Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Tracy Alloway and I'm Joe. Isn't all so, Joe?
Speaker 1: I feel like we're definitely still working through the economic
Speaker 1: reverberations of the coronavirus crisis. Right, We've had this massive recovery,
Speaker 1: but it still feels like there's further to go. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean absolutely. I mean it seems like in many respects,
Speaker 1: like some of the sort of business disruption supply chain issues,
Speaker 1: it's not obvious that they're getting better. You know, we
Speaker 1: talk a lot about shipping and logistics, and at least
Speaker 1: by some measures, for example, that's actually still like as
Speaker 1: worse as it's ever been today than at any point
Speaker 1: in the crisis. Yeah, so we're still working through various
Speaker 1: forms of gridlock in the supply chains, as we've been
Speaker 1: talking about quite a lot on thoughts. But I feel
Speaker 1: like there's also these sort of deep scars on the
Speaker 1: business environment from the past year. Like it goes back
Speaker 1: to that question. I guess we've discussed it on the
Speaker 1: supply chain episodes, but what do businesses do about investment?
Speaker 1: Are they confident enough to start reopening to really put
Speaker 1: a bunch of money in expansion or is everyone going
Speaker 1: to be nervous for a long time that you could
Speaker 1: get a third wave or some sort of delta variants
Speaker 1: something like that that could come in and um, I
Speaker 1: guess surprise everyone again. Exactly right, you know, I think
Speaker 1: like a lot of businesses were clearly designed for a
Speaker 1: sort of like predictable, pre pandemic like patterns, right, and
Speaker 1: some things like going back to normal, and it's like okay,
Speaker 1: like people are going out to eat again, and it
Speaker 1: looks like people are starting to go to movie theaters again.
Speaker 1: Though I don't know if it's enough to justify mc
Speaker 1: stock price, but people are going back to movie theaters
Speaker 1: again and so forth. But obviously, like things are just different,
Speaker 1: and so certain types of businesses are certain types of
Speaker 1: behaviors are going to be different, and certain types of
Speaker 1: businesses are going to be affected positively and some negatively. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So on that that note of things being different. One
Speaker 1: thing I wanted to do was talk to a specific business,
Speaker 1: like a single small business, to try to get a
Speaker 1: feel of what the past year was like and how
Speaker 1: they're now looking at the future. And I thought, what
Speaker 1: could be really interesting is to look at a business
Speaker 1: that already has its challenges even without the pandemic. So
Speaker 1: today we're going to be talking to a very very
Speaker 1: famous author and someone who recently started their own brick
Speaker 1: and mortar book store in Austin, Texas. And they actually
Speaker 1: opened that store during the pandemic. And Joe, I know
Speaker 1: you follow the Texas news very closely, but there were
Speaker 1: also all sorts of weather related events that would have
Speaker 1: made the past year even more painful for a new business. Yeah. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: I mean I didn't think in the last few months,
Speaker 1: Texas has had both a historic freeze and historic heat
Speaker 1: all in a short period of time, stretching pretty you
Speaker 1: know that added to grid strain. I mean we saw
Speaker 1: like the crazy like freeze. I think we're back in March,
Speaker 1: so just one thing on top of another, Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: So today we're gonna be digging into all those various
Speaker 1: challenges from the perspective of an actual small business owner.
Speaker 1: And I am very pleased to be introducing our guest
Speaker 1: on this episode. It is the author, Ryan Holiday and
Speaker 1: now the proprietor of The Painted Porch. So Ryan, thank
Speaker 1: you so much for coming on. Yeah, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: You're you're right, but it's difficult to have a business
Speaker 1: during a pandemic. I think opening during the pandemic was
Speaker 1: so much harder because you were completely flying blind, like
Speaker 1: you had no you had no idea whether it would
Speaker 1: work under ordinary circumstances. And then it was like, are
Speaker 1: people ever going to be in the same room with
Speaker 1: each other ever? Again? That that was like the level
Speaker 1: of of like questioning your bedrock assumptions about reality that
Speaker 1: we had to think about a lot over the last
Speaker 1: fifteen months. So walk up through the timeline here then,
Speaker 1: like when did you start thinking about opening a bookstore
Speaker 1: and why? And at what point did you actually start
Speaker 1: doing it and how did that clash with the pandemic.
Speaker 1: It seems like an eternity ago, but I was in
Speaker 1: the fall of twenty nineteen. I was We lived near
Speaker 1: a small town called Basstrop, which is right outside Austin.
Speaker 1: I was sitting in a restaurant with my wife in
Speaker 1: this small main street and we looked out across the
Speaker 1: street and there was an empty building that had been
Speaker 1: closed forever and my wife said, you know, it would
Speaker 1: be great there a bookstore. And I said, that sounds crazy,
Speaker 1: But for some reason we ended up like getting excited
Speaker 1: about the idea, and so I think we It officially
Speaker 1: became our space in January, and we hired like our
Speaker 1: first employee started the process in mid February of so,
Speaker 1: right right before the wave crashed. So what is the
Speaker 1: vision I mean? I'm actually I used to live in
Speaker 1: Austin for a while. I've been to bass Drop and
Speaker 1: I'm just sort of like imagining this sort of like
Speaker 1: idyllic little bookstore and it sounds very cool and I
Speaker 1: hope to visit it one day. But besides, like sort
Speaker 1: of like looking at a spot and saying a bookstore
Speaker 1: would be here, like what was sort of in your
Speaker 1: mind like the business opportunity for So I have a
Speaker 1: couple of advantages that your average sort of bookstore owner
Speaker 1: would not have, which is, for the last ten years,
Speaker 1: actually more than that, I've had an email list where
Speaker 1: every month I just recommend some of my favorite books.
Speaker 1: And this started with like fifty friends and it's now,
Speaker 1: you know, a couple of hundred thousand people all over
Speaker 1: the world that get this one email that I do
Speaker 1: twelve times a year. So I've been recommending books for
Speaker 1: a really long time, and I know books that people
Speaker 1: like I've loved. I've loved supporting and recommending other authors
Speaker 1: even before I ever wrote any of my own books.
