The AI Revolution - Cryptocurrency Trends - Trading Cards: A Billion Dollar Industry - The Impact of US-China Tariff

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Speaker 3 This is right about now with Ryan Alford, a Radcast Network Production.

Speaker 3 We are the number one business show on the planet with over 1 million downloads a month.

Speaker 3 Taking the BS out of business for over six years in over 400 episodes. You ready to start snapping necks and cashing checks? Well, it starts right about now.

Speaker 1 What's up, guys? Welcome to Right About Now. It's our weekly business news episode here on Friday, April 25th.
We take the BS out of business, baby. Hey, it's business meets barstool.

Speaker 1 That's what you can call it. And we're not barstool.
We don't need barstool. We got the number one show on marketing.
Thanks to all of our loyal listeners.

Speaker 1 We appreciate you out there, wherever, whenever, however, you're listening as we take

Speaker 1 all the bullshit out of what's happening out there, Chris. What's up, Chris Hanson?

Speaker 4 What's up, Brian Alfred? How are you, bro?

Speaker 1 I'm good, man. Just ready to take the BS out of business.
Just ready to

Speaker 1 take it all out.

Speaker 1 You know, I'm looking at our show notes and

Speaker 1 it's kind of like a slow, busy week, like for business news. It's like there's stuff happening, but it's not like there's 17 headlines.
It's like it's kind of the same old, same old here.

Speaker 1 We've got the U.S. and China tariff talk cooling off a little bit.
The markets are up, crypto's up, and hey, Elon's got to get back in the saddle over at Tesla, get that whole thing flipped around.

Speaker 1 He needs some, I don't know, CPR on that thing.

Speaker 1 What's happening in Miami this week?

Speaker 4 Oh, it's a beautiful week out, honestly. It's nice.
The weather's great.

Speaker 4 Sunny, windy, kind of quiet after Easter weekend.

Speaker 1 I read a report that Miami real estate was cooling off. I don't know if that's true or not.

Speaker 1 I don't know.

Speaker 4 I'm not in the game enough to know. Of course, if you ask ask any realtor, they'll tell you it's not.
So hard to gauge.

Speaker 1 Yeah, exactly. Yeah, you know what I mean?

Speaker 1 Hey, if we're in no BS show, you can't really talk about realtors. I mean, and I love them.
I got some good friends in it.

Speaker 4 Market's always good if you're a realtor. Oh, yeah.
It's always good. It's always a good time to buy.

Speaker 1 Always a good time to buy. Real interest rates are high.
Oh, hey, that means you got a lot of supply out there and you got your choice. And hey, you can always refi in a couple of years.
I mean,

Speaker 1 I don't even know what they say, but I can imagine that's it.

Speaker 1 So we're going to get into the headlines. I like this

Speaker 1 line that we got.

Speaker 1 It says,

Speaker 1 China says it wants peace, but there's a lot like my ex-girlfriend.

Speaker 1 I got a lot of battle scars that would say otherwise.

Speaker 1 I don't know who's blinking here.

Speaker 1 It doesn't really matter.

Speaker 1 We've said this from the outset, Chris. We've said, We don't need terror force.
Like,

Speaker 1 okay, I get if it was the art of the deal and all that, but

Speaker 1 we don't need destabilization. There's no need for it.
I think the one thing I liked, I know Trump's always going to shake things up, and I like that. I like shaking things up,

Speaker 1 but there's this fine line between shaking things up and unnecessary destabilization.

Speaker 1 And it felt like we teetered on the other side of it. I don't know what you think.

Speaker 4 I think the most exciting thing of all of it was all the designer luxury brands being exposed that they're marking up the handbags like a thousand percent markups.

Speaker 1 Did you see that? I did not see that. Let's go down the aisle.

Speaker 4 This was this, I think, is relevant.

Speaker 4 So many people were talking about this over the weekend that amongst these terraforms, all these manufacturers in China that manufacture Birken handbags, Louis Vuitton, all these high-end luxury goods, were basically saying, hey, you can just buy direct from us.

Speaker 4 It's the same quality bag. Literally in the factory, and they're showing the bags.
They're saying you you can buy it from us for $250,000 instead of Louis Vuitton for $5,000.

Speaker 4 So, in a way, it was kind of, I mean, I think this is a bigger thing of people kind of the illusion of luxury. Because what these Italian handbags are doing, they're basically manufactured in China.

Speaker 4 And then in Italy, they'll put on the hardware, right? They'll put on just the metal clamp that says

Speaker 1 Italy. Exactly.

Speaker 4 So I think

Speaker 4 I did see a lot of the, especially the female influencer world going

Speaker 4 kind of wild about it and people feeling that they've been duped for many years, paying these outrageous prices.

