in the roles.
Speaker 1:And then I think, as an owner of a company with technology, advancements, ai, all of those things you should have already been planning for not necessarily a reduction in your workforce, but an increase in your production and so like, if you're used to producing, let's say, one article a day, your team should be able to crank out more than one article a day now, and so you know, the expectation might be two or three articles a day, and again, that's for the individual to figure out. But these are all ways that, like you combat, you create growth, because growth is always going to combat any changes. Increased revenue is always going to combat additional fees. And it's like, if your merchant account suddenly goes, oh, we're going to, like all merchant accounts, go on the same path, and so it's 5% now.
Speaker 2:Well, they do have a monopoly.
Speaker 1:So it goes up. It goes up a whole percentage. In a bit we're going to take 5% of every transaction, Like, well, I can't not use you because I can't collect money. And if you go, oh, I just go over to this other merchant account and then, oh wait, they've raised their prices too, because everybody's in agreeance. You know, this typically happens in a lot of industries where they're not supposed to, but somehow everybody at the same time agrees to do the same thing.
Speaker 1:And we don't want them to you go wait a minute. Yeah, okay, I guess I'm going to pay the extra percentage. There's nothing I can do about it. But then you go okay, how do I make that? So if you already have the plan in place and you're planning for all these different things, if you're planning for an increase in corporate tax and corporate tax stays the same or goes down, now you just have additional revenue.
Speaker 2:So if you Generally, you're trying to grow your company. You, if you're trying to grow your company, you're trying to put out better products, more software, more developers. It's going to cost, so you don't always take that profit and put it in a jar in the backyard. You put it towards. If you have extra income, you either put it back into your company, invest in yourself and grow your company if you can, or you put it into someone else's company with stocks or a house and get the rental income if there is any At this point. No, but you'll be paying off an asset Eventually. It'll be a good thing. It's always going out. It's not staying in your pocket in your backyard, right. But if you're sitting around, someone's collecting more on that money, yeah, and so are you if what you picked went well.
Speaker 1:If you're a capitalist, which probably means you're going to vote for Trump, because business owners not everybody, but, like you know, most business entrepreneurial type people like and obviously that's not technically true there's a lot of people on supporting Harris who are business owners, but I'll use the word capitalist probably more towards the Republican Party now than that. But if you're someone who is sitting around like, oh, you're just waiting to see what happens. If you're sitting around waiting to see why you're playing a losing game, because you should always plan for the worst, because you never know what's going to happen and you need to understand how lean can you run, like what's the minimum you can run on, Because there may be a scenario out of your control. That's not an election. That causes that right. Like we had that during COVID.
Speaker 1:They had the chip issue for cars and so all of a sudden there's no new cars and the price of cars go through the roof. Dealers couldn't sell cars, so they were jacking the prices up to try to meet the profit margins. People were upset so they weren't buying cars, you know. Then all of a sudden they dropped the loan rates because they're like, oh, we get, so then people start buying cars at a premium price. You know you're paying 100 grand for a vehicle that's worth 50. Resell on secondhand cars was through the roof. People were selling their vehicles for more than they bought them to for the first time ever. Has happened. Usually you drive off the lot value goes, they drive off the lot value went up Weird.
Speaker 2:But if you're not prepared for any of this First time ever, the value of your car went up the lot.
Speaker 1:If you're scrambling, the moment something happens, you're rolling the dice on your future, whereas if you have a solid plan and execute the plan, like, okay, corporate taxes are going to go up, uh, we're going to get taxed on unrealized gains, like, if you start looking at that, so if we did, if you just if you just ask yourself a question, if this happens and everything goes to the worst, it could, based on what I know, what would be my game plan? Because then, no matter what happens, you're prepared. And, in fact, if you just implement that stuff, even with no changes, you should make more money. So you should be able to benefit from that. And again, I don't think it's a case like I've seen a case study scenario where it's like you know, ai can replace five of your content team. You know, from a business owner standpoint, what's the ethical thing to do. And I'm like the ethical thing to do is teach those five people how to use AI so you can create 15.
