Apple's New AI Project, Sydney Sweeney Adding $1B to AE & Trump's Tech Dinner

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0:46Visit a Marshalls store near you or shop online at marshalls.com. Xena.com presents the Rich Habits Radar, a new Friday episode of the Rich Habits Podcast, where every Friday morning we're coming at you with the biggest headlines impacting you and your money. My name is Austin Hankwitz and I'm joined by my co-host Robert Croak. The three things sitting at the top of our rich habits radar this week include Trump hosting his tech CEO dinner with Mark Zuckerberg, Tim Cook, and Sam Altman last night in the Rose Garden. The U.S. labor market showing some signs of weakness as jobless claims rise and payroll growth begins to slow.

1:26And finally, American Eagle stock adding over$1 billion to its market cap, thanks to Sidney Sweeney. And be sure to stick around until the end of this episode to find out who Amazon's satellite internet company, like Starlink, right, they've got one too, just signed a huge contract with. So, Robert, let's dig into our first story. That's right. Last night, President Trump hosted a dinner for more than two dozen tech leaders in the business world. And the dinner took place in the newly renovated White House Rose Garden. And wow, it was a who's who of the tech giants. Guests included heavyweights like Apple's Tim Cook, Meadows' Mark Zuckerberg, Microsoft's Bill Gates and Satya Nandela, Open AI's Sam Altman and Greg Brockman, Google founders Sergey Brin and Sundar Pinchai, Oracle's Safra Katz, Blue Origin's David Limp, Micron's Sanjay Mahotra, Palantir's Sham Samkar, and Scale AI's Alexander Wang, and Austin's 100 % sure he said at least three of those names wrong.

2:31Yes, it was definitely a crazy, crazy event. And the dinner followed a White House Artificial Intelligence Education Task Force event chaired by First Lady Melania Trump, signaling an initiative to promote AI education among K-12 students and to showcase the administration's AI strategies. These high-level discussions can shape regulatory policies, influence corporate strategy, foster these private-public partnerships. We've seen a lot more of this year under the Trump administration and establish the U.S. government's stance on this emerging technology that is artificial intelligence, hoping to ensure that America remains the global leader in this landscape.

3:13So, Robert, we had a who's who's dinner last night. What's the big takeaway for people listening right now, especially as it relates to their own portfolios? Well, it's all over the headlines of everything that's happening in AI with the U.S. government. This dinner and the AI-focused event was hosted by First Lady Melania Trump, and it highlighted the administration's push to shape AI policy and education directly with tech leaders and get everyone on board for the U.S. government's ongoing initiative to be the world leader in emerging technology, AI governance, and domestic investment. Yeah, as we kind of take all those buzzwords and distill them down into real words, I think what's important to understand is that under David Sachs, you know, he's this AI crypto czar.

3:56He's done a great job of pulling together some of these people. It's obvious that Donald Trump now is pretty much saying, hey, AI is here to stay. Let me make sure I've got relationships with all these people. And then we also heard during last week's Rich Habits Radar, we talked about how NVIDIA's earnings, you know, they talked about navigating being able to sell to China and not sell to China. So I wonder if any discussions that took place last night at this dinner was very much trying to figure out everyone else's appetite for moving away from China as a customer base and maybe doubling down on the United States.

4:31Yeah, it could definitely hurt the AI stocks that we've grown to love, like Palantir and NVIDIA and Taiwan Semiconductor. But I think the hurt and the pain might be very short-lived. And I think for the long term, this is a really smart, incredible move by our federal government and the Trump camp to make America great again when it's relative to manufacturing, especially AI and emerging technology. So we'll keep a close eye on it, share our thoughts with all of you each and every week. But I think it's definitely going in the right direction. And Elon Musk was not there. He was invited. He tweeted, thanks for the invite.

5:08I'm not coming. He sent like a little representative. So that's interesting. Right. All right. Next headline is the U.S. labor market showing a little bit of weakness. So jobless claims rose more than expected in the week ending August 30th. Private sector hiring slowed sharply as we saw ADP report just 54 ,000 new jobs in the month of August, down from 106 ,000 new jobs in the month of July. And this marks the first time since the pandemic that the number of unemployed people exceeded the number of open positions. And that's a key, key metric. Economists cite President Trump's tariffs and strict immigration policies, particularly affecting hiring and construction and hospitality as key drags on job growth and what's happening with these metrics.

