Carol Roth, 2x Best Selling Author, Business Advocate & Board Member | The War On Small Business

Welcome to Success Story, the most useful podcast in the world. I'm your host, Scott D. Clary. The Success Story podcast is part of the HubSpot podcast network. The HubSpot podcast network is the audio destination for business professionals who seek the best education and inspiration on how to grow a business. HubSpot podcast network hosts actors on demand mentors to entrepreneurs, startups and scaleups through practical tips and inspirational stories. Listen, learn and grow with the HubSpot podcast network at HubSpot.com slash podcast network. My guest today is Carol Roth. Carol is the author of the war on small business. Make sure you go follow her on Twitter at Carol JS Roth. Carol is a recovering quote unquote investment banker, TV pendant and host and New York Times bestselling author of her first book as well entrepreneur equation. She's worked in a variety of capacities across various industries including currently as an outsourced CCO and as a director on public and private company boards. She is also a strategic advisor to various companies and she advocates for small business small government and quote unquote big hair. Carol has spent more than a dozen years in front of the camera. She's developed more than 1,000 pieces of content across a variety of media. She has regularly featured on national cable televisions including Fox Business, CNBC, CNN, Fox News and MSNBC. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Economics from Wharton School of Business in Pennsylvania where she graduated Magnum Cum Laude. Today we're going to speak about her new book and some of the lessons and insights that she pulls out of it the war on small business. We're going to speak about the plight of the small business owner and the fact that they went to hell and back over the last year and a half. We're going to speak about how COVID as well as some government mandate crippled some of the most important people small business owners in society and how they can recover and what we have to do to help them recover because as we know for the past year and a half small businesses have been hit hard. So we're going to walk through some lessons and some insights that she has and then we'll also try and figure out how best to help these small businesses going forward. The goal and the quest that Carol really is on is to help rebuild the businesses that make the backbone of America. So let's jump right into it. This is Carol Roth, author of The War on Small Business. Yes, so I was the first person in my immediate family to go to college. My dad was an electrician. My mom was a stay at home mom turned a hobby entrepreneur, I guess you would call it and I managed to get myself into Wharton undergrad and my father who is extremely common-sensical and financially savvy said that's great. How are you going to pay for it? And we went through this whole ROI calculation of well if I go there I can probably get a pretty decent job and pay it down and so when I was there that was that was the mantra and so usually people who go to Wharton have two paths if you're looking to pay down debt really quickly. One is management consulting for people who like to do a deep dive and for people who have ADD, we go into investment banking. So obviously I was going to take the investment banking route and that's where I started my career. As you noted I am a recovering investment banker. It's a 12-step program. I'm somewhere around step 11 but did you know billions of dollars worth of transactions over my time, raised capital, did mergers and acquisitions and the like and still remain as a market commentator and fascinated just by the concepts of markets to this day. So that's kind of how all of this insanity kicked off and the nice thing about going into a place that buys you financial flexibility is that flexibility piece so it kind of gives you latitude to think about things you might want to do and although I have not achieved my dream yet of being a game show host which is my ultimate goal that in the interim I have been as you mentioned a reality competition judge and host of shows and panelists on shows frequently in media sit on boards of directors do some investing act as an outsourced cheap customer officer for collectibles company and do all kinds of fun things along the way and write books. When when you left investment banking when did you decide that you wanted to build a name for yourself write a book start to put yourself out there because that's not an easy thing to do either but you're doing it you're doing it big and now is it sort of what's giving you the platform to write. Well so I you know I was the big mouth and investment banking that would be like are you guys crazy and like the middle of a meeting and people are like oh you can't say that and I'm like oh well I'm going to say it anyway so I you know I had that personality and people would have saved me all the time like you should be on television and I'm like okay like what the heck does that mean and so like after I left banking and actually started my own broker dealer it was you know one of the things I decided I was going to try doing and I wasn't exactly sure how one did that because this was getting a really long time because like 13 14 years ago and the internet you know and creator economies not where it was you know where it is today like I was one of the first people who was like a quote unquote influencer for brands like before it was influencing was a thing so I remember I would have my brother-in-law bring over this like big old video camera and