Nvidia Is CO-SIGNING $500M in Loans So Customers Buy Its Own Chips + Only 14% Can Prove AI Works

[00:00:02]What is up ladder climbers? Antoine Wade here from Elevate to the Unknown and we're reporting nextgenheights.com and it is Wednesday July the 22nd 2026 at 7:35 a.m. Central and we are live on a daily climb. Guys, on yesterday we sat right here and talked about Intel, how Intel is cutting the one division that's actually growing. And that division grew 22%.

[00:00:34]Getting layoffs. And Wall Street cheered it. I told you to hold on to that in your hand because it was going to lead somewhere. And it led to yesterday's entire show.

[00:00:49]But this morning, it led somewhere somewhere else. It led to the question that nobody is asking out loud. Where is all this AI money actually coming from?

[00:01:02]That's the question that should be asked.

[00:01:08]And a lot of people aren't asking that question. Where is all this AI money coming from? Everybody's talking about how much is being spent. Nobody is asking who's paying for it. That's the question that we answered this morning.

[00:01:25]I'm going to open with three numbers for you guys. Okay? Just three. I'm not going to make it four numbers. I'm going to make it just three. Make sure my volume's good because yesterday you guys were complaining about the volume not being so loud.

[00:01:38]The first number is this. Okay.

[00:01:42]$500 million.

[00:01:44]That is how much Nvidia is now backstopping in loans. So, one customer can afford to buy Nvidia's own chips. I want you guys to say that back to yourself. The company selling chips is now co-signing the loan so that you can buy the chips.

[00:02:04]The banks wouldn't do it alone. So, Nvidia stepped in and said, "Hey, you know what? we'll cover part of it for a cut of it. That's like a car dealer co-signing your car note because the bank said no so they could still make the sale. All right, so that's the first one 500 million. The second number is this $2.46 trillion.

[00:02:35]That is how much American companies have borrowed in the bond market this year.

[00:02:41]And it is the record. It is up about 12% from last year. And a huge slice of it has one word attached to it. Guys, what do you think that one word is? A matter of fact, you might as well say two letters.

[00:02:56]AI.

[00:02:58]So roughly a fifth of the entire corporate bond market is now tied to this one buildout. And I'm going to say this plain.

[00:03:09]One out of every $ five dollar companies borrowed this year is riding on AI paying off.

[00:03:19]It's a big bet.

[00:03:22]$157.

[00:03:24]That is what the biggest tech companies are spending on AI for every single dollar of new cash they actually generate. So to generate a dollar, they're spending $157 on AI.

[00:03:43]For every dollar, they're spending a $157.

[00:03:49]Think about that math.

[00:03:52]That gap does not get paid out of the checking account either. That gap gets borrowed. So you cannot spend more than you make and you can't do it forever.

[00:04:02]You guys already know this, but your personal finances, you can't do it. I can't do it. Not even a trillion dollar company can do that.

[00:04:11]Something ultimately has to give. Now, I want you guys to hold on to all three of these numbers in the same hand.

[00:04:19]Nvidia's co-signing loans so that people can buy from it. companies borrowed a record$ two and a half trillion dollars and they are spending more than they make to keep it going. That is today's whole show, guys. And here's the thesis for today's show.

[00:04:39]The AI boom is not being paid for out of profits.

[00:04:46]It is being paid for on borrowed money.

[00:04:50]And tonight after the bell, we're going to have the two biggest borrowers in the game report their earnings. You got Google and you got Tesla. And we're going to watch each one. We're going to watch the line. It's not going to be the profit line either. It's going to be the spending line, the capex, because that line tells you if the credit card still works. And here's why this is your show and not just a finance story. If that borrowed money keeps flowing, the AI jobs keep getting funded. If it tightens even a little bit, the spending that pays for your AI adjacent job slows down the same week. Your paycheck is sitting on top of a loan and most people don't even know it. And by the end of the show, you will and you will know exactly what to do about it as well, too, because that's what we do on the Daily Climb Show. And one more thing before we go deep, because the money the money's leaving through every door at once this week, in the same 48 hours, ESPN cut Ryan Clark and Cam Newton, and Pixar cut 116 people.

[00:06:12]The same month, Toy Story 5 cleared damn near a billion dollars.

[00:06:18]So, hold that, too, and we'll come back to it. Do me a favor in the chats. Type 500. If a chipmaker co-signing loans sounds backwards to you, type 2.46 2.46. If that number is hard to even picture, type 1.57 if spending more than you make sounds a little too familiar.

[00:06:40]Type it in the chat. I want to see who's all in the chat this morning. Let me get my chat screen up. See my windows. See where all my peoples at in the comment section this morning. Where y'all at?

[00:06:52]Okay, let me put you on over here. I see Jay Mela in the house. Good to see you, Amela. Good to see you, Big Sugs. Good to see NC worker. Get to see a life cam.

[00:07:03]Get good to see a Cryptocase Cartel.

[00:07:04]Brandon Fields in the house. Good to see a Trina Perfect. Good to see you. Joe Spivey is in the house. Lata Sims in the house. Good to see you all guys.

[00:07:13]We're going to have a brand new show today. Like we have a brand new show every weekday morning. On this show, if you are new here, guys, we read the market, the market intelligence, so that you can read your career. This is a daily climb. I'm Antoine Wade. Let's look at the data.

[00:07:32]All right. Before we look at the data, do me one quick favor though. Before we climb, I need your guys help. The show is absolutely free, okay? It reads the money for you and it helps you to make a decision on your career. That is free information.

[00:07:52]I request you to hit the like button, okay? Hit the like button. That's free as well, too. And that helps the YouTube algorithm put this in front of more people. So, do me a favor, hit that like button right now. Also, if you are new here and this is your first time looking at the show, first time viewing the show, go ahead and be active in the comment section, the community here is absolutely fantastic. And also hit the subscribe button so that you can come back. Okay, that is how we move in this room, the climbers. Okay, now let's go ahead and do segment number one.

[00:08:29]Let me make this trillion dollar thing small enough to hold. So there's a company called GMI Cloud. They are run by a founder named Alex Yay. They run out AI computing power. That's the business. Basically renting out AI computing power. Somebody needs to train an AI model. They don't own the machines. So they rent time from a company like GMI. And to do that, GMI got to buy Nvidia chips. and they got to buy a lot of them. And those chips are expensive. We're talking about tens of thousands of dollars each. That's a lot of money. And that costs more than a young company has just laying around.

[00:09:18]So, normally what do you do when you're a young company? You go to a bank for a loan. Let me get some of this cash. Let me fill out give it fill out this information. deter determine if I can get a loan so that I can buy the compute that I need or the products that I need.

[00:09:36]Well, here's the part that stopped me this morning when I was reading through the amount of money that's being spent on AI.

[00:09:49]What I determined is that the banks got nervous.

[00:09:54]So Nvidia stepped in and they agreed to backs stop the loan itself up to $500 million.

[00:10:07]I'm going to repeat that. Up to $500 million. I want you guys to listen in on this real quick so that you get a better understanding of what I'm talking about. Let's jump into a CNBC tech check podcast and listen to this real quick.

[00:10:28]Nvidia CEO Jensen Wong joining Swapbox this morning talking up all the investments he's been making lately in AI startups and saying he's looking for even more. For today's tech chat, Christina Partzilla is taking a look at Nvidia as the new AI bank, not just the center of the innovation action with chips. Yeah, I'm going to explain the bank analogy, but Nvidia may be the most valuable company in the world, but it's also, to your point, becoming the AI industry's preferred lender. So, Bloomberg reported the company plans to invest $2 billion in Elon Musk's S XAI as part of a 20 billion funding round.