Speaker 1 Which I mean, what did they think?

Speaker 1 What did you think was going on? I know. Yeah.
Come on. You're buying the brand.
And

Speaker 1 I'll believe it when I see it when the, you know, women stop buying the luxury brand labels. Yeah.
Yeah. Not say,

Speaker 1 I don't know. I don't know enough about the youngest, the young generation, but it sure seems like

Speaker 1 that gets passed on from from generation to generation, the luxury appeal of certain brands. And I mean, the exclusivity, scarcity,

Speaker 1 you know, if you didn't know, it was getting marked up like hell, then

Speaker 1 I don't know what to tell you.

Speaker 1 But I'm sure there's a sub-segment of people that will.

Speaker 1 I do see, I mean,

Speaker 1 is Trump blinking, or was this part of the plan?

Speaker 4 Come on, man. This is Trump.
It's all part of the plan.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Well, I mean, there's some theory that, you know, if you muck it up enough, then you can always say it was part of the plan or not. You know, I mean,

Speaker 4 as long as you're getting the outcomes that we want, I guess you can say it was all part of the plan, right?

Speaker 1 I don't really care, like, ultimately. I mean, I do.
I mean, I care, but I don't, you know, that's why I just, well, at the end of the day, I just didn't think we needed

Speaker 1 destabilization. I don't know that

Speaker 1 maybe maybe we're getting

Speaker 1 more negotiation than we would have without it. That's to be seen.

Speaker 1 But I don't think it does us any good. I don't think we need.
And I don't think Trump, like I told you, like Trump likes the good headlines.

Speaker 1 He wants, you know, I do think he wants what's best for himself. Yes, I can see that.
But for America, you know, and I think he likes the the good news.

Speaker 1 So, and to own it.

Speaker 1 And I don't think he wants to own 5,000 point drops on the stock market in a day. You know, I don't think he wants that.

Speaker 4 I mean, nobody wants it, but I think he sees the bigger picture that you have to do this. The only other solution was literally just raise taxes on Americans.

Speaker 1 Right. So, yeah, well, we'll see where it all nets out.
But it's just so amazing the swings on sentiment.

Speaker 1 You know,

Speaker 4 it's like everything. You just got to zoom out, you know,

Speaker 4 because it already feels less less painful than it was.

Speaker 1 Yeah. And I just think it goes back to what we said, though.
Just ignore it and go in. Yeah.
Never been a better time to be an entrepreneur, solopreneur, whatever.

Speaker 1 You know, it's all the tools are there. AI has enabled so many things

Speaker 1 that you would have needed a team for three years ago. So

Speaker 1 either run real lean or you can do a lot through AI automation and a lot lot of these tools that are out there. It's crazy.
I mean, like,

Speaker 1 I mean, the democratization of a lot of tasks that's taken place that would have taken specialized labor, especially with, I think, white-collar type jobs

Speaker 1 and information-driven jobs.

Speaker 1 Like, the internet democratized information in a way, Chris, like, you know, like access, you know, I didn't have to, you know, suddenly, if you had to do that report, you didn't have to find an encyclopedia around the house.

Speaker 1 You know, like 30 years ago, the internet, you know, democratized information. Now

Speaker 1 we've democratized information and skill sets at a very high rate. And just things that, from coding websites to creating videos to

Speaker 1 generating ideas or research around concepts, processing data

Speaker 1 and charts to give you insights. Stuff that,

Speaker 1 you know, 10 years ago, I remember doing research reports where I'd call over these charts. And I enjoyed it.
But

Speaker 1 now

Speaker 1 the

Speaker 1 machine,

Speaker 1 the artificial intelligence can do the legwork for you.

Speaker 1 You still have to distill it, maybe, to the key points and add the human dynamic to it, but it's just the speed with which these things are happening enabled. Like,

Speaker 1 if anything, I think that's what we want to be the champion of: is just the opportunity, no matter what's happening with some of these headlines, the opportunities have never been greater with the tools that are at our hands.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 it's also sort of made us all a little lazier. So it's like

Speaker 1 another opportunity because a lot of people just don't want to, I don't know. put the grit the grid in there, you know, and get after it.

Speaker 1 That's the only thing that pains me.

Speaker 4 I mean, as I think of just computers growing up in general, right? It's like you get to a point where you're not as good as learning stuff on computers and like the younger people are.

Speaker 4 And that's where I think people need to be really

Speaker 4 active to try to learn some of this AI stuff, like you said, whether, even if it's not for business, just for your personal use.

Speaker 4 I mean, there's a ton of Even me being sick, I was using ChatGPT over the weekend, right? Just trying to like diagnose myself.