Speaker 1: So I've kind of had a digital bookstore for a
Speaker 1: long time, except almost everyone that recommends stuff online sends
Speaker 1: those people to Amazon, and you take affiliate revenue, right,
Speaker 1: And so I've I've sold hundreds of thousands of books,
Speaker 1: hundreds of thousands of dollars with the books over this time,
Speaker 1: but just you know, taking a minuscule commission. And so
Speaker 1: part of it was thinking like, Okay, I've already done
Speaker 1: this before. What would it be like if I actually
Speaker 1: owned the books and sold the books? And what if
Speaker 1: I sold my own books directly to consumers? What would
Speaker 1: that be like? Then the other wrinkle, and this was
Speaker 1: a great piece of advice I actually got from Alison Hill,
Speaker 1: who is the owner of Romans and Book Soup in
Speaker 1: Los Angeles and now she's the head of the a
Speaker 1: b A, the American Book Association or the American Booksellers Association.
Speaker 1: But she was saying that if you use this space,
Speaker 1: multi purpose use of the space in bookstores is basically
Speaker 1: the only way to survive. And so I actually needed
Speaker 1: my My wife was tired of all my books, being
Speaker 1: in the house, uh me being in writer mode around
Speaker 1: the house, sort of dipping in and out of reality.
Speaker 1: And and so the idea was, I needed some office space.
Speaker 1: I needed a place that I could do what I do,
Speaker 1: even recording this episode right now. So I needed space
Speaker 1: I wanted to do. The bookstore that came together in
Speaker 1: this specific location in this town, you know, down the
Speaker 1: street from from my house. So first of all, let
Speaker 1: me just give a plug to Ryan's reading recommendations email,
Speaker 1: because it is really good and probably responsible for like
Speaker 1: a good chunk of my personal reading every year. But
Speaker 1: just going back to this idea of like a physical
Speaker 1: bookstore and a multi use space, so I get that
Speaker 1: in your case, it's a little bit different. You're an author.
Speaker 1: You're looking for office space that you can use, um
Speaker 1: for your own projects. But to what extent are most
Speaker 1: bookstores nowadays multi use space? Like I certainly know in
Speaker 1: New York, if you go into a bookstore, chances are
Speaker 1: it's probably going to have like a coffee shop, um,
Speaker 1: maybe like a little area where they're selling stationary and
Speaker 1: greening cards and things like that. Everything seems to have
Speaker 1: diversified and expanded to try to offset the giant that
Speaker 1: is Amazon. Yeah, that's that's a huge part of the business.
Speaker 1: H wine bars or coffee shops, stationary gifts, successories, that
Speaker 1: that's all a part of the business. But that, to
Speaker 1: me is still makes you very vulnerable to like in
Speaker 1: person retail traffic. So I would say the real way
Speaker 1: that most indie bookstores are diversified is that they also
Speaker 1: sell online. Right, so having e commerce and in person
Speaker 1: that's a big part of it. But still you're dependent on,
Speaker 1: you know, customers to sell books. So what I really
Speaker 1: wanted was some some way that like we could have
Speaker 1: a bad day, like nobody came in the store, which
Speaker 1: does occasionally happen, and and I wouldn't have necessarily lost
Speaker 1: any money, Like it didn't cost me anything because I
Speaker 1: still needed the space to write. When I was thinking
Speaker 1: about sort of risk mitigation of this crazy, very expensive
Speaker 1: let's call it uh vanity project, that's the wrong way
Speaker 1: to put it. I think this rather self indulgent business,
Speaker 1: Like you're you're not opening a bookstore because you think
Speaker 1: it's going to make you very wealthy. I was doing
Speaker 1: because I genuinely love books. But I wanted a way
Speaker 1: that like, hey, the mortgage or the rent or whatever
Speaker 1: it is, is covered at least partly by things that
Speaker 1: are not dependent on people coming in and buying hardcovers
Speaker 1: or paperbacks today. So why do you walk us through
Speaker 1: the timeline a little more? You mentioned that you had
Speaker 1: the idea late obviously no one knew what was coming
Speaker 1: a few months later. How quickly did you put it
Speaker 1: into motion? What did they entail and what were the
Speaker 1: first like steps to turn like raw space into a bookstore. Yeah,
Speaker 1: in March of that's when we had just started the
Speaker 1: building of the demo, the building of the shelves. All
Speaker 1: that work started like right as the world was shutting down.
Speaker 1: I remember talking with some of the workers and going like, hey, guys,
Speaker 1: like this is gonna get real. I don't know where
Speaker 1: this is going. And so you know, then it it
Speaker 1: did escalate really quickly. We took I think we took
Speaker 1: our our youngest out of daycare on like March eighth,
Speaker 1: March nine, and sort of stayed at home, which is
Speaker 1: a few days before things really started in Texas. But
Speaker 1: I remember a few days later, you know, because no
Speaker 1: one was in the space, I could safely drive there
Speaker 1: and not be around anyone. But I remember just walking
Speaker 1: through this net, this space that had previously been set
Speaker 1: up to be a restaurant. That's what the space had been. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's been open for a hundred and forty years, but
Speaker 1: the last thing that was here was a Mexican restaurant.
Speaker 1: I remember I walked through the space. It's now completely empty.
Speaker 1: All the expensive kitchen stuff has been torn out, the
Speaker 1: bar has been removed. It's like worse than when we
Speaker 1: bought it. And I remember thinking, like that line from
Speaker 1: Arrested Development, you know, I may have made a huge mistake.
Speaker 1: Like I was just like, oh my god, did I
Speaker 1: bet everything on like a thing that's not going to
Speaker 1: exist anymore. So in March of when you're surveying the
Speaker 1: space and it's a mess, are you what are you
Speaker 1: thinking in terms of next steps? Do you just press
Speaker 1: on with the plan or did you maybe scale back
Speaker 1: some of the ambitions or have to delay some of
Speaker 1: the work and refurbishing it. Yeah. The first thing we
Speaker 1: did was basically cut the plan in half, so our
Speaker 1: spaces is technically two addresses, although they're joined interior in
Speaker 1: the interior through a through a door. The original idea
Speaker 1: was like a bookstore on one side, coffee shop, meeting space,
Speaker 1: events space for the bookstore. On the other side that
Speaker 1: would be the bookstore would be like five thousand square feet.
