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

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0:36We are the number one business show on the planet with over 1 million downloads a month. Taking the BS out of business for over 6 years and over 400 episodes. You ready to start snapping necks and cashing checks? Well, it starts right about now. What's up guys? Welcome to Right About Now. It's our weekly business news, our first news. of May 2025 here on the 2nd. It will be May the 4th on Sunday. May the 4th be with you, Chris. What's up? I'm sitting here just thinking April flowers, May showers. I don't know why. April showers bring May flowers. It's been rainy here, so hopefully that's the case.

1:19It's been rainy and warm, which is nice. Not here. Sunny and breezy. It's been beautiful. Yes, it's been good. Our weekly business news. We're going to hit all the headlines. Try not to talk too much about tariffs. I never, Chris, I never imagined that I would have a moment in my life where I use the word tariff, like in a sentence as often as I have or read it. Definitely not weekly. I know. I don't know if it's a sign of my age, a sign of the times, a sign of the way news is. Which one? Is it all of the above? I don't know. Maybe lack of all of the above. Yeah. So I'd rather talk about a lot of other things.

2:02That's for sure. I know. So we're going to we're going to attempt to do that. Some of the market data is not wonderful, but I think, you know, it's early in the season. I think I think there's some cooling going on of all the banter a bit. I think the reality is we live in a world where you're never going to get the straight talk. It's always going to have the spin of one side or another, you know, kind of compounding whatever that news might be one way, one direction or the other. You know what I mean, Chris? Yeah. I mean, everyone will never always think alike. Yes. And everyone has a voice now with social media.

2:50And, hey, we got our own voice here on our platform. But it's like everything gets cut. You just got to tune it out. I do think we've talked about it. We want to I think we got to tamper down the negativity and the all out war on, you know, some of our allies. I think you're seeing softening of that language and, you know, it's brought some people to the table. I think sometimes the we've talked about this, the the means might be correct, but the way that things are happening might be the way that you get them done. But I think sometimes you can go a little further than intended with impacting overall sentiment.

3:39And I think I think you're you're feeling that a little bit with kind of like people feeling a little uneasy. that I think hopefully we can start to get on the other side of that and focus on the data because the numbers are still like, it's all relative, right? It's like, it's not like we suddenly stopped commerce completely. It's just we're in this really weird funk where this has caused just enough of a stir combined with the real estate market and interest rates and battling inflation. so it's like maybe we chose the wrong time to sort of stoke this yeah i don't i sometimes wonder if you'd ever hear that behind the scenes i don't know it's interesting seeing the impact of it i mean i've seen some really creative advertising related to it i've seen one company they do jewelry and they're like literally the ad was like tariff suck but our jewelry doesn't and i'm like all right they're making the best of it obviously their stuff is made overseas even me myself like you know i do the lab grown diamond jewelry my supplier messaged me this week about uh tariff changes you know so yeah and then i've seen on some some clothing brands that i'm familiar with like they basically they sell wholesale direct from china right so and i saw they posted just the tariff tax was the same price as the order of the clothing so it's giving people the ability to learn how to pivot i think it's going to teach a lot of lessons right now but as far as real estate goes i have noticed a lot of price reductions in the real estate market down here yeah i'm getting a lot of zillow alerts of a lot of price price on on on family real estate like single family homes it's going to be interesting in a market like greenville that where we're at we're here the lovely greenville South Carolina, where we've seemed to have been Teflon to almost everything because it's an attractive market to move to for families leaving larger states with higher costs and just more stuff.

5:50So you've got a lot going for the city. It's going to be interesting where all this knits out for a city like ours. If we stay Teflon through it all and not have declines, Because the biggest thing here has just been inventory availability, which still hasn't improved, even with the interest rates. And so it has changed. And you see what I worry about, like being here and, you know, we talk about a lot more national topics. But like as it relates to small town America a little bit, the changing dynamic when housing brings in people from other markets because it's more affordable. but not necessarily affordable.