[00:11:01]Under the deal, about 12.5 billion will be raised as debt through a special purpose vehicle that buys Nvidia chips, which XAI then rents out for 5 years.

[00:11:11]NVIDIA CEO Jensen Wong told CNBC this morning about the importance of investing in the entire ecosystem of AI.

[00:11:17]Listen in.

[00:11:20]>> The only regret I have about XAI. We're an investor already.

[00:11:23]>> The the only regret I have is I didn't give him more money. We've made some really terrific investments and and largely my only regret is that we didn't invest more.

[00:11:34]>> His largest regret is that they didn't invest more.

[00:11:38]Now, I want you guys to just think about what's being said real quick.

[00:11:44]Nvidia sells chips. Nvidia cosigns the loans so you can buy the chip and Nvidia collects on both ends. Critics have a name for this. They call it the circular financing. That is money that goes out one door and comes back right in another door. Nvidia's money helps you buy Nvidia's products, which becomes Nvidia's revenue round and around and around again. Now, I'm not saying that this is bad at all. That's not what I'm saying at all. I'm not saying this is bad because as a company, this is fantastic.

[00:12:20]I mean, like, you see this, you're like, uh, investment opportunity. I'm staying in Nvidia for a very long time.

[00:12:30]But I'mma be fair here. That's only dangerous if it's manufacturing demand that isn't really there.

[00:12:41]Okay? If a whole lot of real customers genuinely want this computing power, then it's just normal financing, normal stuff, loans here. But if the demand is being propped up by the seller's own money, that is a different story. And that's a company funding its own customers to make the sales look bigger than the real demand. Now, I'm not saying that's what Nvidia is doing. I'm a believer in Jensen Wong. I know I I I would as a somebody who looks into the research and and research these leaders for companies. This is a man who has been doing it for a very long time. And I wouldn't think that he would cave into Wall Street to go about funny business like this. So that's not what I'm saying. I'm just letting you understand the data.

[00:13:38]Nobody knows for sure which one is yet.

[00:13:42]No one knows for sure which one it is yet. Now I'm taking the approach that I believe demand and that's not the case.

[00:13:49]It's demand is there. The demand is there, but that's the whole game right now. Nobody knows for sure which one it is yet. Is the demand real or is it being financed into existence? And let me tell you why you should care about this question. Even if you never buy a single share of Nvidia, you may say, Anton, I don't touch Nvidia. I don't like Nvidia. I don't like this whole AI stuff. And that's fine. Completely fine.

[00:14:17]You don't have to like Nvidia. You don't have to like, you know, companies that are doing pretty well. You don't have to like AI.

[00:14:26]The reason why this is important for you, even if you never buy a single share of Nvidia, is because of this exact move, the seller financing the buyer. It is the same move that showed up before.

[00:14:42]every big bubble that we've ever had, the Telecom crash, the.com crash, the housing crash in 2008, in every single one of them, at some point, the people selling the thing started lending people the money to buy the thing because real demand alone wasn't enough anymore. Now, I'm not saying that we're in a bubble or I'm not saying we're in a crash. I'm not predicting anything because the data is giving me, you know, some information that I can just talk about.

[00:15:20]I'm not predicting anything. But the AI demand might be completely real because I'm a user of it every day and I use it hard and I use it heavy. But when you see the seller co-signing loans, you keep your eyes open.

[00:15:36]You don't bet your whole career on it never slowing down.

[00:15:41]Okay, I want you guys to type loan in the chat if a company co-signing its own sales makes you nervous. Type real in the chat if you think the demand genuine genuinely is real. I mean, you think the demand is out there, type real in the chat. And as somebody who's a host of the show and you guys are the co-host, me in my chat or whatnot, I expect to see if you're AI user real. A lot of reals in it. But I Let me know your thoughts. Type it in the chat. Let me know what you say. Let me know what you think.

[00:16:12]Okay. Now, let's zoom out real quick because this is not one weird deal in a corner.

[00:16:20]This is a whole system. Now, Nvidia, the most valuable company on the entire planet, just sold bonds. bonds are borrowed money and they did it for the first time in five years. Now, I want you guys to stop and think about how strange that is. This is a company sitting on a mountain of cash. They could pay for almost anything out of pocket. Anything that they choose, they can pay for it and they choose to borrow instead.

[00:16:50]$25 billion worth. When the richest company alive decides to borrow instead of paying cash, you should ask yourself why. Well, here's one answer. When you borrow, you lock in today's cost and you keep your cash free for emergencies.

[00:17:10]Makes sense. That's what the rich people do. That's what a lot of richest companies and what financing people decide to do. Let's lock this money in.

[00:17:17]Interest rates, keep it at same.

[00:17:19]Whatever it is, we don't have to worry about it. But that's the innocent read.

[00:17:23]Here's the other answer. Sometimes you borrow because paying cash would show everybody just how expensive this race really has gotten.

[00:17:33]Debt spreads the pain out over years.

[00:17:39]Cash shows the pain all at once. Think about it. Paying cash for a whole bunch of stuff going to drain your cash. It's going to drain it. But if you borrow, you can pay that back over a certain amount of years and your cash still looking good.

[00:17:57]Either way, the richest company alive is borrowing. And that is the tail, guys.

[00:18:03]Okay, that is the tail. Let's go to Bloomberg real quick. I want to show you something from Bloomberg that I came across this morning.

[00:18:10]Um, and it's a little bit more about the what's going on in the bank financing in the financing that's going on for AI.

[00:18:21]Let's check this out.

[00:18:24]>> She joins us now. Rashan, great to see you.

[00:18:26]>> Great to see you. Thanks for having me.

[00:18:28]>> Well, I would love to get your thoughts on those comments coming from the IMF that you think about all of this debt issuance that we're cutting from these tech companies to fuel these AI ambitions. I mean, do you harbor some of those similar concerns when you think about what we're talking about in terms of duration of the assets and the duration of the debt itself?

[00:18:46]>> Yeah. So, I think when you think about sort of the AI boom, and it's certainly a boom, but I will say that investors have become increasingly cautious in terms of how they look at the space and they really are looking at the project itself, thinking about financing contracted revenues, you know, uh, good sponsors, you know, where there's, uh, long-term stability and cash flow. And so I think what we're seeing is that the markets have been open um for all the financing that uh needs to occur and I think we're going to need to use all the markets. So whether that be credit markets um sort of private markets um as well as uh securization markets um we're seeing an evolutions of various solutions that can be used to really allow investors to play in this structural theme and tap the markets in various ways. So I do think we have a breath of financing uh resources and solutions and I think investors are being very keen about how they play and looking at some of the things and topics that were me mentioned in terms of duration matching etc. >> Investors are looking at all kinds of financing for this AI all kinds all kinds of vehicles. Some banks are saying nope we don't want it. So this is the reason why Nvidia is choosing to finance it themselves.

[00:19:58]All right. And here's the thing. They're not alone. Company after company lined up to borrow this year. $2.46 trillion in corporate bonds, which is a record. And roughly one out of every $5 in that bond market is now tied to the AI buildout in data centers, in power lines, in chips, in cooling systems. All of it bought on credit.

