The Todd Herman Show
Can The Unions REALLY Cripple America? Zach Abraham joins Ep-1869
The guy who runs the Longshoreman's union seems like a nice guy. “I'm going to cripple you, cripple this country”. We'll play that clip if you've not seen it. His name is Harry Daggett and he owns Yachts, makes 900 grand a year, and drives a Bentley while an average Longshoreman on the West Coast earns 100 grand. Plus there's some entertainment to come, I think, and it has to do with something that's going on at Starbucks. This has been a long time brewing.
What does God’s Word say?
1 Peter 5:2-3
2 Be shepherds of God’s flock that is under your care, watching over them—not because you must, but because you are willing, as God wants you to be; not pursuing dishonest gain, but eager to serve; 3 not lording it over those entrusted to you, but being examples to the flock.
Matthew 20:28
28 just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
Episode Links:
- It Begins: US Port Strikes Erupt, First Shutdown In 50 Years Sparks Fears Of Supply Chain Crisis
- What does a port strike mean for the US economy? Harold Dagget, the chief negotiator for the International Longshoremen Association explains: "I will cripple you, and you have no idea what that means. I do. Let me explain…”
- This is the key group of stocks to watch if the port strike drags on this month
- 500 Starbucks locations have voted to unionize as labor talks continue
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- Broadcast on:
- 04 Oct 2024
- Audio Format:
- other
Zach Capreham is going to join us to talk about things various, you know, like the kind union feller. The guy who runs the Longshoreman's Union seems like a nice guy. A more cripple you, cripple this country. And we'll play that clip if you've not seen it. His name is Harry Daggett and he owns Yachts. He makes 900 grand a year. Harold, pardon me, drives it Bentley. Average Longshoreman on the West Coast earns 100 grand. We'll talk with Zach about that. Plus, then the S&P drop in 1% and CNBC says they know why. Is that really why? Plus, there's some entertainment to come, I think. And it has to do with something that's going on at Starbucks. This has been a long time, Bruin. Bruin, I kill me. We'll talk about this with the help of our YouTube channel, youtube.com/atthetodhermanshow. And of course, with bulwark capital management, know your risk radio.com and courtesy of God Almighty. The Todd Herman Show is 100% disapproved by Big Pharma technocrats and tyrants everywhere. Now, from the high mountains of free America, here's the Emerald City Exile. Todd Herman. The day is the day the Lord has made and these are the times to which God has decided which he lives. Zach Abraham joins us its wise council day on the Todd Herman Show. Man, that Tim Walts, he's an exciting, calming personality, very nuanced, able to present things well without waving his hands around and turning right. Did you sit down and watch that thing? Well, I was too busy fawning over my school shooters collector cards. Not everyone saw the debate, please explain that. Oh, well, he's he's he's what a bizarre comment. He's I've made friends with several school shooters. We're like, you know, oh, I I didn't watch the whole debate. I read it. Yeah, I gotta look after my own. I have avoided these debates like the plague Todd. I read about them after the fact. Yeah, I just I just can't do it. Now, look, I work with guys who've been in jail in prison. And I've become friends with one of them. I think I consider a friend. I mean, we just hang out. I haven't that just reminds me. I haven't seen him a while. He's sick. I need to get in touch with him. But we hang out and I enjoy his company. Other guys that have been in the in prison, I mentor but man, they're not my friends. They're scary, right? They're there. And they don't know where I live. And actually, they've never seen my truck. Yeah, and it also it also points to I think somewhat of a spiritual vacuum, but but but a giant logic hole in so many of this, making friends with evil makes it no less detestable. Right? Right. It doesn't protect your home. Okay, you because you make for like, you know, it's it's like having a pet great white shark. Okay, like, don't don't get in there with an open wound and swim with him, right? Right. And it just it just goes to the idiocy of people. We were talking about somebody that somebody off the air or before we got on here, you know, that's kind of done a similar thing, right? Where you just sit there and go, you realize making them your friend or aligning with them makes you no more safe. Yep. Right. It doesn't it doesn't improve anything. And it I you know, to me, it's not even so much about who wins the election. Obviously, I think that's important. To me, it's a tragedy that that people this vacuous, this stupid and this unaccomplished have found their way to the tops of tickets. It with this little wisdom. I mean, just the guy, the guy's an idiot. And in all, in all sense of the term, I have to track this thing down. I mean, interrupt you, but I got to track this thing down. I used to work with a guy who was a major league mathematician, machine theory guy, machine learning guy. He had like three PhDs in math. He's just that dude. He did a mathematical model to prove that we were headed for the, what was it, an era of mediocre presidents. And it was based upon modeling of how elections are decided at the last minute by swing voters. You know what it is? I like him. Yeah, I like that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He's he's he's a kind uncle. You mentioned what pet a great white shark. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I'd be hyperbolic. No, I know. But you're the second friend to imagine. I've had a friend this morning. Tell me that he has a friend who has an ostrich is a pet. And this is true. He was explaining this that when he wakes up and he goes to feed the ostrich, ostrich hisses at him, tries to use that uber claw to kill him. And then he puts food in there. Then by the end of the day, the ostrich is just his buddy comes up rubbing against him and making like friendly noises. Goes to sleep. Gets up the next day at his groundhog's day and the ostrich wants to kill him again. People better understand this about the political process. That ostrich that's your friend during the election cycle, it will take that little prehensile claw and open up your jugular like this dear guy from the longshore menu. All right, let's let's watch this video. This is a guy named Harold Daggett combines salaries. He gets seven hundred and twenty eight grand as the president of the Longshoreman's Association National Longshoreman's Association. Another hundred and seventy three grand as president emeritus of a local union branch. According to