In this engaging episode of Trailblazers and Titans, we delve into the intricate dynamics of entrepreneurial success, a theme epitomized by our esteemed guest, Crom Carmichael With a rich tapestry of experience spanning various industries, Crom elucidates the paramount significance of execution over mere ideation in the entrepreneurial sphere. He shares invaluable insights drawn from his career, including the critical lessons learned from observing the meteoric rise of brands like Nike and the consequential decline of Converse. Throughout our dialogue, we explore the multifaceted nature of business models and the imperative for entrepreneurs to adapt and innovate in a rapidly evolving marketplace. As we journey through Crom's extensive knowledge, listeners will glean actionable strategies and profound wisdom that may illuminate their own paths to professional excellence.

Links referenced in this episode:

• fromourgeneration
• giantsofpoliticalthought.com
• cromcarmichael

Welcome to Trailblazers and Titans, your premier destination for high stakes insight and transformative leadership wisdom.

This podcast exists to empower aspire and seasoned leaders by distilling mindsets, breakthroughs and actionable strategies of the world's most influential entrepreneurs into a roadmap for personal and professional excellence. In a world that moves at lightning speed, staying ahead requires more than just hard work.

It requires the specific blueprints used by those who've already conquered the summit. I AM your host, Reverend Dr. Keith Haney and I want to welcome to the podcast today Chrome Carmichael.

He's an entrepreneur, investor, independent thinker whose career spans multiple industries and pivotal economic movements.

From co owning a multi state sporting goods enterprise to witnessing the rise of Nike over Converse, Chrome has had a front row seat how innovation, timing and leadership intersection.

As an early stage investor, he was backed by over he has backed over 60 startups experiencing both major wins and invaluable lessons. Today he hosts from Our Generation podcast as a regular voice breaking down critical issues with clarity and independence.

Thank you so much for joining us on the podcast.

Hey Keith, how are you doing?

Glad to be here. I'm doing good. Good to see you here. Looking forward to this conversation.

Me too.

So I'm going to ask you my favorite question to kind of get you warmed up here. What's the best piece of advice you've ever received?

Well, my advice to entrepreneurs is to recognize and I'm saying this because my background is I have run businesses and I have invested in businesses. And the key to success is not so much the idea that you have, but the execution of the idea.

If a, a a great idea, poorly executed is a hole in the ground, okay. From an investor standpoint, it's a hole in the ground. A an average idea extremely well executed can be a tremendous success.

A, a great and novel idea extremely well executed is the home run.

I love that.

So I would say this. If there are certain businesses that require capital to grow the business in increments that, that, that that comport with the scale.

So for example, I'm going to use, I'm going to use.

There's there are three or four fast food restaurant chains that we've all heard of, and some have had certain business models, others have had other business models.

So I'm going to use, I'm going to use what I consider to be three that I'm fairly familiar with only because I've kind of been enamored with how they, how their business model works and what they do. One of them is of course, McDonald's.

And McDonald's is a company that has grown to have, you know, I don't know how many, many multi, thousands of locations. Some of them are company owned, most of them are franchisees. And, and so McDonald's perfected what they believed was what a restaurant ought to be.

They perfected the cost of the build out. They perfected how to find locations, they perfected how to operate them, create operating systems.

And then their business model was to find investors who wanted to build McDonald's restaurants. And McDonald's corporate would then own a share of the revenue. And so that's the franchise model.

And in order for that to work, the franchisor had to execute on the things that I just described. And then the franchisee had to execute at the local level. And if both, if both did what they were supposed to do, then both were quite successful.

Okay, now another fast food chain that we've all heard of is Chick Fil A. Yep. Chick Fil A has a modified franchise model in that if you want to be a franchisee of Chick Fil A, you apply to be a franchisee.

You, you only pay a very small amount of money to apply to be a franchisee. And then if you are selected, you are told you're selected. And now you wait until they tell you where your location will be.

