Drug policy reform is many things, but it is foremost a movement for liberty and freedom. Freedom from oppression, freedom from fear, freedom from incarceration, freedom from racism, freedom. That's what we need to keep in mind that that core element of freedom is absolutely pivotal to who we are. It is what unites us with all the other human rights movements that have gone before us and the ones of which we are increasingly becoming a part. More than 1400 people from 71 countries came to Washington D.C. to attend the International Drug Policy Reform Conference organized by the Drug Policy Alliance. There are so many vibrant communities represented at this incredibly colorful meeting. For example, medical marijuana patients, psychedelic researchers, low enforcement officials and harm reducers. There is one goal that unites them all to end the global drug war. The drug reporter video team came to Washington D.C. to learn about the new trends of drug policy reform in the U.S. and around the world. I'm also a part of the New Jersey United for Marijuana Reform, which is about a year old coalition in the state of New Jersey that brings together law enforcement, clergy, civil rights organizations from different communities, medical folks, all to legalize, tax and regulate marijuana for adults. MPP was included in the majority of the medical marijuana programs that we see established now. And we were behind the Colorado Initiative as well as Alaska and bringing legalization to those states. Next year, we're looking forward to legalizing in five more states as well for the 2016 election. More and more, the presidential candidates are willing, even Republicans, willing to say that this needs to be a state's issue. And so we're looking forward to seeing that kind of reform at the federal level much sooner than later. I worked with ramp Republicans against marijuana prohibition. And we just share a conservative message to Republicans about why ending marijuana prohibition and making it legal is consistent with traditional Republican values, safer communities, personal responsibility, fiscal responsibility, medical freedom. What are the experiences so far with legalization in the state of Washington? So the really important news, the headline is that far, far fewer people are getting arrested or put in jail. Some things that are encouraging is we're not seeing an enormous increase in use of marijuana by young people. We're still not effectively doing marijuana education. Legalization has so many models and it can take so many forms. Do you think there are any dangers of choosing the wrong model? Absolutely. I think what happened in Ohio, what almost happened in Ohio, would have been a disaster. To have an oligopoly model written into the state constitution for 10 groups of private investors. Imagine the development in the United States of America. If in the 1700s or 1600s the king of England granted a royal charter to 10 families, only these families could ever grow tobacco. Imagine the kind of aristocracy we would have today. It was the marijuana smokers themselves who said, we don't want this model. On the other states, I think the states, the 50 states are supposed to be laboratories of democracy. And that's the way the system was designed to function. That's what the federal government ought to allow them to do. It's come with different models and the best ones people will adopt. I'm part of 22 Too Many organization. It's a non-profit organization raising awareness on the veteran epidemic suicide. I served a year in Iraq from 2004 to 2005. I was in the infantry and I was a mortarman. Served on the front line, I had guns shot at me. The death that I saw and have had to put on people has messed with me a lot mentally. I've got a lot of grief. I've got a lot of inside mental conflict. How can medical marijuana help people like you? I'm standing here today because of it. If I didn't have access to medical marijuana, I would probably have taken my own life by now. Medical marijuana helps calm me down. MAPS is focused on taking MDMA, assistant psychotherapy through the necessary steps to make it an FDA approved prescription medication. Meaning people have gone through the research is just incredibly inspiring. Hearing their experience and seeing the joy they have in their life and trying to imagine them in a hard time is really reaffirming. We're here to say, ask mom about the casualties of the drug war. We call for a focus on saving lives and ending mass incarceration. My older son spent 11 years psyching through the criminal justice system because he was arrested for marijuana possession. My daughter got up in a Saturday morning, went kayaking with friends and took half a gram of white powder that turned out to be ecstasy. That was 91% pure and she collapsed and died three hours later. We know that drugs are widely available. There's no minimum age, there's no need for ID and there's no label. Now had my daughter had a label with how much ecstasy was in it and dosage and so on, she might still be here. The government has changed recently in Canada. What are your expectations about drug policy changes? Well I can say that the first day I woke up happy since the day my daughter died was the day after the election. And I woke up to know that we had a majority government, a government that was ready for change, a government that would listen to its constituents and actually put into practice what we've been asking for from the conservative government for many years. Do you expect that some new supervised injection sites will be opened in Canada soon? Absolutely, I think the prime minister now when he was running he stood shoulder to shoulder with the mayor of Montreal and it was very clear he supported Montreal's application for three supervised injection sites. Can you explain what was the ruling of the Supreme Court in Mexico around marijuana? A case of four individuals was brought before the court where they were asking for permission to grow and consume cannabis for their personal use. They had requested this as a right, as a human right that's in our constitution. They had asked this of the government, they had been denied and so then they created a legal case against the government saying that they needed access. And the court ruled in favor, four judges, to one saying that in fact it is part of the full and free development of the personality to be able to consume and have substances as long as they don't hurt anyone else around them. This is a mock supervised injection facility and the project is called Safe Shape. We're now starting to reach out and form what is in essence a national alliance of harm reduction organizations, syringe access programs that are dedicated to realizing the vision of supervised injection facilities in virtually every metropolitan area in the U.S. That is the grand goal. Then this year you are awarded for the wonderful work you are doing around harm reduction and overdose prevention, congratulations for that. How do you see the trends around naloxone? It's really a no-brainer when you think about it. Here's a drug that is a pure antidote. It has no effects of its own and we have people dying in huge numbers. Why not make it available to them? Where's the downside? Naloxone, I think because of its simplicity, in 19 years it has cut its swath through the insanity that is the drug war in the United States and that's been really nice to see. Can you tell me about the work vocalist doing in New York City? What are you focusing on now? Right now we are working on a homeless campaign which is our newest campaign. We just, before actually making it to the conference, we were at the mayor's event where he announced about 1,500 units that we're getting back of supportive housing. About a month prior to that we had another victory which was the Fair Chance Act where people who are coming home from incarceration will be able to get a job without being discriminated upon. Not one other community has been disassembled and harmed in the way the black community has been harmed by this dirty, stinking drug war. You wonder why a 14-year-old is out selling cocaine because his mother is working three jobs and still can't pay to rent because minimum wage is $7.45 an hour and his father is in jail on crack charges because every 28 grams of crack is a mandatory five years and it takes 500 grams of cocaine to get the same amount of time. But who's going to have crack? Black people. We represent a space of a certain level of clarity around all of the different permutations that enslavement has taken the form of. So first it was the actual physical chains of enslavement of being tied. And for me policing is the way in which white America continues to replicate the cycle of enslavement that reminds itself of the power relationship on which the society is based. Everything that happens to us is a precursor of what is in store for you. So if you don't understand that, then you don't understand that our fight for freedom is your fight for freedom because one of the burdens of oppressed people is to be the agent and the catalyst of the freedom of their oppressors.


