Thanks, Frank. Yes, you bet. >> And a little pitch, you heard Frank talk it. I am a proud uh alumnest of Miami University. That's the Miami University, not the one down in Florida. And uh we are 30 and0. So, our basketball team is the only undefeated team in the NCAA. We've got one more game on Friday and we're going to have a perfect season. So, ESPN 2 8:00 local time here. I am a golfer, too. So, I will uh I'll rep the golfers are doing quite well as well. And we'll see what happens with who gets to the tournament when. So, uh thanks so much. I appreciate you guys having me. Um I can talk I'm here to talk about international business. Uh obviously that changed a whole bunch last weekend. Um I will talk about that, but I'm also you guys were great last time with questions. I will talk about anything you want to ask me about. Please, uh do not hesitate to raise your hand, interrupt me, or just shout say, "Chad, I'd like you to ask your question." Um so, international. Know a lot of you in here are business owners or at least work in a business in some way, shape, or form. If I were to poll you, and I won't. If I were to pull you and say, "What's the number one thing that you want for your business?" You probably all tell me growth first. And I would tell you, you're a little bit off. The first thing you want is stability. And that's been a big problem lately. And that really got worse uh last weekend when the incident uh you know, the the interactions with um Iran started. And it is going to only get worse if that continues to go longer and longer and longer. So, as a publicly traded company, and did I say this already? The first thing I'm going to tell you is these are the uh these are the opinions of Chad Carney, not of 3M. Uh I work for the company, but these are my own opinions. Um the first thing we want is stability for a couple reasons. One is we don't like change. Uh we like to be able to set things up that work really smoothly for a long period of time. And the second reason is we are constantly reporting to Wall Street. So when things change and we have to tell Wall Street things change, what does it do? It affects our stock price. So, a great example would be the tariffs. When the tariffs first came in, we said, "Uhoh." So, probably I spent with my team a month figuring out exactly what was going to happen, uh, how it was going to affect us, both from a pricing and a revenue standpoint, and try to figure out how to mitigate those risks as soon as possible. The great news for 3M and my business specifically is we have a really aggressive approach to regional supply. So, most of the stuff I sell is made in country, but there's many, many things that just can't be made in country for a lot of reasons. One is there's just not enough of it, right? So, we could talk about a fact of some of my production lines are $30 million. So, if I don't have a need for a second production line, I'm certainly not going to spend $30 million to produce it. I'll just ship around the world. And the second thing is there's a lot of um IP at 3M. So, the point is is there's things that we don't want to make other places simply because we don't want anyone to see how they're made. So, we kind of keep those a secret. Uh and the thing I'll tell you that's most important about learning in the in certainly in the publicly uh traded sector is money moves very quick. Capital moves very very slow. So when we do things like bring in the tariffs to try to change these things, we have to understand that the money can move tomorrow. Wall Street works in micros secondsonds. They don't work even work in days anymore or even hours. They work in micros secondsonds. That can be very quick. And you as customers, if I won't say hi Ve, if Cub changes their prices tomorrow, we're showing up at Hi Ve, right? And we can move our dollars very quickly. Capital takes a long time to build. I'm actually working on a production line right now. We just produced finish the process of getting the money for it. It won't start until 2029. >> So that's how long some of these things take. So we have to be a little bit smarter with how we do these things. I would say rather than be doing the penalties of the tariffs, we should probably be doing things about uh giving incentives for people, right? We do it with taxes, but we don't have any teeth to it. So, I'll give a great example is the Samsung uh facility over in Wisconsin that got a whole bunch of tax rebates that was supposed to bring I think 4,000 5,000 jobs is going to end up being I think 28 jobs, 29 jobs. But, did we claw back the taxes from them? We did not. So, if we're going to make things stick, I'm I'm much more of a carrot than a stick person, but the carrot's got to have some teeth to it. So if you don't follow through on what you're supposed to follow through on, then it's uh then there's a problem. You got to pay it back. Um international trade got a lot hairier and people are thinking about uh the Iran situation in oil and gas, but I will tell you it goes much much deeper than that. And if this uh conflict protracts for a very long period of time, we're going to start to feel it here in the US