So unlike McDonald's, when they launched on the franchise space, somebody might have said, I want middle Tennessee.

And McDonald's would say, if you want Middle Tennessee, you have to agree to build out 25 restaurants in five years or something like that within the, within the franchise territory. And you paid a lot of money in advance for every location that you opened.

But then you owned 100% of that location and you paid, and you paid a percentage of revenue to McDonald's. And so you might end up with 15 or 20 restaurants. And then you could sell those 15 or 20 restaurants to somebody else.

The way that Chick Fil A works is that you don't have to put up a lot of money to become a franchisee, but when you, when you are selected, you're only given one location, okay? And then that, and you have to operate that location. You have to Be there and you have to run it.

And then you have a profits interest in that location for as long as you are the franchisee.

And then when you get to the point where you want to retire, then my understanding is you then sell your interest, which is a profits interest, back to corporate and then corporate will pay you for that. And then they turn around and then award that profits. Interesting. To whoever the new franchisee slash manager of that location is.

And so, and so Chick Fil A, all of their restaurants are still majority. Every single one of them is still majority owned by Chick Fil A Corporate.

Okay, interesting.

Yeah. And then another one. Are you familiar with Raising Cane?

Oh yeah, we got, that's my, my kid's favorite one.

Okay. Now, Raising Cane, what I love about the Raising Cane model is I think that Raising Cane, I don't even think they franchise. They hire managers.

And the managers, I'm sure, are on a salary plus a bonus.

But what I find fascinating about Raising Cane is that the selection that they give their customers, who almost are all drive thru customers, is if you want two pieces of chicken, you're going to get French fries. And then you can, you can buy, you have a relatively small selection of drinks that you can include. If you say, well, I'd like to have coleslaw.

And they say, oh, okay, well now you have to have three pieces of chicken. And you'll get, and you'll get french fries and coleslaw. You can't substitute, you can't substitute coleslaw for French fries.

I find that kind of interesting. And then you can buy buckets of chicken of different sizes, but they give you very few. And all of the chicken is a chicken tender. They only.

And so they have a very, very limited menu, but it's very tasty.

And so in the case of Raising Cain and the case of Chick Fil A, they know exactly how much land they need to build a restaurant that serves a particular. I think that Chick Fil A has probably two or three sized restaurants.

I think they have some that are a little smaller than others, but they know how much land they need. They know what the demographics are of that, of the markets. So they have refined to the level of excellence the selection of, of their sites.

And then the, and then the operations in all of these restaurants is when you're, when you're the customer and you go into McDonald's, chick fil a or Raising Cane, you have an expectation of, of the level of service and the quality of the food. And almost every time that expectation is Met.

I love that. So we talked about.

Yeah, go ahead. Sorry.

No, I like that we talked about those models that are successful. What are some models that you've seen that have flamed out because maybe the process wasn't good, the product wasn't right?

What are some examples of things you go, why, if they had done this, boy, they could have been successful?

Well, this gets back to execution. So I can't think of a business model that will inherently fail other than trying to sell something for less than it costs you to make.

That'll fail every time. Every time. But I'll give you kind of my story with Converse because we became Converse distributors.

My business partner at that time was a wonderful man named Tom Baldrige. And Tom was well known in the sporting goods industry back in the 70s.

In fact, even in the 60s, back when sporting goods stores were all mom and pop, there was no such thing as a big box. There were no Academy Sports, there were no Dick's Sporting Goods. They were, they were mom and pop small sporting goods stores.

And then there were companies that would sell team products like helmets and uniforms and things like this. But they, but they were, but they were locally owned and there were not any big, big players. And so Tom was well known in the industry.

And Converse athletic shoes, back in the 70s, they had 95% of the basketball shoe market. 95% Of the, of the, of people who played basketball, 95% wore Converse. And they started with the old Chuck Taylors.

