A blog to showcase my opinions and thoughts. Various forms from Artist Profiles to Random Thoughts, as well as long, newspaper style opinion pieces. And everything in between.
Warren Buffett is an investor. In some views, the greatest of all time. That is all he does. He doesn't start companies or invent or make things or run big Fortune 500 companies. He either buys them or invests in them. Currently, while he is on record stating that he hates to keep his capital in just cash, he is awash in cash. He has upwards of 90 percent of his money just sitting in low return cash investments. He continues to sell what little he has invested. He gets it. He is certain about what is going on and has been for a couple of years at least. Investments, right now, are bad investments. He is someone who puts his capital to work. Right now, that isn't working, so he doesn't. There will come a time, an extreme bottom in the stock market, and some very desperate companies that need immediate capital, and he will swoop in then. He did exactly that in 2008. He is patient and very disciplined.
The stock market crash of 1929 and the ensuing main street crash is referred to as The Great Depression. The stock market and housing crash of 2008 and the fallout of that is referred to as The Great Recession. I will call what is happening now The Great Regression. A regression into foolish ideas, policies, threats and destruction for no good reason other than a crazy dictator who said he would do exactly what he is doing was able to get elected in spite of promising to do what he is doing now. It's a regression caused by a small faction of voters who are so desperate to get back what they never will have again that they were willing to elect a Hitler style dictator who promised them he could achieve that Golden age when there is zero chance that ever happens.
One only needs to look at how that worked out for Germany and Hitler. Nuff said.
Buffett is patient. America has panicked. One of the markets greatest beefs is not that there will be tariffs. They dont like tariffs, but they can deal with them. It's simple enough for them. They will just pass off the costs to the end consumer. When they do that, sales will go down, layoffs will happen, the tariffs will come off for good because those that put them there, namely Donald Trump in this case, will be long gone and out the door. Sanity will return at that point, but the scars of what he has done will last long beyond that. Real people will lose real money and real jobs. Real people, just as in 2008 will lose their houses and the ability to have their kids get a decent education. That will be the end result. Other countries will simply do what Canada and China have done. Tariffs on, threats continue, the tariffs back at America stay on. They will double down until you pull the game of chicken car off to the side. They aren't going to do anything but keep driving directly at you. It's clear Trump will not crash the car, as he has threatened to and then cried wolf already 3 times in less than 6 weeks.
Just today, he has threatened to double down again. Lets see how long it takes to walk that back again. But the biggest beef that the market has is the uncertainty. Tariffs on for Feb 4th?.Trump said there was nothing you can do about that to stop it. Then, they are delayed. Fix your border. Border fixed, tariffs are still threatened to go back on for March 4th? They haven't done enough. Big business and the market complain the next day, and then the border issues dont matter and the tariffs come off. Then it's another bullshit tariff reason, then the threat is ignored, so they come back off.
Today it's Aluminum and Steel to go into effect for March 12th. World wide. Nobody flinches. We all know America needs what they import on the metals. Trump can say what he wants. Alcoa and the rest of the big American metal companies cannot produce any more, and certainly even if they could it would take years to get that stream to come online. In the meantime, everything that is made these days needs high grade aluminum and steel that America does not have on its own. It's just a simple fact. And on and on it goes. Rinse, repeat. Rinse, retreat.
As I started writing this blog on Monday morning, the stock market opened way down. It's the third or fourth time in less than a week that has happened. It's a clear signal that the market has figured out Donald Trump. They are certain he will keep doing this for as long as he has the Presidential clout to do it. He just simply does not care that he is completely destroying his own country and hurting other countries and business people that want America and themselves to succeed. That is very certain at this point. There is a strong case to be made to deal with China in this way, and to bring jobs home. Just not the way he is doing it. It's dumb, and it's lazy. And it wont work. On top of that, he has completely surrounded himself with very determined loyalists who dont want to tell him what the last bunch did from 2016 to 2020. That is, stop doing this insane dumb shit. It's very harmful. So, everyday he hears from the Howard Lutnick's, the JD Vance's, the Peter Navarro's and the Scott Bessent's. They tell him to pile on the tariffs and threats. Donald Trump loves to have spineless people around him. He has succeeded this time in achieving that. And only that. When Mr. Trump quickly backtracks on the tariffs like he did last week, first with the Automakers, then with all the rest of it, the market doesnt even flinch now. In fact, after a small trading bump, they double down on the selling off. They already know. They are very certain that within hours, he will just start with more threats. Which is exactly what he did Friday morning after he ditched all the tariffs on Thursday. He has created virtual certainty for the markets and business that the only way to eventually reign him in is to threaten him back and punish him for his insanely foolish and reckless behavior. So, that is what they will keep doing. If he wants the market to lose 50 percent, or in other words, Great depression levels of pain, he can just keep talking. What he doesnt realize is that they can also make money betting against the market. They can hedge his bullshit rhetoric and get rich while the masses suffer horrific losses. In fact, almost all of them have already done that. They are going to win either way. That is also certain. So, keep talking Mr. Trump. The market is certain what works with you now. Why the market took so long to figure all that out is hard to make sense of. Mr. Trump has a very long history of doing things exactly this way for as long as I have known of him, which goes back 45 years now. He is not going to change. It's his way. For better or worse. Worse in this case. Until he is removed, this is the new certainty. Chaos reigns. That is certain. Here is what is also certain. That flock to American debt as a safe haven will be the next domino to fall. There is no safe haven when Donald Trump and his fellow cult members control the purse and piggy bank. There are lots of places to find safe haven debt purchasing and investing. I invest. I can simply buy the debt from other countries or businesses. Stable countries and sensible businesses. That is something no country wants. To have the world of investment view them as a very risky investment. It's how Latin countries like Brazil and Argentina end up defaulting on their debt and people lose confidence in them for decades after that. One of the main reasons that the stock market crashed so violently in 1929 was that there were no buyers when everyone was selling. That is something that feeds off itself. When you get to that point, it collapses very fast. We all know about runs on banks. What the average person does not understand, but real investors do, is that when there is a run on stocks it only takes a couple of days for everyone to sell and basically get wiped out. Personally, I have no money invested in any risky debt or stocks and haven't for a couple of years. This was obviously going to happen if someone like Trump got in. He did, and so, now it's certain if Congress and the Senate refuse to do the job they were elected to do, the market will just do it for them. In the meantime, Joe Average and his family in Oklahoma or Utah or Kentucky is going to take massive pain the longer this goes on. So will Canada and others in the short term. We are willing to take that. We are united. Americans, as is their history, are not. When the price of gas and eggs go up they will revolt. We wont. We will ride this out for as long as it takes. That is again another certainty. Trump has created absolute certainty. As long as he is in, the market is out. As long as he is in, business will not invest. They will conserve their capital, and wait until he is out. As long as Trump is in, jobs will keep disappearing. All of that is 100 percent certain. What I am not certain of is how long the American people are willing to stick with him. I was hoping by now they would revolt, but there is not enough of that. The clock is ticking and the market is tanking. There is very little margin left for them to get on this. Their futures are at stake. Go ahead. Put the steel and Aluminum tariffs on on Wednesday. We dare you. Keep making mistake after mistake. Keep shooting your mouth off, day after day, hour after hour. Keep digging a deeper and deeper hole. Take on the world on April 2nd and tariff everyone for no good reason other than a whim or crazy idea you have. I am certain that the more Mr. Trump does this, the faster the American people will turn on him. The market already has. Big business already has. It hasn't been enough. It's been a start, but it will not finish this. When real America, the people that actually work for a living do, then we can be certain this ends for good. Not a day before. A perfect example of all this is Tesla. At the rate that stock is falling, and sales are dropping of real product, it's not out of the realm of possibility that they will have to be bailed out by the American government or they will go bankrupt. In any case, there is going to be massive layoffs of real workers and people at Tesla. One only has to watch Elon Musk at work in the last month to see that is his way on a good day, not to mention when the blowback causes a financial collapse to his empire. That is another certainty. A harsh, stark, and terrible one for people that have been drinking his Kool Aid for more than a decade now. When you lose the certainty of a great reputation and honor, you create the reality of a complete lack of confidence. That is where we are as I write these words today. It's very easy to take back your words on a daily basis. It's much harder to regain the trust that you wont keep doing it over and over again. In my previous blog about a month ago, I laid out exactly how this is going to play out. Most of what I have said has already happened. It's a long blog, but you can read it here if you wish.
