Observations and Predictions! What Will 2025 Be Like?

Welcome to our last podcast of 2024! As we wrap up the year, we look back at the events of 2024. Next we make some predictions for what 2025 will be like. Join us in the discussion to see if you agree with our review and forecasts.

New episodes to launch on January 9th, 2025.

Please like, Share, and Subsribe!

Vandross Idiake - Season 2, Episodes 2-6

Jay Goninen - Season 2, Episodes 7-10

Brian Weavel - Seson 2 Episodes 15-18

Doug Reitz - Season 2, Episode 35

[00:00:12.15] - Alice

Hello. Welcome to Books in the Biz, a podcast that looks at both the financial and operational sides of success. Please welcome our hosts, Dan Paulson and Richard Veltre. Dan is the CEO of Envision Development International, and he works with leaders to increase sales sales and profits through great cultures with solid operations. Rich is CEO of the Veltre Group and a financial strategist working with companies to manage their money more effectively.

[00:00:43.11] - Dan Paulson

Hello and welcome to the last episode of Books and the Biz for 2024. Rich, how are you doing?

[00:00:49.13] - Rich Veltre

I'm doing well. How about you, Dan?

[00:00:51.15] - Dan Paulson

Can't complain, other than it's snowing outside. I guess then I can't complain because I- Keep it by you. It's coming your way, Well, you'll get in the next couple of days.

[00:01:02.16] - Rich Veltre

Yeah, so I heard.

[00:01:04.12] - Dan Paulson

Anyway, here we are at the end of the year. And I thought, since this is going to be our last one, we're going to take the next two weeks off for holiday purposes, also falling on a holiday. I don't think too many people are going to be watching anyway. So I wanted to actually talk about some of the interviews we've had or maybe some of the previous discussions we had. So I've actually taken some snippets of some of our previous interviews Thanks to all who participated. However, I didn't put all of them on here just because time and everything else, and we do need to talk about something, don't we? I guess not.

[00:01:45.15] - Rich Veltre

I guess not.

[00:01:48.26] - Dan Paulson

So Rich, you don't even know who I picked from from our previous interviews.

[00:01:53.25] - Rich Veltre

No, I feel like I'm on a game show.

[00:01:55.16] - Dan Paulson

You're on a game show. Yes, you are. So I tried to go through and find people that either... One industry, we've had some people on, I think three or four people in construction, picked one there. We had one person who did blockchain, and that was also our first interview. We had pizza, which I know is your favorite, so I picked that one. And then who else did I pick? Well, you did pizza, so I did cars. Those were the four people I picked. So if you can guess who they are. First one here, I actually uploaded little snippets of our previous interview, so we'll let them play and then chime in on our thoughts and maybe some of our predictions on how that's going to play out in the year 2025. But let's start in the beginning. So our first one was with Vandros Hediaki. That's his last name, Vandros Hediaki. And he talked a lot about Bitcoin and blockchain. And we were asking at the time, well, what does all this stuff mean to us? I think there was one really good example beyond the use as currency that I thought was pretty good.

[00:03:09.05] - Dan Paulson

So here we go.

[00:03:12.11] - Vandross Idiake

Because I'm building a startup me and my team, we've already basically built out everything. Right now, we're looking for funding, and we're leveraging the blockchain in the logistics industry for documentation and storage. So in the logistics industry, you have the issue of when you go to customs and you're trying to sell whatever it is you're trying to sell or trying to ship it to the end destination. The problem is a lot of times there's a lot of paperwork and documentation maybe that's missing. Some of it ends up getting forged. People take a percentage of whatever it is that you have, and they sell it back in the black market, depending on what the item is. And also when it's staying for too long and they're trying to get the documentation sorted, you need to then pay extra fees. And so what we've done is created a solution where you can encrypt all your documents in an in-house solution, one-stop shop, encrypt it on chain. So you can check it on chain that your documents are encrypted, and everyone can all look uniformically at one in-house solution to see all your documents in one solution. And so it streamlines the process for businesses.

[00:04:21.24] - Vandross Idiake

And that's another way in which the blockchain can be leveraged to as well is the encryption aspect, right? So where your digital IDs, identifiers, and everything can't be corrupted. People can't forge the documents. And so that's another way in which blockchain can help society.

[00:04:45.25] - Dan Paulson

So that was Vandros talking about a project that he had going on. We should really get him back on and find out how that's going since he got that started up. I think this is an example of how technology is changing and maybe new opportunities. Because I don't think either one of us at the time thought about blockchain in that way. I think we've all heard stories about how it could help, but from practical purposes, neither. I'm not that versed in it. I don't think you are either, unless you have studied up on it a lot in the last year or so. But I guess, what's your thoughts? What are you seeing even maybe from the finance or accounting side?