5:54Now, the slowdown has intensified the speculation that the Federal Reserve may cut interest rates in their September 16 through 17 meeting. Jerome Powell has already mentioned rising labor market risk. I think the quote was something like, we believe the risk associated with the labor market is more important, right, than the risk associated with inflation. So that has now caused the market to price in a 98 % chance of at least a 25 % basis point rate cut announced here in the next couple of weeks, according to the CME FedWatch tool. So why does this matter? What's going on behind the scenes and why you should care?

6:29Rising jobless claims and weaker hiring suggest that this post-pandemic labor boom that we experienced is starting to cool down. A softer job market can drag on consumer spending, which could absolutely impact the stock market. With unemployment rising, I think it's at 4.2 % right now, up from like 3.5 % just like six to nine months ago. The Fed is now thinking, hey, do we pivot faster toward rate cuts? And as those rates do get cut, this has huge implications on borrowing costs, if it has to do with real estate, if it has to do with growing a business with debt or whatever that way, stock valuations and risk appetite that these investors want to take on as it relates to deploying their capital, knowing that the risk-free rate, which is the federal funds rate, is now starting to come down a little bit.

7:15And recession odds for the next 12 months, according to Goldman Sachs, are still only at 10 percent. But those odds may change as more economic data like this is published. But just make sure, don't have knee-jerk reactions. Relax. Chill out. We'll keep you up to date here and make sure you know what is happening behind the scenes and how it affects your money month after month. Now rounding us off with our last major headline here, Sidney Sweeney adding$1 billion in market cap to American Eagle stock. So the Sidney Sweeney Has Great Jeans campaign, which was designed to resonate with Gen Z and dudes, very much sparked massive engagement on the internet, generated over 40 billion ad impressions, and brought in more than 700 ,000 new customers.

8:03I love the campaign and what happened around it. And I would say, you know, sparked engagement is an understatement. It ruffled so many feathers that just this campaign with a cute girl in jeans could cause so much disruption. And it's crazy how the economic turns of what happened with this happened. And for Q2 of 2025, American Eagle reported a profit increase of 15 % year over year, more than doubling Wall Street's expectations. And revenue came in at around$1.3 billion, slightly higher than expected. So what a great campaign. It's going to go down in the history books for them especially and many others for how to do it right and get your money's worth for sure.

8:50Yeah, the company also announced a$200 million share repurchase plan, shrinking their share count by 10%, which is pretty impactful. They also returned cash to shareholders through dividends totaling$21 million. Now, despite the upbeat results, American Eagle did flag some tariff-related headwinds during their earnings call. They're expecting$20 million of tariff headwinds to impact the bottom line in Q3 and up to$50 million to impact the bottom line in Q4. So, Robert, let's break down why this matters. Yeah, I think this campaign is a prime example of celebrity-led marketing translating into tangible financial performance, driving engagement, sales, and new customer acquisition.

9:31While the great jeans, jeans, puns, sparked controversy over alleged racial messaging, it ignited brand conversation and definitely a ton of media attention. American Eagle managed to pivot the narrative into engagement in sales, adding more than$1 billion in market cap to their company just in that short amount of time. Yeah, well, that$1 billion came after they just blew away those earnings results. Stocks up 35 % yesterday, which made their CEO, Jay Schlottenstein, I think is how you say his name. He owns 15 million shares of stock. So yesterday's 35 % increase in stock price increased his fortune from about$200 million to$275 million overnight.

10:16So that guy is happier than anyone about the controversy that came with that marketing campaign. Yeah, it definitely speaks volumes to our message here at the Rich Habits podcast of people not having knee-jerk reactions to headlines, both good or bad, because this is a prime example of how people are so reactive to what's going on in the market when they're choosing their stocks or their investments in crypto or whatever they're doing. So I love this story. I love seeing a win. And I think it was just a really big headline when it comes to consumer brands and pop culture. So I think it's great that we covered it and just crazy the numbers behind this campaign.

10:58Well, let's now jump into our rapid fire headlines. Robert and I, every week we bring our own headlines that we think are interesting. And so I'm going to kick us off with Figma's earnings results, causing Figma stock to drop dramatically. It's now down 55 % since their IPO just a month ago, it seems like. So everyone's favorite IPO of the year so far, Figma, reported earnings earlier this week, and things did not look that good. Yes, their revenue did come in at about a quarter billion for the quarter, growing by about 41%. but their forward guidance only suggested 33 % growth next quarter, which is a meaningful deceleration.

