Bloomberg Businessweek Weekend - November 21st, 2025

25:58I've been talking about this piece that was on 60 Minutes about the founder of Anthropic. Yeah, Dario Amadei. Right. And he talks specifically about how AI in healthcare. And I've talked to doctors, too. We were at Boston Children's about the use of, you know, they can't keep up to date on everything. and that how AI can data points and so on really come together to help create in terms of diagnoses, treatment, and also in terms of innovation. But Amadei is saying on 60 Minutes, basically he's talking about this thing of condensing basically, let me just look what he says, the compressed 21st century.

26:43That's the phrase he uses to describe what could happen. And he says the idea would be the point that we can get AI systems to this level of power where they're able to work with the best human scientists. Could we get 10 times the rate of progress and therefore compress all the medical progress that's going to happen throughout the entire 21st century in five or 10 years? I realize it's his book. But I mean, those of us who've started playing around with it are kind of blown away with it in terms of what it can do. But again, do you think it's just a productivity tool or something more that maybe creates?

27:12At this stage, yes. Remember in the old days, Ray Kurzweil was one of the early advocates of AI. And he said, well, it's not intelligence, it's simulated cognition. And he was right. But then he had so many people throwing money at him to go to conferences and speak that over time he adopted a more liberal, more, you know, I guess accepting view of this technological phenomenon. But to me, as a writer, when I use AI, I use Google, for example, it's nice if you know what you're looking for specifically. But I'll always ask the machine two or three times the same question, differently worded. And you always get different outputs.

27:55So let me give you another example. Imagine using AI for a mortgage lender to deal with customers who are calling for a variety of reasons. And you want to use it to try and sift through those inquiries, answer the ones that you can in a reliable fashion. Also use it to do summations of phone calls that have to be reviewed and okayed before they're finalized. These are all valid functions. But ultimately, all we're really doing here is summarizing. And that's what computers do. They sort. They do summations and averages and everything else. but it's not intelligence. It's not the ability to learn on the fly and particularly without a monitor and a companion, if you will, in a human sense.

28:44So for a lot of companies, they look at the horsepower, they look at the speed and the robustness of these AI tools, right? But they don't quite get there in terms of rolling it out because of the high error rates. That's the thing. Okay, Tim and I are like fighting. Who gets to ask the next question? Go ahead, Tim, because I'm gracious. So are you out of NVIDIA then? Because if this doesn't amount to... Everybody seems to be getting. A lot of people. I got in a long while ago. I wrote it up. Then I got out. Then I got back in. And each time it went up so much, it got to be such a big percentage of my portfolio that I had to sell it.

29:20Well, the thing I want to ask you, Chris, is how does this end? Because I'm looking at Amazon did a big... Their first US dollar bond offering in three years, looking to raise$12 billion, but attracts about$80 billion of orders. The size of U.S. dollar bond offering at$15 billion. It's like, and Meta did it. So how does this end? I mean, I mean it when we turned to you so many times during the great financial crisis. And this was something that there was so much FOMO and people didn't want to miss the gains, but we know how it all ended. So how do you, I don't want to be alarmist. I want to be smart here.

29:56How does this potentially end? the AI component, who's impacted? I think you're going to see a correction in some of these valuations simply because they've gone up so much in a relatively short period of time. Let me give you another interesting example. A company I actually like a lot, SoFi. SoFi is the best performing bank stock in the United States. It has been for the last 18 months. You know what the next one is, by the way, among big banks? Citi. The rest of the big guys have fallen behind. So why did SoFi do so well? Well, slowly they're growing into their overhead. Their overhead was massive.

30:31It's still too high relative to the size of the bank. It's about$50 billion in assets now. But they had a tech component, a Silicon Valley component, a little bit of Bitcoin. All of these pieces that made equity managers love it. And they drove the thing up over 100 % over the last 12 months. I think stories like that are going to cool off. I think Bitcoin, frankly, is in big trouble because it was kind of co-opted by Wall Street. When you see ETFs with Bitcoin, that's not a good thing. This was supposed to be a means of exchange, remember? Well, you know, I think all of these markets are going to have to retreat a little bit, Carol.

31:11Will they go down way much like 2008? No, because there's still too many dollars chasing these opportunities. Yeah, there's a lot of liquidity out there. Chris, so glad already where my team is like, when can we get Chris back? Thank you so much. Really, really appreciate it. Time to rebook him. We have lots of follow-up questions. We have lots of follow-ups. So far, by the way, it's up about 74 % year-to-date. Citigroup's up about 40%. Comparison, JP Morgan, also having a good year, but again, of about 25 % year-to-date. Chris Whalen, thank you, thank you. So appreciate it. Chris is chairman of Whalen Global Advisors.

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35:10Just say, Alexa, play Bloomberg 1130. All right, so we continue to try to make sense of the U.S. economy. As we've been discussing, growth is slowing. The job market is cooling. Inflation has eased from its peak, but still above target. The Fed is still cautious again. And credit conditions show stress in places, even while banks overall look resilient. And I got to say, we are spending so much time, you and I, and I feel like when we do our planning calls in the morning, of just are there cracks when it comes to credit and any kind of financial stress? Well, one person that we regularly go to for his view on the economy and rates and building is Frank Sorrentino.

35:47He's chairman and CEO of the publicly held New Jersey-based community bank Connect One Bank Corp. It's a parent company of Connect One Bank. It counts small businesses and construction companies among its customers. It's got locations in New Jersey, New York, and Florida. and what's unique about Frank is that he has a background as a builder. He actually studied construction in college. So we always like to talk to him about supply and demand when it comes to those physical things, buildings and homes. We are at this moment where we're trying to figure out, I feel like I can say this a million times this year, like where we are in the U.S.

36:20economy, what's ahead? What kind of clarity do we have? Tell us about your business and what you're saying. We've left the nice, calm part of the pool and now we're into the rapids. and the more turbulent it was when you look back before Liberation Day. Oh, okay. Fair. Certainly, you know, we're seeing a lot of people have a lot of apprehension about where we stand right now, right? So small businesses have a lot of concerns. There's so many things going on. There's so many different data points to look at or not look at or not have information in front of them. But, you know, I know we've talked about this before.

36:58I keep saying I believe we're on a robust footing here with our economy. Because you see it in terms of what, loan generation or what? Our clients, you know, they discuss the issues of, you know, not being sure what to do next. Yet, when you ask them, how are sales? What's going on? You know, are your revenues up? Are you thinking about expansion? Are there opportunities? Are you looking to hire people? In our market anyway, in the New York metro market, which is the market we represent, we're finding that people, the businesses, business owners here are doing quite well, and they're continuing to do well.