Hi, everyone, Tom Stewart here, cleaning business today. I've got my partner, Liz Trotter, and we've got a special guest today. Matt Ricketts is gonna help us with, I guess, a couple of topics. We wanna start off to talk a little bit about good work habits, which is kind of really important when your world gets turned upside down and all of our current, or for a lot of us anyway, our habits that we've developed have been disrupted because of changes in our business and work from home and whatnot. We need to kind of regroup and make sure that we're using our time wisely and productively. And we've had some discussions over the last number of days amongst ourselves. And Matt, you wanna share with us a little bit? With some of them, yes. Yes, I mean, I don't profess to have all the answers, but over the last few years, I've made a lot of changes in my life about just getting back to structure and having structure being a big part of how I define my day. And that's been really big in getting through this. I'll be the first to admit this whole thing is stressful whether you have a big company or a small company. We're getting some feedback, I'm sorry. So, I was thinking just to talk a little bit about how I start my day, what we're doing, people that I'm surrounding myself with and then some just daily habits and then just some of the planning that I'm doing for not just the financial stuff, the financial stuff I know we all wanna know about. We all wanna talk about PPP, we all wanna talk about the disaster loan and we will probably get into some questions on that and what we've done and what we're planning to do. I know me and Tom jump on a call every day, 9.30 his time, 8.30 my time, that's one of the things we've kind of scheduled out either a half hour to an hour just to kind of download what we've learned from the last day and kind of start our morning after we've kind of sifted through a bunch of information and just make sure that we're all kind of understanding the things the same way. So typically, before this all started, I used to get up at five a.m. every morning. I'm struggling with that habit. I think that's a really good habit but if I don't have to be up that early, it's really hard to do that but I am still getting up and trying to get a workout in in the morning. I've already run 20 miles this week. I know that sounds ambitious and you don't have to go out and do that. My goal is to knock out 30 miles this week on running. That would be a new weekly record for me other than a week that I've run a marathon or something like that. And then I've been on the bike about 150 miles since Saturday and just carving out that time for working out, figuring out how to keep those kind of healthy habits in. You know, one of the things that I've learned about from the process of doing that stuff is is your body can only take so much stress. An exercise is stress too but it can also relieve some of the stress and tension of what's going on. And so carving out some time for some of those healthy hobbies that you have and it doesn't have to be running or biking or anything like that. It could be just going on a walk around your neighborhood and making sure you keep social distance going and all that stuff. But I think taking some time now to actually decompress from your day is really a super important thing. And I think a lot of people are gonna be happy with themselves for making those changes to their time now. We've got extra time. I know it seems like we've got a million emails to do but if you really look at it can you break your day into chunks? I mean, most of the emails and stuff we do we could look at that once every five hours and still be just as productive instead of staring and waiting for the next email to come in. And I'm equally guilty of that, you know, but that's sort of a way that I start my day. Again, I have a circle of people that I trust that I'm involved in business with that I make sure I touch base with every day. I reach out to my banker every day just to find out what he knows. I reach out to my accountant every day to see if he's got any different insight on things. So I am just letting him know that I'm there, especially the banker that I'm there and that I'm thinking about him. And I want him to make sure that he sends me over any information that's pertinent as soon as possible. So I'm leveraging all those networks. I'm also working on, I'm also structuring out my day and making time to work on all of my marketing. So my brand has always been about being green and clean and all that. Now it's about, I'm kind of circling back to what Tom does and talking about cleaning for health and the science of cleaning and all this stuff that I used to give him crap about that I said, nobody cares about. Nobody cares about ATP meters and the science of cleaning. Now I'm like, man, I got to get an ATP meter. I got to know about this stuff. So I'm really trying to, I'm trying to, first off, I've always known about a lot of this stuff. I just didn't think it was important to market but our operations have to be incredibly tight. So I'm working on, I'm working on communicating that stuff through my brand a little bit better. So I'm spending time every day on that. And then I'm carving out time to rework my marketing materials all the way down from my safety manual to include what we're doing now in a world with COVID-19. And then I'm going to work on just, how to express those things to my customers and to my employees and I'm making those times and scheduling it out every day. I really suggest you use a calendar when you break your day into chunks. You carve out time to take a lunch with your wife or husband or family or, if you don't have anyone close to you and you're living at home and doing this all on your own, then making some time for some virtual friendships and things like that where you're spending some time with people, but put it on the calendar. Liz has always thought this is a cute thing but I've always for years had a lunch or breakfast date with my wife every day where we don't have the kids and that's hard now. And we just sit down and talk about what's going on with the business, personal stuff. And that's always been a scheduled activity as part of our relationship. So if you're not into scheduling and you're not into structured time, maybe some of my advice on this stuff is over you and you're just like, no, I'm not going to do it that way. But I find in times like this that just really structuring out your time when it feels like everything's falling apart, it seems to help. So that's sort of what I want to talk about and see how you guys are spending your guys' days with COVID-19 being the main focus of everything we're doing. Thank you, Matt. Yeah, it's kind of a different world out there for a lot of us, for the moment, I guess for all of us in one way or another, but there's a lot of opportunity, I guess, in this disruption and change. Stopping back and giving some thought as to really, what do I do with this? I've got, there's a lot of things that need to be done, but at the same time, how I arrange my day and how I use my time can be very much different now. So it's an opportunity. Let's make sure that we're making the best out of it. What do you think, Liz? Well, I really like a structured day. I do better when I have very structured schedule. I'm doing this at this time, this at this time. So I'm still open. So my days are different than y'all's because I'm still open, I'm still getting up at five, I'm still doing my morning routine. And the thing that's changed is I have to, I have to shift my schedule around and make sure that I give time to the people that need to talk about the pandemic and make sure that that's in my schedule, but also bite size it so that it doesn't just take up my whole entire day. Otherwise, I know a lot of people and all of the different groups, all wanna talk about the pandemic at some point in time and I could easily get sucked into an entire day or multiple days of just talking about it. So, Matt, you and I are in one group together and sometimes I'll go to that group and there's been like 250 messages that I haven't read. I'm like, I haven't read that group for a while. I hadn't been in that group for a while and then Sarah's like, well, we want you to come back. And I was like, all right, fine. But it does, like some of those groups can take up a lot of your time because you're looking at all these things and do I need to catch up on this, do I need to? And I mean, I'm equally guilty that I like to jump in those things and converse but I think like you have to limit those times. Tell me about your five a.m. habit though because I think that's a great habit. Like when I'm really on my best game, I really admit that like five a.m. is actually a really powerful habit. I'm off it right now because I just like, I'm over getting up that early if I don't have to but you're still working, you're still doing your thing. So what do you do at five a.m.? What's your morning routine like? All right, so I get up at five and I make my coffee the night before so I go and I hit my coffee. And my coffee takes about 25 minutes. So while I'm waiting for my coffee, I go into, I have another room that's really quiet and dark at five o'clock and my cats don't go in there which is really important for me. And I read for usually about 20 minutes and then I call it meditating. Nobody else on their right mind would ever call it meditating but after I've read, I just sit for like five to 10 minutes and sort of process what I've read and what I'm gonna do about what I read and this thing that I'm reading in the morning is like a self-improvement something or it might be a biography or something like that. And then after that, I go and I make myself coffee and then I hit the shower and the reason why I do it in that order is it gives me another 15 minutes to sort of ramp up for my day. My shower gives me another 15 minutes and during that time I start thinking about my schedule, like I said, I always have a schedule. The night before I looked at my schedule and so during the day I'm like, okay, just a reminder I have a call with someone, so I have a call. I have a mastermind meeting today. I have, you know, whatever the things are and then that's it.  It's like, gets me excited for my day. Yeah, I like to schedule out your day the day before. So like one thing, I try to do that as well and kind of go over what I have and I always try and leave a couple of blocks open for things that are gonna come up through the day or for overrun if things can go a little longer. So I'm not rushing people off the phone if something else comes up. But yeah, I definitely like the idea of that. And again, you know, those are just habits to kind of put into place that, you know that I think are great. A book that I'm reading right now even though I'm not doing the 5 a.m. thing. Robin Sharma is, he is hard to read sometimes because he likes to tell everything in a story but he has a good message. I love that. Yeah, Robin Sharma has a book, I think it's called like the 5 a.m. miracle or something like that. I think, I may be butchering the name of the book but I'm reading it right now and he always tells it in the form of a story instead of just getting right into like what you're actually supposed to be learning. You know, sometimes it's hard to get into these things because you know it's kind of cheesy but he wrote another one called the leader without a title I think or the basically and it's just a lot of these books that he has are just about habits about you don't need to be called the president of a company to act like a leader. And I used to do a lot of training with my managers on that and I got out of the habit of it and that's gonna be something I'm gonna rework as far as you know, when this is done I think my time as an absentee owner is over like this is, it's back to the hustle and grind because we're all back. I mean, it's not zero, it's 12,000 from a hundred and 70,000 right now. I mean, I'm technically still open but just doing commercial spaces right now and doing apartments with common areas and things like that. So that is a big difference financially but even when we restart, we're not starting from zero.  