Speaker 4 But to speak on kind of what you said, I saw, I can't remember if it was Tim Cook at Apple, but essentially someone saying like in the next 10 years, a lot of these white collar jobs are going to be gone.

Speaker 4 And I know for one, like think of lawyers, right? Like you can draw a contract up relatively quickly on ChatGPT.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Trust.

Speaker 1 Will.

Speaker 1 Yeah. All of that.

Speaker 4 You know, you don't.

Speaker 1 You don't need a lawyer. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And, you know,

Speaker 1 I guess those divorce court lawyers will still be in business, but that's about it. Well,

Speaker 1 as long as

Speaker 1 you're going to need those guys, but when it gets down to just like knowledge of the law and contract writing, oh, see ya. I mean, that's already here.
Go give the chat GPT some prompts and

Speaker 1 maybe get it run by. Like you're going to get

Speaker 1 like a lesser version, like someone that can glance over it versus writing the whole thing. It's like all those hours they could charge for

Speaker 1 their time just goes down to like one. Instead of like 12 hours to do something, it's one hour.
Yep.

Speaker 4 Just approce it and sign off on it.

Speaker 1 Sign off on it.

Speaker 1 I mean, will there become a day? I saw this was really interesting. Like, I think AI is, you know, it's such a relevant topic, but like,

Speaker 1 will there come a day where there's an AI that's like

Speaker 1 a law holding a law degree? like when you think about it like you know ralph your ai companion he's a certified lawyer

Speaker 1 like yeah you're gonna have your personalized like robot that's like your personalized chef slash lawyer slash accountant slash bodyguard and he yeah and he's certified i mean he's got all the knowledge in the world he's just because he knows everything the internet knows and that all the information that's out there he can from any state so he's certified in every state so he could he can his digital handwriting on, you know, like e-signed E-Doc signing by Ralph the Robot.

Speaker 4 I mean, I mean, look at dieticians and personal trainers. Like, I don't need that now.

Speaker 1 Yeah, because you could literally program an AI,

Speaker 1 like talking person

Speaker 1 with the knowledge of like anything that you get from ChatGPT, it could, it could become the human, you know,

Speaker 1 human-like version

Speaker 1 for distilling that to you.

Speaker 1 I mean, that that, those pieces of solar, that's already kind of there.

Speaker 1 I'm not saying it's perfect yet, but like you could totally create an AI avatar that's a human-looking person on screen and make it say anything.

Speaker 1 So if you feed that knowledge base of what the prompts you're asking, ChatGPT or whatever it might be, it could then restate that so that it's, you know, again, in that human form on screen it's fascinating man and i'll say this i saw

Speaker 1 this was happening and i it didn't surprise me but i guess i hadn't really gone there you know like if i had enough hours in a day i'd sit down and think about all these applications someone had you know how you

Speaker 1 within chat gpt you can create you know like projects like you're it has memory it can memory and you start asking it certain prompts that are all about a certain subject.

Speaker 1 So you're kind of creating a project there about that one topic that lives within ChatGPT and a line item.

Speaker 1 Well, and it's almost like each one of those is its own

Speaker 1 potential

Speaker 1 persona in a way, depending on what you direct it.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 what this person was doing was creating an org chart, an organization

Speaker 1 of the AI avatars of each one and giving them duties essentially. So, like, you know, let's use an ad agency, for example, since that's my industry that I came up in.

Speaker 1 It had, you know, Ralph AI, the creative director, and it gave it very specific prompts of what its persona is, what its job was.

Speaker 1 And then it had Timmy, the accountant, Ralph in strategy, and, you know, Gene in account management. And so it was creating an org chart and these different personas

Speaker 1 and then feeding it work so that each one of those kind of did their own task. Because now, I mean, you know, these things can generate emails.
They can, it can facilitate a lot of like digital work.

Speaker 1 And from emails to copy to image, creating images, generating images, generating video. And

Speaker 1 it, again, I'm using the example of an ad agency in the structure within an ad agency of the departments, but it was

Speaker 1 fascinating how that was, because then they're kind of, they're working within the framework of that organization, how it would normally work.

Speaker 1 And each one of them have a specific task, and they're informing each other to maximize optimism.

Speaker 1 I was like, whoa.

Speaker 1 Okay, now I see.

Speaker 1 I mean, does that blow your mind or what? Like, I mean, it makes sense that you hear it and you see it, but I couldn't unsee it.

Speaker 4 It's kind of crazy. You're building a whole team of just automated robots, which I feel like major companies have been doing this and it's just giving people the ability now.

Speaker 1 And I think when I think about it, I was just thinking,

Speaker 1 because when you create on ChatGPT, you're kind of doing these independent tasks. You know, like, hey, like, give me some good news articles to talk about today.

Speaker 1 Hey, how do you make these compelling? Whatever.