Speaker 1: The second this happened, it was like, well, we're definitely
Speaker 1: not doing meetings anytime soon, definitely not having events, definitely
Speaker 1: not having people sit for coffee, Like is that even
Speaker 1: gonna be possible? So we cut it in half just then,
Speaker 1: which was both terrifying and somewhat of relief because it
Speaker 1: made the scope of the project so much smaller, Like,
Speaker 1: of all the things we're thinking about doing that I'm
Speaker 1: the least qualified and have the least experience about more
Speaker 1: of the hospitality side of things was the furthest outside
Speaker 1: my experience. So scaling it down to just like business
Speaker 1: store that sells books and it may be that we're
Speaker 1: primarily online for the foreseeable future was like that was
Speaker 1: the first radical shrinking that we had to go through. Okay,
Speaker 1: so pandemic hits total chaos. When did things start to
Speaker 1: feel for you like, Okay, things are easing a little
Speaker 1: bit that like the chaos of the first couple of months,
Speaker 1: you know, you start to get your bearings a little bit,
Speaker 1: get more, you know, some sense of normalcy, when did
Speaker 1: things start to jel a little bit for you. We
Speaker 1: did end up pressing ahead with the work, so it
Speaker 1: was it was surreal to see like shells go up
Speaker 1: and then the order of books came, but there was
Speaker 1: no sense for us that it was remotely safe or
Speaker 1: appropriate to open. So Texas, like in June late May
Speaker 1: June was basically decided kind of like Florida, that the
Speaker 1: pandemic didn't exist, that we had no obligations to our
Speaker 1: fellow citizens, and then it was sort of every man,
Speaker 1: woman and business for themselves. So you know, that was
Speaker 1: supposedly a pro business decision, but it's actually really kind
Speaker 1: of terrifying and overwhelming for especially for a first time business,
Speaker 1: Like we don't have customers that we're serving right because
Speaker 1: we've never opened our doors. But it's just like, are
Speaker 1: we going to take what is literally a sealed off
Speaker 1: bubble that is our lives and open it to hundreds
Speaker 1: of people? And it is that the right thing to
Speaker 1: do in a small town in the middle of a pandemic.
Speaker 1: So it became this thing, well, now we can proceed
Speaker 1: with opening, but sort of ethically morally, and then also
Speaker 1: just as far as keeping our own families safe. We've
Speaker 1: got two young kids, can we should we and and
Speaker 1: we just decided no, like so we didn't even start
Speaker 1: thinking seriously that that we might open until like so
Speaker 1: we had to eat a year of like expenses going
Speaker 1: out but nothing coming in. So, just to be clear,
Speaker 1: Texas didn't provide guidance on whether businesses should stay open
Speaker 1: or closed or what sort of things they should do
Speaker 1: to try to protect their customers. Yeah, almost none, whatsoever.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, at the beginning of the pandemic,
Speaker 1: there was like a mask mandate and some business closures
Speaker 1: and like some some crazy lady. It turns out it
Speaker 1: was like sort of not a stunt, but it was
Speaker 1: sort of a political sort of operation some some lady
Speaker 1: and I think Dallas kept her hair salon open in
Speaker 1: violation of the policy, and then she was like arrested
Speaker 1: or find and then the governor like pardoned her almost
Speaker 1: like immediately. So it basically made it It basically reduced
Speaker 1: masks and public safety and all the COVID regulations to
Speaker 1: like meaningless theater, which made it so much harder to open.
Speaker 1: Like it made it essentially impossible for us to open
Speaker 1: a business for the safety of our own kids. But
Speaker 1: then also just like in good conscience, right, like I'm
Speaker 1: not indicting or or criticizing the other businesses. It's it's
Speaker 1: totally different story if you have people who have worked
Speaker 1: for you, who are you know, sort of dependent on
Speaker 1: their jobs to whether your restaurant or whatever is open.
Speaker 1: We didn't have that because the government had punted on
Speaker 1: the problem. It now made it our problem, and and
Speaker 1: we had to decide like can we look ourselves in
Speaker 1: the mirror and be part of the problem. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: remember like hearing this from other business owners that like, Okay,
Speaker 1: obviously there's some impulse like you want to people want
Speaker 1: to open up, you want to sell, you want to
Speaker 1: make money. On the other hand, you sort of like
Speaker 1: create this Like I guess it's like game theory where
Speaker 1: it's like if you let some if you let everyone open,
Speaker 1: then you're put in this position where you're sort of
Speaker 1: screwing yourself if you don't open, even if you don't
Speaker 1: feel like you could do it safely or something like that.
Speaker 1: Like it was a pretty like it was a pretty
Speaker 1: weird time. It was. It was super weird. And and
Speaker 1: you know now that we have the vaccines and we
Speaker 1: sort of have. I don't even want to say we're
Speaker 1: coming out of it, but now it's it's really difficult
Speaker 1: to go back and remember what it was like in
Speaker 1: June or like is it coming just around the corner?
Speaker 1: You know? And I think, what what I do remember
Speaker 1: of that time? In every step, like Texas sort of
Speaker 1: made the wrong decision and it got worse. Right, So
Speaker 1: it'd be like, hey, you know we're at ten thousand
Speaker 1: cases a day, Well, you know, is that the peak?
Speaker 1: And then it's like then twenty, then thirty, then four.
Speaker 1: You know, it kept going higher and higher and higher,
Speaker 1: and so every time we thought like, okay, we're going
Speaker 1: to turn a corner soon, it was just sort of
Speaker 1: self inflicted, you know, like let's make it worse by
Speaker 1: pretending this thing doesn't exist. M Did you get any
Speaker 1: help or support from either the state or the federal
Speaker 1: government that you know? I'm thinking about the paycheck Protection
Speaker 1: Program for instance. I don't know if that applied to
Speaker 1: you because you're relatively new, and maybe there were restrictions
Speaker 1: on how long employees had to happen working for you,
Speaker 1: but anything like that. Yeah, I remember I applied for
Speaker 1: all that stuff at the beginning. You know, having just
Speaker 1: spent all this money all this time and then not
Speaker 1: knowing what it was gonna do. And I remember we
Speaker 1: got I think like all businesses got like a thousand
Speaker 1: You got like a thousand dollars for every employee, like
Speaker 1: at the very beginning. So I think we got like
Speaker 1: a thousand dollars or something. And then and then I
Speaker 1: got approved for like a loan in the low six
Speaker 1: figures that the p P people on the first go around,
Speaker 1: and I remember just thinking like I don't actually need this,
Speaker 1: and I don't feel good about taking it when other
Speaker 1: businesses are really struggling and do need it. So we
Speaker 1: ended up deciding not to take it. Was actually funny,
Speaker 1: like several times they replied like, hey, you know you're
Speaker 1: approved except your loan here, And there was a large
Speaker 1: amount of money, and it was tempting. I just felt
Speaker 1: like I felt like, one it wasn't the right thing
Speaker 1: to do too. I felt like because I have been successful,
Speaker 1: I mean, it still wasn't something I could afford, but
Speaker 1: I have been successful. I felt like the optics of
Speaker 1: it weren't right to accept it. And I also just
Speaker 1: didn't know where things were going. One thing I did
Speaker 1: end up doing that. I think a lot of business
Speaker 1: owners or people in Texas where property values have gone
Speaker 1: way up. What I did do was I refinanced my
Speaker 1: house at an extremely low interest rate that just sort
Speaker 1: of relieved the pressure of like floating a business for
Speaker 1: a year, if that makes sense. So so I felt
Speaker 1: like I was benefiting from the government policy without having
Speaker 1: to take a direct amount of money from the government.