It's even if you shut down it's not like you're gonna just be able to turn the water back on either whether however you get slowed down from this it's gonna be a little bit of a slog to get back up but we're all gonna get there. Liz, I wanna hear a little bit more about you so you're still open and Washington is a state that had an outbreak early on so your area kind of seems like it kind of peaked and kind of peaked early and it's kind of on the downside there or what's going on? Well, it kind of looks like that but we're not expected to still see our peak date for 13 more days. So we're not quite there yet everybody else still kind of looks like this and we look more a little bit like this. Okay, so that's good. So you guys kind of, you did what the hope was that's what we're seeing in St. Louis. We're looking at a peak of not all the way till March or I'm sorry May 24th because we're not gonna have a steep peak like some of these places and it's gonna be so peak resources and peak and peak use in St. Louis is all the way out till May 24th with some of the early social distancing and things that we did but that sucks because it was one of the things I was using as a criteria for like reopening like, all right, we're past peak we're seeing a decline in the frequency of this. So what's the psychology of your, how are your employees holding up? I know you're really leading them through this. Well, I'm sure, what are you doing? Like what's the, you know so your staff and your, I guess there's two people, I guess two groups that you're really leading through this is your clients and your staff and like, what does that look like? You know, you're open and it's probably very stressful and scary. You know what, it only gets stressful and scary like around 4.35 in the morning, right? So which is good timing because that's when I'm going to put some effort into chilling out and relaxing and getting into a good space again. So luckily for me it doesn't, it doesn't really impact my day too much. I have, I sort of set my course and I've decided on what my belief system is and my belief is that there aren't enough people out there that are helping to solve this problem that everybody's kind of running away from it, trying to, and I really appreciate that people are self-quarantining. That's super helpful, but not everybody can. And for the people that can't, don't know how and just aren't, somebody still needs to be helping those people so that they're not just out there making things crazy. I mean, that's what we're doing. We're still getting a lot of requests.  So, you know, we're going to just go with, we're going to go with what they're doing. I do think it is region by region and it's, and it's definitely, I think I could do it. I don't think I, I was having trouble with the staff a little bit, that piece, like, you know, with, you know, leading them through this.  And how does that look? Like how are you kind of leading them through this right now? Well, I haven't been around for a lot of it, but I've been leading everybody through Facebook. So we have a Facebook group and I'm on there every day. Well, I'm on there at least once a day. I do at least one Facebook live and then I'm throwing resources on all the time. My style is very open communicative. So every time I hear about something, I'm throwing it in the group. Hey, you guys, here's what's going on. This is why we're doing this. This is why we're not doing that. So my people are kind of pumped. My people are kind of like, like maybe not first responder status, but they kind of have that feeling. And we took a page out of a lot of the stuff that you were doing Matt and, you know, a lot of everybody across the country has had customers that are like, I just want to continue paying for my service. You know, I'm donating money and buying gift cards.  A lot of these people don't have other options and opportunities to do, you know, they're not going to be getting on unemployment. They're not going to be doing all of this stuff. And so we've been getting a lot of donations from our employees and that's really, really good too. So that's something I was going to talk about that we've set up. I set it up yesterday. I created a sub-account in my QuickBooks for an employee assistance fund. I got the idea from Joe Walsh. So, you know, Joe Walsh had some really good communication on this. So I'm donating the first thousand dollars into this employment employee assistance fund. And what I'm hoping to do is raise about $4,000 and buy gift cards for employees and be able to give every employee a hundred dollar gift card while we're off before they get their first check. And so, Sarah Mitchell had a question if you wanted to respond to that. Yeah, let's see, I was just responding to Rebecca's that nobody's been sick. No, we are not currently paying any more. Whether or not we're going to do that moving forward, we did have some people that were nervous they're scared to work and we just kind of worked through that. My message is, yeah, it wouldn't be an intelligent decision to not be scared. A lot of times we're scared of things and that's how you grow in this lifetime is you don't just shrink from everything that scares you. There are times when you have the answer and you have the solution and so it's your time to step up and this is your time. And so that's been working really well for a lot of, we have a lot of people in our company that are high anxiety and a lot of our people take meds for their anxiety problems. And so I thought we were going to have a lot more problems but now people are kind of pushing through. Okay, Danit. I had one other. So Sarah Mitchell, two year thing. Tom didn't necessarily agree with this when I told him what I was doing but I went to all my commercial accounts that wanted to stay open and I told them we would need a $12 an hour override on their hourly rate to continue to staff them because I mean, honestly, my staff going on unemployment versus one that are all being laid off versus the four that I have kept on, I needed to incentivize them to do that versus, since we were laying off most of our staff versus Liz that wasn't. So it just, I mean, depends on where you are. And in St. Louis, I mean, there's probably people that would do it cheaper but the businesses that we were dealing with had enough value in our relationship to see that it was a short-term thing and we were able to reduce the scope of work on a lot of those properties because I told them we didn't want to clean gyms or any common spaces where people were sweating profusely or anything like that right now. We didn't think that was a good safe use of our time. We wanted to shut down as many public restrooms in the building as feasible. They still need public restrooms for if they're showing the place or for the workers to throw. But we wanted, so we closed down a lot of spaces so we reduced the scope of the work so that their bill rate is higher but their actual total bill is gonna be similar to what it was prior. So we went from having three full-time people on one property to two and then split another property that had a full-time person on each. And we split that. And then I have another person passing them up so. So the end result is you're getting a higher hourly bill rate just billion less hours. Exactly, so they're gonna be fairly flat on the bill.  So their bill, when I was running, when I was processing it today or today's the second, when I was doing it yesterday and I was looking at all their bills, one of them had like an $8,000 bill and I was kind of choking for a second. I was like, did we mess up? Did I do something wrong? But no, they just did a ton of turns. And I was like, okay, good. I can't wait for that check. Like that check's gonna feel good right now. Like normally I just think of that as like, oh, that's my fund money check. Now I'm like, that's my pay my people check. We just went through an extra call earlier today when we're looking at what is the actual cash for rate across each branch and how much revenue do we need in order to be revenue neutral in each branch and accounts that didn't look very important to us in the past or like, gee, we need two more crummy accounts just like these. So we can pay all the bills. Went jumped on this call actually before we did and asked a question and it's a, I guess it was a multi-part question. So we should probably see if we could address that. She's asking or making a statement that she's struggling with the $10,000 emergency funds. We plan to apply for the Payroll Protection Program as it is forgivable. Hearing if you take the 10,000, number one, you have to apply for EIDL or two, the 10,000 advance is not forgivable or three is netted against any PPP loan you receive. Have you found any clarity to the bill? Question mark. Can you apply for both PPP and EIDL? So I think it's 10,000, I mean, from my understanding it's 10,000 forgivable, forgivable regardless, but I think you're gonna need to get clarity from that, from your own financial advisor. But Tom, would you agree, no matter whether you'd go for the PPP or not, it appears that the 10,000 for applying is three dollars is presented as a grant. By definition, you do not pay a grant back. Some of the other programs like the EIDL and PPP is initially presented as a loan where if you meet certain criteria and do certain things, some of it can be converted into a grant. But the initial 10,000, just by definition of it being a grant, I think that if you, whatever you get out of that program, you are not obligated, you're not expected to pay that back. Yeah, and my thoughts are so I'm definitely, I would suggest everyone applies for the EIDL, the emergency, the disaster loan. I can't see any reason why not to at least apply for it, take the grant. And honestly, the money isn't gonna be, there's gonna be no interest, no payment to do for at least six months. Money in the bank is oxygen at this point. Like you cannot have enough oxygen, I don't think. I mean, it's just, it's breathing room for a rainy day. So I'm taking it all. And I'm sick of writing checks from myself to my business. And I'm hoping that I get this money before April's over so I don't have to write myself another draw to do that. And not everyone's in the same position where they have personal savings and can do that indefinitely. I can't do that indefinitely, but can do that for a while. But I don't wanna have to do that. So the disaster loan, I'm gonna take the PPP, I'm struggling to wrap my head around what's best because is it the tax credits? Because I'm not sure that I'm gonna get my business schooled all the way back up to where I have 40 people employed again or 44. I gotta look at what I had on my last, my last whatever period they were looking at as far as full-time employees or full-time equivalents and how that they're judging that. So I've gotta look at that, but I'm not 100% certain I'm gonna be schooled back up by June 30th. I mean, that's a concern to me where it might not make sense to take the PPP loan. I'm still gonna apply and see what happens and make a determination. But one of the concerns with that is, is that there was only so much money allocated on this first round. Me and Tom talked about it today, what it doesn't make sense to wait till the end of April to apply. Potentially, but then the money might be gone and then you're waiting on whether the government throws more money in the pot or not. And we think they will, but we're just making assumptions based on how bad we think that unemployment's gonna be and how much the government wants to prop things up. So what are your thoughts, Tom? Are you gonna apply for the PPP right away or are you gonna try and wait? I'm not gonna rush out tomorrow and do it. I believe that if they blow through the initial $395 billion, just think about that for me. Just even saying that's kind of weird. They'll go back for more. Steve Mnuchin, the secretary of the treasury says that they'll do it. I've heard both parties and Congress say they would do it.  