Business News: The Real Opportunity w/ AI - Creating Leverage - Real Estate Market Softening

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It will be May the fourth on Sunday. May the fourth be with you, Chris. What's up? I'm sitting here just thinking April flowers may showers. I don't know why. April showers bring may flowers has been rainy here. So hopefully that's the case. It's been rainy and warm, which is nice. Not here, sunny and greasy. It's been beautiful. Yes, it's been good. Our weekly business news. We're going to hit all the headlines. Try not to talk too much about tariffs. I never, Chris, I never imagined that I would have a moment in my life where I use the word tariff in a sentence as often as I have. That's the word. Yeah, ready. If we not weekly. No, I don't know if it's a sign of my age, a sign of the times, a sign of the way news is, which is it all of the above? Maybe lack of all of the above. Yeah, so I'd rather talk about a lot of other things as for sure. I know. So we're going to attempt to do that. Some of the market data is not wonderful, but I think we're it's early in the season. I think there's some cooling going on of all the banter a bit. The reality is we live in a world where you're never going to get the straight talk. It's always going to have the spin of one side or another. Kind of compounding whatever that news might be, one direction or the other. You know what I mean, Chris? Yeah, I mean, everyone will never always think alike. Yes, and everyone has a voice now with social media. And hey, we've got our own voice here on our platform, but it's like everything gets cut. I just got to tune it out. I do think, and we've talked about, we want to, I think we got to tamper down the negativity and they all out war on some of our allies. I think you're seeing softening of that language. And it's brought some people to the table. I think sometimes we've talked about this. The means might be correct, but the way that the things are happening might be the way that you get them done. But I think sometimes you can go a little further than intended with impacting overall sentiment. And I think you're feeling that a little bit with kind of like people feeling a little uneasy. And I think hopefully we can start to get on the other side of that and focus on the data because the numbers are still like, it's all relative, right? It's like, it is not like we suddenly stopped commerce completely. It's just, we're in this really weird funk where this is caused just enough of a stir combined with the real estate market and interest rates and battling inflation. So it's like, maybe we chose the wrong time to sort of stoke this. Yeah, I don't wonder if you'd ever hear that behind the scenes. I don't know, it's interesting seeing the impact of it. I mean, I've seen some really creative advertising related to it. I've seen one company that do jewelry and they're like, literally the ad was like tariff suck, but our jewelry doesn't. And I'm like, all right, they're making the best of it. Obviously, their stuff has made overseas. Even me myself, like, you know, I do the lab-grown diamond jewelry. My supplier messaged me this week about tariff changes, you know? So, and then I've seen on some clothing brands that I'm familiar with, like, they basically, they sell wholesale direct from China, right? So, and I saw they posted just the tariff tax was the same price as the order of the clothing. So it's giving people the ability to learn how to pivot. I think it's going to teach a lot of lessons right now. But as far as real estate goes, I have noticed a lot of price reductions in the real estate market down here. Getting a lot of zillow alerts of a lot of price on family real estate, like single-family homes. It's going to be interesting in a market like Greenville that we're at. We're here at the lovely Greenville, South Carolina, where we've seemed to have been Teflon to almost everything, because it's a attractive market to move to for families, leaving, you know, larger states with higher costs and just more stuff. So you've got a lot going for the city. So I mean, interesting where all this nets out for a city like ours, if we just stay Teflon through it all, like, you know, like it not have declines, because the biggest thing here has just been inventory availability, which still hasn't improved, even with the interest rates. And so it has changed and you see what I worry about like being here, and, you know, we talk about a lot more national topics. But like, as it relates to small town America a little bit, the changing dynamic when housing brings in people from other markets, because it's more affordable, but not necessarily affordable. More affordable with them, because they were used to paying 800 to a 1.5 million for a three-bedroom house. Or in South Carolina, that's been a, you know, 200 to 400 thousand dollar cost. You know, if I'm not talking about like high end, I'm just about like middle of the road. And people come here and they're like, hey, we're used to paying this rate. We'll take that and they get a little more square footage. So what happens, though, is what happens to market like hours when you get an influx of different personalities, beliefs, etc. And I'm not saying we're also different, but it can change the makeup. Yeah, I mean, the makeup and the fabric of the city. And not because, you know, everything was right about old school greenville. No, we needed some growing up. But what is the true impact of that, both socially, economically, etc., right? I think we're in a time, I