[00:20:29]The market had to strain just to swallow it all. That much debt hitting all at once. And here's why this matters to you specifically. When a company pays for growth out of pocket, that growth is durable. It can ride out a bad quarter.

[00:20:48]It can survive a slow year because the money was already theirs. It's yours.

[00:20:53]It's in your hand.

[00:20:55]But when a company pays for growth out of debt, that growth has a due date. Just like every single loan has a due date.

[00:21:04]Interest rates continue to go higher if you don't pay back that loan on time. There's a lender on the other end waiting to get paid back. And when the bills come due and the market gets nervous, the first thing that stops is new spending, which is another word for new hiring.

[00:21:28]Think about that.

[00:21:30]There won't be any new hiring if investors feel like they're not going to be getting their money back because they're not going to be lending anymore, which therefore means a lot of this being on AI will stop.

[00:21:47]The debt doesn't just threaten the company, guys. It threatens the next requisition, the next job title, the next growth opportunity, the next person in line that wants to start a career.

[00:22:04]And that's probably the one with your name on it.

[00:22:07]That's probably the one that will change your life. That's probably one that takes you from $40,000 to $70,000 or $70,000 to $100,000 or $100,000 to $150,000.

[00:22:22]So, the money's borrowed. Fine.

[00:22:26]Companies borrow all the time. Borrowing to grow can be smart. The question is whether it's paying off yet. And here's where it gets uncomfortable. For every dollar of new cash bu being being generated in big tech, okay, for every dollar of new cash that big tech is generating, they are spending a dollar in 57 on AI in capital spending is growing about 70% a year.

[00:22:57]Their actual cash is growing about 23%.

[00:23:01]That is not a gap. That is a canyon.

[00:23:05]in a canyon like that only gets crossed one way by more borrowing.

[00:23:12]This is what it is.

[00:23:14]Now that part I mean like if you're a manager in here, you know, you can't continue to borrow a whole bunch of money without paying off stuff. You can't ask your boss to invest in something without telling them when they're going to get the payoff. You can't ask them to invest into a new person on your team without telling them that those ticket cues are going to go down.

[00:23:40]That's what's happening right now in the AI in AI space. Borrowing, borrowing, and borrowing and nobody knows when the payoff is going to be. But that is a huge point for the opportunity, which is the good news for you guys who are using AI and part of my community.

[00:23:58]Companies are going to want to get a return on investment. And who is responsible for making companies get a return on investment? You, the person that is watching this show right now, who's the person that's responsible for companies getting ROI? You, if you know anything about AI, you if you know anything about business processes and solving problems.

[00:24:25]So, what are companies going to pay?

[00:24:27]They're not going to spend as much on the AI boom, but they're going to spend a whole bunch of money to get this whole thing figured out. Because it does take problem solving. It does take people skills. It does take people understanding AI. It does take people who understand the business.

[00:24:47]And every single business is different.

[00:24:50]So, your time is coming. If you are investing in yourself right now in AI, I'm just letting you know that right now. Your time is coming.

[00:25:00]Be ready for it.

[00:25:02]Start talking about it. Start showing your work.

[00:25:06]Be visible.

[00:25:11]I'm just giving you the heads up, guys.

[00:25:14]There was a brand new report from Boston's consulting group, BCG. Many of you guys heard about BCG.

[00:25:20]They went and asked CEOs about their AI, big companies, real big budgets, and 90% of them said, "Yep, we're seeing some benefit somewhere, a little faster here, a little cheaper there." Sounds great, right? Some companies are saying, "Yep, we're seeing some benefit to this whole AI thing." But then they ask the real question, the only question that actually matters. Can you tie it to the bottom line? Can you prove it made you money? Real money on the actual books.

[00:25:56]Only 14% said yes.

[00:25:59]Dang.

[00:26:02]Only 14% said yes.

[00:26:06]So sit with that number for a second and think about you.

[00:26:11]All my people who are watching this show right now who's using AI, think about you.

[00:26:18]Have you ever been able to show a return on your AI spend? You may be spending hundreds of dollars a month, thousands of dollars a month on AI. You may be spending $50 a month.

[00:26:30]You may not be spending anything. You may just be spending your subscription cost $200 a month, $100 a month for max plans, whatever it is.

[00:26:40]But have you been able to see revenue go up? Have you been able to see if it impacted your bottom line?

[00:26:51]Same thing is happening for companies.

[00:26:52]Only 14%.

[00:26:57]That's it.

[00:27:01]That's not a lot.

[00:27:04]No, it's the beginning of it, of course, because you're talking about the four deployed engineers and the new teams being created to get out there into these companies and turn loose and turn wild. But that's the opportunity right there, guys. the opportunity is only 14% said yes. And every single one of them who's investing into it, they want to get it and be able to say yes. So of course they this 14% says yes and they're going to do it from this company and this company really helped them implement the AI that they spent the money on.

[00:27:33]They're going to say, "Okay, well what you do? What company that you did? What company you use to help for consulting?"

[00:27:39]All right.

[00:27:42]I want to do what you did because that's what people do.

[00:27:46]So that 14% next year may be 28%. Or 35%.

[00:27:53]That is you as the opportunity to make that number increase for these companies.

[00:28:00]14% record borrowing, record spending, a $157 out for every dollar in and only 14 out of aundred companies can actually prove it's working.

[00:28:13]That is not a technology problem anymore. The technology works. We've seen it works. The AI is real. It does things. That's a math problem. They're spending borrow billions of dollars on something most of them can't yet prove pays for itself. And the math is being funded by a loan.

[00:28:35]So, here's your first move this morning.

[00:28:37]Before we go anywhere else, ask yourself one question about your your own job.

[00:28:42]One, is my role funded by profit or is it funded by a bond? And here's how you tell. If your team's growth is coming out of the company's earnings, out of the money that the business actually made, you're on solid ground. But if your team's growth is coming out of a funding round, you're working for a startup or a debt raise or a big capital budget the CFO keeps talking about.

[00:29:10]You want to know that now? Not the day that the credit tightens because the profitfunded jobs survive the downturn.

[00:29:19]The debt funded jobs get re-evaluated the second the lender blinks.

[00:29:25]Kind of like working for a private equity company. You know how you working for a a a private equity owned company and all of a sudden they start to cut and cut and cut because they're trying to sell it to another private equity company and cash out because that loan because of that loan.

[00:29:46]I'm just giving you guys the game. But there's a the big opportunity here is is this guys you see these numbers. Only 14% of CEOs say that it's hit their bottom line. It's done good for the company. And that is the opportunity.

[00:30:05]That is a whole bunch of money for you right now. Let me go on a little bit of a tangent.

[00:30:10]I was telling my content creation workshop um members last night kind of got gave him a little peak preview into uh both of my channels. um YouTube data and even in one of my other um behind the scenes I showed how I I leverage AI agents to help me with the content creation space and to look at transcripts and all this other stuff.

[00:30:43]And my agent Denzel has been able to increase the revenue on the channel by almost 300%. Since building them, that is a bottom line number. That is agents being able to or you using AI to be able to grow to increase your profit, to grow your top line, to improve your bottom line.

[00:31:13]Think about that for yourself as well because these are the things that you can talk about during your interview.

[00:31:22]Now, I I'm talking about for content, but I was able to do the exact same thing for ground truth.

[00:31:32]Do the exact same thing for ground truth by selling it to one city right now.

[00:31:40]These are the examples that people are going to ask you doing your interviews if you are going and seeking big top dollars from these companies who need AI help.

