I'm losing everything. Everything I own is being taken away from me and they set up a movie company, right? Next to my outdoor patio, which is right over here. And people wonder why I'm protesting. And why I have had enough. They have not given us money and they have shut us down. We cannot survive my staff cannot survive. Look at this. Tell me that this is dangerous. But right next to me as a slap in my face and we need your help. We need somebody to do something about this.
Welcome to Keith's night, don't try it on anyone. And the libertarian Institute today, I am joined by Carol Roth author of the war on small business, how the government used the pandemic to crush the backbone of America. Miss Roth, where is the best place to get the book. So I always tell people to support their local business Bookseller, if possible because that money stays in your community about 67 cents of every dollar.
If you don't have access or you like to order online, there's a wonderful place called Bookshop. Dot-org that fulfills from local business booksellers and right up at the top there page. You can see all the money that they have helped get to those small businesses, which is really meaningful. So those are, those are my choices but I'm the capitalists as long as you get it. You know, that's up to you links to those will be in the description below.
Miss Roth, closing small businesses in the middle of a deadly. Pandemic was necessary to save lives. How do you respond? Why was it necessary to close? Small businesses and not the big businesses that were next door. I didn't notice that there were any pools of death that were reported from either of those locations. I'm uncertainty as to why you could go to a big box retailer and get your pets Nails, groomed
and your pet's hair done. But I couldn't go to a beauty salon and get my nails done or hair done and why there was that disparity between the employees and certainly if you had any day Or science to back that up which nobody did you would have to compensate people for taking their property for the good of society. That's eminent domain within the, the Fifth Amendment of the Bill of Rights.
So you know if you were going to make some sort of scientific and data-driven reason why small business needed to be shut down for society. There's a compensation piece that went along with that, that was absent. None of this was done Based on data and science. It was done based on political clout connections and I have yet to see one piece of data that proves otherwise, When it comes
to what the closures? Did you find any correlation between people who stayed inside versus people who didn't lock down countries or cities or states that lockdown? And those that didn't, how can we actually put this Theory to the scientific tests? So certainly, I am not a data scientist, but I am a numbers person. I've been in the numbers realm my entire life and early on.
It was very clear that the Tactful Factor was if you were older or if you were very heavy and obese and may have had some additional risk factors that way it wasn't based on other factors. Now, certainly we know that the spread outside was different than the spread inside but we were never going to stop the spread of a virus.
I mean that was an insane thing and I think we have proven that out that, you know, now, multiple years later, regardless of the plays even if you Were on an island and locked it down, you still cannot you prevent the spread of the virus. The idea was to slow the spread or to protect the people who were vulnerable and I think there are definitely been some folks who are within the medical community.
That will tell you the opposite that will tell you the the fact that people weren't able to get sick and get over it and develop natural immunity actually potentially prolonged it. So, you know, the The and you can look in by country of the younger populations did better than the ones that had the older populations that thing. Same thing by States. Also, the states, that decided they were going to have mandates where they put covid patients back into nursing homes.
That skewed data because obviously, that created a lot of contagion and unfortunately, deaths in the beginning, and those skewed numbers that models were built upon erroneously thinking that, that was representative of and Higher populations, instead of just you the people with those risk factors. So it was sort of sold to us as sort of putting paws on the TV. We're sort of putting pause on the world and then when we come back, we'll just pick up sort of
where we left off. How would you explain the secondary tertiary consequences of things? Like the lockdowns to people who say? Well, you didn't go to work. Most of us got checks. And then we went back. What are some of the costs are down? Sides of these lockdowns. All right, so let's back up a minute and, you know, the interesting part. We talked about lockdowns, depending on where you live or your personal experience. You're going to have a different perspective.
