Latest / The Slump Monkeys Concrete Podcast / 012 - Paul Fendley

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012 - Paul Fendley · The Slump Monkeys Concrete Podcast

• Paul: And welcome into the Slump Monkeys Concrete Podcast. We're on our way to being the world's number one Concrete Podcast. This episode is brought to you by Rocket Star, our friend Manny Tajano. That's Tajano with a soft J. T-E-J A-N-O. Yes, that spelling is for all my Alabama friends that you know our education was what it was. but you're looking at Tejano, like jalapeno. It was very confusing growing up. Jalopeno and Hallelujah. They sound so similar, but it also they're not spelled the same at all. Anyway, anyway, Rocket Start is amazing. They do culture. Manny Tejano is the ultimate culture warrior. Manny Tejano decided that he wanted to make sure that key employees were rewarded and recognized properly. Started with truck drivers, it's expanded to many more. And if that's something you're interested in bringing to your company, please visit Manny.gorocketstart.com. Tell him Slump Monkey sent you. Call Manny Tejano today. GoRocketstart.com and enhance the culture inside your company. Superstition. According to Merriam Webster Dictionary, that is a belief or practice. Resulting from ignorance, fear of the unknown, trust in magic or chance, or a false conception of causation. I'll be honest with you, that definition sounds incredibly negative. My whole life, like superstition was not a negative term, it was just a thing. It wasn't positive or negative. It was it was pretty neutral. In fact, I actually think superstitions are fun. my wife has a bunch of She has so many superstitions that I think she's afraid to tell me all because she thinks that sh I'll think she's nuts. And you might be laughing at that, but I mean, full disclosure, I found a clove of garlic inside her six month old's car seat, which was supposed to ward off bad juju or something. So, you know, do I believe in that? No. But I love that she believes in it, because I think superstitions are fun. So I grew up playing baseball, which had a million superstitions. You know, we have rally caps and rally monkeys and y you know, things that you don't do because you're on a win streak. So you you don't shave your beard or cut your hair because you're on a win streak. When I was in high school we had a guy who wouldn't wash his jock strap or change his underwear as long as we were winning. Now, that's disgusting. but you know, I've had my Fair share superstitions too. I used to this one's this one's a little weird. I used to think that my day like like you wake up in the morning, you take a shower, and and are you gonna have a good day or a bad day? I used to think that my day being positive or negative depended on how I ended my shower. Now get your head out of the gutter, this is a family program. The what I'm talking about is like when you shut off the water. So When I shut off the water, it had like the the shower head would have this, I don't know, I don't know a good word for it, backwash. I don't know. And just because you shut it off, it's like it still would some of it would like still drip out a little bit, right? And when that happened, I had to make sure that water hit my right foot and my left foot as the last thing I did before I stepped out of the shower to dry off. If I didn't do that, I was doomed for a negative day. If I hit my right foot only, left foot only, no feet, doomed. Both feet, let's rock and roll. It's gonna be a good day. Now in 2026, if you knew your kid was doing that, they probably call it autism. but I snapped out of it. when I got older, I I had a shower that did not have the backwash. And yes, I'll admit that first shower when the backwash didn't come and I didn't have anything. To hit my feet before I went out, I was super nervous that my entire life was gonna crash down around me. but it didn't, and snapped out of it, and now life is is pretty freaking awesome, and I don't worry about the little shower backwash. So, just because I dropped that superstition, doesn't mean I dropped all of them. I I wanted to tell you guys about what happened this weekend and why. I I am such a believer in this superstition in my life. so the big one right now is that my wife is mandated to be home in our home during Alabama football games. Otherwise, we will lose. Since my wife and I got married in July of twenty twenty two, Alabama has lost eight. Regular season games. On six of those occasions, my wife was not home. You have no idea the number of times we've been losing, and I made my wife come home at halftime, and we won. So, first off, you're welcome, Vamination. I feel like at this point it's a lot of pressure on her to be home, but That just comes with the territory of greatness. And I want to be super clear. I don't have to be home. I can be wherever I want to be. She has to be home. It's like this past weekend, I was on a golf trip with the boys. Bama was losing in the first half to Kentucky. Where was my wife? She was at her dad's house. Are you kidding me? She knows the rules. She to be home. Now, thankfully, she's a good wife. She got home, Bama dominated the second half, and we move on with our lives. Now, if you ask her, she'll still tell you she was home for the game, but that is not true. Do not listen to her. She was at her dad's house. Bama's falling apart. Wife gets home. Bama dominates. So From now on, she has to be home. And this you know, I realized this back in like twenty twenty twenty two we lost regular season game to LSU and I was like, Man, that was weird, like we shouldn't have lost that game. And the wife went home. And then in twenty twenty three we lost two more games, and both of those she wasn't home. We almost lost all miss. Thank God she came back. And I realized what was happening. And then in twenty twenty four, I'll never forget we were in a restaurant. And we're in a restaurant with one of my daughter's friends and her parents and Vama versus Oklahoma was on. And she says, aren't you happy? We can watch the game while we're here at PJ Wheelhands And I said, No, I'm not happy because we're gonna lose. She's how do you know that? Aren't you guys favored by like multiple touchdowns? Yeah, we were until you decided To go out to dinner