he would record me answering entrepreneurs questions and then we use the cables to like download the video and find some way to slice it and upload it to like a web my website that's that's originally housing that's how I started and you know leverage that into radio and leverage leverage radio into local television and leverage local television and to national television and I was actually doing that kind of stuff before even got on social media I had a woman who was a good dear friend OG on Twitter who has recently passed in the last couple of years nameless Strauss who brought me on to Twitter kicking and screaming to the extent that she actually ran my account for the first couple months like I wasn't even on it like anything if you go back to the beginning like none of that is mine and you know then eventually I figured it out and Lord help everybody else but you know that's kind of how all of this madness started and you know in the beginning I just I wanted to help small businesses I wanted to as I said I really wanted to be a game show host like I never bull like really thought I would get into areas like news and political commentary and all these things that just sort of happen along the way when you try something new and you go down and you make your plans and then different doors open and you're like well okay I'll just walk through that one and see what it's like so typical entrepreneur path right yeah nothing's planned and everything happens and you just roll with it as it goes and I love it so now you know so now you you know you've built a great name for yourself still championing for small businesses obviously that's what that's what your your core message is and you've built an incredible following around that message I think it's very important and I think that one thing that is actually interesting is you know you you have a social platform and you get invited to speak on various business topics but you mentioned that this particular topic has not really been covered that much so this is not something that you're getting as much exposure on as some I'm sure you know you have the you have the relationships you have the network so let's you know I guess this this is the this is where you're at in your career now I think that that really sounds up quickly I don't mean to gloss over a lot of the stuff you've done but I think that there's a lot of really important stuff that we could talk about just with the book and what it's discussing so let's walk through the premise of the book let's just add at a high level and then we can talk about maybe why it's not getting coverage why it could be why it's not getting the reach that I think it's an important topic so let's dive into it so I think the first thing I just want to say out front is this is a non-partisan issue we're going to talk government and we're going to talk political because it's impossible not to but this is a systemic issue this is not oh if we just had this person or this party in place it it all fixes so I just want to put it out there because I think sometimes it taints people's reaction to think oh well this is going to be you know a political lecture and it's not but it's a political reality so the reality of what happened in the last 15 months which you know I lay out the argument that actually the seeds of this have been planted for a very long time is that the government decided that it was going to deem some businesses essential and some non-essential and it was going to decide who gets to thrive and who has to fight to survive and they did this based not on data and not on science but based on political clout and connections and via these actions and also not appropriately compensating the small businesses for taking over their property rights and subjugating their property rights for the public good it's enabled the most historic wealth transfer we've ever seen from Main Street to Wall Street so you know that's kind of the overarching theme of the book as well as this kind of ongoing battle between the decentralization that you know not only small business but you know gig workers creator economy crypto all those things stand for versus centralized power and that's you know the messaging and unfortunately this historic wealth transfer and this unequal treatment of small business is just getting glossed over you know via the macro oh things are getting back to normal oh the stock market's doing great well again let's peel back the onion and look at the story here so so a couple of points because people are going to listen to this they're going to say okay so where is you know I think that essential makes sense to me like we need people that are up and running so how do we how do we how do we quantify that some businesses were left open and some weren't and there wasn't a science or a reason behind it and I'm actually so I want to point out one more fact I'm actually Canadian and Toronto is still shut down more or less just until recently so I see it and I see all these you know you see the stories and not everybody knows somebody who owns a business but you see the stories like you know restaurant that's been open for 50 years 60 years close down close down close down and it's horrible but the logic at the beginning the premise was well these you know these are spots where the virus can spread and we need to be careful about this so walk me through walk me through that yeah so you know these are spots were so the virus magically can't spread in the Amazon warehouse it magically can't spread in Walmart it magically cannot spread in Petmart where you can take your dog to get your dogs hair and nails groomed