The tax credit is an interesting option, weighing the benefit of PPP versus tax credit. There's some uncertainty in terms of what criteria do you need to meet in order to qualify for the tax credit? That's not a good question. I wanted to point that out. So if you've stayed open and haven't had less than 50, so the tax credits your business needs to be affected by 50% or more to qualify, that's one criteria. So if you've been able to stay open through this and you're slogging along, definitely the PPP is a better option for you. If you shut down completely and you're not sure you're gonna spool back up in time for that June 30th deadline to get all of the PPP funds and you're just gonna get some sort of portion back, then it might be better not to have taken the PPP funds and just work the tax credit angle. It just depends on how bad you need the capital too. I mean, if you need the capital, PPP is, it's cash in your pocket, you're paying people. And if you don't spend it all on that right away, then you can continue to use it for payroll past that initial point. They're not gonna ask you to pay it back. But I think it's gonna be fairly short term. I don't know that it's gonna be like the disaster loan where it's like 30 years. It might only be like four years, two years, you think? Two years. Two years. So that's a pretty short term loan to take out. For me, my payroll would be somewhere between 250 and 300,000, depending on how they calculate this. And that hurts my head to think about a two year loan for $300,000 that I would potentially not hit all the targets for and not get paid back for. So I struggle with that one a little bit and that's gonna be a tough choice when it comes down to it. So for me, disaster loan, yes. PPP I'm gonna hold off on to see how my spool back up looks. And if it looks like we're spooling up really well and it might be advantageous to get that money and do that versus the tax credits, then I'll do that. But I think for my situation, the tax credits is probably better and I might not have said that a week ago, but I feel like that this is gonna be an ongoing issue in my region and it's gonna, the psychology of it is gonna slow us down for a while unless I can pivot and find some more business. And I'm looking at that too, and pivoting towards more commercial. But you gotta remember, we all wanna pivot towards commercial, there's gonna be all of us trying to pick up all these commercial jobs.   So Winti, I don't know if that is, not an exact answer to your question. I guess your question, do we have clarity on all of this? No, the question, can you apply for both PPP and EIDL? I believe the answer to that question is yes. Yes, you need different reasons technically. Like so I talked to my banker and he's like, well, you need, so you need different reasoning between the two. And I can't quite, we talked about a little bit, like what our reason for one versus the other was, what would you say the reason would be? If you do just EIDL, you can use those funds for payroll. If you do EIDL and PPP, then the PPP I think has to go for, for payroll and the EIDL for other things. And I'm, I don't know, I've seen so much stuff over the last week that it's all kind of blurry. But at one point that was the thinking anyway. Yeah. So long, long, long winded answer. Liz, I think your situation where, where you are operating still the PPP might be the, it might just be like fricking gold in your pocket.  And so that's a, that's a win-win.  No, we're not. We are down 30% on our people. And we're not, it's not necessarily laying people off, but it's a combination of, you know, you had a couple of symptoms, you had a sore throat and okay, you're off for two weeks. And now you've got a couple of daycare issues. All right, you're off for another two weeks. You know, so we're dealing with a lot of that right now. But it's all going to be based on your current business situation. So like someone like Liz that's been able to remain open through this, I would say that's the PPP is a slam dunk for her. That's just a win on top of a win. It's still a timing thing. So I still need to be figuring out when can I get the maximum amount of people? Yeah, but June 30th is what your timeframe is. And for you, if you never shut down, I think you're not going to have the spool up issues that maybe Tom and I did for our operations. And that's, you know, and again, you know, it's going to be just very individual. So I personally would think that your situation, I would take that money and figure that out. Because, you know, you could hire a couple extra people just to do door-hangering and things like that to make up the difference. You know, and bring in an internal marketing person and pay that person. And maybe bring on some positions that you traditionally haven't had in your company. And, you know, at least for a short period of time. And then if it doesn't work, or maybe they're an intern, I don't know. But that's for eight weeks. And at the end of the eight weeks, then you need to ask yourself, what are you going to be in? So. Yeah, you're right. There's so many different angles to this. And every day that goes by is like, you know, month's worth of information and you get more insights. And it's just, you know, we'll figure it out, but we're not going to have all the answers at this moment. Yeah. I did hear from a fairly reliable source that a lot of the larger banks are really struggling with the PPP loan, because they're going to be facilitating that with the SBA, that they're looking for guidance. They haven't gotten it. That they're not really going to be able to hit the ground running. Supposedly they're supposed to be in a position to start doing those applications at midnight tonight. But I understand a lot of the larger banks are not going to have it together tomorrow in order to be able to do that. I understand some smaller banks are starting to take some information, but I don't know, you know, it'll be interesting to see tomorrow what that really looks like. Yeah. I think it's going to be, I mean, I think it's going to be interesting to see how much that each individual bank can even lend.  I have, you know, something called Midwest Bank Center and I have US Bank. And I've been dealing mostly with Midwest Bank because, you know, I have a good relationship with the banker as kid goes to my school. We talk all the time. And anyway, like, you know, he's been incredibly helpful. But, you know, we talked about, like, what his bank's reserves are and, like, you know, what it's going to look like for them.  So, you know, he's like, we have good reserves to make a lot of this lending possible. And the fact that it's backed by the government is great, but we still have financial risk markers that we can't go below. So we can't just throw money out the door just because they tell us to. So... The Federal Reserve announced last night that they're lowering the reserve requirements on banks on several, I mean, there's a lot of different types of reserves they have to have, but they're loosening it up as recently as last night on banks in terms of the amount of money they have to have in reserve. Okay. I don't know if that substantially changes that particular situation or not, but more and more they're trying to get more money out there. Let's see, we had a question. Heather says she jumped on late and wants to know which, I guess, loan program does she need to go through to get the grant? That would be the EIDL. And I pasted a link in the chat down here. Heather, and also at the end of the discussion here, I'll show you in cleaning business today. Where we've got our resource page and it would have that link on it. It's really easy to go there and fill out your information and send the SBA website. Takes about 15 minutes maybe. And if you haven't done that, you really, really wanna do that.  I would, so I just got, while we were sitting here, I just got an email from my banker. I had applied for line of credit with a couple of banks, my larger bank and my smaller bank. And I just got noticed that we got approved for a pretty large line of credit. So that's something I would be working on in the short, in the interim too, while you're working on all this stuff and you're getting all these documents together anyway, potentially, you know, some short term funding, if you can secure it would be good. And Tom really turned me on to that. Outside of the scope of the SBA. Yeah, I did because I wasn't sure what the timing was. And I know it makes my wife nervous. Every time I'm like, I gotta take a $10,000 draw from our savings. I know she loves that so much. Cause I think for her, like that money represents like, like food and like and shelter. And drawing off that money means less food, less shelter. We have a pretty good amount of savings. And, you know, for her, that's like every time I touch that, she like gets really nervous. So I was like, all right, well I guess I'll do some debt. And I've never really been big on business debt. And I know a lot, I hear from a lot of people like, oh, I don't do debt. I'm like, I would have never said I would have needed debt for a cash flow business either. Like this is a cash flow business, right? We all kind of think like, you know, we don't need debt to run a cash flow business because there's no, there's no receivables typically. Like my receivables are like less than 15,000 a month typically, you know, it's not like I'm waiting 90 days to get paid. I don't need to float things, but now we're looking at being 90 days out and getting paid. So, you know, setting up some lines of credit that'll float you through this. And, you know, I'm hearing different numbers. Like I'm hearing April 13th, they would start funding these things. I don't know how they're gonna do that. I mean, that's like next Friday, isn't it? I mean, that's incredibly fast. So if it happens that fast and I'm wrong. I was talking to somebody earlier today who actually had a discussion with somebody working in the SBA, asking about the $10,000 grant and he was told that that might be three weeks out because you're just so far behind. I was presented like it was supposed to hit the bank in three days, right? Three days from the time you applied. And then I got an email from them to reapply if I wanted that and I put my bank account information. I thought I was getting scammed because I'm like, government doesn't typically like ask you for your bank account routing information. So I was like really checking carefully that this was like the SBA's website and I wasn't getting spoofed somehow. But no, like that application that they have on there is first of all, it's nothing. If you haven't done that yet, it's like it's 10 minutes maybe. I've seen credit card applications that are more... Oh. You know, it's hard to imagine that we're gonna be loaning that much money with such a lot of money. The $35,000 line of credit that I was just approved for took days and days and I literally just sent them a statement today with like, they were like, oh, we need a different statement from this account and this account because we have different savings in different places and they're like, okay, fine. I'll keep giving you stuff.  