6:37More affordable to them because they were used to paying$800 to$1.5 million for a three-bedroom house. Where in South Carolina, that's been a$200 ,000 to$400 ,000 cost. I'm not talking about high-end. I'm just talking about middle of the road. And people come here and they're like, hey, we're used to paying this rate. We'll take that. And they get a little more square footage. So what happens, though, is what happens to market like ours when you get an influx of different personalities, beliefs, etc. And I'm not saying we're all so different, but it can change the makeup. Yeah. I mean, the makeup and the fabric of the city.

7:23And not because, you know, everything was right about old school Greenville. You know, like, no, we needed some growing up. But what is the true impact of that, both socially, economically, et cetera, right? I think we're in a time, I would almost call it a financial migration. You know, it's crossing cultural boundaries. And like you said, people aren't necessarily living where they want to live anymore. People are living where they can afford to live. Yep. And I think you're right. Even with COVID, for example, that was a mass migration or maybe that was the beginning of a lot of financial difficulties.

8:08I know it was for many small businesses, of course, if you couldn't operate in certain states. because even down here in Florida, all the towns I've lived in and grown up here, they've all had a large change because there's way more out-of-state people migrating in. Yeah, exactly. And so we'll see how that goes. I was commissioning if Greenville, as sort of a proxy for other cities this size, uh you know i'd throw in like little towns in arkansas that are kind of you know seeing their heyday from some social media and some of the shows that have been on uh bentonville and like places like that and even i mean austin's a is a different place altogether uh and larger tech scene but how all this uh the interest rates in the real estate market it and i continue to beat this drum just it drives money in the market when you've got a good amount of real estate turning and refinancing and all that stuff.

9:16And so that's why we need these inflation numbers to go down. And that's where I choose to believe. And I've been Chris and I both been pretty transparent, you know, like where I claim myself to be an independent. I think you do as well, Chris, for the most part. We don't necessarily wear a color on our sleeves, but we voted a certain direction. And I choose to believe that there's a game of chess being played and a game of checkers being played. And I think there's some chess going on overall that I think is going to net out where we like it. But it's going to continue to be a little rocky. And I said this on a post that you'll see later today where it's uncomfortable to get the change that you need.

10:13It's not always comfortable. And we've been conditioned to be very comfortable. And, you know, COVID in a strange way and, you know, putting aside the major impact medically. I'm not saying like, but it made us comfortable, those of us that were not impacted by it directly with the money in the market. Everything's good. And then we had an administration where it was just kind of like they lull you to sleep with everything's fine. But we've got to suffer a little discomfort to get to the change that's needed. And I can't stress that enough. And I don't say that lightly because I feel some of the discomfort, you know.

10:56but I think it's necessary. Chris, what do you think? Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think this is a ship that's been going the wrong way for a long time. I'm talking like 40 years. Like these multinational corporations outsourced all of our middle class chasing profit over ultimately patriotism. Our own people sold us out to make cheaper goods with cheap labor outside of America. And before our eyes, all of us have been lulled for longer than I would say COVID. I mean, essentially it's been slipped out the last 20, 30 years. We've outsourced everything. So we have now an entire population, the middle class with no jobs and no money.

11:40And that's why ultimately, unless you open your eyes, we are completely screwed unless we turn this around. There is, unless we get all agreed that we're going to give universal basic income because AI is going to be doing so many jobs and everyone's just going to get paid to live. Yeah, exactly. You know, like, and unfortunately that, that has never worked. That does not. And I mean, you can say this as a business owner, Ryan, just who we are as people. No one is living a good life, not chasing anything, right? No, like you're not happy. It's like, you know, and not to get into the health impact, but you not talk about it on Vibe Science, like, and talk about mental decline.

12:22That, that would be it. I think that's where you're going, right? Yeah. I mean, we've been in decline for a long time and I would say we've been very comfortable and complacent. And this is the result of that, unfortunately, you know, and I hate it because if you look at historical timelines, like we're over the hump of the greatness of this empire. And that's just history. And I think we're trying to save it, but it's not going to be an easy turnaround. and the wealth may be too consolidated at this point. But the reality is, is these fuckers that have been buying yachts and mansions for the last 30 years, it's because they started producing these goods elsewhere to get higher profit margins.