Speaker 1:Well, 25. Well, they're not all. You've got five. Five times five is 25. So you've got 25 employees with the same five people you had. You're probably right, like you probably should. You should give some some. Okay, we'll go through her.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I have a question. I know Um, I can't, I don't know where, where to take it. In my own, in my own head, I thought about it just very little, but when one of them was, it was a Trump said don't tax tips.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:What in the world is that benefit or negative? Um, if you get income, you have to be taxed on your income, no matter where it comes from. If it's cash, you're supposed to report it. I understand a lot of tipping generally doesn't, but you're supposed to be taxed on all of your income. But if you're not taxing tips, what is the point of?
Speaker 1:that Both parties have adopted that now.
Speaker 2:I don't understand it though.
Speaker 1:But so in the my understanding is that for minimum wage for restaurant owners it's a lot less.
Speaker 2:It went really high in California.
Speaker 1:Because they fast food, yeah, but for restaurant owners it's different. And weight the minimum wage, they factor in tips, tips, and so if and I don't know specific numbers, but let's say they factor in you do you know you? You, you make six bucks in tips per hour, so they go 16, which is minimum wage minus six. Therefore, a restaurant can pay you $10 per hour because you make six from the tip. So what Trump is saying is you'll get taxed on the $10 you get paid from the restaurant, but the $6 you make from the tip is just cash in your pocket.
Speaker 2:I know generally that is a lot of times how it works.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, that's the thing with cash. I mean, you know, you go to a tattoo artist, you go to anyone that can deal in cash, and they would rather have cash because they don't necessarily have to put it they should, but cash is not, like it's tracked or traced, which is a big reason I believe the governments in all countries are trying to shift towards digital currency, because then they can monitor everything. And I would love to not tip. Pay your restaurant worker a wage, but is food service that slim a margin?
Speaker 2:Well, I think tips are ridiculous, but it's because I grew up in England. If your food costs more, you go out to restaurants a little less. But then when you pay the price it's saying on the menu and you're not tipping. You can budget for that. You can go and get what you want when you're ready, when it's appropriate, and the workers get that pay and gets.
Speaker 1:I don't know. Yeah, I don't think tips should ever be fact. If minimum wage is $16 an hour, they should get paid $16 an hour and then tip on top of that is just extra. But we're at a point where if you don't tip 25%, you feel bad about it because you know the waitress or waiter is not making very much money.
Speaker 2:When they make you feel bad about it.
Speaker 1:If they did a bad job, I was like wait, wait wait, sure, but the crazy thing is, like I've said this before, I don't have preferences on where I eat, like it doesn't bother me if it's a chain restaurant, it doesn't bother me if it's not a five-star place, right, like I like expensive food and I just as much as I like a good burger and fries, right. So I eat a lot of different places and I've had some of the best service in places that are just like regular, you know mom and pop restaurants, and the food you know is $20, you know, and you give 25%, but, like, you're tipping way less than you do. If you go to a steakhouse where the steak is an $80 steak to start, so you get maybe a $200 bill and then you're tipping 25% on that start, so you get maybe a 200 bill and then you're tipping 25 on that. It doesn't necessarily the, the, the, the money you pay. Like.
Speaker 1:I would rather people think like, oh, I'll just, I tip 10, like I'll tip five bucks, or tip 10 bucks and like, or 20 bucks and you don't like, regardless of what the cost of the meal is. Like if you just tip five bucks every time, right, but in some restaurants they'd be like oh well, thanks, you know, because your dinner was seven bucks. You know like I remember Waffle House back in Columbus, ohio, where we used to eat. You know it's like you're spending more than 20 bucks is almost impossible there. Everything's so cheap, it is impossible. But you tip them five bucks and they're like do you need change? Because the cost of the bill versus the tip. In their mind they're like what? But then you go to a fancy restaurant. If you tip five bucks they'd be like what did I do wrong? Yeah, what did I do wrong? So again, there's no logic in tipping. So it's super interesting.