pretty quick. We've already seen it in gas prices, but gas is really speculative, right? It's going to go up and it's going to go down really quick. And I would say that's less on impact and more about people trying to take advantage of perceived impact than actually the impact happening right now. We'll get there, but it's not there yet. Uh the bigger issue that I'm dealing with is the fact of um my business doesn't produce anything in that in that region, but we sell a lot of things in that region. Transportation is pretty much stopped. So that means I'm already looking for other ways to get my material in for the things that people desperately need. And I sell health and safety products, so it's actually pretty important to get my stuff there. So I will get preferential treatment. And I'm still struggling to get materials into that area just because nobody's willing to take the risk. >> Yes. >> Have a little closer. >> Oh, sorry. >> No, that's okay. I just want to make sure everybody can >> catch you if I can. >> And then the other thing that next if this goes on for a long period of time, the next thing that's going to happen is the fact of there's a tremendous amount of shipping that comes from China and Asia into Europe through that shipping route. That's all stopping as well. If you're not going to send an oil tanker through there, you're not going to send a container ship through there. You see the current administration offering uh insurance, offering ridealongs with, you know, naval vessels and things of that nature. You're still seeing people already scramble to reroute. That reroute is expensive. It's expensive. It's expensive. So, you're talking about adding two to three weeks to that shipping time or you're talking about 300 to 400% for whether it's air shipment or over the road shipment that takes even longer. So, what's going to happen is all those products coming out of Asia, they're already made. So, they need to find a market for them. So, what they're going to do is they're going to send it to any place they can send it to. So, don't be surprised if all of a sudden we see much lower prices coming in from Chinese suppliers and Asian suppliers here to North America because they're going to be looking to get rid of that material that's sitting on their books. They've got probably billions worth of inventory that they're not going to hang on to for a second. So, if they can't get it into Europe, they can't get it through that straight. They're going to send some of it around around the other routes, but they're also going to send a bunch of it here because they can reduce the price and make about the same amount that they can with the increased shipping costs that are going on right now. So, that's the that's what's going on. The other thing that happens is you've got people like me and my entire team that are just basically coming together and doing a lot of uh I don't say this anymore, but a lot of wargaming. So, how long is this going to last? What if it lasts two weeks? What if it lasts four weeks? What if it lasts six weeks? So, we're doing a lot of planning that adds a tremendous amount of cost. The hope is is this is impermanent, but the point is is we're planning for it not to be because we just don't know. And then the other thing, too, is I'll just talk quickly about uh we talked saw about the reversals of the tariffs, the original tariffs, and then the 15%. That is an absolute nightmare for me because I have my CFO asking me things like, "Hey, are we going to get any of that money back?" I have no idea. If you're asking me, I say, "There's no way you're going to get that money back. Don't even try. The best thing we can do is just move on with ourselves." But then you add the 15% tariff on places where we do pull from that we didn't have a tariff before and now we're talking about cost increases. And and just to be clear that does go to the consumer. There's there's no question about that. That's the first thing we're doing is looking at how do we cover these costs? What do we do? Can we do things differently? You know, can we offer a lesser product? Can we get a cheaper product? Or do we just have to raise the price? So questions on any of that? I know there were some questions over here. You guys Yes, sir. >> You pay the tariff. not the country that's shipping it in. >> I pay it. So, if I bring it in, customs charges me that rate for bringing it in. Now, we can go through the all the iterations. Are there some customers or some sellers externally that are saying, "Hey, I'm going to reduce my price because I still want you to buy that." Yeah, but that's back to the point of I talked about earlier. Money boos very quick. I can order from someone else who I'm not going to get those tariffs from, but they can't increase my they can't increase their output that quickly. Capital takes a long period of time. and the the I would say the transient nature of these tariffs, right? It's been kind of up and down, back and forth. Supreme Court administration. Uh you know, we got midterms coming up. There'll be a different administration in in a few years. Nobody's spending like I am putting $40 