Speaker 1 But if you literally created the personas of each one as different, sort of, we'll call them GPTs.

Speaker 1 Uh, that's okay. Your job is to continually farm the internet for the most compelling and engaging topics based on the history of click data, you know, clickbaity

Speaker 1 stuff.

Speaker 1 And you're creating the master. Your GPT's job is to create all these.
This GTB's job is to

Speaker 1 pick the best ones and create the hooks.

Speaker 1 Then this one, yours is to add some imagery and video to go with those for social media posts.

Speaker 1 Then your job is to create the newsletter and your job is to send the emails out to the list

Speaker 1 and to post it to social media.

Speaker 1 It's, there's your team. I mean, but that's what this stuff is enabling.
And the only thing sort of in the way right now is the education and desire for everyone to take advantage of it or to use it.

Speaker 1 I mean, because it's there, it's not perfect. I'm not saying it can replace anything, but all of that's sort of there.
And

Speaker 1 I don't think everyone

Speaker 1 is wrapping their head around both the opportunity and the potential threat of what that means.

Speaker 1 Bona, bona, bona, bona.

Speaker 1 So, you can frame that however you want. Is that good news or bad news? I don't know.
I think if you take advantage of it, it's good news. The good news is, man, you can move quick, nimble as hell.

Speaker 1 And, but you just got to have the idea, the core idea. Okay, how can you leverage that? And that's what you got to think about as a business owner.
Think about your business today,

Speaker 1 what you do, and what I just described. How could you leverage that to be more efficient, to move faster, to serve your customers better? I bet you you come up with some ideas.

Speaker 1 You need to think more about thinking

Speaker 1 about AI. Like,

Speaker 1 don't sleep on this.

Speaker 1 I think

Speaker 1 I pan the hell out of the metaverse.

Speaker 1 We'll play that tape. I knew that shit was a flash in the pan while we were going through COVID.
It wasn't ready yet. It'll be here one day.
I'm not panning this.

Speaker 1 This is real leverage and real threat.

Speaker 1 Proceed accordingly.

Speaker 1 Good thing Elon Musk is getting back in the saddle a little bit. I think he's,

Speaker 1 you know, getting out of the doge

Speaker 1 and getting back into the

Speaker 1 e-car business and getting that in line.

Speaker 1 I don't think,

Speaker 1 even for Elon, I mean,

Speaker 1 I guess if anybody's Teflon a little bit, like the world's richest man is, like, he's only going to tank so much, I think. But

Speaker 1 once again, I just think there's a

Speaker 1 I don't think if he's being honest, he quite wants the unsettled nature of what's happening within his businesses right now, right?

Speaker 1 You don't want that. No, he's been a little

Speaker 4 thing. He's just been wrapped up with the administration, more focused on politics and the business.

Speaker 1 But it seems like I think there's a, it's an, I think there's an endorphin, I think, with politics because it's so

Speaker 1 charged and so front and center. And look, I mean, Elon's in the news no matter what he does, but

Speaker 1 I can see like the rush that these politicians get from all that.

Speaker 1 And I think Elon's trying to cut money. He's feeling empowered.
Hey, Donald gave him a big

Speaker 1 role

Speaker 1 to do. And he's trying to do what he thinks is best.
And he sees like these clear opportunities, but I think he didn't. He probably underestimated sort of the blowback a little bit.

Speaker 1 Like, sometimes, and you'll learn this. Like, I've learned this as an entrepreneur, something that seems so clear to me, like an inefficiency or something like that.

Speaker 1 There's the unintended consequences sometimes of decisions that you make. It doesn't make it the wrong decision,

Speaker 1 but it doesn't always mean that it was right at the right time or that there weren't other steps that had to be taken to get there. Because sometimes you can't,

Speaker 1 even if it makes sense to blow up the foundation,

Speaker 1 you don't need the building to fall over

Speaker 1 unless you're, you know. So I've learned that in business myself.
I'll be like,

Speaker 1 this makes no sense. Let's

Speaker 1 X.

Speaker 1 And I'm like, whoa, okay.

Speaker 1 That had an impact that wasn't, didn't make the decision wrong, but maybe the timing wasn't. And I'm not saying that with everything that Dave Elon did because it's so diverse and things like that.

Speaker 1 But I think at the end of the day,

Speaker 1 you got to get back in the saddle. I don't know how the hell he'd run a company.
He's running

Speaker 1 two or three of the largest companies in the world, you know, like structurally and by value. And

Speaker 1 trying to save the government efficiency. I mean,

Speaker 1 and he plays video games all night, supposedly. I think he might be a robot.
I think he implanted one of those chips, Chris.

Speaker 4 He's something. He's different.