Speaker 1: And I felt better knowing that, you know, hey, that
Speaker 1: that's going to someone who had actually needed And then
Speaker 1: of course you find out like all sorts of huge
Speaker 1: corporations and businesses did take it that really didn't need it.
Speaker 1: But you know, what are you gonna do? So, you know,
Speaker 1: Tracy and I were talking about in the beginning, obviously,
Speaker 1: I think like in the last few months, Texas has
Speaker 1: had at least like two very extreme weather seeing both
Speaker 1: extremes of the weather that really stressed the power grid.
Speaker 1: There was the big freeze, and then of course there's
Speaker 1: all these issues is that companies that small businesses are
Speaker 1: facing both with logistics getting stuff and with hiring. So
Speaker 1: let's take some of these things. Like, first of all,
Speaker 1: you know what happened to you and uh, your I
Speaker 1: guess your home but also your business during I get
Speaker 1: the freeze. I think that was in March, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was out of the fire and into the furnace
Speaker 1: for us, Like, what what happened was we ended up
Speaker 1: opening the business right after the surge crests at the
Speaker 1: you know, the beginning of the year, sort of partial
Speaker 1: open mass, only only a few people at a time
Speaker 1: and mostly selling on e commerce. And then this massive,
Speaker 1: unexpected freeze happens that again the Texas government was totally
Speaker 1: ill prepared for, had neglected maintenance and basic responsibility of
Speaker 1: competent governance, and the result is the power grid collapses
Speaker 1: in the midst of a you know, a terrible freeze.
Speaker 1: It's a huge disaster. Because we don't end up we
Speaker 1: don't all live in the same reality. We don't see
Speaker 1: it on par with like a Hurricane Katrina. But it
Speaker 1: really was a disaster on that scale. I mean, hundreds
Speaker 1: of people have died. State with with like thirty million
Speaker 1: people is completely without power in many parts for for
Speaker 1: days at a time. I remember going into my son's
Speaker 1: room and sleeping in his bed with him because we
Speaker 1: knew we would lose power during the night, and I
Speaker 1: had heard of people freezing to death in their homes
Speaker 1: like that. Just the level, like that's a thing you're
Speaker 1: doing in the first world is insane, right, And long story, Sure,
Speaker 1: what ended up happening is pipes at our at the
Speaker 1: building froze because we couldn't keep the heat on. Also,
Speaker 1: snow accumulated on the roof and the weight of it
Speaker 1: cracked parts of the roof and water came rushing in
Speaker 1: and ruined a bunch of inventory. So again to go
Speaker 1: back to this idea that like, oh, the Republican response
Speaker 1: or the Texas responses, pro business, we're not going to
Speaker 1: let these lockdowns, you know, keep our businesses shut like
Speaker 1: pro business is a philosophy which means supporting business and
Speaker 1: making business possible. The incredible incompetence and negligence right down
Speaker 1: to Ted Cruz fleeing the country for a resort in
Speaker 1: Mexico like that cost businesses like mine tens of thousands
Speaker 1: of dollars, to say nothing of having to be closed
Speaker 1: and all that. And you know, let's not even get
Speaker 1: into the sort of perpetual denial of climate change which
Speaker 1: puts us in the mess to begin with. Right, So
Speaker 1: it was extremely frustrating and just again, I could afford it,
Speaker 1: but I can only imagine a business that was struggling
Speaker 1: to hang on that being the blow that finishes you off.
Speaker 1: Did you ever stop and think maybe it's not worth it?
Speaker 1: I mean, the beauty of the sun cost fallacy is
Speaker 1: that it blinds us and we keep going because of
Speaker 1: all of what we've already done. Supplies so like, okay,
Speaker 1: you're like the snow like it cracks the roof of
Speaker 1: your building, the pipes freeze, so obviously that creates things
Speaker 1: you have to buy or thinks someone has to buy. Anyway,
Speaker 1: you mentioned inventory damage and so forth. We also know
Speaker 1: that coming into this people are already talking about difficulty
Speaker 1: finding labor after imagine, it's not trivial funding construction labor
Speaker 1: or repair labor in Texas in the middle of a boom.
Speaker 1: On top of that, how did these things intersect to
Speaker 1: the extent that they did, where like sort of like
Speaker 1: getting back on your feet, intersecting with some of the
Speaker 1: broad shortages and tensions that were building up even prior
Speaker 1: to this. I mean, I'll give you something even more
Speaker 1: practical than that. Publishers have had trouble keeping books and stock.
Speaker 1: My own books have gone out of stock, like three
Speaker 1: or four different times, different titles have You know, publishers
Speaker 1: tried to over the years get closer and closer to
Speaker 1: sort of real time inventory management to keep as little
Speaker 1: in stock as possible. Amazon the same thing. You want
Speaker 1: to have as little inventory sitting in warehouses, but you
Speaker 1: want to speed up your ability to get books to
Speaker 1: people who need them. And so when the pandemic happens,
Speaker 1: that's bad because publishers are you know, printers are struggling.