I'm going to begin this blog with a passage from a TV show I used to watch about 15 years ago. That show, Human Target, wasn't on that long (2 years I believe), and while it started with a fantastic pilot, highlighted by this clip in a very good first episode, it tailed off and only had small amounts of quality as it progressed. I actually didn't even watch any of Season 2. By the end of the first season, it had petered out badly. Its my contention, and that of many, that the show ended up going the wrong way because of interference from the network. The creative people were overruled by the non creative people. More about that later. Nevertheless, this -in my opinion of course-is one of the all time great scenes in TV history. That is a big claim and I will attempt to back that up. Mostly because of Jackie Earle Haley and how he plays Guerrero in this scene and others. Also, the structure and the dialogue in this scene are perfection. Anyway, on to the clip.
I gotta warn you guys. If this gets violent, I'm gonna fight back. You think you're gonna fight back? Allright, maybe fight back's a little misleading. I'll take the beating. Because that's all you two amateurs are cleared to do. Then one night soon, I'm gonna break into your houses and kill each of you in your sleep.
Why is this scene so important to this blog? Two reasons. First, this is how you deal with bullies. You stand up to them and let them know they are not bullying you at all. They thought they could, but you have explained to them that in every bullies life, there will come a time when they have met their match, and THIS IS THAT TIME. But secondly, and more importantly, it shows the strategy behind how you handle foes AND allies. The elements of BOTH surprise and preparation in combination. Planning and anticipation are everything.
Its important to pick your spots and that is also evident here. There is a time to do it, to show resistance, and a time to just let it be. Sometimes you have to just use words and make them understand that they should back off. Other times, you need to be ready to use violence and force and beat them down. It depends on them. Not you. In all cases, its always better to avoid violence. Sometimes though, you have to fight when you're a man. I will return to my comments of this clip at the end of the blog. In the Late Shift, which is the story of the battle to host The Tonight Show between Jay Leno and David Letterman when Johnny Carson retires, there is a pivotal scene where the NBC executives have to decide what to do about Helen Kushnick, who is Jay Leno's agent and now the Executive Producer of the show. She is wildly out of control, so what do they do about that? Do they fire her, or do they let her self destruct to the point that they are better off with that option? Either way, they know she has to go soon. They choose the self destruct option and as expected, she does exactly that. They won the battle because they were several moves ahead of the current situation. In the movie all of this is well documented and laid out. There is also the article below, although it hints that a lot of that is because Kushnick is both a woman and not an establishment player. It's correct to characterize her as both of those, but that isn't why she was terminated. She was bad at her new job and destructive to the entity. That is what got her fired in the end. Any man also would have been fired, and anybody period who showed the level of disrespect she did to everybody would have as well. In fact, she actually lasted longer than any man would have. NBC didn't want to look like they were beating up on a woman, so they let her beat up on herself instead. A man wouldn't have gotten that latitude. While Kushnick was a tough broad, she wasn't a smart cookie. She needed to be a smart cookie for this job.
Power can be a wicked narcotic and, to hear some of Hollywood`s principal power brokers tell it, Helen Kushnick was a junkie....If Kushnick erred, it was in believing that she could play by her own rules without resorting to the kowtowing or inner-sanctum shenanigans that often grease the wheels of show biz....”This is a tough town,” she said. ”But I`m a tough broad.”....Caught in a vicious drive-by public relations campaign by those to whom she would not curtsy, Kushnick`s just learned a hard lesson about that tough town.
It would have been easy to just fire Kushnick and think only about the small picture and/or only about the immediate results. But, NBC had a master plan. Keep their asset, Jay Leno, and remove his cancerous agent, Kushnick, who they made the mistake of giving too much power to so they could lock up her asset, Leno. They obviously didn't do their homework on her. They were not prepared for the next 3 chess moves after that. If they had been, they would have put clauses in the deal to protect themselves, if they knew what to expect out of Kushnick. They simply didn't do their due dillegence. But, they got prepared at that point with a plan. They righted the ship. Kathy Bates was nominated for an Emmy award for her performance of Kushnick in this movie, and she was excellent at conveying how toxic someone like this can be. How they will self destruct when they are playing in the league where they dont belong. Kushnick got to the top doing exactly what she is doing now, but while that worked in the minor leagues, in the big leagues of network television and Hollywood more specifically, the opposition is far superior and powerful relative to her. In the end, she is destroyed. She believed her own bullshit, and she paid a heavy price for that. They didn't. She didnt adapt to the new level. Possibly, she just wasnt capable of doing that. Her skillset was a different skillset which worked great in the element she dealt with on the way up. And then it didnt. Her own star client almost paid the heavy price for that. That point should not be forgotten. Leno went on to host the Tonight show for many years, NBC made loads of money off all that content, all the executives at NBC got rich because they executed like top shelf execs have to. Helen Kushnick died a few years later. Broken and alone. It played out exactly how you would expect it to. It's the way the world works. If you want to play the game, you have to play the game that is there. Not the one you think is there. And you must play it well, or you will fail.
In the next scene after the clip, NBC explains to Leno that he must ditch Kushnick. They want him, they want to work with him, but not if he is working with her. He is very loyal and wants to resist but in the end he has no choice. They explained she is going down. If he wants to, he can go down with her ship. She is poisonous. She will die professionally. He has to cut ties. He does. Reluctantly, but he does the right thing. Loyalty only goes so far. Reality goes the distance.
What does this all mean and why should you care about a 30 year old movie about a battle to be the host of The Tonight Show? Because there is a lot more to the story. That is why will care when you see the other side of all of this. It sets the table for my main thesis or point in this piece.
On the other side of the Leno coin, David Letterman hires superagent Michael Ovitz. The story of how Letterman got to Ovitz is key to much of this blog. After Letterman learns that NBC is replacing Carson with Leno-a job Letterman presumed was his after working for them already for 10 years, he comes to realize that he made his own bad luck. How did that happen? Well, as Letterman states in the movie when he is discussing his predicament with his friend and mentor Peter Lassally, he relates to Lassally that he acted as his own agent and negotiated a horrible one sided contract for himself which gave NBC all the power.
Lassally: How about getting an agent? Dont reject the idea out of hand, I know how you feel about agents. But we need someone with power in the business. Letterman: Jesus, an agent? An agent is what you pull off the bottom of your shoe at the end of a baseball game. Lassally: Listen David, I have an idea.
Lassally then gets Letterman a meeting with Ovitz. Ovitz isn't a bottom feeder agent type like Kushnick, which is what Letterman was referring to above. What Letterman didn't understand was that on his way up, he could be his own agent and make deals with bar owners, clubs, and promoters to some extent. His talent was always enough to give him the leverage he needed because he was major league as a comic, but as a business person he was amateur hour. What he didn't realize is that there is a huge difference between what a booking agent is and what a super agent who has a plan, knows all the power brokers, and is a master chess player is. Ovitz was that person and Letterman realizes that in his first meeting with Ovitz. As soon as the meeting commences, Ovitz takes complete control. Lassally begins by telling Ovitz why they are here. Ovitz stops him on a dime.