They were the canvas shoes with the vulcanized outsoles. And in fact, the Boston Celtics, which are by far the most. The greatest NBA franchise at that time, they had to buy their shoes.

They didn't even get them for free. They had to buy the shoes.

Wow.

Yeah. And, and shortly before, shortly before we became. So let me finish the story.

So because of Tom Baldrige's reputation in the industry, which was quite good, he was, he was at. He got a phone call from a gentleman named Gibb Ford. Gibb. Ford was head of sales and marketing for Converse.

And Gibb told Tom Baldrige that Converse was going to separate their relationship with Wilson Sporting Goods. And Wilson Sporting Goods had, was the national distributor for Converse.

Now Converse also sold directly and shipped directly, but they had a national distributor named Wilson Sporting Goods. And, and, and Wilson had told Converse that Wilson was going to start making an athletic shoe branded Wilson.

And Converse said, well, if you're going to do that, you can't distribute arse you also. And so it was a very amiable separation. And so we were.

We were given a territory where if we located in Columbus, Ohio, we would service Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky, western Pennsylvania, most of West Virginia and northern Tennessee. We then later were asked to put a warehouse in Chicago and service northern Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, north and South Dakota.

And when we first started in business, and this is quite interesting, let me back up now that we set that table. About two years before we became distributors, Adidas was the very first athletic shoe company to pay somebody to wear their shoe.

Interesting.

And they paid Kareem Abdul Jabbar $5,000 a year to wear Adidas shoes. Converse's initial reaction to that was they were furious and felt it was unethical to pay somebody to wear your product.

I'm just giving you this, is that we're talking now 60 years. Well over 50. Over 50 years ago.

Wow.

And then we then became distributors for Converse. And about the time we became distributors, Converse recognized that paying athletes was a good marketing idea. And they signed Dr. J.

And Dr. J was an absolutely. He's a wonderful guy, an absolutely incredible basketball player. And he was by far the most exciting basketball player at that time.

Some of the things he could do with his hands and his body were just amazing.

I remember.

So the. So the shoes, the shoes that Dr. J wore, the people in the market, the dealers and the fans, they all call the shoe the Dr. J, which was our leather.

It was Converse's first leather basketball shoe. Low tops and high tops. Now, Converse didn't call for Dr. J. Everybody else did.

So that's different from Nike entering into a deal with Michael Jordan, calling it the Air Jordan. Okay, that was. So it was different in that regard. We paid and Converse paid Dr. J. I think it was $5,000 a year. And.

And so business for those, I'm going to say the first six or seven years was pretty consistent. Converse, the Dr. J basketball shoe, would be updated about every two years.

And the Converse, the canvas shoe, the old Chuck Taylor, the All Stars, they weren't updated at all. And they. I mean, we might come out with different colors, but the construction of the shoes stayed the same.

And so then fast forward into the early 80s, and Nike got into the basketball shoe market, and Converse made one huge strategic mistake. As I said, Converse had 95% of the market. And part of Converse's strategy way of doing business was their salespeople. And they covered.

The salespeople, covered the entire United States.

And the salespeople would call on retailers, but they would also call on the local college coaches in their market and promote Converse Shoes to the college coaches. Nobody paid college coaches to put their team in, in a particular shoe. And so we just simply out promoted everybody.

When Nike decided to get into the business, they went to the top 25 coaches and offered to pay them $5,000 a year if they would sign a five year contract. Every single one of those coaches came to Converse and said, if you'll offer us the same thing will stay with you.

Converse refused to do it and lost 23 out of 25 of those coaches.

Wow.

So for $115,000 a year, Nike had their shoe on, on all the, almost all the teams that were playing on tv. So Converse allowed Nike to come into the market and pay almost nothing to get there. That was a strategic mistake.

Wow.

So then what, then what Nike did was then the first thing they did was each year, and this happened very quickly, each year they'd come out with a brand new line of basketball shoes. And Converse was used to coming out with a new, new line of basketball shoes every two or three years.

