Speaker 1: You're listening to Bill Handle on demand from KFI AM
Speaker 1: six forty.
Speaker 2: KFI AM six forty Bill Handle Here. It is a
Speaker 2: Thursday morning, October thirty of.
Speaker 3: Tomorrow being Halloween. Quick word that a week from Saturday.
Speaker 2: Neil and I are broadcasting his show from two to
Speaker 2: five at the Wild Fork Store in Laguna Neguel and
Speaker 2: it's all about meats, frozen meats and desserts, but mainly
Speaker 2: frozen meats.
Speaker 3: And man, what a store.
Speaker 2: It is, hundreds of different kinds, and we're going to
Speaker 2: be doing thanksgrilling where we're going to have all kinds
Speaker 2: of grilling apparati there and chefs and samples for everybody,
Speaker 2: and I mean samples, not costco size samples.
Speaker 3: Samples.
Speaker 2: Also Zelman's is going to be there handing out samples,
Speaker 2: and so please join us. Good and Miguel the Wild
Speaker 2: Fork Store and we're out there, I think in the
Speaker 2: parking lot where we're gonna be able to yell at
Speaker 2: people and bring your appetite and bring your friends and
Speaker 2: family and yeah, with all that stuff, Okay, let's do it.
Speaker 2: Time for Joel Larsguard on a Thursday, host of How
Speaker 2: To Money Sundays from twelve to two pm My social
Speaker 2: addresses at how to Money. Joel, Good morning, Joel, Hell Joel,
Speaker 2: Oh there you are. Hey, Yeah, well let's go no
Speaker 2: for you, you know, it's that's why he's here.
Speaker 3: He's he's cheap. What he's cheap? But good right, what
Speaker 3: you pay for you know?
Speaker 1: All right?
Speaker 3: Joel.
Speaker 2: You know I've been talking to people, I've been talking
Speaker 2: about this and discussing email on the radio. That's something
Speaker 2: extraordinary is happening and I don't understand it. And the
Speaker 2: stock market is at an all time high. It seems
Speaker 2: like every day it's hitting new levels, especially over the
Speaker 2: last week, week and a half. At the same time,
Speaker 2: consumer confidence is low and it's dropping. And unemployment, I mean,
Speaker 2: look at the employment sector. First of all, no one
Speaker 2: is hiring or very few people are hiring, and they
Speaker 2: are laying off people by the tens of thousands, soon
Speaker 2: to be the hundreds of thousands. Has this ever happened
Speaker 2: and put all the connect the dots on this one
Speaker 2: for me?
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's a good que I mean I think there
Speaker 4: was probably there was really was a similar reaction kind
Speaker 4: of in the heart of COVID right when the stock
Speaker 4: market it took a massive dive and the things in
Speaker 4: the overall economy were looking not so great. And then
Speaker 4: the stock market continued to it started to shoot back
Speaker 4: up dramatically, and people were like, wait a second, Like
Speaker 4: we're not out of the woods on Main Street. There's
Speaker 4: a lot of uncertainty, there's a lot of difficulty in
Speaker 4: the labor market, and just like, well, can I actually
Speaker 4: my business function the way that it used to? And
Speaker 4: yet we saw the stock market crews to new heights
Speaker 4: pretty quickly. It was like such a short recovery time.
Speaker 4: And I think we were seeing kind of like obviously
Speaker 4: just not the exact same thing, but something similar happening
Speaker 4: right now where people on Main Street are feeling more
Speaker 4: uncertainty and the job market is it's certainly not what
Speaker 4: it was a few years ago, and the stock market
Speaker 4: roaring to new heights, up something like forty percent since April,
Speaker 4: and it's kind of tough to square everything in your mind.
Speaker 4: And that's why I think we're hearing more calls of
Speaker 4: this being a potential bubble. Is there a bubble in stocks?
Speaker 4: I think it's a worthwhile conversation to have. I just
Speaker 4: think it's also a really hard discussion because especially as
Speaker 4: individual investors, but really nobody knows.
Speaker 1: It's hard to predict the future.
Speaker 4: So could the stock market see a significant decline from
Speaker 4: here over the next year, Sure, it's it certainly. Could
Speaker 4: Could it continue, you know, soaring over the coming year,
Speaker 4: Yeah it could. It could be up fifteen percent, it
Speaker 4: could be down twenty percent. It's really really hard to predict,
Speaker 4: which is why the boring it's are so much. Even
Speaker 4: if we are in a time of overinflated stock prices,
Speaker 4: like staying the course still makes sense for most people.