with these people. Now we're gonna lose. Sure enough, Jalen Milrow forgets how to play football, and Bama loses to Oklahoma, which is about the most embarrassing thing you can do these days. And that cemented for me my superstition that my wife must be home during the Bama games. I wonder how many other good superstitions this community has. if If you guys would, please share those with me. you can send them to me in direct messages on LinkedIn. Some of you got my cell phone number. Everyone should have my email at this point. It's admin at slumpmonkeys.com. If I get some good ones, I would love to share them on the next episode. I am a fan of superstitions. I think they are hilarious. And I would love to know what the community is doing out there. Admin at slumpmonkeys.com. That's M-O-N-K-E-Y-S. Dot com send your superstitions. I'd love to hear what they are. And speaking of good luck charms, you don't need good luck in finding your next great employee when you have the talented staff of concrete careers working for you. Folks, these guys are the best. TJ Crosby leading a crew of absolute hiring savages. And I mean that in like the best way. They are finding talent like you would not believe. they posted today they've placed eleven people in Q3. Eleven. That's unreal. If you need help finding the perfect hire for your job, whether you just opened it up and you want the best candidate right away, whether it's been a hard-to-fill position on the executive level and you need some expertise in your corner, call concrete careers today. Visit them at concretecareers.com. dot com tell them slump monkey sins you also by the way let's say you're listening to this and you're not a hiring person you're not a company you're not a business owner you're not looking to hire anybody but you're thinking about making a change concrete careers can help you too concrete careers dot com slash jobs they have a concrete specific job board go there search out jobs in your area or maybe areas you want to be in roles you think you might want to have it's all there filter it out Have fun. ConcreteCareers dot com slash jobs. They are here to help us all. I actually have another superstition I want tell you about. So this one's not football related. This one's work related. I I developed a superstition over the last pool gosh. fifteen years, I'd say. and I it actually is it possible to develop superstitions in conjunction with others? Because I know I have this. I I think some of my old workmates, I think maybe we all believe the same thing, but I certainly it certainly holds true for me. When I travel for work, if the travel goes too smoothly, then whatever it is I'm seeking to accomplish will not get accomplished. There will be a negative outcome. However, if in some instance in some way the travel is difficult, then I'm gonna have a good day. It's gonna be a good trip. I'm actually traveling right now. If you're looking at any clips of this show or you're watching it on YouTube, bless your heart, you will see that this is not my studio. I don't know what how the audio is gonna come out. Hopefully it comes out alright. I'm gonna do everything I can in the edit so this still sounds pretty good. but I'm traveling. I am in Atlanta and I'm excited because we've got multiple meetings and we're also working with another company. We're gonna be putting up lots of lab mixes. looking at the calcium clay, we've been working all year to get a better understanding of the product. We've seen a lot of pores go out and go down and it it's just been a ton of fun. Everything looks really good. Now we're just sort of going to that next level of improving and just looking at it on a performance basis only, not not just like how low can you make the carbon value of the concrete, but how far can we push the performance of the concrete? So I'm really looking forward to getting a lab and putting up mixes with that kind of mindset, right? but when it comes to the superstition, this morning, I I I always have to debate myself. Am I gonna take an Uber to the airport or am I going to drive myself and just park at the parking garage at the airport? It costs about the same. It's similar. it's probably more to Uber, but there's a chance that something can always go wrong with parking. I I'm the kind of guy I get there way early. Just in case there's any issues whatsoever. I'm always early at the airport. I actually got there a little bit later today than I normally would. And of course, today would be the day that I show up and they closed all the parking garages at Philadelphia Airport. I've never seen a f the parking garage fill up. That's crazy. Like where is everybody going? Th there's six parking garages. They were all full. Insane. So then the guy I'm trying to pull into the last one, because the one I usually go to anyway, 'cause I got a big truck and I just like to park on the roof of that one and I don't have to worry about ceiling heights or hitting anything or it. So I went over there and there's a guy standing there and he's like, sorry, you can't come in. I'm like, Well that that's crazy. I saw that like garage A and B were closed and full. F is never full. It's the last one. He says, No, it's full today and of course he's being a Philly guy, so he's a jerk about it. And I was like, Are you sure? Because the sign said it was open, and you know, he was done with me. He's he says, look, you can go to short-term parking or you can go to economy. Get out of here. And I was Alright, well I'm running a little bit late, so later than I like to be, I should say. So I was like, I'll just do short-term parking and I'll just have to ask for forgiveness on how high this parking bill is gonna be. pulling short-term parking. There's no parking there either. The entire place is So after circling short-term parking for way longer than I'm gonna admit to you on this podcast, I left and I went, I made sure when I left that I went out where a cashier was, and I gave her my ticket and I said, Hey, I circled around there for a while, I couldn't find any parking. And she says, Yeah, it's all full. The entire place, 100% all of it's full. and I said, Well, what do I do? She says, leave. Leave. The parking attendant at PHL told me to leave. That That is hilarious. So I ended up driving out to