Lassally: Michael, maybe we should tell you a little bit about David's circumstance. Ovitz: Peter, I know Dave's circumstances. And so, I know why you are here....we pride ourselves here at CAA on developing a career plan for our clients that protects them as much as it enriches them....David is going disturbingly unrewarded. That just doesn't make sense. Its simply bad business practice....Frankly, we have worked out a career plan for David and it includes securing everything for Dave that he wants...of course, that means an 11:30 television show. Dave WILL be offered an 11:30 show and he will be offered it by every network...we shall frame a deal that will make you one of the giants.
I cant do justice to how Treat Williams plays Ovitz in this scene with just the text. He was also nominated for an Emmy for this performance, and likely, for this scene. You must watch his mannerisms to understand what he has conveyed. Much like Jackie Earle Haley did above. Safe to say, that exactly what Ovitz promised is exactly what happened. Letterman describes meeting with Ovitz as being in the room with the Godfather. Ovitz is portrayed as mesmerizing in this clip. I'm sure there is a lot of artistic license in all of that, but in terms of how it is presented, it provides the example of the difference between one way of doing things, the right way, and the other way. The wrong way. The point being, when Letterman and Lassally show up, Ovitz already knows everything he needs to know and he has already made the entire plan. He knows the entire scope of the full chess game ahead and has all of his moves planned, knows all the countermoves coming from the opponents, and basically, he is playing a rigged game where he controls the entire outcome. That is how prepared he is before the entire thing starts. Ovitz has major power at this stage, he knows how to use it, knows it will work and simply executes.
Contrast Kushnick with Ovitz. Ovitz is an executive with a strategy and a plan, a way to move the pieces around so when it gets time to execute he has all the power and ability to make the exact right move. The way he does it is with smart words, convincing language and top shelf information. With everyone involved. Kushnick simply bullies, threatens, disrespects and insults anyone to get her way. Which in the end, she doesn't. Ovitz never threatens. He persuades. When Leno first gets The Tonight Show, and at this point Letterman has not even contacted Ovitz, Kushnick tells Leno, who is not mesmerized by Kushnick but completely trusting and compliant to anything Kushnick tells him to do that Leno got The Tonight Show over Letterman because..
"the real difference between you and Letterman. you had me."
And that was true at that point. Kushnick did get Leno that show. She did take him from performing at strip clubs to the host of The Tonight Show. You cant take that achievement away from her. But the difference in the three main players is this: Letterman was the best talent but he thought he was also an agent. He is not. Kushnick was a good lower level agent but she was not a mastermind and she also wanted to produce shows. Something she was not qualified to do. She also has a horrible temper and lacks class. Ovitz is a master strategist and negotiator. He is not an agent per say. He is a representative who has no interest in gaining the spotlight or producing shows. He sticks to what he does best. He stays low key and in the background, but he is the key player in all matters. David Letterman got fucked over by NBC. That happened because he acted as his own agent and made a horrible deal for himself. That happens. But he did the smart thing. He stopped being his own agent, when that wasn't his skillset. He is a master comic. That is why he ended up where he was and got the deal he did with CBS. He hired Ovitz, on the advice of his producer and confidant, Peter Lassally, and Ovitz wowed him with the reality of what mastermind negotiators do. He listened to smarter people than he was and let them do their jobs FOR him. I don't know how true all this was, because it's a movie with artistic license and Kushnick in real life sued the producers of the film based on the portrayal by Bates, but, Kushnick is portrayed as someone with no respect for anyone. That includes the execs who gave her the job, her own client, Leno, Carson, the president of the United States Ronald Reagan and also anyone who works on the show or at the network. Even the President of NBC, Bob Wright, who could fire her on the spot and wants to at some point. Wright actually pleads with Kushnick to be respectful to Carson on the day he retires, but she defiantly says that isn't going to happen. Being disrespectful is what got her fired. Being forceful has its merits, being disrespectful never will. It creates a mob AGAINST you, not with you. No one person ever beats a mob. Not for long. The bigger the mob gets, the smaller you get in comparison. Kushnick bullies everyone she wants to, and she gets away with it as NBC continues to wait for her to completely self destruct. Then, she bullies a very powerful agent, Ken Kragen and he tells her this:
"Helen, I think you need to know something about me. I don't respond well to threats. Maybe I can offer you something else......"
Kushnick then makes the fatal mistake.
She insults him with this:
"Excuse me, this ain't Merv Griffin, we don't do fucking theme shows you dumb, shit kickin hick. Let me break the news to you. Not only is Travis Tritt not going to do the Tonight Show ever again, but you and I are going to be in this town a long time, we're going to see each other, and we're never going to talk again. It's your fucking loss. And the record companies."
Kushnick's was to be the producer of the show but she was actually destroying it. She produced nothing but chaos that destroyed the viability of the show. Agents control clients. The talent. Shows like the Tonight Show and those that produce them need talented guests to get viewers to watch. No guests, no show. She needs them. They don't need her. They can go on any number of other shows to get attention and promote. At this point, she was basically done. She had stepped over the line. Agents represent their clients. No clients, no agent. Helen Kushnick started representing herself. She forgot what got her to where she was in the first place. She started to believe she was the star, NOT the representative. She became drunk on power, and became a junkie. Sad, but it happens to people. Ovitz and great agents never forget that. They understand how talented they are as well, but they know they aren't the talent or the show. Agents produce, they don't perform. At one point in that scene, Ovitz conveys to Letterman that if Letterman gives them the privilege of working with him that Letterman is the one that has to be served. Ovitz is well aware of where he was on the pecking order. I will note that in this movie Ken Kragen was played by himself. I doubt he would have let them make him say anything that wasn't actually true. The rest of the movie takes many liberties but in this case, what was portrayed in that scene was extremely factual. It comes directly from one of the people involved. The person with the gold standard reputation and not the cancerous small time agent who believed her own bullshit. By that point, Kragen had been a very powerful agent for more than 25 years and had clients like Kenny Rogers and Lionel Richie--two of the biggest music stars on the planet at that point, and also all the top Country music stars of the day, when New Country music was the biggest thing out there. He also basically pulled together the We Are The World concert and song in 1985. He had massive power and clout. He also had a great reputation and was highly respected. Kragen goes public about Kushnick and she is vilified in the press, and that gives NBC the power to get rid of her because others are complaining about her, not them. She did all the work for them and made NBC look good in the end. They played it right. They were 3 chess moves ahead of her at all times. They just kept letting her make all the bad moves. Did they make a mistake in hiring her in the first place? Absolutely they did. But they didn't compound that problem with another knee jerk mistake. They played it right, and came out smelling like a rose. Just as Letterman did. He wasn't foolish enough to keep to his opinion that agents were worthless and useless. He wised up. Leno also had to wise up, but he was forced to. He didn't want to. If you are inclined, watch the entire 30 minute clip above. The entire movie is also on You Tube if you wish to watch that.
Letterman wises up, because he has to. His way has not worked. He is the mega talent, but he is not going forward in his career. As an agent, he fucked himself. As Ovitz's character in the clip states.
It just doesn't make sense. It's simply bad business practice.