Speaker 1: It's hard to get supplies. Everyone's dealing with you know,
Speaker 1: sort of new COVID safety protocols, and that makes it
Speaker 1: harder to do what you normally do. But then also
Speaker 1: this bumps into a good thing, which is suddenly people
Speaker 1: are home and reading more and they're buying them, you know,
Speaker 1: mostly online, but they're they're reading more. So book sales
Speaker 1: have gone up during the pandemic, but the ability to
Speaker 1: stay in stock has been a perpetual struggle. So, like
Speaker 1: even even right now, I sent out my reading list
Speaker 1: email yesterday and I had to decide what books I
Speaker 1: could recommend based on what books I could actually get
Speaker 1: my hands on in high enough quantities to sell them
Speaker 1: to people. And these are you know, publishers are publishers
Speaker 1: and booksellers primarily make their money off what we call
Speaker 1: the backlist. Yes, new titles, celebrity books, memoirs, et cetera sell,
Speaker 1: but it's you know, it's books that are five years old,
Speaker 1: or ten years older or a hundred years old that sell.
Speaker 1: But though those are the most dependent on that sort
Speaker 1: of inventory management. So it's been a real struggle just
Speaker 1: getting books in people's hands because stuff that people want
Speaker 1: isn't in stock. What do you think is needed to
Speaker 1: rectify that situation? Is it just things sort of going
Speaker 1: back to normal maybe people this sounds weird to say,
Speaker 1: but people reading less as they go back to work
Speaker 1: and start going out to bars and restaurants. Or is
Speaker 1: it publishers and printing presses responding to the new demand
Speaker 1: and actually ramping up production. Well, I hope the solution
Speaker 1: is not people reading less as as just a member
Speaker 1: of society. I think part of why we're in this
Speaker 1: message people not reading enough. Like one book we've sold
Speaker 1: a ton of copies of is is John M. Berry's
Speaker 1: The Great Influenza, which was published in I think oh
Speaker 1: four oh five. Actually George Bush reads it and puts
Speaker 1: in place a pandemic response team that, as we know,
Speaker 1: is later disbanded, and that gets us where we are.
Speaker 1: But books are timeless, and good ideas are timeless, and
Speaker 1: and it's by studying the past that we can prepare
Speaker 1: for the future avoid unnecessary repetitions of the past. Um
Speaker 1: So I think we need to read more. But I
Speaker 1: do think publishers are having to figure out how do
Speaker 1: you minimize costs but also not make yourself dependent on
Speaker 1: this sort of byzantine supply line that really struggles. Like,
Speaker 1: so one of the things I've made, I made these
Speaker 1: sort of brass coins, these challenge coins that are emblazing
Speaker 1: with some of the ideas in my books. Right, we
Speaker 1: could have made them cheaper in China over the years,
Speaker 1: and that would have helped us be profitable up until
Speaker 1: but the fact that we use this small uh you know,
Speaker 1: mint that's based in Minneapolis allowed us to never go
Speaker 1: out of stock during the pandemic. So some publishers print overseas,
Speaker 1: but most printing is done in the US, which I
Speaker 1: think is why although there's been trouble, it hasn't been
Speaker 1: a complete disaster. Businesses are having to figure you're out, Hey,
Speaker 1: you get stuff cheaper in China or Bangladesh or wherever
Speaker 1: you make it, but that makes you vulnerable to very
Speaker 1: long supply lines, and the closer that stuff is to home,
Speaker 1: the faster can be done. It's more expensive, but it's
Speaker 1: also more resilient. Let's talk about that a little bit more.
Speaker 1: The actual physical publishing, because every once in a while,
Speaker 1: like me and Tracy, like we'll talk to someone about
Speaker 1: writing a book, like maybe an Oblots book or something
Speaker 1: like that, and they're like, oh, if you start it now,
Speaker 1: you know it'll come out seven or something. It's like,
Speaker 1: that's all right, I'd rather just like write write a
Speaker 1: tweet and have it be up two seconds from now.
Speaker 1: But you know, but in all seriousness, like it does
Speaker 1: seem as though my understanding, like actual physical capacity of
Speaker 1: production is an issue and there's only like so much production,
Speaker 1: so how much publishing capacity is there just in a
Speaker 1: normal state, and then like what really like happened to
Speaker 1: it and how strained is that is that? Now, like
Speaker 1: walk us through a sort of like publishing supply chain
Speaker 1: a little bit more. Yeah, I'm not an expert on
Speaker 1: it by any means, but I'll give you an example.
Speaker 1: This was happening before the pandemic. The success of the
Speaker 1: Obama books, particularly Michelle Obama's books, were so pronounced and
Speaker 1: so enormous that like printers in the US, we're running
Speaker 1: out of paper right, so so um it can be
Speaker 1: you know, a massive hit book, you know, can suddenly
Speaker 1: suck up all the printing supply and publishers have to
Speaker 1: make decisions. And this there is our arguments I was
Speaker 1: having with my publisher of course, is like you know,
Speaker 1: well who gets you know, if there's however many pages available,
Speaker 1: how are you allocating them right? And who gets those pages?
Speaker 1: And so that can be a real battle, and that
Speaker 1: you know, the customers don't understand is is influencing what
Speaker 1: they can see and what they can order. But what
Speaker 1: you're really dreading is like somebody decides they want to
Speaker 1: read a book and then they go on your website
Speaker 1: or they go on Amazon, where they go to a
Speaker 1: store and it's not available, and you can't tell them
Speaker 1: when they're going to be able to get it. And
Speaker 1: so that's the perpetual difficulty. What's been interesting about my
Speaker 1: books is my I think my oldest book is ten
Speaker 1: years old, but all of my books remain in print
Speaker 1: and sell sort of consistently. It's what they call a
Speaker 1: perennial seller and publishing. That's a good problem to have,
Speaker 1: but it's also you know, I've i think twelve titles,
Speaker 1: so that's a lot of books to keep in print, right,
Speaker 1: and that can be a hard target, and hard choices
Speaker 1: get made, and suddenly you know your book is the
Speaker 1: one that they pushed the printing back, you know, six weeks,
Speaker 1: but at yourself through rate, that means they're going to
Speaker 1: run out two weeks from now and for a month,
Speaker 1: people that want to buy your book can't buy it.