Speaker 2: At the same time, though, I'm having a hard time understanding,
Speaker 2: for example, the employment world. And I use my daughter
Speaker 2: Pamela as the poster child of employment. She is a
Speaker 2: computer nerd and has some extraordinary skills, and she's because
Speaker 2: she can't get a job because all the entry level,
Speaker 2: lower level jobs, of which where you start it doesn't
Speaker 2: matter what your skill set is, they are all disappearing
Speaker 2: and they're gone. And she's starting her master's degree. And
Speaker 2: as I told her, you're now unemployed with a bachelor's
Speaker 2: you're going to be unemployed with a masters in computer technology.
Speaker 2: And so it's gotten to the point now where you're
Speaker 2: an expert also on cannabis.
Speaker 3: I mean, she knows an addition of being a pothead,
Speaker 3: she knows this stuff cold.
Speaker 2: And I go, you know, you have to go door
Speaker 2: to door to cannabis stores and get a job at
Speaker 2: one of the or you're gonna have to go to
Speaker 2: a fast food place.
Speaker 3: You'll still be employed. But instead of making a.
Speaker 2: Six figure income with your skill set at a major corporation,
Speaker 2: you're going to make thirty thousand dollars and you'll still
Speaker 2: be employed. I mean that's the way it's going. And
Speaker 2: I mean she's devastated, and you know what do I
Speaker 2: say you are? Yeah?
Speaker 4: I mean I feel especially for younger people who are
Speaker 4: entering the job market now, and I don't know that
Speaker 4: it's quite as bad as graduating into the teeth of
Speaker 4: the Great Recession back in eight oh nine, where like
Speaker 4: the employment sector was incredibly locked up. I do think
Speaker 4: we're part of it too, is like, what did we
Speaker 4: experience recently. What we experienced recently was a job market
Speaker 4: where employees and workers had so much of an ability
Speaker 4: to jump ship, get paid a lot more. There were
Speaker 4: a lot more job openings versus job hunters. And we've
Speaker 4: seen that dissipate and so I don't think again, it's
Speaker 4: as bad as we've seen in slightly more distant history,
Speaker 4: but it's cold conso right for somebody graduating and saying like, hey,
Speaker 4: I've got this degree, I'm well prepared. I would make
Speaker 4: a great employee. And AI is stealing some of those
Speaker 4: entry level jobs. And just the general economic concerns are
Speaker 4: causing many employers to, you know, be more careful about
Speaker 4: when they're hiring and who they're hiring. It does make
Speaker 4: me think of just some other something I saw recently,
Speaker 4: which I think is good advice, is that people should
Speaker 4: be and I think you and I talked about this, actually, Bill,
Speaker 4: people should be maybe consider more part time work or
Speaker 4: contract work, because that might get your foot in the
Speaker 4: door at a place where you're interested in working and
Speaker 4: that employer is not making quite the.
Speaker 1: Same commitment to you.
Speaker 4: But so there's something about, especially in today's environment, getting
Speaker 4: your foot in the door, having a job in a
Speaker 4: place where you're interested in working and where you think
Speaker 4: there's room to grow. And I do think at times
Speaker 4: it is this mix of like a difficult employment economy
Speaker 4: and also maybe really really high expectations.
Speaker 1: From certain young young workers.
Speaker 4: I was talking to an older lady in my neighborhood
Speaker 4: the other day, and she was like, man, I just
Speaker 4: see this unwillingness, like this desire for young people they
Speaker 4: graduate college and they're like, yeah, I want to work
Speaker 4: from home five days a week.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, you know there are some of that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we got the entitlement titlement issue going on too,
Speaker 2: and that's something else to talk about that we're going
Speaker 2: to over the next month, two months, six months, all right, Joel,
Speaker 2: this headline I kind of find interesting. Customers are feeling
Speaker 2: discount fatigue. And as I asked just before we went
Speaker 2: to break, how can anybody feel fatigue getting discounts?
Speaker 3: Explain that one to me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a good question.