37:36And there's so many inputs that are helping that. AI is helping in a lot of cases. Just the amount of capital coming into this region, the amount of construction going on, the amount of heavy and highway work, just you name it. But manufacturing, I think today there was a fact that came out about New York manufacturing was on the rise, something that was actually a little bit of a surprise to most, not to me. Our clients are telling us that business is continuing to improve, yet they have trepidation about where they settle right now. However, interestingly, if you ask them where they think they'll be in six months from now, everyone says they think they'll be in a better place.

38:20So everyone is counting on the economy getting better, or at least their conception of what better may be from where they are today. What I say is they're in a good economy now, and it's going to continue to do better. Now, there's also the tale of two different stories here. There are some parts of our economy that are not doing as well as others. And I think we saw some of the reaction to that recently in some of the political events that have occurred. So I think we do need to take a look at this. What's the distribution of where wealth is being created and not created? As a New Yorker, it's nice to hear that things in the New York City area are looking good.

38:58But it also makes me think of the changing politics of the city and mayor elect Zoran Mamdani. And this is not a political question. It's simply a question about how people should plan for the future. We reported that aides to President Trump have spent the days following Mamdani's victory in New York, reviewing federal funds that benefit the city to potentially suspend or cancel, a White House official said, highlighting the threat of retribution over the Democratic Socialists win. If we were to see in New York City or New York State funding cut off for some of these projects, would that have a big effect on the economy?

39:31Look, I would believe the answer would be yes. It will have some effect on the economy. Because you mentioned some infrastructure projects that you're seeing. Sure. I don't know how big that would be. And I don't know what the, you know, it seems to me in this economy, at least over the last 12 months or so, there seem to be so many inputs that have been maybe going in one direction, maybe a negative way, and something else turns around and comes back in the other direction. So look, New York has always been New York. And we've been through all different types of political environments. And there have been ups and downs.

40:06But if you chart the growth of New York from 1609 or whenever, when the first settlement started here through to today, it has been an uphill, nonstop economy. And so I have every confidence that New York is going to continue to be the place to be. Are there challenges here today about affordability and who can live here and some of the changes that need to be made? Absolutely. I think we'll get those things right. One thing I have learned from this administration, there are a lot of threats that are made and a lot of, you know, there's a lot of saber rattling at the end of the day, though. I think our president loves the city of New York.

40:41I can't see him doing anything that's generally going to be harmful to the city. Frank, correct us if we're wrong, though. We were talking with some of our folks who also cover the banking area. And our understanding is you do have some exposure to rent regulated properties or apartments, I think, via your CRE lending. So with the Mamdani win here in New York City, how do you feel about that exposure? and what he has said about his pledge to freeze rents. So look, for those properties that we're trying to convert from rent regulated or rent stabilized rather to market rent, those properties are going to have some challenges going forward because that's not going to happen.

41:23And part of that was the 2009, let's not forget the 2019 law made that change. And it was interesting, right? The candidate everybody wanted to win, which was Andrew Cuomo, he's the one who signed that law. So everybody's afraid of the mayor coming in. But yet, you know, it was the one who ran against him that brought that law to pass. For the balance of the rent-stabilized properties that are out there that are already cash-flowing and have been underwritten under those terms, I think they're going to be fine. As a matter of fact, the current mayor-elect has spoken many times about programs possibly to lower property taxes for some of those property owners and come up with insurance programs to sort of help out to keep the rents at a lower rate.

42:08So if that's true and, you know, if there's going to be some level of negotiation around what to do or how to do it to keep the rent increases lower, I'm all for it. That's great. What we have found over the years is that there have been rent increases. There was just one passed recently for, I think, about 3 % that went into effect in October. And let's not forget that the current mayor has six picks still on the Rent Guidelines Board. And they are supposed to look at the economy on the ground today. Where are our expenses? You know, the city does raise your taxes and your sewer fees, and the cost of everything else goes up.

42:48So rents should go up appropriately as well, you know, based on inflation. So I do think there'll be a give and take there. And, you know, at the end of the day, look, I think having affordable apartments is a very, very great thing for our city. I'd like to see us be able to do more in that regard here in New York City. Why don't we do more? And I guess I ask that because... Oh, we would need a very long program to get into what, you know, there are cities and towns. New Rochelle is an example of that, where they've taken the opposite approach, which is let's build as many apartments as we can possibly build.

43:20Let's let the developers go build. Yeah, it stands up there. And they did that. And, you know, the laws of supply and demand are sort of like gravity, right? You can't undo them. And so they built a lot of supply. And guess what happened to the rents? They came down. They didn't go up. They went down. We had the mayor, Yadira Ramos Herbert, on a few months ago talking about this and the zoning changes. You have background as a builder. You actually went to college for this before you were a banker. And I think it's fair to say that all I'm not going to say all economists, most economists would agree the way to decrease housing prices is to build more housing.

43:58How do you do that in New York City? And are developers going to do that in New York? Like what would developers need in the next administration in order to do that apart from zoning changes? What would they need to hear from City Hall that says, you guys can go ahead and build and build more housing? Well, we would need zoning changes. We would need the ability to build housing that is affordable to build. You can't add on all of these issues. Listen, I come from a union family, so I love unionized workforces. But if you're going to force every small apartment builder to build using union labor, you're going to drive up the cost.

44:32if we're going to force buildings to not be able to use certain types of natural gas appliances, or they've got to meet certain environmental standards. These are all issues that New York City has faced and builders have faced here. And so they keep adding all of these things on, and it makes the projects unaffordable. And if they're unaffordable, they don't get built. Just one last question, because I've got it. We're Bloomberg. We do have a last Fed meeting come December. What are you expecting? What do you think we do need? based on, you sound pretty upbeat. Just got about 40 seconds here. The Fed's got a tough job ahead of them.

45:05On the one hand, you know, unemployment and the employment structure in the economy is giving some mixed signals. Yeah. You know, larger businesses may be hiring smaller businesses, may be laying off. That could be temporary in that camp. I do believe that the smaller businesses are going to catch up soon. I do think there is, I don't think there's a lot of inflation built into the economy. I think the tariffs are sort of skewing some of those numbers. I think they're going to have a tough call. My hope would be that they continue on the path and they cut rates another 25 basis points in December.