Speaker 1: And you know what happens if that's the week that
Speaker 1: you know, you get interviewed on NPR and suddenly I'm
Speaker 1: only saying that because we're not actually talking about my
Speaker 1: books here, but I just mean, like, you know, maybe
Speaker 1: that's the week that some celebrity mentions your book on
Speaker 1: Instagram and all that demand disappears in the wind because
Speaker 1: they can't purchase it when they want it. A lot
Speaker 1: of this reminds me of in some of our shipping episodes,
Speaker 1: we've been talking about how you actually get space on
Speaker 1: a container ship, and it usually goes to the big customers,
Speaker 1: like a Walmart or an Ikea. If you know, if
Speaker 1: you're the shipping company and you have to make a
Speaker 1: choice about who gets limited space on your ship, you're
Speaker 1: going to give it to people that you know are
Speaker 1: going to come back again and again and be worthwhile customers.
Speaker 1: So I guess I'm curious when it comes to authors, like,
Speaker 1: how are publishers making that judgment call? Is it just
Speaker 1: based on on who they think can sell the most books? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it's it's primarily based on demand and need
Speaker 1: and velocity. The good news is most books from the
Speaker 1: big publishers are printed in the US. But actually, during
Speaker 1: the pandemic, I had bought back the rights and was
Speaker 1: working on a leather bound edition of one of my books,
Speaker 1: The Daily Stoic, and the only place we could get
Speaker 1: it printed was in Belarus. So it got printed in
Speaker 1: Belarus in I think late May, but we weren't able
Speaker 1: to sell it to August. That's how long it took
Speaker 1: to get from Belarus to the United States. I remember
Speaker 1: how just watched it was a crash course in global
Speaker 1: logistics to watch, you know, a book leave on a
Speaker 1: boat from Belarus, make it to New Orleans, travel up
Speaker 1: the Mississippi and a container ship until it got to
Speaker 1: our warehouse in Chicago, and watching that happen, watching it unfold,
Speaker 1: and then exactly what you said. I mean, as you
Speaker 1: pick your shipping rates, it's like, you know, here's what
Speaker 1: it costs to be in the container, but here's what
Speaker 1: it costs to be the first unloaded from the container, right,
Speaker 1: And oh, I didn't realize that was a thing that
Speaker 1: that was like part of the plot. And and you know,
Speaker 1: here's what it costs to put it on a on
Speaker 1: a on a plane. You know, maybe that's three or
Speaker 1: four dollars a copy, which is you know, obviously destroys
Speaker 1: the margin. So there's there's all these things that you
Speaker 1: doing my own books, having self published a few sort
Speaker 1: of premium editions of my task, it did give me
Speaker 1: so empathy for the struggles that my publisher was going through.
Speaker 1: Although you know, I remember having one conversation that was
Speaker 1: sort of like, look, uh, the reason I sold my
Speaker 1: book to you was so this would be your problem
Speaker 1: and I would get I would get the benefit of
Speaker 1: being a protected by the big guy, you know, the
Speaker 1: multi billion dollar corporation. But I think one of the
Speaker 1: things I learned about the pandemic was like it really
Speaker 1: put everybody in the same boat, didn't matter how big
Speaker 1: you were. How did you end up if you had
Speaker 1: this vision for like a really premium leather bound version
Speaker 1: of the book, how does that process work? Like finding
Speaker 1: the one printing pressent Belarus that can like deliver deliver
Speaker 1: the version you need. Yeah, it was pretty funny. Um
Speaker 1: My my agent had been a long time publisher before
Speaker 1: he was an agent, and he he recommended me to
Speaker 1: someone that they had used before. It was like a
Speaker 1: Bible printer in the United States. They're actually based in Dallas,
Speaker 1: but they print at a factory that they own in Belarus.
Speaker 1: So you know, we went through a bunch of different people.
Speaker 1: They gave a samples. But one of the reasons my
Speaker 1: publisher didn't want to do the premium edition and why
Speaker 1: they sold the rights to me is that it felt
Speaker 1: like to them to be more trouble than it's worth.
Speaker 1: It actually ended up being a great idea and and
Speaker 1: readers have really loved it because because the day was
Speaker 1: still because the book you read a page a day
Speaker 1: every year, and you start over it, you know, after
Speaker 1: you make it through all three five days, so it
Speaker 1: kind of needs to be a sturdier book than your
Speaker 1: average hardcover. So it was it was a cool project,
Speaker 1: but yeah, you just realized, like, oh man, now I'm
Speaker 1: having to you know, different qualities of leather. What do
Speaker 1: I want? And how do I get in a box?
Speaker 1: And you know, how do I ship it some to
Speaker 1: the arehouse in the UK and some to the warehouse
Speaker 1: in Chicago? And what am I willing to pay? And yeah,
Speaker 1: how fast do I want it loaded off the containership?
Speaker 1: And you know how what is the capacity of the port?
Speaker 1: You know, during the pandemic and then god forbid people
Speaker 1: whose stuff was going through the Suez Canal and there's
Speaker 1: a boat stuck sideways. Like all of a sudden, these
Speaker 1: things that you read about in the news become like
Speaker 1: your problem when you're you're when you're the publisher, or
Speaker 1: when you're when you own the bookstore. One thing we
Speaker 1: haven't spoken very much about is uh, I guess employment
Speaker 1: and whether or not it was difficult to find enough
Speaker 1: people or the right people over the past year. I
Speaker 1: imagine some people you know, much like you, were perhaps
Speaker 1: reluctant to open in the midst of the worst of
Speaker 1: the pandemic. Employees were probably reluctant to come into work.
Speaker 1: And then of course this year as the economy reopens,
Speaker 1: we've heard all this talk about a labor shortage, and
Speaker 1: I'm just curious if this is something that you've experienced yourself. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we we hired someone really great at the beginning of
Speaker 1: the pandemic to be the manager. And then I think
Speaker 1: that was you know, as soon as we did that
Speaker 1: and then we couldn't open, it became sort of unconscionable
Speaker 1: to us that we would like if we wouldn't show
Speaker 1: up at the bookstore every day, to send someone else
Speaker 1: to do it for us, you know. So so we
Speaker 1: just decided to sort of first have this person set
Speaker 1: up everything and oversee the roll out of the of
Speaker 1: the bookstore, knowing we weren't going to open, and then
Speaker 1: sort of repurpose them for other projects until they felt
Speaker 1: comfortable and we felt comfortable. And then you know, obviously
Speaker 1: the decision for for all of us to get vaccinated
Speaker 1: and made some of this stuff less stressful. But you know,
Speaker 1: Texas again shoots itself in the foot, decides to sort
Speaker 1: of aggressively politicize the vaccine, you know, to lift the
Speaker 1: mass mandate early again, the pro business state passes this
Speaker 1: sort of nonsense legislation about, you know, not being able
Speaker 1: to discriminate in the form of vaccine passports. It's like, okay, great, Um,
Speaker 1: now you have to deal in a universe where you're
Speaker 1: asking someone, an hourly employee, to demand some complete strangers
Speaker 1: much bigger than them to put on a mask. And
Speaker 1: you know, this is a state where people can openly
Speaker 1: carry handguns like that. That is a totally unfair birden
Speaker 1: to throw on businesses. But it's the reality of where
Speaker 1: we are. So we we said, what can we do
Speaker 1: about that? My wife and I have volunteered in the
Speaker 1: vaccine clinic in town. We've tried to go like, we
Speaker 1: want to live and work in a town where people
Speaker 1: are vaccinated and safe. We can't affect government policy, but
Speaker 1: we can sort of try to be part of the solution.