the economy lot, which is like, you know, seven minute drive from the airport to park in the economy lot. That joker was just about full. That was crazy. the guy, they had like a bunch of people out there helping us like get through into the lot faster. And the guy was helping me and he goes, Where why is everything full? Like, where are you going? He's the attendant. Like, why would I know? And I was like, I don't know, man, I'm just trying to get to Atlanta. And he says, Well maybe he said, Maybe everybody's just trying to go to Atlanta like you. I was like, Maybe. He's like, Yeah, maybe Trump's down there and he's gonna give everybody five thousand dollars. Ha ha ha ha I don't know, man. Maybe. Can I please just go park? I have an airplane to catch. thankfully we got all the TSA pre check digital ID scan, jumped to the front of the line, whoop de doos, and I was able to get through, get a cup of coffee and get on the plane. flew next to a guy who I think might have been rock star. He looked like a rock star. He looked famous. when he pulled out his MacBook on the flight, he was like signing contracts for music deals I think he might have been famous. That was kinda neat. I didn't ask him who he was 'cause it was weird and I don't do that. anyway, yeah, so this is gonna be good week because my superstition tells me that if all the parking garages are closed and parking was an absolute nightmare this morning, so much that when I left my house at eight o'clock on a normal day, and I'll again this I left at eight. Normally I go for like a super early flight, so I'll leave my house at like four thirty in the morning. It'll take me twenty five minutes to get to the airport. I'm through security by five fifteen. I parked through security by five fifteen. And I you know, get on my six AM, six thirty flight. All's good. this time I left at eight. I did not get through security and everything until almost nine thirty. And I spent half of that time Driving to the airport forty five minutes to twenty-five minutes. and the other forty five minutes trying to find parking. Forty-five minutes trying to find parking. don't know when the last time you tried to do that, like try to find parking, and it took you more than a few minutes. But forty-five minutes feels like an eternity. And there's a slight level of elevated stress with that, so that tells me we're gonna have a good week this week. I'm really looking forward to it. Other positive News positive news. We need to talk about the slump monkey college football pick'em contest presented by Vince Hagan. If you're not in that, I think people can still join. I just saw two more people join this week. I don't even know how that's possible because the event already started. But I think like technically you can join at any time, and like maybe some people forget to set their picks one week, and so if as long as you remember every week you pretty much catch up, I I guess. Like I'm not exactly sure. Anyway, we had more people join. We're already over forty in the group. Come and join us. Go to the ESPN the easiest thing to do is search. Like go to Google and type in ESPN College Football. Pick Search for the Slump Monkeys group. Jump in. Free to join. There is a prize. A hilarious trophy by the way. the guys over at Vince Hagen helped me design the trophy. They're helping me build the trophy. It's h it's absolutely awesome. so creative, and you know, credit to them. And there's also a cash prize, the $500 cash prize. Free to enter. You're here to win. It's not just bragging, right? Let's get a trophy and a cash prize. Come and join us today. The leader at the moment is a person named Anthony R1 Forever. Now, that is my brother, my biological brother. Brother Anthony. He's winning. He is he's an awesome guy, but he can be a little bit insufferable when he's winning. 'Cause he wants to play this like I'm just all G Shucks, I'm just a humble little guy over here winning the contest. And that d give me a break. You wanna know what this guy did? So his n his name on here, by the way, R one Forever, like what does that mean? he used to Be like super hardcore into video games. One of the games he was like hardcore in was World of Warcraft. He was literally the number one ranked player in the world for his player type. I don't really I don't fully understand how the game works, but there's different archetypes that you can be. I don't even remember which one he was. He healed people, whatever that one is. He was literally number one in the world according to a site called Arena Junkies. So He's used to like winning things on the internet. It's kind of what I'm getting at. As now he's all excited because he's winning this pick thing. you might say to yourself, Well, gosh, self, how did he do that? Let me tell you. He forgot to make his picks until eleven thirty Eastern. You have to have your picks in by noon, because the games kick off. He had forgotten to make his picks, opens it up at eleven thirty and realizes, wow, I went nine and three or whatever last week, whatever it was, no three loss. So seven and three last week. I need to catch up and get in the lead. So I'm gonna go against the grain on some of these picks and hope that I get right. And if I get right, it means everybody else got wrong. So if it was an eighty twenty matchup, eighty percent of the people picked one of the games, twenty percent of the people in our league picked another game, he'd he'd lean on he went on the twenty, hoping that he would be able to come out victorious. And he did. He only lost one. And that one that he lost was Texas, who won the game but didn't cover by half a point. So, please everyone, go and make your picks this week. Lock in. Knock it out. Knock my brother out of that top spot. You know, he's not one of the people that I really want to crush. But I yeah, we don't want to see him winning this thing. We don't want that. Last week I gave you my lock of the week. So every week so far, giving you lock of the week. They've all cashed. Last week was Bama gonna roll Kentucky. It absolutely happened. It's two weeks in a row now. The Bama looked horrible, and we won by four touchdowns. That I guess is is this the new Bama? I don't know. But it's annoying. I don't like it. And now we've got some good games coming our