Managing Your Money Through Policy Shifts and Volatility: A Wealth Manager’s Advice
Does this sound familiar? Have you been told to just follow the latest trends and consumer sentiment to make the right investment choices? But despite doing that, you still feel uncertain and anxious about not getting the results you want? If you’re a business owner navigating immigration policies, you’re probably feeling the pain of this ineffective advice. It’s time to break free from the cycle of uncertainty and take control of your financial future. Let’s explore some effective strategies to navigate the ever-changing landscape of business ownership and investments together.
Uncover the unexpected trend that’s shaping investment decisions for business owners navigating immigration policies. While discussing consumer sentiment and market volatility, an enlightening revelation emerges about the thriving industry of experiential retail franchises. Stay tuned to discover how this surprising trend could hold the key to unprecedented opportunities and disruptions in the investment landscape.
My special guest is Eric Schmitz

Eric Schmitz, a chartered financial analyst with Crescent Grove Advisors in Milwaukee, brings a wealth of knowledge and expertise to the discussion. His insights on the impact of tariffs on small businesses and strategies for diversifying investment portfolios are invaluable. With a laid-back and approachable style, Eric offers a unique perspective on navigating immigration policies for business owners. His ability to simplify complex economic concepts and trends makes him a valuable resource for understanding potential disruptions and opportunities in the business world.
There are just certain parts of the economy that we’ll call the durables or the staples, always the services and products goods that you’re always going to need regardless of what the economy is doing. – Eric Schmitz
In this episode, you will be able to:
- Discover the potential for growth and success by investing in experiential retail franchises.
- Understand the impact of tariffs on small businesses and how to navigate through the challenges.
- Explore effective strategies for diversifying your investment portfolios to maximize returns and minimize risks.
- Gain insights into consumer sentiment in franchising trends to make informed business decisions.
- Learn valuable tactics for navigating immigration policies as a business owner to seize new opportunities and avoid disruptions.
Discover the potential for growth
Explore the exciting opportunities for growth in investing in experiential retail franchises. Understand the potential for long-term success and profitability in the service-oriented and human experience-focused industries. Consider the enduring nature of human experiences and engagement in the market as a key driver for growth.
The resources mentioned in this episode are:
- Visit Megschmitz.com to download Meg’s free ebook that outlines everything you need to know about franchise ownership.
- Schedule a free informative call at Megschmitz.com to see if franchise ownership is in your future.
- Check out the investment opportunities in Franchoice, as mentioned in the conversation.
- Explore the service and experiential economy for potential business opportunities, particularly in travel, leisure, and experiential retail.
- Consider diversifying your portfolio and seeking tax-efficient, tax-advantageous investment strategies to maximize after-tax returns.
- Tune in to the Free Agent Podcast with Meg Schmitz for real stories of self-employment and business ownership. Contact Meg Schmitz to schedule a free, no-obligation call and get insider insights on franchise opportunities. Use the form at the FREE Agent Podcast if you’d like to be considered as a guest on the Show!
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Click to Take the Leap into the full interview transcript of the Free Agent Podcast, Episode 6.23, with Meg Schmitz and her guest, Eric Schmitz
Free Agent Podcast with Meg Schmitz – Guest: Eric Schmitz, Chartered Financial Analyst and Wealth Manager at Crescent Grove Advisors
Meg Schmitz:
Well, hello everyone and welcome to or welcome back to my podcast. My name is Meg Schmitz and this is the Free Agent where the discussion is all about free agency and taking control over your financial future.
The mission of my show was to share inspiring conversations with real people who took the leap into self employment, business ownership, franchising and freedom. From corporate refugees and executives tired of the desk job to entrepreneurs and investors looking to share camaraderie and inspiration through their own business journey. My podcast aims a spotlight on real people who stepped into the unknown, took control over their destiny and became their own boss.
These are all conversations that I think a lot of you don’t normally have on a day to day basis. But I do want you listeners to know that I’ve got my finger on the pulse of what it’s like to own and operate your own business.
We are in at the end, very end of February. By the time you hear this, it’ll be mid March. So we’re just in the first couple of months of a new administration. And so coming back to the show, you might recognize the name Eric Schmitz, chartered financial analyst with Crescent Grove Advisors in Milwaukee. And my go to guy to get finger on the pulse of what is going on in the economy. What is the chatter on the line?