for lack of a better term but you can't get your own hair and nails groomed you can go to the weed dispensary which by the way was not even legal a few years ago in many states but now is deemed essential you could go out and get liquor but you know some other small business dry cleaner whatever it is in your neighborhood isn't essential so those were kind of the delineations that were drawn up front and again if they had compensated those businesses we're saying we're we're gonna take some of you we need to do something we don't know what we're doing but we're just picking you and here's money so that you can you know have continuing operations but you get to stay home then there's you know then it's a different completely different discussion but that's not what happened so that's what happened up front but then if you keep going down the line and again you obviously I'm taking the US take on this and I'm sure you have your own examples and count it up but you had situations where okay if you had a bar in New York you could reopen but you had to serve food so then they would serve chips and then they would say no you need to serve chips and dip so the dip was the scientific difference between being open and shutter then you had on the other coast in LA and I go through this story in the book pineapple hill saloon and grill that spent more than $80,000 reportedly to fix up their outside seating so that they could comply with outdoor seating requirements so they could keep their business and they you know our community staple and then they said well no we're gonna shut down outdoor seating too which we know the data and science didn't support that but at the same time they gave a permit to a movie production to be able to shoot a movie and they opened up yeah they opened up a catering tent to provide food service to the cast and crew in the same parking lot like a hundred feet away from the pineapple hill saloon and grill outdoor seating so how is that not okay but a hundred feet away the same activity is okay like you can just see these examples time and time again and it's very clear that this is a cloud and connection thing and not a science thing and that particular case Gavin Newsom who is the governor of California was found having dinner and breaking his own COVID protocols at the French laundry which is this hoidy toyty place in California with a lobbyist from the movie industry so you know we have all of these very concrete examples it was completely done on a cloud connections and again if there had been compensation so that we truly were all in this together it would be a very different story but we were not all in it together and that's the big problem here what so what always confuses me is why would anybody benefit from not understanding this seeing this and being like this is a problem it's like we we can't lose because you said biggest wealth transfer we can't lose all of these mom and pop brick and mortar family run businesses because that would be the logical thing to say right you don't want all these you don't all you don't want all these people being an extra burden on the system because they can't they can't pay bills because the restaurant shut down so why would why would this not be rectified I mean that's you know the multi trillion dollar question yeah and that doesn't make any sense to me they could have they could have done that very easily here in the United States we spent like more than six trillion dollars addressing COVID they could have bought themselves two two and a half to three months and spend a trillion to a trillion and a half dollars and if they wanted to address the small businesses and find risk mitigation strategies instead so they could have done that and again if you wanted to double that it still would have been a fraction of what they actually spent but unfortunately the media is you know running cover for politicians nobody's digging in to this and no matter how many times we hear small business is so important it's the backbone of the economy we have to preserve you know wealth creation opportunities to people when it's time to walk the talk you don't have that and unfortunately and I don't know how it is in Canada but things are so politicized here in the US is that you can't even have a nuanced conversation without everybody retreating to oh well let me see what my party talking points are and like just like okay it's put that all aside like let's just you know as common sense human beings yeah take a look at this and and we're not even saying like you can't lock down or you have to have complete freedom we're just talking about winners and losers and different treatment of different entities and that is belayton and it's why it's so important for people to educate themselves and to get all the information and facts behind us and you mentioned largest wealth transfer um so what do you have numbers do you want do you know what the numbers are like I'm curious I do yeah I know I know I know you're in Scott I know you do so yeah so basically there you have to understand that there were two levels that this happened on so there is the kind of the fiscal policy level we we've closed down your business you go you have a customer who's looking to spend a dollar they can't spend it at you know the local small business and they spent that at Amazon they spent that at Walmart they spent it at Target and I have you know actual numbers in the book but these companies they had record quarters we know that Amazon had their first hundred billion dollar revenue quarter in the fourth quarter of 2020 they had a second one in the first quarter of 2021 um you know