Speaker 1 And I still have no interest in buying a Tesla, so I don't know. And I, but I didn't before this.

Speaker 1 So, you know, it's just not my cup of tea. But

Speaker 1 it's,

Speaker 1 have you seen any Teslas burning on fire?

Speaker 4 No, there's none of that down here.

Speaker 4 Someone would probably get shot.

Speaker 4 So there's no crazies trying to keep Teslas down here.

Speaker 1 Yep. It's all friendly fire, anyways.
What's happening in the crypto market?

Speaker 4 It's last two days it started to go back up again. I mean, I I can't give you an exact reason why.
It was probably tied to the general market, obviously. But yeah, Bitcoin's back up over 90,000 again.

Speaker 4 So that's a positive sign.

Speaker 1 So good time to buy.

Speaker 1 Sentiment seem like

Speaker 1 positive.

Speaker 4 Yeah, and I think, obviously, with what's going on with the overall global economy, like

Speaker 4 we see with the tariffs, right? We see some positive movement happening. So just positive signals throughout the entire market is getting some relief to everybody.

Speaker 1 All back to the sentiment. How do you feel? What, you know, so many,

Speaker 1 but at the same time, but when you look at what's happening, this is what, you know, you and I have talked about this, Chris, like

Speaker 1 you've got a president who supports crypto and deregulation of currency in a way. And so it should be headed north.

Speaker 1 But like, you know, everybody with the terrorists and everything. And naturally, I get it, like the unsettled nature of it.
But when you look at the underlying

Speaker 1 direction

Speaker 1 and

Speaker 1 the fact that more and more, like,

Speaker 1 I don't know, retail day traders are, you know, in crypto and promoting it.

Speaker 1 All the other signals

Speaker 1 are positive. It's just been sort of this air of like unnatural

Speaker 1 uneasiness that drove it down.

Speaker 1 That's why I bought that XRP, baby, when it was, hey, bought low, headed back up.

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 1 Just waiting.

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 1 I've kept it simple, Chris. You know, just one thing to keep up with right now.

Speaker 1 I can't do the 17 variations.

Speaker 1 You don't need it. And I mean, I loved it when it was kind of a little more volatile.
Like,

Speaker 1 I like those swings because that's how you make the money. Like, I'm not a day trader, but I was kind of a

Speaker 1 called a half-week trader. Hey, if I could put in five grand and turn it into 15 every three days, watching people go crazy, I kind of laugh.
That's fun. It's like gambling.

Speaker 1 But I don't know if those days are those goes. Are those days coming back?

Speaker 4 I think so. This year.

Speaker 4 I can't tell you when, but I know

Speaker 4 it always comes back.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Oh,

Speaker 1 so

Speaker 1 Instagram launched a new app this week called Edits to compete with CapCut. I did play around with it, Chris, before this.

Speaker 1 And let's just say back to what I'm saying about the democratization of media. Like, I'm come up in the agency business and am a hybrid strategy creative account guy.

Speaker 1 And all you agency people out there rolling your eyes, yeah, they exist.

Speaker 1 It's just, you know, y'all got too slow. That's why I went and and started my own thing and made a lot more money.

Speaker 1 But the reality is, if you're not a creator, didn't know very complex software five years, even five, three, five years, two to five years ago, let's say that, then you're relying on someone else to do it.

Speaker 1 But I'll say, you know, ByteDance slash CapCut slash China.

Speaker 1 CapCut's pretty easy to use and very powerful with what the average person can do with video. And so you've had this democratization of it.
And now Instagram clearly sees that as a bit of a threat.

Speaker 1 And they've come out with edits. I have played around with it.
Pretty slick. It's got some AI features with animating pictures and stuff.
Played with it right before this. It's pretty cool.

Speaker 1 So what's the impact on business? Hey, look, get more content out there. I mean, anyone could be a creator now.

Speaker 1 Like, and everybody needs to be posting what you're up to in social media and creating awareness for what you're doing. But I liked it.

Speaker 1 I don't know if you've played with it, Chris, but clearly, probably a good way to also spike the algorithm for your accounts because I think they've got to have code in those videos that tells them it was created there, right?

Speaker 4 Yeah, I mean, I downloaded last night and it said something how it tracks your analytics and whatnot.

Speaker 4 So I'd imagine there's some little, there's got to be some way they're going to try to motivate people to use that instead of cap cut.

Speaker 4 So I'm going to mess around with it over the next couple of days. We'll try to throw something up,

Speaker 4 see if it is affected by the algorithm any differently, essentially.

Speaker 1 Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 I bet it is to a degree.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 you never know. But I did think

Speaker 1 it's pretty slick so far. I don't know if it's better.