And so we’re just gonna freeform this conversation to get a real good understanding if possible of where are we, where we come from. And Eric, where do you see us going? So I don’t know where you want to jump in on those three past, present and future, but let’s talk about money.
Eric Schmitz:
Sure. So kind of the genesis of this conversation was what is going on out there in the business community, in the business world. And I mean just the broader economy. So a lot has happened in the last three months, four months. Obviously, a new administration change puts a lot of people on edge. New policies, new procedures.
Hearing a lot of headlines of the media gives people a lot of pause or hesitation when it comes to what do we do with our money or how do we think about the future and where do we invest. So I guess we’ll just back up a couple months, just into 2024. Had an election, obviously a pretty meaningful change coming into Washington. And I think you saw a lot of local elections actually as well, shift from blue to red and all of the policy changes that are going to come along with that.
So the way I like to put it is there’s an uncertainty tax on the economy right now. There’s just a lot of headlines going out, a lot of policy changes when it comes to tariffs and immigration and deregulation and tax cuts, are they going to be extended?
So you started thinking about the business community and how do we think through this? Obviously, I don’t want anyone to think too short term when it comes to my own clients, at least other business owners, executives. You don’t ever want to think too short term. Administrations do change. There will be another election.
Let’s not get bogged down in the policy details or what politicians were running their campaigns on. Ultimately, government is designed to work slowly and these things are likely to come out piecemeal. Obviously, big pieces of legislation are going to take time.
What you’re hearing about today, though, is tariffs and, you know, what can you do unilaterally inside of government? So when it comes to immigration and tariffs, both of those we generally view as a drag potentially on the economy.
And we’re finding a lot of executives, boardrooms, business owners, trying to navigate the impacts of those policy changes in the near term. The bigger term policy stuff, call it tax cuts, the extension of those cuts that we saw in 2017 is a top priority item for this administration. But that ultimately gets easy to go through government or reconciliation process and we just don’t know where that’s going to fall out.
So all that to say is there’s a lot going on out there, there’s a lot of change and that just gives people pause. And we’ve seen that across different sentiment surveys here and in the headlines. I’m sure your clients, people you’re talking to are seeing this as well.
Meg:
Yeah, the two topics of tariffs and immigration and how those are impacting business owners right now. Can you get a more granular with those who I’m thinking about immigration in terms of like my winery owners out in California who rely heavily on lesser paid immigrants.
Tariffs. We’ve got people who are very concerned about the price of avocados and tequila coming from Mexico. But if you could get more granular on how those are, what are your resources too? And what are you hearing from your resources about tariffs and immigration?
Eric:
So we like to stay plugged in via Bloomberg, CNBC, but then also just talking to the investment managers and macro economists that we talk to or read on a daily basis. And basically there’s a lot of misconceptions out there around tariffs.
We’ll just go the tariff route first. There’s a lot of misconceptions. Tariffs are actually paid by US Businesses. The importers of goods are the companies and the businesses that actually pay that tax, that tariff. So any business that’s going to be reliant on imports is going to be heavily impacted.
And I’ll just give you the example of the Detroit automakers. A lot of component parts, even full finished products, are crossing borders potentially multiple times. And every time that crosses a border, there’s a value associated in a tariff paid. And like I said, the tariff paid is ultimately borne by the US Importer. And that US Importer is likely to push those costs onto their customers.
Now there is a whole, there’s a lot of unease out there. We just got out of a pretty meaningful inflationary environment. Inflation has settled down. However, if you start seeing these tariffs and the costs associated being passed on to the end customer, that has an inflationary impulse.
It also has the, I mean, obviously prices go up, generally supply goes down. You think about supply to supply and demand equilibriums. You would think the higher price for a good, the less likely, the lower the volumes, right? The less likely they are to sell.
So when it comes to the granularity or ultimately the impact to the end customer, there’s a lot of unease about are my living costs actually going to go higher? We just got out of an inflationary environment and probably a big reason why the former administration got voted out and why you saw Trump and the Republicans get voted in was cost of living.