at the same time you had the monetary policy issues and here in the United States obviously the federal reserve the most powerful central bank in the entire world did a couple of things they went back to you almost zero interest rates and in conjunction with that and and to in part to affect that they print quote unquote printed because it's really a digital entry you know on their books but they created money uh and put that you know into the system which ended up inflating the market and disrupting risk and what we saw from that side and as well as the the you know the revenue expansion is that we had seven technology companies that gained three point four trillion dollars in value in 2020 as well as it being a record year for initial public offerings as well as a record values raised by SPACs which are special purpose acquisition companies and at the same time by June of last year we had recorded 400,000 small businesses that had been permanently shuttered and millions more that were struggling to survive and i've seen lots of numbers on the outflow here i've seen something up to 40% of all small businesses permanently shuttered those numbers aren't correct that's probably of um employer-based small businesses but even so if it's two million i mean that's insane there's only 10 to 15,000 big businesses in this country in the united states so if you're talking about even 400,000 that's 40 times the number of big businesses that were shuttered permanently by these policies and then obviously the the trillions of dollars of wealth that was transferred from mainstream to wall street is just staggering but this stuff is opaque it's hard to understand what people don't know what the federal reserve is which is why i have a whole chapter on it in the book so people can really understand what's happening in terms of tilting the playing field because you know i'm the biggest free market capitalist that's out there and and i don't you know i think that inequalities are okay if they come about in the market you have different inputs and different outputs but are completely not okay when you have the government tilting the playing field in the direction of of a handful of the players i just want to take a second and thank the sponsor of today's episode have spot have spots crm is the easiest tool you can ever find to align your team there are two features that you need in a crm that optimize every activity your team does it's the ability to communicate meaning chat email etc messaging as well as a unified system of record your company is going to use a crm to manage 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all the communication is seamlessly documented into your have spot crm so that if somebody else has to look into an account or to help out they know exactly where the last person left off best of all with hub spots various price points inflexible pricing any company at any stage can take advantage of the various features that hub spot has to offer starting with free and allowing for more scalability and complexity as your organization grows learn how to scale your company without scaling complexity at hubspot.com all right let's get back to the show now the there's so there are so many directions that this is so great there's so many things that I want to pull out of this but I guess I think that it's also notable to to speak on your experience about getting okay let me let me think about this first I want to understand why you decided to write this book why is this important to you because this is obviously you're putting yourself out there in a big way and secondly speak about the reception of the book and then I want to speak about some lessons learned because I don't want to move off that yet because I think this is very interesting as well so I was actually approached to write a book not necessarily this book but a book about the economic consequences of you know what happened last year very early on Harper Collins identified that this was going to be historic and they wanted somebody who had an actual background in finance and economics to be able to give a real take that wasn't just you know a bunch of partisan talking points and pushing and agenda so I like like an idiot agreed it was like oh that sounds like a fun project to do while I'm on lockdown um and so I didn't really realize that this was going to be this herculean task because stuff is unfolding real time and decisions are being made and so I just started you know chronically what I was seeing and used it just a huge variety of sources and I knew small business was going to be a big piece of it um partially because of my background and because I identified in March of 2020 hey these are the first guys getting shut down this is going to be a problem and it kind of put out an op-ed about this is the way that you could avoid having this economic disaster so I knew that was going to be a piece of it but you know I I actually wrote like three and a half different books to be perfectly honest during this pandemic and this last one was like 160,000 words and my editors like no we're not doing that so we we called it back uh to the you're just under 90,000 that it is today and so it was just as we were kind of going through what happened and it was such a wild ride because we had this historic falloff of the the GDP but then you had this fed intervention and then you ended up with as I said this crazy wealth transfer so like where the the story started was very different than how it ended but the clear thing that just kept happening the whole time and the untold under reported story was what was happening to the little guys whether