Speaker 1: So what about like just sort of I mean when
Speaker 1: we talked about the power outages and the power stress
Speaker 1: and the buying things like buying shells or like buying
Speaker 1: furniture or buying lighting, I imagine this was like totally
Speaker 1: new to you. And again we keep hearing about like
Speaker 1: shortages and delays with all that stuff. What was that process? Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you you definitely hear that from contractors and stuff. They're like, hey,
Speaker 1: you know, I had to go to six different home depots,
Speaker 1: you know, to get this thing. And you're and and
Speaker 1: I'm sort of going like, but I don't want you
Speaker 1: to have to go to any home depots, Like can
Speaker 1: we buy this stuff online? Because again I've I've I've
Speaker 1: been very conscious of not wanting to ask people to
Speaker 1: do things I wasn't comfortable dealing with myself. But we're
Speaker 1: in the middle of this, you know, we talked about
Speaker 1: the freeze. Well now it's this crazy heat storm and
Speaker 1: lo and behold the A c uh you know, goes
Speaker 1: out in the building and we're gonna have to spend
Speaker 1: you know, a large amount of money on these two
Speaker 1: A c s. But like we're in a line, in
Speaker 1: a long line from the company, so like they have
Speaker 1: to wait to get it, and then we have to
Speaker 1: get slotted in with all the other businesses and people
Speaker 1: that need air conditioners, most of which you know, probably
Speaker 1: weren't super well maintained during the pandemic, and then to
Speaker 1: go through this freeze. So that that's what like right
Speaker 1: now today we were trying to figure out how to
Speaker 1: get this, to say, cee situation fixed and you know,
Speaker 1: sweating our asses off in the meantime. I guess that's
Speaker 1: a good segue into what things are like right now. Um,
Speaker 1: have things improved our customers coming in? Does the business
Speaker 1: feel established to you? Yeah, it feels. It's been just
Speaker 1: long enough that it's sort of part of a new normal.
Speaker 1: But business has been better than we expected. People have,
Speaker 1: for the most part, been wonderful. So many people have
Speaker 1: comeing up. I love bookstores. I you know, I always
Speaker 1: wanted there to be a bookstore here. I'm so happy
Speaker 1: you're here. And it's been cool to see other businesses
Speaker 1: pop up, you know, and some of the empty storefronts
Speaker 1: since we opened. So we're feeling good about where it's going.
Speaker 1: But then, like a lot of business owners, you sort
Speaker 1: of also out of the corner of your eye or
Speaker 1: your track in this delta variant, and you're wondering, you know,
Speaker 1: could could this all go back in the other direction again?
Speaker 1: And how can we be prepared for that too. The
Speaker 1: other thing we haven't really talked about is independent bookselling
Speaker 1: in the time of Amazon. Obviously, it's been pretty you know,
Speaker 1: I fear the sort of like chain physical bookstores like
Speaker 1: they got sort of obliterated, but there does seem to
Speaker 1: be the space for more independent um bookstores are things
Speaker 1: like sort of at an equilibrium, were like sort of
Speaker 1: like true book levers are supporting independent books, maybe more
Speaker 1: than they did in the past, and they're sort of
Speaker 1: like this balance or is there still like persistent Amazon
Speaker 1: anxiety in your community, in your world. I'm a little
Speaker 1: unique among authors in that, like I don't get any
Speaker 1: of this Amazon hate, Like I love Amazon. Amazon has
Speaker 1: been amazing for me, not just because they've sold a
Speaker 1: lot of my books, but they've surfaced my books to
Speaker 1: so many people that would have never heard about them,
Speaker 1: and that quite frankly, you know a lot of indie
Speaker 1: bookstores have never got behind them the way that Amazon has.
Speaker 1: So you know, when I go on Amazon, I know
Speaker 1: my books are in front of people. When I walk
Speaker 1: into a random indie bookstore and you know, Cleveland or something,
Speaker 1: it's not a guarantee they're going to carry my book.
Speaker 1: So the the majority of my sales come on Amazon.
Speaker 1: That not only am I not going to bite the
Speaker 1: hand that feeds me, I'm grateful for for what Amazon
Speaker 1: has done but I would say that our strategy is. Look,
Speaker 1: if you know, if you're looking for a very specific book,
Speaker 1: like you want to read the newest whatever, um, You're
Speaker 1: probably just going to buy it on Amazon because you're
Speaker 1: that title is in your mind and you want it
Speaker 1: right now, You're going to buy it there. The need
Speaker 1: we're trying to fill is, hey, exactly the need we
Speaker 1: felt when we were sitting at that breakfast restaurant, you know,
Speaker 1: eighteen months ago, which is we're having brunch. What are
Speaker 1: we gonna do after? I love browsing bookstore. So the
Speaker 1: premise of our bookstore is not that we carry every book,
Speaker 1: but that we carry books that we know you will like,
Speaker 1: that we have gotten behind, that we want you to
Speaker 1: check out. And you know, that was something that surprised
Speaker 1: me when I was researching about the indie bookstore business.
Speaker 1: The average indie bookstore carries about ten thousand titles, which
Speaker 1: is an insane amount of books. We carry about six
Speaker 1: hundred titles. We have multiple copies of those books. But
Speaker 1: my premises I want to have a small amount of
Speaker 1: books that of them I've not only personally read, but
Speaker 1: like I can tell you about and I can tell
Speaker 1: you why they're amazing. You absolutely have to read them,
Speaker 1: and I want to be able to display them in
Speaker 1: the store in a way that they stand out. So
Speaker 1: we carry a smaller number of books that we we
Speaker 1: we know people will love. That's the premise of this store.