But most people seem to believe that there were Broad lockdowns and we were all in this together and that very much wasn't the case that the brunt was born by small businesses. As we know those bigger competitors were allowed to stay open and people who had alternate means of working were allowed to continue on. Doing what they what they did the stock market was well supported, you Amazon's
Warehouse could stay open. So it is able to continue on for much longer than those proposed 15 days to slow the spread because the people with those cloud and connections were impacted, if those had been shut down, if you couldn't go to the grocery store, you couldn't get your Amazon delivery and you're stuck, you know, portfolio was in freefall, probably those big entities with Cloud. What is that?
This is ridiculous. We can't do this and it would have shut it down within those 15 days but because they weren't impacted. And they were actually benefiting and multiple ways both from their competitors. Being closed as well as the support from the Federal Reserve as well as all the stimulus. You know, they love this. This was a huge bone Anza for them.
So, I think that that's sort of the first piece, the second piece as you alluded to. Was this idea that you could just turn on and off the economy, like, you were power cycling a modem or I think you said hitting pause on the on the TV and assuming that there wouldn't be any impact, and this is unfair. Fathomable because I've had discussions with people all along going. These are the kinds of things that are going to happen.
I wrote them about them. In my book, they disrupted the labor market, the way that it was constrained, in terms of the way that they structured it to make it more constrained and had a bunch of people, leave the labor market, three million early retirees, two million legal immigrants, that otherwise would have come in and a bunch of people who traded crypto started, side jobs or just said you, I don't care. I'm just not doing anything. Thing.
Because of the way that this was structured and that created this epic supply-demand imbalance in labor, it sort of wreaked, havoc on the supply chain and with all of the stimulus and the FED intervention that went along with this created, as we know and are living through historic inflation. And just it, every part of the way, it's insane. Like, if you said, well, you really need it.
Did the feds come in and prop up the stock market because you know, there were liquidity issues or it was an emergency or whatever. Ridiculous reason you want to come up with then you can say fine. But when did it ceased to be an emergency because this happened in March of 2020 by June 5th of 2020, the NASDAQ had an intraday record high. So if you have the stock market hitting a record highs, I would say, that's no longer emergency
that you need support. Yet the FED continued to Press rates, it continued to add to its balance sheet. By the way, neither of those policies were stopped until a couple of months after we hit 40 year, historic highs on inflation. That's something that should have been seen in The Distance by quote-unquote experts that are making multi-trillion dollar decisions and impacting our
economy. So all of these issues the inflation, the disruption of Labor, the disruption of Supply, you know, other supply-demand imbalance. Isis have created an environment that really is, frankly hurting
everyone. I mean, it really at the end of the day was all for naught but the people who are the little guys, you know, the average person on Main Street, the average small business is much, you know, in a much worse position to be able to weather that than somebody who is wealthy a business that is well, capitalized and can take a long-term View. And so all of this just ends up being an epic, long-term wealth transfer. The magazine or website Jacobin actually had a tweet.
It didn't come to me until now, but it actually reflected what a lot of people that I went to college with would say that look these small businesses I don't care if they go under their greedy profit-seeking institutions. If they all burned down tomorrow well tough luck. That's sort of like a predator drowning. Why is it that small businesses are not these terrible things. That we should see as parasitic, but they're actually a net
benefit to society. It's so fascinating to me that the Socialist faction, you know, doesn't like the little guy like this, it's hard. It's a lot of mental gymnastics. I might have to give a gold medal in mental, gymnastics for that one, because it is, you know, the opportunity for each person to creates freedom, and economic freedom, and to create wealth, and to do well for themselves. And it's a Push back on these big corporations and big special
interests and big government. And you would think that that, you know, if you're somebody who wanted to support the little guy, that would be great. You don't want Amazon to have all that power, you don't want Walmart to have all that power. You don't want your name, the company to have all of that power. You want that to be dispersed amongst the people write as isn't that the spirit the principle of what we're talking about.
Well, that's what small business does, you know before covid if you Took the economy and cut it in half. You would have in the hands of what's now like 30 2.6 million small businesses, they created about half the GDP and almost have the employment and the other half was concentrated and like 20 plus thousand big businesses. So, yeah, I don't understand why they would say that these small businesses are the ones who are greedy.