[00:05:27.07] - Rich Veltre

I would tell you that I thought it would be still more of a conversation starter at this point in 2024, and I don't think that it is. I expect it's going to come back, though. I just don't know what. I think a lot of times what my problem, I think, is these new ideas come out, and they're super ideas, but they are not realistic in the time frame for implementation. And I think that blockchain is not going away. And I think that blockchain will continue to expand and come back to the forefront. But right now, I would say, I've noticed that it just is not in the forefront of every conversation, where if this was really being implemented at a high speed, we'd be talking about it, just like electric vehicles.

[00:06:28.01] - Dan Paulson

What do you think to I have an idea of what might have taken over the conversation of blockchain, but what do you think did it? I don't really know. Are we getting too far in front of our skis for it?

[00:06:44.23] - Rich Veltre

I think that's a big piece of it, because I think you have a lot of people that have to be, number one, educated and the trust factor has to come along. And I think that's the one thing that stops some of these things from going, because people believe that It can't possibly be so encrypted that nobody can hack it. And so that trust factor has to be beaten. And until that's beaten, I think it will always be a questionable thing, and that will slow its growth.

[00:07:14.16] - Dan Paulson

I think it can be hacked. I think eventually anything can be hacked, because if we create it, that means somebody else can figure out what created that process and decipher it. So I don't think we're ever going to get away from that. But at the same point, we pass cash online. We do all this stuff that is far more risky and far less protected. So it's interesting that I think we just struggle with the idea of it. I mean, that's my thing. Vandros was very well-educated in it. He's obviously done a lot to get himself up to speed on it. And I think for you and I who are used to still passing paper money around, which my daughter that thinks is insane, or writing a check, God forbid, you write a check for anything. What? A check? What's a check? What's a check? Exactly. That's exactly what the grocery store says every time I show up every week, and they have to, how do you file this again? But it's interesting to me that, how are we going to use this and what's going to be the deal breaker that's going to get it into mainstream?

[00:08:26.28] - Dan Paulson

I also am curious if Because conversation really changed from things like Bitcoin and blockchain and whatnot to more AI. And I would say if we looked at 2024, what was the big discussion? It was around artificial intelligence and how that's going to eliminate all our jobs, which is not. Should have almost taken some of David Turner's information putting on here, too. But due to lack of space, I picked one versus the other. But I think with what we've been talking with AI that seems to be in the forefront of discussion, and maybe because it's more usable to the general public. There's ChatGPT, there's other forms of AI now. Google, when you do a Google search, it now uses AI to improve that search. Microsoft, Office, Apple, all the software is now incorporating it into your daily routine more so than say, blockchain would be. So I think AI jumped ahead of the line because they made it more accessible to the common user.

[00:09:35.20] - Rich Veltre

I can agree with that. That makes total sense to me.

[00:09:39.12] - Dan Paulson

Good. It makes sense for once. Rarely happens. Let's go on to our next interview. This guy, I think you like. You liked him before. He was even our first live interview in Expo. And who doesn't love pizza, right? That's it. So Brian Weeville came on and he talked to us a lot his experience in the restaurant industry, but also got a lot into branding and customer service. And so I just took a quick snippet on that. Let's see if that loads quicker than the last one did.

[00:10:10.11] - Brian Weavel

To me, it's differentiating your product. The place we went to Pomodora's was a New York style pizza. It's a different style than the place that's going next door, which is Capri, which is the traditional Rockford style pizza, which is amazing pizza, too. Then I think there was a fast food type of pizza place a little farther down, which that's the national chain. You need to differentiate what makes you better, what makes you different. You talk about advertising, you talk about places need to say to let people know this is why I'm different. You can't just say, I make a New York style pizza. You got to say, well, we use the freshest ingredients. We use what makes you different than everybody else. Because when I say to you guys, I You got great pizza, you're like, Yeah, you got great pizza. But what makes me great? Dan saw four pizza places in the same corner last week. What makes you better than them? What's making me and Richard go to Pomadoras instead of Capri's or vice versa. You got to differentiate. You got to make sure people know the quality ingredients that you're using. If you're not using quality ingredients, time to get there.

[00:11:31.06] - Dan Paulson

There again, I think a tremendous gold nugget from a pizza dude. Pizza dude.

[00:11:37.23] - Rich Veltre

He started talking about pizza. Did you see my head go like that?

[00:11:41.16] - Dan Paulson

Ears perched up.

[00:11:42.20] - Rich Veltre

It's like a puppy dog.

[00:11:43.24] - Dan Paulson

Hey, send me a slice. I guess I know what you're having for dinner tonight.

[00:11:47.11] - Rich Veltre

That's too funny.

[00:11:51.15] - Dan Paulson

But I think pizza is a great example because as we were talking about back in that episode, here we are in a small town, and there's four pizza locations. Literally, you can walk to each one of them. And that's how close they were together. And for what I understood, well, one was being built at the time, so the other three were up and running. They were all doing their own thing, and they all seem to work. So how does that impact maybe how we need to look at 2025 with what we're doing or what other businesses are doing?