Okay, what's your top number? What's your cost of goods sold? And that's the only two numbers it asks. If you keep good books or okay books, you should be fine. I don't keep like Tom level books and that's gonna be something I'm gonna change through this process is beyond my books better because it took me a few hours to fix my books to get ready for all this process. So that was a headache that I had...  And so I had to go through and fix all that. So if you keep better books than me, it takes 10 minutes. It took me a few hours because I had to go fix all that stuff, but... Liz, do we have any other questions? Other people are answering questions as we're going as well. Tom, Chris gives an idea. Check to see if your county is offering anything. So don't just be thinking about all of the fed stuff that everybody else is talking about. What is your county offering? For counties offering grants for local small businesses. My county is also offering a couple of different things. So look and see what's being offered locally. Yeah, yeah. That reminds me the, tell it like it is question for yesterday. We kind of skipped over that. Do we want to fit that in here now so we can... Yes, please. Okay. The question came up about, how does the $1,200, I guess, economic stimulus check that most of us are supposed to be getting, when are we going to see that and how does that work? The Secretary of the Treasury was making a statement as recently as yesterday. You're going to be getting a lot of people. If you have an account set up with the IRS, for like direct deposit for your tax returns. Say when you filed your tax return in 2018 or if you happen to be somebody that filed it for 2019 and you gave them a bank account to directly deposit any refund that you were getting, then the IRS will, they will use that routing number and account number to direct deposit the $1,200 or the $2,400 if it's two people in the household qualify into that account. They say that's about three weeks out though for that. If they don't have a direct deposit account, they will physically mail you a check just the way that the IRS would mail you a check for a refund. I'm sorry? They're saying 13 weeks on if they're mailing you a paper check to process them all. Yeah, they said best case eight. They just can't, it wouldn't happen any sooner than eight. Yeah, I read that it was going to take them as much as 13 weeks to go through and process all the paper checks. So don't expect that, like if you haven't, if you haven't, so that I guess that's bad if you haven't had a refund in a while or had to make a payment. So I guess I had a refund last year so I guess I will, I've had an overpayment so I will get that. But if you haven't had a, in the last two years is what I read, right? So 19 or 18? Yeah, a direct deposit account. They'll direct deposit right in there. But you gotta figure too, that they've been optimistic on a lot of their other projections like the $10,000 grant that's supposed to hit in three days. Now it looks like it's going to be several weeks. They, you know, the PPP where all the banks are supposed to ready to start taking those applications tomorrow and the banks are saying, yeah, that's best not gonna happen. Oh, yeah. I had an interesting conversation day too, like with the unemployment office. So they actually called me because they knew that I was the officer of my business and I was taking unemployment. So I had an interesting call with them too. I know we talked to this last time and I think a lot of us are kind of hesitant to file for unemployment for ourselves and things like that. But I totally qualified. We had a conversation about it. I would highly suggest doing so. So for me and my wife, each, because we're both officers in the business, we've always taken a salary from the business and we both qualified. It's gonna be with the new government incentive. It's gonna be almost $1,800, $1,870 a week for us, for our unemployment benefit. I just got word on that today. So that's gonna be faster than some of that money from, that's gonna be faster than probably some of that money that we're talking about that stimulus relief money. That's supposed to be happening in the next two weeks, for sure. Greg says that his accountant told him that the feds are setting up a website that you can add your direct deposit info into. So that would be cool if they do that. Just be careful of scams. There's gonna be so many scammers. Sure, it's a legit website. There's gonna be so many scammers, guys. So just like, yeah. We can, my mother-in-law has been hit by three scammers already. My mother-in-law is 91, and she is a prime target. The last one that just hit her up, she's, she drug them along for a while. She loves to mess with them. And they wanted her checking account information. They wanted a social security card. They wanted everything. So because they're going to get her her $1,200 stimulus check immediately. Yeah, of course. So she could get it into her account today.  Can you apply? Are you talking about for unemployment? Because typically the answer would be no because you are not paying yourself a check. So I file as an S corp, so I pay myself a salary. But the rules have all changed on that. So you can collect at least the federal unemployment of $600 per week right now. If you apply through your state and they will have expedited applications for that. So I don't know what your state is typically, but typically if you are self-employed or your LLC is a partnership and not like, so my business is an LLC, but we're taxed as an S corp. And we've done that because we've always paid ourselves and then we've taken benefits from the business like healthcare and then paid that through our, through a payroll deduction. So yes, we would qualify for unemployment because we've always paid into the system. But even if you've never paid in right now even if you have been self-employed or however you paid yourself, you do qualify for the $600 and I'm from what I understand and I would get guidance on that. A lot of the 1089 contractors who, like Uber drivers and whatnot, they're all qualifying for unemployment benefits. So it's a whole new world out there. My suggestion would be ask the question and you just never know what type of answer you're gonna get. I mean every bit, so we are talking about money as oxygen. Every bit that you can secure right now.  I sold some stocks and we already had a lot of savings.  Like, and so I know of those of you that haven't been around and haven't built up your wealth and haven't been in this business as long or whatever. I know it's scarier but leverage all of these opportunities. Do not be afraid to file for unemployment or do whatever you can because I'm telling you every dollar matters to me as well because I don't wanna spend my personal money on this. I wanna leverage what resources the government's given to anybody, you know? So I'm not embarrassed to take that money. I've heard other people saying, I don't wanna do that. Well, do it. Like it is not even a question of morals. Everyone is entitled to that.  You did not make this happen. We, you know, and the government is trying to help the economy and you failing is not what they want. They want you to come through this on the other side. So I just cannot, you know, I cannot stress enough. You don't need to be embarrassed about these things. I know that it seems like counter to what we've always done because we're, you know, we're these self-made people and we control our own lives and do these things. But I mean, you know, I think I might have even talked Tom into doing it. I don't know if he's quite ready yet. Hold on a moment. Yeah, I'm thinking. I mean, actually I'm sent to do it. I just haven't gotten around to that yet. I've been doing triage. It's on my list. Just haven't gotten to it. Two weeks ago. And I'm just checking that.  Yeah. No, I just, I just, Tom made me super, Tom made me super nervous two weeks ago when he was telling me all the stuff he was doing.  I'm not even close. Like, like I'm not even doing enough. But yeah, yeah, definitely do everything you can. I think we've, I think we've had, I've said this before when I've been on, and you know, we, I guess we're circling back to money. And again, when I, my, my, also my, my advice on this is don't let this take up your whole day. Schedule this into your day for a part of your day and then be done with it for a while and then take a break from it. Like make this, like, make some, some time for these, like, you know, these learning opportunities like this, and this is just, I consider this more of a fireside chat because I can't give you legal advice or financial advice. All I can do is tell you what I'm doing and doing my best to, you know, get myself on the other side of this.  I mean, I sleep better now that like the first couple of weeks of this, man, I was not sleeping well. I'm feeling a little better actually and my first good night of sleep last night in a while. And I think a lot of that had to do with just that I've been getting back into my routines and, you know, finding that part of it instead of staying up till midnight every night, like trying to do things that are unproductive and then being on Facebook Messenger with the other people. And really what I'm talking about because she was talking about chat, too, it's like nonstop and it's, there's useful information but it's like wading through it.  