11:34On the bright side, their net dollar retention rate remains high at 129%, which is best in class. But I think this is the greatest example of all time as it relates to understanding why you shouldn't jump in on an IPO just because it's hot and sexy and fun in the moment, right? Their stock went from 33 to 140. Now it's back down to 55. Who knows what's going to happen next? The next headline I want to share is the World Knowledge Answers. Austin, what is that? That is the name of Apple's secret Siri project. So Apple is working on a new system, dubbed internally as World Knowledge Answers, that will be integrated into their Siri voice assistant.

12:14Apple's aiming to release the service, described by some executives as this answer engine, in the spring as part of a long-delayed overhaul of Siri. We all hate using Siri. It sucks so bad. I refuse to use it. The underlying technology enabling the new Siri could come in part from Alphabet, Apple's longtime partner in Internet search. The company's reached a formal agreement earlier this week for Apple to evaluate and test a Google-developed AI model to help power the voice assistant. Finally, Apple is getting into the world of AI. I could not be more happy about it. They need to just take over as quick as they can.

12:49We all know that they've been lagging pretty hard on that. And Alphabet just announced that they do not have to divest Google Chrome, which I think is now probably going to get tied into this whole equation, which could be pretty cool. Now, finally, let's talk about Amazon's satellite internet business and who they just signed as their first client. Amazon's satellite internet business, which is a competitor of Starlink, called Cooper, signed a massive deal with JetBlue to provide 25 % of JetBlue's fleet with in-air Wi-Fi services starting in 2027. So Starlink, we know SpaceX's satellite Wi-Fi company, they partnered with T-Mobile and United Airlines, keeping it here on airline companies, tapping into those 8 ,000 low-orbit satellites.

13:37Thus far, Cooper has only launched 100 of these satellites, so nowhere near the existing 8 ,000 that Starlink has. But if we know anything about Amazon and, I guess, Blue Origin now, right, that's Jeff Bezos' company, they want to do some space stuff. So be sure to keep your eyes open for more interesting Amazon satellite Wi-Fi internet business developments. Man, we are long overdue, Austin, to be able to get on a flight, switch to airplane mode. We get free internet. It's easy to get. We don't have to worry about it. Every flight should have that. They have us captured for hours at a time. Just make the internet easy.

14:13So hopefully this is a step forward to be able to make that happen on all flights. Yeah, no, I hope so. I know they're doing that with United right now. I just experienced it a couple weeks ago. I forget what flight I was on, but I was on a United flight. It's like, hey, click this Starlink button and you get normal Wi-Fi. It's free. It's fast. It's everything. It was like 200 megabits per second download, super fast. All the streaming, all the movie, everything was right there. So, yes, I am the biggest believer in fast Wi-Fi on airplanes. That is a problem I will invest into. 100%. it brings me back to one of the most terrifying two and a half hour flights.

14:54I was boarding a plane and XRP, this is back in 2017, hit an all time high. I had it teed up to sell, I think, 50 ,000 or 100 ,000 units at a huge gain. And I got on the plane and we take off and I'm loading on and she said, sorry, the Wi-Fi is down. By the time I landed, XRP was back down like 37 cents. I sold, but it just left so much money on the table. So fingers crossed, we need this to happen sooner than later for people like us that fly all the time. So let's get into my rapid fire, my top three, and that is gold hits all time high. I've been shouting to the mountaintops for years to diversify with precious metals and Bitcoin.

15:36And with the weakening dollar, gold has been crushing for months and months. Number two for me is, this was a little bit scary, is delinquency rates spike in commercial real estate. CMBS reported that delinquency rates on commercial real estate has spiked to a record high of 11.7 percent. And this spike includes multifamily investments as well. So hang on to your hats because this will present many great opportunities for the buyers and investors out there, but also a lot of turbulence for those people that are over leveraged. So we'll keep a close eye on this, but I think it's a pretty crazy stat right now.