Speaker 1 It's obviously not where Capcom. I mean, CapCut's loaded with features.
I don't think it's obviously going to take time to get there.

Speaker 1 But first play around, pretty good. And,

Speaker 1 you know,

Speaker 1 I bust about the walled gardens of all these companies kind of owning these spaces. But look, I mean, Instagram's done me right.
It's where I've grown my biggest audience.

Speaker 1 Definitely done a lot of business there.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 I still can't quite get like

Speaker 1 my head around threads. other than you know a lot of motivational stuff

Speaker 1 you know it's kind of my it's like my daily business devotional.

Speaker 1 Oh, good on threads. And Chris has always got something thoughtful to say.
I'm like, ah, that's one way to think about it. And, you know, Chris Burby Hanson, go follow him on threads and Instagram.

Speaker 1 He's looking good, folks. The guy's working out hard.
I'm, he's, he's motivating me. I'm like, all right.
I did one, I did like one more set of push-ups this morning because of Chris.

Speaker 1 Progress on perfection. Yeah.

Speaker 1 But you're looking good, man.

Speaker 1 Appreciate it. I mean, that in the most heterosexual way possible.
Of course.

Speaker 1 But yeah, Threads is my daily kind of motivation stuff. Trying to get back into X too a little bit.
Still get a lot of news there.

Speaker 1 Threads still feels like the motivational quote space where X is more news content.

Speaker 4 That sounds fair. Threads is a little bit more positive.
X is a little bit more gritty.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah.
A little bit more news. The trolls.

Speaker 4 Yeah, more trolls for sure.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 4 Threads is like the healthier version of X.

Speaker 1 Yep.

Speaker 1 I do think it's a good time to point out, you're talking about news.

Speaker 1 And,

Speaker 1 you know, depending on the news outlet, you can get it. Look, it's all biased.
It seems like right, left, or whatever,

Speaker 1 it's a mess. Every headline can be spun way where, one way or another.

Speaker 1 And that's why I've actually been using for our show, Chris, ground news.

Speaker 1 It's not just an aggregator, it actually tells you where the spend is happening. It will tell you if it's left, if it's right, or center.
It gives you these percentages.

Speaker 1 And I was like using this first. So,

Speaker 1 let me give you an example. So, this recent story, Trump announced he's going to reduce the 145%

Speaker 1 tariffs on Chinese goods. We talked about that earlier.

Speaker 1 Sounds straightforward,

Speaker 1 right?

Speaker 1 It says,

Speaker 1 but tending on, but excuse me, my grammar is terrible. Depending on where it came from, it gets spin and manipulated.
So, like, look at this. Like, literally, one can say,

Speaker 1 pull together 186 articles on that same story. Some outlets painted it as a strategic move, others as a sign of weakness.
The bias distribution was 36% left, 32% center, and 32% right.

Speaker 1 It's fascinating to see how the same facts get sponge away. Anyway, I we talk about taking the BS out of business.

Speaker 1 Ground news was like the perfect partner for us in looking at the news concepts and how they're little,

Speaker 1 take one quote and it gets framed differently. And it's, I think it's both education for people because you need to know.

Speaker 1 I'm still amazed number people that don't know they're being sort of biased, you know, like

Speaker 1 they don't the subtle nature with which news can push you one direction or the other. Give them a shout-out, groundnews.com.
Subscribe. I've subscribed.

Speaker 1 I actually found them before we started partnering with them and had been using them because I like to know

Speaker 1 sometimes you don't know the spend is happening. And they're calling it out and they're putting the percentages on it.
It's really cool. Good way to see the news and to take the BS out.

Speaker 1 We appreciate them. Groundnews.com.

Speaker 1 Be informed, not influenced.

Speaker 1 That's the tagline, Chris.

Speaker 1 Hey, none of that influencer stuff can't be biased influencing. We don't want that.

Speaker 1 We want the information. There is a difference between information and influence.

Speaker 1 That's what I learned about politics.

Speaker 1 That's all politics is, right? It's all influence. The original influencers is your senators

Speaker 1 in Congress.

Speaker 1 Any other thoughts? I mean, I saw the news about WrestleMania. I can't believe how big wrestling still is.
WrestleMania just happened this past weekend. Had two nights.

Speaker 1 John Cena is the championship again. I mean, I bring it up.
We got the championship belt right here. I guess, you know, he doesn't have this belt, John.
Come get this from me. I'll power slam you.

Speaker 1 I'm just kidding, John. Don't beat me up.
I could power slam him.

Speaker 1 I mean, I could, we come up with a good skit, you know, like, I mean, it's all entertainment.