political, this is all according to political drives a Bentley has a yacht that seventy six feet in length. And Elon Musk says, dude has more a lot yachts than I do. Watch watch this video this guy. These people today don't know where the strike is. When my men hit the streets from main to Texas, every single poor will lock down. You know what's going to happen? I'll tell you. First week be all over the news every nine boom boom. Second week guys who sell cars can sell cars because the cars ain't coming in off the ships. They get laid off. Third week. Mall saw closing down. They can't get the goods from China. They can't sell clothes. They can't do this. Everything in the United States comes on a ship. They go out of business. Construction workers get laid off because the materials aren't coming in. The steel is not coming in. The lumber's not coming in. They lose their job. Everybody's hating the longshoreman now because now they realize how important our jobs are. Now I have the president screaming at me. I'm putting a Tef Harley on you. Go ahead. Tef Harley means I have to go back to work for 90 days after cooling them off period. Do you think when I go back for 90 days those men are going to go to work on that pier? It's going to cost the money, the company's money to pay the salaries while they go one from 30 moves an hour, maybe to eight. They're going to be like this. Who's going to win here in the long run? You're better off sitting down and let's get a contract and let's move on with this world. In today's world, I'll cripple you. I will cripple you and you have no idea what that means. Nobody does. So Zach, in a second, I want to talk with you about that statement. I will cripple you because as I'm listening to this, I want to believe it's an idle threat. But something tells me dude is not idly threatening even with the big gold necklace. And look, everybody has your thing. My thing is health. Zach's thing to his degree is health to a large degree. And there are simple, simple hacks. You can make it complicated. Let me give you some hints. This comes from Tim for Ferris. This holds true. Don't eat foods that are white or can be white. In almost all occasions, foods that are white or can be white are bad for you. Now, there are some exceptions. I've learned that potatoes are a big exception for me. It's a great card for me. Eat foods you can identify on site. Don't drink calories. Now you take like a protein supplement or something like that. That's a controlled calorie, but don't consume calories. Never drink a sugar. Fruit juice is a sugar. Never, ever drink a sugar. Understand that anything sweet in your mouth like this gum I'm chewing, your body thinks his sugar and it will cause you to store fat. Got that? Here's another easy tip. Go to byoptimizers.com/todd, pick up a bottle of mass Zymes. This is a very potent series of digestive enzymes. It took them 243 experiments to land on the formula. They will release to us. I've gotten to use it. I love it. And now you get to use it. It helps maintain muscle because according to a test at Berkshire International University in Bosnia, it produces 1200% more amino acids in your body than eating food alone. That's muscle preservation. It can even contribute to muscle growth. Definitely digestive comfort is huge with this. I take it three times a day. Go to byoptimizers.com/todd, get 10% off your bottle of mass Zymes and all their products. And don't let poor digestion hold you back from reaching your full potential. So Zach, this guy, and he's got the gold necklace swinging. He's got that sort of attitude. The political reported, no, it was the New York Times, reported that he has been linked to the, was it the Genovese crime family? No, the telegraph reported that. That's weird. He doesn't seem like a crime family guy to me, but look, I'll cripple you. So he can, Kenny. He's going to make us, well, we probably should be careful. He's going to make us swim with the fishes, or sleep with the fishes. Look, here, this guy is the walking embodiment of the issues that I have with organized labor. Okay, so on the face of it, I have no problems with organized labor. If people want to organize and unionize, I think they should be allowed to. I don't think it should be something the government gets in the way of. I think it should be between the employees and the employer. And I think that in some industries, in some situations, I think unions are good, right? So here's the issue that I have. All too many of these unions have become simply political apparatuses where this guy and the education union, teacher's union, is the exact same way. They are political arms, the Democratic Party, and they are meant to enrich and empower those running the unions and their political cohorts. And the afterthought is the worker, meaning the worker's not even on the priority list. They're just not. And if you want to get an example of this, look at how the Teamsters union refuses to make an endorsement for president, even though their members overwhelmingly support Trump, right? And the teacher's union, same way. The most the highest paid person in education is the head of the teachers union. Why? Why is that, right? Why? Because she is being incentivized through the powers that be to hold on to the power of the teachers union and control them politically to get what they want politically out of teachers, right? And the educational system. And she has paid enough to make that a very lucrative job, just like this guy is paid, you know, is paid to do this with the longshoreman. It's, it's, it's a ruse happening right in front of your face. We're out here for the workers, but I make enough money off the backs of those workers, right? What pays him that 900 grand a year is taking money out of those people's checks. He's not doing the work. He's not taking the risk. He's not operating a crane at three in the morning and loading it on a ship, right? Just think yourself. And I think compensation, especially in situations like this, if somebody owns a business and they go out and produce a good and they make $10 million a year, that's their deal, right? Like, so they've generated that money. They've created that money. Good for them. Okay. This is completely different scenario. Ask yourself, why is he paid that much money? What? Why? Why would the head of a union of longshoreman get paid a million a year? Why? Right? Because he's doing something really valuable for deep pocket people. Who are those deep pocket people? His political alliances, right? That's who he answers to, not to the union. So this is the problem I've got with, you know, and I feel all too often in my opinion that because of guys like this, we demonize unions. And I think that unions can be good things. To me, it's all about context and the way it's set