I mean, they're fulfilling a need in the market if they don't do that, then they end up. Going under but they're competing in a contest that is rigged.
And that's the problem is that you know if they were competing in a fair contest it maybe they had some advantages and some disadvantages you know you let it play out but when you know the referee goes and gets with the people who are judging in says, well you know, let's just change everything around so that the big guys win, that's something you would think that the people who care about the every man would certainly be
behind. I have a A Time explaining crazy but, you know, that's kind of the basis of it. It's very easy to work to explain if someone voluntarily offers you products services or a job that's evil, exploitation the running around, burning down your city. Well, that's your good comrade and we need to unite with them against the best, but force force versus free choice. So that seems like a really interesting Dynamic there. Always always, okay, lockdowns. Weren't that bad.
They only closed non-essential. All businesses. Tell me. Well, first of all it you can explain how that's a lie but talk to me about this term non-essential, how they issued this opinion to the public and they just separated people from the essential in the non-essential. This was bizarre non-essential to whom not Essential by whose decision. I mean, if you're putting food on the plates of your family, it seems like you're pretty essential to your family if
you're offering a value. Keeping your employees employed that's value to them, that flows through the community. Like the idea that the government would like put people in these boxes, I mean, in a sense, I'm glad that they did it because it, put it pretty much out in the open and it shows just how dangerous this sort of collectivist attitude is the thing. I find the most fascinating, you're now being able to look back on what's happened.
After a couple of years, is that the People who were essential in the people who were Heroes. Once they didn't comply once they decided that they didn't want to get vaccines for whatever reason, they didn't believe in him, they had already
had it and natural immunity. They had a religious exemption, whatever then all of a sudden you were essential and you were a hero and you work the whole time but now you can no longer have a livelihood because we've now changed what we have deemed as important to our narrative and you are no longer. Going along with that. So apparently you were very essential than but not so essential now and you know, that that's what happens when you allow some group of people to
make these decisions. Instead of this being based on individual rights and free choice and opportunity, they decide they make decisions according to what they like, and then that shifts at their whim and that is not a way to have freedom to have wealth creation to Have set a success or any of the other key ingredients that you would want in terms of an economy and a nation chapter 5 is selling out Main Street to Wall Street, the federal reserve's decades-long role in
helping government transfer more wealth to the wealthiest, what is the Federal Reserve? How is it an upward transfer of wealth in its activities? So the Federal Reserve is the Central Bank of the United States.
It is a Quasi-government agency. It's supposed to be independent but they get their Authority from Congress and if they make a profit, they give it back to the treasury and they all sort of, you know, collude on what it is they're going to do so, is it really independent, you know, wink wink nudge nudge? Sure, sure its independence. But they make the monetary policy decisions, and somehow think that, you know, changing around interest rates and now going in and meddling in
markets. And In a buyer of Treasury Securities or mortgage mortgage back Securities, somehow is the ultimate way that they can ensure that we have full employment and stable prices. Now, they've done such a good job of stabilizing, our prices that we have now based on their decisions, in conjunction with what they've enabled from the government in terms of overspending, we now have you know, historic inflation. So I'm going to go ahead and say
they're probably not That great. But there is this weird Nexus of power between the, you know, the Federal Reserve and the sort of financial services company the treasury and the government, big business interest that all work together and they create these like crazy, boom and bust cycles and because they the wealthy and well-connected have the balance sheets to be able to wait that out. They end up benefiting, you know, they on the upside have more Stood.
So they do well then. And when things go bust and all the little guys are sort of flushed out of the market. They act in the sort of vulture Capital way and go in and pick up whatever is left at bargain-basement prices and our position for the next run up. So that's really over the last 30 plus years kind of how I viewed.