And then after about 18 months, Nike started coming out with a brand new basketball shoe every quarter.

Oh my goodness.

And so when you see, when you see Converse All Stars today, that's a Nike product.

Oh my goodness. I did not know that. Yeah, I thought maybe Converse came back again or something.

No, but we had a, we had a nice run.

But it, but it shows you that even I don't care how dominant you are in the market if you don't keep up with your product, if you're, if you're not a leader. Converse became obsessed with what Nike was doing. And Nike set the, Nike was the trailblazer. Converse became obsessed with them.

Nike didn't really care about Converse because they knew that their strategy was a leading strategy. Now the only time where Nike had a hiccup during the time period I was involved was that they went.

There was a period of time where there was a, a new, a new athletic phenomenon called aerobics. And, and women, women especially women, had to have aerobic shoes. And an aerobic shoe was not a basketball shoe. It wasn't a running shoe.

It had a different. It had a different construction. And it gave rise to a company called Reebok.

And Reebok dominated the female athletic shoe marketplace other than the actual basketball shoes or the actual tennis shoes, because Reebok became the fashion shoe for women to wear.

And so even though Nike was still growing through all that, and then what Nike did was they started then adding functional clothing to their, to their product line, and then they started adding casual clothing to their product line. But they were able to do that because they were still selling it through the same salespeople and the same retail outlets for the most part.

So if you're an entrepreneur listening to this story of Converse and Nike, what lessons would you say if you are in the business?

I remember hearing the story of Apple versus Microsoft, and it kind of reminds me of the story you just told about how Nike approached things versus how Microsoft approached things. Apple goes, we're just going to do our product. We're not competing with Microsoft.

We're just doing our own thing. That's not exactly right.

Okay.

What Steve Jobs did initially was he designed the beautiful Apple desktop computer. And part of, part of building that computer was building an operating system.

And what, what Steve Jobs did initially was he said he would not license the operating system to somebody else who wanted to build a computer with a different brand name.

Okay.

But use Apple's operating system. Steve Jobs would not allow that.

And because of that, that is what allowed Bill Gates and Paul Allen to then build an operating system that they would then license. That was the Microsoft operating system that they would then license to anybody who wanted to build their own computer.

So compact, compact, built compact computers powered by the Microsoft operating system. IBM bought their. Built their desktop computers powered by Microsoft operating system, Gateway and so, and so on and so forth.

There were, there were a number Dell, Dell computers, there were a number of hardware manufacturers who used Microsoft operating system. Had Steve Jobs allowed others to use the Apple operating system, I'm not sure Microsoft ever would have existed.

Interesting.

Yeah. And then, and then what's interesting is, and then Steve Jobs was removed as the CEO.

So even though Apple had fantastic technology, their business model was not a good business model. And so Steve Jobs left. And by the way, when he left, the market cap of Apple was about $6 billion. It's 4 trillion now.

Yeah.

Okay. And then they brought in, I don't remember the gentleman's name, but he had been the CEO of Pepsi.

Is that Cook?

No, no, Tim Cook was. Tim Cook was there when Steve Jobs was There.

Oh, that's right.

And this guy came in, I don't remember his name. He didn't last very long because he, he understood marketing, but he didn't understand technology.

And, and, and he, and you had to understand both, you really did have to understand both to, to, I guess certainly to run Apple. And so what happened was they brought Steve Jobs back.

But I believe, I believe, and I have no facts to support this, but I believe that when they brought him back, the deal was, Steve, you can, you're now going to be the CEO and the visionary. Tim Cook is going to run the company. He's going to make the business decisions and he's going to run the company. You will still be the visionary.

And I think that Steve Jobs liked that role because that's what he is. But it was Tim Cook, it was Tim Cook who made the decision when they came out with the iPhone to have the App Store.

Now the way Steve Jobs would have looked at it originally was no app could be in the Apple App Store that Apple didn't build. That would have been the way Steve Jobs would have looked at it before.