Thinking is hard. People like easy. Playing high level chess is not just flipping coins in the moment and hoping it comes up the way you guessed it would. When one faction is playing one way and the other the other way, there can only be one logical result. The chess player is going to win in the long run. The coin flipper can guess right here and there, but they have a certainty to also guess wrong and then panic and make destructive losing moves, which the chess player is just waiting for. Flipping coins is easy. Playing high level chess requires a lot of thinking before hand and during the process. Its not easy, but it is rewarding. Donald Trump is a coin flipper. He gets an idea, likely on the spot, it sounds like something that has worked for him before in the real estate world where he had massive leverage and power, and so, he thinks no more. He puts it out there and attempts to sell it. No matter how it turns out, he characterizes every result as a win, even though its obvious to all that he is losing. He has been raised to never admit that he ever loses at anything. Which is foolish. Everyone loses at some point. It only makes you look like a fool to say otherwise. In fact, while The Late Shift is a movie and probably isn't entirely true, what Letterman says at the beginning of the clip where Lassally convinces him to take the meeting with Ovitz is exactly what someone like Donald Trump would say in most cases. He doesn't need help. He is pigheaded and believes he can handle situations himself when he is not qualified to do that. What did Ovitz offer to Letterman that many could offer to Trump that he is clearly rejecting? Ovitz explains to Letterman the situation in a way anyone can understand. Let us represent you, and we will win and you will win. There is no loser in that scenario. He is negotiating a deal where everyone shares in the win. Ovitz doesn't want more than his share, he wants his FAIR share and he wants his client to have his fair share. That is why Ovitz also went on to be very successful. He gets others to believe, correctly, that if he is around, they will win WITH him, not against him. He also uses this exact tactic to get all the suitors for Letterman's services to bid on him, and he uses it as well to give NBC what they need in the moment to get Letterman out from underneath the bad terms Letterman agreed to when he was acting as his own agent. He did all this without threats, but by giving something to get something and making the other side feel like they were winning, even in some cases when they weren't. Trump insists that he must not give anything unless forced to. He doesn't want the other side to win at anything. Its said that in any trade, you don't want the other side to lose or to get fleeced. You want others to come deal with you. If they feel that your intention is to take them, they will avoid you. You never want that. If you are a representative and have to negotiate, the worst thing you can do is convince others not to show up and deal with you. One very important thing that Ovitz never did is personally negotiate in public. That is suicide and tactically it is antagonistic and counter productive. It's amateur hour at its worst. He tells his client what he will do, he goes to the power brokers on the other side and tells them what they should do if they want something and then he gives them that when he knows it will help his client in the long run, because he has played the whole chess game out long ago in his mind and he knows what buttons to push on the other side to get them to move their pieces where HE wants them to move them. It's a master class in how you represent your side. And of course, it worked. He never flips a coin. He persuades them to deal with him and give him what he wants while still giving them what they want. He attempts for the win/win. Helen Kushnick was very good at recognizing talent that was undervalued and getting them where they should be. She took Jay Leno out of strip clubs, where he was performing comedy and got him on the big stage. But, she was an agent. Not a super agent like Ovitz. She was not a television producer, as she didn't have the savvy or temperament to do that job. Once she assumed that role, she self-destructed immediately, and her prize, the only real prize she had--her meal ticket, Leno, was forced to ditch her. Leno was extremely loyal--to a fault, but he had no choice. Leno would have lost everything Kushnick got for him if he stuck with her. She did that. She could have stayed on for a long and lucrative ride, but she wanted to be something she is not and she ended up with nothing to show for it. She lost the biggest coin flip in a bet on herself that she should have never made. She played the bad strategy/lose game. It's a sad reality for those like her. They can't accept who they are and where they are on the pecking order. She kept flipping coins until she lost enough of those flips to be wiped out. She gambled. Ovitz calculated the probabilities. He will never get taken out by a coin flip. He doesn't ever gamble. Back in the day, Donald Trump was perceived to be a brilliant real estate mogul. I never viewed him as great, but I fully admit he played that game well and got the success he did because of that. But that wasn't enough for him. He had to own golf courses, an airline, start a University, which failed, a wine company, which failed horribly. He even appeared on Letterman when he was selling ties that he manufactured, and that failed. It wasn't that he didn't try though. Trump made his ties in China. Of course he did, they make them super cheap. He wasn't so interested in Making America, or ties, great back then. He was interested in only one thing. Making money for himself and if that meant his country suffered, he was perfectly fine with that. Letterman exposed him right on the spot there.
I have nothing against China, I just hate that their leaders are so much smarter than ours.
-Donald Trump
David Letterman was a very good comic. He is no brain surgeon though, as his stint as his own agent showed. However, he easily sandbagged Trump on the air on Live TV and Trump did not see that coming. Trump was so busy out there promoting he didn't anticipate he was being set up. Of course he knew the ties were made in China. Trump then does what he does best. Or worst depending on your perspective. He lied and said he has been honest about all that, when in fact, just seconds before he pretended he didn't even know where they were made at all. All you have to do is look at Trumps face to know that he knows he has been caught in this lie, by a lightweight like Letterman.
The fact is that Trump is stating that China is raping America and has been doing so for decades. What he doesn't say is that when he was on the other team, he was happy to go along and rape his own country. He isn't the only one that does or did that, but it should be noted where his morality is on all that in actuality. When all those businesses failed and the real estate market was tanking, Trump lucked into the TV show The Apprentice, and that is where the real problem started. Trump believed that he was now the star, the performer, and to some degree he was for a while. Like Kushnick, he got away from doing what he does well....buying real estate and making a huge up front profit before it collapses. That is his bread and butter. But his mindset has now changed. Now he has to be the star. The show. The attention getter. Whatever that takes. That isn't the role of the President. The role of the President is to represent the interests of those who elected you. You aren't the star, you are the producer and the agent. Unfortunately, he is neither of those. He is the joke that others laugh at. Including the Ovitz's of the world, the world leaders who are waiting to pounce on him, as NBC execs and Ovitz did to Kushnick.
Trying to make sense of it all, but I can see it makes no sense at all.
-Steelers Wheel
Trying to make sense of what Donald Trump does, is doing, and will do is almost impossible. It just seems to make no sense at all. Unless you truly understand. Who is Donald Trump and how did he get to where he is now? It helps you understand Letterman, Kushnick and Trump. The path, the journey, the upbringing, the genetics of personality all play a factor in what we see as the end or current product in front of us. I really don't think most people understand what Trump is and what he is doing here. Most want to work together and think of a relationship as friendly. That isn't Trumps way. He has to win, and only views a win if he takes a piece of your pie. If you keep any part of the pie he wants, he isn't winning. World politics is not business. It's way more complicated than that. We are creatures of how our parents raise us. I don't know if many are aware of this, but Trump's father was very clear to him that business, and life, is kill or be killed. You have to win, they have to lose. I don't think he can be any other way. You have to be who you are at your core. Donald Trump at his core is a coin flipper. He has no real plan or strategy. Today he is putting on tariffs. Then he isn't. Then he is. Then he backs off. But he might put them back on. I suppose it depends on his mood in the morning. Or, possibly how his golf game went the day before. Or what someone said that influenced him. He is not playing chess. He is playing roulette or craps, with the lives of Americans and anyone who deals with America, which is basically the entire planet Earth. Just putting out tariffs is easy. Trump is on record that he loves tariffs. He loves it because its easy to do that, not because its a smart thing to do. The entire history of the world shows that any time tariffs are used, they dont work. In fact, America came into existence because the British were hell bent on taking a cut they were not earning. People should remember that. If he loses one spin of roulette, Trump just shrugs it off and tries to roll the dice at craps again. He has to win, so he just keeps throwing darts. Meanwhile, the smart opposition is maintaining their chess moves and continues to wait for openings to crush him. They know he has to win, so he will get desperate when it looks like he isn't. Then, he makes another bad move, until they have him cornered and he makes one final horrid chess move. Like saying this week he is going to annex Gaza and turn it into a Riviera style resort. Who knows what tomorrows coin flip or craps roll of the dice he will play? I doubt he even has a clue. Eventually, he wins a few of those coin flips, and when that happens, he is keen to repeat those repeatedly. In chess, you don't gloat over a small win. Winning a small battle but continuing to lose the war ends in checkmate at some point. Checkmate means you lose. But he doesn't like to talk about those, and even when he does, he finds some way to claim them as wins. What Trump is certain to win at is creating bad will, destroying the reputation America had as stable and reliable and all the credibility and trust that flows from that. In the long game, the world leaders and chess players are just letting him win that game daily, until he has organized a massive mob against America. By my count, in 18 days now, he has gathered up Columbia, Canada, Mexico, Greenland, Denmark, Panama, the Middle East, Iran and many business leaders with all that he has said in that short time. Some of those, like Mexican Cartels, Palestinian terrorists, and Iranian suicide bombers don't need much reason to start attacking and have no conscience about doing it. What happens when he has made it easy for some of those to align with China and Russia and against America? When he goes after the European Union next, which he has promised to do, do we want some of those to make deals with the devils that are China and Russia? China and Russia do and are just patiently waiting for him to get started. Putin has even egged Trump on in that endeavor. Trump wants to make America great again. He intends on doing that by getting large companies to start making stuff again in America. If you were a large Auto maker, would you make cars again in the United States? What if he just decides one day to sign an Executive order and slap a 25 percent tax on what they make? I think you would think twice about Kushnick like behavior like that. You would find the Ovitz and align with them, whatever country they represent. If you are another country, say like Canada, or Mexico, or any of the European ones, would you continue to do business with America, or would you just find other places to buy and sell? I know what I would do and most countries would do. They would find the stable, reliable countries they could count on to honor their word and treat them fairly. They would be looking for the win/win scenario, not the fight me on all fronts scenario. Honor and respect matter. A lot. All the while, they will be sandbagging Trump like Letterman did. Making him think he is winning, appearing to not fight back and not see him coming, when in fact, they know exactly what he is doing and what he is going to do next. They, like Ovitz, have mapped this entire game out well ahead of time. Trump is who he is. He is very predictable that way. They have made sense of his apparent madness of approach.