45:40Well, just another excuse for Frank to come and hang out with us again. And get to the other five questions that we had here. December 10th Fed Day when we get that decision from Jay Powell and the Federal Reserve. You're just up the street, so come back soon. Will do. Frank Sorrentino, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of ConnectOne Bank, joining us right here in our Bloomberg Interactive Broker Studio. You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week Daily Podcast. Catch us live weekday afternoons from 2 to 5 p.m. Eastern. Listen on Apple CarPlay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app.

46:09Or watch us live on YouTube. Plenty ahead in our second hour of the weekend edition of Bloomberg Business Week, including how Looking Good became a$450 billion industry and how one retail behemoth is giving strip malls the major glow up. We're talking Ulta Beauty. Plus, we'll hear from the behavioral psychologist with alternative thinking on what makes great leaders. It may just be time to throw out all those management books, at least according to John Levy. He's the author of Team Intelligence, How Brilliant Leaders Unlock Collective Genius. And he joins us a little later. First up this hour, the great crypto crash of 2025 entered a new phase on Wednesday as Bitcoin plunged to its lowest level in seven months, extending the more than$1 trillion wipeout across the digital asset world.

46:52The day before that, on Tuesday, investors pulled more than half a billion dollars from BlackRock's iShares Bitcoin Trust, the largest single day outflow, Tim, since the fund's debut. The total market cap of cryptocurrencies peaked at about$4.3 trillion. Now, that was a little over a month ago, back on October 6th. At now hovers around$3.2 trillion, and much of that change reflects paper losses, not real world cash leaving hands. To talk all things crypto, we were joined by Zach Pandel, head of research at the crypto asset manager Grayscale Investments. Also, Isabel Lee, Bloomberg News cross-asset reporter.

47:27And just one more thing, Grayscale recently filed for an IPO. So we know the company manages about$35 billion in assets with more than 40 products giving exposure to over 45 tokens. Well, what I see is a repricing of technology-related assets across the board, whether it's some of the AI names, satellite companies, quantum computing stocks. And crypto has been part of that story. So it really hasn't been a crypto-specific sell-off. It's been a frontier technology sell-off. And so I see macro drivers behind that rather than crypto-specific. But if we look at the sell-off in the Nasdaq, what, down about roughly 6 % from all-time highs.

48:05I mean, we're down 30%. Yeah, modest for the big indexes and some of the mega cap names. You see much larger declines in Bitcoin and some of the, again, frontier technology type of names. And crypto is that sort of space. On the one hand, Bitcoin is a major asset, a$2 trillion asset. Much of the asset class, though, still early stage technologies. I think it's fair to characterize it. And it's definitely been trading with that part of the market. I think that has to do with concerns about the U.S. economy, questions about the Fed policy, much more than what's happening in crypto specifically. Well, how do you see Grayscale or just crypto in general?

48:40Like, is it a safe haven? Is it a cryptocurrency? Is it a currency? Is it a commodity? Is it an asset? Like, how do you really define it? Crypto is a$4 trillion alternative asset class today. So it's a mid-size alternatives category. And investors think about putting it in their portfolio in that way, alongside hedge funds, private equity, infrastructure bets, crypto fits in that way. With the same amount of risk or no, not necessarily. It's definitely a higher volatility alternative and should be considered that way. But that fits very well for many investors with longer term portfolios. They're looking for many different ways to take risks in markets that don't have the same correlation with public market equity.

49:22Sometimes that means it outperforms SOX. Sometimes that means it underperforms SOX. It's been a great diversifier over time. I know Isabel wants to jump in here in a second, but I just want to get one more in. And that's on this conversation, the idea of some of the other assets that you mentioned. Okay, if we're talking about alternatives, you know, maybe we're talking private credit, maybe we're talking real estate. Sometimes those are hard assets, like real estate. Sometimes they're assets that produce cash, like private credit returns, you know, you loan money to people, they give you money back at a higher interest rate.

49:51You hope. You hope. Yeah. We'll see if that happens in the future. with with bitcoin that doesn't exist there are no cash flows with bitcoin that's right so we call it the crypto asset class we could call it the blockchain asset class because that's what it's all about blockchain technology that's what stitches together everything in the crypto asset class and it has a diverse range of use cases digital money like bitcoin digital finance applications like decentralized finance stable coins tokenization all the things we've been talking about this year. It is all of those different things, and it will compete in some ways with commodity markets.

50:30In some ways, it'll compete with equity markets. And so it is hard to give a tight answer because it is its own unique thing, a$4 trillion blockchain-based digital finance and money asset class, how we think about it. So Grayscale is an early mover, actually, when it comes to offering crypto funds, namely Bitcoin and Ether. They scored a legal victory. That's why we have this very successful dozen or so Bitcoin ETFs that we have seen. Ether ETFs, Dogecoin, Carroll, Tim, everything, really. How has the proliferation of ETFs reshaped the market? And do you think it's for better or for worse? Well, absolutely for better.

51:03I mean, it's broadening access to this asset class to a much wider range of investors and allowing them to access it in ways that's convenient for them with the same reason that they use ETFs for other purposes. You can include it in tax advantage accounts. It makes taxes easier. It makes estate planning easier. All of these reasons are why the ETFs have been so popular. But what is your response to when people say the whole premise of Bitcoin is to be decentralized? And all the biggest holders of IBIT is Harvard, although we know that's not really a conviction bet. It could just be because of basis trade and all of that.

51:38But BlackRock, all those big issues, grayscale. Yeah, that's right. The premise is that Bitcoin mining, which provides the security for this network, is decentralized. And if for some reason that were to be questioned in the longer one, investors should question Bitcoin, because that's the thing that really matters, not who is holding the asset. And the same is for gold. Nation states hold gold as a decentralized asset to a store of value, and they keep it in the basement of the New York Fed here in downtown Manhattan. So it's just convenient to hold it in this same place, the ETFs or gold. That's not what gives it its value.

52:13It's really Bitcoin mining that's core to the value. I've actually seen some of that gold, by the way. How do you know? I visited the Fed, yeah, years ago, and I got to go underground and see the gold. That's so cool. They wouldn't allow us to take pictures. I bet there are lots of securities. I got to see the gold. It's there. It's there. I didn't count it. Why not just buy crypto directly? Like if the whole idea is this to be this kind of pure straight to it, very different from what the financial system has been, Zach, why do I need you guys or anybody else who's kind of a middle man or middle individual?