would almost call it a financial migration. You know, it's crossing cultural boundaries. And like you said, people aren't necessarily living where they want to live anymore. People are living where they can afford to live. Yep. And I think you're right. Even with COVID, for example, you know, that was a mass migration. Or maybe that was the beginning of a lot of financial difficulties. I know it was for many small businesses. Of course, like if you couldn't operate in certain states, because even down here in Florida, you know, all the towns I've lived in, you know, growing up here, they've all had a large change because there's way more out-of-state people migrating in. Yeah, exactly. And so we'll see how that goes. I was commencing if greenville as an sort of a proxy for other cities this size, you know, throw in like little towns in Arkansas that are kind of, you know, seeing their heyday from some social media, and some of the shows that have been on, bittenville, and like places like that. And even, I mean, Austin's a different place altogether and larger texting. But how all this, the interest rates in the real estate market, and I continue to beat this rum, just, it drives money in the market when you've got a good amount of real estate turning and refinancing and all that stuff. And so that's what we need these inflation numbers to go down. And that's where I choose to believe, and I've been, Chris and I've both been pretty transparent, you know, like where I'm out, I claim myself to be an independent. I think you do as well, Chris, for the most part, we don't necessarily wear a color on our sleeves, but we voted a certain direction. And I choose to believe that there's a game of chess being played and a game of checkers being played. And I think there's some chess going on overall that I think is going to net out where we like it. But it's going to continue to be a little rocky. And I said this on a post that you'll see later today where it's uncomfortable to get the change that you need. It's not always comfortable. And we've been conditioned to be very comfortable. And you know, COVID in a strange way, and you know, part, putting aside the major impact medically, I'm not saying like, but it made us comfortable, those of us that were not impacted by it directly, with the money in the market, everything's good. And then we had an administration where it was just kind of like they they'd allow you to sleep with everything's fine. But we got to suffer a little discomfort to get to the change that's needed. And I can't stress that enough. And I don't say that lightly because I feel some of the discomfort. You know, but I think it's necessary. Chris, what do you think? Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think this is a ship that's been going the wrong way for a long time. I'm talking like 40 years. Like these multinational corporations outsourced all of our middle class chasing profit over ultimately patriotism. Our own people sold us out to make cheaper goods with cheap labor outside of America. And before our eyes, all of us have been lulled for longer than I would say, COVID, I mean, essentially, it's been slipped out the last 20, 30 years. We've outsourced everything. So we have now a entire population in the middle class with no jobs and no money. And that's why ultimately, unless you open your eyes, we are completely screwed unless we turn this around. There is. Yeah. And unless we get all agreed that we're going to give universal basic income because AI is going to be doing so many jobs. And everyone's just going to get paid to live. Exactly. You know, like, and unfortunately, that that has never worked. That does not. And I mean, you can say this as a business owner Ryan, just who we are as people. No one is living a good life not chasing anything. Right? No. Like, you're not happy. It's like, you know, and not to get into the health impact, but you not talk about it on five science, like, and talk about middle to climb. That would be it. I think that's where you're going, right? Yeah. I mean, we've been in decline for a long time. And I'd say we've been very comfortable and complacent. And this is the result of that. Unfortunately, you know, and I hate it because if you look at historical timelines, like we're over the hump of the greatness of this empire. And that's just history. And I think we're trying to save it. But it's not going to be an easy turnaround. And the wealth may be too consulted at this point. But the reality is is these fuckers that have been buying yachts and mansions for the last 30 years, it's because they started producing these goods elsewhere to get higher profit margins. I mean, that's it. Bingo. And so you're going to have a little pain to get to the side of it to bring some of the jobs back. I just saw where four trillion dollars in investments come back in in the last hundred days. So it should motivate you. Yeah. You know, figure some shit out using internet YouTube. Yeah. Yeah. Man, that's what I talked about last week or the week before. Yeah. All these things are there. Like you could run leaner than you ever had to. Like you're in your barrier to entry as a solopreneur has never been lower. And I say that not because everybody's meant to be solopreneur. But if you can't find work or can't find something else or you're struggling with, you know, where you're going to find the job and do all that, then you've got an option to turn to. Tools are there. But you got to you got to have that want to Chris. You know, isn't sure supply these days that want to