up and industries and all those different things. But there's this incentive issue. Like you're talking about his papers. Let's look at his incentive issue. He's incentivized to keep as many people employed as possible, regardless of whether or not they're contributors. Now, you know, and I know they're a longshoreman in women, for that matter, who are very proud of their jobs. They're aware of how integral they are to the economy. They may have heritage in this world and they may love their jobs. And you and I can look at a job like that. You were described unloading a shipping container at three o'clock in the morning. You and I would look at that and go, that's not what we would choose. I know people who like that line of work. They're alone. They've got clear deliverables. They've got their shift. Their shift is eight or 10. They get three, you know, three eights off. And they have a predictable pension package. It's solid for them. They go home and work is over. You and I works not over. Show prep is constant for me. Looking at the market is constant for you. So I agree that I don't want to throw those guys into this bucket, but he doesn't care about the people who don't like their jobs. They're going to work on slowdowns all the time. I'll never forget this day, Zach. This was so educational to me is I got hit in the back of the head with a two by four by a union member in 1995 when I was doing radio because I was talking about Kaiser aluminum in Washington state. There used to be a big deal. Funny thing. They're not a big deal over there anymore because of treatment like this. I was talking about the strike and I was talking about how good Kaiser been to people and I found out how much money the head of their union made in 1995 and it was 10 times what Kaiser workers were making and trying to tell them, do you understand? You guys are going to get a five thousand per year bump. This guy is going to get a hundred thousand per year bump. Do you understand this? And a guy got so outraged at me, we had no security in this radio station. He came into the radio station, came upstairs at the two by four. And just before he hit me solid in the brain stem, my producer yelled, "Herman!" and I ducked and it grazed my head. Later, a guy told me about quarter day. Have you ever heard about quarter day? I don't think so. Okay. So the union had argued into their contracts that their employees shouldn't have to pay their money for vending machines. They were vending machines on the Kaiser property, candy bars, soda, whatever, but they didn't ask the union's permission to get them there. So the union did a negotiation based upon, and I don't remember if it was once a week or what the timing was, everybody got a roll of quarters to spend in the vending machine. So here's what quarter day was. When there was an Apple Cup, Washington State versus University of Washington and football, or let's say the Seahawks made the playoffs, or there were Super Bowls, weird thing happened, the aluminum rollers ended up getting rolls of quarters in them. And it's a multi-million dollar shutdown. And the rule the union had negotiated was if equipment breaks, our guys go home. And the people who fixed the equipment come and fix the equipment. And that came to me from a union employee saying it was the union bosses who argued that into their ears. And Zach, I knew people who had three houses retiring as skilled labor and truly skilled dangerous shops at Kaiser. That was a smelter man. That's not an easy or fun or safe job. So then Harold Deggitt sits on top of this. His other incentive is to continue to bump pay no matter what it does to the country. That's the part that gets me. He sits on our prime coasts as the dude who's only incentive is more money, more employees. He doesn't have anti-incentive at all to even reach into his heart to care about America. And he says, "I'll cripple you." And I'm telling you, he can. Yeah. No, I mean, and so my comment about unions then, here's the next part, right? Everything has limits. The idea that we have a setup in this country where a guy like that can even make that kind of threat is ludicrous, right? Like that's just, I mean, talk about letting the inmates from the asylum, right? Like, you just can't do that. I mean, you can't allow somebody or some group of people to hold a sausage, right? So everything has its limits. But to me, it's the perverse incentives and union members need to know this, right? Like, meaning, you know, and part of me is encouraged because this might be the beginning of the end of the political domination of unions, which truthfully is going to serve union members better, quite honestly, right? Where they've got, you know, both parties see them as viable, which means that they're going to get more legislation. But so I think it will benefit them. But I think that this could be the end of, you know, this uneven leverage that these union bosses have in our economy because it's just, it's crazy to me. It's ridiculous. Right. And they don't get this math. I agree with you on all of that. There's this math. Software companies largely exist to find, well, not all of them, because some of them are just social media consumer apps. But a lot of software, a lot of AI exists to say, how can we remove humans? If I was an AI startup, I'd be going, I want AIs that drive four cliffs at three o'clock in the morning and unload ships. Yeah, that's the AI I want. And I'm going to name my AI Harold Daggett. And I'll give it one yacht and it won't use it because it's an AI. I wanted to ask you a question about investments related to this risk management and opportunities to capture maybe some profits on this, given that we are looking at least to shut down. We'll talk about that with Zach Gabrielham, chief investment officer of bulwark capital management. As I mentioned this, I just realized, dear God in heaven, we could be, we, okay, stop the show. Coffee. Guys, I can't finish the show. I've got to order more bone frog because some of this stuff has imported some of the beans. Tim, does everything you can to work with veterans. He's a Navy SEAL retired the three deployments on our behalf. Each bag says God country team on it and 10% of proceeds always go to the Navy SEAL Foundation. But dang it. I'm on subscription coffee. If you're not, you better get on subscription coffee because the shutdown is going to hit things like coffee in the empty store shelves. So get ahead of this, get over to bonefrogcoffee.com/todd, get 15% off subscription coffee, 10% off your first purchase. And if you're a first timer, first of all, what's wrong with you? Who hurt you and where? Point on the coffee doll. Yeah, I could see that hurting. I'm sorry, I asked. You should try the sample pack six four out samples of