Trump has the same weakness politically. For every winner there must be a loser. And that's just not how politics works, not over the long run.
Trump is utterly convinced that his experience in a closely held real estate company has prepared him to run a nation, and therefore he rejects the advice of people who spent entire careers studying the nuances of international negotiations and diplomacy. But the leaders on the other side of the table have not eschewed expertise, they have embraced it. And that means they look at Trump and, given his very limited tool chest and his blindly distributive understanding of negotiation, they know exactly what he is going to do and exactly how to respond to it.
From a professional negotiation point of view, Trump isn't even bringing checkers to a chess match. He's bringing a quarter that he insists of flipping for heads or tails, while everybody else is studying the chess board to decide whether its better to open with Najdorf or Grünfeld.”
— Prof. David Honig of Indiana University.
Put in the context of this blog, Trump is Kushnick and the other world leaders are Ovitz, while Letterman was Trump but he wised up and engaged the expertise of Ovitz to win the game. Trumps father didn't prepare him to be a world leader. He prepared him to survive and thrive in the world of New York City real estate. Which he did, and did very well. Kill or be killed and win at all costs worked very well there. He didn't need to be Ovitz there, he needed to be Kushnick. Like Kushnick, he has moved up the food chain now, and while before he was the predator, now he is the prey. We all know how that movie ends.
In the next scenario, Mike Ermantrout is a former police officer who now does side jobs as a protection specialist, among other things. He is both a tactical expert and a fixer, but he doesn't do much fixing until later on in the series, BETTER CALL SAUL. In this scene, Mike is one of 3 protection people hired to go with a unique character named Pryce, who is stealing pills from his workplace and selling them on the black market to a drug dealing gang member, Nacho, who is doing those deals behind the back of the gang. He is a very dangerous character, but Mike has done his homework in advance, and knows this particular transaction will go well, because the gang member, Nacho, doesn't want anything to go wrong and word to get back to the gang about his side gig. The other two protection guys, one a tall, scruff, first sideman gun carrying type and the other a huge, simple muscle guy who doesn't speak are very similar to the two that Guerrero meets in the restaurant in the first clip I posted at the start. Mike is essentially the Guerrero character. He looks like he is the least dangerous, but yet, he is the most. He has the skillset you actually need and he does his homework in advance. The gun toting bully mocks Mike and challenges him to take his gun when Mike says he doesn't need one for the job but will take his if he has to. In this scene, Mike has to do what Guerrero didn't. He has to actually hurt the bully. That became necessary because that bully wasn't convinced yet that he had met his match. So, he challenged him, then underestimated a foe he had no clue was miles his superior. He ends up on the ground, has lost all his guns and also lost a day's work. Mike had not intended on challenging and taking down a bully in this case, but he was forced to. Anyway, it is just another example of when a foolish and overblown bully met his match and didn't see that coming.
Once the bully is taken care of, and the big muscle guy is so scared he runs off, they head off to consummate the deal. Pryce is scared that one protection guy is not enough, and he states that again when Nacho and his two guys show up. But Mike knows better and it goes smoothly. Back in the car, Pryce asks Mike this and gets this response:
Pryce-How did you know? How did you know not to bring a gun? Mike-I put in a lot of legwork before coming here, that fella you met is Ignacio Varga. He runs with the connected crew of drug dealers, now the deal he's doing with you he's doing outside his crew. He doesn't want his bosses to know. So it was in his best interest that things go very smoothly.
One thing you can be sure of. The big gun toting bully didn't know any of that and thought just bringing the guns was all the preparation he needed. Eventually, operating like that, he will get shot. You have to know what you are walking into before you show up if you intend both to survive and win. And its also good to know who you are working with. If he was smart, and did his homework he would have known not to mess with Mike.
For China, and Russia, and others they want to make Trump think he is winning all along, until they don't. The important part of doing that is pretending to be surprised and scared of him. It bravens Trump up even further. As it did Kushnick. Putin wants Trump to think he is afraid of him enough to not fight back, when in fact he is just waiting for the right time to spring it on him. He is going to ally with China and together they will do what they want. Because together, they are by far the bigger and more dangerous bully. They are the growing mob. China is just going to wait this all out and let Trump piss off the world, and even better if he gets into fights and wars with others. Less work for China to do the work there. Trump is doing it for them. Xi has hired the best people, like Ovitz, to calculate all that way ahead of time. Putin is former KGB. He is fully trained in how to play this game. Trump is a real estate developer. Trump believes that he is the one that is smarter than the really smart Chinese. He is just flat out wrong about that.
There is some talk, and I have even said this, that Trump went after Canada first because he appears to have maximum leverage over Canada. And he does. Also, we have a weak leadership issue and he sensed that. So, he attempted to slay the old, weak gazelle in the pack before he takes on the Alpha leaders of the world and the pack. The theory is that it sends a message to the other countries that if he will shoot his best pal dog, what will he do to us? Of course, that ignores how chess players play. Choosing to beat C level chess players when you have to be an A level chess player to compete in the grand master game at some point sends a clear message to the Grand Master competitors. That message is this:
I don't think I'm good enough to compete at the highest level, so I will stick with the weak links. When you are that strong competitor, you have no fear whatsoever of that opponent. They have shown they are scared to compete with you. So, while Trump threatens Xi in China with this or that, he is just basically ignoring him, because all he needs to do now is let Trump self destruct and make enemies. Trump's not worth bothering with while he is already hurting himself with what he is doing. Trump has shown that he is afraid of battling with China. Why would China be afraid of him? We already know Putin is not. Putin is so crazy, he would take on a 100 person army by himself. To scare either of these two, you would first have to prove you could beat a very tough foe, which is not going to happen. In the meantime, China and Russia want to make Trump think they are worried or scared. It will make it easier to beat him when he gets brave enough to make a real move on them. Since he seemed to get away with the 10 percent tariff on China, he will likely attempt a larger one in the near future. That is when the shit hits the fan. When China plays the next move on the chess board. They want Trump to make the first bad move, much as NBC wanted Kushnick to do that. It makes it easier to sell to the world and your own people. Play the victim. The good guy.
