Todd Keske; Chemical manufacturer on the hole in the ozone, regulatory moats and the World Bank

Guest [00:00:00] To curb some of this spending that's going on. You have to raise rates. How else are you gonna curb it? And we have to stop giving away money. I, I didn't really understand the first stimulus to the extent of the money because we upped the ante. Why did we need to up the ante? What were people doing? They weren't going on vacations. I'm Ashley McFarland, a nonprofit executive living in Duluth, Minnesota, and you are listening to the Vance Grow Podcast. Welcome

Vance Crowe [00:00:34] Back to the podcast. I'm glad you're here. Today we talk with my friend Todd Caskey, who runs a chemical company here in St. Louis, Missouri called Foam Supplies Inc. Now, you may be asking yourself, why in the world would I find a conversation with a chemical manufacturer? Interesting. But very quickly in this conversation, you start to understand all of the inner workings, the chemicals that make up all the things that surround us. And Todd has a way of bringing up how this world got regulated, why people have this kind of intrinsic feeling that chemicals are bad polluting the world. And we even talk about that concept that used to be something we heard about all the time, the hole in the ozone layer. After we talk about chemicals for a while, we talk about regulations that are created that make companies larger and larger. And we end up talking about the World Bank and both of our experiences mine working there, and his as a consultant and contractor that interacted with the organization. This is a topsy-turvy conversation, and I was so glad that Todd could come in and have it. Before we get to the interview, I wanna talk about the introductions class that we just released publicly for you that wanna get better at explaining who you are and what you do. So in the Articulate Ventures network, I created a class to help people have the mental models to say, how long of a story should I tell? How do I describe who I am without overwhelming people with details?

Vance Crowe [00:02:07] And what do I do if I don't fit neatly into a single category? Well, we cover all of these subjects in a one hour class that will help you be able to explain who you are and what you do so that you're both memorable and approachable, so that afterwards people can come up and start a conversation with you and have the right people talking with you about things you're interested in. This is a class I'm really proud to put out there. So if you are interested in supporting the podcast and getting this class, go to store, Articulate Ventures where you can pick this class up. I'm really excited to have you check it out. And now we're gonna head to my interview with my man, Todd Keke. Todd Keke, welcome to the podcast. Thank

Guest [00:02:52] You.

Vance Crowe [00:02:53] So you are in an industry that is much maligned. It's not quite the coal industry, but people that are manufacturing chemicals are often kind of pushed out of the world. So talk a little bit about the company that you run and your perspective on chemistry in the modern age.

Guest [00:03:09] Sure, yeah. And yeah, I mean, that's a great comment. Name of the company's foam supplies. We're a polyurethane chemical manufacturer. And in our industry, our industry has a lot of vernacular. Our trade has a lot of vernacular, and it's just misunderstood. We're called a systems house is where we sit. So we buy raw materials from major chemical companies like Dow, BASF, formerly buyer, but now Covestro. I actually think they sold that off to buy Monsanto. And then we make, we make a, the special sauce, so to speak, with the chemicals that we make. And then we sell them in our industry, typically to OEMs. So

Vance Crowe [00:03:55] OEMs,

Guest [00:03:56] Yeah. Original equipment manufacturer. So that was a term from business school. And I think just a another form of vernacular. And so people that will make steering wheels, people that will make a refrigerator, people that will make a boat, that's an OEM versus say aftermarket type of products. But we also sell some products into aftermarket industries. And

Vance Crowe [00:04:23] I think about urethane and I think of like bar sanding. Yeah, sanding down the And varnishing. Yeah, that's not that.

Guest [00:04:30] Well, so those, those are, I would say, kissing cousins, right? So urethane's is a small part of the large universe of plastics. So we're a thermoset plastic. So we typically, most typically we take a an A and a B, and we mix them together, and then poof out comes your product. So most people relate that to epoxies, which epoxies are also like kissing cousins of urethane's. We in fact can make epoxies ourselves. So it's, it's isocyanate and polyol and you know, that's,

Vance Crowe [00:05:19] I mean, these are the kinds of things that everybody knows exists because you have all these things around you, but where they come from seems almost magical in the world.

Guest [00:05:28] Yeah, absolutely. And but, and, and ours though, even some people don't even realize they exist. So say spray foam, you roll the clock back 10 years and the awareness of spray foam for insulation in a house was just not that well known. And there were a few independent companies that were really pioneering that avenue, even still today. And I mean, last year in a COVID year, they had a 12% growth, which is substantial. They're a very small piece of the insulating pie. So they're still infant really in their, i, I guess in their growth. But even though they've been around for about 30, 40 years, they're just not well known.

Vance Crowe [00:06:18] It strikes me that to run a chemical company in today's day and age, you know, I was with Monsanto, which was maligned for being large agriculture, but chemical companies, I mean, even just saying I run a chemical, chemical company at like a dinner party would be like,

Guest [00:06:31] Oh, oh yeah. Like, ooh, the dirty, the dirty business and oh, the, the polluters of the world. But the reality is, is that our, my products or my company's products, and then my customer's products as at least in the way life exists today are what are helping conserve things like energy. So for instance, we sell a lot of material to portable cooler manufacturers, right? These premium, you know, coolers that are near indestructible, right? Well, why they can keep ice for so many days is because they're well insulated. So a lot of times our product is the muscle behind the product that you actually buy. So, I mean, refrigeration is impossible without our product. It's impossible. Yet in the manufacturing world on the commodity list, our product falls to the bottom as far as cost goes.

Vance Crowe [00:07:36] When you say that it's 'cause you're the outside exterior material for the refrigerator, you're not the Freon or anything like that, are you?

Guest [00:07:42] Well, okay, so vernacular for you here, blowing agents, which is an awful name like blowing agent, it almost sounds risque blowing agent is actually the expansion agent. It's the ingredient within our two products that makes the foam grow, right? So they call it a blowing agent. So Fon is a trade name, I'm trying to remember, I believe it's Aroma's trade name. Okay? And so there was free on 11, which is actually Chlorofluorocarbon 11, right? So there were CFCs free on 11 that was the most notorious for, you know, putting a hole in the ozone layer, right? Which isn't necessarily true, but societally accepted type of knowledge that we have here, it's not necessarily accurate, but so many people believe it, that that's what it is. So there was CFCs, h CFCs, HFCs, which is HFC 1 34 A, most, that's what most homes and cars, that's what their air conditioning runs on. And then the move is to HFOs and h CFOs, which are, and all, all those iterations are allegedly less damaging to the environment.

Vance Crowe [00:09:07] Oh man. You just hit on something I think is super interesting, which is, you said it's not necessarily that it caused the hole in the ozone. Yeah. That to me is like one of those, everybody knows this is true and therefore it's not even a question. And I CFCs I remember that being like, Ooh, those are bad hairspray,

Guest [00:09:24] Hair

Vance Crowe [00:09:25] Spray bad. Ooh, if you're doing hairspray. So I feel like I'm gonna get struck by a bolt of lightning by asking you this, but like, it wasn't causing a hole in the ozone there.