13:02I mean, that's it. Bingo. And so you're going to have a little pain to get to the side of it, to bring some of those jobs back. I just saw where$4 trillion in investments come back in in the last 100 days. so it should motivate you yeah like you know figure some shit out use the internet youtube good yeah man that's what i talked about last week or the week before like yeah all these things are there like you could run leaner than you ever had to like you're in your barrier to entry as a solopreneur has never been lower and i say that not because everybody's meant to be solopreneur but if you can't find work or can't find something else or you're struggling with, you know, where you're going to find the job and do all that, then you've got an option to turn to.

13:56Tools are there, but you gotta, you gotta, you gotta have that want to Chris, you know, uh, it's in short supply these days that want to, you know, I used to think everybody had the same amount. I don't think that anymore yeah no and i mean every sort of like reasonably driven human being i thought kind of had average i'm not talking about everybody has their ups and downs you have people on substance and you like throw out the kind of health and anomalies i thought everybody kind of in the middle had the sort of all the same nope nope that was a biggest like my biggest learning lesson in last 10 years.

14:37Some people are hanging out. Yeah. They're just hanging out. It's okay, but you always just going to be hanging out. You know, it's like, I'm okay. If you're okay with that, I really am. What I don't have, what I have a problem with Chris is the ones that want what comes with the want to and the not hanging out and you just want to hang out that, that just don't fly. It doesn't work. It doesn't work. So it's an interesting time but there's never, there's not a better place on the face of the earth than to be within the walls of this country and don't ever forget it. Don't let the news or the negativity or your neighbor or your mom or your sister convince you otherwise.

15:29Because when you start drinking that rat poison you're going down a real slippery slope. And they've been dishing that. it's been a lot of like people haven't been proud to be an american it feels right there's been a degradation of our morals and values as a country and what we stand for and it feels very victimy nowadays instead of like you said this is the greatest country on the planet to come and make something with yourself you have more opportunity here than anywhere else yep and that hadn't changed yeah the the amplification of political warfare in news and headlines doesn't change that fact and you know economic data everybody's in the short term man every person is in the short term I got a fun fact too.

16:27What's that? I got a fun fact also. Yeah, but it's like everybody's in the short term. Everybody's like, okay, the news today and the impact of that today. No, this is a long game, man. It's like stock market in a way with your life, with your financial goals and all these things. They're all, you know, it's not because you don't have to make bills today or this week. I get it. I wrote those checks all morning. I know the pain of that. but we can't like continue to x-ray everything down to the micro moment yes and i'm gonna jump on that with something i read yesterday we weren't programmed as humans to care about everything going on in the world we don't have that capacity our brains were basically built to care and have an impact around the 150 people closest to us, our community.

17:23We're doing a disservice and it's good to care, right? But to turn on the news and you're getting all this influx, you got war going all over the world, financial hardships. How much of worrying about that can you actually control? What is worrying you worrying about what's going on the other side of the world too? And that's part of our problem is it's great to care, but we weren't built to fix everyone's problems everywhere. No. And I will even say that may be part of America's problem, right? We wanted to go fix everyone else and them to do it our way. And obviously, a lot of it was financially motivated, right?

18:01For other resources or cheap labor. But we got to worry about ourselves. You got to worry about what you can control, your family, your community and tune it out because it's just stealing from you. Yeah. Stealing your joy. your joy your energy your focus yeah your presence with the people you're actually around you know it's like life isn't that bad when you turn off all the negativity coming through the media focus on the day and focus on you what can you control exactly that's it and look we're going to give you some tips right here free ai tools facebook parent meta launches ai assistant app further competing with OpenAI and Google, and it's free.

18:47I was just playing with it for 30 seconds before we got on here. I'm a chat GPT guy. I've said that. I'll go ahead and just say that, but it's pretty slick. I like the calming voice that came on and told me things, Chris. She was very pleasant, very just calming is what I would say. But look, you got to use these tools, especially when they're free. It shortcuts research, shortcuts information. It can process things way faster than you can looking things up. And when you're working on any project of any type, you should be leveraging these tools. It's going to be interesting how, and also like being Facebook, it integrates with like your Facebook account.