Speaker 1 But those guys are beasts like i respect them they're some of the best athletes in the world yeah running around it's not like it's not like it used to be chris like when i grew up these guys were drinking beer like before they came out like they were big guys

Speaker 1 and they'd bleed everywhere real like but

Speaker 1 half drunk half in shape dusty roads oh man not anymore these guys are beasts

Speaker 1 Are you a wrestler? You're not a wrestling guy. I know.

Speaker 4 No, but I can appreciate it. I appreciate what they've built.

Speaker 1 Yeah. And all their numbers are up year over year.
I thought that, like, at some point, this, there'd be a decline in this. I really did.

Speaker 4 I'm kind of like intrigued by the resurgence of it, to be honest with you.

Speaker 4 And I wonder if it's a little bit of like nostalgia. Do you think it's like guys our age, like

Speaker 1 kind of a bad thing?

Speaker 1 I think it's the soap opera combined with

Speaker 4 we have reality TV with live entertainment.

Speaker 1 We have so few channels to sort of escape reality. Like, and everything's so serious.

Speaker 1 And even though these, you know, like rivals can seem serious to in our world, they're not, you know, in the world of the fan, they're just fun, you know, because they don't, it's not threatening to them.

Speaker 1 And whereas everything else, I mean, it's why live sports are up because We don't want the spin of bullshit news.

Speaker 1 Like we've talked about a hundred times and everything's so serious and everything's so woke. So, I can go to wrestling as and excuse male.

Speaker 1 I'm sure there's women, a ton of women, there's women wrestlers too, but like it, I think for men, it's it's the it's escape for a little bit and have some fun,

Speaker 1 right? I mean, how much entertainment fun really is there for middle-aged men anymore? True,

Speaker 1 so when you think about it that way, maybe that's why, you know, it

Speaker 1 but the scale and scope of it,

Speaker 1 I know.

Speaker 1 Maybe we're missing out on it, Chris. Maybe we need to get into it.
I don't know. I mean, it's popular, man.
Shit. I bet our numbers will go up if we start having a wrestling segment.

Speaker 1 I'm just not going to go there. We got the trading card segment, which we're about to get to, because we have the trading card series that's launching.
We've done three interviews.

Speaker 1 We got another one today. We got the largest

Speaker 1 top stealer and retailer in South Carolina coming on today.

Speaker 1 We got all. Hey, if you're going to talk about an industry, you got to go to all, you gotta go from manufacturer to distributor to retailer.
We got all three levels, and then we got the apps, Ludd X.

Speaker 1 Brian Ludden came on, the founder of Luddex. You scan the cards, you know the value.
No more looking it up. Chris, when we grew up, we had to go find that Beckett, look up for those value.

Speaker 1 Like, how much is this thing? And the magazine's three months old. You're going, oh, that 87 tops rookie.
Oh, it's $3.

Speaker 1 It went up 40 cents.

Speaker 1 No, app out. Scan that thing.
Brian was awesome. He's going to lead off the first of the trading card series.
Like, okay, what are you talking? Look, this is a business show.

Speaker 1 Trading cards is a billion-dollar industry. It's only going up.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 talked with

Speaker 1 good friend Jeremy. It's Sports Illustrated.
collectibles and

Speaker 1 all this stuff, man. Everybody's getting into Tom Brady.
Talked about a card vault last week. Tom Brady's not a dummy.

Speaker 1 Card vault by Tom Brady.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 that series is coming up. It's going to be a six-part series, six guests, big hitters in the industry talking about it and why you shouldn't get to know about it.
I'm excited about it.

Speaker 1 The interviews have been raw, real, and fun. It's supposed to be fun.
It's a hobby. Back to like, hey,

Speaker 1 let's lighten things up a bit. But it's also serious money, man.
I'm telling you. I pulled that Josh Allen gold downtown $5,000 card out of a $15

Speaker 1 pack.

Speaker 1 That's serious money.

Speaker 1 Now, we won't say how much I've spent all over and above that, but yeah.

Speaker 1 I mean, you see the trash can, man. I'm like, how many landfills have we filled up with this?

Speaker 1 You open those packs of so much trash. I'm like, I fucking need to start incinerating it or something.

Speaker 1 The amount of cardboard,

Speaker 1 cardboard kingdom.

Speaker 1 But today is a big release for Don Russ Optic. Look, somebody's going to be watching this, Chris, and they're going to know what this means.
This is the hottest box in retail right now.

Speaker 1 Don Russ Optic.

Speaker 1 Chris, let me tell you, these boxes came out at like 30 bucks.

Speaker 1 They're going for 100 now, like a week later, and you can't buy them. There's all these bots that if they come available online on like Target, they buy them before they even hit the market.

Speaker 1 It's craziest thing. Because I'll get these updates because I have like notifications set up or whatever.
And literally, it's like

Speaker 1 grown men in the store fighting for boxes of cards.