People were very much on edge about cost of living increases. And this is where you’re actually seeing it now in some of the sentiment surveys where people are very worried about our costs now going to increase as a result of these.
So it’s hard to say when you start thinking about a business owner is do you import goods from China or Mexico? Even Canada now is getting caught up in the tariff crossfire just creating a lot of uncertainty about, you know, what are, what are the costs of my goods? Am I going to have to increase the prices for my customers? Ultimately, how is that going to impact my business?
So a lot of uncertainty right now, at least to date. I know we got some headlines this week about this, but to date, since Trump has come in, a 10% tariff has been implemented on China. So anybody importing goods from China is already feeling this.
And then there have been tariff threats against Mexico and Canada. It looks like as a recent indications. Right. As of this recording, those tariffs are likely to be input on Mexico and Canada. Part parcel of this administration is some of the noise there. I think it’s just part of their negotiating tactics.
However, it just does create that uncertainty tax that, that I mentioned earlier.
Narrator:
So curious, franchise ownership might be the next step for you or just interested in owning a small business that offers a proven path and support system? Download Meg’s free ebook that outlines everything you need to know about franchise ownership. There is more to life than your desk job. Visit Megschmitz.com and enter your email to receive your downloadable copy instantly. And now let’s get back to the conversation.
Eric:
That’s that piece on tariffs. I don’t know if you want to go any deeper there before we, before we switch over to immigration.
Meg:
Yeah, go ahead and switch over to immigration and the impact there on U.S. businesses.
Eric:
Yeah. So whether the goals of the administration or at least. Right. How Trump was on the campaign trail remains to be seen. If that actually gets implemented, I think the initial goal was, it sounds terrible, but a thousand illegal immigrants a day would be deported, ultimately ramping up to a million. There are some estimates ranging between 12 and 25 million illegal immigrants in this country.
Now, you think in your own communities, some of these immigrants, yes, they came over the border illegally, but they fill very valuable jobs that some Americans don’t want. And you start thinking across different industries. You generally find them in agriculture or hospitality and leisure, if you think hotel properties.
Meg:
Right.
Eric:
You also tend to find them in home building or construction at a time when housing is near its most—or it’s the least—affordable in decades, just given the cost of money, but also the cost of imported materials that we just talked about with tariffs, but also then the labor then to put a house, to build a house or to build a commercial building.
So you’re starting to see business owners plan for this. Obviously you won’t get ahead of it. If you can, of course, you’d obviously would like to hire or employ legal immigrants. And you might try to be able to get around some of this. You’ve been in the country a decade, two decades, there might be some paths to citizenship there.
However, there’s certainly a risk that your labor force could get upended. Being a business owner, maybe you don’t even know or they’re, you know, those documents are forged and you have an illegal immigrants working for you, you just don’t even know it.
So you might get caught up in this immigration control and start to see some upward pressure on labor. But ultimately, if you push illegal immigrants out who are taking over those valuable jobs in the United States, now you have to hire somebody who’s in the United States, who’s here legally. But they might cost more, right? They might require a wage that’s 25, 50% higher than what you’re paying in illegal immigrants.
So you talked about inflation here. It’s ultimately, if you’re hiring another person, you know. Right. To fill that job, you could ultimately be paying more for your—to produce your product or service, which ultimately likely means prices could get passed on to the end customer.
Meg:
Yeah.
Eric:
So another inflationary impulse to be mindful of there. I guess it just depends on how quickly these immigration policies get implemented.
Meg:
And from what I’m reading—I don’t watch any TV news media source, so I’m—it’s all what I am reading—it sounds like United States trade schools, trade programs are continuing to be in decline. So yes, these immigrants are fulfilling roles that we absolutely need in the United States.
We have our necessities, we’ve got our pleasantries, and these immigrants are very vital to getting that work done. Then there’s the moral conundrum of, well, there’s legal and there’s illegal.
And actually I was talking to my mother, your grandmother, about this. The number of people who are in the United States who are—maybe they’re illegal—but they’re good people. Then you’ve got the people who are bad people. And there are plenty of those that clearly documented with crime in major cities, sanctuary cities. It doesn’t even matter where they are, but they have infiltrated.