I do have a question, Matt. Denit wants to know if you're still getting a paycheck. You're not getting a paycheck anymore because of the UI, right? So I stopped taking a paycheck three weeks ago because I saw this kind of come in and I saw this come in ahead out. And so I was just trying to hold on to cash in the business and we pay ourselves pretty aggressively. You know, so we're trying to, you know not have as much profits in the business and pay ourselves an aggressive salary. Just my strategy, other people like to do draws, different things and we do a mixture of both. But yeah, so about three weeks ago and I wish I'd done it five weeks ago is to stop, you know, stop paying myself but and just had even more money in the business. And you know, that was a strategy we took. So yeah, there's really nothing, you know cash flow wise that would allow me to take a salary like I was taking before. I would say I'm making less now per month than I was taking in salary before. So yeah. So Chris is telling us that, I guess in Wisconsin anyway that I think I find employment insurance they just have to update their website and so on and so forth. Her husband's a very popular DJ and if you follow her on Facebook she's a covered charge girl. Yeah, so I think that's kind of a gray area in the past. Like yeah, this would have been a no. There would have been a solid no, not even a gray area like, you know, prior to this bill that was passed I guess it was last Tuesday now and we're still kind of sort through all this. Yeah, you'd be out of luck if you were a self employed or an LLC partnership and just took draws for your income and even if you paid quarterly taxes you would have been out, you'd be out of luck because you're typically not paying into the UI system at that time. You know, and there's gonna be some interesting consequences of some of these changes when the dust settles. You know, a lot of the business models who are like Uber can treat their drivers as independent contractors like Congress is already talking about what we're gonna have to change that there are gonna have to be employees moving forward, I mean it's not gonna happen next week there's other things to worry about but eventually it's gonna be a whole lot harder for companies to designate their work with those independent contractors. I think that's gonna be a huge fallout from, that's gonna be a huge fallout from this Tom, I agree because I mean all those employees are basically getting paid out of this benefit pool and moving forward states and the federal government are gonna have to reevaluate whether that was fair and right and if they can allow that to happen again, you know this is this, is this a one time bailout or is this like, you know, an ongoing thing that like, you know, that- What I'm saying is that, you know people need the money so we need to do it and it's the right thing to do but moving forward everybody who's getting these funds the system has to be suffered and we're contributing to the pool so the next time it happens. Yeah. I think it's gonna change the, I think it's gonna change the gig economy quite a bit where, you know, if it, you know walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, it's a job.  I mean, it might not have, you know and that's a bonus like, you know like if you're, this administration has not really enforced that as much as the prior administration. So that was, that's good if that's what you were trying to do before but I don't see that. I see that being a huge fallout from this and I think that that's gonna change. If you do business like that, I would expect that that to be something that affects you and if that's something that hurts you now because some competitors are able to do things cheaper and with less overhead and I think that's gonna level some of the playing field. I definitely agree with that. That's a real reality that's gonna come from this. And Matt, Bill Gilderman, I guess have a comment here. He has a really good time to buy stock in the steering road. I think that's a great business. I think we're all gonna need, we're all gonna need to actually be evaluating our employees from afar before we see them. We should all be. I think that was directed at you personally. I know, I know. But I was plugging his, I was plugging his business. Bill's an old friend and I think he has a good product. I think his son would be sad if he sold it out from underneath him to me though. I think that would be rough, Bill, to do to your son-in-law. We'll talk about it. Hey Heather, I don't know if anybody knows about Pennsylvania Unemployment Law. You guys don't know happen to know anything about Pennsylvania, do you? But I would suggest just to check on that. Yeah. What Tom? The north of Maryland. Yeah. Tom is a geography king. Hey Tom, it's time to put up our link for cleaning business today. And I also, I have a tell it like it is question for you. I don't know if you can do this or not, but there has just been so much conversation around the $600 unemployment federal monies, whether that is going to come on top or if that's going to be on top to fill the gap up to $600. Any chance you can find out the truth about that? Sure. We were talking about that earlier. We still, I mean, I don't think that we have any definitive answers. Yeah, I feel like that's just, nobody really knows. Everybody kind of thinks they know the truth, but right now there is no, I'd love to know what it is. I'd love to hear from you, what's the real gig on that? I think we're all just interpreting it right now, what our understandings of it are. So my interpretation is that that $600 is on top of what the state is already doing. And so yes, that's going to create an incentive that people are actually making more to be unemployed than they are to come back to work. And that's going to be a challenge. That's going to be on your culture to bring people back and figure it out. And I think the way you have to, you're going to have to balance that.  There's 30% of people that are unemployed.  And if we have to lay you off again before the end of the year, for whatever reason, if we don't make it, you can still, you still have more of that unemployment benefit. You haven't burned through it all. So I think you're going to have to have some one-on-one conversations with their top that are going to be tough with some people that are going to be like, I feel safer and more secure on this unemployment right now, but you're going to have to make sure you're really clear with them. That's a short-term, that is a short-term gap. That is 16 weeks that that is going to be in effect. You know, that reminds me of something that I meant to mention. If you remember this time a week ago, we were pointing out that going all the way back to the beginning of time, the record for one week's, you know, the number of people who filed for unemployment in one week was 695,000. Last week, it went up to 3.3 million. Last week, 3.3 million people filed for unemployment in one week. The numbers came out today for last week and it went up to 6.6 million people. So the number last week was like four and a half times higher than anything we'd ever seen. The number this week was twice as high as last week. And together, that's 11 million people in a two-week period that have filed for unemployment. Just to think that they were able to process because all those had to be in a computer and just, you know, it's amazing that government was able to process 11 million. That was not even processed, but at least- I was amazed they had time to call me today and ask me about my business and I was amazed that they were calling me personally today. Like they're still providing a fairly good level of service on getting through this. Depends on your state and the technology they have, but they're getting through it somehow. Great. You know, if you look at the entire workforce, I don't know that somewhere between, I don't know, where else 7% give or take of the entire workforce, filed for unemployment in a two-week period. We were at 3.8% before that. We're probably close to 11% unemployment. I started my business in 2008 and so I didn't go through the downturn. I kind of went up, you know, started on the bottom of a cycle. And I know, Tom, you've been through something like this, but I will say that there is one upside to this and maybe it's not gonna be as good because of this unemployment benefit, but when we get to the other side of this, there's gonna be a lot of good people available. There's gonna be a lot of restaurants that don't come back from this that had some really great servers that have great customer service skills. They're gonna be looking for a great job.  The flip side of this is that there's gonna be people with work ethic that understand that their unemployment benefits are gonna run out and they need to be looking for a job and they're gonna be, they're gonna find those companies that are hiring. And I'll tell you what, 2008 through 2010 I had the best team I've ever had. I mean, just, I have employees that I'm still friends with and maybe it was because it was early in the company and you know, like those people are imprinted on you a little bit, but man, it was really easy to find great people. I had like home act teachers and I had grad students and I had, I mean, just incredible people that like it would be really difficult to find now in this environment three months ago. And now I think you're gonna be, the flip side of this is at some point there's gonna be a, there's still gonna be a lot of fallout on the economy and there's gonna be a lot of good people available to our companies. So silver lining, I guess, I don't know. It's, there is a silver lining, hopefully. Let me, what's this? Okay, I'm sorry. Not everybody knows. It's here kitty, kitty, right? It's here kitty, kitty, yeah. Tiger King. Me and Tom both like the Tiger King. You guys don't know what they're talking about. I had no clue what they were talking about. Apparently there's a Netflix show called Tiger King. Liz is obviously more productive than us. I have carved out. Supposedly, supposedly this lady killed her rich husband and fed him to the tigers. Her nemesis. There's Joe. Oh, there he is. This is Joe Exotic. He's, they're not, let's just say they're not friends. Anyway, cleaning business today. Here we are. This is how you subscribe. If you go to our special link on coronavirus dash downloads, it shows you like all of the resources that we've talked and shared over the last, going on a few weeks, I guess. Out of the few here, payroll protection plan. This is a link on the Treasury website, which has got, basically the application form that if you wanna fill some of this out and read this, you'll be better prepared to work with your bank when they're ready to do the SBA lending if you're going down that path. And we pointed out yesterday too, all the really neat resources on the ISSA page, especially if you go down here to the bottom, like cleaning industry tips. These tip sheets are awesome. It's specifically focused at coronavirus. I would recommend everybody take a look at those and download those and put them to work. Yeah, it's a great time to work on your training materials, right? So like finding all those resources and putting them into your training manual is gonna be a good use of your time. Yeah, all right, are we good? Do we wanna close out with one last comment about how to rejuvenate yourself and re-invigorate? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think we were talking about before.  