Guest [00:09:34] Well, I'm not gonna, no, I don't think it caused the hole. Did it exacerbate the hole? Maybe, maybe not. We don't know that. And humans are not okay with, I don't know. So the idea that we can predict the weather a hundred years from now or how it was a hundred years before, right? But before we started actually taking readings, like temperatures and so on and so forth, right? When we can't get it right 24 hours from now, it's absurd. And no one, no one wants to, it doesn't seem like, I don't wanna say no one, but I'm speaking in generalities here. It doesn't seem like we wanna slow down, take a breath and say, do we really know? And then we follow just this nonsense. Oh, it's global warming, it's this, oh wait, it's climate change. We allow, you know, our societal leaders, I don't, you know, I don't wanna turn this political or anything. And it doesn't matter what continent you're on to just kind of dangle us along this path that they don't know anything about. Instead of just saying, you know, we don't know. And I think we can look at it differently. You know, if I think it's harming, should I continue or should I try and find a different way? We don't necessarily have to know with absolute certainty everything to change our ways for the better. And so in this latest iteration of blowing agents or Freon, the energy required to make it is unlikely.

Guest [00:11:14] It's, it's probably a net loss. The energy required to make it is high. It's not gonna be made off solar. It's not gonna be made off of hydro. You know, it's gonna require coal, electricity or nuclear. And I'm totally fine with nuclear. But meaning

Vance Crowe [00:11:35] That in your plants, you require to make this process happen where you make the chemical reaction happen. So you have fon, it requires a hu a big part of your costs are electricity. That Yeah.

Guest [00:11:46] Oh sure. Energy. Okay. Absolutely.

Vance Crowe [00:11:49] And so how does this energy cost relate to whether or not it's,

Guest [00:11:53] It's, I would say it's, you know, I don't know that, I don't know that number. I will dig on that number. 'cause it's curious to me. It's, it's enormous. I mean, we were, we, we own most of our facil facilities for a short period of time. We were leasing a facility. Just business was expanding. We were getting into different polyurethanes that weren't necessarily our core and we needed a place to jumpstart it. Well, the electricity bill was more than the rent by a lot. I wanna say it was 11 to 15 grand a month for what I would consider a very small facility. And it's because the equipment that we use, it all takes two 20 or four 80, you know, three phase. I mean, it's, it's sucking up a lot of juice.

Vance Crowe [00:12:51] And as you think about things like CFCs being banned and your experience of being in the, the chemical industry, where, where does the energy come from to, to, to get society to say, that's the answer. Let's ban them. Let's go down this path.

Guest [00:13:07] Well, I mean, why are we looking for silver bullet answers? Okay, it, I, I don't think that works in most things that we do. So for, let's take CFC 11, okay? The best insulating product on the market. Now, in most cases, it was contained, what do I mean by that? Until meaning, while the product was in use, let's just take a wall of a house or a wall of a refrigerator, while that foam is in that refrigerator, that CFC 11 isn't going to the atmosphere, it's contained. It's, it's between two impermeable facers. So, and that was proven by a government organization outta DC ah, Abraham, which is the Association for Home Appliance manufacturers. That was proven when they went from past CFCs to an a product called HCFC 1 41 B, which is probably in most refrigerators historically today. And they proved that. But that science not well known, I mean, it's known within my small industry, and it's not sexy, right? It's not a sexy story. So we don't like to push things that aren't, you know, polarizing. So unless it's polarizing, you know, hairspray, everybody understands hairspray, you know, whether you use it or not use it, you, you're familiar with it, but foam behind a refrigerator, most people don't even know it's there.

Vance Crowe [00:14:49] Do you remember that, that thing that came out called the story of stuff that was like a short little documentary and it, like, it was one of the first things I ever saw that went truly viral.

Guest [00:15:00] I, I don't, I do remember hearing it, but I haven't, I haven't gotten to that yet. I mean,

Vance Crowe [00:15:05] I'm certain that if you went and looked at this, you would say like, oh, these are all the topics. And the reason I'm so familiar with it is when I was working at Monsano, you know, there was this huge push against GMOs and I was constantly looking at why is it that the known answer by regular people is that GMOs are dangerous? Like, how is it that an idea spreads out into society and becomes so endemic that you, the, the actual like leverage has to be done, that these are not dangerous because people know it as the truth. And I think the story of stuff is a really good example of how they were able to tell a story that made people feel like they had some hidden truth. Sure. Some like secret wisdom. And then if they hated things like refrigerators and the chemical companies behind them, then you were doing the right thing.

Guest [00:15:58] Yeah, I, you know, I'm gonna read that actually, that's gonna, that's to the top of my list now. 'cause you've really piqued my interest there. But geez, I mean, I don't know how it started. I, I'm kind of a cynic this way. I, I don't think it was, I would bet it's nefarious in nature, maybe not. When we were pushing CFCs to think about this a little bit, actually, just, it was nefarious in nature. So folklore, which I think is probably accurate, NASA was running into funding problems, sending up the shuttle, probably one of the most amazing manmade things we've ever done, right? I mean, it's, it is still to this day, utterly amazing. I mean, we, it was like school buses that we put up into, you know, space to do stuff. It just, it, it still blows my mind to this day. Well,

Vance Crowe [00:17:09] It was 60 years ago today. It was actually, is that right? 60 years ago today. Yeah. But the Russians actually beat us to it, right? Oh,

Guest [00:17:14] Well, but not well on a shuttle. Well,

Vance Crowe [00:17:17] To get a human being up into what we consider space.

Guest [00:17:20] Sure.

Vance Crowe [00:17:21] The Russians did that 60 years ago today. I was just reading about it.

Guest [00:17:23] Is that right? Yeah,

Vance Crowe [00:17:24] That's right.

Guest [00:17:25] I did not know that I'm disappointed in myself that I don't know that, but I'm gonna Yeah. So with Yuri Gagarin.

Vance Crowe [00:17:31] Yeah, that's right. Yeah.

Guest [00:17:33] So I lost my

Vance Crowe [00:17:37] Place there, there, this is running into, into funding,

Guest [00:17:39] Running funding issues, right? How do you get people to fund it? How do you get tax payer down? Oh, there's this hole in the ozone. How do we know it wasn't there to begin with? Where is the ozone hole? Exactly. You know, these are questions that really never come to the surface, if at all. Right? And then because, and it's not nec I'm not necessarily trying to cast out, but, you know, in, in Reagan's words, you know, trust but verify. And so the ozone hole kind of stays around. I can't remember which pole it is. I wanna say it's around, I

Vance Crowe [00:18:22] I think it's the south pole

Guest [00:18:23] South, right? And it's, it's like a lung for the earth. It opens and it closes. So it opens up in the summer, closes in the winter. And we know this, but most people don't know that. Why not? That's not a difficult concept to understand. It's not a difficult concept for people to say, oh, the ozone holes over Antarctica. Not, I mean, most people think I walked outside. Oh, I got,

Vance Crowe [00:18:55] I mean, I, it's really interesting even just to think about this, because when I was probably, you know, third through the eighth grade, these would've been topics that I heard all the time. And, you know, one of the reasons you got a worse sunburn this year than you did last year was because we've depleted the ozone layer. And now I look back on it, I'm like, that's probably not true. Right? But it became received wisdom, right? It was that thing that, it was a story that made sense to me. And actually, I was thinking about this, there's a book right here there called Winning the Story Wars. And it, it's, it's the, it's actually written from the activist perspective. This is about the guy that, that made a video called The Matrix, which was a faux video where they, where they took barnyard animals and they made cartoons out of them. And then the one barnyard animal was given a behind the scenes look. He got to take either the red pill or the blue pill. And when he fi, when he finally discovered what was going on, he realized industrial agriculture is bad and you should be eating organic instead. And you think about that and you think, well, that's a silly story, right? That's not that big of a deal. It got 2 million views in like the first four hours it was out.

Guest [00:20:03] Oh, sure.