The FED really started with Alan Greenspan and his Greenspan put where he was basically saying I'm not going to The market ever go down so much without intervening, you know, basically allowed for excessive risk-taking. And, you know, basically, they think they, they project that they're smarter than everyone else and that they are going to do a better job, but really, it is just a mechanism to make sure that their cronies are taken care of and it ends up being a
wealth transfer. So it started with Greenspan Bernanke under at the Great Recession financial crisis. You took it to Another level yelling perpetuated that and then Powell, you know, what he's done over the last couple of years is just complete Insanity and yet he was rewarded with another term so they are all in it together.
It's a really bad thing for our economy and for wealth creation, for stability of our money and unfortunately it is opaque by Design, not enough people understand it and so we don't have people like they did you. Back in the 80s marching on Washington. You know for what the FED did. We should be doing that now but there just aren't enough. People who really fundamentally understand the mechanism and that really is by Design. Chapter 8 is protecting the
smallest minority. How individual rights and capitalism set the foundation for economic freedom. What is it? That you mean when you say protecting the smallest minority. So this is an Ian, Rand Sort of concept that the smallest minority in the world is the individual. And so, if you really want to protect going against the grain of the mob, you have to protect the individual and the
individual rights. And which we have been endowed by our creator and those are the most sacred government's job isn't to be a nanny. A fairy godmother, a sugar, daddy, a provider or whatnot that there the way that are Representative constitutional republic was formed was for them to uphold and protect our individual rights. And unfortunately, they have done just the opposite. They've gone into the position of subjugating.
Those and you know, becoming all of those other things, sugar, daddy, and Fairy Godmother. And what nods to basically, you know, our detriments, you know, the closer we get to that, that free market, free choice scenario, where we have the guardrails of property rights and individual rights being protected, the more prosperous we are.
And frankly, everybody else ends up being, you know, by by default and as we've moved away from that, you know, that's where people who are working and saving and you're trying to do the right thing and still not able to get ahead and I kind of can't Peg what's wrong. You know, that really is the core of what's wrong here. So if I'm someone, who sort of sees the world as an oppressed versus oppressor, kind of Layout and I just want the working class to do.
Well, I sort of throw these things like, you know, Screw the Canadian truckers because I have to because I support your doe. If I really just want to help the working class and the poor, I just want to give people opportunities. Why should I embrace this sort of pro small business for Pro free market ideology? Well, I would just look at the results. I mean that the people who have been, you know, quote unquote, Press tour.
Had the fewest opportunities are those, you know, typically in urban areas of big cities, like you, my city of Chicago that are controlled by those people who espouse those values yet, I have not seen the benefits being ascribed to them, you know, they're not Building Wealth. They're not creating opportunities for themselves to get to the next level and pass things on to the next generation.
We pay for their schools, but they're their schools are certainly run in a worse manner than those that are in wealthier neighborhoods. So, you know, basically by saying we're going to trust somebody else to know what's best for us instead of ourselves. They've given up the opportunity to create and participate in that economic freedom. I can tell you from somebody who comes from a financial background, I've been an
advocate. It of wealth for the little guy because I've benefited from it. My father was an electrician and grew up on the west side of Chicago. You know, my grandmother used to wash paper plates, not only through the depression, but the entire time that I knew her and, you know, was the first person in my family to graduate from college wealth, comes from ownership and it comes from owning anything, owning a home investing in stocks and owning
that owning your small business. But in order to have wealthy Have to own something that appreciates in value. That's what creates wealth and being on the government Dole never does that. The government doesn't create wealth, they have no mechanism to create wealth. All they do is move Dollars around, but we know that doesn't work. We've seen lottery winners who won tens of millions of dollars who end up bankrupt because they were just given something. They were given the skills.