I will conclude this long blog with another look at the Guerrero clip. I put it above here because now I will analyze a different portion of the dynamic.
This time, I will focus on the part just before and just after the dialogue I mentioned at the start of the blog. Here is what the head bully said to Guerrero before he explained the reality of the situation back to him.
You know, we came here to explain to you, but you don't seem to be getting it. Maybe the three of us can take a little walk out back to the alley and we can explain it to you a little better. So, there's no impasse.
What is important to note is the deception and how the bullies become the bullied, and how Guerrero knows everything that is going to happen and how it is going to play out. They think they are ambushing him. He is actually waiting for them. So, he just explains to him/them what is actually going on and then, like Mike, he dares them to try him. Note that at the start of the clip, Guerrero acts like he is scared, that the bullies are very confident, that Guerrero acts as if he doesn't even know who they are, although he knows everything about them and what they are there to do. Gradually, he moves from scared, to curious, then to explaining why he is meddling, to defiant, to ruthless, and then deadly. He dares them to take him on. For their part, the bullies walk in thinking they have an easy task, a small guy who they are ambushing and who looks overmatched.
Also note that at the beginning, Guerrero has his heart in his throat, but by the end, the bullies do. That is a subtle way this is portrayed. How the situation has flipped 180.
Finally, Guerrero explains all his prep for this meeting, letting them know he was waiting for them, they didn't ambush him. In another example of Ovitz playing chess with a Kushnick type, or other world leaders playing chess with Trump. I pick up the dialogue from where I ended it above at the start of the blog.
Probably start with you Alfredo. That way Steven here can have a few extra days with Marla and the girls. Only seems fair.
How do you know my name?
Your employer keeps sensitive information on a drive he thinks is secure. It isn't.
Since the bullies had previously said they would all go out back to the alley and they would explain the whole thing to him, Guerrero ends their pipedream by saying.
Shall We?
And then the bullies get up and leave. Without making eye contact with him. When they walked in, he pretended not to make eye contact with them. Its a very key way to show who is in control, and who has realized they don't have control anymore. What is chess? Its playing two moves ahead of your opponent at all times. While they are living in the moment and reacting on the fly, you already have a plan and you know how they are going to react when you do things. In essence, you have their playbook while they don't even know what play they are going to make until that very moment. They are incredibly easy to beat if you are competent at chess. You are completely instinctive and reactive. They are prepared, cold and calculating. Furthermore, on the world stage, you aren't dealing with inferior, simple people. You are dealing with the best of the best. The smartest people, the most successful, the mentally toughest of the tough. They can't be bullied, they can't be outsmarted, they wont be out gamed. The best you can do, and the only good thing you can do is work with them so they are on your side, not your opponent. You don't want them as opponents, you want them as allies and partners. That is how you get things done in the real, big bad world. Yes, on the micro, local, small world that you probably came from on the way up, you can easily pick low hanging fruit and not pay full price for that. You likely have maximum leverage on those people and they are easy to bully and beat. Beating apprentices is easy. By definition, they have not gotten anywhere close to your level, so its easy. When you are playing in the big leagues, against the best of the best, if you are not the best, you are going to get eaten alive. And if you have a massive ego, which Trump has, you cant accept that and admit it. Because you have been raised to not accept that there is always someone smarter, tougher, more tactical than you are. I am smart. Extremely tactical, tough to the extreme. I am for sure not the smartest person I know, and as tough as I am, my father was 100 times tougher than me and I would never mess with him or anyone like him. I know my level, my skills and my place in the pecking order and I work within that. If you don't do that, you will get crushed. Its just how the world works.
Joe Biden is and always was a sideman. Like a VP of something at a company. He can and does good work, he seems to be somewhat moral and smart, means well. But he is no leader, he is not top shelf material, and tactically, he is very poor. The bar he sets is easy to surpass, but that doesn't mean doing better than him is good enough. Not as the highest level. That bar is extremely high and not meeting it has grave consequences for any entity that attempts to win a gun fight with a dull butter knife. Yes, in a fight where you have the dull butter knife and the other person has no weapons and a broken leg, you can win those fights. Those fights are rare. You have to be able to win the battles where you don't have your usual advantage. That means getting others to cooperate with you, not fight with you. Unlike others, I can see some very positive things in Donald Trump. He is and can be very charming when he wants to be. He is personable, and a lot of people do actually like him. But, when he is over his head, when he himself, deep down, knows he cant win, he gets very nervous. He cant live up to the way his father raised him and drilled into him how he has to be. He starts lying, making stuff up, making claims he cant back up. He starts threatening, bullying, and anything that makes him feel like he might find a way. Then like most that do that, he gets in deeper and deeper and then he has to back up the lies with more lies. Its an avalanche and its why his type is so destructive. I have firsthand experience with all that. My father was exactly that way. He was that and did all those things. And if you met my father, in person, you would love him. On the surface, he was great. But when things weren't working out, he became what Trump becomes. That is fine when the stakes are not as high as they are in the world he now plays in. My father was a nobody in the world. Donald Trump is the President of the most powerful single nation on the planet. He can do great things, but he can also completely destroy a once great nation on the current brink of disaster with multiple, very serious, structural problems. As many Americans know, this is their last shot to turn that around before the hole is too deep to recover. There are other suitors to the crown out there, and they are just biding their time waiting for America to self destruct. In the game of chess, they are already plotting how they are going to take over the empire while they just let him destroy himself. Currently, China and Russia are keeping quiet because all the have to do to win the chess game is let the other player make bad moves. Is Donald Trump better than Joe Biden? Yes. Is Donald Trump good enough to lead America against the best in the world? Not even close. America needs to do better than Donald Trump. Its as simple as that. A lot better.
Taking the experience out of the experience. That is what this blog will partially be about. It's also about a trend or mindset that has been building for many years in our society, but now it is wildly out of control. It might even be irreversible at this stage. That remains to be seen.
Take me out to the ball game. The seventh inning stretch. It was part of the live game experience at every park that had baseball. How did Harry Caray know that?
"There's a sense of integrity and honesty in telling the people what you actually see and feel and I think if there's any difference at all...some announcers may be more interesting than others because of their style and style is personality, whatever your personality might be. I'm a people guy and I think everywhere I go I look for people to talk to....I go to bars because who do you see there, baseball fans. You find out firsthand what they like and what they dont like. You can't learn that any other way. Unless you have an occasion to talk to the true fan."
-Harry Caray
I remember very clearly when I would go to baseball games with my grandmother, she would always sing along with the seventh inning stretch. She would also always buy a beer, and get a bag of peanuts. It was part of the experience. The live baseball game experience.
When I was growing up, we had season tickets to the Montreal Expos, at Jarry Park, from their first season in 1969 until we moved away to another city in 1977. I dont remember much about the 1969 season, but I know we went to games. I was only 4 years old that first season. The Expos had special days once a year, where the players and their children would be on the field before the game and if you were a season ticket holder and were interested, you could let your kids come on the field with the players and their kids. I was one of those lucky ones that got to do that and in the family scrapbook, I have pictures of that experience to prove it and look back on. Through the years, part of the experience was getting fries between innings, and always a soda pop to go with it. It was little things like that. Like the sun shining in our eyes for the first few innings of a night game because of how the park was constructed and the seats we had. Many other things like that also come to my mind. Too many to mention for this blog. I will take on that memory treasure chest in another blog on another day. Safe to say, while Jarry Park was not a great field to host Major League baseball, it did have that Wrigley Field and Fenway Park ambiance that cant be replaced or described. When the Expos finally moved to the Olympic Stadium in 1976, that was the beginning of the end for the franchise. It was a terrible place to watch a game. It was easier to stay home and watch the game on TV if you could. And that is what we did. There was not much experience left in the game experience.