million into a into a new factory that 40 years or four years from now might not have the same advantage or even the same customer base that they have today. So, capital moves slow, money moves very quick. >> Yes, sir. >> So, how fast does it happen? Let's say Trump is wake up one o'clock in the morning and says, "I'm gonna put a tariff on mandates." >> Does it happen the next day? Does it happen the next month or does it even happen? >> Yeah, it happens. You So, a company like mine would plan for it immediately because we don't know where shipments are and then we would do the assessment as those shipments come in because there's an enact date and things of that nature that we don't know. But we immediately plan like the worst case scenario. So, we're immediately putting that cost on ourselves and we have to face it. And I will tell you right now, uh, 3M's a huge company, one of the largest, right? We go aggressive. So if we we we're not allowed to take the we think it's about this, it's the worst case scenario, and that's what we plan for. >> You price that accordingly as well. >> Yeah. >> Now, again, the the other thing too is we don't necessarily see that. So, I will tell you if something changed tomorrow and my prices were impacted by $10 million. Um, you wouldn't see that as a consumer if you're buying my product probably about for six or eight months, but it's not going to come and go as quickly, right? Those things have a tendency to be permanent and they certainly have a tendency until we feel comfortable that we've either recouped those dollars or the fact that those dollars are going to or the impacts of those fees are going to truly go away. So I would say there's a lot of companies that just say once they get the price, once people are comfortable paying it, it just stays whether that tariffs goes or goes or stays. >> Yes, sir. >> So as a large company, do you see any benefits to the tariffs at all from the consumer standpoint from the country? What other what you know? >> I will tell you it's it's helping us out a ton. Um there's there's and we're meeting with the government on a daily basis. We have great conversations with the government uh on things like, hey, should we have tariffs on these? Should these things be exempt? Should those things be exempt? 3M does a phenomenal job of, you know, not just because I work there. It's one of the smartest companies I've ever seen with how it manufactures. So, we have a extremely aggressive because of the way we built our company on a subsidiary structure. We have a very aggressive sourcing uh policy. So, we make probably 85% of what we sell right there. So, it's really helped us because our impacts are minimal. However, we can never escape it and it's even with small tariffs, it's tens of millions of dollars because there are things that we just can't get. Uh, a great example, and I won't use exact examples, but a very simple metal as a raw material. When the tariffs came in, that metal was taxed tremendously from where it was coming from, and I won't say that either, and I won't say what it is. Uh, so we immediately went out scouring around. That's the only place it comes from because again it's labor intensive or it's capital intensive to get the manufacturing things. So we could probably change it three and a half years from now and then the question becomes is that worthwhile? What's going what's going to be the scenario at that point? Um so that's one of the bigger things and and I'll give you another recent one is that we have had significant offshoring from the US and I don't know if a lot of that's going to come back. So I think we're looking at the critical items. We're seeing like the chips act and things of that nature to bring back things that are mission critical. But there's a lot of stuff that's just it's too cheap to make. So even if you put a 10 and 15% tariff on it, it's not going to generate a factory in the US. And even if it does generate a factory in the US, those costs are maybe on par, maybe close, but certainly not a benefit. So other questions. The other thing we were talking about is is uh the consolidation of of large and small stores. That's one of the things that we're seeing a lot of um and I will just tell you from a manufacturing perspective, one of the things that we focus on is the cost of doing business. And one of the things that we're doing is basically saying how big is the customer and how valuable is that customer to us. So that's what most customers are doing now. It's why you see the rise of the Walmarts, the Home Depots, the Lowe's, the things of that nature because what can they offer a manufacturer? They can offer a scale. uh we want to run our factories super efficiently. We'd not like to order the same amount every month and ship it out in the same way in the same fashion in bulk. So that's where we're seeing that tough. We were just talking about the fact of how does uh the fratal Ace Hardware keep itself going when it's got you know some of the biggest competitors in the world right next door. It's an amazing story but uh from a manufacturers perspective love to hear his side about what he's hearing