way. There the one that I I think I like the best is LSU going into Ole Miss. LSU's favor by three and a half. I think LSU wins by double digits, but I I don't know that's what I think. But I don't know. If I'm giving if I'm giving you a lock of the week, you know, I want to I want to better know what it is that that I'm telling you. I want to Give you some sense of Some sense of like certainty. Is there any certainty that I can provide to you that this pick is the one that you need to roll with? That pick this week is Virginia versus West Virginia. The game is in Charlottesville. Virginia is favored by ten and a half. West Virginia is two and though. Virginia's undefeated. West Virginia's undefeated. This is the first time the Mountaineers have started two and in like 20 years or something crazy. I for it's not it's not 20 years, but it's a long time. They've not started 2 0 in while. but the teams they played were Roast Beef Tech and Cupcake U. So not real teams, and I have zero faith in West Virginia. The only thing they've done so far was give us that John Denver song. And outside of that, their football's terrible. Pat McAfee's not there anymore. He didn't really have that big of an impact when he was there. He's hilarious on ESPN. But he was a punter at West Virginia. Steve Slayton is not walking through that door. All right. Pat White is not walking through that door. This is not the same West Virginia team that we grew up loving on the video games. This is today. Virginia is the most underrated team in all of college football. They are ranked 25. They will be in the top 15 before the season. They are probably going to win the ACC. I it's Miami's obviously the favorite, but I would not be surprised if. Virginia's defense, which is a massive surprise this year, slows them down to the point that it's gonna scare people. So Virginia, lock of the week, minus ten and a half over West Virginia, lay those points, win big. We're not betting real money on this. That is just my pick inside the pickle. one more observation, one more observation. Cause we all know that this is secretly supposed to be a college football podcast. even though we're doing a a concrete podcast. We're gonna get to to the concrete in just a second. But on the college football side, has anybody here watched Mississippi State play? That is not a rhetorical question. I want you all everyone who has their hand raised right now to say they have watched Mississippi State, you're either a liar Or we should be best friends. Because that means you love college football as much as I do. Mississippi State right now has a quarterback by the name of Comario Taylor. If you're not familiar with Mr. Taylor, get familiar. He might be the number one draft pick in all of football in two years from now. Why two years from now? Because he's still a true sophomore. The guy is unbelievable. Mississippi State has maybe the most like raw physically talented quarterback in the entire country. At Mississippi State. Nobody watched them last year. They finished frickin' last, so people didn't realize that he was over there. A bunch of big schools came at him with NIL money to leave Mississippi State. He's a Mississippi kid, loves Jeff Levy, the head coach, and said, Nah, I actually want to play here. Like I didn't I didn't come here because Mississippi State gave me the best NIL deal, and these other guys are offering me way more money now. But I came to Mississippi State because I wanted to be at Mississippi State, and I'm gonna stay here, and we're gonna do this. This guy's a freak. He fli he'll roll out to his right and flick the ball like he's playing beer pong and throw it forty-five yards on a frozen rope to the corner of the end zone. It's the most insane thing you've ever seen. He's got a little receiver, this little guy named Evans. He's awesome too. So I don't know where these people came from and why they ended up in Stark Vegas. By the way, if you've not ever been to Stark Vegas, Starkville, Mississippi is it it's in the middle of nowhere. You're just riding through cow pastures. And if somebody didn't tell you, hey, you need to turn right here, there's a large state college. down that road. You'd have no idea it's even there. I but there's a couple guys there, they're gonna be NFL players, good NFL players. And they're running around in in Stark Vegas playing playing the game that we all we all love. So highly encourage you to take some time, find Mississippi State on the TV, if they're even on the TV, because they're Mississippi State, and give them a little bit of A watch. Now I think I may have mentioned it slightly. I'm in Atlanta this week. putting up Ladmixes meetings with other companies as well. So we're getting a lot done this week. I just I wanna just say something nice. Am I allowed to do that? In concrete In concrete, nobody ever calls you to tell you you did a job. Everybody only calls you to yell at you about whatever they're mad about or whatever you did wrong or whatever, but I'd like to like take a moment, say something nice about somebody. I don't think he listens to this show, so he's probably never gonna hear this, but it's not for him, it's for the audience. There there's a guy out there by the name of Vance Robinson. He works at Criso, the admixture company. We both have been working here in the southeast in in a concrete space, him probably as long as I've been alive, and then for me, you know, the last twenty years. And in that time, we have developed so many mutual relationships. And I don't mean like, yeah, I know that guy. I sent him an email five years ago and he never responded. No, I mean relationships like, yeah, he was at my wedding. Or Yeah, that guy, he I I meet up with him for dinner at every conference that we go to for the last several years. yeah, that guy? We've spent more nights on concrete pores solving problems than I care to admit. this other guy? Yeah yeah yeah. We've watched the sunrise at a concrete plant more times than I can count. this other guy, yeah yeah, yeah. Before he retired, you know, he we did a ton of work together. Our Venn diagram of people that we know is insane and somehow Vance and I did not know each other. But we know each other now. I met him earlier this summer. This is one good dude. And I think you