So it’s—are you seeing any sort of division down a party line with how people, your clients, are reacting to some of these stories?
Eric:
So excluding our client base for a second, I’ll just tell you what the data says. So consumer sentiment data came out not that long ago and there is a very clear divide between Republicans and Democrats.
It’s actually pretty interesting. And I would argue top level before we get into it is I wouldn’t let sentiment necessarily dictate how you make decisions, at least broadly speaking—watch what people do, not what they say. So there are problems with these surveys. We’ll just, we’ll start there.
But I actually had the University of Michigan sentiment report up—came out, geez, had to be earlier this week. And if you look at—let’s just go back to inflation here for a second. I mentioned this to you before the call—but Democrats are now expecting there’s about a 3% jump in terms of their inflation expectations. And a lot of that stems from their concerns over tariffs and immigration.
And perhaps even if you start getting tax cuts, like additional tax cuts, does that have additional inflationary impulse to that as well?
So it was interesting to see the Democrats associated in this survey start to expect higher inflation, whereas Republicans basically expect flat inflation, basically no change to what it was before.
So it’s actually really interesting to see how the different parties or different consumers based on their party alignment, how they feel about the economy. I think you saw that even prior to the election where Republicans started to see the writing on the wall—our guy or our party that we’re going to—they’re going to have control of Washington or local politics—where they started to feel really good about their future prospects, started to invest in their business or invest in their portfolios.
Whereas you started to see Democrats be a little more wary. They’re like, what is going to happen over the next 4, 6, 12 months? They’re really not sure. And I think they’re taking that wait and see approach.
Right. You just ultimately think again—we started this conversation with—don’t let short term emotions necessarily dictate your long term business goals or portfolio or investment goals. So I would say this is a lot of noise right now. Let’s see how this plays out over the next three to six months.
Generally the first hundred days in office are when new administrations make the biggest impact in terms of policy changes. So once the dust settles on that, I would say get back to focusing on your long-term goals. What are your priorities for building your business? How can you thoughtfully navigate this new policy environment that’s going to be in place?
So I think right now you just expect volatility, expect some uncertainty, but ultimately we will get through this. This too will pass.
Meg:
And so I pay attention to consumer sentiment in the world of franchising—where are the consumer dollars going? Despite what happened during the pandemic, during the last administration, administrations before that.
I’m not sure if the slide, the graph came from you or from Pete that shows the last 70 years of the economy and where the recessions took place, but the corrections—we have recession, downturn—the corrections after that were huge.
And so I’m seeing in my own database of candidates who are interested in business ownership, they’re very much paying attention to consumer sentiment.
As human beings, we still need senior care, childcare, pet care, health, fitness, wellness, beauty—are still very, very vibrant consumer trends. Experiential, retail, hospitality, food, technology—those are really some of the big ones. And it really doesn’t have anything to do with tariffs or products and where they’re—how many times they’re moving across the border.
So for people who are listening to this, there are many different types of sentiment. But what I always say is follow the consumer dollars.
Because even though as Eric is talking through some of this, it sounds scary to me, uncertain to me, it’s not going to change the fact that I’m going to buy gas or take care of my 92 and 87 year old parents’ needs. We’re still going to spend money that needs to be spent.
Do you agree with that?
Eric:
I do. I mean, there are just certain parts of the economy that we’ll call the durables or the staples—always the services and product goods that you’re always going to need regardless of what the economy is doing.
And then there are other cyclical businesses you just immediately jump to, like travel and leisure, where people potentially cut back. Those everyday luxuries are probably going to stay. It’s the bigger trips, the big home purchases that are likely going to slow down in any scenario like that.
But any—yeah, any staples business, I think you’re going to be just fine.
And back to your sentiment illustration or summarization—it’s generally what we see, like you were saying—as you see that snapback after any sentiment dip or any recession.
I would argue that sometimes when sentiment is at its lowest is some of the best times to invest in a new business, a new startup. You initiate new higher-risk portfolio positions, buy some equities.
Generally, when people are all feeling really good about the economy and everything is going really well, volatility is low, markets are at all-time highs—that’s generally when you want to be a little bit more wary. Might be time to take those chips off the table.