[00:31:55]Talk about the numbers.

[00:31:58]Talk about how you've been able to improve your bottom line or your top line by leveraging AI. Talk about the projects that you use and you built.

[00:32:07]Those are all the things, guys.

[00:32:10]All right, so we just spent a whole bunch of time on the money, but let's put some faces to it because the money leaving a company always shows up as a person leaving a building.

[00:32:25]And this week, it left through three different doors. Three completely different reasons, too. Now watch how different that these lessons are and the reason is the lesson. So pay close attention to this. So door one is the AI door.

[00:32:51]There's a woman named Suzy Jammenzi. Okay. She is a talent leader out of Silicon Valley. Let me see if I can get her on the screen real quick.

[00:33:04]Let me see if I can get Susan on the screen.

[00:33:09]There she is.

[00:33:11]It's her right here on the screen. Title of the article is, "I'm trying to get hired at 52 and as I job hunt, I've been hiding my grades and doing everything I can to appear younger."

[00:33:30]Title of the article, go and check it out. But the lady is 52 or the lady is 52 years old, a talent leader out of Silicon Valley.

[00:33:41]Her job was hiring people and finding talent and building teams. And she was good at it.

[00:33:51]She was very good at it. Good enough that her company came to her and asked her to build an AI playbook to make her whole team faster with AI.

[00:34:02]So guess what she did?

[00:34:05]She did it.

[00:34:08]She rolled out this training. She rolled up her sleeves and built the thing. The exact same thing that they asked for. And then guess what the company did?

[00:34:21]Company laid her off.

[00:34:23]After she built the playbook after she built the playbook, the company laid her off because she made her own team more efficient.

[00:34:36]And now she's job hunting at 52.

[00:34:39]And the reporting says this, she's covering her grades trying to look younger for interviews because she feels the age bias in the room.

[00:34:51]Now, I'm not telling you guys out here to go out here and dye your beards or your, you know, your your your your hair.

[00:34:59]That's not the lesson here. The lesson is colder than that. She did everything right. She upskilled. She learned the AI. She built the AI thing they asked for. And being the one who understood the AI did not make her safe. Now, why?

[00:35:17]Why didn't this make her safe?

[00:35:20]Because the value she built, walked out the door as a document, not as her. The playbook stayed. She did not. She made herself replaceable by building the exact thing that replaced her.

[00:35:42]Pay attention, guys.

[00:35:45]Pay attention to that.

[00:35:48]Let's go to door number two. Let's go to the merger door. And this one's got a name on it as well, too. So, this week, guess what happened, guys?

[00:36:01]You guys know who um Ryan Clark is?

[00:36:06]You guys know who Ryan Clark is, right?

[00:36:14]This is Ryan Clark.

[00:36:20]Guess what happened at ESPN this week? ESPN cut Ryan Clark, Cam Newton, Carl Revat.

[00:36:31]These are on air talents, recognizable faces, people at the top of their field.

[00:36:41]Millions of people watch these guys every single week. Millions.

[00:36:48]Okay. Why? What? Why am I What reason is Antoine tying a ESPN firing into the Daily Time show? We get there.

[00:37:02]Pay attention and focus.

[00:37:03]>> Bad news out of Bristol.

[00:37:05]>> Pay attention and focus. Okay.

[00:37:08]>> Bad news out of Bristol.

[00:37:11]>> We'll get to this video in a second.

[00:37:16]It wasn't because a robot took their seat.

[00:37:20]It was a merger. ESPN is folding in the NFL network. Two companies became one.

[00:37:28]And when that happens, you suddenly got two people for every one chair. Two analysts for the same segment, two hosts for the same show. And somebody's got to go.

[00:37:42]Somebody's got to go.

[00:37:46]I'm going to play this video for you guys real quick on ESPN laying off Ryan Clark and it being a stunner.

[00:37:55]Let me listen. Let you guys listen in on this one.

[00:37:58]This came out of the blue. This was a stunner. Andrew Marshawn of The Athletic reported yesterday.

[00:38:05]Ryan Clark out after more than a decade with ESPN.

[00:38:11]And that was clearly the headline, but the sub headline is more to come, more layoffs to come.

[00:38:22]ESPN and NFL Network.

[00:38:26]And we knew this was coming when ESPN got the keys to NFL Network on April 1.

[00:38:32]And you know, this happens anytime there's a corporate transaction like this.

[00:38:37]Everything is fine. Nothing to see here.

[00:38:38]Everything's going to proceed as it usually is. is and then the dust settles and then that's when it all hits the fan. Anytime that you bring whatever the business is, when you bring a capacity that currently exists as a separate entity into an existing framework, there will be duplication of everything.

[00:39:00]We don't need two.

[00:39:03]All we need is one.

[00:39:06]We don't need two. All we need is one.

[00:39:10]How do you think they went about deciding on the one that they need?

[00:39:18]Do you think it has anything to do with how easy people are to work with? You guys think anything to do with if they have AI skills?

[00:39:26]Do you think it has anything to do with if they position themselves and got friendly with the people who are making the decisions? I've gone through this before.

[00:39:37]I'm 42 years old. I've gone through the duplication before.

[00:39:45]And sometimes you have the energy to play the game. Sometimes you don't. And sometimes you just say, "Hey, you know what? I'm talented enough. These people are going to recognize me. And I'm not going to cuddle up with the big dogs up top because I'm I'm Ryan Clark.

[00:40:02]I'm Cam Newton. I don't need to go talk to them.

[00:40:07]They can see me live on the shows. They can see my views.

[00:40:12]It's not how it works.

[00:40:15]I tell you this as a personal story.

[00:40:16]That's not how it works.

[00:40:21]You have to play the game. You have to continue to play the game.

[00:40:26]Nobody's going to care about what views you're bringing in. Nobody's going to care about how well you worked.

[00:40:32]You have to build that relationship with the people who can make the decision.

[00:40:36]And if there are people who are doing that and they are less talented than you, they're going to get the nod. That's what we going with because they're buying into the person.

[00:40:51]They're buying into the person.

[00:40:57]And here's a part that'll make your jaw drop, guys. In the same week that they cut Ryan Clark and Cam Newton, reports have surfaced that Pat McCaffy's deal is worth 60 to $65 million.

[00:41:14]So the cuts come from the bottom and the money stays at the top.

[00:41:25]Boy, oh boy.

[00:41:28]giving you guys an education on this corporate game and this career game that you're not going to get anywhere else.

[00:41:36]That's why the show is important.

[00:41:38]McCaffy said that he's catching heat for it online.

[00:41:44]Fans blaming him.

[00:41:49]fans basically saying this the reason why ESPN is cutting all these people this good talent is because they spent so much money on Pat McCaffy. Think about it, right? It's kind of like you know how you have a sports team and they have a certain salary cap, right? And uh you know a player like say I'm not going to say LeBron James, but let's just say who was the person that took the match deal? Let's say that Giannis. Giannis back in Milwaukee. Okay. You want to stick a max contract, super max contract. You couldn't bring a talent in around him because he took all the money. So people and fans are blaming it on Pat McCaffy because they said McCaffy took all the money. Stephen A.

[00:42:31]Smith took all the money.

[00:42:36]Is that the reason? Could be. Which is another reason I'll tell you this.

[00:42:42]Even if you're making the whole top dollar, you better protect yourself.

[00:42:48]You'd better protect yourself. I'm not calling Pat McCaffy a villain at all.