They didn't earn it and they didn't invest it in something that that created that wealth opportunity. If we want people to be able to participate in wealth, they need to participate in ownership and having a decentralized free market economy, accomplishes that we're having something. That is a centrally planned. Economy were saying we're seeing what happens to that, you know, five dollar gas, historic
inflation. These are the things that happen when the people who think they know better than everybody else. Take Don't? We have living proof that. Now, people can point to I, like what you said about giving people the opportunity, because you can think that even below minimum, wage jobs like internships that pay $0 an hour. Well, this is so bad. We need to outlaw these.
Well, look, you can have all the opinions in the world but give someone that opportunity if they want it offer them an alternative and that's why the opportunity aspect is so different. Thomas, Soul sums this up very well. He said the very same people who say that the government has no right to interfere with sexual activity between consenting adults. Believe that the government has every right to interfere with economic activity between consenting adults.
How has such a scam been able to come to fruition and full so many people blatantly in so many high places. I think we could spend an hour on several quotes, right? I mean, it's not, so he's so incredible and, you know, the way he talks about greed and the way he kind of What's one thing against each other? I don't know. I think that people just aren't principled and, and I put this on both sides of the major aisle. I know that your libertarian and, you know, kind of in the
middle. But you know, if you look at the two big classes, neither of them has sort of a strong commitment to principles and individual rights, it seems like they like big government when it suits whatever narrative that they have and it is a good question to ask people as we know why do you think this is okay? Hey, when that's not okay. And it's never based on a basic principle like, oh, because you know, I believe in the protection of the individual,
right? It's because I believe in this, but I don't believe in this or I understand this and I don't understand the other thing. And so it's a very emotional and visceral response and I completely understand and don't blame people. I mean I wasn't educated on a lot of this myself, even though I went to, you know, the arguably the best undergraduate business school in the world.
It wasn't until I started accidentally getting involved in the political realm that some of these things really kind of occurred to me. So it's not something that's taught probably by Design and you know, it's unfortunate and we lack economic and financial literacy. And you know, that creates a pipeline of people who think because they don't have the vision and the deep understanding that that's going to make people's lives better.
I also think there is a piece of it that is trying to Outsource personal obligation used to be that when we had issues, they were solved within our communities. And with Charities, and by taking a personal responsibility. Now, people feel like well, I can just pay taxes and I will off, you know, offload this to the government and I'm sure they'll take care of it and since, you know, I'm not paying as much as somebody else.
Like, you know, I'm okay with them paying more, and it's a people are just Kind of looking at it from a selfish perspective, which is okay, people are self-interested, but they have to understand that everybody else is self-interested to and that works not just at your level, but at the government level and that's why these things that sound great in theory, aren't in reality.
And I had to tell you Keith, you know, there is this like huge decoupling from reality that we're living through right now whether it's the oh were the mmt, the modern monetary Three or I call the Magic Money Tree, folks, who say, oh, well, we could just print as much money because we've got the printing press, like, it doesn't matter. Will never default done anything because we can, we can just print more.
You assuming that there was going to be no consequences to that or the people who are pushing the green agenda and being like, we need to, to be green and decarbonized and trying to move us away from that without having a viable replacement that works today at scale, you know, at an appropriate price. You've got people who are living in fantasy worlds and it sounds nice to some people, you know, rainbows and unicorns but in reality it sucks.
And so we need to get back to reality and have the reality check and we now have all of the data of which I'm sure somebody's going to say, oh well you know it was different or it wasn't really tried the right way this time. But no we need to just stop indulging the fantasies and go. Can we listen to your Insanity? We get that you feel this way.
But in reality, this is not how it works and have that reality, check that come to Jesus meeting with people who are living in a complete fantasy world because they have had the privilege of living in the United States of America during an unusually prosperous time. The best time to ever be alive in history, the best place to ever live in history and this is the anomaly. This isn't the isn't the rule and I just think people don't have enough.
Depth and worldliness and understanding of History to really have a grasp on that or reality. Yeah I wish the modern monetary theorists could just make a phone call to Haiti and tell them you idiots print more you're welcome, goodbye help North Korea. Bob way works out well for their Raylan, turkey's turkey, it's good going great there. Raise the minimum wage just just do it, but there's a study, the impact of regulatory costs on small firms 2010 from the small business.