that be small businesses or individual investors retirees you know and I felt like you know this this championing of the small person was was important and you know so that ended up being the story and you know it's like the most under reported story that's out there so you know we're you know my publisher super excited they're like you know everybody's going to be all over this because everybody's seen what happened yeah and they're such a differential and the craziest thing is like I'm walking in the path of the small business owner because like decentralized media the creator economy folks like you Scott folks who are not at big networks but have kind of their own things are all over this I have a few champions Charles Payne at Fox Business will give Charles a shout out he's always a champion for the little guy but I have done and again this is like hard hard for people to understand but like I'm somebody who's in the media like I'm on TV multiple times day like I'm a known quantity so this is like it would serve to to think that like this would be a no-brainer but I have done at this point in time and scheduled for zero prime time television hits and zero morning show hits none zero zero even even with somebody who wants to argue with you about this like no yes like even with people who like you're like oh we support the little on either side none and I've had you know op-eds that have been rejected you know that we've tried to put out in in in media that are adapted from the book Fox Fox Business did run one of them and I think the New York Post is going to be running one but again like in terms of you've got you're the first person to market with this huge under reported story that affects half the economy and like like crickets like my publishers like I can't believe this and it's just proving that they says that everybody talks a big game at the end of the day nobody actually cares it's you know the government does it the media does it and unfortunately as I said this is not a niche this is half the US economy globally small business is 99.9% of all business entities around the globe so this is a story and I've had people you know not only from Canada but from Nigeria and from India and other places saying weren't the same thing happened here the same thing happened right everything is the same so even though it's and you would think the US would be like the one place where they're like oh well we're going to do right by you know free market capitalism but it's completely moved in the opposite direction so even though the story is told from the US lens it is very relevant and has had a lot of interest you know broadly and I will say the other weird thing is is that the the people who read the book love the book like that the feedback across the political aisle and and it's early from early readers and there are a bunch a bunch of people who like rip through it this week yeah yeah has been great you know it's already got a bunch reviews up it's been phenomenal so it's not like oh well you know it just wasn't a very good book and people don't want to talk about it because there are lots of very bad books that we see on the media all the time so this is something that people think supposedly think is important people agree that it's well written it's important and yeah like nobody wants to talk about it I still it still it still blows my mind that on you know it's too bad that it's turned into a partisan issue because it's not it's it's a it's a human issue at the end of the day when you really when you really break it down the people that are losing businesses and are trying to reinvent themselves and you know I love what you said at the beginning about the gig economy is great and that's fine but not everybody who's owned a restaurant for 40 years is comfortable just joining the gig economy or or selling a service on Fiverr or going to deliver for uber like it's not easy for some people and this is the people that are really hurting not the people that were easily transitioning into another job or something like that yeah I mean and that's and that's the point of small businesses it's so broad and it encompasses so many different things and it's not only about money either you know it's about freedom and flexibility and passion and it's people's identities I mean it's so important outside of the economic realm in terms of just the concept of freedom and economic freedom you know that's what small business stands for and so you know that makes it kind of doubly a heartbreak here yeah it's it's very strange to me that nobody is really is really picking this up how do we how do we help small businesses what's the what's the what's the action plan to help these people that haven't you know haven't had a lot of support well so the most important thing that we can you each and every one of us can do is vote with our dollars is that it's very easy and we've all become very lazy and accustomed to you know just doing whatever is the the fastest or something that you know you have auto programs in your phone but remember that you know that has consequences and so you know if you're sitting around and you're asking Alexa Alexa why does Jeff Bezos have so much money you know there's a little cognitive dissonance there and so you you have to be thinking about who is it that I want to be supporting you I only have so much money to to put out there you know be thoughtful about about your capitalism and about your spending I think the other thing you know and particularly here in the US we need to reign in the federal reserve you know the impact of this monetary policy in terms of driving this this