52:41The premise of this technology is taking intermediaries out of the financial system. And we are going to drive huge efficiencies in the financial system over time through tokenization, stablecoins, all these different use cases. However, there will be a lasting role for certain types of intermediaries, we think, including fund managers and others. And we are just providing a convenient way to access these access for many types of investors, again, for taxes, for estate planning, for tax advantaged accounts, it makes it much more effective. But self-custody, holding your crypto yourself is a core part of what the asset class is all about.

53:16And we certainly would encourage more sophisticated investors that have an understanding that to to please go for it. But don't crypto, for cryptocurrencies to have value, don't we have to really be using them to do things? And we're still, no offense, but I'm still, I don't know, still using dollars. So like, I'm just trying to understand, like I understand blockchain. Like if you buy a house and you have, you know, rather than, you know, the ownership and so on and so forth is all there, the papers. I understand the blockchain, that value. But that hasn't happened yet, by the way. Like we're still doing old school titles.

53:49That's right. Thank you, titles. But I don't quite still yet the transacting that I will be doing. I think there's been research that it's still a lot of folks who want to keep things under the radar, illegal activities. I'm trying to understand. So I think you're going to be using stable coins. And we had a lot of people hearing more about this this year because we had a key piece of legislation in July, the Genius Act, which provided a comprehensive regulatory framework for stable coins here in the U.S. And over time, you will see many more payments use cases for this technology. You will also see stable coins on corporate balance sheets.

54:24You will see stable coins as collateral on the major U.S. derivatives exchanges. So you will see this dollar-based, blockchain-based dollar ubiquitous in our system relatively soon. But if people are using or companies are using stable coin or stable coins as collateral, aren't they just saying they're using treasuries as collateral? blockchain technology again is to take intermediaries out of the financial system but those stable coins are backed up by treasuries depending on where you buy it but for the most part if we're talking about the most well-known stable coins like usdc backed up by treasuries yep absolutely they are one back one for one and that is written in the regulation and that's a very important piece of the whole story if these technologies are going to be ubiquitous in the financial system they need to be safe for consumers safe for the financial system as a whole that's why this regulation in July was so important.

55:12So SEC Chair Paul Atkins conceded that he promised a token taxonomy for the longest time. People have been confused whether Bitcoin is a security or commodity. And so this moves away from the fact that almost every digital token acts like a stock or something like that. How do you view that? Because the lawyers I've talked to, some viewed it as a win, but some didn't really. So the Senate is working on legislation exactly on this topic, And I think will clarify a lot of these issues for investors over time. Look, Bitcoin is a commodity. It's a digital commodity. And that can maybe be hard to understand, but that's what it is.

55:47It's a digital commodity like gold or copper or silver. It's just in digital form. But there are other crypto assets that look more like a claim of some kind. And I believe we will see more of that, that it will be common for large corporations to issue tokens as part of their capital structure alongside equity, debt, preferreds, and other hybrid instruments. You will see tokens. And so there's a lot of different uses. It's all based, again, on that same technology, but it's hard to put one label on how these assets. I just feel like there's a bunch of smart people here and a lot of smart people at Bloomberg, and we constantly are having conversations like kind of, I feel like a toddler.

56:24Why? Why? Why? Like, why is this needed? Well, that's why Zach is here to explain to us all the questions that we have that toddlers would ask. Hey, you know, I mentioned political tailwinds. And one thing that I wanted to get your view on is obviously the regulatory environment is much better for cryptocurrency companies right now than it was during the previous administration. I mean, look at prices as a result of that. But the Trump family and the Trump family's connections to the actual crypto industry, how do you view that? Look, it's not a crypto friendly administration. It's a crypto friendly nation or crypto friendly voter base.

56:59I don't know. I don't I don't necessarily agree with that. And here's why. Here's why I don't agree with it. The and push back on this, feel free. But the yes, a lot of the pro crypto candidates won in 2024. But the messaging that the crypto community pushed in their districts wasn't crypto messaging. Like if you look at the ads for Bernie Moreno, who won in Ohio, it wasn't about crypto. It was about other issues that resonated with those voters. So I I don't necessarily see it as a crypto-friendly nation. Is that what you meant by crypto-friendly nation, like these people were voted in? What I mean is that holders of the technology, users of the technology are bipartisan.

57:38That is a global asset class, and we see comparable things happening all over the world that Democrats voted for the Genius Act and the Clarity Act that passed the House, and I think will again vote for market structure legislation in the Senate. And this is really a key issue for us as an industry, that it continues to be bipartisan so that any changes are durable and they last well beyond any one individual. So essentially you're saying is it doesn't really matter. At this point, the administration doesn't really matter because these laws have been put into effect. It doesn't matter who SEC chair is.

58:10In the long run, it doesn't matter because this is innovative technology that's going to transform the financial system. And how the politics shake out over time is hard to predict. But I have no doubt that in 10 and 20 years' time that the technology and the assets will be everywhere in our financial system and we'll have clean regulation everywhere. And now you see Democrats as on board as Republicans were last year. Increasingly on board. And I think that that's because their voters care about these issues. In our own survey data, slightly more Democrats hold crypto assets than Republicans.

58:40So we see it clearly as a bipartisan issue. And I think, again, you see that in the House and Senate also. Zach, I do wonder, I know, Isabel, you wrote about the coming IPO. And I know you're probably limited in what you can say, but I do wonder about the market volatility that we're seeing. And this is a big week. We're going to get NVIDIA earnings, which will certainly play into the AI trade and enthusiasm or lack or pullback that we've seen in that. But will market volatility possibly change your timing on all of this and maybe delay it? Yeah, as you know, I'm in a quiet period, so we're limited to what we can say.

59:10But as soon as we have more to say, we will offer that. Look, what I would say is in the longer run, I'm incredibly enthusiastic about where this technology and where this asset class should do. I wouldn't spend all my time on it if I wasn't. dead. It's hard to predict the short term in any asset class. I think it's a very great long term bet for many investors to allocate to crypto. When will you have more information on the IPO? TBD. All right, just checking. Thank you so much. We really enjoyed this. Zach Pandell, he's head of research over at Grayscale Investments in our Bloomberg Interactive Broker Studio, along with the amazing Isabel Lee Crosshouser Reporter here at Bloomberg News as well.

59:47Thanks for coming.

59:54If you're actively involved in your portfolio, you probably catch yourself repeating the same actions. Buying the dip, manually sweeping idle cash, putting on a hedge. On public, you can now create AI agents that handle all these tasks on your behalf. Just describe what you want to do in plain English. Like, if the VIX hits 25, buy a put option on the S &P 500. Or, if my cash balance goes above$20 ,000, move the excess into my direct index. You approve of the workflow, and your agent handles the rest. monitoring the market, watching for your conditions, and executing your strategies exactly as defined.