Advocacy Association, the cost of federal regulations by Farm by Farm size per employee, seventy seven hundred dollars for big business, 500 or more employees and 10,500 for small businesses, meaning that every additional regulation, literally helps big business at the expense of small business, giving consumers, less choice and employees, less choices. What are, what is some reason that people should have to?
If that regulation the idea of helping the consumer or worker actually hurts the consumer or the worker, so I can just give you an anecdote. Because as we were talking about sometimes just the seeing what happens. Makes it more clear to people. So I have a scenario. For example, I have a small business in Chicago and I have a worker who works from home on computer answering emails and you know, doing that kind of thing a very highly dangerous
job, right? Sitting on your computer and I have to spend thousands of dollars a year and lots of paperwork headaches, getting them Workers, Compensation Insurance. Now again, if I they're working in a dangerous Factory with blades and sticking their hands in there, I can understand. But please anyone, Keith explain to me, why does my worker who sits at home on their computer? Have to have Workers Compensation Insurance, there's no reason. And by the way, Happens to be my
sister. So you know what I like and even like it's even dumber. So the the thought is that your that's money that it cost me to have this employee that could be going to that employee or it could be you know with the other stupid regulations and things that I have to pay for other other people and other facets of my business could be going to hiring more employees and growing the business. But instead is going to the prophet ears, it's going to
these insurance companies. Our big who have lobbied the state of Illinois, who brags that they have more Insurance firms that work with them than any other state out there, which I don't know why they're bragging about because you they're all seeking rent they're all sticking profits at the expense of my small business and so I'm not getting to direct that and I'm not doing that in a way that is adding to, you know, profit centers and making people's life better and
increasing productivity. Tivity, it's just a money grab and I have a small business Community, I serve a them a few years ago, they said they spend forty percent of their time on administrative items and things that don't directly produce Revenue. So imagine even if you cut that in half, how much extra time letting a small business owner, focus on growing their business and adding to people's lives and adding to the economy and getting more workers.
Like, you know, how much better that would be for? Them the community is the people who work for them that the opportunity for wealth creation and so on and so forth.
But instead it's constrained in government you know BS in my new shh and as you said the smaller the businesses you know we don't have human resource departments or you know these people who can we can just kind of offload this to this is coming from the people who are wearing all of the different hats in the business and it ends up being very, very costly.
You wrote a book, The Entrepreneur equation, evaluating the realities, risks, and rewards of having your own business, walk us through some of the myths about entrepreneurship. So my favorite myth is that you get to Be Your Own Boss, right? Like that's that's what the the Pinnacle is, like, I'm gonna leave. I'm sick of reporting to people. And then when you find out, when you run your own business, is that you report?
First and foremost to your customers, Because if you don't have any customers, you don't have any business, you report to your landlord and your vendors and your employees, and you're making sure that like everybody is Happy paid taken care of before that, like even comes to you. So it ends up being that you probably especially in the beginning have more hours worked more stress and equal less pay than if you just stayed at the job.
But for some reason, people think that they are now the boss and You I think that's a big, big shock to people when they first start their own business. When looking at a lot of successful entrepreneurs, what are some of the traits that you most commonly see in those people that you think are a causal result of their success or have led to their success? Yeah, there's a saying when you make an investment like as a VC or private Equity that you are betting on the jockey, not the
horse. And that really is the case. That, you know, there are these personality traits that can make you very successful. I think, having sort of the the Perseverance and the willingness to Pivot at any point in time is
huge. You know, you need somebody who's like going to keep trying to run through wall, run through a wall, run through a wall and then what it doesn't work, build a ladder and then try to climb the ladder and when that doesn't work, then try to figure out a way around and you just that kind of a personality that they're not giving up that they're tenacious, whatever happens that they're going to
Pivot is really critical. And I also think that At having some hubris and thinking big is pretty important too because frankly, it's pretty much as difficult to start a small business as it is big business and you know having the the scale sometimes actually gives you some benefits and some leeway that you don't get as a small business. And so I think somebody who's willing to, to think bigger and it will be on, just what's in front of them.