Speaker 4: I think I see this from multiple angles, and I
Speaker 4: do think that there is a certain amount of just
Speaker 4: there's so many sales now, right, there's Prime Day, and
Speaker 4: now Prime Day is twice a year, and it's like
Speaker 4: Black Friday is no longer a single day. It's now
Speaker 4: kind of a seasonal event and it basically kicks off
Speaker 4: here as November starts, and it you know, runs through
Speaker 4: the beginning of December. And so it used to be
Speaker 4: like a few days that you had to pay attention
Speaker 4: to and now retailers are like around every major holiday
Speaker 4: and their own concocted holidays, they're coming up with different
Speaker 4: ways to try to entice you to buy stuff at
Speaker 4: a discount.
Speaker 1: And I it's I think it's harder than ever.
Speaker 4: You would have thought that the advent of the Internet,
Speaker 4: we would have it'd be so much easier to price
Speaker 4: shop and say is this actually is this deal actually
Speaker 4: a deal? There they're you know, the one I'm getting
Speaker 4: in my email inbox or the one that my favorite
Speaker 4: website is trying to get me to click on. And
Speaker 4: it's actually harder in so many ways to know whether
Speaker 4: or not a good price that you're being pitched is
Speaker 4: actually a good price, or if it's if it's actually
Speaker 4: more expensive than it was let's say three weeks six
Speaker 4: weeks ago, and they're making it seem like it's a deal,
Speaker 4: and so much of that comes down to MSRP, whether
Speaker 4: or not it's it's legitimate or not. And so it's oh,
Speaker 4: it's sixty percent off, but what you know, what are
Speaker 4: they actually charge for it? Most time, maybe it's actually
Speaker 4: more only more like ten percent off. So I do
Speaker 4: think it's getting harder and harder for individual shoppers to
Speaker 4: know whether deal is a deal, and it feels like
Speaker 4: they're getting inundated with quote unquote deals.
Speaker 1: All the time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the other side of that coin, and I
Speaker 2: am guilty of this. I am looking at a product
Speaker 2: and there are different brands basically does the same thing,
Speaker 2: and I assume that the more expensive one is the
Speaker 2: better one, and that's automatic, and I will go for that.
Speaker 3: And I've been told over and over again I'm a
Speaker 3: moron for doing that.
Speaker 4: Well, I do think one of the things that this
Speaker 4: recent survey that kind of talks about deal fatigue points
Speaker 4: out is that people are making decisions based on value
Speaker 4: and quality a little bit more. And I think that
Speaker 4: points to something else where those the Chinese sites like
Speaker 4: Timu and she and We've been inundated with stuff and
Speaker 4: you buy it and it looks so good on the app
Speaker 4: or on the site where you're shopping, and then it
Speaker 4: comes to the mail and you're like, oh my gosh,
Speaker 4: the sizings way off, the materials terrible, and it was
Speaker 4: really cheap. But this belongs straight in the trash. It
Speaker 4: wasn't expensive, but it wasn't worth anything. And I do
Speaker 4: think that's A really important thing for people to consider,
Speaker 4: especially as they're making purchases going into the holiday season,
Speaker 4: is not just the price, but how much actual use
Speaker 4: am I going to get out of this product? Like,
Speaker 4: for instance, I bought one of those kind of pop
Speaker 4: up tent saunas because I was like, I would want
Speaker 4: to get in do I like the idea of like
Speaker 4: getting into sauna before I get into bed, kind of
Speaker 4: nice and relaxing, And it's fine, but it's kind of cheap.
Speaker 4: And so really what I need to do if I'm
Speaker 4: into it is to get a full fledged sawna. Put
Speaker 4: my money where my mouth is and spend a couple
Speaker 4: thousand dollars really to get something that I'm going to
Speaker 4: use regularly and enjoy. And so I think maybe thinking
Speaker 4: about the longevity of items that you're buying and not
Speaker 4: just how to get the absolute lowest price is also
Speaker 4: it's really worth considering I personal.
Speaker 2: Story, just as everybody knows around here. I have just
Speaker 2: remodeled my house and it's really nice. You'll never be
Speaker 2: invited to get to go to it, by the way, Joel.
Speaker 1: Good to know.
Speaker 2: And I bought outdoor furniture, and so I'm looking at
Speaker 2: outdoor furniture, and I go to Costco and there's a
Speaker 2: full outdoor set for two eighteen hundred dollars. By contractor
Speaker 2: who had nothing to do with it, said would you
Speaker 2: like this to still be here next year?
Speaker 3: And I said yeah.