you know, I used to think everybody had the same amount. I don't think that anymore. Yeah. And I mean, every sort of like reasonably driven human being, I thought it kind of had average. I'm not talking about everybody has her ups and downs. You have people on substance and you like throw out the kind of health and anomalies. I thought everybody kind of in the middle had the sort of all the same. No, no, I was a big if like my biggest learning lesson last 10 years. Some people hang out. Yeah. They're just hanging out. It's okay. But you always just going to be hanging out. You know, it's like, I'm okay. If you're okay with that, I really am. What I don't have what I have a problem with Chris is the ones that want what comes with the want to and the not hanging out. And you just want to hang out. That's just don't fly. Doesn't work. Doesn't work. So it's an interesting time. But there's never there's not a better place on the face of the earth than to be within the walls of this country. And don't ever forget it. Don't let the news or the negativity or your neighbor or your mom or your sister convince you otherwise. Because when you start drinking that rat poison, you're going down to real slippery slope. And they've been ditching that. It's been a lot of like people haven't been proud to be an American. It feels right. There's been a degradation of our morals and values as a country. No, we stand for it. And it feels very victime nowadays. Instead of like you said, this is the greatest country on the planet to come and make something of yourself. You have more opportunity here than anywhere else. Yep. And that hadn't changed. Yeah. The amplification of political warfare in news and headlines doesn't change that fact. And you know, economic data everybody's in the short term, man. Every person is in the short term. Everybody's in fact too. What's that? I got a fun fact also. Yeah. But it's like everybody's in the short terms. Everybody like the news today and the impact of that today. No, this is a long game, man. It's a stock market in a way with your life, with your financial goals and all these things. They're all the way, you know, it's not and it's not because you don't have to make bills today or this week. I get it. I wrote those checks all morning. I know the pain of that. But we can't like continue to x-ray everything down to the micro moment. Yes. And I'm going to jump on that with something I read yesterday. We weren't programmed as humans to care about everything going on in the world. We don't have that capacity. Our brains were basically built to care and have an impact around the 150 people closest to us, our community. We're doing a disservice and it's good to care, right? But to turn on the news and you're getting all this influx, you got war going all over the world, financial hardships. How much of worrying about that can you actually control? What is worrying you worrying about what's going on the other side of the world, too? And that's part of our problem is it's great to care. But we weren't built to fix everyone's problems everywhere. No. And I'll even say that may be part of America's problem, right? We wanted to go fix everyone else and then to do it our way. And obviously a lot of it was financially motivated, right? For other resources or cheap labor. But we got to worry about ourselves. You got to worry about what you control your family, your community. And tune it out because it's just stealing from you. Yeah, stealing your joy. Your joy and your inner peace. Yeah, your presence with the people you're actually around. You know, it's like life isn't that bad when you turn off all the negativity coming through the media. Focus on the day and focus on you. What can you control? Exactly. That's it. And look, we're going to use some tips right here. Free AI tools. Facebook parent Meta launches AI assistant app further competing with open AI in Google and it's free. I was just playing with it for 30 seconds before we got on here. I'm a chat. GPT guys said that. I'll go ahead and just say that. But it's pretty slick. I like the calming voice that came on and told me things, Chris. She was very pleasant, very just calming is what I would say. But look, you got to use these tools, especially when they're free. Short cuts, research, short cuts, information. It can process things way faster than you can looking things up. And when you're working on any project of any type, you should be leveraging these tools. It's going to be interesting how it also like being Facebook. It integrates with like your Facebook accounts, which is pulling in knowledge already about you. And then for everybody gets like the conspiracy theory is scared. We already just told you what to worry about what not worry about. Use this for your advantage. Don't worry about it. If you're worried about pulling something from your Facebook, you shouldn't have posted it to Facebook to begin with. You're into deep already. Exactly. So I wanted to pull all my stuff. I don't have any. I had to have been a poster too. Okay. Usually I'm like, I did. You know, I should have gotten that cup. Sure. But 99.9. I don't care. Like you use it. Help me. I mean, you learn more about me so you can help me do my job better, learn better, be a better parent, be a better husband. I mean, there's knowledge and calculating all that stuff. But it's a dedicated app, Chris. I went and found that meta AI. Go, go look it up. It's powered by llama four. For some of these names. Lama just doesn't make me feel powerful. I know. The almighty llama four. I'm sure it