19:30So it's pulling in knowledge already about you. And before everybody gets like the conspiracy theory, gets scared. We already just told you what to worry about, what not worry about. Use this for your advantage. Don't worry about it. If you're worried about pulling something from your Facebook, you shouldn't have posted it to Facebook to begin with. You're in too deep already. Exactly. So I wanted to pull all my stuff. I don't have any. Has there been a post or two occasionally where I'm like, I should have got in that conference? Sure. But 99.9, I don't care. Use it. Help me. I mean, you learn more about me so you can help me do my job better, learn better, be a better parent, be a better husband.

20:13I mean, there's knowledge and calculating all that stuff. But it's got it. It's a dedicated app, Chris. I went and found it. Meta AI. Go look it up. It's powered by Llama 4.

20:31Such a whore. These names. llama just doesn't make me feel powerful or i know the almighty llama four i'm sure it stands for something yeah language learning i wish i had a different name a language integrated you know i don't know me ask me anything language learning ask me anything There it is. Meta's latest. It's a large language model. That's probably what the large language asked me anything. We're going to start making up acronyms. It boasts enhanced reasoning, multilingual capabilities, and better efficiency. And wife-pleasing recommendations. I made that one up. Literally, you can use it for that too.

21:25Exactly. If you were me. I look, I'm going to give you a prompt, a free prompt, free prompts. People pay for prompts, Chris, you know, pretend that I'm a husband and this is you're talking to your GPT here. Pretend I'm a husband that's fucked up a few times with my wife. Nothing salacious, but just like, hey, it's been a bad month. I made some bad decisions. Wife's not happy at me. and you were trying to find innovative ways to make her feel better about you. And you have kids, so you have to keep that in mind. You have a busy schedule. How would you handle this situation? Could you give me five suggestions for a man in that situation?

22:13Just ask it and the answers will be yours. Yep. There you go. There's your husband. Luckily, as a perfect husband, but I've never had to ask that, but you can. You've thought about it though. Yeah. Tongue firmly in cheek, as said. But that's the crazy thing. Like it could be your assistant for all kinds of things. And it's fun. The app will offer personalized responses using context from a user's Facebook and Instagram accounts. We talked about that. That's good. integrate with meta ai's glasses and merge with its existing companion app have you ever used have you seen meta glasses like no i like you know is this my no idea even to talk about these things yeah it's like we had to come back to the metaverse right it's like no one cares guys let it go a page description for advanced chatbot features will begin testing in q2 the revenue impact may not be seen until next year.

23:20LlamaCon is the AI developer event. Of course it is. Met is hosting LlamaCon, its first AI developer event focused on showcasing its llama AI models. It really could have gone. Strong llama. It could have at least been a donkey. You know? Donkey AI. Lion or something. Yeah, lion. Apple has like lion, snow leopard. I mean, that's cool shit. I want a snow leopard AI. Reasoning engine. I want a lion, but I'm a llama.

24:07Donkey AI.

24:12It is what it is. We don't take ourselves too seriously around here. Anyway, but everything we're saying about AI, you need to listen to. We will pan it a little bit, though, because you do wonder what happens behind these boardrooms. You can tell us tech people, Damon, shit. You need to get some marketers in there. Like, need some fierce AI. Fierce. The fierce model learning llama engine. Fierce llama. At least put it like a, you know, something on top of it. Like, how about Loyal Llama? Hey, the Loyal Llama. Okay. All right. Makes it sound better. It's all horrible. You can't make llama sound cool.

24:53Yeah, it's true. It's true, Chris. Not even me. Not even with that voice tone. Yeah. Oh, U.S. Sports Merchandising Group Fanatics plots global trading card expansion. We've been telling you folks that that trading card series is starting in about two weeks. It's a fun series, but it's an eye-opener on the data and the numbers around this shit. It's crazy. Fanatics Global Trading Card Ambitions. Founder and CEO Michael Rubin projects$3 billion in trading card and collectibles revenue for the company by 2026. Expanding aggressively in international markets. Benax acquired Topps trading cards for$500 million in 2022.

