This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Jason Kelly on Bloomberg Radio. Let's add out to Wisconsin. Uh rejoining us is John Burke. He is the president of Trek Bikes. It's a family business. We got to know him a little bit, I believe late last year. Carol, My timeline is all uh messed up a little bit, but great to have John back with us. John, how are you. I'm great, Thank you very much for having me. Good. Well,
it's good to hear your voice. And I trust everybody as well in your family and things are going okay out in Wisconsin. They're doing very well. Thank you. So you are in a unique position. I think are in an interesting position, to say the least, as a business owner an employer who has spent a lot of time. We've read multiples of your books, you know, both the one that you put together about the company, the one
you wrote about your father. You are someone who has really been forward thinking and has made thinking about your employees and your customers really at the center of everything you're doing. How do you sort of synthes is everything that's going on in the world and look at it through that lens well, you know, I mean I've I've been at Trek for thirty six years now, and I've seen a lot of different things, and I've never seen
anything with the impact of the virus. I mean, these are unprecedented times, and so as a as a company, one of the things we're really focused on our customers. We've got five thousand small businesses around the globe and we're trying to figure out everything we can do to help those customers survive and help them get through this crisis.
These are your retailers, these are retailers. Well, tell us about some of the things that you've had to you know, some of the stories that you're hearing from them, some of the steps that you've had to do to help them get through this, you know. I mean it's a mixed bag. I mean some you know. One of the things that's good about being in the bike business right now is bikes are good for social distancing, they're good
for the ironment, they're good for people's health. And you're seeing a lot of people riding bikes, not just in certain cities in the US, but all over the US and all over the world. So there's actually, believe it or not, a mini bike boom going on in certain markets. In other markets, they're just closed. So we're having to
deal with the mixed bag. But one of the things we're doing is an example, is we're putting out a whole bunch of information as to how bicycles can run a safe play with both their employees and their customers. We're also helping people out with how can you help getting government assistance? Here. We set up a hotline within the business here. The other thing we're doing is, you know, we send out content on here's six ways that you can make it through the crisis. We're doing everything we
can to help those retailers manage their businesses. And so John tell us about what this outbreak is like in how this virus is affecting your local community and what that means in terms of you taking action for your employees. Well, you know, as as soon as the virus broke, we we got the you know, the senior staff together here and we said what our priorities and we came up with six six priorities, and number one was the safety for our employees and our customers. And that's something we're
super serious about. So we're having everybody worked from home. We have a small manufacturing group that works at the office. Um, I'm still working at the office just because I like being here. And when you come in, you get your temperature taken, you get asked a bunch of questions. But we're doing everything we can on a safety side here and we're doing everything we can to make sure employees
are in a good space. I mean, I'm just curious what your perspective is too, as you look at what's going on on the coast, whether it's West coast you know, or the East coast. Certainly big markets for you guys, Um, you know, but the the magnitude of cases and shutdown are you anticipating you know, something along those levels or I'm just curious how you see it? Well, you know, we you know, you take a look Michigan for example,
I mean, our business in Michigan is down. And if you take a look at the bike business, April is Christmas and the bike business and you're taking a look at big markets for a trek that are just shut down. And if you go to Europe you're looking at you know, a shutdown. But um, you know, thankfully there's you know a few other positive things going on just because of the popularity of the bike, and we believe. My whole message to the team here is we're going to use
this as our finest hour. We are rethinking everything about the business. It's a whole new world and when we get on the other side of this, we're going to be stronger than we've ever been before. That's what we're focused on. That's so interesting. So tell us give us an example of something that that you're rethinking. Are we talking some light chain, are we talking sort of retail relationships, like maybe all of the above, Like, give us an
example of something there. You know, we're talking everything, but I'll take you in one place, which is just digital. Um, most of our bikes are sold through retailers, and people walk into a store and they buy the store. Well, in this world, a lot of people home delivery. So our whole website has changed to you know, you can get on the website, you can buy the bike, you
can get that bike delivered at your house. Um. That might sound like an easy thing, but to pull that off, I think we pulled that off in less than a week. We're pulling it off really well. And it's all those sorts of things that we're doing, whether it's working with the customer on the website, our supply chain, the way we're dealing with marketing where our sales people are focused. Um, this is a new world and uh, we're adapting to it still with us. John Burke, president of Track Bikes,
on the phone from Wisconsin. So, John, tell us a little bit about this book that you wrote, Sixteen simple
Solutions to save America. Um. Timely, uh and thoughtful considering it is an election year, and I do feel like right now we are seeing some leaders step up to the plate and some really disappoint You know, after the two thousand and sixteen election, I said to myself, I was really kind of disappointed with the whole political process, and I said, if no one runs for the presidency who is competent or who has a plan, that I'd
do it myself. And so I spent the last two years of writing a book which would be my plan for the American people. And I got to the end and I decided not to run. But I decided, you know what, this is a really good plan and I'm going to share it with the American people. In the first chapter, and there's sixteen on sixteen Nonpartisan Solutions to
Save America. The first chapter is demand a high performance government it and I think we um, I think we deserve better as a people, and I think COVID nineteen is a perfect example of good government matters. And I think we've forgotten that as a people. And right now we're paying the price for poor leadership, and we're paying
the price for poor government. And what have you seen is this has has played out because we've been talking about this a ton, uh, John, as you can imagine, especially sort of sitting here where we are in the Tri state area and seeing mayors and governors, you know, candidly, regardless of your politics, sort of step to the step to the front. I mean this unprecedented. I think by all accounts, you know, even conference call that Weed saw earlier.