know, in this business we should recognize people, not because they're just at the end of their careers and we want to give them a lifetime achievement award at the NRMCA or whatever. He started helping me. At first it was out of just plain curiosity. we have a calcyne clay that we make, and it's a new product coming onto the market. Calcian clay is not new, Mediquin's not new. But our plant is a new plant that's doing this, and our product's a little bit interesting because it's densified. And so the question is there's a new calcium clay coming onto the market. And he was curious about how it worked. And as he dug into it, he was like, wow, this stuff's incredible. Incredibly reactive. We gotta figure out what's going on here and have to figure out how we're gonna use it, if it's gonna be used, people like it. And then it turns out everywhere he went, the people he was talking to were like, yeah, that's Paul's company. and he's like, How does everybody know this Paul guy? How do I have his material but I don't know him? And we got connected, and the amount of effort and the amount of thought and the the contribution that Vance has made. to my understanding of our product. It's not his product. It's it's it's our product. And the amount of understanding that I've gained from Vance because he cared enough to take the time to help our company, to help his constituents, you know, his customers, you know, it's not it's not totally altruistic. I mean, you know, he he wants people to use His additives and he thinks his additives are probably best suited to work with our clay. And if he understands our clay better than the other additive guys, then you know he'll be able to formulate the additive package that works the absolute best with the clay. And so I don't want to say it was t all altruism, but he went above and beyond. And there were some insights that he gave us. He he came out, he brought his friends with him, they came out to our production facility in Georgia. And we gave him the you 50 cent tour, but we had a long meeting about here's what we've done and here's what we think we should do next. And like a lot of that insight that came from Vance has really helped shape the success we had with some ready mix folks. But taking some of his insights and we're able to apply those into the field, well, we put them in the lab first. and then applied them into the field and it and everything went really smoothly. So I I just wanted to say thank you to Vance Robinson at Criso and their team for putting in some effort to to help us better understand our product. And I just I'm gonna be working with him this week and I just really wanted to say thank you and let people know that there are still good people out there in this industry that are willing to to help others. And Vance is one of those and I just really appreciate it. if you're looking for a company that might be able to help you in your life, maybe maybe almost as well as advanced has helped me, you're gonna want to call Command Alcon. Say, why would I call Command for help with all of my software needs? Because they've been doing it for fifty years. That's right. We're celebrating fifty years with Command Alcon serving the concrete industry. Fifty years, that's 1976. They started doing software. Software on like Floppy disk, the actual floppy discs, not the little hard ones, but like the big giant ones. Again, I I'm sort of being sarcastic. I don't know if they actually had this. But 1976 was a long time ago. The software world, command alcon was there. They're still here today. They've expanded beyond just the badging software. They got all the cloud services, the inventory tracking, they got all the all the stuff. All the stuff. If I were you, I would hop on. LinkedIn and I'd go find a fellow by the name of Billy Ripple, greatest IT guy in all of Concrete. Message him, his DMs are open, message him, tell him Paul Finley, Slump Monkey sent you, and you want the friends and family discount. Now, that's not a real discount. Ooh, we should do discount codes. Hmm. Good idea for the future for ads. We should have discount codes. for all the slump monkey community. Anyway, in this case, you just gotta ask for a favor. Say hey Paul said, hi b he says here's what you do. You go to LinkedIn, you find Billy Ripple. You say, hey Billy. Paul said that you should give me the friends and family discount there at command. we'll be a new customer for you. Or maybe we're an existing customer, but we'd like to hear about some of the expansive offerings since you guys have really gone all out on the tech side. we'd like to learn a little bit more about that. Could if we if we expand. with you if you can make our business better, faster, stronger, leaner, meaner, more profitable, would you give us the slump monkey discount, the friends and family discount? I bet if you ask really nicely, Billy Ripple might make that happen. Call command today celebrate fifty years, commandalcon dot com. That's A L K O N. Command Alcon dot com. Fifty years is crazy by the way. Like it just it just blows my mind. deep sc go a little bit deeper into the congregate stuff here. construction dive. I love construction dive. They're great. If there's there's a few newsletters that bounce around out there, like the ACI newsletter is fun. there's a cement one that's fun. and then there's a webs a couple websites that have news, construction news that I like. And then construction dive is probably my very favorite one. Construction dive dot com. you can find all kinds of fun articles on there. I I save them during the week. During the week there'll be some that pop up and I'll click save because I want to talk about them on the podcast. This is one of those. It actually came out today. Interesting. But it was about the Fed raising rates. And you guys know on here we don't talk politics, but sometimes we talk policies. And the Federal Reserve is in charge of one of the things they're charge of. They're supposed to have a dual mandate. They're supposed to make sure that the country has maximum employment. Not full employment, maximum employment. And their other charges to keep inflation under control. They're what they're in a previous administration that tried to put a third charge on them that's not really a a thing. So