I have that shirt I have that I think you wore it last time I was here and I thought what are the odds that we show up looking like the boy twins but you know byard he’s a friend of mine I love him and I’ve had him on my podcast and
He’s uh featured in a new book that you’ll love if you haven’t seen it it’s called flannel yep and it’s all about what it really takes to make this shirt shockingly difficult it is amazing brother I mean I I know you know that you gave me a shirt 10 11 years ago when
You were doing what was it 17 1791 yeah I still have it it was like it’s like a canvas work shirt yeah yeah yeah and ever since then man I I’ve been obsessed with trying to better understand the drama and the trauma of getting textile manufacturing back in this country it’s
Mindboggling if if companies like Levis would do 5% of their of their manufacturing here in America yeah America would change yep would change for sure no interest in it at all it’s I mean when you really start to peel back the layers and this is I
Don’t know if this is on your agenda of stuff to talk about but it is I just did a whole thing on the toothpick like the business we used to be the toothpick capital of the world we was very proud of it it was a giant industry up in Maine you know white
Birch I mean the there’s the book on it is amazing and when you slowly see the way that we basically gave up on toothpicks you can start to understand the way we gave up on textiles and then you start asking questions like well what hope does Detroit really have like
If we can’t get the Splinter right if we can’t get a shirt right right so there are no small things anyway what what American Giants doing I think is I think it matters because because because they’re 13 years at it now right so that’s you know good for you for having
Them on great I know I I love them I love them um so Mike let’s just talk about the state of the world because we are being boxed if you’re a small business guy you have under 20 employees you now have a transparency act where you’ll spend two years in jail if you
Don’t tell the federal government the treasury crimes division uh everything that they want to know um I don’t know how much that’s going to cost the small businessman uh in just time alone plus you have the proa which has now just been done through the Department of Labor we don’t vote on
Anything anymore it’s just a new guidelin guidelines yes yes new guidelines yeah and uh what is that going to do to when we think gig economy we think you know Uber drivers Etc no no no truckers alone will we have groceries at our stores 50,000 in California alone 50,000
I had a guy on my podcast called Tom Odum who’s one of these truckers and he’s been written about in the press and I I was just so interested in his story he in fact I interviewed him while he was in his truck driving across cross
The fruited plane you know and he just pulled over and we had this amazing conversation but people I I like to talk about it in terms of unintended consequences but I realize now that I might be giving too much credit way too much credit right
But look I’m I’m I’m trying to stay in whatever Lane is left to me but when I when I first saw AV taking that lane away from you soon it’s getting narrow it’s getting narrow um when I first first saw this thing rear its ugly head
It was uh it to your point uh aimed toward the gig economy and Silicon Valley mostly Uber and Lyft and then it just grew and grew and grew graphic artists writers cinematographers dancers uh so many people and I’m like how many are actually going to be impacted and then
The question was how many people are actually freelancing right now and the answer is north of 70 Mill ion in the whole country and so what the drafters of ab5 asked us to believe initially was that huge numbers of workers were being shamelessly victimized by greedy and rapacious capitalists who should have
Hired them as employees and therefore opened the door to benefits and so forth now did that ever happen yeah I I suspect it’s a big country and there’s exceptions to every rule but the number of people who were adversely affected prior to this versus the number of
People who have now lost the freedom to work the way they want is mindboggling it’s and it happened in California of course and to your point it’s happened and is happening right now and when people realize what this means you know you want to set your own schedule forget
It you want to eat what you kill forget it we don’t we don’t want to think that way anymore because that person might fail and if that person fails well then the narrative goes we just can’t tolerate that I I’m sure you’ve been to Buckingham Palace and uh Windsor Castle
I was just over there for the first time and uh the new King was in the castle uh and he’s got this whole Wing by himself and he lands his giant helicopter right there in his backyard and I’ve never been like I’ve I’ve been to you know the
American castles and I’ve never had a problem with it never I walked through that castle and it pissed me off the entire time yeah because I thought there is no one in this country that could ever build this except the one who’s cornered the market right you know
There’s no opportunity none to actually become something because the government has you so pigeon hold and people just accept it and I don’t want to be like that I don’t want to live in that kind of country you know if there’s no risk there’s no reward well there’s the
Four-letter word right risk I guess risk and maybe debt are the the only four-letter words right now that I think are truly for sale you know we have to have honest conversations about both of those things the willingness to accept risk is the fundamental Bedrock of freelancing right and not everybody is
Willing to take that risk some people just want a stable job and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that nothing wrong with that it’s it’s so similar I think the reason this thing has become such a an an issue for me is because it it translates perfectly into
A 4-year education versus a trade school this idea that we have to put our thumb on the scale this idea that one has to be elevated at the expense of the other is precisely what’s informing the proac we’re not saying that it’s that it’s good to be an
Employee we’re saying it’s so good that if you don’t do that then you’re doomed you you you are engaging in a level of behavior that’s so risky you’re actually posing some sort of existential threat not just to yourself but to your family to your neighbor and so forth so it’s it’s
Amazing how we can’t simply put all the options on the table and let the grown-ups decide what fits best I got to tell you you say even in today’s world where universities are taking our children and molding them into the exact woodro Wilson said the job of a