[00:12:28.22] - Rich Veltre

Well, I I think it, Brian's point was very well taken, that you really do have to differentiate yourself. You have to show yourself being different from the other people, because if you come to a corner and there's three pizza places, which one do you pick? I mean, obviously, you could pick one. If you don't like it, you try the other one the next time. But if you already know something about it, it can help you lead towards which one you start with. I think that with costs increased, with interest rates increased, with any other business challenges that you can add in there, we can talk staffing again, right? You add all of that into what to look forward to in 2025. These are the things that I think lead to, hey, are you differentiated? Have you figured this out? What's your plan? Look at those challenges and don't cower away from them. Challenge them. Say, I can beat that challenge because here's how I'm going to do it. And everybody will have a different answer. But I think that's a really, really common goal for 2025. Set your challenges out and figure out how you're going to beat them.

[00:13:41.11] - Dan Paulson

Yeah, because there's going to be a lot of competition. There always is. I don't see competition getting any less. I think if anything is going to ramp up even more. I would also say, depending upon where you're at, it could be a bigger impact on you than other places. For example, if we look at the housing market here in the Midwest, it's going pretty strong. I'm pretty sure up by you, it might be as well. But I know there's some other states that maybe due to regulations or due to costs, housing is backing off, or real estate is backing off a little bit right now. Same could be said about agriculture. Same could be said about manufacturing. We all go through these ebbs and flows. And really, when you need to look at amping up your game is when you're starting to see the market dip down like that, because as the market drops, there's still the same number of competitors, and there's just now fewer people competing for that product or looking to buy that product. And I think that's some of what we're going to run into in 2025. And we're going to touch base on a little bit of what our predictions for 25 is in a little bit here.

[00:14:55.11] - Dan Paulson

But to me, there's probably going to be a lot more competition ramping up, combined with maybe some more business optimism, which is then going to lead to more people trying to win more business. So that's one way we got to look at it. The next one, so you got pizza, I got cars. Jay Godinen from Wrenchway, he came in. He talked a little bit about the car market. And it's funny that you brought up EVs earlier because that's the snippet I got. So here we go. How about how's EVs affecting this? Because now you're taking a gas motor and you're replacing it with electric. How about how's EVs affecting this? Because now you're taking a gas motor and you're replacing it with electric motor and a battery. How is that going to change the industry?

[00:15:46.12] - Jay Goninen

It's definitely going to have an impact. It's still, if you look at EV adoption rates and you take California out of the mix, it's still a slow roll for EV adoption. You are seeing more Teslas and more Rivians on the road, but it's going to take some time to get to where it's fully EV. I still think the government's standards for that are very, very ambitious, especially given that we can't support the grid that we have right now.

[00:16:12.17] - Dan Paulson

That's a longer discussion.

[00:16:15.08] - Jay Goninen

But the fact of the matter is it is changing, right? And we are seeing a shift, with the exception, if anybody ever listens Toyota, their CEO has such a great take on this. They're all in on hybrid. They're not in on EV at all. They're basically saying, we're not going to do EV, we're sticking with hybrid. And I actually think it's a more sustainable model moving forward. But the EVs that are out there, one, if you've ever driven one, if anybody's ever driven a Tesla, a blast to drive. It's a different experience because it's very quiet, and you hear that weird humming, but they are super fast, a lot of fun to drive, and the technology behind them is insane. I think the new Ford Lightning has over 200 million lines of code, I heard. So it is just it's a different type of repair. They still need to be fixed. Now, what you'll see is it's not so much maintenance items as it is repair items. So the repair Repair, a general repair order, if you go to a shop, you could expect to say on average, and this isn't across the country, this is just maybe in a specific area.

[00:17:23.09] - Jay Goninen

But say the average repair order when you go to take your car in is $400. In EV, the average repair order is $1,800. So it's, again, when we talk about the theme of it getting more expensive to get your vehicle fixed, you're going to see that with the EV side. It's not going to be as much maintenance items as it is true breakdown diagnostic items. And there are some really cool things that you can do. You can diagnose over the airwaves. Tesla is doing that as we speak. But the fact of the matter is, you still have to fix it, and the batteries will still have to be changed. And there's all kinds of different things that can go wrong with them. And being able to understand that when you're buying an EV, that it's just a different experience altogether. And same with the shop end. They have to understand that this is just a different world, and might move to more of that lab type of shop feel and look. But the fact of the matter is, there's just always going to be work at some capacity.

[00:18:30.10] - Dan Paulson

So, yeah, we've got the EVs coming along, but I don't think they're going to expand as much as we thought, and given maybe some changes we're going to see regulatory, it might actually slow down the process of EV adoption because I'm having a feeling there might be some incentives that go away this next year, but we'll see what happens there.