[00:42:52]Pat McAfee does a fantastic job. I'm on holiday right now in DC and I went to a cigar joint yesterday. They had Pat McCaffy all on the streets.

[00:43:04]Just a good talent. He has his own production crew, his own people. He has the leverage at ESPN.

[00:43:12]But my whole point here is when you have two companies merging together, that is how consolidation works. You can't have two people doing the same job.

[00:43:25]Somebody's got to go.

[00:43:28]The org chart shrinks from the middle and the big names at the top usually stay.

[00:43:35]the layer just below the big names at the top. Those are the directors and the vice presidents. Those are the ones that typically go.

[00:43:50]Now, let's go to door three, the margin door.

[00:43:55]And this is the one that breaks the rule in your head. Okay, so Pixar Pixar cut 116 people this month. That is 116 people. The same month that Toy Story 5 was clearing almost a billion and a half dollars worldwide.

[00:44:16]So, how in the world do you cut people during a billion dollar hit?

[00:44:22]Well, here's how. It wasn't about Toy Story. It was about a different film than than that. It was about a different film that missed a movie called Hoppers. It made about $389 million on a $150 million budget, which sounds like it won. Okay. Well, doubled it, right? 389 against 150.

[00:44:49]Well, until you do the Hollywood math, the marketing costs, theaters, they take their cut, overhead, and suddenly that 389 million is barely break even, maybe even a loss. So, $1 billion hit could not protect the people attached to the one that missed the margin.

[00:45:12]Now, put all three doors together, guys.

[00:45:15]One lost her job.

[00:45:18]Hey, one lost her job. Now she has to dye her hair, you know, and try to look younger.

[00:45:27]One lost his job during a merger or two, right? Cam Newton, Ryan Clark.

[00:45:33]And one lost their job during margin.

[00:45:38]Three completely different situations here. Three completely different reasons, but same results. people losing their jobs. Somebody packing up a desk and getting out of there. And here's the through line. The one thing that ties all three together is revenue did not protect a single one of them.

[00:45:58]Susie, she built the value herself. Cam, Ryan Clark, they were national stars and are national stars. Pixar was attached to a billion dollar hit, but it didn't matter. Not one of those things saved the job. So here's the thing. What what what is it that actually protects you?

[00:46:20]It's not being near the revenue.

[00:46:25]No, sometimes that can protect you. No, I got to say this. That's what I tell you guys all the time. Be close to the revenue.

[00:46:32]How close to the revenue are you getting though?

[00:46:35]Are you getting close to the revenue and owning something?

[00:46:43]It's owning something. It's position, not proximity. Being close to the money isn't the same as owning a piece of it.

[00:46:54]Why don't you guys type in the chat, type close if you are close to the revenue at your job, but don't actually own a piece of it. Type it in the chat.

[00:47:07]Type 116 in the chat. If a company cutting people during a billion dollar hit is crazy, type it in the chat.

[00:47:16]And before we leave this segment, I want you guys to hear something. [snorts] I I want you guys to hear something. I want you to listen in very very clear on this one because I think it's very very important. I need you guys to hear what Cam Newton said after he got cut because this this man just lost a national TV seat.

[00:47:42]He was calm about it. He didn't cry.

[00:47:46]He didn't call ESPN evil.

[00:47:49]He said he looked at his whole run there like an internship.

[00:47:55]I want you guys to let that sit in. He looked at it like an internship, something that you learn from and move on. And then he said the thing that I want you guys to pay attention to when he says it.

[00:48:09]He said, "If you don't own your own, you're always working on somebody else's term. Own your own."

[00:48:21]Write that down.

[00:48:24]Let's listen to what Cam says. M >> working alongside with some of the most talented journalists and you know sports individuals that cover sports was something that it got me to realize the new I have a newfound respect for the skill.

[00:48:46]Molly Cara Shay Cornet obviously Stephen A. Smith. Yeah. Ryan Clark where you have Dan Olowski, Peter Shrager, the list goes on, and all the countless producers and support team that went into making sure that I was equipped with all the information each and every episode. It was second to none. So when you hear certain things, it was like, damn, it's messed up how they did. Ryan, hold on real quick.

[00:49:24]Hold on real quick.

[00:49:27]Hey, you can go with it, too. They're like, "Dad, you have to make light of something because for me, if this isn't a way for all athletes and even content creators to learn one important rule of the times that we live in right now, >> if you don't own your own platform, you're going to get overlooked, bypassed, and be extinct just like dinosaurs.

[00:50:07]Cam Newton just dropped it on you. This is what I've been telling you guys for a long time. We had a content creation workshop last night.

[00:50:15]We got some people who are serious about it, some people who aren't serious about it, right? Some people who are serious and they're going to take it serious, some people who are not.

[00:50:28]>> [snorts] >> But just listen to what's being said right there. Listen to look at look at what's going on right now in the workforce.

[00:50:41]Look at what's going on in the workforce. AI disruption not even in media is not even AI. There is no security anymore.

[00:50:56]The term job security does not exist anymore.

[00:51:05]Win when you can.

[00:51:08]Win when you can.

[00:51:11]Do you the best that you can do that is all training ground.

[00:51:16]Learn build those relationships because you are going to need them later on in life whether you start your own or not.

[00:51:23]But just know there is no such thing as job security.

[00:51:30]So you have to focus on building your own.

[00:51:36]That starts with financial planning.

[00:51:39]Understanding that this can happen to you, this will happen to you. And what are you going to do about it?

[00:51:48]So many people are blindsided by this whole thing. So many people are upset by this whole thing. Know the game now that you're getting into it. Know the game that you're into it.

[00:52:01]Know it. Know what's going to happen to you. So, what are you going to do about it if it happens to you? Do you got that six-mon savings? Do you got that other thing that you've been working on that can hold you?

[00:52:11]Do you got the partners and the people in your relationship or your family that you can potentially borrow money for you? Things get really tight.

[00:52:23]Start thinking about it if you haven't been thinking about it yet.

[00:52:28]Now, we're going to be coming back to this before the show is over.

[00:52:33]A man who just got cut from national TV told you the whole strategy, though on his way out the door.

[00:52:45]All right. So, we've um we've talked about the money. We talked about the people leaving. Now, let's talk about the people that's actually staying and what their job actually turned into.

[00:52:56]Because here's the good news buried in all of this. There's a whole bunch of good news buried in all of this. The job didn't disappear. The jobs just change shapes. And if you can see the new shape before your co-workers do, you can go get it.

[00:53:13]Business Insider just ran a whole series this month and they're calling it the Great Coding Reset. And here's the headline underneath it all. They said, "Software engineers are not writing code all day anymore. They're managing the AI that writes the code. Their job went from author to editor, from typing the thing to checking the thing that the machine typed. And this is the same person.

[00:53:43]That used to be multiple people's jobs.

[00:53:47]No, that's now the same person. There's the article right here, the great coding reset. Go and read it. And here's the warning buried inside the reset.

[00:54:01]Nobody's sure what happens to the junior developer anymore because the entrylevel task, the writing the simple basic code is exactly what the AI does first and it does it well. So the bottom rung of that ladder is the rung that's disappearing.

[00:54:19]Which means if you're early in your career, you can't just be the person who does the task. You got to be the person who checks the task. And here's how you make that jump. Stop asking, "Can I do that task?" Stop asking, "Can I run five of these at once?"

[00:54:38]And catch the ones that is wrong.