transfer of wealth and and creating this unequal playing field has just gotten to absurd proportions and because it's as I said it's opaque and people don't understand it it's just not getting the lens and we need more deregulation and things that are removing these anti competitive barriers that make it harder for small businesses to operate you know here in the US obviously we were the center of the great recession financial crisis which ended up impacting the world economy some financial institutions took on too much risk and we all paid the price for that and coming out of that there's this regulation called Dodd Frank that was supposed to reign in the big banks but what did it do it basically completely killed off the start of small community banks it threw a bunch of them you know under and that they they couldn't they couldn't exist anymore and the outgrowth of that because small institutions are the ones that led to small businesses meant that small business lending went off a cliff at the same time the big banks had less competition and so they had also this all this access to capital from the feds intervention in the markets and so big business lending increased so all all of this stuff that was meant to reign in the big banks ended up giving them free reign and the small guys got screwed once again so we have to be very careful about trying to get more involvements into the market we need to let the small businesses operate in a more free decentralized way but so one thing you said that was it was really important is you can vote with your dollars that makes sense that everybody can action that tomorrow even you're you're doing that so I don't you know you didn't even mention that you're launching your book and selling it through a small business versus the Amazon right that's yeah so it's I mean it's available everywhere it's a big publisher but I personally have been telling people particularly in the US to go to bookshop.org bookshop.org fulfills through local small business booksellers and we've said so much traffic to them that within like two or three days they were already back ordered which is a great thing so you can still backorder it there now but there are all kinds of retailers that are listed with the publisher and you can certainly walk over to your small business bookseller as well but you know I didn't want to be the person who was like oh let's support small businesses and go buy my Amazon so you know we're trying trying to walk the talk and again I'm a capitalist so if you find the convenience in that and you've been thoughtful about it and that's still the best option for you then God bless you know I'm not going to stop you from buying the book but you know give it a second thought give it at least a second thought so that that was my point was that you can vote with your dollars there but in terms of understanding the federal reserve understanding how to actually push move the needle on on holding them accountable maybe you know you said the average American has to be better educated so do you have ideas about is it is it just voting for the right representative is it covered like what is the what is the action plan for the average American to move that needle so by the book and read chapter five which consistently chapter five and twelve the federal reserve in China everybody's two favorite chapters including mine in the book so you need to learn what what it is that you're talking about and then we need to be contacting our representatives and telling them that they need to reign it in and that they need to call the purview and you know what it is that the federal reserve can do the fact that they have eight trillion dollars on their balance sheet that they have created from nowhere through a digital entry the fact they have suppressed interest rates below market rates for so long and disruptive risk in the market that isn't okay and they're not following their mandate from congress anymore so I think the more people that complain because I mean I guarantee you other than like a couple libertarians who followed Ron Paul and Rand Paul like nobody's calling their representatives being like hey have you looked into the federal reserve lately so yeah I mean that's I mean that's like a great place to start and it's one that I think that as more people figure out what's going on again bipartisan like you know non-partisan like everyone should say like yeah that's good thing and you know I feel like sometimes this whole like discussion of eat the rich or eat the wealthy is a bastardization of not understanding that there's nothing wrong with being wealthy as long as you're not getting these special favors or you're not having you know the ability to take somebody who's a retiree's money that they put in the bank and they're getting like zero percent interest on and then you're borrowing on that and like buying up the house to compete with them you know I think if that's that okay so like understanding the dynamics there I think we'll make discussions more nuanced and then people better able to articulate what it is they think should be done and just to tie tie that to something that maybe people have heard in the news is the CARES Act that was part that was something that was initiated by the reserve the Fed or is that something different now CARES Act was the Congress and that was sort of the it was the third but like the big relief act that came out at the end of March and that's what had the first tranche of PPP which was the payroll protection program which has its own issues which has so many issues and I again I kind of detailed this whole thing in the book but that