Vance Crowe [00:20:03] And that simple story then became the knowledge that everyone had. Sure. And I think one of the biggest difficulties that whether you're talking about ag or chemistry has, is if they say something that's metaphorical or even wrong, no big deal, right? You just kind of blush it off. It's, it's part of a story. If you say it wrong though, somebody will sue you. Right?

Guest [00:20:24] Right.

Vance Crowe [00:20:24] So, so the, the balance of honesty and truth is not on the side of the people that are producing things. You, you have so much higher of a burden of proof than the other side. Oh,

Guest [00:20:37] No question. Yeah,

Vance Crowe [00:20:38] We are. I think it's interesting.

Guest [00:20:39] Yeah. I, I, I'm glad you said that. It, I'm gonna have to, I'm gonna sit with that a while because it, it is like, we have a guilty before and we have to prove ourselves innocent, which, you know, we, we live in a country that's, you're innocent until proven guilty. So I do, it doesn't sit well with me. It probably gets the best of me more than I'd like to admit, but, well,

Vance Crowe [00:21:02] I think it's just natural, right? Like, we love stories, right? Oh, yeah. The easiest story for, for the easiest thing for us to explain to another person is not facts. The easiest thing is to tell 'em stories. Stories,

Guest [00:21:11] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:21:12] And then you have the problem of the people producing things are typically not storytellers because they're, they're doers, right? They're not talkers.

Guest [00:21:19] That's right. Yeah. I'm more of a doer.

Vance Crowe [00:21:21] So how did you get into the world of chemistry like this?

Guest [00:21:24] So I'm not, I'm not much of a chemist myself, although I'm, I'm fortunate enough to have rubbed elbows with a lot of great chemists. And I work with, I call it the Big Bang theory. It's fun, right? I, I mean we have Sheldon's and the whole thing. And it's great. I, I was born into it. My dad got into it. He worked for the Olin Chemical Company, kind of hit a glass ceiling just 'cause he didn't have a college degree. So he went out on his own, became a distributor for Olin. Really? He was buying their chemical and packaging it in smaller sizes that Olin had decided we're not gonna sell to companies that buy X amount and less. And then what happened is the Montreal protocol came along and it said, we gotta be done with CFCs. Well, typically when things like this occur, big companies start licking their chops, oh, this is time for us to gain more market share. This is time for, you know, us to squash this company and that company and take it all. Because

Vance Crowe [00:22:37] They have like regulatory capture,

Guest [00:22:41] They have the might and typically they have more resources, including, you know, people, smart people. They, they get 'em quick. They don't maintain 'em, they don't treat 'em well. Some of our best people we got from big companies that they were just in, in some regards, cast aside, I don't wanna make it sound like it's that contentious, but you know, they hit the magical age of whatever it is, let's say 55, right? And they get put out to pasture and they're not done yet. And we've taken a handful of those types of folks and they helped grow our company when I first got into the industry. And I, I, I had to work from the ground up. I mean, that was just the way it was gonna be. And, but when I started finally making it to our trade organizations with my dad and his team, it was just really obvious to me that there was just no mentorship. There was no succession planning. I mean, I was the youngest guy by a long shot. And, you know, then another 10 years passes and I'm looking around the same things happening. So fortunately for us, you know, we've grown, we do have our own resources and you know, I, I recognized that and I went out and I hired a bunch of young chemists.

Guest [00:24:14] And I'd love to say that I did this with a plan. I just did it. 'cause I knew we needed it. And then fortunately it happened to when the boil, the, the barrel of oil cost went down. So we got a bunch of good candidates at cheap because the oil companies, as soon as, you know, the barrel of oil went from say one 40 to 55. They were letting chemists go left and right. So, and then, so I have a pretty, I'd call 'em still young. They're really middle aged chemists now that are helping. So they'll be with us a long time and then we'll have to go find more.

Vance Crowe [00:24:53] Yeah, you were mentioning the Montreal protocol, and I always find that those types of things, like people that are in the masses that are listening to, you know, people on the news say, Hey, we need to put these new regulations on these corporations. We need to make sure that they are, you know, following all the rules. What they don't realize is, and I used to say this all the time to activists that were against companies like Monsanto, the more you protest, the more the companies will be like, that's great. Do you want us to do four more years of testing? We'd be happy to do four more years of testing. Do you want more paperwork? We're we're fine with that because they know that they can create a regulatory moat that makes it so no new entrance can ever come in, right? So if you're doing a GMO, it takes you 10 years at $10 million a year just to go through the testing alone, which means you have to go through all this discovery and then have a hundred million dollars and 10 year runway to be able to get your thing to, so they just sit there, the big companies just sit there and pick off all the little people's innovations.

Guest [00:25:53] Absolutely. Absolutely. They do. And the refrigerant, I mean the chemical companies, the one product, the, the MDI, the ISIS ate, I mean I, a lot of us refer to it as a cartel, right? They're, they're just a few of them, right? And they've been slapped with price fixing, well they blowing agent companies. That's an even smaller cartel, right? It just a few of them. So I mean, like, what's happening right now is, you know, there's this deadline of 2022 to get out of certain HFCs for foam blowing. Foam blowing always goes first before refrigerants because, you know, it's a much smaller market. Now, if we really cared about taking care of this problem, and we really believed in the problem, why are we focusing on the smallest, most insignificant part instead of the big juggernaut, which is the refrigerant side and the place, if they're accurate about it, damaging the environment, that's where it's really happening because it's the most likely for it to happen that doesn't refrigerants have many, many more years than foam manufacturers to use HFCs HFCs. And,

Vance Crowe [00:27:13] And that would you say largely because your trade organizations don't have the lobbying power to be like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, we we should slow this down? Or how, what would you

Guest [00:27:22] Say? You know, no, I, I don't think they have the moxie or the brains. I, they, I mean this affects big companies too. So I mean, our competitors, my competitors are big chemical companies who I ref, you know, I'm not competing with, I would say companies our size. It is very much a very David and Goliath type of playground. The major chemical companies have been, you know, they bought most companies like my dad built decades ago. And they, they don't seem to stop. So, I mean, we're very much alone in the, in the pouring place market. I mean, we are, it, it's us, Dow, BISF, there you go. And that's, that's it. That's who we compete with.

Vance Crowe [00:28:18] And so, as you're doing competition right now is a weird time in the world because it appears as though prices for input costs are going way up. I know lumber, I, I see gasoline prices going up. I'm sure this is going up from shipping costs. I've not heard a single person say there is anything going down in price. What's your experience with this?

Guest [00:28:39] Everything's going up. Everything's going up and well, and you know, some of that I think was avoidable. So the United States has been a net importer of Isis signate that's, you know, one of the components. And it's approximately 50% of it. We've been a net importer of isocyanates for probably a decade or better, right? I'm, I'm not too sure of that. But for a very, very, very long time. And what happens is the big chemical companies will say, we're gonna put on more capacity. Okay, great. And they, and it, it just never seems to come on. Like they say it's gonna come on, right? And so then, oh, is it really a net gain? They throw out big numbers, but who's, who's checking it really? So, you know what it we're, we're, we're bringing in more from China. Well that's struggling 'cause of all the ports then we have this unexpected weather in the gulf, you know, 'cause you know, it got colder this winter. I mean they had, I, what I had heard was it's been a hundred years since some of those areas had frozen.

Vance Crowe [00:29:53] I know nothing at all about this. This is to a

Guest [00:29:55] Totally, I I'll send you some pictures because it's, it's, I, and I don't know why these pictures weren't on national news. I mean, you're talking about basically where we get the ingredients for our products. And I mean, there are companies as big as GM that are starving for chemical. I don't think they're gonna be shut down two weeks. I think they're gonna be shut down two months.