[00:54:42]The person who does one task is competing with AI. The person who checks five is using it. One of those people is cheaper to replace. And don't be that person that's cheaper to replace.

[00:54:56]I'm going to put a real person on this one as well, too. Business Insider sat down with the manager at Microsoft, a senior software engineering manager, 14 years at the company, and Business Insider verified his identity, his job, and his pay. So, this real person is on record. Here's what he said AI did to his job. He said it cut the time that he spends on code by 70%. 70% of his coding time is gone. He used to check every single line his team wrote by hand. Now the AI does the first pass and he reviews it.

[00:55:38]This is the article right here.

[00:55:41]I'm a Microsoft manager. AI reduced my time spent on coding by 70% but that doesn't mean I work any less overall.

[00:55:51]Actually works more. Here's the part that matters for you guys. You think that saving 70% of your job means that you have a better work life balance, means you work less. Nope. Listen to what he says. He says, quote, "You cannot just sit and relax." All that save time. It went straight into meeting quicker deadlines and shipping more updates. His words, the time saved goes to quicker deadlines and shipping. So read what actually happened to his job.

[00:56:21]He stopped being the guy who writes the code and became the guy who reviews the code and approves it. It owns it when he ships. The typing got automated. The judgment did not.

[00:56:33]The AI can write the line. It cannot decide if the line is right. That decision is a human. That decision is the whole job. Now, type catch in the chat if your job is already turning into checking and improving the AI's work. Type it in the chat.

[00:56:52]And if you want real proof that this is real and not just talk, look at Open AI's coding to Codeex. If you ever use Codeex, the thing that writes and runs code for you, it went from 1 million weekly users to 5 million in about four months. 1 million to 5 million. That is not a trend. That is a stampede.

[00:57:17]millions of people handing the typing to a machine and moving into a supervisor seat because that's where the job is going.

[00:57:26]The people who moved into that seat early, they're the ones running the show now. They're the ones who they aren't the ones who waited.

[00:57:34]The ones who waited are the ones who's sweating. The ones who waited are the ones who's getting no longer having a job for the most part.

[00:57:46]So, here's a shift in one sentence, guys. The job used to be doing the work.

[00:57:50]Now, the job is directing the work.

[00:57:52]You're not the coder anymore. You're you're the director of agents.

[00:57:56]And that is ultimately a promotion if you position it right.

[00:58:05]If you don't position for it, it's a layoff.

[00:58:11]Two totally different outcomes. If you position yourself right, it's a promotion. If you don't, it's a layoff and you are the one who determines that side for the most part.

[00:58:30]Let me give you the number that makes this whole thing concrete cuz I don't want you guys thinking that um this is a whole bunch of this AI talk. We got Anthropic, the company behind Claude. They put out a report this year, an agentic coding trends report, and they measured how developers actually work now. And here's what they found. They said that developers are using AI in about 60% of their work.

[00:58:58]That is 60%. It's a lot. So, we're half.

[00:59:02]But they're only letting the AI run fully on its own about 20% of the time.

[00:59:11]Okay, that is an anthropic report.

[00:59:13]Managing AI agents is now the core job of engineering leadership. Most VPs aren't equipped for it.

[00:59:22]The age of a agentic AI, what engineering jobs actually look like in 2026.

[00:59:32]Check out both of those.

[00:59:35]And I want you guys to sit in that gap.

[00:59:38]60% of work touches AI but only 20% runs without a human watching it. That 40 point gap in the middle that gap is the job. That gap is you. The human who delegates the work, reviews the work, owns the work, owns the result when it ships.

[01:00:03]And here's a um something that I read about a engineering director in one of these articles here. He basically said um you know how many of his engineers wrote code by hand?

[01:00:23]Only three out of 40.

[01:00:27]The agents wrote the other 37 and the engineers spent the whole sprint revealing, correcting, and catching hallucinated AI work.

[01:00:44]Three 37 reviewed.

[01:00:48]That is the ratio of the new economy.

[01:00:50]And here's the honest warning inside of it. Better AI does not shrink that job.

[01:00:55]It actually grows it because the faster agents make more code and the more code means more people to review it to catch it to make sure that it works and the supervisor doesn't get auto automated away. At the end of the day, the supervisor gets busy and you just put it on yourself. Like you see yourself being able to build so many projects and you're like, "God dang, I got so much work to do." I mean, this makes you got to it it it seriously I think it's going to cause a job boom, but the jobs are just going to change. I got a lot of people who are about this whole doom and gloom and stuff like that in which a lot of people when you listen to the show, that's all you think about it is you think that I I'm talking about doom and gloom. No, I want you to see the opportunity.

[01:01:41]I want you to see the opportunity that's ahead of you because there's a massive opportunity.

[01:01:49]There's a massive opportunity.

[01:01:52]Get busy with AI.

[01:01:55]Be the person that takes a, you know, accountable for what goes on. Review it, work with it, and you will see the opportunities that's going to be out there for you.

[01:02:07]I do me a favor. Type three in the chat if you rather be the person reviewing 37 agents code than the person who's handwriting it.

[01:02:17]Type it in the chat. Now, quick one before we move further. Everything that we're breaking down this morning, the earnings, the diagnosis, the heights is the prescription, guys.

[01:02:30]weekly career blueprints, AI2 access, live accountability calls built exactly for navigating this transition.

[01:02:40]Go to nextgenheights.com.

[01:02:43]If you're watching this and you're wondering your next move, get into our Patreon, www.patreon.com/blackheights.

[01:02:51]That's where we congregate. That's where we have the content creation workshop.

[01:02:57]I was on that call from 8:00 last night till 10:00. It's like, WHY IS THIS CALL GOING SO LONG? WELL, because we was getting to work. Before you know, you work hard, timelessness goes. Just like this call or like this show. Before you know it, I'm looking up. I'm like, damn, it's already 8:30. It's almost 9:00.

[01:03:14]All right, let's continue on. Um, my job is not to leave you guys in the dark. So, we spent this whole show talking about borrowed money, doors closing, doors opening.

[01:03:32]Let's find out where you actually went.

[01:03:35]I want to really talk about the success here. And here's the question that pays you. All that borrowed money, $2.5 trillion of it, it has to land somewhere and it has to get spent on something real. You can't borrow $2.5 trillion and sit on it. So, where does it land? So, let's follow where that money is going because that's your opportunity.

[01:03:56]And you're standing right there where the money's got to come.

[01:04:00]Here's one that nobody saw coming, guys.

[01:04:04]You guys know the Post-it note, the Scotch Tape Company, the company that makes the sticky notes on the desk that the old folks used to do. My my grandfather I mean not my grandfather I said my grandfather but my um uh my father-in-law he was a sticky notes guy. I mean everywhere you go to his desk there's sticky notes everywhere bop has dates on it. He wrote a lot.

[01:04:31]Well the company that makes these sticky notes their CEO's name is Bill Brown. Okay it's his name Bill Brown.

[01:04:42]and he went on MadMoney, Jim Kramer, and he explained that 3M is now an AI play.

[01:04:50]How does a company like 3M become an AI play? Well, they make a special fiber connection for data centers that cuts the install down by 85%.

[01:05:03]85% faster. And here's how Brown put it on mad money. He said quote it saves 85% of the installation time for hyperscalers and time is money for hyperscalers. And then he said the line that tells you everything quote so we are building a business here Microsoft certified it for the Azure in their cloud. A business that's 40 to $50 million today.