bonefrogcoffee, bonefrogcoffee.com/todd. And if you're not yet subscribing again, same question. Where did the coffee man hurt you? Just go to bonefrogcoffee.com/todd, get 15% off subscription coffee and do you better stock up because what the shipping thing is going to shut this down. So Zach, his direct threats were cars, clothes. He didn't say consumer electronics, but cars closed. Oh, patrol him gasoline. I mean, refined gasoline, et cetera. What do you look at in terms of a shipping shutdown as ways to get in and make, let's say, a vultures profit off of this? Well, one of the things that is looking interesting for a variety of different reasons also because of what you've got going on in the Middle East right now, there's a lot of thought that in retaliation to what I ran did recently in Israel is that the Israelis are going to strike back in some capacity. And there's a lot of thought and speculation that they're going to hit an area in Iran that is basically their hub for oil exports, refining all that kind of stuff. If you've got a scenario here where if these things dovetail and happen at close to each other, you could see oil rocket higher in a very short period. When I say rocket, I don't mean it's going to 200 bucks a barrel, but you could see oil pop back above 90, maybe even 100, depending on the veracity or the intensity and the damage done by an Israeli air strike, but you copy that or you pair that up with a strike, you could have some serious disruptions in oil supply. Now, would you go out there and buy a bunch of oil producing companies? Probably not. I mean, I think if you're trying to make the most bang for your buck, it'd probably be buying oil and natural gas futures. The reason I say NAGAS is it's trading very cheap and if oil, if they're become complications or issues in oil trans, being oil or global transport of oil through either one or both of these actions at the same time, NAGAS is what people will turn to to some degree where it can be substituted for oil and things like that. But probably betting on the oil in NAGAS futures and the event that those things occur, that's probably the way you'd make the most money off it in the short term. And to be clear, I don't think this would be a long-term issue. But yeah, that would be the way to play it. I mean, that's kind of similar to where we're looking right now just because I think when you turn around and you look at oil with all this being said, trading at $70 a barrel, to me, it's very, very hard to make an argument that there's any risk premium price in the oil here. So yeah, that would be probably the way that if you were to say, hey, let's bet on this one way or the other, what's going to give us the biggest potential win? Probably that. Okay, so I got to think that Harold Daggett knows. With his 900 grand a year, I got to think he's got that all laid out. This is the industries we're going to hit. This is the problem with bottlenecks of power. He could go to his men and say, hey, listen, let the oil in. Let's have the oil upfront, but some of this other stuff like these consumer electronics, they need to let's cripple them. He could be saying to iPhones, he could be saying to this stuff coming in the raw materials for this, that's the problem with bottlenecks of power, right? Because it just invites that. And I bet you Nancy Pelosi's long, if she needs to belong, she's known this is coming forever. And what you're saying makes sense about fuel, but I can control what comes into the country. Yeah, well, and like you said, this is what's problems with bottlenecks of power, because they always get abused. It's inevitable, right? Which is why you can't have bottlenecks. Everything has to have alternatives, right? If we believe in, that was some stealthy move there. I missed the fly though. Oh, see, you gotta be quicker on the rock. But that's where these issues stem from is, if you have the capability to do this, it's an eventuality until somebody does. It's out for bid, right? Eventually, if the benefit or the amount of money to be made from this reaches a certain level, somebody's going to pull that lever, right? Right. I had this idea, and I don't even know if this is, you're a dear friend. And so just tell me if this is insane. So what if we, I don't know how to explain this, drilled our own oil here? And then refined it here and ship it around the world. And look, maybe even made the cars here in the clothes. But you okay? Yeah, I don't even know. You're concerned about having a stroke? Yeah, this can take some time. You're pressing the stroke button on the emergency producer thing. Herman's having a stroke. Yeah, I, you know, the biggest issue you've got here, the production here in the United States is adequate. It, it, you know, the Biden and Harris administration haven't made it any easier. That being said, I think some of the talk about them preventing what they say and what they do is a little bit different. Okay, so, so very unfriendly language toward the industry. At the same time, they really haven't passed anything that's too onerous, right? So it's not, I mean, US production is back up close to or at all time highs. The real bottleneck here, and it makes absolutely zero sense is the lack of refining capacity. Okay, so they make it virtue. I don't think you've had a new refinery built here in the United States in the last 30 or 40 years. Don't quote me on that, but it's somewhere close to that. That's the real bottleneck. And it's just absolute absurdity, right? Like you're, you're giving those jobs away to somebody else. You're giving the money away from somebody else that is generated through that. It increases vulnerability to our system. It makes no sense. It's just complete ridiculous. The other thing is, well, climate change, the climate doesn't care whether you're refining oil here, whether you're refining it overseas. It's complete nonsense, right? It's just political dogma and BS. Great. And so, yeah, that makes no sense. But, but this gets into your point. Here's the right that the perverse interplays and the perverse incentives. You cannot convince me that part of the reason that there have been no refineries built in this country, and you look at the people that stand behind that the most, right? Politic, we're not going to build any refiners. That dovetails pretty good with their support of the unions, right? Meaning, I don't, these things aren't done by accident, right? And these are decisions and processes built to optimize getting elected, not what's good for the country. That to me is what is so heartbreaking right now is because so many of our elected officials, if you look, and this is my biggest problem with the insider trading issue in Congress, how it's legal, right? Why is it such a problem? Because it perverts the incentives. You, you