The way that Tim Cook looked at it is anybody can build an app that goes into the App Store. And here's how we do the Rev Share.

So what Tim Cook did was he said, I'm going to have tens of thousands of developers developing apps that I don't have to pay a penny to those people to develop great apps. We will then merely approve or disapprove apps to be in the App Store on our Rev Share program.

And it was that decision that catapulted Apple into a whole different level.

I love that.

Yeah.

As I listen to you talk, it kind of dawns on me that ideas, not just capital, are kind of the drivers of long term success. So how, as an entrepreneur do you keep making sure you are on the front end of new ideas and innovation?

Because that's going to be probably your business evolving is going to be what lasts for long term success.

Well, the way you asked that question, I'm 77 now. I know when you look at me you don't, I don't think.

77, No.

Well, I am.

And so I made the decision that I'm really not investing in new businesses now just simply because if it's a brand new startup, then I'm not going to invest because my experience has been even if somebody thinks it's going to take three years for a brand new business to reach a certain point, it really is closer to seven. If they really operate very well. And so that would put me at an age that is not conducive to early stage investing.

I have invested recently in a couple of businesses that have, that are, that are where the executives had already built the business up to a certain point and where I felt like, okay, well, given where it is now, which had already taken three or four years to get there, now if I invest, a three to five year period is quite reasonable, or in my own mind it is. And so I am now more in the area of harvesting businesses, harvesting my investments than I am planting, planting new seeds.

But I do believe that AI is, is. It's. It's all the companies that I am still in, and I'm still in about 20. I encourage all of the CEOs.

I read articles about AI I play around with it a little bit. But, but the, the value of AI from a, from a business standpoint is, is figuring out how to use it to dramatically increase productivity.

And, and here's kind of an interesting, this is an interesting ethical question and an interesting legal question because it.

I just read an article the other day where, and I don't remember the lady's name, but, but she is an author who has written a number of books and her genre is horror books. She writes books that scare people. And, and, and she has a, you know, she has a nice following, people who like to buy her books.

She has a publisher who published her books. And, but she recently submitted a manuscript to her publisher.

And, and there is a, there is some company that, that says that they can examine a manuscript or a newspaper column or anything like that and determine whether or not it was written with AI and this particular company claims that this lady's most recent horror book was not written by a human. It was written by AI oh, wow. Now. And the publisher then refused to publish it. The author says, I wrote every word in there.

And so there's now going to be. I, I would assume there'll be some legal process. But here's my question to you.

If I write a book using AI and the, and the, and the readers of that book like it, what's wrong with that?

Right?

Especially if I say I wrote this book with the assistance of AI Right? Okay, so it's a good question because AI is being used now to do all kinds of things. It's being used to write business plans.

It's being used, being used to do all kinds of things. And 90% of them are things I'm not even aware of.

At least 90% exactly but, but I do know that as a tool, it's going to dramatically increase productivity. And, and, and, and then there's all.

There are a lot of people who think that AI is going to, you know, destroy, destroy the workforce and eliminate so many jobs that it, it wrecks society. I don't agree with that because there are examples of that in the past. Are you familiar with the Luddites?

No.

The Luddites were in England back in the days when socks were all made by hand, they had to be knitted by hand.

Now, because socks had to be knitted by hand, only wealthy people could afford to buy socks because there was a lot of labor involved in, in making a pair of socks.

When somebody came up with the, the, the, the piece of equipment, I think it was a loom, but don't hold me to that word, but it was a piece of equipment that could manufacture socks in mass production. And the Luddites were the ones who were, who, who made the socks by hand. And they went initially and destroyed the factories.

Oh, no, that made the socks with machines because they said, you're destroying our jobs.

But because machines could make socks, the cost of making a sock dropped so much that now just a person with average income could afford to buy socks. And so the demand for socks exploded because the cost of making a sock drop a pair of socks dropped so much.