But I would argue that this uncertainty tax, or some of the new policies that investment—or, excuse me, business—people will have to navigate, might be actually a great time to step into the market when others are perhaps stepping back.
Might offer you a chance to—like I said—offer a new innovative product or grab some market share from someone who’s not necessarily investing in their business at the same time you are.
Narrator:
Let’s take a quick break from the conversation.
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Visit Megschmitz.com to schedule your free informative call. Many people don’t realize that franchise consultants are paid by the franchise companies, so there are no fees, no obligation, and no strings attached.
Schedule your call today at Megschmitz.com. And now, let’s jump back into the conversation.
Meg:
I had an interesting conversation first thing this morning with—it’s a gentleman I met through a family office summit. So very high net worth. He’s invested in real estate, manufacturing, building, he’s got commercial real estate.
He’s absolutely bullish on the markets right now and his ability with all of his multiple business endeavors—he’s not feeling any bit of leeriness.
In fact, he came to me this morning—I don’t think I’ve talked to him for five or six years, definitely before the pandemic—and he wants to buy two new… he wants to make two investments. One is manufactured goods and then the other one—home services.
Think restoration work, mitigation, anything around smoke, fire, water. Because Mother Nature happens and he wants to go big.
Eric:
Mother Nature does not care about recessions.
Meg:
No. No. If you get locked out of your car or your house, it doesn’t really matter. You need to get in.
So there are some of those necessities. With your investment advice—and you’ve got clients—and what are you hearing from your clientele right now? Are they looking to shift their portfolios or do some of the things that you were just talking about?
Eric:
So we have a full spectrum of clients. There are some that are being more aggressive just given the uncertainty out there, others that want to protect the downside.
So just from a markets perspective—we’ll set aside the business side of this for a minute—from a markets perspective, what we are seeing: the U.S. economy, the U.S. markets are still trading near all-time highs, which is great for any asset owners, anybody that’s invested in the market. That’s great.
Valuations are high. We have some people that are getting nervous about those valuations, and they are looking to protect their portfolio. There are several different strategies that we’re using, not least of which is rebalancing and diversifying the portfolio, just getting away from some areas that are perhaps overvalued into other areas that are offering better relative valuation today.
But that happens across client bases.
I have others that are looking to get more aggressive—perhaps not in the overvalued segments of the market—but we want to be more opportunistic in nature when it comes to private markets or U.S. small-cap equities.
There are different areas of the market that are offering unique opportunities as opposed to some of the—I’ll call out—large-cap tech names, for example. You know, the Nvidias, Microsofts, Googles of the world certainly have been on an incredible run for the last four years, pretty much post-COVID.
Where there’s certain of those, where you think, okay, maybe that race has run, and since it has outperformed, it’s become a larger portion of your portfolio. Let’s balance. Let’s get into some other esoteric or opportunistic areas that offer better value.
Conversely, to your point—I mean, I’ve seen clients pull from their portfolios, take cash out to invest in their own businesses. So it’s a total spectrum.
Obviously, you know, we talked about Republicans versus Democrats and the different sentiment feelings out there, so you start seeing that across our investment base as well.
Meg:
Your mother being a case in point there for taking cash out of my account. For anyone who’s listening, Eric is my wealth manager. And so if you think your wealth manager rides you hard, mine won’t let me do things that he doesn’t agree with.
So luckily—luckily you’re being thoughtful about how you’re financing your new project. But I’m all for it.
Eric:
Yeah. Well, and then we had that other opportunity that came at the end of the year to buy an equity position in Franchoice. And so that has—just forwarded the valuation to you the other day. That’s been very nice.
So I’m very happy with how my money has been managed and available assets to further diversify my own business portfolio.
Meg:
I think I have really migrated over my lifetime from being very risk averse to being very risk tolerant, and now I’m shrinking back more towards the middle again.
I’m 61. I’ve made some mistakes, and so learning lessons with how to manage your money through diversification and taking appropriate risks at the right time—and that’s really where having a good wealth manager helps tremendously.
Eric:
For any of your business owners out there—once you’ve invested in your own business and you’re starting to get some cash flow back—we’re happy to help you think through how to diversify.