really just need to tame inflation and they need to maximize employment. So how do they tame inflation? It's not just taming inflation, by the way. If if the country's going into a recession, they also want to like spark the economy. They there are policies that the Fed can enact, but but there's not that many levers for these guys to pull. The main lever that they pull is they raise interest rates or they lower interest rates. And contrary to what a lot of people thought, Warsh, the new Fed chair. Announced that they're gonna raise rates by 25 basis points. This is the first hype in like three years. Alright, so just really quick, let me level set, because I don't know if everybody listening to this, because I know I didn't used to know any of this stuff. What on earth does the f when I say the Fed raised rates by 25 basis points? What does that even mean? That sounds like a bunch of gobbledygooks. Well, the Fed is the Federal Reserve. It's the central bank of the United States. One of its main jobs is to influence the cost of borrowing money in the economy. If it's more expensive to borrow money, then people won't borrow it. And when you do that, economic activity slows down, and you get a you have the ability to either tame inflation or even enter a deflationary cycle where costs could even you know go down. the basis point. So when they change the interest rates they do it on what they call a basis point. One basis point is 0.01 percentage points. Okay, so if I told you there's a four percent interest rate on that mortgage that's four hundred basis points. are making up that four point zero zero percent interest rate. So if I raised it by one basis point it would be four point zero one percent interest rate. If I raised it by twenty five basis points it's four point two five percent would be your new interest rate. Which is what the Fed's doing. So how does that affect us, like me and you regular people? Well it actually kinda doesn't in most cases. And did not it will eventually. But in the immediate, doesn't always. So they've raised the overnight rate. That's a fancy term for what's it cost for a bank to loan money to another bank overnight? So if I'm bank A and I need to loan out ten million dollars to a guy, but I don't have ten million dollars sitting in my bank, like literally behind me in this vault, but I'm agreeing to this contract with this guy. He needs that ten million bucks, you know, wired over to him. well, okay, I need to give him an interest rate on that money so that I make sure I make my money. So I need to first look as the bank, I need to first look, say what are my borrowing costs, because I don't have ten million dollars, so I need to borrow ten million dollars. I'm gonna call I one of the things I can do, I need to call another bank or I can get it straight from the Fed. And the Fed has their overnight rate and so the bank can overnight I mean theoretically that's kinda where the name came from. I don't think it actually works literally overnight anymore. But you would take that overnight rate, say it's four percent just for fun. And all right, you're like, okay, as the bank, I'm gonna pay four percent on that money. I just borrow that ten million dollars. Now I'm gonna give it to Mr. Businessman. I so I'm I'm acting as a middleman essentially as a bank and saying, All right here businessman, you can have it for six percent. So I'm bar the bank takes it at four percent overnight rate, gives it to him for six percent. Bank makes a little bit of margin on that. That's how that's how they make money. So this whole like money shuffling thing, you don't you can't just go by what like the overnight rate says. 'Cause if the overnight rate's four, mortgage rates might actually be seven. And if the basis points go up point two five percent on the or the interest rate goes up point two five percent, twenty five basis points on the overnight rate, it could be more than that. It could be like a point five percent interest rate jump on on a mortgage. Where that can get you as a as a regular person is like your house. If you've got a variable rate mortgage and that that rate's gonna change, you know, next year and they start jacking up the overnight rates at the Fed. You know, you could be in real trouble with your mortgage payment coming next year if that new rate's much, much, much higher, and suddenly your premium payment's higher. But that's not what they're wanting to do. You know, they're what they're trying to do right now is slow down the economy and reduce inflation. Inflation's up. Now, the article on construction dive made me angry. Because it starts out the byline's already making me mad. The byline on this thing is. Higher rates could force owners to delay or outright abandon the projects. Jesus Christ. You're telling 0.25% if that puts you out of favorability on math, then I'm glad your project's not being for that because you were way too close to the line on that. 'Cause on a million bucks, say you're borrowing million bucks, that point two five percent increase is an increase of about twenty five hundred dollars a year. Twenty five hundred dollars a year on the life of that loan. That's crazy. If that is the thing that's tipping you over, you know, then I I that just seems crazy to me. Now that's that's a little rude to be fair if you're listening to this and you're a s C F O or a real business person or whatever. So that's kind of a rudimentary take, Paul. Yes, you're right. It's rudimentary. We're d I we're not diving into the contracts of the covenant, you know, covenants of the contract saying you have to have a certain ratio of, you know, cash to loan value, whatever. You know, we're not looking at all that. We're just we're basic, basic people on this podcast for the most part. And I'm telling you that little bit of a raise is just it's a signal to the market is what it was. It's a signal that Warsh isn't just gonna do whatever Trump tells him, all right? Because Trump wants their rates to be way down. He thinks they're way too high. He wants them to go way, way down because he wants the energy to he wants the economy to be on fire and charge ahead. But inflation's up. Now, with inflation being up, what what does that really mean? So the Fed is mandated with making sure the inflation is