We'll talk about our day and catch up. And again, that's some physical time, that's some time away from the kids. My 13-year-old can watch them for a minute and get through this. But yeah, I think for me, it's just making sure that I turn this stuff off for a couple hours and put the phone down and walk away from this for a couple hours here and there because it is definitely information overload. And I can handle a lot of information. I've always been able to like process a lot and take in a lot and do that. Angela's different. She doesn't want all this overload. She doesn't like to watch the news or anything. She likes to process stuff at her own time. This is like, everyone's gonna process this differently. So for her, she doesn't have Facebook on her phone. She gets on Facebook once a month and like responds to stuff and like, so we're all doing this differently. But my biggest tip right now would be to maybe take the Facebook app off your phone and just like consciously use that app when you're on your computer and when you're scheduling time to kind of be doing in that. I could use that tip because it's a constant flow of information, some of it not so helpful. You wanna say anything about that fancy, fancy bike we see hanging in the background? A couple of them. I've got, there's like three bikes. You can see the picture. So this is triathlon bike. There's another one over there in the corner. That's the one that I have on the trainer. There's a TV. That's where I watched Tiger King while I'm on my bike. That's Angela's bike hanging there. And then this, that's my favorite bike. That's my gravel bike. And then my first bike ever that I had when I used to race, when I was in my twenties, I cannot manage to get rid of that bike. When I used to do bike racing when I was between 18 and 22. So that's one of my big, big things for getting out and getting on the bike. And you know, I live in the city, but what's funny is in the city is there's, we have rivers in St. Louis, right? So there's actually these gravel access trails where they actually like the city workers use them to do work and stuff like that. Well, those trails are empty right now. There's no city workers out there doing anything. So I take my bikes out on these gravel trails that are designed for, you know, access to all these, I consider them open sewers. They're called rivers, like river to pair and stuff like that around the city of St. Louis. They're basically, they're like open sewers. I don't know what they are, they're gross. But you can ride your bike for miles and miles on these things and not be by traffic. So that's a healthy habit I was talking earlier about getting out for a run. I might still get some miles in today and do, you know, just some really light exercise. But my suggestion is with exercise too is is that exercise can stress you out too if you're just adding something really intense in your routine. Like what is those Billy blank videos from the 90s and stuff like that? Or it's like those extreme hit routines and stuff like that. I don't recommend that if you haven't been exercising for a while. Like I'd start out slow like with a walk and like just move your body and find something. But if you don't know me, I was probably 350 pounds three years ago. So I kind of re-found my love of exercise and racing from when I was younger and got, you know, got back into this. So no matter where you are in your fitness, fitness spectrum, now is probably a better time than ever to focus on your fitness because you've got a little bit of extra time on your hands probably. Yeah. Greg says he has a vintage twin that he still rides. That's cool. Tom, I know you do some running every day too. Well, most days. I still run. Yeah, hit and miss. I'm in different mode right now. It depends what time, you know, I'm thinking about my habits. Well, I got different habits depending upon where I am. And I guess for the last couple of weeks, I'm in, I guess, strategic thinking mode and, you know, I'm spending a lot of time reading, a lot of time trying to keep up on the news, a lot of time, a lot of unstructured time, just trying to figure stuff out. There'll come a time when that needs to shift to actually implementing stuff and developing stuff and doing stuff. But, you know, I guess I'm trying to figure out where I'm on, you know, where do we need to be going before we start running too fast in any one direction? Yeah. Signals breaking down. So to answer your question, you know, when I'm on my game and I'm in being productive mode, yeah, I get up at 4.50 in the morning.  I go about two miles a day. And I'm back home with a cup of coffee, watching Squawk Box on CNBC before six o'clock. But that's my normal drill in the morning. But, you know, I haven't been getting up at 4.50 for the last couple of weeks. Like Matt's flacking. Yeah. Enjoying your mornings. Still doing Squawk Box though. Yeah. Alrighty. So anything that anybody wants, no for tomorrow, go ahead, put it posted in the thread. We'll see it and hopefully get some of that stuff on tomorrow's call. And we'll close up the week. Great care. We'll see you here tomorrow at five o'clock. Thank you, Matt. Bye, y'all. Thanks, Matt. All right. Thanks guys. Good talk. Bye. See you soon.


We are in a wages moment, a time when it is universally agreed that wage growth for nearly all workers, both white collar and blue collar, high school educated and college educated, has been inadequate. This is the predictable result of policies that have been implemented over the last four decades, and consequently, we can reverse these trends with new and bold policies. Unfortunately, too many people believe that the wage suppression we have lived with is the inevitable consequence of ongoing changes beyond our control. It is critically important that the policy agenda you put forward highlights the many ways that we can support larger paychecks for the vast majority, not only low wage workers, but also for middle wage workers. This is the path to shared prosperity and expanded middle class reduced poverty and vibrant social mobility. It is common sense that wages are key since for most families they don't receive much income from owning things. They get to consume based on what kind of paychecks they bring home. And we know what's happened with wages. I won't belabor the facts. We know that way too much of them have gone to the top 1%, whose wages grew 150% over the last three decades or so. We know that a typical worker saw his or her pay rise around 9%, including benefits, while productivity grew about 72%. What that means is that there has been a substantial growth of income, of wealth, and output. And that our problem is not that the economy didn't grow, it's that we have not had policies that ensured that as the economy grew, most people benefited. So what were the rules? How were the rules rigged to suppress wages? We didn't have macroeconomic policy that assured us of full employment that would allow everyone a job and that would assure wage growth occurred. We eroded labor standards in their enforcement, most prominently people are familiar with the minimum wage, but many other things happened including millions of wages, misclassified as independent contractors, and wage theft for which workers lose three times as much each year as the country suffers from robberies. New business practices such as subcontracting and temporary employment that has been used to establish lower wages. An assault on collective bargaining that was the single largest factor that limited the wage growth, at least for middle wage men. And globalization under terms that hollowed out manufacturing and undercut non-college educated wages across the board. How can we change that? Let me go over the ways. And what I want to emphasize is that many of the policies that you have been discussing, have been discussing the campaign, can be synthesized around a story for wage growth. First, jobs. Monetary policy that allows a full recovery. Infrastructure, clean energy, housing, public investments that are going to create jobs. Public service employment that makes sure that we target jobs to areas of high employment that won't necessarily be benefiting from recovery unless we have such targeted programs. Okay, two, we need to rebuild labor standards. Most prominently people familiar with the minimum wage. We can get to 12 or 12 and a half by 2020 and eventually get to 15. We have to do that. That will ultimately raise wages for the bottom third of workers. We have to rebuild our collective bargaining system. This is essential for making sure that wage growth reaches middle wage workers. I think it's also essential for our democracy so that working people have a seat at the table. I urge you not to just tinker with existing law, but to explore wholesale changes that will really truly establish a new collective bargaining system. Next, we talked about immigration reform, but too few people acknowledge that making undocumented workers citizens raises wages. Non-documented workers are exploitable and are exploited. They earn anywhere from 12 to 20% less than citizens. Making them citizens will raise their wages and help people who work in similar fields of work. We need to end forced arbitration where workers are not able, because they sign something when they get a job, to make a class action suit to protect themselves against gender, age, race discrimination, or the violations of wage and hours. And we need to modernize our labor standards. We're busy, unfortunately, defending those that were implemented in the New Deal, but we need sick leave, we need paid family leave, we need childcare that helps people balance work and family. We also need to make sure that we end race and gender inequities and two more things. We have to address the top 1%. The reason we have to address the top 1% meaning we have to find ways to limit their ability to skim off the top, because that's money that otherwise would go to the vast majority. We can do that. That is about the financial sector and that is about exorbitant executive pay, and there are policies that can deal with that. And last, I want to urge you not to pursue tax cuts as a way to help people. A one-time tax cut cannot address ongoing wage stagnation. Paychecks have shrunk not from what the government has taken out, but it's what employers have failed to put in. And that has to be the focus. Thank you very much. Congressman Nelson. Thanks for your testimony. Dr. Michelle, really appreciate it. You know, people would love to be in a union, but they absolutely need a job. And so when they get threatened or fired because they're trying to engage in union activity, that really puts a chill on everybody who's thinking about joining the drive to certify the union. But at the same time, while I want to commend the people at the National Labor Relations Board, I know they work hard every day. They do their best. For a lot of workers thinking about joining a union drive, the relief that they would get, at least I've been told from people I've talked to, is slow and not adequate. Do you agree with that? Do you see that? And do you think that strengthening and speeding up the justice for a worker who's fired or retaliated against for-union activity as part of this effort to raise wages? I think what's criminal is what legally employers can do as well as what they actually do illegally. And I think the penalties are weak to non-existent. And that's the low-hanging fruit. There's a wages act that's been introduced. We should pursue that. But I want to go further. I think we have to explore issues that people have not been talking about. Call it occupational bargaining, sectoral bargaining, whereas the rights where workers in a whole sector or occupation meet with their employers as a whole. And so the right to collective bargaining is not just subject to whether you can win some small particular unit and hold on to that as employers do everything they can to erode your rights. They do this in other countries. We have to explore it here.  