It’s interesting, just anecdotally from our own client base, a lot of people built their wealth via a single company or maybe two, three companies that they’ve built throughout their career.
Ultimately, like you were just saying, they’re getting older, they’ve made it, they have their nest egg, and now it’s time to diversify. There’s a lot of risk when it comes to investing in a single business, right?
That business could fail. Obviously, you want to bet on yourself first and foremost—you know exactly what you’re doing in your own business.
But once you have the cash flow and the asset base and you get a little bit older, I think it starts to make sense to diversify away and protect that nest egg, as opposed to generating meaningful wealth.
Meg:
Well, and what people don’t always think about is in that diversification, you’re creating tax strategies that could really benefit your personal tax responsibility.
Eric:
This is something that we are thinking about immensely just given the new—right—you do get those tax cuts rolling off. How do we prepare client portfolios to best handle that?
Some of the most unique strategies or best uptake that we’ve gotten in recent strategies are these tax-efficient, tax-advantageous strategies.
Ultimately, at the end of the day, what we’re trying to maximize for our clients is after-tax return. So it’s: how do we not only maximize your returns after tax via all these different sorts of accounts that we have, but also via the investments that we put in those accounts?
So being very thoughtful—I mean, at the end of the day, right, that’s what you take home, that’s what you keep, and that’s very important to our client base and ultimately how you compound your wealth going forward.
Meg:
Yes. Which is really the fun part now for Pete and me—to be able to take the lessons learned and the investment opportunities coming up. It is a really interesting time.
When I think about our own portfolio, we’ve got a couple of assets still in Illinois, in Cook County. And one of those entities would like to buy a building that we own in Arlington Heights.
Well, now with the administration change and some of the things that are transpiring with Take the Leap, with Doge, and uncovering where is the money going—we are seeing, just for ourselves, uncertainty in trying to sell certain assets.
So we are working with you and being very mindful about keeping things balanced, because when that entity sells, that’s going to trip a big tax occurrence for us and we’ll have to make some further adjustments when that does happen.
Can’t wait.
Eric:
Well, I would say once policy does settle, hopefully you see other investors, buyers, and sellers come back into the market and resume that activity.
I think in the short term you’re going to see some slowdown or at least people feeling out the new environment, new policy environment that they’re going to have to navigate.
Meg:
Yeah. So anything on the horizon that you’re particularly watching and waiting to see what happens?
Eric:
Like I said, the first hundred days of a new administration are generally a time of upheaval or change—maybe not upheaval, maybe that’s a bad word—but certainly change, certainly there.
And I would see a toning down of the rhetoric from the campaign trail. But there will certainly be policy goals that this new administration and incoming Congress are going to have to navigate—and what’s the highest priority that they want to push through.
So certainly paying attention to Washington, what’s happening there. And I think just from a markets perspective, given where we are today and given our own investor base, it’s just really making sure we’re well diversified.
I do think there’s going to be some volatility on the horizon here as investors navigate the new environment. And I can just see that. Right.
Expect volatility this year is basically where I’m going with this. There’s going to be headlines—whether you’re—I wouldn’t take them at face value. This administration, it’s part of their MO and how they’re going to operate.
Ideally, this settles down and then ultimately that gives boards, executives, company owners, business owners, small business owners as well, more confidence to go out and invest in their own businesses and ultimately get back to what—you know—focusing on the economy and what’s important.
Meg:
Do you think about investing in a business for yourself?
Eric:
Thought about it. My wife and I are certainly considering that at this point.
I mean, internally at Crescent Grove Advisors, we like to think very entrepreneurially in how we can best service our clients. So there’s some pretty exciting stuff for myself at Crescent Grove Advisors—getting new clients and making new investments in this business.
We are investing in our business—that is important to us and important to our future growth. And we’re thinking long term. We’re not getting caught up in anything short term, administration or policy driven or otherwise.
Really want to build this business to be durable long term, which is great. Like we’re making new investments and thinking that way.
When it comes to business ownership for myself, I think it does come via my wife and I. For me it’d be more of a side project. For her it’d probably be a primary consideration.
But yeah, we’ve thought about it and I’m not sure we’re ready to take that jump at the moment. But it’s certainly on my horizon, I think—and obviously, you’d be one of the first people we come and talk to.