University is to make a man the most unlike his father as possible okay that was his goal um and that’s really kind of the goal now I think in many in many places um and so many people will say because I’ve got two teenagers are they going to go to
College no probably not one of them maybe the other one trade school maybe don’t know don’t know it’s going to be up to them and what is the value of a big expensive $250,000 education if you’re not going to use it right if you don’t have something if you’re just like well I
Think I’m going to do this this a the world is changing so fast we don’t know what jobs are going to be there I worry that look I I I’m the product of a liberal arts education I got one it served me well I’m glad I got one yeah
Did it lead directly to my chosen field no it did not but it comes in handy every single day and mine com consists of two years at a community college and another couple years at a university and when I finished in 84 the whole thing cost $122,200 all of it today same schools
Same course loads 92 Grand now nothing in the history of this country has increased faster than the cost of a four-year degree Bitcoin Bitcoin Bitcoin well or but then fallen and it back and right I mean look it’s but but I mean really if you look at healthare if you
Look at real estate if you look at food and if you look at energy the big four those things have all been eclipsed by the cost of a 4-year degree but still we can’t help ourselves still we’ve told this whole generation if you don’t get one you’re screwed right and that’s
Criminal it’s a shame because my liberal arts education right now is on this thing all we have I’ve got access to 98% of the known information right now for free yeah okay but still still we charge during lockdowns Colombia raised their rates NYU raised their
Rates and we still paid it right so look it’s it’s easy to look at the ivy league especially now and and point to all sorts of embarrassments yeah but it’s it’s not even about that it’s it’s just this bigger thing that’s happening where a whole chunk of our Workforce is tied
To a whole chunk of our education system that has been that has become the proximate CA of derision I said to my uh son where did you learn that he said oh I can audit a course at MIT online oh okay yeah I mean you you have the opportunity unlike any human
Has had so your big push for a long time is you can go to college but you don’t need to go to college that’s right and you’ve been I mean you know it started with dirty jobs mhm um now you are I mean your you your
Foundation has raised a ton of money how many people are you putting through college so far we’ve got close to 2,000 who we’ve helped Master a skill that’s in demand um microworks began really just as a PR campaign in 2008 Dirty Jobs was at its uh absolute height the the whole country
Seemed to unemployed but you know everywhere we went we saw these Help Wanted signs so it seemed pretty clear there was some other narrative going on and this idea that you could fix unemployment by simply creating more jobs was actually a Canard you know today we have close to 10 million open
Jobs we’ve got $1.7 trillion in student loans and we’re still sending the same basic message that we always have this path is the best everything else is going to lead to some sort of vocational consolation PR so that PR campaign morphed into a trade resource center and now we’re
Scholarship fund uh we’ve raised about $9 million and giving it out you’re doing another million this year aren’t you right now as we speak yeah microworks dorg if anybody’s listening with a kid or a grandkid or you yourself want to learn a skill that’s in demand
We can help and we have helped but it’s really a means to an end Glenn the scholarhip program in and of itself is great but what it’s done for me is it’s given G me a chance to Circle back and talk to people who 5 six years ago got a
Welding certificate with our help or or a plumbing right and when you ask them the question today how’s it going you get amazing answers like now some of them are still Plumbing they’re in a strong union hang on just a second still Plumbing do you know what plumbers may
You do I do plumbers make a really good living if they bust their ass they make a really good living and if you’re back to that freelance model we were talking about you can work as much as you want you can set your own schedule you and
You are busy I know a lot of guys both electric plumbing uh heating and air conditioning you can basically work anywhere in the country right now and I have to tell you I had some I was building a house and they had the plumbers there and I was talking to them
The guy’s like I can’t get anybody to help me it’s he’s like I’m I’m aging out soon I don’t have to do this he said I’ve been trying to get all the the kids in my family to hello good living here here’s the math for every five Trad
People who retire this year two will replace them jeez that’s been happening for 15 years now you you know where this is going right in fact we’re here right now it’s happening right now so what I’m trying to do with my little slice of the internet is make sure I can tell the
Stories of the people that I just described because I mean I can tell a decent story but I’m not persuasive to a 25-year-old or a 20-year-old they need to see somebody who looks like them and talks like them who is living debt-free uh and making 150 Grand a year and I’ve
Got a long list of those people and they are very persuasive so you know going back to your first question you know how do I feel about the country what do I think needs to happen I’ve got a list of things but for me somewhere near the top is a
Persuasive campaign and that’s not even the right word but we need persuasive voices talking in a credible way about the value of all forms of education and the absolute criticality of not ignoring the part of our Workforce that keeps these lights on because it’s only a matter of national uh security security
It it really is man and so and so look here’s the good news and I’m not sure it’s good you know sometimes things need to go Splat right we’ve talked about this before and so rather than just having a conversation about okay this Company’s trying to hire skilled trades
People and they can’t and these people over here don’t have a skill we should get them together yeah yeah yeah that’s happening but now the real conversation is how long do you Glenn want to wait for a plumber how long does Stu want to wait for an electrician when the lights
Aren’t coming Simpsons on this very thing that I thought just a Simpsons on everything there is there is there is South Park too okay where do people go if they want to find out more about the scholarships microworks dorg we’re always open uh we’ll be taking applications through the middle of April
Uh we’ll give away a million bucks in this trunch and we’ll probably do it again later this year but you know baby steps man you got to push the boulder up the hill micro always pushing the boulder up the hill thank you anytime