from manufacturers but uh the big channels the omni channels are offering us discounts and things of that nature that it's just impossible to take. the volume is there and the people are coming to those channels. So it's difficult for the small business to stay in place right now. Questions topics you guys want me to cover? >> Private equity. Just do it a little bit. >> All right. These are Chad Carney's opinions on private equity. U uh it's it's difficult and again I deal with private equity on on the other side there. A lot of my customers are owned by private equity, so I'll be a little bit cautious here. Um, I just think there's got to be more guard rules on how that's done. Um, right now, I think there's a little bit of a free-for-all. Some of the guard rails have been taken away, and we're seeing some of the uh I would say some of the the raider corporate raiders that we saw in the 1980s of people buying companies, breaking them apart for the parts, and selling them for a quick for a quick buck. Um, I I I see the same thing in some of the examples. Um, Red Lobster is the example. You can read about this. This isn't Chad's information. And this is publicly available information. Private equity bought Red Lobster from Olive Garden. Uh the first thing they did was they sold all the land underneath the stores. And where did they sell it? They sold it to themselves. They sold it to another company that that private equity company owned. So that private equity company was made whole on the entire deal on day two. And then what happened? Every franchisee, every store, every every outlet is now paying rent instead of having to just pay taxes on the things they own. So profitability goes down. And then what do we see? Uh there's a book and I won't name the book, but I highly recommend everybody read it. I don't know how it's a bad word, so I don't know how to say it. Uh in poopification is the is the book. It's a really good book and it talks about things about once people get scale, they immediately start taking all the things that got them that scale away. The great example is Google. If we went to Google um 10 years ago, you'd type in what you wanted in Google and it was really relevant the first first page, first three things that you saw. If you go to Google now and you type in a search, what's the first two pages probably you get? >> It's all us. All of us paying. >> It's the sponsored ads. It's things that they're putting in. And oh, by the way, those sponsored ads because I do this. I buy Google Adwords. It might not have anything to do with that. So, I might be selling you a respirator and I might say, "Hey, you know what? I want anybody who who who Googles sanding or abrasives or sandpaper. I want my ad to come up on that." So, you might type, "Hey, what's the best way to sand walnut?" and you're going to get an ad for a 3M respirator as the number one thing that you should be looking at. Doesn't make sense, right? But the point is the business model has shifted. So now that they've got us all going there, what is it? 95% I think Google has on their on their uh on their usage. So now they're just turning that into another business model. So that's where things get worse over time. And then shrinkflation, all the rest of that stuff that we're seeing as well. >> Thank you. >> Yes, sir. >> How about the rise of China? I read some stuff about there's non-stop growth in reach. Is that truly a problem? >> It truly is a problem. It's still going on. Uh one of the places we're seeing that is um I was just in Australia 3 weeks ago. Um so if you had gone to Australia, I don't know, five years ago, there would have been a heavy heavy heavy um uh consumer dislike for things produced in China. That's gone. And the reason that's gone is because they're making better and better products and they're making them available. So pandemic helped a lot because China was able to get things into Australia where places like Europe and North America had just shut things down. So that changed that swing a lot. And also it's just as the economy starts to soften, people get much much more price sensitive. So all of a sudden they're looking at the at the uh at the Chinese products and saying, "Yeah, I used to not want to buy that, but the European and the US products are 40% more price than that, so I'm going to do it." There's not a lot of manufacturing in Australia, so a lot of their consumer goods are just being produced elsewhere. Um, and and it it's the other thing too is, and I will I will give them tons of credit, the China manufacturers, the uh Vietnamese, Indonesian manufacturers, they're really really good. So, I'll give you an example of what I saw. Uh, we sell uh welding equipment. So, welding helmets, right, with an automatic darkening filter. I went to 15 hardware stores to see how my products were placed and other people's products were placed. When you have a dominant player like 3M, you have a really easy business model if you're chasing us. Just make our product a little bit cheaper or make our product a little bit better. So, what becomes of that is I looked and all they would do is they would have, you know, we