Vance Crowe [00:30:16] Really?

Guest [00:30:17] Yes.

Vance Crowe [00:30:18] This is because they can't drill the oil out or because the, the ships that contain them can't get into port.

Guest [00:30:23] The factories weren't running, they were physically shut down. I mean, there was a picture of all these pipes and widgets and what have you, and they were completely frozen over like it was a block of ice inside of them. Oh,

Vance Crowe [00:30:36] You're talking about in Texas when they had the big ice storm. I see. Yeah. Okay.

Guest [00:30:39] Yeah. And so it's like a domino effect of problems. And then to get from under all the while demand hasn't stopped at all. Zero. I mean, are we in a recession? Are we, I mean, I don't know.

Vance Crowe [00:31:02] It's interesting because I mean, if you keep throwing cash into the system, how would you be in a recession? Right? Because people have money. I, I just anecdotally, I had a friend telling me that their family runs those little gambling machines in, in, in Illinois.

Guest [00:31:19] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:31:19] And normally those machines pull up something like $350 a week, you know, each one. I probably more than that, but it was like 3000. Yeah. Like it was thousands Yeah. That they were pulling out. And so that money went into the system and then was gambled right up.

Guest [00:31:34] Yeah. I think that's happening everywhere,

Vance Crowe [00:31:36] Right?

Guest [00:31:37] You know, people stay at home, you're running outta stuff to do, you buy more stuff, whether you're doing it consciously or unconsciously or you know, whatever that's happening, the prices of it are going up because for every a hundred containers that we're shipping in, there's only 40 going out. That imbalance itself as no one anticipated that no one.

Vance Crowe [00:31:59] Yeah. Right Now the, so a good friend of mine, Dwayne Faber, he runs a dairy farm out in the, on the west coast. And he said it used to be that the dairy industry had a, a float that they could send dry milk to China. And this was like, you know, the, it was really cheap to send it back because there were so, like the containers were empty, right? So we'll just fill it up with this dry milk powder, no

Guest [00:32:21] Deadhead.

Vance Crowe [00:32:21] And, but now it is, there is so much demand for goods to come from China to the United States that they don't even wait to be able to load the, the dry milk powder up. They just leave it behind. Sure. It's not worth it to them to bring that back into China. And that seems to me to be a problem.

Guest [00:32:38] It is a problem. And I mean, where's, where's that toilet bowl gonna end up? Right? What, what are we gonna do with all that stuff? We don't have a process for that. We're not gonna be building cities outta shipping containers. I mean, that's a cool thing to do, right? Like, I don't know if you've seen that, where they, they take a shipping container that brought goods over and they make use out of it. Right? I love that kind of stuff.

Vance Crowe [00:33:03] Yeah. But it strikes me as

Guest [00:33:04] It's not

Vance Crowe [00:33:05] Trying to make the type of art that you make out of beer cans in Africa. Right.

Guest [00:33:08] It's not,

Vance Crowe [00:33:09] That's a novelty but not a final solution.

Guest [00:33:11] Right. It would wear off and, and not, not enough people would sign up for it if it were, they would, nah, I'm not gonna live in a shipping container. Like I don't care how you dress it up. Right. My wife would probably say, hell no. No chance. So, yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:33:26] And so are you guys having trouble getting the goods that you need in to do your, to do your work? It's

Guest [00:33:30] A daily grind.

Vance Crowe [00:33:31] Daily grind

Guest [00:33:32] Daily. Because what is, and it's been happening, I don't wanna say that it's never happened, but it's daily where they'll say, okay, yes, we've confirmed your order. It's, you know, shipping, it'll be there on Wednesday. Wednesday shows up, nothing. Where is it? Oh, you know, and right now they're able to, there is a driver shortage as well. So I mean the, those are, these are things that we haven't looked at. I it's gotta be at least five years now where I got a presentation from very large chemical company and they were looking at the average age of drivers. Average age of driver five years ago was 55 and the average retirement age was 60. Well, we're here and then these, you know, they don't have a new crew. They did nothing for succession planning. So people that are in the trucking industry are killing it right now. They are killing it.

Vance Crowe [00:34:44] If they can get drivers. I've had truck driving companies on here and they're saying, you know, we gotta, we gotta go to jail to, to, to wait outside the door for people that wanna come outta there.

Guest [00:34:53] They're, they're getting what they want now. Enough of them have figured out. Well, so like, we're having trouble getting chemical from Texas to Missouri. So we, we have a, a like manufacturing facility in Lewisville, which is just north of Dallas, Texas. And drivers aren't wanting to just leave the state 'cause there's enough business for them to do there. They can just keep getting jobs, keep getting jobs, keep getting jobs right in their own state to just to handle the backlog. Now that will tail off, but what, what domino effect of problems happen while that's going on? So it, you know, we, we have, my company has done a great job of investing in inline capacity. It's just something that we did. And what does

Vance Crowe [00:35:50] That mean? Inline capacity?

Guest [00:35:52] So when I go, so let's, I'm trying to think of a good, I have more raw material capacity to then make my final product. So it would be like if I had my own seven 11 to fill up my car at my house, right? I just have a big gas tank and I fill it up all the time and then I draw off that gas tank until I fill it up again. Right. And so, and we're still putting in capacity, like you wouldn't believe, I mean at the moment I'm like, this is not the time for us to pull back and reduce costs there. We're gonna invest in even more capacity. So last month we tripled our isocyanate capacity in our Texas facility. Right. So just so we could weather the storms to smooth out that I have it, I don't have it, I have it, I don't have it to say I've got it, but you know, the demand keeps going like this and I can kind of even out, I can even out when I need it.

Vance Crowe [00:36:57] This is striking how similar this is to agriculture right now.

Guest [00:37:01] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:37:01] Because they, they hit the point where they were like, we don't wanna be beholden to the commodity brokers, so we're gonna build all of our own grain stor storage. So you see all these, if you drive throughout the United States in the rural areas, you see way more grain bins than you ever have before. And I wonder if the same thing is going on with their fuel and trying to keep stuff in in hand. It's expensive to keep it in hand. Oh

Guest [00:37:27] Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I mean, we wanna turn inventory, right? We're far more profitable if we turn inventory. I mean, but right now, I mean we can unfortunately, and you know, we like charging a fair price for our product and we don't like gouging. There are people that right now, not a lot of our customers, but the market, oh, that's too much for that. And it's like, man, this is what it costs. You either want it or you don't want it. It's, it's a pay to play right now. And that's very, I would say that's probably our biggest struggle. 'cause culturally that's against our DNA. We're like, Hey, we gotta make some money, but we're not trying to press or rape or this or that and you know, but right now they're getting it. You ever, have you tried to buy a car lately? Use car market, new car market prices are all boat. Have you ever tried to buy a boat?

Vance Crowe [00:38:27] Oh, I keep getting letter after letter about wanting to sell my cv. Right? Like, they're like, we'll, you know, like I would say maybe once a week I get a letter to sell it. And I think it's 'cause there's just not inventory. And I have a buddy down in Oklahoma that told me, he was told that if the car is not literally on the lot of the car dealership, they are not getting any new cars for more than six months.

Guest [00:38:50] Oh, easy. Well see, there you go. Six months. So that kinda doesn't fall in line with GMs. We're only gonna be shut down two weeks.