16:15Another one I wanted to touch on that I think is very relevant is the U.S. government revoked Taiwan Semiconductor's waiver to produce chips in China for China. This is a bold move by the Trump camp and a huge setback for China in the AI race against the United States. And I think this could cause a little headwind for Taiwan Semiconductor in the short term, but I am definitely still bullish in the long term. The AI sector relies heavily on Taiwan Semiconductor, so we will keep a watchful eye on what happens next. I like this long term, even though currently the chips being utilized in China are older models and don't really compete with what we're doing here with Taiwan Semiconductor in the U.S.

16:56And so I believe that leads the U.S. to a stronger position in being the AI and chip powerhouse that they so desire and I believe will happen. All right, here we go. Ladies and gentlemen, my three headlines, Robert's three headlines, and then, of course, the top three that are on our radar. are. Let's now wrap up the episode with some questions coming from you all. Remember, all of these questions have to do with being a small business owner. If that means you're making money on the side, if that means you actually own a business, whatever it might mean as it relates to building wealth via increasing your income.

17:31So our first question comes from Mandy. Mandy says, I'm currently exploring the idea of opening a small nursing home with a friend. I'm a registered nurse and she's a licensed nursing assistant with some business experience, although not in the United States. Our main goal is to build our business while also reducing our overall tax burden. I have two ideas. Idea number one is a small nursing home that we can operate ourselves with the help of one to two additional nurses. And our second idea is an infusion therapy center, though I understand that field may be more competitive, but lower upfront costs could be attractive to us.

18:05I'd love your advice on a couple things. The first one is, do you think it's a good idea for me to open up a nursing home with my friend or should I go solo? The second is, what financial risks or considerations should I be aware of when starting this kind of healthcare business? And then finally, I'm familiar with setting up an LLC, licensing and some startup basics, but I don't know much about capital, loans, taxes, anything like that. So I really appreciate your insight. Any suggestions you have are very much appreciated. Okay, so Mandy, Mandy, Mandy, sounds like you are really excited about providing care for people, if that is in the form of a nursing home or in the form of infusion, which infusion therapy, when I think infusion therapy, there's obviously like medical infusion therapy, but there's also things that are like hangover related and different types of vitamins and things like that, which is what I think you might be alluding to here.

18:58So let's go down both alleys. The first one is the nursing home. Nursing homes, I don't know much about the logistics of opening a nursing home. However, if I were to go open a nursing home, I'm going to probably do three things first. The first thing is I'm going to go find nursing homes in my area that are privately owned. Because nursing homes are a very profitable business if you do things correctly, which is why private equity and publicly traded companies like tend to own them in bulk but that doesn't mean that there are not still privately owned nursing homes there was one here in nashville i was going to put my dad in it was completely privately owned and it was really cool so if i were you i would one start by finding some privately owned nursing homes and seeing if you could just talk to the owner hey i love what you're up to here how did you get started what's your story maybe there's some stuff written online about it but in my experience right it it comes down to like understanding, again, one, how did you get started?

19:56But also two, and this kind of maybe Robert could talk toward this, the funding for it, right? How do you go buy a commercial facility? How do you make sure that it's up to code? How did you make sure that, you know, you did the right sort of licenses and things as it relates to care for people, because I'm sure there's a lot that goes into that. So that's the first thing that I would do is understand from a privately owned nursing home, how they got started. The second thing I'd want to do is I would want to make sure that I'm going into this with a partner who understands the space already. And your friend might not be that partner.

20:28So if you can be like the head nurse, the person that provides the care, hires and trains the nurses, right? Things of that nature. I think that's a really great way to start this business. Assuming you can find someone who could own the actual operation side. Maybe they've done this before. They've worked at nursing homes. Maybe they are just super familiar with the space, But someone that is a proven operator that has done this that you can lean on that can help take your business from zero to one. And then the third thing I would do is I'd make sure I do all my chat GPT research as it relates to getting licensed and the government.

21:02And like, because I feel like nursing homes probably have a lot of licenses, government certificates, like all that stuff needs to be, you know, up to snuff. Because if it's not, I mean, like, you know, you can't just start a hospital. You have to make sure that things are, you know, up to code and things of that nature. So same deal here. Make sure you're good. Maybe even hire a lawyer to help you do that beyond just chat GPT. And those are the first three things I would do if I were in your shoes. Robert, what do you think about the situation and what from a loans and funding perspective advice can you share for Mandy?