Speaker 1 That's an entertainment show right there.

Speaker 1 I got to send you some.

Speaker 4 Let's pop this seal.

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 4 See if we got any winners in there.

Speaker 1 Yeah, we got to see.

Speaker 1 All right. Hottest box in retail, 2024 Don Russ Optic.
There's six packs in here. I don't know if we have each one.
You're chasing these cards called Downtowns, Chris.

Speaker 1 And speaking of fun, go to breakingrad.com, but

Speaker 1 they have these cards that are like downtowns. They should like the length.
They're almost like

Speaker 1 art drawings of the players with like a background that's in the city that they play in. And it's almost cartoon-esque to a degree.
It's like RTC. Cartoon is probably not the right.

Speaker 1 way to say that, but

Speaker 1 designed.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 the team may or may not have made a downtown of me that we might show them. We'll show them here eventually.
Kind of fun.

Speaker 1 Yep. Optic by Don Russ, the hottest box in retail.
We're opening it here. If you send me a DM, I might send you a card.
Say,

Speaker 1 I want the optics.

Speaker 1 Hashtag optic.

Speaker 1 The amount of people that have DM'd me, like old friends,

Speaker 1 listen or watch the show or brought it up, going

Speaker 1 like it's crazy how many people are into trading cards. So these are pretty cool.
They've got, they're all have this chrome look to them.

Speaker 1 Dayvonne Han. Then they have these silvers.
That's kind of like your good card in the packs. There's only four cards.
So fun open.

Speaker 1 You're looking for those downtowns or like these with some of the good rookies. This guy's pretty good, but he played it in a dame.

Speaker 1 Two rookie cards. We'll open

Speaker 1 a couple more here just so you see. You got to watch the YouTube video though, guys.
YouTube's where this gets interesting. So you can actually see the variations on these

Speaker 1 cards.

Speaker 1 Jalen Polk, you're really hoping for Michael Pratt. You're hoping here for like a Drake May.

Speaker 1 My kids now know every single one of these players. And, you know,

Speaker 1 I will say this is where like you get the Luddix Luddix app, you click on the image of the card, it brings it right up. We're going to talk more about that on the trading card series.

Speaker 1 I'll do one more here. See if we can pull like a downtown or something.

Speaker 1 Um,

Speaker 1 oh, I thought it was one. It has a yellow board of it.
Pat Firemuth, tight end for Steelers, Stealing Wright, rookie. So, these are fun to open.
You get a lot of variation with holographic look.

Speaker 1 Um, hottest box in retail. Chris, we opened a box with my kids the other night.
$35 is what we paid for. We actually paid retail, and we had $1,000 of value in cards in a $35 box.

Speaker 1 It's crazy. The hit rate is really good.
None of those that we hit were pretty good, but fun. They got a big release today, actually.
So they'll be sold out in no time.

Speaker 1 Optic from Don Russ, one of the last sets of football coming out the rest of this year. You got the draft on Thursday.
It would have already happened the night. So you'll be hearing this.

Speaker 1 You already know who got drafted in the order

Speaker 1 because we record on Wednesdays and then releases on Fridays. So

Speaker 1 football is sort of in the air when draft starts. So we'll see.
Still got four more months, though. It's like the driest month, you know, waiting for football to start.

Speaker 1 Chris, any final words today, my friend?

Speaker 4 Everybody have a great weekend.

Speaker 1 Chris, got to get get you healed up man chris has been under the weather

Speaker 1 he had the flu over the weekend struggling

Speaker 1 i'm going to send you some uh

Speaker 1 some matrix uh

Speaker 1 uh pick you ups

Speaker 4 products i think so

Speaker 1 heart is good for the flu whatever works

Speaker 1 hopefully you've been using that stuff

Speaker 4 yeah I haven't tapped in yet.

Speaker 1 Oh, we appreciate everyone. RyanisRight.com.
Find highlight clips, all the information and links. And we appreciate you for listening.
Chris Broby Hansen on Instagram, give him a follow.

Speaker 1 Get his motivational quotes on Twitter too. I mean, or not Twitter, threads.

Speaker 1 They should never change the name. It's like people still call it tweets.
They still call it Twitter. I get it why he did it.
It's his brand. He owned the X.
Anyway, won't go down that path too far.

Speaker 1 I'm at Ryan Alford. You can find me on Instagram as well.
Chris and I both have those blue checks right next to her name. We had them for you.
You could buy them.

Speaker 1 We'll see you next time or right about now.

Speaker 3 This has been Right About Now with Ryan Alford, a Radcast Network Production. Visit ryanisright.com for full audio and video versions of the show or to inquire about sponsorship opportunities.

Speaker 3 Thanks for listening.

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