whole package was trillions of dollars that mostly went to cronies and like a couple hundred billion that in that particular tranche that went to small businesses that got eaten up in 13 to 14 days by quote unquote big small businesses that had access to capital including like celebrities that were being named to the Forbes billionaire list and all kinds of stupid stuff yeah just more accountability more transparency more more education like this is what this is what and it's so sad that it's just pigeonholed into a partisan issue because it's so not like it's so it's so not so is that the general like every every everyone's part of the green party like we all want the opportunity to take control of our wealth yeah it's been great you know it's it's funny because I would say like here in the US I feel like progressives libertarians and conservatives have all identified some of the same problems they just differ on the solutions and sometimes it's just not you know kind of looking at the scope of what's out there are kind of bringing nuance to the table but the reception from people who you know may not agree politically on this particular subject is pretty universal so that the reception has been great so far from readers that have found out of it through the decentralized media and the people and the influencers who've been out there spreading the word and so yeah that's what we're going to continue to do good okay so we went through a whole bunch of stuff and of course yes I want people to actually go read the books we're not gonna we're not gonna make you you know do a read through every every single chapter but I like to wrap this up with some like career and life questions some experience that you've had in your career just for people that are younger in their career but before we pivot was there anything else that you want to bring up and relationship to the book or or some of the things that we've just spoke about that we didn't go into yeah so I just want to make a plug why this book so important and hopefully you'll indulge my silly personality by saying this and that'd be like she can't believe she said this and I'm saying this like tongue in cheek but like I got an advance for this book like I'm getting paid whether or not any of you buy this book like this is not this makes zero financial difference in my life I promise you so like you could if you buy it or if you don't buy it like it doesn't help me one way or another like I don't I don't care I'm catching my checks from that standpoint but what I do really care about is small business advocacy and advocacy for economic freedom and wealth creation and making sure we don't end up with economies where there's like 10 companies that everybody's only working for them and only can purchase from them and we've taken away you know this opportunity from everybody so if you care about that that's why you need to buy the book and that's why you need to convince other people to buy the book because if this book doesn't do well and people aren't talking about these things then the media is going to continue to ignore this and publishers are going to continue to ignore this and politicians are going to continue to ignore this but if people start seeing this as a movement and taking this information and talking about it and spreading it and it does well and when they can see like the little guy does matter like that's going to affect change so like I hope I plea with you to buy the book for that reason not because it's like going to support me or change my life one iota good I love that that's very good okay let's do let's do some rapid fire career questions as lengthy or as short as you'd like biggest biggest challenge in your career how did you overcome it I mean I feel like I'm the biggest chair because I'm so hard on myself and so like anything I do that like doesn't have this like immediate like oh my god like you killed it in the media see like I like I'm just that person so hard so I've taken a success mantra which I used to have pinned at the top of my Twitter and after I stopped promoting my book the end of the summer we'll go back to the pin on my Twitter which is basically success comes when you pursue something with the vigor to get it done immediately but having the patience when it takes much longer and I put it up there not really for all of you but it reminds her for myself because you know it is like like when stuff doesn't go in that linear line or you know it's like one step forward and two step back like I I can just be so hard on myself that you know that stands as a nice reminder for me and then anyone else who takes something away from that as well I feel like that's gravy that's a great I love that that's a great quote is that you the wrote that or is that a quote yeah that's a Carol Roth original that's good I love that I should end up see it yeah you should end up to it that's a good one that's that's really good I like that I'm never I was like I don't think I've ever seen that one before like who the hell said that that's Carol wrong to herself good good okay one lesson you would tell your younger self uh take more risk early on that's an easy one I mean it takes it takes just as long and it's just as hard to build something big as it is to build something small and when you don't have a lot to lose it's the time to experiment so like if you are early on in your career like just go big like whatever you're doing just like three x it five x it nice ask yourself if like it is this big enough I love that um uh one person that had an incredible impact on your life who was it what did they teach you uh my dad my dad was