1:00:30An investing platform driven by your intent, not just your clicks. You can also get full read and write access to your account via the public API. Go to public.com slash market and fund your account in five minutes or less. That's public.com slash market. Paid for by Public Investing. Brokered services by Open to the Public Investing, Inc., member FINRA and SIPC. Advisory services by Public Advisors, LLC, SEC Registered Advisor. Complete disclosures available at public.com slash disclosures. As industries evolve faster than ever, companies need an environment that accelerates strategic growth, and Michigan delivers on that promise.

1:01:09From emerging startups to global enterprises, Michigan offers what executives value most, a resilient, innovative ecosystem, diverse communities that attract top talent, and a quality of life that supports work-life balance. With our unified Team Michigan approach, businesses scale faster and compete at the highest level. Michigan, pure opportunity. Seize your opportunity at michiganbusiness.org. Whether you're planning a big tech event, launching a new campaign, or just stocking up on team gear, finding the right promotional products makes all the difference. 4imprint offers thousands of options, from on-trend apparel and premium drinkware to tech, totes, and giveaways, so you can find the right fit for any audience, purpose, or budget.

1:01:50You can customize it all, your logo, your message, your look, and many items come with no setup charge to help you save. And if you're really watching the bottom line, you'll find standout choices at every price point, so you can make a real impact while staying on budget. Plus, you'll get expert help, fast turnaround times, and their 360-degree guarantee, so you can be 4imprint certain your order will arrive on time and look exactly right. Whatever your goal, 4imprint makes it easy to find your perfect promo match. Explore the possibilities today at 4imprint.com. 4imprint. 4certain. When you own your own business, you own every decision.

1:02:28Now own the card that rewards you for it. The Chase Sapphire Reserve for Business card brings the best Sapphire Reserve benefits to business owners who expect hard-working rewards. Designed to meet the needs of business owners at scale, this pay-in-full card elevates your travel experience and offers premium benefits and value toward business services that will take your business to the next level. Fuel your business and maximize rewards with 8x points on all purchases through Chase Travel, 3x points on social media and search engine advertising, annual partnership credits, and more. Make every journey more rewarding with a$300 annual travel credit and access to a network of airport lounges.

1:03:08whether you're looking for pre-flight productivity or time to rest and recharge. Chase Sapphire Reserve for Business. It's the card that gives back all you put in. Learn more at chase.com forward slash reserve business. Chase for Business. Make more of what's yours. Accounts subject to credit approval. Restrictions and limitations apply. Cards are issued by JPMorgan Chase Bank N.A. Member FDIC. This is the Bloomberg Business Week Daily Podcast. Listen live each weekday starting at 2 p.m. Eastern on Apple CarPlay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app. You can also listen live on Amazon Alexa from our flagship New York station.

1:03:46Just say Alexa, play Bloomberg 1130. Elon has it. So too does President Trump and Steve Jobs also as well. We're talking about leadership. I mean, these are all leaders. John Levy thinks about leadership a lot. He argues, though, that one thing all leaders have in common is not the thing that we're told when it comes to these executive coaches or these business school courses like, you know, empathy or humility, those sorts of things. He says it's something else. John Levy is a behavioral scientist and New York Times bestselling author. He's got a new book out, Team Intelligence, How Brilliant Leaders Unlock Collective Genius.

1:04:27Let's think about it like this. Elon Musk or Steve Jobs, right? They weren't great at creating psychological safety or even getting consensus among their leadership. Yet people still hold them up as these examples of amazing leaders. The problem is that what we've been sold is that, and mostly through universities like Harvard, Yale, and so on, is that we have to have these essential skills if you want to be a leader. And if you pay them a whole lot of money, they'll teach you those skills, and then you'll be a certified leader. Congratulations. The problem is it just doesn't track. When we really started looking at this, there was only one trait that was common across all leaders.

1:05:04What is it? It's that they have followers. It's so self-referential, and it's kind of ridiculous. And so we really wanted to ask the question then, okay, what causes us to follow someone? Generally, people say, okay, it's vision and charisma. But that doesn't make sense. There are plenty of people who have no vision and no charisma and still people follow them. Yeah. So the answer, it turns out, comes down to this. Do you remember how you felt when you were in high school on Sunday at 6 p.m.? The Sunday Scaries? Mm-hmm. Now, I want you to think about this. You were free. You were at home. But you felt anxious.

1:05:39Friday at one o 'clock, you were in class, but how did you feel? Great. Yeah, so excited. Ecstatic. And that's because human beings don't relate to the present. They relate to the future that they believe they have. If you can make me feel - We don't live in the moment. Definitely not. We believe, we tend to have this association right now to what we think is about to happen. And so in high school on Sunday, what was going to happen was school the next day. Or if you're about to leave for vacation, you might be sitting at work, but you're wildly excited. The reason we follow somebody is because when we interact with them or their media, they cause us to feel that there'll be a new and better future.

1:06:19That's it. So that's fascinating. So let's take it to somebody, President Trump. Is that kind of his success or where he is today? It's because of that. I would argue that people in general vote for whoever they feel will cause them to have a new and better future, whether it's President Trump or it's investing into Elon Musk's companies. Listen, when you read the reports of what he's like as a boss at Elon, right, it's not the type of boss that we exemplify. You might not even have to read reports of what he's like as a boss. You could just follow him on social media and get a good understanding of his personality.

1:06:59And when you do, you have to ask yourself, like, is this really the person I'd want to be reporting to? And the answer is maybe not, but what he's amazing at is he has a handful of super skills that nobody else has, right? He thinks at scale and moves faster than anyone in our society. And those super skills are so profound that when we interact with them, people will either say, hey, we'll give him a trillion dollar bonus, right? Or we will come and work for you, or we want to launch things into space. But it's not because he's charismatic. Right. I mean, look at the example of when he pieced together the Doge team.

1:07:35What were the qualifications that he put out there, right? You have to work 80 hours a week. You're not going to get paid. Sign me up. He had people from all over the country who not just wanted to work with him, but believed in his mission. Yeah, it's really kind of fascinating. So the things that we get, so being nice and generous is not necessarily things that are going to make a good leader. So I want to separate two things. Okay. Let's separate being an effective leader from having followers. Having followers just means that people feel that you'll have a new and better, or they'll feel. Doesn't mean you will.