25:44Collectibles revenue hit$1.6 billion in 2024, expected to top$2 billion this year, and$3 billion the next year. That sounds like pretty damn good growth, but just adding Bs right after another billion, billion, billion. He said, Ruben attributes the boom to increased disposable income and boredom. I'm like, really? That's their market analysis. Yeah, I was expecting something a little more interesting than that. Finax opened the first trading core store in London on Regent Street. Purpose is marketing and a model for entrepreneurs. It's all about showing people what the store should look like and how it should work.

26:29So they're essentially showing Europe how trading card stores should operate. So then you get spinoffs from that. Fanatics overall revenue expected to hit$9 billion this year and$11 billion in 26. Fanatics will gain exclusive rights to the English Premier League trading cards and stickers in June 2025. They can go over from Panini. Panini and Topps are just like that with back and forth. They needed to figure out a merger. I don't know why they did. It's not good for the business. It's like it's the stupidest shit. But now that I'm in it and I'm seeing all of it, and I see, you know, Chris, this is what happened.

27:04This year, like for NFL, Panini's had the exclusive rights to the NFL. So what that means is Topps cards this year, none of it doesn't have any logos on it. So you'll get like, you know, Josh Allen, but it has no Buffalo Bills logo. It says Buffalo, and it says Bills, but there's no logos on their helmets or their jerseys. it's odd and it's like unnecessary i'm like why can't you sell more than one license to both companies if they both want to make cards then you know double it up here but like starting next year tops is going to have a panini want then their cards won't have logo it's just dumb it's dumb it's not good for the you know it's not good for the culture no it's like i don't know and it keeps me from buying certain cards like that's it looks stupid yeah well if you want it probably not worth as much too.

27:55Well, the tops is, tops is, see, that's the thing. They go to these other measures to make it. They do. They get the autographs agreements with some of the hottest players. So then if you want that player's card as a rookie with an autograph, the, you have to buy the tops first and he has no logo on his helmet. Cause Panini doesn't have his autograph. It's like, huh? You can't get the best of all worlds. I want to in the autograph. Exactly. That's what it does. The collectors. They're making it harder for collectors. Yep. So there it is. More Americans are financing groceries with buy now, pay later loans.

28:34It's hard for me to know if there's a reflection definitively of the exact economics of tariffs right now, or if this is just a proliferation of the buy now, pay later expanding into more things. Yeah. Like it's a little bit of both. I mean, I wanted that steak last night. I didn't quite have enough money, but I wanted it. So I'm going to finance this baby over 30 days. Interest free. What a world. I mean, Coachella, you know more about this story than me. I mean, we're not. Yeah, same concept. It was something like, actually, it even says in this article, recent surge in buy now pay later use even includes Coachella ticket purchases.

29:20And that was something like 70 % or 80 % of the attendees of Coachella had all used buy now pay later options. Oh my God. Which Coachella is a very bougie, you know, big music festival in the desert, very expensive. It's the place to be, right? So that kind of even shows you even in that world, people are uh stretching stretching their cash yeah the uh i just think

29:51back to kind of like the topic we talked about you know people kind of want the spoils without the work it's like oh i'm gonna keep this lifestyle up but i don't want to go work for it i mean that's kind of where my head goes the coachella but not talking about the groceries yeah and people are fed up honestly i've been seeing a lot of people like just talking about their credit scores in general. They're like, just, I don't care anymore. Like, and I don't know if that's a good thing, right? It's almost like people are just getting pounded down so hard that they're becoming indifferent. Well, I think it's because back to their plan, everybody's playing the day game and not the long game.

30:30How great can I make today without working hard for them? Yeah. and i think just we're under extremely shitty financial conditions yes the average 18 to 25 year old you know yeah it's harder to get like great jobs but at the same time it's still back to the internet and ai and all these things there's lots of ways to kind of put it together if you want to piece it together but but there's becoming fewer of is the handout of easy to get this job that is pretty decent. Those are becoming harder to get. It's easier for those that have the want to, you know, to get in on it and probably make more than they ever would have from the, you know, sort of the easy handout job.