publish, hey, here's the 15 reasons you want to buy our product. They would make all of them equal and pick two of them and make them slightly better. Doesn't matter if it's important to the customer or not. They'll just say, well, geez, why would I buy this if this is the exact same thing? Two of these things are better and it's 30% less. So, that's the thing. It's a it's a brilliant business model. They're really really really good at it and they're fast. That's the biggest thing. Um they can produce things in a fraction of the time that we can um because they have all the means necessary to themselves right there. So I would say China is the economy is slowing a little bit. Um they've been stumbling quite a bit ever since the uh the real estate bubble burst probably four years ago. That was a huge hit to the wealth of that country, the individual wealth. So there's a lot of people that used to have a lot of free capital that have lost all that capacity. But no, they're still uh they're still growing huge. They definitely have, again, if you want to get into the economics of it, they definitely have a population problem. Uh their population was kind of their big strength and now it's kind of tipping over. Uh and and it's just um we can look to an exact example, which is Japan. China's just happening at macro speed. So, it took Japan a long time for them to realize that things like uh you know the the work environment, the cultural environment of that, people not having kids, working till you're 60, all that kind of stuff. Now, their population is completely upside down. That happened to China in a third of the time that it happened in Japan and I don't think they have a way to fix it. They had a one child policy for a very very long time to control their pol to control their program. Now, if you go there, um I give you a great example. When I was living there, people would see me on the street that I work with and they would be stunned that I have three kids. They'd be like, "Are you insane? What are you doing? What is wrong with you?" Because it's just one is enough. That's all you need. And it's more than enough. Especially if you're living in Chongqing or Shenzen or or Shanghai where real estate costs are through the roof. Raising a child in China is expensive. So having more than one gets exponentially expensive. >> Child kids being born these days all across the world are is way down. So, how's that going to affect the economy in the world? >> Uh, you're you're losing you're losing your your customer base. So, it's it's a huge problem. Um, that's one of the things if you guys are reading into the AI doom and gloom, which I don't believe just yet, that's one of the concerns that they have about AI is the fact that it's attacking not only blue collar jobs, but white collar jobs. So, you're not going to have the consumers. So, you might be able to make your car at a fraction of the price because you've got no humans working in the factory, but those humans buy your car. So if they don't have a job, if they don't have an income stream, then there's nothing they can do. Then they're not going to be buying the Mercedes that rolls out that line that's 100% robotically inst, you know, created. So yeah, it's it's a big problem. I don't think we're going to see that tip over for a long time. Uh it all depends on what you're what you're talking about. If you're talking about uh consumer goods like diapers and things of that nature, that market has been dealing with that reality for decades, right? And there's it's struggling mightily. You're seeing a consolidation there. Talking about the rest of the products, electronics and that kind of stuff. people are still buying more and more of that stuff. So, I don't think we're going to see any uh any impacts there for a long time. So, the first things you're going to see are baby care and all that kind of good stuff are going to going to struggle. >> Yes, sir. >> How about small business uh in relation to the uh mom and pop restaurants? Seems like the last couple of years they've had Minnesota sick and save time and know this year Minnesota paid leave. Yeah. What are they doing for us? >> Yeah. To be able to offset some of that. >> So, I've got a bunch of friends who are small business owners. Uh that's that's a massive hit on on those on those folks. Right. That is uh again, if you go back to what I started with, what's the number one thing you're looking for if you're a business owner? Stability and and you know, and and that puts a whole bunch of that, right? If I have employees that can now just randomly take time off, uh with no penalty, a long time off, um I've got to figure out a way to do that. It's not great because we're already in a in an environment where uh premium labor is at, you know, is tough to come by. Um hiring we most of 3M's plants in the US are in small to midsize towns. Uh we've had trouble getting and keeping skilled labor for a very very long time. I'll give you an example of that. Um I used to deal in the printing printing industry. Um the printing presses and cutting machines and things of that nature are very unique. It's it's a it's an