have, you create all these new incentives for people to get into public service for reasons that are completely juxtaposed to public service. Right. It's just, it's to serve the public in a negative way. You've done been served, right? It's to not seek to be, not seek to serve, but to be served. Yeah. It's the opposite of public service. But, but these are the incentives that you've set up. And so it's like Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett's old, you know, colleague who passed away recently, God rest his soul. He used to say, I don't need to see the outcomes. Just show me the incentives, show me the incentives, and I'll show you what's going to happen, right? So, you know, what, what is the incentives for the union bosses to do? It's to do this. It's to cripple us. It's to shut us down. That's where they get the leverage. And then you look at the rest of the economy, and it's organized in such a way as to preserve that power for them. Exactly. It's just absurd. Did you ever meet a real mobster? You know, I think so. It seems to me that I did a reformed one. But yeah, I think so. And I'm blanking right now. I know I told you my Vegas story where I was just about murdered. Yes. Right. Yes. Right. And that was one of my favorite stories, very scary story. I used to work with a company in Utah, and they sold raw diamonds, really cool guys, unbelievably nice dudes, and they like to pay cash. So, they would tell me and my partner Rick, I mean, he did the afternoon show I did the morning show that, hey, look, just keep track of the ads you do for us. Write it down. When you want money, come and see us. All we ask is you, let us take you to lunch. And they would bring wads. And so, one time I'm like, man, I haven't been to see these guys in a long time. I hope this isn't too much money. And so, I call them, hey, you know, I'm sorry, I've been lazy on this. I mean, it's a lot. I can get it if you can't pay it right away. It's like 5,500 bucks. And no problem. It's a lunch. Let me tell you in a second how this went down because I'm not saying these guys are mobsters. In fact, there was something else. I learned later what they were and how they were able to act like they did because this was one of the great, great stories. And I want to get into what's coming at Starbucks. Speaking of getting served, what is about to unfold at Starbucks. And then I want to talk to you about unions on a personal level. If you've ever been pressured to be in one or had to work around unions. We'll talk about this in a second with Zach Abraham. Just to secrete to me, I have been trying to explain, and I'm going to get some images, and we'll run in the video, these stem cells I keep talking about, how they work. And if I just occurred to me, this bottleneck of power. Now we're talking about the ships and the ports and this guy, they get hold and rule over these things getting in. There's this bottleneck of power in the human body. So you have the placenta that surrounds the baby. Obviously, the umbilical cord will know what these things are. Those things are packed with these stem cells. And those stem cells jobs are to get into the baby and to do whatever the baby needs done to build baby. So some of the stem cells build hearts, some builds muscle, some build brain, and that's what they do. Now once the baby's built, you don't need all the stem cells. So that still packed with this incredible power. And here's what brand new health care does is the team there, Steve James and the Harvard Certified Surgeons, they work with women who are having babies and they pay for the entire birth process, whether or not they use the stem cells. Now why wouldn't they use some of them? Because they track the health of the baby and the mother. And they only work with great health outcomes. Now they still pay for the birth even though these are stem cells. They then take those stem cells, they preserve them fanatically, and then they take them to Mexico. And in their lab, they culture stem cells. So they're growing stem cells from stem cells. What they then do is take all that power and they use it in your body. So you might be being told you have to have spinal surgery. That might not be true. The stem cells could go in and rebuild muscle and tendon and cartilage and destroy inflammation. You might be being told you have to have your arm cut open and your tendon tunnel scraped because of carpal tunnel. Again, that might not be true. You might have a horrible neurological condition. I know of a woman who got hit by a car and thrown about 15 feet and they were able to help her. So it's not, not the same thing that's done in America, which is your own stem cells. They don't have that power. And at no time did they work with anything related to abortion, not ever, not once. These strain of stem cells I use have never touched the mRNA injections. That's because these stem cells were cultured before those injections existed. Find out if they can help you stay out of pain, stay out of surgery. Good to renew r-e-n-u-e.health care. Renew.health care. Elevate your quality of life. R-e-n-u-e.health care. So Zach, I was telling you about this company I worked with in Utah. Two really, really good guys, Bob and Keith. And one day we go to lunch and I call him and say, "Hey, that's like 5,500 bucks. Okay, no problem." And I don't remember what Rick had. Rick had like three grand. So all in these guys are bringing 8,500 bucks. I go, "Well, when do you want to go to lunch? Like, you know, tomorrow I need to get by the bank." No, you can come by now. Sweet. So we drive up and they just pop right out of their office. And they were very, by the way, very ethical diamond people. They wouldn't let you buy in the first time you came in. They show you how diamonds work. Here's the color chart. Here's the clarity chart. Go shopping and then come back if you want to use this. Right? It's totally ethical. We go to lunch and a guy comes over and he goes, "Hey, you're that Todd Herman and you're that Rick Taylor." And Bob and Keith are sitting there, "Yeah, yeah. Hey, nice to meet you. Oh, no, I'm not a fan. I hate you guys. You guys are ruining this state. You're perverts. You're no." And he's just all over us. And Bob said, you know, Bob, look up and he goes, "Hey, pardon me. You know what, we're having lunch. This is a business conversation. Can you excuse us?" And he's doing what I'm doing, chomping gum. Can you excuse us? No, I'd never get to see these guys. F you. Well, I wish you hadn't said that. I really wish you wouldn't have said that. Now I'm going to tell you to leave. I'm not leaving. So Bob and Keith both stand up and open their jackets and both of them have long rifles. So the semi-auto variety that hide really nice and easy on each hip and both indicate that they're there. We're