[00:18:57.04] - Rich Veltre

Yeah, I think so. I think one of One of the things he said that I really keep hearing is that the government's rollout was a heck of a lot more aggressive and not necessarily sustainable. And there is a big question of where's the hiccup? Right now, I think they're still in that early stage where it doesn't cause any issues. But there are a lot of issues with it that have to be figured out as you keep going. We were talking about it recently about no resale market on the cars, the repairs that eventually down the road. What do you do with the batteries when they have to be disposed? So these are all answers that I don't think too many people have the answers to, if anyone. And so it's going to be a constant discussion.

[00:19:55.16] - Dan Paulson

I still see for as much technology as EVs have in them, the biggest challenge is usability for people that drive more than, say, 100 miles a day. If you live in a city, if you have your own house, you drive to and from work, which might be, again, 15 to 20 miles each way. It's probably a far better investment because for the most part, you're not going to wear that vehicle out or the cost, at least at this point with electricity, depending, again, on where you could make it more affordable than, say, a traditional gas-powered car. I, however, look at how my driving habits are or what I have to do. And if I bought an EV, I would really struggle to be able to get around to half the appointments I go to. If I leave my house and say, go to Milwaukee, for example, that's roughly 100 miles one way. You got to cover 200 miles. Well, you're not always going to have a place to charge up when you get to where you're going. So that can be a problem. I was actually watching a video a week ago on that new VW microbus EV that came out, and the guy got it, and he was going to take it from somewhere in Ohio to O'Hare Airport in Chicago.

[00:21:19.06] - Dan Paulson

So a one-way trip. It was a three-day ordeal to get there. In the beginning, he couldn't find a charger. He got a hotel that said they had charging stations, but they were all Tesla charging stations, so that EV didn't work. They got to another charger, and it wouldn't charge. It wouldn't take their card or anything. They were broken. They got to another one. They finally could charge, but after an hour, they could only charge up to 80 %. You can go to a gas station right now and fill up in five minutes and go from zero to full. And for most cars, you've got a range of probably 400 miles once you do that. So you've got that longer travel time. And I think until they fix that problem, it's really going to be hard for most people to adapt to EVs, because I think the anxiety it creates that you could be sitting in traffic on a cold winter day in Wisconsin, for example. We've already seen some of our electric busses up here when it got really cold a couple of weeks ago, they stop, they're done. You're charged limits go down significantly in really cold weather.

[00:22:24.08] - Dan Paulson

So you lose about 40 % of your range in some cases. And until we change I don't really see where EVs are going to be the end all be all. I think it's going to still be a struggle. It'll be great for certain markets. Definitely, if you want an EV, go out and get an EV. And if you don't, you shouldn't have to. That's my opinion. All right, let's take it to our last video interview here. So we talk a lot about construction. We've talked a fair amount about it in the past. Well, this is our first book author, too. So Doug Reitz joined us, and he was talking about some of the thoughts that were going in his book. And I thought this one was pretty good. So I'll share this.

[00:23:06.29] - Doug Reitz

So since we last spoke, we have doubled our volume, and we have almost doubled our staff from what it used to be when we talk last. It's been a great ride. And I can't stress enough now that I've figured out how to write a book for the first time, for any of the CEOs and the leaders that are out there, start writing things down. The clarity comes so much quicker, because you actually, you just can't ramble and talk about it. You have to be specific about what you really believe. And that was really the genesis of the book, just trying to figure out what I wanted for a culture for the company. And that came out for us to be a builder in everything you do every day. And being a builder in everything you do every day is not just about construction. It's about building consensus and building Building consensus, building faith, building trust, those types of things, because that's what really makes the company culture what it is. So that was the genesis of the book.

[00:24:13.11] - Dan Paulson

So his book, Build, which I got to find out if it launched yet. I think he was trying to get launched in September, but I know he's been busy on projects right now. So sometimes work takes place over writing books. Believe me, I know that one for a fact. What's your thoughts on that? He talked a lot about building, a lot about writing it down. His big focus was really, get focused. That's what I got from him. Get focused and take action. So if you're not If there's a problem, figure out what your problem is, get to that baseline and then build. Figure out how to build your way out of it.

[00:24:54.09] - Rich Veltre

I think I loved that conversation. And I think that writing things down is it's an enormous point. I think I heard someone say, and I'm sure this is an old thing that just somewhere along the lines stuck in my brain. But plans that aren't written down are just dreams. If you take that advice, and I take it into the financial side, write down what you're trying to actually accomplish, and then see whether you get there. And if you don't, why not? So it's an accountability feature. It tells you whether or not you hit the goal that you wanted. It tells you whether or not you had the right plan. That way, you can adjust the next year's plan. So I think it really resonated with me when he said that.

