The Exchanges

Q You kind of took the opposite direction of what you saw. Well, tell us about your background to start. I think you were Yale undergrad at Harvard Business School and you were, you were at Citadel after that. What's your background?

A I went to Yale for undergrad, like you said, Uh, with a private equity firm called Summit Partners after undergrad. Business school was working at Citadel. Um, I was actually on their long short healthcare team. It was, uh, the worst job I probably ever had as, uh, I was literally forecasting how many people were gonna need knee replacements and hip replacements based on weather patterns and how people were gonna fall and break hips. Uh, that wasn't gonna be very exciting. At the time, I then ran into the folks from, uh, Three G Capital, and that was the group of sort of, uh, Brazilian guys that had rolled up kind of the beer industry in South America. They bought InBev over in Europe, which owned, like, Stella Artois and left, and they had just bought Anheuser-Bosche and

AI assessment note: “I went to Yale for undergrad, like you said, Uh, with a private equity”

Q scream at me online, you know, or something. They really censored us. It is interesting how finally it's kind of opened up, and now, you know, does it feel like the corporations are realizing they have to be more careful not to, not to be extremists and activists, or are they just going to find new ways to be activists the next few years? Like, where are we with this?

A I don't know. I mean, it, it seems like the, the camp's really splitting in two. I think that for the vast majority of companies, they're realizing that the ESGD agenda, it didn't make them more profitable. And it didn't help them actually create. So it's called better societal value became more divisive more than anything. So you're seeing a lot of companies that are walking back from these positions. I think Goldman Sachs this week, no longer is going to force quota systems on board members. You're not going to be having, uh, Disney's drops in the DI, but other companies are leaning in. Costco over the last week has really doubled down on their DI initiatives, continue to have supplier quotas in terms of how they're going to get products.

AI assessment note: “it seems like the, the camp's really splitting in two.”

Q the nature of humanity is that whenever, whenever something like this exists, people will start using it to express their views and to force people to do things and to push people to things. And it seems like a lot of the left captured these things and used them to attack and punish their enemies and, and force people to fund their stuff. I mean, isn't that how this iterated?

A I mean, a hundred percent, Joe, you're, you're absolutely right. You know, the, the, the left started using sort of business to get done through the, The back door of business , they couldn't give them to the front door government. I mean, the state of California is a perfect example. So the state of California is the largest pension fund in the United States. It's two hundred and eighty billion dollars. And what's crazy right now is they're only being funded at about 80 cents on the dollar. So if you're in the state of California, you're on their pension system, you don't expect to get your full pension. One of the reasons is, is that that pension system is essentially controlled by the government. I mean, the governor Gavin Newsom appoints a bunch of people there and even the state of California, they've said that we're going to use our pension dollars To promote an ESG and DEI agenda. It's not about actually maximizing returns and making sure that the people of California can have a pension with dignity, but they're using that to force oil and gas companies to go out of business because they have a lot of money. They want to remove that. Um, and they're using it in a very weaponized and politicized way to get done again through the backdoor business, but they can't get down to the front door.

AI assessment note: “I mean, a hundred percent, Joe, you're, you're absolutely right.”

Q away when you guys, when you guys started it then. Um, for people today, would you encourage people to fight back more if they're seeing this nonsense though in their companies, or is it the kind of thing that you just have to run, run away from still today? Or do you think there's room to kind of fight and push people and try to teach them to act better?

A No, I mean, I think that now it's an amazing opportunity. I mean, the Overton window has opened in a massive way. Whereas two, three years ago, um, to your point, I mean, you would be called, you know, racist, bigoted if you push back on any DEI agenda, whether it was quota system, whether it was giving hundreds of millions of dollars to BLM. I mean, heck, like every company for a while had to have the BLM square, even though BLM, they said on their website that, you know, we wanted to essentially destroy the nuclear family. And if you just disagreed with that, all of a sudden, You're racist. Um, but I think as we've seen, and again, it really was what I think Bud Light opened this, where people saw the real problems that happen if you get involved in a lot of this social and political issues, especially if your brand has nothing to do with it. And then all of a sudden, it's actually sad because the company lost millions of customers, billions of dollars of shareholder value, and forty billion dollars have been erased since this happened. Thousands of people have lost their jobs. They work with tons of independent Uh, distributors, family owned distributors across the country. They've laid off tons of people, uh, suppliers have closed shop. I mean, it really shows the problems. What happens when you lose focus on your customer and the bigger issues has been zero accountability.…

AI assessment note: “I think that now it's an amazing opportunity. I mean, the Overton window has opened”

Q you guys definitely played a role in that. Let's talk a little bit about optimism for the future. So what, what's the way forward for America and all these issues? How do we protect corporate America from this woke mind virus? How do we cure it? Are there policy changes? Are there things investors should be doing? Like, like what, what, what are the next steps for all of us?

A Yeah, I think that the, uh, the next steps for all of us, I mean, I'm incredibly optimistic. I mean, I love your podcast, American Optimist. Um, I actually came to my bar and had my American flag behind me here, because I actually think we're getting back to the principles of American free market capitalism that made this country wildly successful over the last hundred years, that created unprecedented wealth and prosperity. And we're doing that by dismantling a lot of these programs that frankly just didn't Work. A lot of people think that Trump's responsible for the dismantling of DEI programs. I think Trump is really just given all these companies cover to roll back programs that they saw weren't adding to the bottom line, weren't helping them innovate, weren't helping them actually going out and creating, uh, workforces that were amongst the best and the brightest. And so now that they're pulling a lot of these back, I think we're about to enter into a, a, a era of unprecedented economic prosperity, New job creation, new innovation, because businesses are getting back to what they do best at, and that's innovating, serving their customers, and leading all this other social stuff to politicians.

AI assessment note: “we're doing that by dismantling a lot of these programs that frankly just didn't Work”