You can't convince a fool against his will.
-Ernie Banks
Ernie Banks played 24 big league seasons, all with the Chicago Cubs. There was never even a remote chance he would play with any other team, even though most of those Cubs teams were terrible and he was a superstar. He was a Cub. Simple as that. He was their brand. He was actually known as "Mr. Cub" and "Mr. Sunshine". He was a sensation in his first season, then went on to be an All Star for 11 straight seasons. He is considered one of the greatest players of all time. He was a shortstop, yet he hit more than 500 home runs in his career. Most shortstops would be considered power hitters if they hit more than 200 home runs for their careers. He hit 512.
More than anything, Ernie Banks just loved to play baseball. He was well known to say that he wished he could play more. "Let's Play Two" was his famous saying. He loved playing baseball so much he would have loved to play a doubleheader, where most players would not like that sort of thing. Because of all of the above, the fans loved him. And they loved the Cubs, even though they were a bad team almost every year Banks was a professional. In today's game, a player like Banks in his prime would almost certainly be traded, or, he would leave due to free agency. It's the business of baseball, not the sport and fun of baseball. It's how the game has changed. Not for the better. In Banks last season, 1971, I was only 6 years old. By then, I was already a massive baseball fan. Although I was more a Montreal Expos fanatic, I did love baseball. Playing it, watching it, cheering for my team. Even at that young age, and Banks advanced age and in the last year of his career, I understood what a big deal Ernie Banks was. In a time now where the word legend is tossed around way too loosely, Ernie Banks was about as legendary as a legend can be. During one game I watched on TV, the announcers talked about Banks as though he were the messiah. And he was, to baseball fans. Harry Caray understood that.
On a trip I took about 10 years ago, I made it a point to stop at certain parks. Parks that had that aura of experience. Fenway Park in Boston was one of those. It didn't disappoint. I had already been to Dodger Stadium in the 1980s on another trip, and to this day, that is the palace of all stadiums I have ever been to, and that number of parks is many. You just have to be there to soak in that atmosphere. There is just no way I can explain that feeling to you if you haven't been there. Even just approaching it from the highway to park my car and being able to see the entire park because the highway was far elevated relative to the stadium. It is just breathtaking. When I was very young and the Expos would play there, it felt like watching a game from Fantasy Island. But on that recent trip I also stopped in to Wrigley Field in Chicago. If I had a bucket list, which I dont, but if I did, that would have been on the list. It is another that didn't disappoint. It was like walking into a time machine. Where time was frozen. Where baseball was still baseball. Played on grass and not at a cookie cutter stadium with advertising all over the field but with Ivy covered outfield walls, seats that were so old they were timeless, where the smell of beer and hot dogs was everywhere. Where you could hear the crack of the bat from any seat and you might even catch a foul ball. I still have 10 or so foul balls we caught back in the day. One of those was from Wrigley, which my father caught, but I was too young to remember that trip. I think I was only 5 at that time.
People will come, Ray. They come to Iowa for reasons they can't even fathom. They'll turn up the driveway, not knowing for sure why they are doing it. They'll arrive at your door as innocent as children, longing for the past. "Of course, we won't mind if you look around," you'll say. "It's only $20 per person." They'll pass over the money without even thinking about it. For its money they have, and peace they lack. Then they will walk off to the bleachers and sit in their shirtsleeves on a perfect afternoon. They'll find they have reserved seats somewhere along one of the baselines. Where they sat with their children and cheered their heroes. And they'll watch the game and it will be as if they dipped themselves in magic waters. The memories will be so thick they'll have to brush them away from their faces. People will come, Ray. The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It's been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt, and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game, is part of our past, Ray. It reminds of us of all that was once good. And it could be again.
Can it be that again? I doubt it. The trend of society and the people who control that variable says no. They dont want it to. They have lost their moral compass, and they are the tour guides.
Tim Horton (1930-1974) is a name almost exclusively known with donut shops now. But that wasn't the case when I was growing up. Tim Horton was a great hockey player for a long time who died tragically in a car accident back in 1974. At the time, like Banks, he was an older player, but still viable. These days, you would be hard pressed to find a baseball or hockey player still playing at the age of 44. In spite of his longevity and success, like most hockey players of his day, Tim Hortons would barely make enough money to live off of as a hockey player. Many, including Ernie Banks and others had day jobs in the summer and off season to make ends meet. Ernie Banks in fact worked at a bank. Tim Horton took another route. Horton opened his first donut shop in 1964 while he was still a star player in the NHL in Hamilton, which is about 1 hour from both Toronto and Buffalo, two teams he played for in his NHL career. By 1968, he had created a franchise of many shops and was well off. Horton died travelling from Toronto to Buffalo, which can be a very dangerous drive in the winter. I have done it many times. It is known as a snow belt. Horton liked fast cars and he liked to drive fast. He also was a drinker and all those factors played into the single car crash that took his life that night in February 1974. While Horton had franchised out his original donut shop, which he also ran when he was able to in the early days, he co owned almost if not all the franchises and had a hands on approach to making sure it stayed true to the brand which he had built. He had name value, and he used that wisely, not loosely and flippantly. Once he died, all that changed. Like Ernie Banks, as soon as he was eligible, he was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame. In fact, both were inducted in 1977. Without Horton around, the franchise was now just a coffee and donut shop chain, without its founder. That is where the trouble started.
What a lot of people dont know is that Tim Horton and his partner Ron Joyce built that first location. I dont mean built the business, they physically built the actual building brick by brick. In addition, in the early days, if you wanted a franchise, you had to go to Donut School, learn how to make the products and then work a certain amount of hours before you could have a location. As the brand built out, they were very careful to make sure they were operated to the same standard as the first location. When Tim Horton died, his partner Ron Joyce bought out Hortons widow in 1974. He operated and expanded the franchise and he did that until 1995, when he sold the chain to Wendys. I used to travel a lot in those days, and if you went into any rest stop plaza off the highway, there would be a Wendys and Tim Hortons side by side. It was almost like they were operated as one restaurant. Around that time, Tim Hortons started selling bagels and sandwiches, and as the years have passed, now it is considered a restaurant, not a donut shop. In 2014, the entire chain was bought by Restaurant Brands, which also operates Burger King and Popeyes Chicken among their large stable of brands. These days, if you go into a Tim Hortons it's nothing like the ambiance of the early chain of stores. It's an assembly line of service, the prices are sky high, the workers barely speak english and dont understand the product, and the offering is very little donuts and mostly higher end items. It has become a big chain with no ambiance period. Many dont even bother going into the store, but line up 30 deep at the drive thru window. There is very little experience left to the entire experience. If you watch the video above, you will see how that experience was described by those who worked there or operated the earlier franchises. That is ancient history now. As well, because Tim Hortons in the early days was associated with a famous and respected hockey player, and then as a Canadian meeting place and it now has tried to expand into other countries, with very few exceptions, it is failing in that endeavor. Tim Horton as an icon means nothing to Americans, and Tim Hortons as a donut shop doesnt have any cache at all. Dunkin Donuts would mean more to an American. As a Canadian, Tim Hortons is like how baseball used to be. It meant something. Now, it's just a massive chain restaurant like many others. As it has scaled up, as a massive operation like Restaurant Brands would be expected to do with it, it has lost the core reason it was so popular in the first place. Those reasons were simple. It was a relatively inexpensive place to get some comfort food and a coffee, and it was a nice place to do that, and in many instances you might even make a few friends because the customers were very loyal. Many would travel to just one location. It had a family feel to it. As well, the servers in many cases had worked years at the same location. I can say with certainty that that is now not the case. Why is there such a difference now? There is a big difference between those who build a business and those who buy a business to strictly make a profit. One watches the details, the other watches the numbers.
