Jonathan Ward on California’s Horrible Business Environment

I would think that for a guy like you who's building cars the way you're building them, the real challenge would be staff. Yes. I think that would be the real challenge is finding people that understand what you're doing, finding fellow artisans that also understand how to build cars that really get what you're doing. Yep. That and I love the state of California, but they do not want me here. How so? They don't want me in business. They don't want anyone in California making anything except maybe solar assisted bicycles. The business climate in the state of California and the associated HR costs and insurance and workman's comp and liabilities, like every couple of weeks there's another absurd ruling that we get an update on that like, wait, what? It's like, you mean to tell me if I catch a dude smoking crack while on the clock stealing my inventory, I can't fire his ass on the spot? What? Oh yeah. Now, if you do, you have to give him a week's pay at the time of letting him go and you can't make him sign anything that indemnifies nor protects you. You have to put him on probation and offer therapy and resources. No you don't. Yeah. Really? You catch someone stealing merchandise and smoking crack. Like literally the most vagrant disrespect of safety, of policy, of company goods. It has gotten so bad. We just got a letter from the building inspector came by and he's like, yeah, you know those automotive lifts in your building? We're like, yeah. He goes, yeah, you have 30 days to remove all those. What? Thank you. That was pretty much my response verbatim. What? Because yeah, you're not zoned for automotive. I'm like, you see this plaque on the wall? The congressman, councilman, and the mayor. You see this picture of me and the mayor when he did the ribbon cutting. Here's the email record showing the mayor's aid personally delivered me all my occupancy permits because yeah, not my problem. I'm like, what about the last nine years of inspectors coming in all the time and saying you guys have the cleanest, most professional above board shop kick ass. Well done. Thank you so much for making my life good. He goes, yeah, they're idiots. I'm the new inspector. So the new inspector says you're not licensed. I'm not zoned appropriately to be in business where I'm at despite having permits and everything for it. Did they change the zoning? I don't know what the hell happened other than this new guy seems to be a prick and wanting to show his value. What's his name? I actually don't remember. But I literally at every turn it's killing me. What a piece of shit. I think at this point too, the amount of costs related per employee should be going to my employees. Not to insurance companies and all this bullshit that gets tagged on top. It's like for every dollar you pay someone now, there's another 32 cents that should be going to them that's going to suck your fish and then they want you to do it. How do they expect you to work on these cars? Oh, I honestly. Is this something you can fight or are you going to have to actually? Oh no, I had to lawyer up and we're fighting it. But I mean literally, I honestly think they'd rather have a commercial weed facility in that building kicking out a hell of a lot more tax revenue than us. Really? Do you think that's what they're doing? Yes. Do you really think they're trying to make it challenging for you to do business so that you quit? Yes. And just about any small business owner I know in the state of California, the challenges we're facing are getting to the point of making us wonder about our own intellect for staying in the state. Where would you go? I don't want to move. I don't want to go anywhere. I don't want to. I love it here. So what would you do if you lose this? You know, if it gets the point that we have to, oh, you mean this building situation? Yeah. I'll fight it or a move and I'll deal. I've been through this shit for a while. Until you find someplace where you are zoned for a lift. Yeah, you just keep partying on. But I know I'm zoned fine where I'm at. I'm just going to have to, you know, instead of running a business, I have to now become a lobbyist and, you know, knock on doors and ring phones and dig through my black book to find people with the clout to get the city to go. So is this guy just flexing? Like, what is this? I think so. And at first he seemed like he chilled out when we went above him and then everything was good. And then a week later, it bubbled back up again and we got another notice. So we're in the middle of it right now. You went above his head and you got approval? Verbal. Verbal. Yeah. And then... And he said, yeah, I don't know what he's talking about. You're fine. You're good to go. And then you go back again. And now it's a problem. He said, what in the fuck? That's crazy. But look, at the end of the day, the reality is also I'm going against what trade schools are telling young kids that are going into the field. What are they telling kids? They're telling kids that here, if you run this scan tool, you'll be, you'll make 150 grand a year as a lead tech at a BMW dealership. What they're not telling these kids while sucking all their money out of them with crazy, you