Speaker 2:We had this whole thing in Monaco where they would bring us a bill. We ordered this amazingly expensive, fantastic food because we're like we just want one really cool meal. All the rest we could budget, whatever. So we did, we got, you know, caviar to our room and we saw the bill and it was much lower than I expected and there was no line for tips. So I was like, what do we do? And she goes. Well, if our service is exceptional, you know some people tip around, you know close to 10%, but usually nothing. We get paid really well, because we get paid, we do a great job. We did a great job. We did a great job. The service was incredible. Even the Uber guy like this wasn't Uber, but it was like we got a car for the day and they said, okay, it's this much money for the car for the day and the guy will drive you anywhere for this many hours or whatever no-transcript there, so different.
Speaker 1:But again, it's because they get paid Like they get the tips on taken out of their wage, like it's like you get paid this much money and they're happy, like most of them are happy, right. Obviously, most people aren't big fans of their job in general.
Speaker 2:We tip at the pub anyway in England because we thought we should.
Speaker 1:But you tip and they kind of like it's like a weird thing there, whereas over here it's like if you don't tip and if you buy a coffee and don't tip, they look at you weird. It's like you stood there, took my order, they flip the screen around and it's got 15, 20, 25%. I'm going for a $6 coffee that you're. You just put it in the machine and the machine's making it Like it doesn't feel right. But if that person isn't getting paid and they're relying on tips now, as the consumer you feel bad, cause you're like you can't afford one more dollar.
Speaker 1:Well, that's true.
Speaker 1:I mean, I always tip, but most of the time it's out of guilt, because you live here, but most of the time it's out of guilt, like it's not necessarily, like it just doesn't make sense to me. Like I like the person getting tipped benefits. I like that they benefit because I think people should be able to make more money. And I think when you give a tip, you give it to a person and you expect that person to keep the tip right. I like if they split it, that's cool. But like when you give it, you don't give it and then hope they get 50 of that tip. Like you give them the tip you want to give them. So I like all of that.
Speaker 1:I just would prefer, like if I get my hair cut, that when they say it's 40 bucks, it's 40 bucks, not that I have to go okay, so it's 50 bucks, and send you 50 bucks like I would like to just be told. But it's the same as like when you like kids don't get this, you know piece of candy. Well, now it's like two dollars and 50 cents, but it used to be like 99 cents. So you take your dollar to buy the candy bar and they'd be like that's one dollar and three cents. So you'd be like what, I have a dollar, and they'd be like sorry, and every now and again they would take the pennies out of the thing on the counter. But all kids have had that experience in England. If it says 99, it's 99 and it's like here's a pound and they give you a penny back and it's like there's no guesswork and it's like for me. I just don't like the guesswork. It's the same with taxes. How much do I?
Speaker 2:owe you. Well, you get fines and penalties, but if they take more money from you than they should, they'll just give it back. No penalties, no fines. You can't fine them. I would love to.
Speaker 1:But they keep it for a while. It's not like they give it back to you immediately. It's like let us hold it for as long as we can get away with it.
Speaker 2:It takes years.
Speaker 1:So these are things I think this is like. Obviously, I'm not trying to get you to vote either way. You vote however you want to vote. A lot of people vote based on their principles and their like. Business has nothing to do, but if you are a business owner, you do have to think through the economics of business. You do have to think through the changes that are going to come, and all I could say is just be prepared either way, right. So have a plan either way, and you know one way you may reinvest back in the company and grow quicker. The other way, you might have to have slower growth. But make sure you have a plan so that, no matter what happens, you don't find yourself in this situation a year from now where you're like, oh my gosh, like we got it and you're in a state of panic. So that would be what I get Any advice on your side for business owners.
Speaker 2:I've never been in a state of panic, that's for sure. We have to make major changes like all of a sudden, and then it upsets all of the staff. I don't know. Like I said, the customer experience versus the customer service is a big deal to me as a customer of lots of platforms and then, as I want my customers to feel from my support, we like that part. As it gets more expensive, I explore more of the chat FAQs. That will solve the problems. There's less customer service ticket so I could save a little bit on customer service here and there. So I plan some of it. But the major changes when you do have to make them, are very hard. But you should have ABC in front of you with what changes you think are coming. Love it with what changes you think are coming.
Speaker 1:Love it. All right, everyone. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Whichever way you vote, we still love you. Hope to see you on the next one. Talk to you soon, bye.
