We are in a Debt Spiral – 40 Didnt Pay Rent!

Things were up 18%. Wow. The year-over-year, January of 2024, we talked about how things were up 18%. Horrible. Then you had, I think I followed up in April, 24%. Uh-oh. Then you go to June, up 34%. Uh-oh. Uh-oh. Uh-oh. Uh-oh. It’s going in the wrong direction. Well, we just got the numbers in for September, and from a year ago, small business bankruptcies. Now, this is what I get a kick out of. What is considered a small business? Yes, the SBA, they say its business is under $35 million. I would be loaded, loaded, loaded if my business had $35 million a year.

So, the problem is that now bankruptcies have hit a 40% mark. That is horrible, guys. It is absolutely going in the wrong direction, and people have no money. Now, here is the stat that just made me sick with all of this. Now, bankruptcy is horrible, and that’s not anything good. But here is the worst part of this whole thing. And what you have is you have the fact that almost 40% of all small businesses in the United States of America did not pay their rent on time or in full in September. Now, maybe they caught it up, but as of September 1st, when rent was due, they didn’t make their rent payment.

That is awful, guys. That just shows the lack of business. It shows the problem that people are having. It shows the extra expenses. It shows how I’ve got to pay people before I can pay you. That is a horrible way to live, guys. And the problem right now is I have people that write me and say, hey, I want to get a line of credit for my business. Do you know anything about this? Yeah, I know a lot about that. And I always tell people not to borrow money just to pay bills, borrow money to move yourself forward.

That’s the first bit of advice I would give anybody, because I’ve been guilty of this. I have been kind of like, just get another 25 grand. I can fix this. And then you puke. It’s like a magic trick that just pops away and spends. Oh, I have no money and business didn’t increase and I’m in deep trouble. The problem with it is you’re advertising and everything that you’re doing right now is not working the way it has in the past. Business in general is going down right now. So I’ve got to carry the phone because I’ve got some notes, some cheat sheets.

So with that, business is off, guys. And it is getting more and more difficult. The thing that’s blowing me away is that you’re getting landlords around the country. It’s not just California or North Carolina that are doing a stupid thing where they’re sitting saying, hey, you can afford this. You can pay us more rent. So they’re raising rents on people when they’re slow paying them and not getting paid. Well, then just move out. We’ll get somebody else to move in. But will you? That’s the thing. So here is the other stat that really bothered me that people don’t think about.

How much are sales off right now for the average small business? Right now it’s 20%. The average business is selling 20% less with revenue than they did a year ago. Well, that right there, when you do the math on that, here you’ve got everything going up in price. You’ve got to manage that. You’ve got to manage more expense on your employees, insurance. Everything has gone up, your inventory, everything. But people are selling things and it’s 20% less than what they did a year ago. So with that, how do you make it? I am telling you, this is such a perfect example right now because people sit there and say, oh, this is going to turn around after the election.

You’re kidding yourself. I don’t care who gets in. You’re going to see a chaotic. I think if one person gets in, it’s going to be chaos myself. But with that, I think that you’re going to see things get worse and worse and worse right now. So manage your finances better. Look at what you can do to do this. And I am telling you, it doesn’t matter if you are single, one-man band, one-woman show, or you’ve got 40 kids. You have to sit down and you have to be on the same page with everybody and on the same page with yourself.

Sit down and look at your finances and sit down and have this conversation with yourself and with everybody and make sure you’re on the same page. You’re not pissing away money right now and spending things. And if you can get rid of things and cut expenses, by all means do that. You have to do that right now. If you are in business, the best thing to do is look at your existing clientele and how you can get more of them back. Rewards programs, selling them more of what you sell, whether it’s food, whether it’s home improvement, whether it’s anything, you can always do that.

And that’s the best place to grow your business. 20% of your business should come from your existing clientele. Always, always, always, always. Now, the favor that I want to ask you guys is in the four and a half years that we’ve had this channel, we have gone out and the charity that we’ve promoted the most has been Joseph Dreamhouse. Joseph Dreamhouse is a charity that puts meals together and feeds people. And Fran Glover runs this and she’s just done an amazing job with this. But here is the problem with this right now, is that she’s not getting the donations that she’s had in the past.

I’m going to ask you guys to donate to her charity, give whatever you can, whether it’s $5, $50, $20, $10, $100. Put your money up and please help these people to eat. That’s what she’s doing. She prepares healthy meals. She’s a nutritionist and that’s what she does. Now, think about this. She’s not getting the donations that she’s gotten in years gone by. Well, why is that Fran? When I spoke to her yesterday, it was heartbreaking. Think about this. September is what they call hunger awareness month. Let’s make you aware that people are hungry. And the one thing I love about Fran, and she’s just such a great lady, is that she’s so positive all the time.

And she says, Dan, I follow your guidelines and you always tell everybody to be nice to everybody. I have to believe every day is a new day and I’m going to get something good out of this. But guys, think about this. Hunger awareness, there’s a month to remind you that people are going hungry right now. Here’s the worst part of this that really got me, it got me angry too. In the last year, she has had multiple families that used to donate to her and give her money. Do not offer food because she buys it through a wholesale program and then gives it out.

Whatever you give her goes directly to feeding these people. That’s not wasted. She’s had multiple veterans, almost a dozen, that have reached out recently that have been denied SNAP, EBT programs, welfare, whatever you want to call it. And they’ve given it to the migrants and other people. That is heartbreaking, guys. Because what you’re going to see is more of this. You’re going to see more people that are worthy, that are having a bad beat right now, that need money. Please. Okay? And again, I love Fran’s attitude. She doesn’t call it hunger awareness month, she calls it hunger action month.