Vance Crowe [00:39:00] So what do you think, how, how, how does this play out? I

Guest [00:39:02] Mean, like two weeks, six months, you

Vance Crowe [00:39:03] Know, because I, I think, you know, my obvious answer is like, okay, well we're gonna watch inflation, but then there's other people that are like, oh, you don't have to worry about inflation. It's deflation. What do you think you're, you're in the game. Is it inflation or deflation that's coming?

Guest [00:39:16] Yeah. I mean that one's not hard for me. That's inflation. I mean, I, I think that we stress too much home loan rates, right? That's, that's our, seems to be our only variable for if there's inflation. But gimme a break. What's the cost of not having a car? What's, what happens when your lumber goes up four times? Four times? And, and I mean literally overnight. It's not like our salaries increased four times to go along with it. I mean, that, that in itself is inflation. I, I don't know if our government is smart enough to know that.

Vance Crowe [00:39:59] Do you think it goes wild? Do you see it as a wild inflation?

Guest [00:40:04] You know, I don't know. Because our, our, our political climate is so crazy, right? And they're the one, the fed, they're, they're the ones that are gonna set our rates. And you know, you, there was a, you know, our, the presidential election, what have you, that past elections, that was like a death battle, right? At least I felt like it was, I was like, this is ridiculous. And, and it still is. So I mean, to curb it, you have to raise rates to, to curb some of this spending that's going on. You have to raise rates. How else are you gonna curb it? And we have to stop giving away money. I I didn't really understand the first stimulus to the extent of the money because we upped the ante. Why did we need to up the ante? What were people doing? They weren't going on vacations. You know, what were they doing with the money? And I, I will, I think history will show that not enough of it was saved and too much of it was spent. Right. And there's just no such thing as a free lunch. Where is, I'll probably outlive it, but certainly some generations will be paying for this.

Vance Crowe [00:41:32] Well, it's interesting that in our culture, you know, we have this, if you save money in a savings account, you're a fool because it will burn off to inflation. But it doesn't actually have to be that way. Right? No. Like, people forget that there was a time when you could have a CD and you could count on that cd That's

Guest [00:41:52] Right.

Vance Crowe [00:41:52] Bringing you a return on money that's you would have, you would have an interest in, in saving money. And I remember when I was in graduate school and I was learning about China, and they said one of China's biggest problems is that their savings rate is 50%. And so they have trouble getting their people to spend money. And I think

Guest [00:42:09] Is that really that

Vance Crowe [00:42:10] Big

Guest [00:42:10] Of a problem?

Vance Crowe [00:42:11] Because like the, like I understand that people are like, well then prices might go down and then, and then what will you do? And you'll be in stagflation. But to me, the ability to be able to gain wealth and hold it without having to put it in unnecessary risk in order to not have it eaten to inflation seems like a really, the, the, the decision of a, of a wise society.

Guest [00:42:34] I I would agree that, I mean that's interesting. I, I'm, so we have a business in China as well. I'm gonna have to ask 'em on what their, I've never asked this question before. You know how they save money? I mean, my gut screams something that probably is gonna sound silly, but what are they gonna spend it on? When you go and you look at how they live, it's so vastly different from how we live, right? And the reality is there's a class system there. You're a have or a have not, which is most of the world, right? What most Americans don't know that or don't see that it's definitely not talked about. Right. And because it puts, oh, how could there possibly be a have and have not society? Well, having been globally traveled for a very long period of time, I mean, since I was eight, it's true, even I didn't see it for a long time. But what are they gonna spend it on? What are they allowed to spend it on? Like, has anybody thought about that? Like maybe they don't have a choice. Does the government tell 'em that they have to save it?

Vance Crowe [00:43:50] You know, I think there's an interesting thing that goes on with the haves and the have nots in the United States versus like a place like China in that you're absolutely right that they have a, a class of huge, like huge percentage of their people have nothing. But they also are in a system where you can raise up your standard of living rather dramatically in a way that like maybe isn't it, doesn't it, this is gonna seem a little counterintuitive, but I heard this Tyler Cohen talking about this the other day, an economist. And he was saying, you know, the, the, in the United States, we think of ourselves as having the American dream. And in many ways we do. You can start a business, you can do all these things, but we also live in a certification society, right? Like one of the downsides to the way our corporate culture is, is the way that you avoid having, and this is my part, not his, so I don't want to put impute meaning on him. One of the ways that you corporation defends against discrimination lawsuits is they say, well, we're gonna pay you within a band depending on where your degree is from and how high of a degree you got. And so if you're from, you know, this university and you have, you're right here, then this is your pay band. And that way you don't get sued, right? So what we don't realize is we made this trans transition into a certification society, whereas in China you have a, a very different system where certification is not the most important thing. They're hyper competitive in their schools. Oh,

Guest [00:45:19] Who

Vance Crowe [00:45:19] Can get in is based on what, what tests you take. And right now in the United States, we're getting rid of standardized testing. So we're making it more of a certification society.

Guest [00:45:28] Yeah. I, yes. I think there are a lot of things going on there. They are very competitive, but culturally also, I they copy or what we consider copy and

Vance Crowe [00:45:50] It's copy and they know it, they know they're copying.

Guest [00:45:53] You think so? Oh,

Vance Crowe [00:45:53] A hundred percent. Yeah. I mean there's a because they well, they don't care. Yeah, they don't. That's right.

Guest [00:45:57] There's, yeah, it's the, yeah. And that's how I mean it like from a morality standpoint and yeah, they do know it's copying from that. Absolutely. And they just don't care. So it's, it's hard to get, I would say, ahead in that type of spot. You have to, it is competitive. You have to be picked. But they also, they're rich Chinese families and they protect their families just like the class system does in Europe, right? You have to be born into a class system in Europe and you either are or you aren't broad brushing. But for the most part, it's the truth. And, you know,

Vance Crowe [00:46:38] I think my, the, the only point that I'm making is that I, after having, like I studied under a Chinese scholar, I spent quite a bit of time like looking into China, I had never encountered the idea that, you know, one of the most wealthy men in the entire world, Jack Ma, when he was in his twenties, was teaching English and rode a bike. You know, he, he was not the richest man in the world. He figured out a business plan that he could execute and he raised up his standard of living. And if you look at that, and we, if we look at, you know, the Jeff Bezos of the world and say, look, the American dream is still alive here, you know, but then, but you say, well it is, it's alive in other places as well. And that was something I had never grappled with.

Guest [00:47:19] I do. Yeah. I, you know, our country was founded from those people right. From others. And that Horatio Alger story didn't necessarily originate here, even if the story was best told here.

Vance Crowe [00:47:36] Oh, that's interesting.

Guest [00:47:37] Right? It, it, we were talking about this earlier, it's, you know, what captivates people, what gets their attention? You know, sometimes people will tell a story, some people are storytellers and some aren't. And I'm, I, yes, that does happen there. I'm just saying in a and I think we're trending in the, in the direction to where we're actually being a class system also. We're just not gonna talk about it. Right. And it's economical, really, it's socioeconomical, I'll be quite honest. I wanna make sure that my children fall on that right side. So I will basically do anything to, you know, to just try and preserve their way of life. And that's kind of what happens in class type societies. It doesn't mean that there aren't, my dad was a Horatio Alger, you know, in a sense he

Vance Crowe [00:48:31] Was in Horatio Alger. You

Guest [00:48:32] Mean rag rags to riches, you know? Yeah. You know,

Vance Crowe [00:48:35] I think most people, so tell who Horatio Alger is, I don't think most people know.

Guest [00:48:38] Well, I mean, it's just, I, you know, I haven't read the book. I just know it's a rags to riches story.