[00:25:45.26] - Dan Paulson

Well, and a key part of what he said was, if you don't write it down, you can just ramble on about anything, and it doesn't stick. And I believe we're all guilty of that. I know myself, and I do this stuff for a living. I am guilty of big thoughts, but you forget to write them down or you don't write them down. And then minutes, hours go by even, and you're like, well, what was I thinking of there? It was such a good idea a moment to go, what is it now? And the more complex your business gets, the more it grows, the more people you have involved. If you're not writing things down and working towards a common goal, it's very hard to hit that target or expect the level of success that you want. And that's where what I see a lot of companies struggle with is they have grand ideas, especially in that small to medium size range, because then they're more guilty of this, I think than other ones are, where we don't write it down. We just focus on the day to day. We keep trudging through, and we hope there's going to be that milestone or that breakthrough.

[00:26:54.10] - Dan Paulson

But there isn't, because, again, we're only focused on what's in front of us at that time. And as you and I know, what's happening today changes two weeks from now, changes two months from now, changes two years from now. So you really do have to put forth your planning, build a culture around it that supports that growth, and ultimately write down so that you can go back to it and say, this is our target. This is where we're going. This is how we're going to get there. I follow the same pattern as you.

[00:27:26.11] - Rich Veltre

I'm always doing this for my clients. By the time it comes down to doing for myself, I'm tired.

[00:27:33.20] - Dan Paulson

The plumber has leaky pipes, right? The cobbler has kids have no shoes. There you go.

[00:27:39.16] - Rich Veltre

There you go. It's exactly right.

[00:27:41.02] - Dan Paulson

So the common phrase they use.

[00:27:43.17] - Rich Veltre

So I told myself for 25, which I don't want to jump ahead, but I've told myself, I have to write it down. I have to do the plan. Don't work that Saturday for somebody else. Do that Saturday for yourself and make sure you're doing and taking the advice that you're giving. Yeah.

[00:27:59.22] - Dan Paulson

They have the saying, Pay yourself first. Well, maybe part of it should be plan yourself first. Yeah. Very good. Hey, so that's it for what I had brought up as far as recordings. Again, we had many people that jumped on over the course of the year. It was wonderful to have all the guests. So if you weren't featured, I apologize. We'll get you back on sometime in the near future, because again, I can't think of a bad conversation we had with anybody And everyone brought their unique insights. So if you haven't listened to all the interviews, I recommend you go back. You'll have a couple of weeks to catch up. Binge watch, if you can, if you dare. I know we're as exciting as some Netflix series, but take a look at it Let's see what we got. So let's look forward. So we're now at the end of 2024. We're looking forward to 2025. A lot has happened in the last several weeks, let alone several months. I just thought it'd be interesting to talk about what we see as projections for how 2025 is going to go. Is there a subject that you would like to start with first?

[00:29:09.03] - Rich Veltre

I think that my main thought is, get perception out of your way. Don't think that... I go back to November. Everybody's like, wait till after the election. And I think I said this 100,000 times. Dan's probably very, very mad at me that I brought it up again on our recap show. But get the perception out of your way. You are a small business. We only work with generally smaller-sized businesses that are looking to grow. These are not people who are affected on a daily basis by a political decision or by an action of the government. By the time anything comes down to you, it's been filtered and and tested and pushed, and very high level people have come up with ways around it already. So by the time it gets to us, it's no longer a thought. But we've probably worried about it for months. This is coming. It's going to affect me tomorrow. No, most likely, get that stuff out of your head and go by the plan that you have for next year. If you can't find customers or if customers are shorter, they're not hitting you the way they are, follow that plan and say, I need more customers so we can react to that.

[00:30:34.05] - Rich Veltre

That has nothing to do with government, has nothing to do with the election, has nothing to do with four years from now when there's another election. So take the perception of all of these issues and get them out of your head and just look at the business. What is the business's issues? Not the government's issues or anything else. And look at 2025 as anything that they're going to do and make any changes, it's going to take time to get to you. Get busy and get ahead of it. So that's my thought.

[00:31:02.03] - Dan Paulson

That's a great thought. And I will add on to that, make the investment. I think many businesses are scared to make an investment, whether it be in people, whether it be in planning, whether it be in operational improvements, equipment improvements, hiring, whatever it might be, just because they're fearing that, well, that's an added cost. You're not looking at the added benefit. Automation, for example, there might It's going to be a significant upfront cost to do that, but then look at what you have after that. Is it going to lead to faster production? Is it going to lead to higher quality? Is it going to lead to you being able to produce more in the same amount of time with fewer people? All those things fact that and create an ROI. So really start looking at what the ROI is of the investment you're looking at making instead of looking at it as a cost. And I know it gets tougher for smaller businesses where budgets are already probably a little tighter, resources are a little tighter. But the businesses that exceed are the ones that really take that step or take that risk and make the investment.