[01:05:33]They think it could be five times that.

[01:05:36]Let's listen to what he talks about here on Mad Money real quick.

[01:05:40]>> Well, the old 3M always had it always went to their absolute best annual and then when it was put online, they would have it would look at it was the the periodic table and you would click on each one and you would see all the new products that you had created. I now feel like you can go back to that particularly because I'm seeing what you're doing in the data center is a very good place to start with the Microsoft deal.

[01:06:02]>> So, it's that we're really proud of that deal. The company has a lot of deep expertise in optical connection technologies. This goes back many, many years. And we've been working over the last couple of years on a new optical fiber connection technology, expanded beam optics. We have a 100 patents in the space, another 50 patents pending, and we're very optimistic of growth in that sector, mainly because we're seeing copper trans data transmission in that in data centers shifting over to optical transition. That's what's happening over time. So we're building a business here.

[01:06:35]I'm really excited that Microsoft after several years of testing has certified us as a provider for them to for their Azure data centers. We're working to scale up that technology both internally as well as externally with contract manufacturers. And Jim, another key piece of this is building out the ecosystem of partners. Hyperscalers require supplier supply assurance. And what we're doing is working with about 44 or 45 other suppliers in the in the ecosystem to enable people to manufacture this product for us as well while we'll do the same thing internally. That's what's going to help us grow that data center business which today is relatively small but growing very quickly.

[01:07:18]>> Relatively small but growing quickly.

[01:07:20]Who would have thought?

[01:07:23]Check this out.

[01:07:25]Who would have thought that the company 3N would be getting into this whole AI boom?

[01:07:33]Sit for that for a second, guys. A 122year-old industrial company is winning on the AI buildout.

[01:07:44]Not building a chatbot, not training a model, by selling the plumbing.

[01:07:51]The borrowed money bought the chips, but the chips need fiber and it needs power and it needs cooling and somebody's got to install all of it. So, the old boring company that makes the pipes is cashing in on the gold rush right now without ever touching anything part of the data itself and in the AI itself.

[01:08:16]And 3M is not alone. I want to give you guys the purest example of this whole idea. A company most people have never heard of. Company called Verdives. They don't make chat bots. They don't train AI models. They make the power and cooling systems that keep AI data centers from literally overheating. The boring stuff, the pipes, the chillers, the power supplies, the plumbing in the business is very, very good. First quarter this year, $2.65 billion in revenue. Their profit grew 83% year-over-year in their backlog. The work already ordered waiting to be done more than doubled to over $15 billion.

[01:08:58]Check this out. Could Vera be the next pick and shovel play for the AI infrastructure boom?

[01:09:06]Don't say Professor Antoine doesn't give you guys any investing advice. You go to some people and they just, you know, they they keep all this stuff locked up. They don't tell you this information. And a lot of people who come across this channel and say, "Annone, all you do is talk about the negative stuff." No, you're getting a whole list of things that you can do in your career and the mistakes to watch out for. And not only that, investing opportunities as well because of the data.

[01:09:33]Verdive, 3M, who we talked about on yesterday, Caterpillar, Intel, do your own research.

[01:09:47]But you see where the money is going.

[01:09:49]You see where the opportunity is.

[01:09:52]Now, here's why all this is happening.

[01:09:54]The new AI chips run hot and they run really hot. And a few years ago, a server rack pulled about 140 kilowatts of power. Now they're hitting 300 and headed for 600. And you cannot cool that with a box fan. You can't cool it with just an air conditioner. You need real heavyduty cooling systems. So the market for exactly what Verive sells jumped from $62 billion to 75 billion.

[01:10:22]And the hotter the chip gets, the more plumbing the company makes and the more money it makes as well too. Now you can put 3M Inverive in the same hand. A 122year-old company and a cooling systems company most people can't even name. both cashing in on this AI on the physical buildout.

[01:10:47]Neither one of them train a single model. They just sell what the models need. That's all.

[01:10:54]Type 600 in the chat. If the hotter the chip gets, the more plumbing the company makes. The more money it makes as well, too. You make a whole bunch of plumbing, you're going to make a whole bunch of money.

[01:11:05]So, here's the opportunity for the people, okay?

[01:11:09]The AI money is loud. The AI money is chat bots and models and headlines and things like moonshot. That money is loud.

[01:11:19]That's the part that everybody sees. But the AI money spends quiet.

[01:11:30]It spends on infrastructure, on implementation, on the physical layer nobody post about.

[01:11:38]and look at the highest paying jobs in your own state right now. Pull up a map.

[01:11:43]It's not all software engineers. It's the people who build and run the systems, the managers, the engineers, the implementation layer, the jobs where the borrowed money actually has landed.

[01:11:57]Check out this real quick.

[01:12:00]Check this out.

[01:12:03]One map shows the highest paying job in every state outside doctors and nurses.

[01:12:15]Highest paying job in Wisconsin, lawyers.

[01:12:18]Highest paying job in Georgia, airline pilots, co-pilots, flight engineers. Highest paying job in Florida, airline pilots, flight engineers.

[01:12:29]Let's go to Texas.

[01:12:31]Chief Executives, Architectural Engineering Managers, Oklahoma, Chief Executives, Minnesota.

[01:12:43]Let's go to District of Columbia.

[01:12:44]Where's the District of Columbia at?

[01:12:46]There we go. There you go. Maryland, Virginia, Maryland chief executives.

[01:12:59]They're getting paid, guys.

[01:13:04]There's a whole bunch of people calling for the same 20 prompt engineer roles, but ask yourself a different question.

[01:13:11]Where is the buildout actually physically occurring? Where is it touching? And if you can get on that side, you won't have to worry about getting a paycheck. You don't have to worry about the job security piece of it.

[01:13:25]I know I talked about I talked about the job security earlier and I was like, man, like there's no job security. And I I believe that. I truly firmly believe that. But there's there are parts of this economy where that's not even a thing.

[01:13:40]I mean, you have plumbers, you have HVAC, you have builders, people build houses. They are booked for years because they can't find the work.

[01:13:51]Anytime you are going to a job or or or going to a space that is hard to get into, you're going to be more valuable. You're going to have more security. Or there's more requirements, you're going to have more security. Or people don't want to do the job. You're going to have more security.

[01:14:09]If you're going towards whatever everybody else is doing, be prepared to not have the job security that you want. And that's a choice that you have to make.

[01:14:21]That's a choice that you ultimately have to make. And there's a lot of people who are getting into this solarpreneurship and not a lot of people do it. That may be your opportunity to own your own.

[01:14:36]All right, let's move along. Um, let's get to my community's success tracking.

[01:14:46]So today's proof answers Cam Newton's discussion that we talked about earlier.

[01:14:54]Okay, let's go back to Cam Newton.

[01:14:57]Get him on the screen. Remember what Cam said? He says, "Own your own."

[01:15:03]Well, let me show you somebody in this community that did exactly that. His main is, his name is Ben. Y'all know him from this room. Ben's in the content creation workshop right now. He's learning to build his own YouTube channel, his own distribution, his own audience, his own platform that nobody can take from him. Just started.

[01:15:30]And here's what he did this week. He's already shot his first video.

[01:15:35]Most people would stop right there. Pat themselves on the back. One video done.

[01:15:43]but instead of just letting it sit there and you know, he's basically doing another one. And last night, he gave us the thumbnail what it looked like.