The same thing's true with the printing press. Up until the printing press, in fact, for many years after.

It was decades after the invention of the printing press, before books were actually printed.

It's really quite, it's really quite amazing to see how long it took from the time that you could mass produce books until the time the books were actually mass produced. And people wanted to control the printing press.

In fact, Britain, Britain would only allow printing presses in the US if they controlled the person who had the printing press because they were scared of misinformation and disinformation.

That sounds familiar.

Yeah, in the column. And so at any rate, and that, that, that worked for a period of time, but, but obviously it didn't work for very long.

But back in the days before the printing press, the only books that existed were handwritten. The whole book were handwritten. And it was generally priests and monks and they were. So they religious in nature.

Well, people didn't have to learn to read because there wasn't anything to read.

Exactly.

Okay. So it's really, I mean, these are the types of things where, when, when a new invention or a new thing comes up. The, the.

What that means Means a lot more than. It will eventually mean more than. Than the actual thing itself. So, for example, what was. What was the. I asked you a couple of fun, fun questions.

And what was the last major invention that needed to be invented, the last thing that needed to be invented before you could have high rise buildings?

Hmm.

It's really. This is really kind of funny. It's almost funny.

I would say the crane, but that's probably not right.

That was already there.

Yeah.

Indoor plumbing. Oh, you had to be able to get all the stuff from the top to the bottom. Yeah.

And until they did that, until they did that, the height of a building was minimum. You had to be able to get the plumbing, and that was a whole different kind of plumbing in order to do that.

Now, what was the invention that changed Florida?

That changed Florida?

The air conditioner.

Oh, yeah, that definitely. Because I'm from Louisiana.

Yeah, it may change Louisiana too. But it definitely. It was without the air conditioner, the southern states would not. So it is those types of inventions.

And this is where entrepreneurs need to see where there are new inventions which will cause new demand. So, for example, when the air conditioner was invented and things started happening in Florida, you don't have to be an entrepreneur.

Can be somebody who just simply recognizes that demand for real estate in Florida is going to increase. And so roads, home building, all the different things that are associated with. With population growth.

An entrepreneur, you can say, well, you know, he's not inventing anything, or she's not inventing anything new. And that's true. But they recognizing something ahead of time.

I think one of the great stories is Wayne Gretzky was being interviewed by a fellow and this. And the guy interviewing him called him the greatest hockey player to ever play. And Gretzky's a pretty humble guy.

And he said, well, I don't know if that's true. And he said, well, for this discussion, it's true. And I want to discuss why you were the greatest hockey player of all time.

And so Gretzky started to give. Started to provide what he thought was the one thing that set him apart from. From other players that he. And then the guy said, let me guess.

And so he guessed. Speed. Gretzky said, I had good speed, but there were others who are faster. Okay, well, then your ability to manipulate the puck with the stick.

He said, well, I was good at that, but there were others who were better, and they went through all of the individual things that you would think of that a hockey player would need. And Gretzky said, Well, I was pretty good at those things, but there were people who were better.

So finally the guy kind of got exasperated and he said, well, what is it? He said, I focused on anti. Trying to anticipate where the puck was going to be, and I would skate there.

I wouldn't skate at the puck because if I skated at the puck, it was generally gone by the time I got there. So if, and if I anticipated correctly where the puck was going to be, I was alone with the puck.

And then all the things that come into being, hand eye coordination, manipulating the puck, speed, all of that is, is, is. Except is, is. Is. Is, is the. The value of those things is increased because he doesn't have a defender on him.

Right.

And so I thought that. And I think entrepreneurs anticipating where the puck is going to be is helpful.

Now, if you have a change in government policy, a change in government policy can either create great opportunity or it might create great destruction, depending on what the policy change is.

So I think for people who, you know, if they need to, they need to understand and appreciate that change sometimes comes because of a difference in the tax code, a difference in regulation, a difference in subsidies. All of those types of things can greatly affect the business that you may be trying to build.