going to ask you to get in to leave nicely. Guy puts his hands up and walks out. And just for good measure, Bob follows the guy out. So I wanted to make sure he made it to your car. I'll just be here making sure you drive away. Turns back and says, "Okay, guys, sorry." And he wrote, "Oh gosh, you know, let me pay you." And he rolls out these wads of money and rolled into the gangster role. And he says to me, "You get to count it?" I go, "I don't count money from guys who carry machine guns." And I trust guys who carry machine guns. I found out later that they were a massage, that that's what they did before they got into the diamond business and moved over here, that they went through that training. So not, I'm not saying they're mobsters, but when you confront someone like that or you see them confront, here's the thing I've noticed about them. Their blood pressure doesn't go up. They don't show any sign of emotion. It's just, "Hey, I'm going to, I'm going to ask you to leave and I'm not even the least bit worried about what you're going to do." Nuts. I'm offering you a free out here. Right. Right. Right. It's a coupon. It's like, yeah, yeah, that's the free door. And if you don't, won't be the first time, but for your sake, I hope. Yeah, it did be good thing for you to make a good wise decision right now. So Starbucks has 500 locations that have voted to unionize. Oh, this here, this here is going to be fun. What do you predict on this? Well, I mean, I predict that I don't think those shops will be open very long and I would predict that they shut them down. And if you want to point to the problems with unions, this would be it because effectively, if you look at a business model like Starbucks, it's not viable with unions. It's just, it would be too big of a competitive disadvantage to anybody that want to compete against them. The costs would have to get baked into every single thing they do. I'm sure I'm not telling any your listeners something they don't know, but it ain't like Starbucks is sensible financially already. I mean, it's so, it's going to be a disaster. The funny thing I think about though, is the management of Starbucks. Starbucks has lauded itself and held itself up as being very woke. It amazes me how often these people are all for, and it really is a trend you see in the liberal, especially the woke mindset, is that I'm all for this until it steps on my toes, right? There's an unbelievable hypocrisy built into the underlying part of it. You even saw it in the vaccine thing, right? Look at so many of the, like you look at the proponents, most of them are women that were like the first anti-vaxxers, right? They were anti-vaccines calling that out even prior to COVID, right? Those women, by and large, were liberal women, right? They were granola types, right? And then all of a sudden, you're fighting for personal liberty because you do feel it being infringed on all and you look at them and go, okay, this is a classic example of what we're talking about about a government having too much power. I agree with you. A government shouldn't be able to tell you what you put into your body, what medicines you take, but this is why I don't agree with your politics writ large, right? Because what you're doing is you're building an apparatus that will step on your toes. It's just a matter of time, and as long as they're not stepping on your toes, then you're cheering them on, right? So really, you're building up a machine of your own downfall and that downfall is purely based on inevitability, meaning it's only a matter of time until that steps on you. Oh, this is, let me give you the redneck version of this. This is the total redneck version of this. We were out at the Speedway one year and this guy, I don't know what went wrong. It's something to do with his wife. I was probably 13 or 14 and someone said something about his wife or did something to his wife or his wife did something with someone and this guy just got physically lit and he was hot, taken off the shirt, ready to throw down and all sorts of dudes are surrounding him watching this and some guy gets in and I don't know the relationship. I do know that people are like, "Yeah, yeah, woo!" And this guy steps in and he is just trunks and like three punches and then everyone goes quiet, but it's still cool. It's still cool until this guy, like the combatant, looks at everyone else and goes, "What the hell are you looking at?" And goes at another guy. Then this guy's like, "Wait, no, no!" Like, I didn't, guys, all of a sudden, now, hey, this isn't cool. Well, you thought it was cool and I remember as the 13 or 14 okay, go, "No, but wait a minute. You just thought that was really cool. I saw you." Right. Like, "Oh, yeah, no, take him down. Look at the punch! Oh, yeah!" And then this like drunk outrage, I don't know, dysfunctioned in his anger, dude, turns it on him. This goes right back to the ostrich scenario. Guys, if you can't see that a predator running your union, you think he's not going to turn on you? Do you remember Andy, oh gosh, I'm going to forget his last name. He was the head of the SEIU. I want to say Andy Stern. I do know this. He retired with 64 million dollars. The head of a unit. And these are people who are maids and hospitality workers, largely people who clean hotel rooms and maintenance workers in hotel rooms was their big base. People do home health care, service employee unions international. I wish I could remember that. But I remember we ran ads at the RNC about 64 million bucks and we got to take some union members once to Detroit and I wished dang these people they wouldn't release this video. They refused. It was gold in Detroit. Have you ever heard about card rooms in Detroit? Yeah. Okay. So for people who don't know this, there was a rule that the unions negotiated in to Detroit. If you, if your line of car was not being produced in sufficient numbers that you couldn't be employed, you still had to show up for, quote, work, but you'd go to a card room and you check in on a clock and you got paid, I think, 80% of your wage to sit there. They didn't serve food, but you could bring your own. They did serve coffee and soft drinks. So we went by one of the card rooms and offered to buy the guys lunch and several rounds of golf. Cool. So we took them out to one of the golf courses that's owned by their union, asked them to bring their union card, drove up to the gate and said, just cheer to play golf. Guys, get out their union cards on this. This is only for union management. Dudes are getting okay. They got a, I think a sweet deal. I mean, it's not a fun round sit around playing cards. Maybe there's maybe like that 80%. They're look at, wait, wait, no, but we're union. Call someone. I can't. You can't come in. You have to be union management. That