[00:32:10.13] - Dan Paulson

And pretty soon they're gaining ground where you're still sitting where you're at. So whatever it might be, figure out how to make that investment, make it go. To tap into maybe some of what you are starting with, with the politics side of things. We're not going to get a lot in politics here, but I think to add on to what you were saying, where you can't wait for something to happen. What's going on recently while we're recording this? Well, there's this huge bill they're trying to push through at the end of the year, right before Christmas, which they always do. And they add on a bunch of crap, and both sides are guilty of doing this. So it's not a Democrat thing versus a Republican thing. It's like, well, we only need this much, but then we're going to add on all this other fluff that we want that benefits us or benefits our constituents, and we're going to push that through, and nobody's going to look at it till next year when it's too late. So we got to realize that government's not going to change as much as we'd like to and as much as I think the election was voting around changing government, I think it's going to be a slow process.

[00:33:18.12] - Dan Paulson

And I will be very surprised if in 2025, a lot of the promises that were made are promises kept. So back to your point, you have to charge ahead and do what you're going to do anyway, and not necessarily worry about what potentially somebody else is going to do to make that easier or harder on you. So that's my last bit on the politics side of things. But I would also say, at the same point, I'm hearing a lot more optimism from businesses. And I don't know what it's like out in New Jersey, but in the businesses I've talked with here, they thought 2024 wasn't so bad. They're really expecting 2025 to be gangbusters. And that's in construction and manufacturing from what I'm hearing. How about you?

[00:34:04.08] - Rich Veltre

I'm hearing the same thing. I'm hearing that in the businesses that I've talked to, there's a lot of optimism for 2025. There's a lot of expectations about interest rate changes, about payroll changes. There's still some question marks over effect of, well, effect of just about anything. But that sounds a little stupid. But just recently, all the return to work orders coming out, people saying, return to work or not have a job. And everybody's worried like, what does that have an effect of? To me, it says there's a lot more availability of people. So potentially, that's the negative that everybody's reading into. And I'm looking at it as a positive. That's going to give you a lot of people who are looking and anxious to do work. So Gang Buster sounds like something that you can fund because you can get some people to get some of those projects done that you want to get done. So I would predict some gangbusters based on what I'm hearing.

[00:35:10.21] - Dan Paulson

That leads to some of what we've been working on the last couple of months. I think the fractional market is going to expand. So while these companies, I believe, have been using the show up for work or you don't have a job here anymore as an easy way to get out of doing a mass layoff, that's going to open up an opportunity for maybe some talent that didn't want to move back to the home office or the city the home office was in anyway. And they're looking for ways to participate in the marketplace from their own house. And what that means to me is you're able to take people who have a lot of experience and apply it in the number of hours that is needed in your business. Instead of hiring full-time, maybe you're hiring at to 20 hours a week. This saves you on benefits because now you're not paying that person benefits. Typically, they're a 1099 employee, not a W2. So there's, to me, going to be a lot of advantages as some of these positions free up and some of these talented workers come into the marketplace, but maybe they don't want to perform work in the traditional method.

[00:36:22.10] - Dan Paulson

And if you get the good ones, they're going to be highly motivated. They're going to be very efficient in what they and they're going to get crap done in a lot less time than, say, somebody who knows they're going to get 40 hours a week, no matter what, knows they've got a set salary, and know they have all these benefits to work from. So I believe that is going to be a positive in many ways, where we're going to see a fraction of the workforce, not to tie into that analogy, but there's going to be a certain subset of people that don't want to go back to the work a day world anymore. And this is going to be their opportunity to shine with the skills sets that they have.

[00:37:02.26] - Rich Veltre

Absolutely.

[00:37:06.05] - Dan Paulson

What other thoughts or prognostications do you have for the new year?

[00:37:13.10] - Rich Veltre

Well, I'm highly hopeful that interest rates will continue to come down.

[00:37:20.21] - Dan Paulson

Where do you think they'll hit by the end of the year?

[00:37:23.16] - Rich Veltre

By the end of 2025? I I don't know. I think it really depends. I hate to say it.

[00:37:33.21] - Dan Paulson

Do you think the feds are going to get down to 2 %? Or they're about what, three right now, aren't they?

[00:37:39.08] - Rich Veltre

I thought I saw with this latest change, it was four.

[00:37:42.25] - Dan Paulson

Four? Okay.

[00:37:43.16] - Rich Veltre

I don't know if I... Who knows what I was watching.

[00:37:46.01] - Dan Paulson

I'll take your word for it. You're the finance guy. I don't think we're going to get back to two.