I love it.

And then there are other. Then there are others that, you know, other businesses you can build that, that don't. Don't matter.

But if I were advising somebody who is wanting to build a business that grows by location, I would, I would say that unless until you truly perfect what the optimum location looks like and how to operate it, unless you understand that down to the greatest detail, don't try to grow, because you are then adding, you are growing by inefficiencies, and you don't either, and you don't necessarily know it. And that is a very expensive way to learn your lessons.

Yeah. Good. So I'm gonna ask you my other favorite question. What do you want your legacy to be?

Oh, well, I've helped entre. You know, I think I've helped some entrepreneurs grow. I've certainly helped them raise money for them to grow.

And, and so I have a lot of friends in that regard, and I've helped people generate goods and services that a lot of. A lot of other people have. Have found them to be valuable enough to buy them.

The, I think the giants of political thought, the great, the political thinkers and the podcast that we do is probably has more to do with not just understanding business, but understanding the principles that underlie a society that is both free and prosperous.

And typically those two things are well connected because societies where freedom is being diminished, typically the economic activity is also being diminished. And understanding the importance of that.

In fact, earlier today I was reading a great article about the connection of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and birthright citizenship. And here I am, 77 years old, and I'm reading an article and I'm learning all kinds of things that I thought I knew that I didn't know.

And it's not like I was learning things that, that were false. I was learning things that I just didn't know.

And, and, but when you do learn them, you go, oh, okay, now that, that helps me understand something else. And so, so I am, I'm, I'm, I'm general, genuinely concerned.

I'm, as I've seen over the, over my adult life, which I would describe as over the last, say, 45 to 50 years. 50 Years. I was 27 years old 50 years ago. And so I was, I, I was, I was in business.

And so I was, I was thinking I wasn't wise, I wasn't stupid, but I was quite ignorant. And I had that one weekend in New Orleans at a conference when. That's when I learned how ignorant I was, because I was there.

There was all kinds of upheaval because of the inflation and interest rates and energy prices, all kinds of stuff.

And so I go down to this conference and, and there were, there were a bunch of very, very good speakers in the sense that they made powerful arguments. And one of them said, we're going to have massive inflation, hyperinflation, and here's why, and here's what you should do.

And I said, boy, that's a compelling argument. I better prepare. And the next one got up and said, we're going to have massive deflation. Here's why, and here's what you should do.

And I said, wow, that's a compelling argument. I better prepare.

And then the third one would get up, say, we're not going to have this, we're not going to have that, we're going to have a return to the norm. And I said, man, what a compelling argument. I better prepare.

Well, at the end of all that, my girlfriend at the time, later, my wife, and we're still happily married after many years, she said, well, baby doll, what'd you learn from all those speakers? I said, I learned I am profoundly ignorant. And she said, oh, no, you're smart. I said, well, that's debatable, but whether I'm ignorant is not.

And she said, why do you say that?

And I said, well, I've heard three different predictions of the future that all three are very different and only one can be more accurate than the other two. And I don't have a clue which one that is. I said, that is the definition of ignorance.

And, and so I then became a student of economics over the next five years. And as a student of economics, it wasn't just economics in the broadest sense.

It also, I started studying and kind of understanding that from a business standpoint because as a distributor for Converse athletic shoes, we didn't have to build the product, okay? We didn't have to, we didn't have to design future products. We just had to be distributors.

So we had to be very good at sales, we had to be very good at, at managing inventory, we had to be very good at customer relations, but there was a limit to the things that we had to be really good at.

And, and so, so, and so as, as, as I was, as I was learning more about economics, I learned more about being efficient, recognizing that, that at the end of the day, time, understanding the nature of time is the most important thing.

An entrepreneur can understand that if you can figure out how to help people accomplish the same thing in less time, you are creating something of value. And if you are helping a lot of people save a lot of time, then you're creating something of immense value.