the R and C wouldn't push that messaging out. If the predator is your friend one day, I remind you this, your house cat will eat you in three days. Yeah. If you die, the first day your cat's like, dang, things not feed me. Second day is, it's going to pee on you. You're taking up space the third day. Sweet, sweet meat. Yeah. The other thing is, why did he get paid $65 million because it was worth it, right? Meaning, meaning he was scratching the right backs and he's getting paid that much money for people like, well, it's coming out of the pockets of the union. It is, but what keeps him in power? What keeps him in power or the political apparatus to benefit off of those union votes? And that's why you made, and that should be the concerning thing, right? People should go, your incentive isn't to serve us, right? Your incentive is to, well, yeah, what do you mean? You vote for it. Yeah, but who do you vote for? You vote for the politician that come for the guy that the politicians come in and tell you you have to vote for, right? Because it's always a scare tactic. You get rid of this guy. Look, what he's done for you, you know, all this kind of, and it's just, once again, it's at the cost of the working man. It is. I want to ask you a question about starting over. I saw this fascinating discussion with a guy, and he's a big personality, big money guy. He builds gyms, and his thing is, you know, taking gyms from nothing to something, and he's a great brand, huge video presence on YouTube, and they did this thought experiment where you lost everything. You lost your family, you lost your friends. He had to completely start over in life. What do you do? And his answer was really compelling. I don't know that I believe it was quite as simple as he put it, because in 90 days, he was earning 50 grand a month, which, I mean, okay, maybe that's possible, but I wanted to ask you about start over stories and things where you've seen where people do have to start over, because I'm looking around the world, and I'm seeing a lot of people really, really panicked right now, Zach, about, well, gosh, if Kamala Harris gets in, I'm going to be crushed, my retirement's going to be crushed. What is it like to start over? We'll talk about this with Zach Gabriel in a second. My friend John did a bit of a start over. I mean, it was not, I mean, he didn't start life over, but he certainly started his career over. He'd earned and built a ton of, well, earned a bunch of money in digital marketing, and built a ton of respect. I wish I had his permission to share with you some of the campaigns he created. You would recognize them, many of them turned into TV campaigns, some of them turned into super bowl level ad campaigns, and it was office skill, and then they had their second son, Alan. Now, imagine being in the doctor's office, and you're looking at an ultra-centered son, and the doctor says, "Hey, we got an idea. Why don't we go ahead and snip his spinal cord for you and kill him and vacuum him out, or do a saline abortion and just burn your baby to death?" Well, so he and his wife said, "No, let's not." And Alan was allowed to be born, and yep, he has a lot of structure health problems, 18 surgeries. He's only 13 years old. He's nonverbal, largely through autism. So, John struggled with, "What am I going to do for my son? I don't want my son in public assistance. I don't want my son to be a creature of the state. He's a brilliant kid, just because he can't talk, doesn't mean he's not brilliant. What product would work?" And he looked at several, and he already landed on his soap, and here's why. You'll always need it. And none of the big soap companies have any particular caring about you. All the soap is sort of the same. It comes out of China or, you know, slave labor. It's all kind of, you know, chemical-based. So, John said, "We're going to do this. We're going to find a company that will mentor us in this." And they found a family company. All they do is make soap. They've done it for three generations. He mandated that the soap is all natural because Alan's skin can't stand anything else. And it has to be super gentle. And then Alan comes up with the fragrances. And then John said this, "This company, yeah, we're going to make a profit, but we're going to employ people like my son." That was one person, another two, and another three. So, you have this decision to make. I'm offering you a free out. Go to alansoaps.com/todd, get 10% off their products. They'll ship it to you. You can subscribe so you never miss soap or continue to serve the big companies that don't particularly care about you. It's alansoaps.com/todd. So, have you ever seen a great big huge startover story? Have you ever had to sit down? I mean, I know you and your wife. I mean, you guys had to build bulwark all those many decades ago, given what happened in the financial market. You lived it. But have you seen people who just completely blown it all and rebuilt it? And do you think there's a process to that that people go through? Yeah, I have. I've seen it with a few clients. I've seen it with a couple different business people that I know, some personally, some not so personally. Yeah, and there is a process. But the funny thing is, is that what I've seen is it tends to be a condensed process of what most of us know or what is inherently known about business anyway, which is you see a renewed focused on lower costs of overhead. You know what I mean? You think of all the mistakes that people make in businesses? And what you end up seeing is you end up seeing at least in my experience. And I think it's one of the reasons that so many people that go down that path end up being successful. And I think that so many times, we don't think about the startover story. We think about it as being the end success, right? Meaning, oh, they got here doing this and you're like, well, yeah, but you're ignoring the three disasters that they had prior to that. It's almost always that way, right? And I think the reason for that is you learn what not to do. And I think most of the time or in a lot of instances, what not to do is almost important than what you should do. Meaning, there's so many ways you stub your toes. There's so many ways that ego gets a control of it. And you start making decisions based on ego or other motivations. And those are always going to lead you astray, obvious. Because the business and the balance sheet don't care about your ego, right? But the one thing I see is a renewed focus, a flexibility, a lack of caring about what others think. And that's one of the nice things about failure is that out of the ashes of failure, you've already been laid low, right? And so nobody's looking up to you at that point anyway. So rebuilding it and making it correct, you're able to build