Speaker 1: So we're not competing with Amazon, We're not competing with
Speaker 1: Barnes and Noble. It's right right back to this email
Speaker 1: list I've done this whole time, which is like, here
Speaker 1: are some books that I'm personally vouching for that I
Speaker 1: think you'll love. Um. So I realized that we haven't
Speaker 1: actually plugged many of your books on the podcast, So
Speaker 1: I'm just going to say that two of my favorites
Speaker 1: of yours are Conspiracy, which probably for our listeners is
Speaker 1: a little bit media naval gayzy, but that's why I
Speaker 1: am very interested in it. And Ego Is the Enemy
Speaker 1: was also amazing and helped me a lot when I
Speaker 1: moved into a managerial role at Bloomberg. So thank you
Speaker 1: for that. And I have to ask, are you working
Speaker 1: on anything at the moment. Yeah. I mean that was
Speaker 1: the other part of the pandemic, which is as as
Speaker 1: expensive and costly and crazy as all this has been.
Speaker 1: It was also wonderful to have a quiet, safe space
Speaker 1: just to myself that I could write and and to
Speaker 1: know that hey, if I show up every day and
Speaker 1: write this book, do my job, We're not going to
Speaker 1: starve to death. It will cover all this, right, And
Speaker 1: so that was that that was the ultimate sort of
Speaker 1: variable use of the space was that I could use
Speaker 1: the upstairs to write. And so I worked on a
Speaker 1: kid's book during the pandemic. I wrote a kid's book
Speaker 1: about Marcus. Reallys uh that that that came out in March,
Speaker 1: and then I I'm just now finishing and it's going
Speaker 1: to the printers. I'm writing a book about Courage that
Speaker 1: will come out in the fall and hopefully we'll be
Speaker 1: the first event that we have in the store, depending
Speaker 1: on sort of where the pandemic goes. My wife is
Speaker 1: reading the book by Conspiracy. Oh, thank you, it's great. Um.
Speaker 1: And the new one on Courage it's called Courage is Calling.
Speaker 1: Is that right? I'm looking on Amazon right now, Yeah,
Speaker 1: we'll see there you go. Yes, Courage is Calling. The
Speaker 1: subtitle is Fortune Favors the Brave, and it's it's the
Speaker 1: first in a four book series and the first one
Speaker 1: comes out and I believe September. Okay, well, we'll definitely
Speaker 1: look out for it. Um. Ryan, thank you so much
Speaker 1: for coming on all thoughts and talking to us about
Speaker 1: the challenges of starting not just a new business, but
Speaker 1: you know, an actual brick and mortar bookstore during a
Speaker 1: massive pandemic. Appreciate it. It feels good to uh to
Speaker 1: vent a little bit UH and and share, to share,
Speaker 1: to share the journey. So I appreciate the opportunity. Well,
Speaker 1: thanks so much, Ryan. That was great. Ryan. Thanks so Joe.
Speaker 1: You can probably tell I enjoyed that conversation, but I
Speaker 1: think it really helped to crystallize a lot of the
Speaker 1: different ideas that we've been talking about. I know we've
Speaker 1: spoken individually on a number of these supply chain issues
Speaker 1: now and a number of these sort of like high
Speaker 1: level economic themes. But I feel like this one store
Speaker 1: in you know, a small town close to Austin probably
Speaker 1: crystallizes a lot of what's going on. Yeah, totally right,
Speaker 1: And I feel like, you know, it's interesting, like it
Speaker 1: did would not have occurred to me that, like, even
Speaker 1: though it makes sense that like publishing got curtailed at
Speaker 1: the same time there was like a spike in demand
Speaker 1: for physical books, like how many? Like I just feel
Speaker 1: like that is such a repeated theme that we saw
Speaker 1: over and over again this last year, the simultaneous spike
Speaker 1: in demand and the color and the you know, the
Speaker 1: diminishment of supply all hitting at once. I just hadn't
Speaker 1: thought about it at all with the physical books, And
Speaker 1: then everything you said about shipping was like super interesting,
Speaker 1: Like I didn't even realize that, you know, track your
Speaker 1: own ship and getting to decide like when it gets unloaded,
Speaker 1: just all super interesting stuff. Yeah. And also publishers prioritizing
Speaker 1: prints from certain authors. I guess like intuitively it makes sense,
Speaker 1: but it's also something I hadn't thought about before. But
Speaker 1: the other thing I'm thinking is getting back to that
Speaker 1: question of whether or not these pressures are transitory. You know,
Speaker 1: this idea of does the publishing or you know, the
Speaker 1: physical book shortage resolve itself because publishers ramp up capacity
Speaker 1: in one way or another, or because demand starts to
Speaker 1: normalize and unfortunately people start reading less, or maybe it's
Speaker 1: a permanent shift in behavior and having spent a year
Speaker 1: at home, people decide that they actually really like reading books, um,
Speaker 1: and it becomes the new normal. I guess it's too
Speaker 1: early to tell. It's too really, but again it's interesting
Speaker 1: because like how many times have we seen like an
Speaker 1: industry was trying to get like super lean or like
Speaker 1: just in time inventory or and again like books, it
Speaker 1: must be suit Like I get that impulse like of
Speaker 1: course that you want to not of inventory, but also
Speaker 1: like books are super unpredictable in terms of what's gonna
Speaker 1: have a huge run. So once again you see like
Speaker 1: the sort of cost of like trying to get to
Speaker 1: to lean to fancy with your inventory. Yeah, absolutely, Okay,
Speaker 1: shall we leave it there? Yes, leave it there. This
Speaker 1: has been another episode of the All Thoughts podcast. I'm
Speaker 1: Tracy Alloway. You can follow me on Twitter at Tracy
Speaker 1: Alloway and I'm Joe wi Isn't All. You can follow
Speaker 1: me on Twitter at the Stalwart. Follow our guest on Twitter,
Speaker 1: Ryan Holiday, He's at Ryan Holiday. Follow our producer Laura Carlson,
Speaker 1: She's at Laura M. Carlson. Followed the Bloomberg head of
Speaker 1: podcast Francesco Levi at Francesca Today and check out all
Speaker 1: of our podcast at Bloomberg onto the handle at podcasts.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to the Year to