Vance Crowe [00:48:43] Oh, this is very, so my mentor was a Horatio Alger, a award winner, and Oh,

Guest [00:48:47] Is that right?

Vance Crowe [00:48:47] She, like, I had knew nothing about it until our joint friend Travis Liebig started giving me these books about the Horatio Alger story, which is basically he was,

Guest [00:48:56] He is, yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:48:56] He was in Horatio Alger and he raised himself up and then was able to be much more successful, if you like. I actually think the best children's books that are out there right now, my daughter will 100% hear, read these books with me, are books like Only an Irish Boy, which is really a story about a kid that Yeah. The society doesn't want him, his, he's being raised by his mother 'cause his dad's dead. And like, what, what's the rich kid like versus what's he's like and how not to develop a chip on your shoulder and not to turn himself into a victim. Right?

Guest [00:49:26] Like

Vance Crowe [00:49:27] That story needs to be told in the United States more than ever.

Guest [00:49:30] Absolutely. But what are we doing with stories? We're taking 'em out. I mean, come on, Tom Sawyer doesn't have a place in Missouri schools. Are we kidding with this? I mean, it's ridiculous. It's ridiculous the absurdities that our society allows. And I'm sure that's, that's true most places.

Vance Crowe [00:49:50] I think one of the best thing about banned books is like, that's a really good way to say, what book should I be reading? Yeah, exactly. It's like the, the first guy that gets banned from Facebook or Twitter, I'm like, Ooh, I'm gonna go look that up.

Guest [00:50:01] Absolutely. What'd you

Vance Crowe [00:50:02] Do? Yeah. And generally speaking, not always, sometimes you find some crazy loons, but oftentimes you're like, Hey, that's an idea that other people didn't want here. There's probably some power to that idea.

Guest [00:50:14] Absolutely. I mean, it's, it's just absurd to me that we ban books, you know, over a, a word that might have been commonplace back then. And we're not, we don't hold ourselves responsible enough to be able to handle those types of things. Right. It's just, that's not us getting better. That's us getting dumber.

Vance Crowe [00:50:35] I, and I think like we, our school system didn't do any service to Mark Twain. Like when I was growing up, I remember being forced to read Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer, and I vaguely remember the stories, but just last month I read a Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's court, and which is a Mark Twain book. And it is like phenomenal.

Guest [00:50:57] I bet

Vance Crowe [00:50:57] He describes inflation in a way that like anyone could understand it, he talks about the challenges of slavery and how terrible it is in a language that would make anybody that disagreed with him like look like a fool.

Guest [00:51:13] And

Vance Crowe [00:51:13] So to think that he was dropping the n bomb in those books in order to like denigrate a population, he was doing stuff that at the time was so heretical that like, I can't believe he did it. Like if you go read these books, you're like, man, I don't think you're supposed to say that stuff.

Guest [00:51:29] It was risky for him to do it. Yeah, absolutely. And how do we lose sight of that? How do we lose sight of that? It's weird. It, it's just, you know, well, I mean, one of my favorite sayings is, you know, if we don't learn from our history, we're doomed. And I stress doomed to repeat it. And you know, I know that there's, you know, some minor controversy in who actually came up with that. I learned it out of like, Auschwitz in World War ii. And you know, if we don't learn from this, we're doing repeat it. See, and it feels like we're kind of on some of those same paths. I mean, what did the Nazis do? They got rid of certain books, period.

Vance Crowe [00:52:13] You know, I I I mean I read a very interesting thing about, about Nazi Germany that I didn't know anything at all about. And so it turns out there's this, you know, the, the wine mar and there's this very open culture going on in Germany before the rise of the Nazis.

Guest [00:52:29] Sure.

Vance Crowe [00:52:30] And part of that is this artistic culture, and they had just developed photographs, and photographs like now could become ubiquitous. So there's the, this was the advent of pornography.

Guest [00:52:41] Sure.

Vance Crowe [00:52:41] And so the first books that the Nazis were going to ban were books of pornography. They were, so you, you brought in these people that had like fervent religious beliefs and they started with a purpose of we're gonna burn these books because they're photographing bad things. Sure. Poor, you know, not, not just like two consenting adults, but with children with all kinds of stuff. So they started off with this idea and then it just ballooned

Guest [00:53:07] Out there

Vance Crowe [00:53:07] Totally out of control. But, and then once they figured out like, oh, we can burn these ideas and then we can make 'em so you're not allowed to have 'em. So I think that a lot of people get into the book burning or the book banning idea with like, really good intents and then all of a sudden that fire burns wildly outta control.

Guest [00:53:26] Absolutely. I mean, what we're being censored now, and no one's saying I was gonna try and not curse, but no one's saying shit about it. We are censored on a daily basis and it's, that's crazy.

Vance Crowe [00:53:43] In what way do you think we're censored?

Guest [00:53:45] Well, I mean, not to be contr, he's probably the most controversial person on the face of the earth right now. But taking somebody off Twitter, if you don't like 'em, don't read 'em. I I don't read all kinds of people I don't think I like. Right. I'm,

Vance Crowe [00:54:06] Yeah, I I heard the line of if you can silence a king, then you are the king. Right. And that's spooky, right? Like, and then you have this balance and, and I always have to like say like, because my natural tendency is like, let everyone say whatever they want. Like I'm, I'm very much like, as long as you are not, you know, assaulting a person in some deep, and, and you know, terrifying way, let's let people say what they want. But then you have to wonder, well they are a free company, right? They can do what they want. Yeah. I don't wanna baker to be told what he has to bake. So should I be mad at Twitter that they can knock the president off?

Guest [00:54:43] No, I don't think so. I don't, I also don't think it's quite that simple. I mean, that's, they're heavy influencers, right? And if that's the case, right, and they're a free company, then at least in our electoral process, they have no place then because they're too biased. They're too biased and they're swaying. We, I don't think we as a society understand all the pros and like we're just learning social media and how it affects people. And you know, what's wrong with just a good old fashioned elect? You know, hey, here are the two candidates. I don't care where they come from. Here's the money. Each side gets the same, each side gets to spend the same amount of money. No more, no less. And let's just have a decent debate and talk about it. But the reality is, is they shut people off when they want to influence their decisions and they do it for gain at other people's expense. So, I mean, the re

Vance Crowe [00:55:55] I I often wonder, I mean we're,

Guest [00:55:56] We're traveling down a road where we're gonna be like, you know, we're, you're gonna start charging people for air and you're gonna start charging people for water. And I mean, it's a voice and news media really needs to think about this. I have a great disdain for news media these days 'cause I don't see 'em as being objective at all. The whole point is for them to be objective, but no one wants to talk about that either. Are you being objective or are you not? Or am I buying elections or am I not, I don't know whether Trump bought the first election or outsmarted him with his Twitter feeds or whatever. He lost the second one. You know, did that make it, it certainly those are the types of things that we, that were spoken about. You know, I I don't watch news anymore 'cause I don't trust it. I dunno.

Vance Crowe [00:56:50] You know, I had a, I worked at the World Bank for a couple of years and that was really good for me because, you know, you look at this organization and it's like got this sterling reputation if you're from a particular point of view and they're kind of a cousin to the un And I was just thinking, this is amazing. And then you get in there and I, I had a chance to sit in with the president and the managing directors and the sector directors and you realize

Guest [00:57:14] No one is

Vance Crowe [00:57:15] Actually running that. No,

Guest [00:57:16] It

Vance Crowe [00:57:16] Is a, it is a group of people that are, are just like the weather. They're changing directions based on their own personal interests.

Guest [00:57:25] Absolutely.