I don't think collective bargaining is outmoded. I think our particular legal structure for facilitating collective bargaining is outmoded. And I think we have to think new, big, and bold. Ms. Tandon. I actually wanted to build on Congressman Ellison's points and really push on this last point, which is I think we all recognize the importance of a minimum wage increase. But when we're dealing with so many years of wage stagnation, I mean, it's really years and years of wage stagnation, it's folks who are way above the minimum wage who are facing wage stagnation as well. And so what are innovative ideas to create more work or power throughout the economic system? I mean, the bottom 60% are really struggling. So what do we do there? You mentioned sectoral bargaining. I know Germany has workers on their boards. Are there innovative ideas that can really address the challenge we have, which is that workers just have too little power to bargain for wages to go up or to share in the productivity increases we've seen over the last 15 years? Well, thank you for your question. My colleague from another think tank. Well, you know, I think it is important. The minimum wage is no small deal because it's going to... Absolutely, absolutely. I know you didn't say that, but it would affect at least a third to 40% of workers, which is only a metric for showing how far we have sunk. Yes. Now, those workers are low wage workers, but they live in low and middle income households. So this is something that will help middle income households. The Conservatives say that the minimum wage is not targeted, and what they really mean is they don't really care about a woman getting a higher wage because she happens to live with someone who also works and is middle class. But we do have to reach the middle class. One of the things that they illustrate, they hope people profile, is the new overtime rules that were specifically helping workers, salaried workers who earn between $23,600 and $47,000. That's the definition of middle class. And those workers lost their overtime privileges since 1975, basically. Restoring them allows them higher wages and more time with their family, more jobs for America.  Yes. And I'm saying this, it's somewhat that some of my friends are not talking about this yet because I think it's tempting to try to tinker with the existing system. I have lost faith in the existing system, and I want to really wholly revamp it. And I want to talk here about solutions at the scale of the problem, not necessarily what I'm thinking it passed in the first 90 days. Mr. West, Dr. West. Thank you so very much for your very illuminating analysis. But it strikes me, though, we have waved stagnation for four decades, with a hundred and fifty percent increase at the top. It sounds like a war on working people. Is that too strong a language? Is it by design or is it by consequence and effect? It is absolutely. This is alarming. This is a crisis, and it's an economic catastrophe for many of our precious poor and working people. Now, if it is, then what kinds of alarmist responses do we have? Democratic, of course, constitutionally based. But is that too strong a language? How would you respond? I recall back in the late 1970s when Doug Fraser was the president of the United Order Workers, at that point said that we were having a one-sided class war. Warren Buffett has made the same comment in the last 10 years. I think we need policies that focus on how are we going to raise wages, and therefore the incomes of the bottom 90 percent, that may involve measures like innovation and getting economic growth. But we cannot approach economics without being very conscious to make sure there are mechanisms to make sure that growth reaches everybody. This requires changes that involve how our politics work, the voter suppression, the money in politics is a necessary prerequisite for making the legislative changes, I think. So we also have to be bold and call out the forces at play that allow the top 1 percent to skim income for themselves and to prevent regular workers from getting a good deal on the job. So let me just describe a regular worker situation. If she's not happy with her deal from her boss, what are her options? Can she readily go get another job? Well, no. For the most part, that's not available. Are jobs going to be quality jobs? No. Our job quality has actually been eroding. Can she readily go to her peers and form a collective bargaining unit and be able to negotiate? No, that's not as available as it used to. If she's been discriminated against by her pay relative to other workers' pay, can she go to court and get a remedy? The answer is no. She's probably signed a forced arbitration agreement that doesn't allow her to do that. Government labor standards, the minimum wage and other protections high enough to allow her to support her family. The answer is no. So we have systematically undercut the ability of people to do for themselves. We have to re-establish a policy regime that is supportive of wages, and it's not going to happen overnight, but it has to happen in a way that you fully announce to the American people that we can do it and tell the narrative about how that can happen. Thank you very much. Thank you for testifying. Thank you.


On a certain day, the pig went up to the cow and said, I know you give milk, but I give pork. Why is it that you are so much loud and seated well and I am not? The cow looked at the pig kindly and said, I give milk when I am alive and here.  What should I give? I don't want to talk about or I don't want to tell anybody what they should give. But what's precious to you, that you must guess. Something that's not precious to you if you give, that's not giving. Whatever is precious to you, what you value, that's what you must offer. What is worthless with you, that's what you give, that's not the point, that's not giving. That's just cunning, trying to buy a ticket to heaven. If you go with this kind of mind set into the heaven, we don't know what the hell is there. But one thing is for sure, if it's a good place, it'll mock at you. I always find when you have a willy mind, if you're among people who are not like you, it looks like everybody's mocking at you, everybody's talking about you, everybody's saying something about you right now. This is the problem that people will suffer. So if, if heaven happens to be a good place, I have no intention of going there. I have never bothered to find out. So if you're trying to buy a ticket to heaven with your goodness, this kind of a tricky mind will suffer most if that happens to be a good place.  For every little bit, they have a calculation.  His own life, his own self is what is most precious to him. So one who chooses to give of himself or herself, not what's in his pocket, not what is what is in his body, not what is in his mind but himself, whatever is most precious. If you know how to share that, then we don't know about the people. You are longing for people's attention, you are longing for people's affection and love because you do not know how to make all these trees fall in love with you.  All these things are anyway happening. The question is whether you are there to receive it or not.  This is not a new phenomena. It is always there, it's a life process. It is just that, are you there to receive it willingly, consciously that every breath becomes an ecstatic process for you, that you don't have to seek attention and affection and stand in a queue for tickets to heaven. It doesn't matter, even if you fall into a septic tank, don't turn into a pig which gives only when it's dead, to give when you're well, to give when you're alive, to give when it matters to you, that's what is most important. So should I give? So I want to give, I want to give. Giving is great. No, no, no, I want you to understand there is nothing for you to give.   You just have to learn to receive. What is there to give?  You can only take something from here and put it here, take something from here and put it there, take something from there and put it here. That's all you can do. Just putting it where it's needed. That's all you can do. Did you come with an investment? Are you a venture capitalist or something? When you venture into this planet, did you come with your own investment? You came with nothing.  What can you give? What do you have to give? You can take one thing from one place and put it in another place, putting it in the right place and receiving the bounty of joy and fulfillment of putting things in the right place. Everything that's life, everything that's beauty, everything that's ecstatic, you can only receive, you cannot give. If you learn to receive gracefully, that's the best giving. People have always made giving in your big deal and they believe they're giving. The only thing that you can share, that you can call sharing is yourself.  You pick it up here and if you leave it there, is that giving? That's not giving. That is just sensible living, that's all. The only and only thing if at all, if you can call as giving is that you shared the very life within you. This is the opportunity, this is the privilege that they want to offer to everybody that you have the possibility of sharing who you are because that's the only giving. That's the only act that you can reasonably term as giving. Everything else is transportation, just transportation, isn't it? From here to there, there to here because you didn't bring anything. It's always been here, shifting places, something that you considered as yours. If you put it in their house, their house also becomes yours. Yes or no? Yes, isn't it? You can have the world, either you can try to have the world rather back on quest and nobody has managed that till now, fortunately. Not that it's not possible, it's possible but fortunately till now it's not been possible. Another way to take the world is by inclusion. Sitting here you can make it yours. This is a more intelligent way and for sure a successful way of doing things. If this whole world is yours by inclusion, you know I'm letting all of you breathe, eat, do whatever you want. Just as giving. Have the joy of giving because it doesn't matter, all of you can live on my world, no problem. You can eat as much as you want, no problem because we have no issue because you can't take anything and escape. Whatever you take after sometime you'll put it back. So what's my problem? You can live on my world, no problem. Are you capable of taking something with you? If you are that kind of a super thief, then even we are even more happy with you because you will take it somewhere and that also will become ours. You know, this is not just playing with words, this is the experience of a yogi. A yogi means one who sees the existence as himself. A union has happened. This is the fundamental goal of yoga. To achieve this union if you sit here everything is one with you. It is not even yours, it's you. Now you can get everything is yours. You can let them take, which is better, you giving, giving, giving or you let them take what they want. Let everybody take what they want. We have no fear, they can use it and then anyway put it back. Some will use it gently, some will use it in brash ways but they'll all put it back. Nobody is going to take it anywhere.