my best friend rest rest in peace Bernie um you know he like as I said when I started like he was not formally educated but he had so much common sense and he just had such great values about worth ethic and being a person of your word and you know good financial sense not buying things you can't afford and and not using dead unless it's a you know an investment tool and being loyal um that you know that's really made me who I am and I think also particularly as as a woman um he never treated me like a woman like there was never the like girls do this conversation or as a like a woman you should be doing this or you should be focused in this thing so like I didn't even know that I was female until like somebody brought that up like by the time I got to the media because you know I went to Wharton which was you know especially at that time heavily male dominated I went into finance you know which is heavily male dominated you know then I did your radio and TV also very heavily male dominated and it went like until that piece when like somebody was like oh and a woman and I'm like what like oh yeah I guess I guess I am I was never given those like limiters like the limiting beliefs like oh you're part of this group and you can only do this and like I was just never taught like that and I attribute that entirely to my father just treating me as an individual which is why I feel like I am an individualist today and and why I kind of walk through life in that direction I think that was so incredibly important in terms of my success I love that okay if something you'd recommend people go check out besides your own it could be a book podcast audible oh there's so many good things one of my favorite books that I've read in the last couple of years that like nobody knows about which is a real story is called a billion dollar whale it's got have you heard a billion dollar whale I have not heard of that okay so I have not heard of that this is this is another one that's a head scratcher and also like I'm in the financial media so this is the reporting by these former Wall Street Journal reporters who are just brilliant on the biggest scam that's ever been perpetrated in history which was on basically the sovereign wealth fund of Malaysia which you may have heard of one MZP like everyone's heard whatever yeah I was like oh yeah I've heard a little bit about it and it's got Goldman Sachs has involved politicians are involved a bunch of Hollywood people like Leonardo DiCaprio and Paris Hilton are all weaved in this like crazy tangled web and they took this thing and they broke down how the scam like unfolded with this guy Jolo it is the most insane thing like every time I would read a chapter I go what's and then like read the next one and then I was like you said to my husband like you got to read this and we'll have book club afterwards and I the same thing he's like reading a chapter to me what you know like every single one billion dollar whale like if you're interested in stuff like this it's phenomenal and like you said like everyone's like oh like I kind of think I've heard something about one mdb but I don't really know what it is and I mean it's wild so I would highly recommend billion dollar whale which I heard they're making a movie and a podcast and all this other stuff up too so there's probably ways to get deeper into it but after you read the war on small business read billion dollar whale you could probably buy them as a as a package together it's a it'll blow your mind it'll blow your mind great great and then last question what does success mean to you even though you're already touched on this but what does success mean to you so I feel like success is ever changing because like at any point in time you know I'll have goals for success in a certain project I have goals for success in my relationships you know those are those are fairly consistent you know I want I want to be a good person and a good partner and whatnot but like I don't I just feel like especially probably because I'm the kind person who does a lot of things and I have a lot of different projects like there is no there's like successes like a oh did this thing end up like in the way that it should by some measurable measurable metric why or why not and then we go to the next thing so I don't know that success is this like overarching glow for me it versus like a measure of objectives that I've set out you know for each thing that I tackle I love that very good you're you're you're fire with these quotes these are very good you should these are all one I do my game show right a book of pithy quotes all right where do people go connect with you social website anything you want to drop yes so sky writing is obviously the the best option but if that is not within your budget Twitter is usually where people find me I'm at Carol J S Roth on Twitter because at Carol Roth was already taken when I got on this you know 2010 or whatever it was and she never uses it which is really annoying I tried to buy it from her early on but at this point I'm like all over the web at Carol J S Roth so it just is what it is and that's really like if you really want to connect with me and as you've probably figured out from this have a slightly warped sense of humor so like it's not for everyone but you know if you like that kind of stuff that's where you should go and then I'm also accessible like if you have a question there's a contact form at my very old and outdated website yes I know but it doesn't generate any revenue really for me so I don't care Carol Roth dot com and I'm always happy to try to be helpful you know within reason people so good