Something that I would definitely look for in an entrepreneur. You yeah, you got to have the perseverance, you got to have the pivoting and you got to have these sort of a bit of a vision there when it comes to the risks of being a business owner you have a general idea of how many businesses go under and one two five ten years. So like this is the mythical number structure because like you can ask all different kinds of people and all different
kinds of sources. Has and they will all contradict each other. We know that the majority fail within the number that's usually quoted as three to five years periods of feel pretty good about that.
And then it just kind of depends on the industry like in restaurants, like, 90-plus percent of them fail within, you know, kind of five to seven years, but I don't think that just the like straight-up failure is as important as the failure to succeed, because there are a lot of Small businesses that are kind of glorified Hobbies or a little side gigs, which is great, you know, again you're making some money, but as long as you're viewing it, as such as long as
this is not, you know, you understand that this isn't your livelihood in the only thing that you're doing, I think that the failure to succeed afflicts many, many businesses, probably the majority of them out there and they never kind of get to that next level. The Ones, who do you have? Can learn a really nice living but, you know, there are a lot of people who kind of just get stuck in. The this is a thing and it's a thing that I'm doing and it's
not really going anywhere. I'm sort of like on a treadmill or treading water and you know those are the people who really need to reassess and go. Okay. Are you going to get this to the next level or you know, is that maybe something else that you should be doing? Because not everybody was cut out to be an entrepreneur.
It's not an easy thing. When it comes to what meeting consumer demand, how is it that companies can constantly be innovating and keeping up with all the competition that's going on? What is an entrepreneur have to do to make sure they're staying on top of things? I think it depends on the entrepreneur, you ask Theo. Some entrepreneurs would say it's about taking the pulse of your customer and understanding what they want and giving it to them the really Visionary entrepreneurs.
Like the, the Steve Jobs is of the world will say it's about projecting what you think they want that. They don't yet know and so it becomes a really difficult balance but it is amazing that just small shifts in the way that we do things and also small shifts in the environment creates, you know, the right person pursuing the right opportunity at the right time. If you go back to like the first.com bubble, there was a company called webvan, that was
a grocery delivery service. And they went from like zero dollars. So it like a billion-dollar IPO to bankrupt it out of business in a very, very short period of time and part of it was just like the infrastructure we didn't all have smartphones at that point in time, you know that the internet was very nascent. People were just in a very different Space versus today. Think about all the things that, you know, are on demand and delivery including in the grocery space.
So part of it is Is just you doing getting the timing right? And making sure that your the infrastructure is there. It's the same idea and it was just executed differently with a different environment and backdrop and that's been the difference in something that was, you know, a huge epic failure to something that's been very successful. Are you familiar with the difference between Market entrepreneurs versus political entrepreneurs?
I have not heard those designations, but maybe understand the the underlying theme. Tell me, tell me what you're thinking. Well, so the theory was put forth by Bert Falls and he says, vilifying the rich is a ridiculous concept. How did they get there? Did they get there as a result of lowering prices staying Innovative? Or did they get handouts from the state uses all the examples? Of for every Carnegie who did something in the free market. There were people lobbying this, yes.
Instead there instead of Vanderbilt doing steamships, there was a guy. Edward Collins who kept increasing the amount of money, every year, the state would give him. So when it comes to this important difference, why is it that we should look at free market entrepreneurs to innovate as opposed to what is constantly being pushed on us? We need more Federal funding for a be And see you have an opinion on that?