Speaker 2: He goes, you're going to have to spend some real
Speaker 2: money for outdoor furniture that's still going to look good
Speaker 2: five years, eight years from now. And I sucked it up,
Speaker 2: per what you were talking about, and frankly, I didn't
Speaker 2: know you could spend that much money for outdoor furniture.
Speaker 3: And that's good.
Speaker 2: Outdoor furniture costs insane amounts of money, more so than
Speaker 2: indoor furniture because of course what it has to deal
Speaker 2: with with the weather, with the sun.
Speaker 3: And he talked me into it.
Speaker 2: I spent some real real money about to go to Costco,
Speaker 2: and I didn't.
Speaker 4: And that's that's the old the buy once, cry once
Speaker 4: sort of way of thinking about things. And I think
Speaker 4: we should probably all be more prone to thinking that way,
Speaker 4: even about.
Speaker 1: Something as simple as our wardrobe.
Speaker 4: It's like I used to buy the like fifteen to
Speaker 4: twenty dollars pairs of jeans, and I was like, man,
Speaker 4: these things like they're misshapen. They don't last very long.
Speaker 4: And then I like stepped up my game and I
Speaker 4: bought jeans. Were like, you know, sixty seventy eighty bucks.
Speaker 4: I'm like, I wear I wear jeans every.
Speaker 2: Day and stop there, Joel, you can stop too much hair. Yeah,
Speaker 2: Costco fifteen dollars shirts are fabulous. The Kirkland jeans are wonderful. Really, yeah,
Speaker 2: they're they're frozen. To try it out, they're frozen. Burritos
Speaker 2: are incredible. It's let me tell you, try it out.
Speaker 2: Fifteen bucks for a shirt and you'll be surprised. Okay,
Speaker 2: all right, yeah, give it a shot. I'm all for
Speaker 2: saving money.
Speaker 1: I do want people well.
Speaker 2: It is I mean, this is I mean it's actually
Speaker 2: good quality stuff.
Speaker 4: It is not garbage. Especially the breath signature box briefs
Speaker 4: are excellent too.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they just did that. Although again, now I'm gonna
Speaker 2: talk about my underwear. All right, Okay, underwear story. I
Speaker 2: just I used to buy du Luth underwear actually was
Speaker 2: given to me by a friend of mine, and those
Speaker 2: are twenty bucks a pair, and I bought a couple
Speaker 2: of them as they wore out after months and months
Speaker 2: of the elasticity going and I ended up going to
Speaker 2: Costco and buying the Haines six pack for less money
Speaker 2: than a single pair of underwear costs with the louth.
Speaker 3: I'll tell you there's a difference. Now, is it worth
Speaker 3: that much more?
Speaker 2: No? And then that's part of the formula is how
Speaker 2: long is it going to be worth?
Speaker 3: How good is.
Speaker 2: It versus expensive inexpensive? But I'll let you figure that out.
Speaker 2: Just remember Costco clothes, Costco burritos. We'll catch you next week,
Speaker 2: Joel and Sunday morning, twelve, two pm right here on KFI.
Speaker 2: All Right, DEI as the president came into power. I
Speaker 2: mean he first of all campaigned anti DEI, and the
Speaker 2: first day he came into power, Uh, the executive direction
Speaker 2: started flowing against anything and everything DEI corporations, schools, and
Speaker 2: it went straight down the line. Someone I've known for
Speaker 2: a very long time, Heather Cox, who is the co
Speaker 2: founder and president of a company called Certify. My company
Speaker 2: is with us and Heather. I've known Heather almost since
Speaker 2: she's been in diapers. By the way, so I just
Speaker 2: wanted to embarrass you that.
Speaker 1: Way, Heather. That's okay.
Speaker 3: So first of all, talk.
Speaker 2: About what the company does, and what you know your
Speaker 2: involvement with corporations, because that's what this is about. And
Speaker 2: then we're going to come back and probably talk about
Speaker 2: how DEI has a you your company and explaining there
Speaker 2: are a couple aspects of this that are being conflated
Speaker 2: by the government and by private business. So tell me
Speaker 2: about certifying my company.
Speaker 5: So the certify my company. We are a boutique consulting
Speaker 5: firm and we work with underestimated entrepreneurs, small, local, diverse
Speaker 5: businesses and help them get the certifications they need to
Speaker 5: prove that they have the ability to do the work
Speaker 5: with large companies, mostly Fortune one thousand. We work with
Speaker 5: the Fortune one thousand companies and in the whole sphere
Speaker 5: there to ensure that their supply chain reflects their customer
Speaker 5: base and it gets the most value out of it
Speaker 5: by diversifying who they work with.