And that's where technology comes into place. And so if you're building a company that's based on technology, those are the businesses that can scale.

And that's why you see companies like Apple and companies like Microsoft and Google and all these other companies that are worth trillions of dollars, you don't see any companies that are worth trillions of dollars that grow by location.

Right?

Because companies that grow by location require capital for every single new location. They don't lend themselves to scale in terms of the amount of dollars required to scale as a technology company.

And that's why America is the leading economy in the world, because our culture is an inventive type culture. It's really quite interesting. How many companies in the US Are worth more than a trillion dollars?

I don't know, but I know there's a bunch of them that are worth two and a half to $4 trillion. There's, you know, we can name six or seven at least.

Right.

Do you know how valuable the most valuable company in Europe is?

No.

The most valuable company in Europe is worth $400 billion.

It's a huge difference.

Now Europe is. Europe has a bigger population than we do. It's certainly older.

So why is it that Europe, the biggest company in Europe, is only 10% of the size of six or eight companies here in the U.S. only 10%. And the number of companies in Europe that are worth More than 100 billion is very small.

I mean, the number of companies worth more than a hundred billion in the US Is enormous. And when I say the worth, that's what lifts all of our pension plans. That's where so many of our people retire. That underpins our society.

And if our society doesn't appreciate, if over time our society doesn't appreciate, what circumstances must exist, what circumstances must.

What has to be going on, to allow that to continue, to allow for the innovations to happen that creates the productivity that lifts all of our lives to a better place.

If they don't understand that or if they get to where they are actually ignorant about it, then that's where I know for a fact, just logically, that things will. Bad things happen.

Right, Exactly. So I'm curious, where can the audience connect with you, listen to your podcast, learn more about what you do?

Well, the podcast is from our generation, and I would encourage people who are interested, who liked what we talked about today. And thank you, Ken Keith, very much for having me on. But the, the podcast is from our generation.

And if, and I'm not even sure the people who produce it are the ones who put it up there. I know we're on, we're on Spotify, I think we're on Apple. We're in a number of different places. And so my name is Crom Carmichael.

So if they just search from our generation. My partner co host is Mike Hassell. Mike Hassell. So if you search my name and from our generation, you'll find the podcast.

And I really encourage people, if they, if they want to listen to the podcast, to be sure to listen to the first two episodes before they listen to any other episodes. Because the first two episodes we can, we, we try to define the economic terms and the principles that then apply to the later podcasts.

Yeah, so we start, we start, for example, with one person on an island who work 16 hours a day, seven days a week to survive.

And, and, and in that 16 hours a day, each day, that person is able to acquire enough food, water, shelter, and clothing to be able to go to sleep, wake up in eight hours, and do it all over again. And that's the lowest standard of living a human being can have. Anything below that is death.

So we try to start at the, at the absolute fundamental basics, and we have about 10 or 12 words that we define that fit that circumstance.

And then we take that exact same island and now we put 10 people on the island and we help explain how 10 people will naturally decide to cooperate with each other if it improves their own what we call standard of living, which means that they are consuming as much as they were consuming, but they're working less time to do it. And they do that on the island through division of labor. And so the first two episodes are what are the foundation?

Listening to the other ones, you may find one or two interesting. That's quite possible. We hope they find a lot interesting, but not as interesting as if they've listened to and really understood the first two.

Well, thanks so much. Chrome well, thank you so much for being a guest on the podcast and I encourage the audience to look up the podcast and learn more about you.

If this episode sharpens your perspective on investing, leadership or long term thinking, I encourage you to follow Crom's work and his podcast from our generation and his ongoing commentary. You'll find his links in the Platform Show Notes below.

If Trailblazer Titans has helped you think at a higher level, please subscribe Share this episode with a fellow builder, an entrepreneur. Leave a review that keeps us helping the blueprints keep moving forward. Thank you so much for joining today.

Thanks Keith. Appreciate it. Thank you.