[00:37:51.23] - Rich Veltre

I think that's way too fast. I think I'd love to see it go back down to three. But clearly, I don't want to drive everything back into another inflationary period and start that going the other way because then it just makes us look like we're just flip flopping all over the place and we don't actually know what we're doing. But I still hope that they come down a bit more I think it opens up housing market. I think it opens up a lot of things that have been constricted. I think just watching people's credit card debt go up, I would love to actually see that get taken care of. And the the fact that the interest rates have jumped so high and credit card rates have gone so high. It's putting a lot of people back on that credit card trail. That's just a danger and a half. Credit cards have their place, but they get a little outrageous. And when you start looking at credit cards at 20, 30 %, and that's the normal rate, then that's a little crazy to be borrowing at that level. So I'm hoping that just the variable rate cards come down along with the federal rate.

[00:39:01.11] - Dan Paulson

I would agree with that. I hope we do see a drop. It'd be nice to get to another full half point this next year, at least. I think that's a little bit more realistic of what we could see over the next 12 months Of course, a lot of things have to settle in as well, too. We don't know what the next... Well, we have an idea what the next four years are going to bring, but we've also heard some differences on some changes that might be coming through, and that could affect inflation, could affect cost of money, the whole bit. So we'll have to see what happens there. But I'd like to see at least another half point come down. As far as inflation goes, I'm hoping inflation gets in check. If some of the deregulation they are talking about that will help pretty much all businesses relate to energy. If they can make energy less expensive, that pays dividends across the board to all of us, from the cost of our groceries, to the cost of the goods we buy, to everything that we do, because cheap energy allows us to do more and allows us to afford more.

[00:40:06.24] - Dan Paulson

So it would be nice to see that happen. I don't believe they're going to be able to make these massive regulation cuts, though some of them would be really, really nice. I don't think that's going to happen completely. But if they can at least get the energy stuff in line, I definitely would like to see a lot lower electric bills coming this time next year. That's for sure.

[00:40:28.10] - Rich Veltre

Yeah, I think Costs in check helps everywhere. Yeah. I mean, and especially for people like we've been talking about. If you're talking about small mid-sized businesses, these costs are far reaching. So If there's a way that we can see that come down. And I think interest rates are a big piece of it, right? People raise it. People across the board are raising their rates to cover the cost that they have to cover. So you then, in turn, get the increased payment that you have to give to them. So that's where I see it just being a never-ending cycle of adding costs until somebody gets hurt.

[00:41:10.03] - Dan Paulson

Yeah, exactly. So industries, how about that? I'll make some projections on industries that are going to struggle in this. And industries I think will do well. I think the automotive industry is going to struggle. I think there's been too hard of a push on EV. Costs are too high, which has them pushed regular vehicles costs way up. What I last read, it was about average costs of a new vehicle is about $48,000. That's a lot for a family to deal with, especially when they might have two or three vehicles in their household So something's got to change there. And there are several automotive companies that are struggling from Volkswagen to, I know, Stellantis, which makes Dodge and Ram and Jeep and all those things. So I think automotive is really going to hurt this year. I would say manufacturing could be the biggest surprise of the year. And why I'm thinking that is, let's pretend for a moment that some of these tariffs go through. It is going to push localized demand for products, for manufacturer products up. Now the question is, will we have the materials for those? So that's the caveat that I would say to that.

[00:42:29.13] - Dan Paulson

I think we're to see more reshoring or more businesses trying to do the manufacturing here in the US. I think long term, that helps us. We're never going to become the manufacturing hub we were 50, 60 years ago. But if we can at least get to the point where we can support ourselves, at least with the manufacturing that we do here. So should something happen again where we can't get goods from another country or whatever might happen, we can at least produce those goods here, which then helps with some of the supply chain issues we've dealt with in the past. What's your thoughts?

[00:43:03.03] - Rich Veltre

No, I definitely have high hopes for the manufacturing section. For that sector, I would really like to see expansion. I mean, I realize my view tends to be a little bit conservative because I put a time frame on it that tells me it can't possibly happen in 2025, maybe by 26, 27. But But plans have to be in place now for that to happen. So for people that have been ahead of me and I've already started those plans that are in secret still, so I can't see them, good for you. I support you 100 %. I truly believe that a key for us long term is having manufacturing back in the United States. And I do think that there will be a lot of surprises for that. I do think I think you're going to get a lot of surprises for who's behind it, who's actually going to back it. I think there are people maybe you don't even think are interested. But the fact that the costs are going up overseas stops them from having the analysis that does so much better just to do it overseas. Now, they're going to change their tune.

[00:44:20.29] - Rich Veltre

It's going to be like CNN anchors on an election. They've tipped their hand on who they're rooting for. But when it changes, they all of a sudden start talking out of the right side of their mouth or the other side of their mouth. So I think it's going to be the same way that I think they're going to realize these costs are going to push them into being willing to participate and back manufacturing in the United States. And I'm going to be very happy.