1:08:09Correct. Because you could have somebody who's incompetent leading a bunch of morons, frankly, and get nowhere. When we actually started looking at the research of what causes teams to be really effective, it came from a woman named Anita Williams-Wooley. And what she found in running a whole series of experiments is that none of the things that we actually thought actually make a team more effective, right? So IQ of the smartest person, no effect. Average IQ, no effect. How much people liked each other? Not a great predictor, right? Do you need to trust each other? Sure. Or think that somebody's competent?

1:08:46Yeah. But you don't necessarily need to want to invite everybody you work with to your wedding or something like that. The single greatest predictor? The number of women on the team. Yeah. And I want to be clear. It's not because they're women. It's not a chromosomal thing. We're not out of a job. Don't worry. He was looking at me. Yeah. It's because women index higher on emotional intelligence. And so there are plenty of men with high emotional intelligence, plenty of women who don't have any. But this is, wait, this makes a better, wait, so more women on a team means what? That on average you have more emotional intelligence on the team.

1:09:21And then? The team can function better because they can coordinate better. And then they? Outperform. because when you have a single person sport, it's all about pure talent, right? Or activity. But when you have a group, you've gone from taking your shots to passing either information or the ball. Now, if I can't communicate with you, we are not going to be able to work well together. Right. Having that high emotional intelligence on the team means that we know when to push on a topic and when not to. Who to call on, even if they're being quiet and get the information out. Your behavioral side, Well, what is your credential in this?

1:09:56Because you've studied behavioral science, but there are entire curricula that are dedicated to teaching leadership that ostensibly have evidence-backed elements that are backed by studies that say this is the right way to do things. And you're essentially saying, that's not really the right predictor here. We haven't been looking at the right thing. What's the evidence that you have when it comes to number of followers or people who are actually following this charismatic personality that says this is the right outcome? So let's separate a few things. On the team stuff, there's a bunch of research I mentioned, Anita Williams-Willi, and there's several studies that back the same thing, that teams with more emotional intelligence outperform.

1:10:38On the leadership side, when you actually look at all of the studies on people who've gotten MBAs versus those who didn't, they find that there's absolutely no improvement in performance whatsoever, having an MBA versus not, compared, and there's like several of these studies on the three-year mark, five-year mark, seven-year mark, there's no evidence in better management skills or anything like that. And so the skills that we're told are essential, we might not really be able to train them in the way that these programs are running. The reason I ask about your, I know you want to jump in, but the reason I ask about the credentialing here is because you have this background in having these dinners, hosting thousands of people over the last 10 years.

1:11:2315, yeah. 15 years, 4 ,000 people. These are private influencer dinners where you have had Nobel laureates, Olympians, Grammy-winning musicians, all at different times show up and be together. What are the takeaways that you've been able to gather from getting this disparate group of people together and having them interact with one another? There's kind of two main things that I've really noticed. The first is that all of them are at the top of their industry. whether they're commanding the International Space Station or they're running a major company. And none of them have the same characteristics at all.

1:12:04Malala does not produce results in the same way as a military commander. But people follow and will go very far in both cases, right, to support that cause. The second is, and this is kind of a wilder thing that people don't really notice, is that no matter how successful people are, they tend not to feel like they fit in or belong. Because the CEO knows that they've had three great quarters, but if the next two are off, they might be out of a job. And the Olympian knows that maybe they won at the last Olympics, but who knows if they'll even qualify at the next one, and then no one will care. And so no matter what, there's this absolute factor that people feel a great desire to want to fit in and belong.

1:12:48Which brings me to my real desire to understand is clearly those leadership traits didn't matter. And if there's such a great desire to belong, it's because human beings tend to be best with each other. So let's try and understand at our core what will allow us to be best with each other. And that's what the book explores, which is what are the characteristics that makes teams smarter than the sum of their parts? Okay, so why if that is our driving force when I look at Congress, And I know you layer politics on things and things change. But if we are better. They cannot be studied. If we are better as a group and a community, and yes, indeed, right, they have to vote on things.

1:13:31And so when they work together, things can actually move forward or at least move. Why does that not work its way out? So that's, I think, a great question. And I want to be very clear. I don't study politics. I'm not an expert. And full disclosure, like you lay politics on everything and it can be a little bit different. I'm under the impression that things changed, and this is what I've been told, after Newt Gingrich was in Congress, because he really pushed for less cooperation and also for people to spend more time in their home districts. Now, when that occurs, then we have something called the mere exposure effect.

1:14:05The mere exposure effect is simply, here's the funny thing. Have you ever, what would you consider the greatest painting of all time? Well, people will say Mona Lisa. Exactly. Do you know why? Isn't it the perfectly symmetrical That's what they'll tell you But that's frankly not true In 1911 a man walked into the Louvre On a Monday while it was closed The Louvre was protected by 11 Mostly drunk legionnaires And walked into The Renaissance section Ripped the smallest painting he could off the wall Took it out of its frame And then wrapped it in a workman's mock And walked out That was the Mona Lisa wasn't it Newspapers around the world spread images of it and that's the first time almost anybody had ever heard of it.

1:14:48It was not considered a great painting. Three years later, it was returned. Once again, newspapers around the world rejoiced. And it was a way to, it was the buildup to World War I, so it was a way to make fun of the French government and its incompetence at the time. Now, human beings tend to like and trust the things that they're familiar with. And when you see the person who might be across the aisle picking up kids at school and your kids are in the same class and you're at the same birthday parties and you've developed familiarity and trust and all these other factors outside of that voting room, then suddenly you tend to treat people with more humanity and have a greater ability to work with them.

1:15:33And so much like the Mona Lisa is not really a great painting if you actually speak to historians, And the lack of that mere exposure and the trust that develops from interacting outside of these traditional negotiations, we've lost a lot of that. Well, and we always bring up Alan Greenspan saying years ago about how when he was in Washington, people, actually Democrats, Republicans, went to cocktail parties together. And so, you know, you have a glass of wine with somebody and, you know, you kind of relate. You're much more relatable, if you will. John, this was really, really fun. And hopefully we can catch up again in the future.

1:16:09I'd be honored. Thank you for having me. Yeah, John Levy. He's a behavioral scientist, New York Times bestselling author. His new book is Team Intelligence, How Brilliant Leaders Unlock Collective Genius, joining us right here in studio. Were you invited to one of those secret dinners ever? It's secret, so I can't tell. Oh, okay. Yeah, same. Same.