It really you know, brings that to mind, Carol, and similar things going on on the West coast too. And I'm guessing around you as as well, John, Um, what have you what have you learned about leadership or what are some of the things that you've seen that dovetail with what you're writing about? You know, I think a key here is, you know, Jim Collins, Great Business author definds a level of five leader, and he says it's
a it's a combination of will and humility. And humility is putting the team first and not putting yourself first. And humility is being a learn it all, not a know it all. And I think the problem we have with this administration is we have just worthy know it all. And if you take a look January, the first case of coronavirus happened in South Korea, and it happened in
the United States on exactly the same day. If you take a look at where we are now, if you take a look at South Korea, they've had less than two deaths. In the United States, it's over ten thousand. Our country is shut down. There's is not and worth spending two trillion dollars in the first first group of funding to try and get our economy back. That's the price of poor government is we missed this thing at
the start. Even though you had people like Bill Gates, you people like George W. Bush, you had Barack Obama, you had people talking about the potential of a pandemic, and for sure you had the CIA, you had other intelligence agencies telling the White House, this is what could happen in January, and it was ignored. Yeah, he said like, how do you you know, what do you do with that? Um, what do you do? What do you do with that?
Because it's not you know, this is something Jason, you know we've talked about this that you know, past administrations in times of crisis will lean on past leaders to be like, how did you do or what did you know or what would you do? Like and we're not necessarily seeing that this time round. No, And you know you're seeing somebody who's a self proclaimed genius and that's
not leadership. Leadership is a high degree of will combined with humility that you learn from other people, that you have the best experts, that you listen to people, and you go from there. And I think where we really missed it. A lot of talk is you know, where we allocate resources today when we open back up. But I think you got to go back to January. But John,
don't you also to be fair? Is I feel like and this was this has certainly been a theme of our broadcast here today is about to some extent, you know, we're seeing it now. The governor's coordinating about how do we reopen they understand this right, We didn't really see a ton of global cooperation either. I feel like among leaders in terms of dealing with this well. And I think, you know, one of the there's sixteen chapters in my book, and one of them is on the you know, importance
of a responsible foreign policy. We used to lead the world. We used to have a lot of friends. You know, if you take a look at, you know, some of the age old alliances that this country has with countries like Germany, um, those don't exist to the extent that they used to. And the United States used to be the global leader. And if you take a look at
where we are with COVID nineteen, we're not there. We used to be there, and we can be there again, but it takes leadership in order to make that happen. And in this book, I lay out here sixteen chapters, and I think one of the key things is is going forward, what do we learn from this pandemic, Because there's other big issues that people have been warning about. They've been warning about a nuclear holocaust. If you take a look at climate change, people have been warning about
climate change. If you take a look at the health of our people. The people in the United States today are obese, and by thirty it's projected to be big issues that need leadership. Well, and to your point, I mean, and we've been talking about this a lot, and we'll
have to save this for our next conversation. But you know, the other one of the big, big things that this crisis has laid bare is the deep, deep inequality that we have, uh that is structural in many ways, and when you see the victims of this crisis, it is very very clear. Alright, great to catch up with you. John Burke, president of Truk Bikes, joining us on the phone from Wisconsin. His new book, Sixteen Simple Solutions to Save America. Check that out. Think about all. You know,
we were saying that the virus doesn't discriminate. It does discriminate, I mean in terms of those that seem to be impacted, um, you know, much more dramatically. It's often a poorer population and minority population. It just we've got some problems out there that we really need to tackle.