Vance Crowe [00:57:25] And they all have little fiefdoms. And I have to wonder if that's what's going on with Twitter. Like, it's very easy for us to tell the story in our minds that Jack Dorsey runs that and that he could be saying, yes, do that, or no, you can't. But he'd have to be getting into millions of lines

Guest [00:57:41] It could at all. Yeah. I don't think it's, I don't think it's individuals like that. I think you, you might be onto something. There'd be interesting to know. I mean, if I owned birthed a company like that, I'd wanna know that. Right? So they certainly can't claim that they don't, they aren't aware of the dynamic. So a Dorsey or a Zuckerberg are more aware than anybody about that kind of thing. And if that's true, they're not saying anything. Well,

Vance Crowe [00:58:12] I

Guest [00:58:12] I

Vance Crowe [00:58:12] Often wonder if those dudes are like, like they're being held hostage, right? Like everything that they have possibly like, don't say anything or, yeah, you get to be the figurehead, you get to be the guy that's in the top here. But by the way, if you don't like our, you know, I, I think there's the, the left coast ideology that, that we have here, then everything that you are in charge of will be gone in an instant. And I mean, maybe I'm wrong and I don't, I'm not making excuses for people that, you know, that should be running things. But I can imagine that there are a lot of things, like when I watch Jack Dorsey on Joe Rogan's podcast, I don't see a man that is full of confidence and knows what's going on. I see a guy that looks like he's blinking out soss with his, you know, what, what's

Guest [00:58:55] Going on here? Like,

Vance Crowe [00:58:56] What's,

Guest [00:58:56] Get me outta here. Yeah. I mean I you might be right there. I mean, who knows? Unfortunately, don't you think we should, should know even if we're, we don't have like in tune and very finite specific insight to that. Shouldn't we like know, like in our gut, oh no, it's, shouldn't we wanna know that our electoral process was, you know, has integrity to it. And although there might be a little phony baloney, it, it, it doesn't really affect the outcome of the election. Right. I,

Vance Crowe [00:59:28] I mean, in some way I, like, I've become somewhat cynical about media, but not, not just recently, but that, like, I was kind of fed a lie when I was younger. Right. Just in the same way about what the cfc the, because I used to think that news was started with this like sterling idea of, I'm gonna just tell you the truth, but it turns out almost all the newspapers that started the United States were started by political parties.

Guest [00:59:49] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:59:50] And so, like, that's why you have the, you know, the press Democrat, or you have, you know, the, like all of the major outlets were started by political bodies that ultimately figured out if I only sell to one side of the distribution, that I'm leaving some market share behind. So they may be widened it out and then start putting the machine of our side is truth. But I think they've always been a sort of political machine. Yeah. And that, that maybe is the thing that we needed to lose our, our nostalgic sense of.

Guest [01:00:19] Sure. But then, okay. I, that's interesting. And that was good knowledge to know why they're so political. 'cause I don't think I knew that they were started by political parties, but then that makes sense, right? What are these, what are these social media companies gonna do, whether it be Facebook or I don't know, whatever, who are they? Do you think those private people are, they're beholden to something or somebody? Right.

Vance Crowe [01:00:50] I think, I think that the, I think in five years the concept of personal responsibility will include, you are personally responsible for how you curate the, the information, the news that you get.

Guest [01:01:05] Sure. Hope so.

Vance Crowe [01:01:06] And I think that it will come down to, you know, when we, when blogs

Guest [01:01:10] First came

Vance Crowe [01:01:11] Out, do you remember RSS streaming? Do you remember this

Guest [01:01:14] A little bit? Yeah. Right.

Vance Crowe [01:01:15] Were you really simple streaming?

Guest [01:01:16] Yeah. Can you put the RSS up in your

Vance Crowe [01:01:18] Yeah.

Guest [01:01:18] Email and see it come across and, but, and that

Vance Crowe [01:01:21] Be, that came out of Vogue. Right. Just look at me like

Guest [01:01:23] I'm ancient that,

Vance Crowe [01:01:24] That became like this, like totally, you know, like antiquated way to get information because you had these things that could tell you the news, Facebook and Twitter and these.

Guest [01:01:34] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [01:01:34] But I think RSS streaming is going to come back in a very big way because I think that people are gonna say, I don't want anyone else to determine whether or not I'm gonna see this information. Right. And so I think email lists, like if you really care about some particular blogger or a podcaster, you should be on their email list and you should figure out RSS streaming. And ultimately, I think this is the long term, there will be appliances in your home that will be your own server where you do not, you don't use the servers of like the collective companies you're gonna have, you're gonna store your information in your own way.

Guest [01:02:13] Wow. I mean, that's wild. That's a wild thought. I don't know that I I'm am pulling for you. I hope you're right.

Vance Crowe [01:02:20] Well, I mean, I wish I didn't have to be right. I just don't, I can't imagine another way in which we would, you or I like you, you've already said, I don't trust the news. I'm, you know, I don't like the Facebook. They flat

Guest [01:02:31] Out lie.

Vance Crowe [01:02:31] Right. So, so the question then becomes, if I believe that's true, then what is it that I, what? Like, you know, my brother is always poking me like, okay, if something is true, then what does it change about your behavior? And so I thought about this a lot and I'm like, well, it would change my behavior enough to change the way I get news, but I have to actually make it happen. It requires more work than logging into Facebook. Oh

Guest [01:02:52] Yeah. I mean, yeah, of course. Yeah. What a, what a great question from your brother. But yeah, I don't know that that's possible. It is so hard to know and there's so much power and money at stake in that regard. I mean, did you know that the World Bank was one of the biggest funders of changing, blowing agents?

Vance Crowe [01:03:18] Oh, I believe that. But tell me more.

Guest [01:03:20] So was, so was the un Well, okay, so I used to, you know, part of my job, you know, our, our, our green technology is called Ego Mate. And basically the UN and World Bank set up these projects, right? To get article five countries, a five countries, which we would call Third World, right? And basically every country outside of the US and western EU is Article five, right? So they get taxpayer money primarily from the US taxpayer to basically phase out of products based on our technology. And so they pay 'em. But what happens is that if the project's approved, it's delayed if the if or ever paid at all. And the consultants take home most of the money and they're just in bed with these lower level politicians at the World Bank or the un I mean, I got to witness it firsthand. It's awful.

Vance Crowe [01:04:41] I'm, I couldn't agree more, man. Like, I didn't know about that specific thing, but after, well

Guest [01:04:45] That's a, it's a tiny bit, but I'm talking probably hundreds of millions of dollars. I don't even wanna know what like the, the food and the water projects get, because those are known to everybody who are the consultants for that?

Vance Crowe [01:05:02] Oh, I know them. I went to school with them. And, and it is, and a and like the thing that people don't understand about programs like the World Bank and the UN is if you think unelected bureaucrats are a problem with the U-S-D-E-A and the FDA, there's no oversight at all of the world being, there are people running their own little countries, their own little gigs, and they're sitting in office, you know, 12, 12 B 17 C, you know, that's just a cubicle. And they are running multi-billion dollar programs and there's no way for anyone to know what they're doing to stop what they're doing to stop the funneling of money from there to the, the consultants. Like it is good money. Oh, it's good money if you can become a consultant from World Bank. Yeah.

Guest [01:05:48] Oh yeah. Well, what's weird is, and I don't know where this stems from on the, you're turning me into

Vance Crowe [01:05:54] Like a crazy conspiracy night. I don't normally talk about these things.