Many remember the classic scene in the movie Wall Street. In case you dont, I will put it above. In the clip, Gordon Gekko lists both the problems that people like him create, and the reasons that the business will fail because of it. What he did not do, is acknowledge his part in all of that. We all know the Greed is Good part, but there is much more in there many forget.
A few excerpts.
"The men who built this great industrial empire made sure of it because it was their money at stake. Today, management has no stake in the company."
"Teldar paper has 33 different Vice Presidents each, earning over $200,000 a year." (This was in the mid 80s.)
"The new law of evolution in Corporate America seems to be survival of the unfittest."
"I am not a destroyer of companies, I am a liberator of them."
Here is what the character didn't say. He only has a stake so he can destroy the parts and sell them off. That is his skin in the game. His law was killing the unfit so he could eat them. He had no interest in survival for anybody but himself. He didn't actually destroy companies. He found companies on life support and he pulled the plug when he got the last breath out of them. He did not liberate anything.
It sounds odd to say it but greed was not the worst part. The motivation of the action and the actions they take to get there are the far bigger issue. In fact, while the word Greed got the headline, and now the hits on You Tube, it's not even the right word for what Gekko was describing. He was describing productivity and accountability, and yes, drive to be successful. Survival of the fittest but only in a scenario where he survives and they dont. He had no interest in making anything better for anybody but himself. In his way, he was a vulture. Here is what the average person wouldnt know about the Gordon Gekko character. He is based on Ivan Boesky. Who was Ivan Boesky? He was known as an insider trading moneymaker. What he would do is buy into the company's stock with the sole intention of selling that stock if the company was to get bought out by a much larger corporation. Because that is a very dangerous thing to try and win at, he would find insiders who could give him illegal information on the chances of those deals happening and closing. They call that arbitrage. There is nothing wrong with it if you just use your own research to figure that out, but when you do it like Boesky did, it's a crime and you go to jail for acting in that matter. Which he did. In other words, a fair arbitrage player is like a sharp poker player. He makes the right bet based on his skills. A dirty criminal one only play poker in a game where he knows exactly the cards his opponents have even though they are theoretically not showing. He cheats. While Gekkos character was based on the offensive and brash Boesky, they actually operated in different ways. Boesky, as mentioned, simply was out to buy stock and sell it if and when it rose in value. Gekko, on the other hand, in spite of what he said in that speech, was one who bought distressed companies at a massive discount, then broke them up, sold off the parts for a huge profit and ruined any chance they had at success going forward. But Gekko and Boesky did share one common trait and strategy. Neither had started any of those companies nor had they any interest in making them viable or better. In the below clip, he lays out exactly what he was.
How much is enough, Gordon? It's not a question of enough pal. It's a zero sum game. Somebody wins, somebody loses....capitalism at its finest. What I do. Stock and real estate speculation. Why do you need to wreck this company? Because it's wreckable.
Not once does he mention making it work better. Nor does he even try. So, the impetus for this blog was the current The Container Store bankruptcy. It is everything that this blog is about. While reading up about that on LinkedIn, I came across a piece written by a woman named Nicole Eisdorfer. She lays out much of the situation with The Container Store and why it has failed, in her view of course. She also relates that she worked in the store many years ago, and what that culture was like. I will summarize all of that, but I encourage you to read her piece. It's very well written and well thought out. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/from-crown-jewel-cultures-common-commodity-harsh-eisdorfer-phd-bx11c/
-employees weren’t just trained; they were nurtured. The Container Store’s vibrant culture has faded into a robotic, monotone husk. -their approach — empathetic, thorough, and people-focused -the founders, made a point to personally visit stores and remember associates by name. You could tell they actually cared. -employees weren’t seen as expendable resources but as the company’s greatest differentiators. -what set The Container Store apart was the tenure of its employees. Some associates had been with the company for more than 10 years, some 25. -the founders weren’t distant executives; they were storytellers and cultural icons whose presence and philosophies shaped daily operations. -As The Container Store scaled its operations and became a publicly traded company, the pressures of growth and profitability began to erode its cultural foundation. -the decline in The Container Store’s employee-first philosophy. -customers who once felt understood and valued began to see The Container Store as just another retailer.
"The Container Store’s journey mirrors a larger trend in corporate America — where the drive for efficiency and scalability often comes at the cost of the very culture that built success in the first place. The story of The Container Store is a cautionary tale for any organization looking to scale. Culture is not a luxury; it is the lifeblood of sustainable success. To preserve what makes them unique."
-Nicole Eisdorfer
I would argue that the nature of scaling up a business, especially when it is taken over by corporate types in of itself is the reason they fail. It is not about the culture, the experience the customer and employees have, but the numbers. And, as Gordon Gekko did get right, if management has no real financial stake in the entire thing, they dont have to care. They apply their principles, techniques and strategies to something that was working just fine, which is why they bought it in the first place, and if that doesnt work, which most of the time it wont, they simply just let it fail and take their loss. While the original owners, like Tim Horton, who started it, nurtured it, and owned it would not have let it get that way. They cared that it would flourish and succeed. It wasn't just numbers. It was an entity. It was an experience. Customers paid gladly to have that, because it gave them peace and a sense that it was worth supporting. A short example from personal experience. A longtime friend of mine had a father who started a company in the 1970s, from scratch. He started with one store, but as they scaled up, one store at a time, he maintained the culture of every store, and the customer base. When he got to about 30 stores, all pretty much local, it was still that way, and very successful. At that point, K Mart bought him out with a massive overpay for the whole thing, and he sold out. Its the kind of scenario Boesky would have loved. Within two years, the whole thing went bust. The kind of scenario Gekko would have loved. KMart changed all of it to make it more efficient. It may have even been more efficient. But, it wasn't the same business, and it failed horribly. As soon as they buy, they scale it, then they adjust it, and then when it changes, it fails.
Efficiency is something. It isnt everything. Customer experience can mean a lot more than that. Simply, if they had just kept doing the same thing, the same way, and opened a few stores at a time in different cities, and taken the care to make sure they were run properly, it would have kept succeeding. They scaled it and they wrecked it. Not that they cared. KMart was a massive entity back then, and the money lost on that deal was not significant. However, true to their way of doing things, it wasn't long before KMart itself was in big trouble and out of business. If they were smart, they would have enlisted my friend's father to run KMart. He had the right formula. He built it, he managed it, he cared about it. He knew it. He made it work. I remember a time when you would go to the grocery store, and some of the cashiers had been there for 30 years or more. They knew three generations of a family. By name. Those days are gone. Sadly, it doesnt seem to matter in the world of buy outs, arbitrage, foolish scaling and stock priced based options compensation.
What is the answer to this situation? Well, I get why everyone has to scale up now. To compete on price and cost of doing business, you have to be large enough to compete with a Walmart, or Amazon, or any big box store. Many smaller hardware stores simply can't compete with Home Depot. They dont have the buying power. But even more importantly, if you can't just stay local, you have to expand out slowly and carefully. Getting larger but losing your core advantage is a good way to go bust faster. In doing that, you will certainly encounter a Gordon Gekko type, who sees the value of your assets, but not your overall business. You have damaged it and he sees it as easily wreckable if he just pushes the right buttons.
Maybe its just a foolish romantic notion of mine to think that the experience meant as much as it did, or does now. Maybe I'm not romantic about it all, but just nostalgic. I remember what it felt like to experience that experience. That experience that came from that scene in Field of Dreams. It was worth the price we paid for that, and it would be worth the price now if we had to pay more for it. But, that is just a dream now, not a reality.
It seems nobody is playing on that Field of Dreams anymore. Can you convince these fools who think they understand a business better than the builders of that business who made it what it is, what they wanted to buy from them? I dont think so. They dont have the will to see it that way. Not the way we saw it back in the day.