tamed. Historically, they wanted inflation at two percent. This administration is not saying that. They're saying they want it to be three percent. Why would they why would they say that? Why would you want higher inflation? That's crazy. They actually think that the economy is gonna grow so much that GDP growth is gonna be they want GDP growth to be three percent, they want interest rates to be three percent, I'm sorry, inflation to be three percent, and they would love interest rates to be down around three percent as well. So There's a lot of work to do to get there. but one of the things you absolutely have to do because the deficit keeps growing is you have one of the things you can do is grow your way out of the problem. But how do you grow your way out of this spending problem we have in this country if interest rates keep going up? So it's this weird balancing game where they're always trying to you know what are we gonna do? We gotta tame everything, but we also have to grow every everything, which is Which is just crazy. And I'm I I the thing about raising interest rates, if if it really does cause people to like stop projects after they've been started, like that r that that the owners are screwing guys like us who are the con contractors. And maybe we've already laid out a bunch of capital expense to be able to meet the needs of the business that was promised to us and now we're gonna be chasing down accounts payable forever. And that kind of stuff just just irritates me. but like I said, I think it's more of just a signal. It's a signal to the market that Warsh is gonna follow the data. It's a signal to bond investors that, you know, hey look, this is gonna be under control and there's grown ups in the room today. We're not just pro Trump or anti-Trump, like we're we're grown ups, all right. We're gonna make this happen. That could actually lower long term rates for construction people, because Once the market realizes that's serious about inflation, that's gonna pull the 10-year treasury down. And that's really the benchmark for construction loans, not the overnight rate from the Fed. So when I see headlines like this, it freaking irritates the crap out of me. But inflation is real. So there is when it comes to like non-residential construction. The input prices into non-residential in construction increased nine percent year over year from August to August. That's crazy. Why is everything so expensive? I I mean supply and demand, I'll tell you, maybe there's not enough supply, way too high demand. I I mean that's nine percent? That's wild. Yeah, I mean that's really wild. So I don't I don't know why the inputs are up quite that high. is it I mean are data centers responsible? I just can't I can't imagine everybody just wants to blame everything on data centers, but anyway, that it was really interesting to me that they framed that twenty five basis point increase saying that you know, construction's doomed now. I just That's crap. No, it's not. And everybody needs just chill out and keep marching forward. Keep building projects, making jobs, making mud, slinging mud. Just keep things moving forward and everybody's gonna be okay. We will not let the doomers win. That's probably gonna be another tagline of this show. Salt Monkey's Concrete Podcast. I'm your host, Paul Finley. We will not let the doomers win. That I somebody trademark that please. I would really appreciate it. something else you need to know. we're not gonna let the Doomers win. We are also going to take the show on the road. We are headed to Concrete Works. One month from well, this weekend, technically. One month from this weekend, we will be broadcasting the show live at Concrete Works. We are gonna set up our booth for the sh for the podcast. It's gonna have its own setup inside the Vince Hagen booth. Big thank you to them. For giving us a space to do the show. They are going to be big partners of ours going forward, helping out with college football pick'em, helping out with these live shows. Cannot thank them enough. If you are interested in being a guest on the live show. So what we've done in the past, just to give you an idea of like what does that mean if you're gonna be a guest on a live show? we typically do like 10-15-minute spots. we get lots of guests are gonna come in throughout the event, give you a chance to talk about your experiences at the show, people you're seeing, things you're doing, get your name out there, get your company out there. We always have a good time. You listen to this show, you know that we have four goals. We're gonna be smart, original, funny, and authentic. And we're gonna bring that out on every single episode, including the short hits that we're doing live. Concrete works inside of the Vince Hagen. Booth, you can email me admin at slumpmonkeys.com. That's O N K E Y S dot com. Admin at slumpmonkeys.com. If you would like to be a guest in the lineup, we still have spots remaining. We are four weeks out. They will fill up. Those slots will fill up. Just like the advertising filled up. You know, I I'm so thankful to the advertiser we have. We do not have any more advertising spots available until February of 2027. Alright? So you think that filled up fast? Wait till you see this list fill up fast. Please contact me right away if you want to get in and have one of the remaining spots to come on live at Concrete Works. Please email me admin at slumpmonkeys.com. Big thank you to Vince Hagen. There was another news article from our guy Honorbond. Listen, Dr. Basu is the man. There's no doubting that. We mentioned him on a previous episode. He came on the old podcast. He's awesome. If you've ever listened to any of his speeches, the guy is hilarious. He knows the economy. He knows his numbers. His data. I don't even know where he's getting all this data. I think he does a lot of surveys, but regardless, dude's got data. Data, data, data, data. Big data basu. Alright. He sometimes irritates me. And that not him. His articles. Shouldn't say him. He's great. If you haven't met him, he's great. His articles irritate me sometimes. Okay, so what do I mean? there was a time period there from about twenty twenty two to twenty twenty four where every other month he was putting out articles jobs are up, jobs are down, jobs are