So let’s, I allegedly channel, I’m going to put my money where my mouth is and I’m going to donate to Joseph Dreamhouse. Please use the link below. I don’t ask you guys much for this, but please. We’ve raised a lot of money for her in the past. She needs it right now. But every dollar you send to her, go through her website, the link will be below, it will make a huge difference with somebody in Eden. Now, get back in the video. The Cybertruck has become a real problem where it’s now the most hated vehicle in America, which I thought, really? Is it really? That’s kind of funny.

So, they’re starting to name it and, you know, it’s the deplorable vehicle. It’s the deplorable mobile, all this stuff. You know, deplorian, you know, all these different things that are funny. You know, by the way, DeLorean, remember those cars? There’s a DeLorean club here in Huntington Beach, California. You can join because they’re trying to resurrect that car. You can look that up. But people like the Cybertruck. Now, here’s the one thing I thought that was funny from the car industry. I have a lot of guys that are friends that do different things, and a guy you want to check out is TK’s Garage.

I mean, he is just really a knowledgeable guy when it comes to his videos, and he bags on Stellantis, and we share different things. And I shared in that recall story from yesterday. But the auto industry is in real trouble, and as much as I make fun of Elon Musk on this channel, it is interesting the fact that they are the guide for every other auto seller. They really are, whether they’re EV cars or not. And now, Barclays and Goldman Sachs are going to start selling their information and starting giving the data on Tesla sales information.

Well, you can sit there and say, that’s good or that’s bad. Is it fair? It’s not fair. But clearly, they’re the guide. By the way, this is under the airport, which you can’t see with the clouds this morning. But again, nobody likes him. But hey, let me show you what he’s doing. Okay, it’s kind of funny. Grant Cardone, I like Grant Cardone for his sales information and his positive attitude. Grant Cardone is a real estate investor who has put a lot of people into apartment buildings and things like that. This guy stepped forward yesterday and lost his mind, and he said, listen, Jerome Powell is a fool.

Jerome Powell should raise lower interest rates right now. Lower interest rates, one percentage point right now. A hundred basis points. Let’s get this economy going. But if he did that, he would admit that the economy is in deep trouble. The economy is in deep trouble, guys. This is all the stats they did with small business people. I’m telling you, you guys have to live your life right now in a frugal way. We are headed towards a really, really bleak Thanksgiving and a really, really bleak Christmas season. And it’s not that it’s going to be bad, and not that you’re not going to get gifts, and you’re going to get coal in your stock.

None of that shenanigans, that people are not going to have money. But what you’re also seeing is that it’s going to be interesting to see the holiday hiring that’s going to happen. I have had probably eight or ten people send me the Costco pictures. And I was in Costco yesterday, and they have their Christmas stuff out full force. Man, it is there. You want to buy a tree? It’s there for you at Costco right now. So, unbelievable. One thing that I always thought would be a great thing to buy, and being a single guy, I could go out and basically live anywhere.

I could live under this bush if I really had to. Was to buy a commercial unit where downstairs you had a tenant, and upstairs I lived there. And I could smell what a Subway sandwich or a Quiznos. That’s what they’re cooking today. Well now, in Los Angeles they’re going to have the first ever Costco complex, where you’re going to have a Costco downstairs, and upstairs there’s going to be hundreds of apartments above it. What do you think about that? Is that the state of the economy? Is that space? You know, let us know. Let us know.

But man oh man, is it… It’s going to be interesting to see what happens with that. So, what else? I’ve got a couple other good things for you that are interesting. I’m going to end this video with these last few stories. And there are a tremendous amount of wineries right now here in California going bust. Cannot make it. Lovely California wines, not making it these days. A lot of people buy these businesses as side investments, and my wife’s going to dig this. He’s going to love making wine. Okay. Yeah, it’s a little tougher than you think.

But there was one company that just scooped up like half a dozen of these places. Check out the story below on that. When I went to the Raider game, I sat next to a man who was a financial advisor, and he was from Kentucky. And we get to talk about local business and how things go in there. And the things I always ask everybody I meet from different places I’ve never been to. And he was telling me that the big thing right now are these… You’ve heard of like a craft brewery. Well, they do craft bourbon there.

And you can do these bourbon crawls where you can go and taste all this stuff. And I’m like, how do you do that after the second or third one? Oh no, there’s like 20. You can do like in a row. Whoa, okay. Anyways, flourishing. So it’s interesting how what makes money and what’s successful. General Motors is doing well right now. They’re going to lay out… First it was announced 1,400. No, it’s 1,700 people in the month of November are going to lose their job. Get ready for the holidays and start packing. So bad, bad, bad, bad.

Final, final story, which I absolutely get a kick out of. And I’ve met people that have done this and the party is over. And what they do is they go and they register their vehicle in a different state. For example, Montana doesn’t have sales tax on vehicles. So what you do is you register in Montana, get a Montana license plate, and then you just say, hey, we’re going to go and drive it in Utah. Well, Utah is the state that’s furious about this. Because, you know, as they’re going through Utah, they’re sitting there looking at all these businesses and all these people that have bought vehicles, driving them from Montana, and they started to calculate how much they lost.

Is $64 million a lot? I think so. Think about how much money that is. And what they’re going to start doing is turning these people into the IRS and charging them with tax evasion. Uh-oh. Okay. So if you’ve done this, I would fix it, man. Because read the last story below, but man, oh, man, I would fix this because Utah’s not messing around right now. And these ladies are out on their paddle boards. We’ll just end the allegedly video today with this. So hit the like button, subscribe. Remember, hunger action month, we can all make a difference.

I’m going to write a check. Please help her any way you can. Help Joseph Dreamcast. Let’s feed some families right now. I’ll see you soon. [tr:trw].

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