Yeah, I mean it's just the basic philosophy that the the government shouldn't be a venture capital firm. Right here, their job is to preserve and protect our natural rights. And as we have ascertained and seen even the quote-unquote smartest people in the room have made a lot of really bad economic decisions and they're making those decisions you from a human nature standpoint, they're making them from the point of what's going to benefit them. What's going to get them, more
power and more. Dollars into their political coffers and whatnot. They're not actually doing anything to benefit you. I think once people get that points that that's fine. It's very different than a traditional Venture Capital fund who participates in the upside
with you. And so if you're giving them money to invest and they don't make any money, you know, they may have some small management fee but you know, ultimately they're not going to get the big paydays and eventually you're not going to invest with them again. So there, Is an alignment of incentives. There's a great Charlie, Munger quote, for people who don't know who Charlie Munger has, he is Warren, Buffett's, partner and Berkshire Hathaway and he's a show me the incentive and I'll
show you the outcome. And so you we know what the government's incentives are and those incentives are not aligned with what benefits you and me or frankly the economy broadly and so it's really important in any scenario to align those incentives. And the government shouldn't be in a position where it is picking winners and losers. That should be a function of the free markets and you know, ultimately that has the the built-in mechanisms, to course
correct over time. Whereas with the government it doesn't there are no course, correction amount of benefits. And frankly, there's a ton of moral hazard. I mean there are absolutely no consequences for not only being wrong but like out. You know, outright basically being fraudulent doing, nefarious, things. I mean, maybe they get voted out of office, but like, how many people have any real accountability in government for the things that they have done regardless of what the outcome
is? How can workers improve the amount of skills they have so they can demand a higher salary. So before the first skill that you should perfect is the asking for what you're worth skill. And also asking for Equity, this is an unknown wealth creator. For many people that if you work for a firm, whether it's public or private that has shares of their company available, that sometimes you can get shares.
Or options to buy shares in the company and participate in the value that you're creating and participate in long-term wealth creation. And so your first skill that you should focus on is asking for more when it's appropriate and asking for some Equity. But, you know, it's funny. I really have this like, feeling at heart that like, you can teach people skills, but you can't teach people to give a
damn. And so the biggest death Run shaders in the market right now, are people who actually care like, who care about the customers, they're serving, who care about their work product, and their name and what they're delivering. And I think if you can focus on that, that's the most important skill. You'll things change around us all the time or learning new technologies, and new Industries and all kinds of things.
And that's all stuff that you can go online and watch some YouTube videos or whatever and find out about Out but to really be somebody who, you know, shows up and does the job and is dependable and kills it. Like those are the people who are irreplaceable in any sort of jobs market. And so, I would Advocate to spend more time on sort of the soft skills than some of the hard skills.
And final question. I've heard that almost every job is selling when your In an interview for the job, you have to sell yourself when it comes to sales. You have any tips for people, how can how people can improve the amount of sales they have or be a better salesperson in general. Yes, this is important for entrepreneurs to because entrepreneurs a lot of times hate to sell and that you know, that's just where we are.
So there's a saying that I use that everybody is tuned in to their favorite radio station and that is called wiifm. What's in it for me? And I think when people we'll sell, they don't spend enough time going into the other person's shoes and putting it from their perspective and focusing on what's the benefits for them. How's it going to make them smarter? What their boss or sell more or whatever it is that it's their issue that you're solving for them.
Like most people don't care about like the typical marketing push bells and whistles that you hear about. They just want to know. You know how does Help me how does it make me better? And so, if you want to sell more, you have to put yourself in their, you know, in their shoes. I will also say it's a numbers game and just get used to rejection. And so, if you were just a Terminator about, I'm going to call X many people, or email or have lunch or however, you do.
You're selling with this many people, a that up and be consistent. And, you know, and have those consistent touch points that the consistency in the Persistence is key and a lot of it is is that Moneyball is those numbers. But, you know, if you're finding even with those numbers, you're not doing the right thing, it's probably because you're not
tuned into wiifm. The book is the war on small business, how government use the pandemic to crush, the backbone of America links will be in the description below. Miss Ross, thank you so much for your time. Thank you for having me.