it the right way without fear of being ostracized or people looking down on you. Because you're already in the ditch, right? Yep. I had a friend of mine who went through that. They went bankrupt as a married couple. And so my friend's like, look, I got to work. Whatever it is, I got to work. And he put ego aside, he'd been a software guy. And through the bankruptcy, he kind of developed not a great reputation because his business tanked and people were angry. And oh, he wasn't a good manager. And I don't know if he was a good manager or not. I know he's a good talented software writer, but people weren't hiring him. And there was a bunch of construction going on as a neighborhood. So he lowered himself, went over to one of the houses. This being built, says, Hey, I live right there and went through a bad stretch. I need work. Like, I've got a good math mind. I understand how to measure things. You know, I've never worked in construction. Well, we don't need no math. But I do need some people to keep our vehicles clean. And we also have made an agreement with the HOA. The road's always got to be clean. We got to keep the dust down. I can pay for that. And my friend sat there and got really purple about it. Like, I cannot believe this dude wants me to spray off his trucks and wash the street. You know, I did it. He looked back over his shoulder and his kids were looking at the window. Yeah. Yep. Yep. So, yeah, I went through something similar where it always involves, and it did for me, the burning away of that ego, right? It's one of the things we say here at Bullwork is, Hey, boys, egos are expensive, right? And what I mean by that is, I want, I've had similar stuff. We went through a time where we were starting Bullwork right in the beginning, and it wasn't paying enough. And so I took jobs cleaning people's decks, you know, was it, was it pride swallowing? Yeah. And but it was an enjoyable pride swallowing, meaning I got to come home every single day and look my wife and my children in the eyes and go, Dad did everything he could. Left no stone unturned. Yep. Right. And you want to build a real sense of self-worth and you want to build real confidence. Yeah. And you want to see that confidence reflected in your spouse and your children's eyes. Let them see that nothing's too nothing's too small, that you will do whatever it takes. It doesn't matter what it is. That's what my friend did. And when he started with the broom and sweep in the streets and keeping the streets clean, he got to use a big, powerful hose off of one of their trucks. And he goes home and his son says, Dad, that's the coolest hose. They've let you use that. Yeah. You get to use that. And here's actually how God worked through this thing is one day he was talking to one of the general contractors just visiting. And the guy's basically like, hey, can you get this truck? And you know, and hey, by the way, introduces himself. And my friend introduces himself. And he says, you know, he got to the point of putting it where he lived. And the guy said, wait, you live here? You're cleaning our trucks and you live in this neighborhood. What do you actually do? And he told them. And he said, let me ask you a question. Could computers do a better job of doing like my project management tracking than how I do it? And he said, well, how do you track your projects? And guy pulls out clipboards, papers and handwritten Gantt charts. And he looks at that goes, yeah, actually, there's off the shelf software that would help with that. But I could write you something custom for construction. And your general contractor, I could build a program where you're the people you contract with could feed into it. They could complete their tasks. You could track who's on time. I could tie it back into payments. Like if you were paying people based upon percentage of completion is completion at this date, he goes, wait, you know about percentage of completion? Well, I'm just guessing you do that. That's how I would do it. You could create that for me. Yeah. So he did. And now my friend, lives in Idaho in a 5,000 square foot home with a helicopter. There you go. And guess, guess what's if you ever go visit him? Guess what's in the lobby of this beautiful home overlooking Corley Lake? One of the brooms or the house? Push broom. There you go. And the tip of the hose. Yeah. The what would be the thing that would blow the water to produce the water? The nozzle. The nozzle of the hose and a push broom. And everybody who's new who comes over, you're looking at this gargantuan home, this beautiful circular driveway, this view of the lake, and everybody sees that. And everybody says, why on earth is that there? Well, let me tell you that broom built this house. Hey, that, no, man, that story gives me tingles because there's something when you're when you're laid low like that and you're completely stripped of any of that pomp and circumstance and you just you can't put on a front anymore. There is there is a beautiful simplicity that comes in and you're able to see you don't even realize it prior to this, but you have so many preconceived, I'll do this. I won't do this. I don't want when you're laid low like that, it's I gotta put it. You see so many more opportunities and you realize how much your own ego was holding you back and how much your pride was holding you back and what you won't do. Right. And then it becomes all about what can I do? Right. And and it's it's when you're looking through those lenses, you just see possibilities everywhere. You got nothing to lose. And so you roll the dice and you go after it hard. Yeah. And and the other thing is getting to that point where you where you've been that humbled. There's something about it, man, where God can work with that clay at that point, you know, right? Right. You're right. Yeah. Guys, like, oh, hey, the clay's good and warm and soft. Yeah. Yeah. It was a little. Yeah. Right. Now that we can get to work and do some things. That's so good to hear you put it that way, brother. Thank you. So it's good to have you on wise counsel day, Zach is available at knowyourriskrated.com. But if I'd said no more, then I have to pay that recorded announcement that disclaimer, but he's available there. Great radio show, great podcast, great man. Appreciate you, my brother. Oh, I didn't hear back from Zach. I guess he doesn't appreciate me. Now I feel bad if he'll lost. I feel oh, you muted him. Oh, so he could have been saying thank you, but you muted him. Oh, well, thanks, Niana. All right, Lord. Thank you for reminding us not to Lord our power over others. Thank you for reminding us as well to seek to serve and not be served. This is the Todd Hermit Show. Please go be well. Be strong, be kind, please make every effort to walk in the light of Christ. [Music]