stands for something. Yeah. Language learning. I wish you had a different name. Language integrated. You know, I don't know. Ask me. Ask me anything. Language learning. Ask me anything. There it is. It is. It's a large language model. Let's try with the large language. Ask me anything. We're going to start making up acronyms. It boasts enhanced reasoning, multilingual capabilities and better efficiency and wife pleasing recommendations. I made that one. You can use it for that too. Exactly. If you were me, I look, I'm going to give you a prompt. Free prompts. Free prompts. People pay for prompts, Chris. You know, pretend that I'm a husband. And this is you're talking to your GPT here. Pretend I'm a husband that's fucked up a few times with my wife. Nothing salacious. But just like, yeah, it's been a bad month. It's in bad decisions. Wife's not happy at me. And you were trying to find innovative ways to make her feel better about you. And you have kids. So you have to keep that in mind. You have a busy schedule. How would you handle this situation? Could you give me five suggestions for a man in that situation? Just ask it. And the answers will be yours. There you go. There's your own. Luckily, luckily, it's a perfect husband. I've never had to ask that. But you can't. You've thought about it though. Yeah. It's tongue firmly in cheek. As said. But you can add that's, but that's the crazy thing. Like, it could be your assistant for all kinds of things. And it's fun. The app will offer personalized responses using context from a user Facebook and Instagram accounts. We talked about that. That's good. You could integrate with meta AI's glasses and merge with its existing companion app. Have you ever used, have you seen meta glasses? Like, no, I just, I know I didn't really talk about these things. Yeah, it's like, stop talking about that. We had to come back to the metaverse, right? It's like no one cares, guys. Let it go. A page description for advanced chat bot features will begin testing in Q2. The revenue impact may not be seen until next year. Lama Khan is the AI developer event. Of course, it is. Met is hosting Lama Khan. It's first AI developer event focused on showcasing its Lama AI models. It really could have gone just a strong Lama. It could have at least been a donkey, you know, donkey AI or something like that. Apple has like lion, the Lama notes, ain't no leopard. I mean, that's cool shit. You know, I want a snow leopard, you know, AI, reasoning engine. I want a lion, you know, but I'm a Lama. Don't key AI. It's, it is what it is. We don't take ourselves too seriously around here. Anyway, but everything we're saying about AI, you need to listen to. We will pan it a little bit, though, because you do wonder what happens to how in these borders, you can tell us tech people damage it. You know, you need to get some marketers in there like need some like fierce AI fierce. The fierce model learning Lama engine fierce Lama, at least put it like a, you know, something on top of it. Like how about loyal Lama? Hey, the loyal Lama. Okay. All right, makes it sound better. Oh, it's all horrible. You can't make Lama sound cool. Yeah, it's true. It's true, Chris. Not even me. Not even with that voice tone. Yeah. Oh, US sports merchandising group, fanatics, plots, global trading card expansion. We've been telling you, folks, and that trading card series is starting in about two weeks. It's, it's a fun series, but it's it's some eye opener on the data and the numbers around this shit. It's crazy. Fanatics, global trading card ambitions, founder and CEO of Michael Rubin projects $3 billion in trading card and collectibles revenue for the company by 2026, expanding aggressively in international markets. Fanatics acquired tops trading cards for 500 million in 2022. Collectibles revenue hit $1.6 billion in 2024, expected to top $2 billion this year and $3 billion in the next year. That sounds like pretty damn good growth. We're just adding bees right after another billion, billion, billion. He said, Rubin attributes the boom to increase disposable income and boredom. I'm like, really? That's the market analysis. Yeah. I was expecting something a little more interesting than that. Fanatics opened the first trading core store in London on Regent Street. Purpose is marketing in a model for entrepreneurs. It's all about showing people what the store should look like and how it should work. So they're essentially showing Europe how trading card stores should operate. So then you get spin-offs from that. Fanatics overall revenue expected to hit $9 billion this year and $11 billion in 26. Fanatics will gain exclusive rights to the English Premier League trading cards and stickers in June 2025. They can go over from Panini. Panini and Tops were just like, I would back and forth. They needed to figure out a merger. I don't know why they did. It's not good for the business. It's like, it's the stupidest shit. But now that I'm in it, I'm seeing all of it. And I see, you know, Chris is what happened. This year, like for NFL, Panini's had the exclusive rights to the NFL. So what that means is Tops cards this year. No, it doesn't have any logos on it. So you'll get like, you know, Josh Allen, but there has no Buffalo bills logo. It says Buffalo. And it says bills. But there's no logos on their helmets or their jerseys. It's odd. And it's like, unnecessary. I'm like, why can't you sell more than one license to both companies? If they want to make cards, then you know, double it up here. But like starting next year, Tops is going to have a