[01:15:55]See if I can get uh see if I can get on here real quick. Go to my Discord so I can pull up Ben's channel, guys. Go and check out his channel real quick.

[01:16:06]Let's see.

[01:16:09]Where is uh let me go to this real quick.

[01:16:17]There we go.

[01:16:20]>> In a single 2 month stretch in the summer of 2025, >> Russia launched nearly 12,000 drones at Ukraine. Not cruise missiles, not fighter jets, cheap propeller-driven drones that sound like a moped in the sky.

[01:16:39]Most of them [music] were one design or built to look like it. It's called the Shahade.

[01:16:47]And the reason it works isn't that it's advanced, it's that it's cheap. And there are so so many of them.

[01:17:00]Start with the category because it's the thing people get wrong. The Shahed 136 is a loitering munition. a one-way attack drone. It's not a missile and it's not a reusable drone like the quadcopters doing recon. It sits in between a check out the channel Birds Affirm. Okay, you want to learn about uh military technology, check out the channel Birds Affirm. All right. This will get you watching and really understanding the technology behind what our air air defenses have to to battle against and not only that what our country is spending money on protecting us from and also on what the you know what our manufacturing is going towards and building ourselves. Fantastic channel.

[01:18:02]Go ahead and check out Ben. Um, he basically is taking this video right here and making it clips as well too to keep his pipeline moving. But this imagine creating a video, putting out there on YouTube, put it out there in distribution so that people can check it out. It's only going to go up from here making videos like this.

[01:18:23]He has 30 videos ideas already. All he has to do is go out there and knock him out.

[01:18:28]Nobody assigned him that. His boss didn't. He just said he's going to go out there and do it. Came to the content creation workshop inside the Patreon and executed on it.

[01:18:39]That's exactly what Cam Newton's been talking about.

[01:18:45]Own your own.

[01:18:48]You got Suzie who built the playbook and still got walked out the door.

[01:18:56]National stars like Ryan Clark got walked out the door. Those are all on somebody else's terms, somebody else's building.

[01:19:05]Ben right here, he's doing the exact opposite. He's starting his own company and building his own YouTube channel.

[01:19:13]Nobody can lay that off.

[01:19:17]No merger can consolidate that.

[01:19:22]And this is what Cam meant. Own your own. The market is cutting the people who relay information for a living. And Ben is learning to broadcast his own signal. The same skill that the ESPN guys had just on the side of the table where you own the platform instead of renting a seat.

[01:19:46]All right. And that brings us to tonight, guys. Tonight after the bell, um, we got some some big-time companies that's going to be announcing earnings.

[01:20:00]Okay, after the bell, we got Google reporting. You got Tesla reporting, two of the biggest spenders in this whole AI announcing, and we're going to talk about that on tomorrow. Okay? U, but here's what I want you guys to watch.

[01:20:17]Don't watch the profit headline that everybody watches. Watch what they're going to be spending the capex. That's the money going into the AI buildout.

[01:20:27]And if that number keeps climbing while they're hiring stays flat, that's the entire show on one line, guys. Spending up people flat, borrowed money in, jobs not coming back out. And we're going to break down the actual number on tomorrow when we get into the show. Okay, let's [snorts] listen to what the analysts are saying before we get out of here.

[01:20:49]>> Two of the Mag Seven names set to report earnings this week. For more on what the big picture looks like for the Mag 7, which some are calling the Lag 7 this year, we want to welcome in Ted Thatcher, president of Bright Lake Wealth Management. It's good to see you here at the big board again.

[01:21:04]>> Good to see you, Dave.

[01:21:05]>> All right, so let's talk about the setup going into these results. There's been this big debate over AI spending and um are they spending too much? These big tech names, big tech front and center this week. We've got Alphabet Google coming to the table tomorrow. Tesla's also set to report as well. People call it the lag 7 this year. What's your take?

[01:21:25]>> You know, it's amazing. You know, the the Mag 7, of course, has led since 2022. It's been the driver of market growth and the the opposite has been the case this year, of course, being led by the memory names and the broad earnings in the market. And so I actually do believe there's an opportunity here if they can kind of find this middle path and explain to the market that they are going to get and are getting the ROI on all this spend. Google said to report I want to see them specifically show 60% year-over-year growth holding that number or higher. 22 billion in the AI and cloud business is what I'm expecting. Uh if they can beat that, I think that that's a good sign for the markets. Otherwise, I'm worried they're going to be post uh kind of pointing too much towards some of these balance sheet gains. Of course, they have a stake in SpaceX. But ultimately, that's not operational ROI on AI. That's just going to be a little bit of fluff. And I hope that they don't have to just point to that.

[01:22:21]Big names reporting tonight, guys, and we'll talk about that on tomorrow. So, let's land on this plane. Let's land this plane right now. Um, so you got Nvidia co-signing $500 million in loans so a customer can buy its own chips. You got American companies borrowed a record of $2.46 trillion this year. A fifth of the whole bond market is now tied to AI.

[01:22:44]Big tech is spending a$157 for every dollar that it makes. And only 14% of CEOs can prove any of it is working.

[01:22:54]The money is borrowed.

[01:22:56]We talked about Suzie. Susie built the playbook and still got cut. We got ESPN cut Ryan Clark and Cam in a merger while Pat McCaffy Pat McAfee is making 65 million. You got Pixer, they cut 116 people during a billion dollar hit. So revenue protecting none of them. And on the other side of this, the coder became the director of agents. 3M the Postit company became an AI play by selling the plumbing and Ben LeBron turned one video into four in building his own and owning owning something.

[01:23:37]Oh, and one more thing under all of it.

[01:23:38]Brent Crew is up 4% this morning. 11th night of strikes with Iran. The tax is hitting everybody. You got gas, you got shipping, you got groceries. All of it's going to go up. It's going to cause inflation to increase as well, too. All right? It's going to make that squeeze that we're going through right now even tighter for you if you're going through it right now. So, here's your move for next week, for the rest of this week anyway. Uh, move one, just audit your own paycheck. If it's funded by profit or by a bond, find out before the credit does. Move number two, move towards the plumbing, the implementation piece of it that I'm telling you guys to go towards.

[01:24:13]You want to get to the money, the infrastructure, the physical layer, understanding AI because companies are going to be spending a tons of money for an ROI for what they have already invested in and it comes into the implementation. And move number three, add the words director of agents to how you describe what you do. The moat is the judgment now, not the typing. And move number four, and this is the Cam Newton move, go build one thing that's yours. Ship one unfinished thing this week like Ben did. own your own.

[01:24:43]Okay, last two things before I let you guys go. One, the heights. Check us out on Patreon. www.patreon.com/blheights.

[01:24:54]That's the room where Ben's learning content creation, where Cam's learning content creation, Jamie, myself, everybody else who's part of that chat.

[01:25:01]And uh Brandon, you got Clarence who's in there.

[01:25:07]Join the Patreon Saturday morning calls also the newsletter www.nextenheights.com you will get a full recap of this entire show and also the career protection playbook www.nextenheights.com/playbook.

[01:25:24]Okay, at the end of the day guys the AI boom is running on borrow money but your career doesn't have to run on somebody else's credit. Audit your paycheck. Move towards the plumbing, the implementation side. I told you you guys this side was going to come. The time was going to come and it ain't showing up now.

[01:25:44]Go build the one thing that they can never lay you off.

[01:25:48]Build the thing that's yours.

[01:25:51]Keep climbing.

[01:25:53]We'll see you guys on