up, jobs are down, jobs are up Golly. And then like three months every three months it was big revision, jobs were up, big revision, jobs were down. It did it was all over the place. And so every other article was, you know, doomer and that was just crazy. It was just crazy. The whole thing was crazy. It didn't make any sense. And then when you actually went in and looked at like who got hired into what in this country, it was like the only people getting hired were healthcare jobs and government jobs. That was it. Everything else was declining. So Were we really in a up cycle or a down cycle? I don't think anybody actually knows. And so those articles irritated me so bad. He's back to irritating. Why is he doing this? He's amazing. He doesn't need to be irritating. He's amazing. So a couple episodes ago, we mentioned him because he was talking about the backlog. And he was saying, Hey, people were backlogged for nine months, now they're only backlogged for eight months, the whole world's falling apart. It's 12% change in backlog. And then you dig into the numbers and you're like, well, actually, it turns out that like if you're a big data center builder, if you're involved in data centers, you have no backlog. In fact, it got worse, backlog got longer. and it was people who were doing like only residential housing, they s they did see you know, a couple they lost a couple weeks. It was like three weeks. They lost three weeks on their backlog. And instead of being like, wow, we're catching up, like it the analysis wasn't presented as like they did more work last month than the month before that, so they are catching up on their backlog. It was like, no, we don't have as much backlog, therefore things are bad. And I that didn't sit well with me. The minute amount of change, three weeks over a year, change being seen as like this giant negative, just it didn't sit well with me at all. And now an an article comes out this month. Month later, it says construction backlog rebounded as more firms won data centers. my gosh, we're doing this doing this again, Basu? Why? We did it with the jobs. Where it was job loss, job gain, job loss, job gain. And now we're doing it with backlog lost, backlog gain, backlog. Why is like a longer backlog a sign of health? Why can't we say like Like if I was running a business and I was backlogged eight months and then I was able to produce more and reduce the backlog to six months, like I would want to give the guy who led that a raise. Like, yes, thank you for clearing some of our backlog. We need to be there for our customers. I don't am I am I getting that wrong? Is that me? Am I wrong? Like is there is there a construction backlog effect that I don't know about that You know, we need to be backlogged for a year? I I've just never heard I've never heard of that. And I I could be wrong, I don't know everything. But just sounds insane. Mm. Sorry, I had to take a sip of my drink there in this nice actually this isn't nice at all. this hotel cup. This paper cup is falling apart on me. this I shouldn't even be drinking what's in here, it's zero calorie soda. Mm mm mm. But it is delicious. Okay. Back to being irritated. Basu in this construction backlog just Just absolutely ridiculous. So then Then then he goes on. The the whole article's irritating. Then he says, there was a sharp increase in the number of contractors who unprompted mentioned labor shortages. So okay, well labor shortages we I think we've been crying about that in construction for as long as I can be alive. But then in the exact same research the share of contractors that intend to cut staffing levels also increased. What are we doing in this article? This is the most insane thing. It it doesn't make any sense we're gonna backlogs down, backlogs up. And then the same article People can't find help. but also people are gonna cut people. Just it's the whole the whole thing just reads like doomer fanfic. It just doesn't doesn't make sense. They try to tie it to data centers. They try to say people who are getting data center jobs are hiring and people who are not are firing. Basically what they end up that's the conclusion they make. At the end of all that. and then the last here here's the last paragraph. Despite the dip in staffing level prospects, readings on sales and profit margins increased in August. All three components also indicate growth expectations over the next six months. So you get this giant Doomer article that is cont contradicting itself. And and it turns out Sales sales and profits are up and everybody thinks they're gonna keep going up for the next six months. So there you go. What what red is a negative thing ends up being a positive r ending and I I guess I just the whole thing was just meant to make me angry. I don't know. That doesn't just doesn't make any sense to me. So Doctor Boss said we love you, but we gotta get this thing worked out. Other things are gonna get worked out, We mentioned the bring the show on the road to Concrete Works. We are also gonna be on the road two more times coming up. we will have announcements for those as they become available. again, if you would like to be involved in the live shows, please reach out. if you're interested in sponsorships, reach out for all things admin at slumpmonkeys dot com. So this is a solo show. I'm so thankful to be able to do this. I'm so thankful to our sponsors. Thank you so much to Rocket Star being the title sponsor this month. We got Vince Hagen coming in. they're helping us in a couple ways, but with the college football pick Concrete careers. Can I end Alcon? I mean, you guys have shown me so much love. you're helping me do this. I love doing this. I'm recording this late at night from a hotel after a long day, no sleep. I try not to come on here and complain about anything, but boy. My wife and I could use some more sleep. If you've got a trick to make a six month old sleep from seven thirty PM to six thirty a.m. without waking up, I would love to hear it. I'll take all those recommendations. You can email me that too, as a matter of fact. we could we could use that. So you know we're running on fumes here, but we're going to get this episode out. Hope you enjoyed it. I look forward to speaking with you all. Next week. Have a blessed day. Talk soon.