Meg:
You are.
Are there other investments that people are talking about right now that they’re feeling pretty hot and excited about?
Eric:
It’s a good question. I mean, we have clients that have businesses across a range of industries. There are some that are very much—hey, let’s go, let’s—you know, it’s all domestic focused, U.S. consumer everything.
It’s a service-oriented business. So you’re not importing anything, you’re not getting caught up in the global tariff or immigration concerns necessarily. But yeah, we have clients that are certainly focused on building their businesses still.
New family members, succession planning—they’re going through the motions of how do we thoughtfully think about the next generation.
Whereas then we have others who are saying, hey, I’m getting close to retirement or I’m in retirement, I want to step back, I want to protect my portfolio.
So yeah, it’s a range of different—I mean, it’s a broad client base, right? So we’re always going to have a different outcome, a bespoke solution just based on the client.
Meg:
Right. I get asked all the time, “What’s hot?” Like, “What should I be looking at? What’s hot? I want—I’m going to be first in. I don’t want to get left behind.” The fear of missing out.
You know, AI is such a big—
Eric:
Thing right now. And I’m glad you brought that up. I got a take on this, and it’s actually one of the investment themes that has come up recently.
But it’s the service and experiential economy. There will be jobs that will get automated by AI or robotics or otherwise. And it’s actually a pretty exciting area to invest in.
However, what is never going to change is the human experience.
And the theme that we’ve really thought about is travel and leisure. And I know we mentioned earlier—it is a cyclical business, and you just have to be comfortable with that cyclicality that comes along with it.
But as jobs get automated—particularly the menial job that a robot can do—you know, it’s such a monotonous job, a human may not want it anyway.
Meg:
Right.
Eric:
But you think about what does the human experience look like—it’s travel, it’s leisure, it’s hanging out with your kids and family and doing everyday things.
Whether it’s your local community or getting on a plane and going somewhere tropical or to the mountains or, you know, some country you’ve never been before—that is never going to go away.
So that is a long-term durable theme. And you see more and more people—travel and leisure is taking up a greater and greater wallet share. People are spending more on experiences than they are on goods.
Particularly my generation and younger. So I think that is a theme that you can potentially capitalize on if you’re looking to start a business—what are those service-oriented businesses that cater to the human experience that will never go anywhere?
Meg:
I’m so glad you brought that up because what I see in my portfolio really strongly is that experiential retail opportunity.
Is real estate available? Are these small bays—1,200, 1,500, 2,000, 2,500 square feet?
Well, what are franchise owners looking to invest in? It’s just what you said—if they can draw people into Sky Zone, into a cooking class—that’s an experience that they have then with their family, their kids, teaching kids how to cook.
There are so many different opportunities in franchising right now that are specifically taking this experience and that human desire to engage and congregate.
And we just are out of the last—I think—of the pandemic here. But people are still reeling from that loneliness and wanting to be around other people doing something fun and then have a takeaway, like a parting gift.
You may make a candle or make a bar of soap or—so I’m seeing a lot of uptick and interest in that particular area.
Eric:
So again, I would say you just got to be prepared for the cyclicality of it. Obviously, if you do go through a recession, if you can weather that recession, you’re going to come out stronger for it.
That industry is not going to go anywhere, in my opinion. People—we are social creatures and we want—and we’re explorers by nature. So people always want to be doing those sorts of activities.
So again, speaking to your listeners and people who are exploring business ownership—that is certainly an area I would suggest looking at.
Meg:
Perfect. Well, is there anything that we didn’t cover that you were hoping we could talk about today?
Eric:
I don’t think so. I think we, you know—keep it short, keep it light, touch on a macro. But if anyone wants to follow up, certainly it could go in more detail.
Meg:
Perfect. Well, this has been really enlightening for me.
Even though we get to see each other about once a week, there’s stuff we don’t talk about. So I’m really pleased that without a script and no prepared questions, we were able to hit a lot of really very interesting topics.
And as always, I learn from you. So thank you for participating on the show again, Eric, and I’ll see you maybe over the weekend.
Eric:
Sounds great. Thank you.
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