industry that's to unto itself. Uh they couldn't keep people. So, one of the companies I I won't mention it, but just down here in St. Paul, u to solve their problem about the fact that all of their experienced pressmen, experienced press operators were aging out, retiring, and they couldn't get anybody to come and take these jobs, they created a university. So, they literally created a university to teach people how to run printing presses and things of that nature. So, they now put 15 people a year through a two-year program that is fully paid for by this company, right? Fully paid for by this company. And the way that they get their money back is obviously they get the pick of the litter of who they think is the best pressed people to hang on to their hang on to in their books, but then they also charge anybody who hires those folks. So, and again, anybody who hires those folks, they have to pay these people 25 grand plus the cost of their education. So, it's a brilliant idea, but it's I think that's what we're going to see is these industries that are going to have to take care of themselves. We're not going to do it on a macro level. It's too expensive. It's too costly. So, if you're running into problems with finding skilled labor, you got to figure out how to build it on your own. Um, but then the question becomes is how do you keep it? I will tell you right now that those pressmen are probably making 4x what they were making even 10 years ago. And the reason for that is they need to keep them, right? The cost of you having to retrain, the cost of you losing production time is way more than the extra uh income that you're paying out on a monthly basis. That's one of the things we're seeing in China, too. Um, China is behind, most of Asia is behind on the uh on the safety regulations, right? Um, and one of the things that we sell is very high-end welding equipment, right? So, a welding helmet from us could cost $300 to $2,000. So, China was never a big market for us. And all of a sudden, they're becoming a big market. Why? Because having a good welder is worthwhile. Keeping someone happy is worthwhile. So, protecting them, giving them the equipment that makes them feel comfortable, giving the equipment that makes them productive and efficient is now becoming a thing in China. So, it used to be just throw more and more people at it. Now they're saying, "Hey, we need the skilled labor to be able to compete with the US and Indonesia and Vietnam and the places like that." So they're spending more now on keeping their workers happy and retaining them versus just a continuing production line of people walking in the door and being taught how to weld. So what the thruster is throwing all these immigrants out of the country who are are people picking grapes and tomatoes and everything else and the roofers I mean anyway they're gone. So what's going to happen on that field? I mean that's just devastating. >> All those fields are going to struggle for a long time. I would say construction and roofing is probably going to be the worst hit. Um, I would say the the you can there's a bit more of a structured system for getting people to come in with crops related uh that the government can manage and understand, but the the roofers and things of that nature. It's it's, you know, you see things on the news about people that, you know, quotes are now out two and three years to get your roof replaced and things of that nature because you you got two choices. the price triples, right? Because labor cost rates and remember that's a high high labor rate thing or you're doing a lot less jobs. So yeah, that's a tough one for me. We've got to do things the right way. But uh but the point and I think the specifically I'll talk about Minnesota, the scare tactics um were really tough. Um so just to give you an example, I have people that work for me that are natural-born Americans, have lived here their whole life, but they would ask, "Hey, can I not come into the office this week? Hey, can I work from home for the next two weeks? And I'd say, why is that? They're like, well, I'm worried I'm taking my kid to school every day rather than having to ride the bus. Or, I'm worried about the fact that I look a certain way, so driving to work every day is tough for me and I live in St. Paul and there's heavy activity down here. Can I just work from home? The answer was absolutely do what you need to do to take care of yourself. Um, I mean, and if you think about it, if if that's my industry where people have four years degrees at least and things of that nature and have been, you know, naturalized for at least 20 years, think about it in a place like uh, you know, construction company 10 times worse. Just insurance alone in those construction industries is I mean we're all feeling it. Bill and Noah as well like our home insurance home insurance a lot and we had just a Stillwater company make $62 million in one year in just just roofing like and now it's all coming almost 10fold like >> and here's the biggest problem I have with that. The need's not going to go away. They aren't putting on those roofs just for fun, right? People need those