1:16:31Support for this show comes from Public.com. If you're actively involved in your portfolio, you probably catch yourself repeating the same actions. Buying the dip, manually sweeping idle cash, putting on a hedge. On public, you can now create AI agents that handle all these tasks on your behalf. Just describe what you want to do in plain English. Like, if the VIX hits 25, buy a put option on the S &P 500. Or, if my cash balance goes above$20 ,000, move the excess into my direct index. You approve of the workflow and your agent handles the rest. Monitoring the market, watching for your conditions, and executing your strategies exactly as defined.

1:17:09An investing platform driven by your intent, not just your clicks. You can also get full read and write access to your account via the public API. Go to public.com slash market and fund your account in five minutes or less. That's public.com slash market. Paid for by Public Investing. Brokered services by Open to the Public Investing, Inc., member FINRA and SIPC. Advisory services by Public Advisors, LLC, SEC registered advisor. Complete disclosures available at public.com slash disclosures. As industries evolve faster than ever, companies need an environment that accelerates strategic growth and Michigan delivers on that promise.

1:17:48From emerging startups to global enterprises, Michigan offers what executives value most, a resilient, innovative ecosystem, diverse communities that attract top talent, and a quality of life that supports work-life balance. With our unified Team Michigan approach, businesses scale faster and compete at the highest level. Michigan, pure opportunity. Seize your opportunity at michiganbusiness.org. Whether you're planning a big tech event, launching a new campaign, or just stocking up on team gear, finding the right promotional products makes all the difference. 4imprint offers thousands of options, from on-trend apparel and premium drinkware, to tech, totes, and giveaways, so you can find the right fit for any audience, purpose, or budget.

1:18:29You can customize it all, your logo, your message, your look, and many items come with no setup charge to help you save. And if you're really watching the bottom line, you'll find standout choices at every price point so you can make a real impact while staying on budget. Plus, you'll get expert help, fast turnaround times, and their 360-degree guarantee. So you can be 4imprint certain your order will arrive on time and look exactly right. Whatever your goal, 4imprint makes it easy to find your perfect promo match. Explore the possibilities today at 4imprint.com. 4imprint. 4certain. When you own your own business, you own every decision.

1:19:07Now own the card that rewards you for it. The Chase Sapphire Reserve for Business card brings the best Sapphire Reserve benefits to business owners who expect hardworking rewards. Designed to meet the needs of business owners at scale, this pay-in-full card elevates your travel experience and offers premium benefits and value toward business services that will take your business to the next level. Fuel your business and maximize rewards with 8x points on all purchases through Chase Travel, 3x points on social media and search engine advertising, annual partnership credits, and more. Make every journey more rewarding with a$300 annual travel credit and access to a network of airport lounges.

1:19:47whether you're looking for pre-flight productivity or time to rest and recharge. Chase Sapphire Reserve for Business. It's the card that gives back all you put in. Learn more at chase.com forward slash reserve business. Chase for Business. Make more of what's yours. Accounts subject to credit approval. Restrictions and limitations apply. Cards are issued by JPMorgan Chase Bank NA. Member FDIC. You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week Daily Podcast. Catch us live weekday afternoons from 2 to 5 p.m. Eastern. Listen on Apple CarPlay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app. Or watch us live on YouTube.

1:20:23Let's talk about Ulta Beauty because by some measures, it's the largest beauty retailer in the country. Yes, larger than Sephora, even though you see those stores everywhere, especially in high-density areas. So true. But sometimes Ulta hides in plain sight. It's stores primarily populating suburban and ex-urban shopping centers instead of thriving high-end malls and pricey urban shopping districts. All right. It is a story about Ulta, how big it is, what it's up to. It is the cover story of the December issue of Bloomberg Businessweek. It's written by Amanda Mull. She is Bloomberg Business Week senior reporter, and she joins us in New York City.

1:20:55We've been dying to talk to you about this. But it is true. When I think cosmetics and stuff, I think about the explosion of Sephora, but Ulta beauty, I feel like it's been a quiet sleeper. It's massive. Yeah, I think especially for people who live in dense urban areas and especially perhaps New York City, Ulta sort of hides in plain sight. It opened its 1500th U.S. location just a couple of weeks ago. That's more than twice the locations that Sephora has in the U.S. The typical Ulta is 10 ,000 square feet, which is twice the size of the typical Sephora. And it's been around since 1990. It has sort of like quietly grown over the years.

1:21:39And in the last five or six years, it's had like a real growth spike. In 2019, right before the pandemic, its annual revenue was$6 billion. And in 2024, it had increased all the way to$11 billion. So it's a booming business, even though you might not notice it every day. What does it say about how Americans shop for beauty products? Because Sephora, for example, this is actually a case, like a Harvard case study in business school, like the experiential part, the way that they built these stores out? How do Americans shop when it comes to Ulta? Well, the beauty business is sort of fascinating, especially at this point in the retail landscape, because most other sectors of the consumer economy don't really have like a thriving multi-brand retail scene.

1:22:24You know, department stores, things like that have really declined in a lot of places, as well as like specialty retailers, like electronic stores. But beauty is a really in-person business. You know, it is a tactile, fun thing to go shop for. And you want to be able to smell perfume. You want to be able to try a lipstick on or see if a certain foundation actually matches your skin tone, which makes it a really unique opportunity for companies that want to operate brick and mortar stores. And that has been a real upside for Ulta. And Ulta and Sephora sort of take separate approaches to beauty, really.

1:23:01And they are both quite successful. Ulta carries everything from drugstore products to Chanel perfume and Prada lip and Dior lip gloss and things like that. Sephora really concentrates at the upper end of the spectrum. But the Ulta theory is that women and beauty consumers in general shop across price points. There's very few who only shop at the drugstore or who only shop from high-end brands. So their theory is if you can put that all under one roof and make it really easy for people to go to, you know, when they're out, you know, buying dog food or out shopping for a coat or something like that at a, you know, at a discount store, Ulta is right there and you can just drive right up, park outside, hop in, get whatever you need.

1:23:46Tell us about the Ulta Beauty CEO who's actually been with the company for a while in some different positions. Yeah. So in January, the longtime CEO, Dave Kimball, stepped down and retired. And Keisha Steelman, the current CEO, took his spot. She has been with Ulta since 2014 in a series of operations roles. Her background is in operations. And she was most recently chief operations officer. And to me, her background is sort of fascinating because, you know, Ulta is a Fortune 500 company. And at the tops of these companies, you usually find people with very similar types of backgrounds, people with elite educations, people who went through certain types of jobs, certain types of, you know, consulting firm work, lawyer work, things like that.