[00:44:47.17] - Dan Paulson

I completely support that because the stronger we are in manufacturing, the better off will be long term. Now, the trick is keeping manufacturing viable because we all know business. Business goes where the money is. And if it becomes cheaper to produce those goods somewhere else, whether it's across the sea or whether it's across the border, that will definitely happen. So we have to look at creating a robust manufacturing economy here, though it may never be at the strength it was in the past, it still needs to be good. So one last thought as we wrap up. Buying and selling of businesses. So ties back in. We've talked about employment, we've talked about culture, we've talked about growth, we've talked about recession. What about the buying and selling of businesses? Are we going to see 2025 be a year of boom, where maybe a lot of companies, where their owners are getting up in years start thinking about selling? Or do you think there's going to be a hold maybe due to prosperity of that business or maybe due to other factors that could get in the way?

[00:45:57.28] - Rich Veltre

My gut on this one is that there should be, and I'll say that clearly, should be a... Over the next few years, there should be an increase in the number of small and mid-sized businesses that get bought buy a new owner. Someone should be buying and transferring assets. There's an expectation of a transfer of assets over the next few years as boomers retire, as people step away, as the economy allows people to take a look and say, I'd really like to try the entrepreneurial thing. So I think there is plenty of opportunity. I think this is another reason why I'm really pushing for interest rates to come down. Because I think there are an awful lot of people who are interested in being the buyer that right now are being sidelined. And I really think that they're sidelined by the fact that deals don't work anymore because most of buyers are trusting the fact that if I want to leave a corporate job and go out into ETA or entrepreneur through acquisition, they want to actually go and buy a business, they don't always have a lot of upfront cash to be able to put in.

[00:47:15.26] - Rich Veltre

So they rely on small business administration loans to finance the acquisition so they can get a small down payment down. Sba loans are up in the teens at this point. It's practically almost double what it used to be even 5, 10 years ago. So I'm not comfortable saying this is going to happen. It should happen, though, because if interest rates are on the right trend of coming back down, then people are going to be there and going to be available to pick up the assets as they become selling points, as they become a chopping block, here's my asset.

[00:47:55.11] - Dan Paulson

Do you think there's any way that could be another opportunity for... If the SBA can't support it because the interest is too high. Is there an opportunity maybe for other investors? I'm almost thinking like the crowd-sourcing or microloan situation that could come in and potentially provide a similar service at a lesser cost, or is that too complicated for what we're talking about here?

[00:48:23.11] - Rich Veltre

It's complicated, but very smart people should put their heads around it because I think it's a very good I think that if you got a few people who put something together and could come up with the funding as a group and realize that, hey, staying slightly under the market gets you a lot more opportunity, I think that's a great idea. So is it possible to put that together? Sure it is. But I think people have to... I lost you.

[00:48:58.23] - Dan Paulson

No, I'm still here.

[00:49:01.14] - Rich Veltre

Oh, there you are.

[00:49:05.29] - Dan Paulson

Here I am. I was going to say, I can hear you.

[00:49:08.24] - Rich Veltre

It's all good. No, I think there's definitely an opportunity for some people to put that together and go around not using the SBA. I am a fan of the SBA for certain reasons. I'm not a fan for other reasons. So feel free to give me a call and I'll tell you all about it. Maybe that's a discussion for another day. It is a discussion for another day. So I really do think if you can get a hold of some people who are sitting on some cash that they're just leaving it in the bank and making four or five %, and you can give them eight % or something like that. It's better than an SBA rate. So I think there's opportunity there to get some people to take some of their excess cash and put it into something that's going to make them a little bit So you have the right deal. There's people who will listen.

[00:50:05.11] - Dan Paulson

Exactly. I think there's going to be plenty of opportunities out there for companies. There's a lot of good companies out there that I think owners are starting to think about when to sell. Hopefully, they're planning ahead, writing it down, and giving themselves enough runway to actually get out from underneath the business without either discounting heavily or putting themselves in a situation where it just isn't going to sell. Well, that's all good conversation. I think we can wrap up there. But Rich, I appreciate your thoughts and your insights, and we'll be planning our own updates to Books in the Biz for the coming year. It will continue to be sponsored by XCXO. So that's our new sponsor for this. So Rich, how do they get a hold of you?

[00:50:52.24] - Rich Veltre

Send me an email at rich@xcxo.net.

[00:50:55.29] - Dan Paulson

And you can do almost the same for me, except as dan@xcxo.net. You will hear us talk a lot about we're looking for people to fill our bench. So if you're somebody who is within 20-ish years of experience and have had, I would say middle to upper management, at least, but ideally sea-level experience, we'd love to talk to you. If you are a company that is looking for help and doesn't want to pay the full freight of somebody who's going to be making a pretty good six-figure salary plus benefits plus incentives, but still want to tap into that talent, we would love to talk to you as well, because I think we can help you out there. Rich, you have a great holiday and a happy New Year, and we will be back again in 2025.

[00:51:40.14] - Rich Veltre

Dan, same to you. Have a happy holiday.

[00:51:43.07] - Dan Paulson

All right. Take care. Take care.