roofs. So I mean we're going to have to figure out >> roofing and siding. Yeah, like are huge. That's what my insurance guy said. >> I'm like, why is this keep going up every year by like thousands? >> And it's the roofing and apparently the roofing and sighting has really kind of done a little number on Minnesota's insurance. >> My wife works for Jame Hardy. James Hardy, so I'm not going to say anything. >> You're going to set down some of your businesses. What would you tell them what they ought to be doing thinking about? >> I think uh everything's got to go back to customer first. The only way you're going to win against the big guys is thinking customer first. Customer experience from beginning to end. If you take a look at all the things we hate about going to the Lowe's, going to the Home Depot, all that kind of it's all self-service. There's no humans to talk to. No one knows what they're doing. All that kind of stuff. That's the thing that I'm an industrial and I'm still focused on that right now. How do I make a customer feel like they can? Again, remember I sell highly technical products. So, the biggest thing I want to do to compete with all the small guys or all the all the international suppliers that are coming to me, I can answer your question. Want to talk to an expert, they're right there. You want to you want us to pick up the phone, we'll answer your question. So, the customer experience is is what's going to win. Uh again, the that book talks about it, right? The and again, I highly recommend it. And poopification, not poop, the other word. um read that book. But he basically talks about these companies get our data, they get us functioning the way we wanted to, and then they start taking all the things away, all the things that we wanted to, all the reasons that we went there. Convenience, ease, uh price points, things in that here. Selection, they start taking it all away, stripping. You were just talking about it now. Home Depot 10 years ago when they started selling plants had the best plants in the world for the lowest price. >> And Bachman's where the company I worked for, like the family. Yep. >> We grew the best, too. And they sold it for onethird. and you cannot even get close to those plants anymore because it's just it's all gone. >> But the minute they get the behavior, they start cranking the price. >> So that's the thing. Uh so I would say f focus on the customer experience. Um talk to your customers. So ask them what they like and what they don't like. That's the number one thing. We we've lost sight of that. I believe our our our the US corporatewide has lost sight of what matters to the customer. We're talking about efficiency, digital tools, all this kind of stuff. what actually matters to the customer. And I will tell you, there's great brands out there that are doing that. A lot of grill brands, a lot of consumer brands are basically saying, "Hey, listen. We don't want to sell you 45 things. We want to sell you the thing that you care about, and we want to do it in the way that you want it." >> Long-term implications of growing US debt. >> Sorry. Long-term implications of growing US debt. >> Um, Social Security, that's going to be your number one thing, right? Um, just to let you guys know, I'm 53 years old. I plan on working for a lot longer. Um, I I work with a financial adviser. I have not since I was 35. I have not considered Social Security in my retirement policy at all. Zero. It is upside for me completely. I don't count on it whatsoever. Um, I know that's hard to hear and there's a lot of people that say, "I just can't do that." Totally understand that. But that's my biggest concern is the fact of we're not taking it seriously. Um, there's a lot of things we're doing right now. So, just so you guys know, there's a lot of things that this administration do is kind of doing under the radar. We're trying to devalue the dollar. That's good for us because that'll make our debt cost less and and and people will, you know, want to buy want to buy goods from the US and it'll also make our debt cost less so we can pay it off quicker. I just think we're at such a state right now that I mean, if you talk about just the interest alone that is compounding on that, I don't think we have a recovery. And I've not I study that world a lot. I've not seen anyone with a decent idea, period. Full stop. Not to mention a decent idea that they could get 50 people to agree with. >> Five minutes. >> Okay, young lady. >> Five minutes. >> Yep. Got you. >> Um, yesterday I was at a um a workforce summit. I did workforce development in the chamber and heard from Sean O'Neal with Minnesota Chamber who I identified some things just locally. I just want to read a couple of. So, um, our our growth here uh GDP growth, we rank in the bottom third in Minnesota. Um, we have about two jobs for every one worker and we have more net migration of high school students going to school out of state in our neighboring states that they than we have coming in. So, I'm just looking at forecasting. Could you forecast? We have some educators in the room too. Um, what does it look like by 2030? So, four years. What