know, student loans and stuff, is yeah, that's like the kids in the street in Brazil all wanting to grow up to be paylay. There's not that many paylays. So there's plenty of dudes at that dealership that are making minimum wage or thereabouts or dealing with the politics of flag hours or whatever. What I'm having a hard time with is we charge $100 an hour for our labor. I can't just keep charging more and more and more at the level of what we do with projects that can run thousands of hours per job. The math is it almost doesn't make sense. Like I honestly have guys that I think should be, I should be paying them 70, 80, 90, 100 grand a year to do what they do because they're artists and they deserve it. The bullshit of running a business in California and all of the exponential costs that are added on top, they even de-incentivize overtime now. If I give a dude overtime, it ups his tax rate and they take even more out of the overtime. Well, is whatever happened to like GDP and employment and productivity and like keeping everything rolling, they're de-incentivizing us even to offer our employees more money with more hours. It's tragic. I've lost several guys now that have gone to do jobs that they hate, but like Department of Water and Power, I've lost several employees to DWP because they'll, they get a pension, they get killer healthcare, they get 90 grand a year to pick their nose and watch other people work. It sucks. What is this? Is this a Democrat thing? I think it might be the Uber green side of Democratic because I think they'll, whatever, they'll two party systems as shit shows it is anyway. I don't think it's about which party so much is I think we've empowered attorneys to such an extent that it's downright sinful because it's hindering industry, it's hindering innovation. There's just so many constrictions because everyone has their handout. No one's self accountable, but everyone's liable. So then you need a policy for that. I mean, we had an employee once sue us, he jumped in a dumpster to stomp on everything to compress it in the dumpster. It started moving across the ramp parking lot and he jumped out of it, clipped his leg on the way down and shattered his arm in four spots. Well, he sued me and it's like, well, it's not in your job description. Did someone tell you to jump in the dumpster and stomp on it? No. And then we discovered the guy had embrittle bones due to chemical agent exposure in the military. But it's my problem. Like what? People whatever happened to like, be proud of what you do, be respected, be well paid. Everyone's content. Everyone's like inspired and engaged. And I just feel like more and more, there's just so much noise and lawyers and policies, all this crap. So we're just here to like do something we love and get rewarded and pay people. I mean, I'm stoked that we support directly 58 families, plus all our sublets and everything else. But it's hard to retain people when we know we can't pay them what they're worth in this business environment. I have a really hard time with the whole crack thing, catching someone stealing, smoking crack and you can't fire them. That seems so strange. You have to give them a week's worth of money. Yeah. On the spot. On the spot. So you have to cut them a check. This is getting so stupid. That seems, that seems, and you had to offer them therapy? I mean, to be clear, I didn't catch a guy doing that. I know what you're saying. It's just a general thing. But I tell you, man, more and more Surfshack with like my own little garden out back and my little leather studio and sell shit on Instagram, Simplify Life. Me and my wife and my dogs. I know what you're saying. My own one bay garage. But you know, Jamie. We've been dealing with cancer. My wife got diagnosed with cancer last year and we've been in the throes of chemo and dealing with that whole shit show. You want to talk about something that puts everything in a perspective. We really made a stop and sit back and go, okay, all right, that doesn't fucking matter. Like a lot of the bullshit, a lot of the noise in our modern world does not matter. Doesn't mean a fucking thing. So that kind of reinvigorated, but also refreshed my perspective to remind myself is someone's panties are in there not because their icons been in storage for six months. They didn't plug it into the tender and the batteries dead and they want to call and yell at me about it. Be like, really? Like, give me your bank info. I'll send you your money back. Oh, well, no, no, that's not what it would be. Then why are we interfacing like this? You have a dead battery. You haven't been there for six months. Dude, that's what happens. Pick your battle. Well, that's why the icon has a real easy way to remove the battery post. Right. And an integrated tender. If you click that box on the fucking configurator. Yeah. Well, there's a lot of silly people out there for sure, but it's just weird when they're empowered by the government. You know, when you don't have a common sense approach to knuckleheads, you know, if you got a guy smoking crack and stealing things, you're not supposed to reward that kind of behavior with a week's paycheck. Yeah. And counseling. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.