Panini wand and their cards won't have logo. It's just dumb. It's not good for the, you know, it's not good for the culture. No, it's like, I don't really, and it keeps me from buying a shirt card like that. It looks stupid. Yeah, well, you want it probably not worth as much too. Well, the tops is tops is, see, that's the thing, they go to these other measures to make it. They do, they get the autographs agreements with some of the hottest players. So then if you want that player's card as a rookie with an autograph, you have to buy the tops for it. And he has no logo on his helmet. Because Panini, that was on Amazon. It's like, huh, you can't get the best of all worlds. I want to go in the autograph. Exactly. That's what it does the collectors and they can harder for collectors. Yeah. So there, there it is. More Americans are financing groceries by now, pay later loans. It's hard for me to know if there's a reflection definitively of the exact economics of tariffs right now, or if this is just a proliferation of the buy now pay later, expanding into more things. Yeah. Like it's a little bit of both. I mean, I wanted that state last night. I didn't quite have enough money, but I wanted it. So I'm going to finance this baby over 30 days. Interest free. What a world. Yeah, I mean, whoa, Coachella, you know more about the story than me. I mean, we're in the same concept. There was something like actually even says in this article, it reached recent surge in buy now pay later use even includes Coachella ticket purchases. And that was something like 70% or 80% of the attendees of Coachella had all used by now pay later options. Oh my god. Which Coachella is a very bougie, you know, big music festival in the desert, very expensive. It's the place to be right. So that kind of even shows you even in that world. People are stretching, stretching their cash. Yeah. The, I just think back to a kind of like top of your talk about, you know, people kind of want the spoils without the work. It's like, oh, I'm going to keep this lifestyle up, but I don't want to go work for it. I mean, that's kind of where my head goes, the Coachella, not to my groceries. Yeah, and people are fed up. Honestly, I've been seeing a lot of people like just talking about their credit scores in general. They're like, just I don't care anymore. Like, and I don't know if that's a good thing, right? It's almost like people are just getting pounded down so hard that they're they're they're becoming indifferent. Well, I think it's because back to their playing, everybody's playing the day game, and that's a long game. How great can I make today without working hard for you? Yeah. And I think just we're under extremely shitty financial conditions. Yeah. The average 18 to 25 year old, you know. Yeah. It's harder to get like great jobs, but I think time is still back to the internet and AI and all these things. There's lots of ways to kind of put it together if you want to piece it together. But so what's but there's becoming fewer of is the handout of easy to get this job that it's pretty decent. Those are really harder to get. It's easier for those that have the want to, you know, to get in on it and probably make more than they ever would have from the, you know, it's sort of the easy handout job. And now they're having to sort of, I don't know, work for it a little harder. Well, and I think we got people that aren't just that I'm built for that, you know, like our engineers and these other types of people that AI is probably taking their jobs that like they're not entrepreneurial type people, you know, like not everyone is going to be successful on internet money and YouTube, you know, but I think people's expectations are definitely out of reach. And a lot of it's because the internet and a lot of it, we know it's bullshit, right? I mean, million dollars last month, I can teach you all that bullshit. Exactly. Not a lot of major headlines this week, keeping it more about the sentiment overall, any final thoughts, articles, etc. Chris hot topics. Crypto's looking a little better than it was, you know, yeah, big coins are 94,000 today. So it was, you know, touchdowned like 76,000 within the last month. So it's looking brighter than it was. How's that Trump coin doing? I have so much. I don't know. I haven't looked at it. Yeah. XRP's doing is coming back around the where it was, you know, maybe 60, 90s go, still way up for the last six or seven months. That's where you gotta put it along. I'm not even looking at it. I stopped looking. I used to look at it every day. I don't even look at it. I got a guy like once a week, like, okay, let's just see what's happened. I'd probably get a notification if it either tanked or went up majorly. And I'm not getting any news. It's doing this pretty much. So, you know, I'm waiting for that, that big pop though. I think I think we're going to get it here in the next few months, maybe towards the end of the year. But hey, Lord, just comfort to get to the better places. Still the best place on earth to live. Don't forget that. And don't forget to leave us a review. If you like the show, we appreciate it. Leave a review that helps all the feedback helps. Tell us you want to hear Chris Brobihans on Instagram. I'm at Ryan offer two. So you can hit us up there. Give us a shout out anytime. Chris, appreciate your brother. Likewise, my man. Hey, Ryan is right. That calm. Find the highlight clips. The full episode. All our sponsors go support them as well. They support us. We and we support you. We'll see you next time. All right about now.