does it look like by 2036? Are there things we can do for those of us who work with like the emerging workforce and then also anybody who has teenagers right now, kids in college, and then of course for educators? >> Yep. Um, so there's tons of stuff to So good news. I'm very bullish on Minnesota because the thing is with a state economy, it can change very, very quickly unlike a national economy and things of that nature. We can talk about things that could change here in two to three years and stuff like that. I would also say that I as a as a as a net hirer, I've probably hired 75 people in the past five years. There's people that want to move to Minnesota. So, there's a lot of white collar workers, there's a lot of people, there's a great um uh uh value of life here. So, there are people that are wanting to move to Minnesota. We've got to enable them for that. Um, this is the place where I would say if I'm if I'm working in the uh in the state government, I'm not, by the way, if I'm working in the state government, um, the first thing I'd be talking to is is promoting job creation. How do we bring jobs back? There's a lot of things. I'll take a look at Salventum, right? We lost Salventum. Salventum was 3M healthcare. Um, they moved their headquarters out, right? There was things we could have done there to keep those people. And I would say that's only going to get worse. So, I'd be looking at the big wigs. I'd be looking at Target, 3M, uh, Medronic, Boston SAI, all those folks, and I'd be going to them and saying, "Hey, listen. It all starts there, right? We need people with high incomes coming into the state so that it all kind of works out. So, we got to get the facilities in place, but you're not going to have people that provide daycare if there's not a lot of kids that need daycare. You're not going to have people that provide the services. So, how do we get those large white collar jobs coming back? How do we get it in mass so that people want to move here?" Because we know people do want to move here. Uh, a great example is um a company called Arctic Wolf, which is a digital company which was based in San Francisco for years. Well, he was a Minnesota guy and he came back and brought his headquarters here. So, that's a thousand jobs right there coming back to Minnesota. There's things we should be doing about that. None of this doesn't all have to be the things we hear about on the news. There could be fundamental business stuff that our state administration is doing on a day-to-day basis. We've got to ask for it. It's our fault, right? We've got to ask for that stuff. We got to say to our say to our state senator, how are you bringing a thousand jobs here in the next two years? >> Just to piggyback on at the end of the day comes down to who we're electing and who we're putting in. >> And so it comes back to us as voters. If we're going to continue to have people in office people out of office, then we're going to continue to have the issues that we have. That's just the way it is. They're anti- business and it's the way it is. My question for you is >> future 3M stock buy, sell or hold. >> No comment here. Here's one thing I'll say because I think this is the end of my time. One thing I'll say on that, I totally agree with you about electing people, but here's the thing. Uh, and I have a 18-year-old who's very, very aggressive towards me right now. He's going to college next year. I'm okay with that right now. um because they are they are different thinkers than we are. We have more power than they do right now. We have to listen to them a lot more. One of the things that he's taught me, he didn't teach me, but he reminded me of the fact of yes, elections are every four years or every six years or that. But they represent us every day. So if I'm upset about something, an email goes a long way. If I'm upset about something, a phone call goes a long way. So don't just put them in and say, "Okay, I elected you on this theory and this theory is going to run through." Challenge them on a daily basis to say, "Hey, listen. my quality of life is going down. I want my kid, my son's going to Montana State uh next year. I want him to come back to Minnesota. The way he's thinking about it, I don't know if that's going to be a reality or not. So, those are the things that we need to be challenging these people on. And and the other the only other thing I'll say is as having lived in this world at a at a at a high level, be specific. Be very very specific. So, if we're unhappy with the fact that they're closing schools in Lake EMO and and aggregating into larger and larger middle schools and we want a better education policy, that's the email that gets sent, not just, hey, I'm really upset about this. >> You're 100% right. I know a number of politicians and they listen. They they pay attention when you reach out. Constituents don't reach out. We all pitch between each other, but we don't say anything >> and we talk about the wrong things. So, pick something that's specific, pick something that's actionable, and ask the question because again, they won't think about it if they're not asked about it. Good job.