Speaker 2: Now you we talked many, many times about this, and
Speaker 2: you help minority companies do this, primarily women owned companies.
Speaker 3: Do I have that right?
Speaker 5: Well, it's women, ethnic minorities, LGBT better than people with disabilities,
Speaker 5: so it's across the gamut. We do all the different demographics.
Speaker 2: Okay, but this is these are what Theronald Trump would say,
Speaker 2: DEI programs that you are basically helping get certified to
Speaker 2: certify my company.
Speaker 3: So the major.
Speaker 2: Corporations hire those companies, employ those companies. And this is
Speaker 2: what's the fascinating part is do you need the certification
Speaker 2: you go to Amazon for example, and here you are
Speaker 2: a minority company. Is that a different process than just
Speaker 2: here's a company and I want your business?
Speaker 5: Well, yes and no. So you do not need any
Speaker 5: of the certifications to do business with these organizations. What's
Speaker 5: the certification? And there's many certifications out there which would
Speaker 5: be too long to give into. There's many certifications. So
Speaker 5: let's say I want to get Women's Business Enterprise certified
Speaker 5: through the Women's Business Enterprise National Counsel, the gold standard
Speaker 5: across the country. I get certified through the organization to
Speaker 5: prove that my company is owned, operate, and controlled by
Speaker 5: one or more women. That gives me a path to
Speaker 5: meet with companies who are looking to work with all
Speaker 5: different types of business to cast the why does net
Speaker 5: possible to find the best possible supplier with the best
Speaker 5: value for their business units? So there's no guarantee in there.
Speaker 5: No one's saying like Oh hew, there's a woman owned business.
Speaker 5: We're gonna get her the contract, even though she's not
Speaker 5: as good and more expensive. That is not how this works.
Speaker 5: And I think it's hysterical that anyone would think that's
Speaker 5: how it works.
Speaker 2: You know. But when I hear what you say, you
Speaker 2: are pushing a women's or a LGBTQ owned company to well,
Speaker 2: as Trump would say, and I agree with him, because
Speaker 2: you want to step up. You do want an advantage
Speaker 2: over a company that just walks in and says, hey,
Speaker 2: I can sell you pencils at this price, versus one
Speaker 2: of your clients that say I can sell you pencils at.
Speaker 3: This price and I am minority owned.
Speaker 5: Right. Well, look, all things being equal, there is oftentimes
Speaker 5: an advantage to working with a diverse owned business. First
Speaker 5: of all, all corporations want to make sure they're reflecting
Speaker 5: their customer base, right, I mean, look what happened with
Speaker 5: Target versus Costco. Okay, we everyone wants to see who
Speaker 5: they're selling to and who they're working with. So we're
Speaker 5: not saying you have to work with us because there
Speaker 5: are women own but if you're you have to go
Speaker 5: through the procurement process. Right in any company that has
Speaker 5: a procurement process. It's not going to matter. I'm not
Speaker 5: going to say, oh, you get ten points more because
Speaker 5: you're women owned. It comes down to who gives the
Speaker 5: best service the best value, and there's always some other
Speaker 5: differentiators in there, and so it's not that you're going
Speaker 5: to get a bit, you're gonna get some over a
Speaker 5: competitor who's not women owned. There's going to be other
Speaker 5: differentiators in there. So it's all things being equal. But
Speaker 5: what happens is people can't even get in the door
Speaker 5: because so many of these people who are doing the buying,
Speaker 5: they are just going to the same people over and
Speaker 5: over and over again.
Speaker 3: Okay, but again I'm going to go back to.
Speaker 2: The argument is that is if you give there's an
Speaker 2: advantage that you give your companies that I, for example,
Speaker 2: want to sell the same product at the same price,
Speaker 2: that you have an advantage. Your clients have an advantage
Speaker 2: over me because these companies have a program which I
Speaker 2: thought was kind of neat to help people organizations that
Speaker 2: heretofore didn't have a door that could be opened up.
Speaker 2: And I think that's the argument, why should your people
Speaker 2: get any kind of a break over mine?
Speaker 3: You've been listening to the Bill Handle Show.
Speaker 2: Catch My Show Monday through Friday, six am to nine am,
Speaker 2: and anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app