Guest [01:05:57] My dad, you know, my dad was very, and his teamwork, they were very conspiracy. And I I, there are some aspects there. I mean, I got to see it. I think it's there. I just don't, I don't wanna be that way. I don't, but you can't unsee things. And I had the consultants in, you know, for the US technology, are they Americans? No, they're Europeans Rich Europeans that, you know, played their cards right. And living in, you know, Indiana getting all the money tax free by the way. Oh yeah. If they lived in, if they lived in their home country, it'd be taxed. So they live here and it's tax free. So,

Vance Crowe [01:06:38] So what he's talking about is if you work for the World Bank or the UN as a bureaucrat or as one of their consultants under a certain contract, you do not have to pay income tax or any kind of tax and it's actually generally sheltered from your other, your home country too. That's right. And so these people are making the, you know, whatever, let's just say it's $120,000 a year, but if you make $120,000 a year in the United States, you're only taking home $65,000 a year. These people are making bank. Oh.

Guest [01:07:06] And

Vance Crowe [01:07:06] No one is watching what they're doing.

Guest [01:07:09] Zero.

Vance Crowe [01:07:09] You don't even know that they're there.

Guest [01:07:11] No, yeah, there's no oversight, like you said. So I was, I was bouncing around to these different, 'cause they pimp you, you know, I was basically a hooker for like a technology hooker, so to speak. And I didn't know it till, you know, it was kind of too late. And, you know, yeah, these consultants pimp you out. Oh, well there's a project here in, in Sao Paulo, or oh, there's a project here over in Marrakesh. Oh, there's a, there's a pro and we're gonna have a, we're gonna have a conference and you're gonna come speak and say stuff and tell people why they should have your technology and so on and so forth. So

Vance Crowe [01:07:51] This is it. When did you wake up to the fact that you were a technology prostitute?

Guest [01:07:56] Well, you know, good question. 'cause you know, it, you know, looking back, I think to myself, man, why wasn't I onto this to be, to begin with? I will say it, it was a platform for us to, to compete with the major chemical companies, right? Because we were the only independent that actually had a product. And then a very, a smaller independent from Europe had something, some technology to speak of probably halfway, halfway through, you know, so it's

Vance Crowe [01:08:33] Amazing. Like, so to to hear you talk. I wouldn't be surprised if they liked you because you were small. Because when I, so I went to the World Bank and worked there for a couple of years, then I moved to St. Louis and it was a couple years later that I went to work at Monsanto. And out of all of the friendship networks that I had, US Peace Corps public radio graduate school, out of all the people that hated me going to Monsanto the most, it was the people from the World Bank. They became absolutely incensed that I would go work for the this Devil Corporation. And you're like, what? Where do you think your money comes from? Right? It's this, these large corporations, like all your food projects, all of this is coming from, but they, they are, they very much have an anti corporation, anti chemical bin.

Guest [01:09:18] Of course, of course that fits in with their story, except that when your ethics come into line and they're not aligned with theirs, then they have a problem. And I would say generally speaking, privatized companies will go to further extents to die on the hill for their ethics than large companies.

Vance Crowe [01:09:42] Interesting.

Guest [01:09:43] Right? It's, well, they're more in tune with them. You know, I, I don't, I don't fault necessarily big companies. I mean, part of what why, or how they operate is because our government taxes them differently or not adequately or, you know, it's just not a good fit. And I don't necessarily think that there's anybody that's responsible for that singly, but that's the way it is. So yeah, I mean they do, they did like our story, but they didn't like it enough to not get in the way of their money and to, you know, everybody could have been a winner in that kind of thing if they just, if they would've let their story actually play out. But the reality is, is they got hung up on just nonsense. And I think that's all a smoke and mirrors routine to just say, we'll take more money in another project so we can have this then debate about nothing and help nobody. I mean Mexico, holy cow. You know, I mean it gi it gives certain people and companies a false sense of security. Oh, I've got this safety blanket of American and European technology and I'll just be able to, you know, when that date comes, when 2022 comes, I'll just be able to flip the light switch. No, it doesn't work that way. You gotta start changing now. So release the money now. But it doesn't happen that way. Or, or they stay in a product that is a, again, allegedly more damaging to the environment longer than they should.

Guest [01:11:23] Towards the end, I started telling people, I said, listen, if you guys wait to start trying different technologies, and I would even say, look, don't just try mine. Try my competitors. Try this one. Do those things. I said, if you wait too long, when time comes, we just won't be able to help everybody. And that's where we're at right now. That is basically what's going on. If you wait too long to transition, if you wait. And some of that is even happening in the United States, right? These HFOs, oh, we've, we've got a HFO, it's passed all the ul

Vance Crowe [01:12:02] What's an HFO?

Guest [01:12:03] Hydro floral olefin. It's manmade. So I don't really think it's green costs. It costs a lot of money to make it, and it costs a lot of energy to make it, and it costs a bad product predecessor to make it, it takes a raw material that was deemed bad to begin with. So anyway, it's, it's

Vance Crowe [01:12:29] So to wrap up, you know, you were saying, Hey, I don't, I don't watch news anymore. I'm done with that. What do you do a long time with the time you, with the time you got back in your life by not watching news?

Guest [01:12:40] I don't know that I got it back. It, it certainly shifted. I mean, I, this time in my life, I'm 48. Told you it was my birthday today.

Vance Crowe [01:12:48] Super happy, fun birthday about it. Yeah.

Guest [01:12:50] Yeah. I'm like,

Vance Crowe [01:12:51] I'm glad you do a podcast on you're 48. This

Guest [01:12:53] Is true. That's right. Yeah. Be interesting. I'll have to watch it and be like, oh man, you sound awful. What's wrong with you? But I, I do read a lot. I don't get to read the things I like to read or want to read. It doesn't bother me. 'cause it's just that I see it as that's my state in life. So

Vance Crowe [01:13:15] What do you wanna be reading?

Guest [01:13:18] Things like this? I'm leaving for you. My wife, I, I went to her Nikki Haley's.

Vance Crowe [01:13:23] So what is this? Tell for the listeners what

Guest [01:13:25] Sure. Well it's, it's Nikki Haley's book with all due respect. And I was able to go to a, you know, a sit down with her and listen to her speak and I mean, she is great. That's why I wanted to give this to you. I didn't know if you, I'm surprised you haven't read it.

Vance Crowe [01:13:42] No.

Guest [01:13:43] So, you know, I have two daughters outta my three kids. And so I'm thinking who will be the first female president? And I'm looking for someone my daughters can look up to and respect. So, and I don't see that currently. She's just got an interesting story. So I want you to have that 'cause you are an influencer even if you don't think you are.

Vance Crowe [01:14:05] Well, thank you. It's, I I love getting books and I'm, I'm excited about that. What was the last good book you read?

Guest [01:14:15] Shit, my dad says.

Vance Crowe [01:14:16] Oh, that is good. That's very, it's

Guest [01:14:18] A very funny book. Yeah. I mean, it, it spoke to me. That's it. It was a good story of how, you know, interaction within my family went with my dad and me. So it was, it was a good book. I mean, I read it in two days, but, and that's been a while. It's probably been at least a decade when I was traveling to un type conferences and you're on a long 15 hour flight and, you know, I could do that. So right now it's email and standard operating procedures and you know, stuff like that. Things to, or, you know, the industry of freight, what's going on here, what's, what's the real do north, what's really going on? So that's just the state of life I'm in right now. It'll pass.

Vance Crowe [01:15:02] Well that's hopeful. I I always think, hope I can read more as time goes on. So, hey, thank you so much for, for stopping by.

Guest [01:15:10] Thanks for having me.