21:32Yeah, first and foremost, I want to unpack a little bit further on what you brought up. And I think the idea here between the two, I would rather see Mandy do the nursing home. She's trained as a nurse. She's licensed as a nurse. She can find other nurses to work there. Because once you start on the road of opening as fusion therapy, you put yourself in a situation where what happens if you hire somebody and they're not legitimate? What happens if they don't show up for work and you're not licensed in that field of expertise? Then all of a sudden you can't control the narrative of your business.

22:05It's kind of like a money person opening a restaurant but doesn't know how to cook. If the chef quits and you take two, three weeks to find somebody to replace them, you're in a really difficult situation. So for me, the opinion would be do the nursing home because you can control it, you understand it, and you know the basis of how to run it correctly. I agree with you totally. Finding an operational partner that may or may not be a nurse is a fantastic idea because you can have all the customers in the world. But if you don't know how to operate it correctly, pay your taxes, make sure your licenses are good.

22:37And all of that, you're going to find yourself in trouble. And then lastly, with the funding, I think this is a situation where it'd be pretty easy for you to go out and find an SBA loan, small business funding with a credit union or other ways like that that are pretty simple to be able to go out and find some initial funding. Or you could do a friends and family raise. I know that that's a very popular way to get you started as well. And I don't think you need to go buy a building. You don't need to go crazy and go millions of dollars in debt. You could go find a facility, lease it, maybe get TI dollars from the landlord to build it out for you.

23:14A lot of times they'll do that and roll it into the lease for you. And that'll keep your costs down and your liability down as well. So I think it's a great idea. I would lean towards the nursing home because I think it's easier. And with so much leaning towards the elderly, in-home care, and all of that, I just think nursing homes are a great business model. There we go. I appreciate you, Mandy. Taking care of old people is very noble. Our next question comes from Candice. Candice says, I run a boutique fitness studio. Our landlord just sent a renewal and it's got a 20 % base rent hike plus higher CAM charges that weren't clearly spelled out before.

23:54I'm worried that if I sign this, I will be put to death by fees. Robert, what's your take on this one? Yeah, this is a tough one and we go through it all the time. And, you know, it's just one of those situations where a lot of people signing their first or second lease, they're not aware of all the tricks that these people play in these leases with cam charges and the like. I just went through it a couple of weeks ago, did a 45 minute call about a food hall. We were going to take over the master lease. They spelled it all out in the lease. And I was like, this sounds great. Send me over the documentation.

24:27Make sure it's DocuSign. If everything fits the snuff test, then we will go ahead and move forward with this. I get the lease two hours later, and there's an addendum A with an$11 ,200 more in the master lease that they forgot to mention on the call. So you always have to be careful. And in your situation, it's a renewal. And that is why it's even harder for you because when you're trying to renegotiate, you're kind of up against the wall. especially if it's a successful business and you want to stay at that location. So anyone thinking about signing a lease, make sure you understand and exactly as stated here, have caps on the cam charge because people will try and inflate them.

25:13They'll try to make you pay more on everything, even though maybe they're not paying more on their insurance or their taxes or the utilities or whatever are built into your cam charges. So make sure you understand that. But you are in a difficult situation because you can fight all you want and say, hey, this isn't a reasonable upcharge on the lease. 20 % is egregious. We can agree to five, but at 20%, it just prices us out of this location. How do we make this work? But you are up against the wall legally because they can just say it doesn't work and they can boot you out at the end of your lease.

25:47So just anyone that is facing a commercial lease, make sure you have someone that's an expert, whether it's a real estate broker. your lawyer, or somebody that understands all of this because this happens to people every single day when running their business. And a lot of times it ends up being futile for the future of the business because death by fees is real. Like if you think of a restaurant, I have a lot of experience in restaurants. You can go from, let's say you want your all-in cost for your rent to be no more than 8 % of sales. All of a sudden, if that bumps up by 20%, you're dead in the water because you don't have the margin to cover that.

26:26So I hope this helps. And anyone listening that's building a business or getting ready to lease a space, make sure you understand all the fine print and all of the upcharges in the totality of the price in the lease. So how would you encourage this person, Candice, to renegotiate their lease? I mean, you mentioned cam charges, but yeah, how would they go about renegotiating it? And do they have any leverage that they could use or anything like that. Not really. I mean, if you're the landlord and let's say you have an A plus location and you know you can lease it to somebody else for 20 % higher, as long as that landlord doesn't have a million dollar build out that he paid for that doesn't work for another tenant, that gives you leverage.