1:24:37Keisha came up through retail from working in stores. Her first job in her career was, in a Target store. And she has worked in stores and then in the corporate governance of stores her entire career. She's from a very small town in Iowa. And she's really, I think, sort of like the Ulta customer. She has a particular insight into how Ulta's customers want to shop. Ulta, something interesting about them, I think, is that they open a lot of rural locations where you don't get Sephora's and you may not have like a target even. So Ulta opens in a lot of places where they try to meet people where they are.

1:25:19Such cool stuff. 30 seconds here. If you say Sephora, do they give you the evil eye? You know, a source that I talked to for this story describes Sephora and Ulta as frenemies. And, you know, they carry a lot of the same products. there's at the high end, especially. And I think that there's this sort of silent rivalry between them. But because Sephora concentrates so much on like high end urban real estate and high end malls with like affluent customer bases, and Ulta just takes an opposite look at the at the market. So they don't overlap that much. I went to an Ulta recently for the first time, and I was kind of blown away.

1:26:00Although I still it's just Yeah, the whole beauty industry just kind of blows my mind. Our thanks to Amanda Moll, Bloomberg Businessweek senior reporter. Reminder, this is the cover story of the December issue of Bloomberg Businessweek. You can read it on the Bloomberg terminal and at Bloomberg.com slash businessweek. The beauty industry, though, overall has several players. We talk about the growth. We talk about the profitability. We just talk about, you know, consumers. They're out there spending. Yeah. Let's talk a little bit about one of those companies, Sally Beauty Holding. Following the company's most recent earnings report, Fourth quarter comp sales up 1.3%.

1:26:34That beat Wall Street estimates. The company also beat estimates when it came to fourth quarter adjusted EPS and Q4 net sales. Delise Polonis is president and CEO of the$1.4 billion market cap, Sally Beauty Holdings. She joins us from Texas. Shares up more than 38 % so far this year. Denise, we want to talk about the company, but I want to start with just your view on the consumer right now. How is the consumer? First, thanks for having me. Great to be on. You know, overall, the consumer that we're seeing is resilient, but is choiceful. So resilient in total dollar spending, but very picky about what they're going to put their money into right now, just knowing that they might have a limited budget to spend.

1:27:13What are they spending it on then if they have a limited budget? Is it smaller items, things that cost less? I'm curious. I think what we see is we see people both splurging and then being frugal. So they'll splurge on experiences. They'll splurge on special products that are important to them. I expect that they'll splurge a bit on things like Thanksgiving dinner, but they'll pull back and say, you know, if I have enough of something in my pantry, maybe I won't buy three more bottles of shampoo or three more lipsticks. I'm going to lean in for what really matters to me. Well, that's what I mean, though.

1:27:47So then I didn't mean, you know, I get it that they might not spend, you know, they look at their whole wallet and what they can spend on. But so what are they really spending money on at Sally Beauty? I will tell you at Sally Beauty, the big thing is hair color. So our hair color business was up high single digits at Sally this quarter. What we're really seeing is customers who have always done DIY for their hair continuing to do so. But more and more, we're seeing customers who are splitting their time that they might regularly get done in a salon. But they'll come in and do a fill in or an update, you know, to to kind of stretch their wallet a little bit between those salon visits by coloring their hair, touching up their roots.

1:28:26And we've also see a reinvigoration of vivid colors as people, I think, want some fun in their lives and want that experience of pink or purple hair. Just remind us that where you play and where you meet the consumer, you call yourself the world's largest distributor and retailer of professional beauty products. brands that might be and are probably known to most of our audience include Clairol, Conair, Hotshot Tools, Wella, and more. Where do you meet the consumer? Because it happens at retail stores, but it also happens via salons. It does. We meet them in two spots. So overall, we're about a$4 billion sales player.

1:29:00That's split half and half between serving a traditional consumer with Sally, which is a public consumer, retail stores that are out there. And then we service all of the beauty salon professionals. So, you know, all those folks who work as independent contractors or work in a salon taking care of folks, we're actually that largest distributor to that salon professional. And primarily what we do on both sides of our business is everything hair, hair color, hair care, accessories, tools, you name it. That's what we do. Hey, I am curious with tariffs and so on and so forth, the global supply chain when it comes to beauty products.

1:29:35I think it's around the world, France, South Korea, the U.S., China, Italy, Japan, how has that impacted the cost of things or your business? Yeah, I think we're quite fortunate that 80 % of our product comes from North America, and the 20 % that doesn't is kind of split equally between China and Western Europe. So we're a little bit more insulated than some other beauty players out there, which is great news for us. When we think about what's most affected for us, it's things like blow dryers or flat irons that It might be coming in from China and have a little bit more of that tariff on it. But we've got some great relationships and we're navigating it quite nicely.

1:30:13I don't expect the consumer will see any notable increase to them as we're going through the holiday selling season on those products with the cooperation we have with our vendors and how we're trying to navigate sourcing. The disconnect between Wall Street's expectations and what you delivered. I know a big part of any executive's job is managing expectations. It was a beat pretty much across the board. Where did that come from? Yeah, well, I will tell you, the team just did a fantastic job executing. We've got a few key initiatives that are working really well for us today. You know, namely starting with innovation, particularly on the pro side of our business, 35 % of our sales in hair care this last year came from product that's new to us in the last 18 months or so.

1:30:56And that's three times higher than it was a couple of years ago, where that was only 10 % from newness. So that newness is resonating. with our salon customers quite a bit. On the retail side, marketplaces. We now participate with Uber Eats, DoorDash, and Instacart in terms of the non-traditional marketplaces, delivered to your door in two hours. It's been a great business growth opportunity for us. We laugh internally that the fact is there's a lot of people who have an eyelash emergency at six o 'clock on a Saturday night before, you know, a big party. That was Denise Paulonis, president and CEO over at Sally Beauty Holdings.

1:31:35And that wraps up the weekend edition of Bloomberg Business Week from Bloomberg Radio. Thank you so much for joining us. I'm Tim Stenevec. And I'm Carol Masser. Have a good and safe weekend, everyone. This is the Bloomberg Business Week Daily Podcast, available on Apple, Spotify, and anywhere else you get your podcasts. Listen live weekday afternoons from 2 to 5 p.m. Eastern on Bloomberg.com, the iHeartRadio app, TuneIn, and the Bloomberg Business app. You can also watch us live every weekday on YouTube and always on the Bloomberg Terminal.

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