Grubstakers - Episode 133: Lawrence Stroll

Episode Date: January 21, 2020

This week we profile a billionaire north of the border Canadian billionaire Lawrence Stroll! Join as we discussed how he cheapened American brands Polo Ralph Lauren, Tommy Hilfiger and Michael Kors with the help of his business partner Silas Chau. Together they made billions in investing in name brand clothes, cheapening the products, and selling their shares at a profit before people realized what they had done. This money was then used to buy a yacht named Faith, which resulted in a British deckhand being drowned, a failed music career for his daughter Chloe stroll and a career F1 racing for his son who doesn’t seem to really know where he is most of the time. All that and more coming up on Grubstakers!

It's the kind of thing that makes the average citizen puke and look at this system and say, yeah, you know, what's going on? The red countries are the countries we sell arms to. The green countries are the countries where we wash our money. We are more than just one coin. We create the world around this coin. Cop. Invention. Cop. Cop.

In 5, 4, 3, 2... The evil has gone And hello, welcome to Grubstakers, the podcast about billionaires My name is Yogi Paiwal and I'm joined by Andy Palmer Steve Jeffries And this week we have a fantastic episode on a Canadian businessman whose links are in fashion and racing I'll tell you what, the other episodes, pure dog shit

This one, top of the line Yeah, that's right, all the other episodes, do you mean, the other episodes, pure dog shit. This one, top of the line. Yeah, that's right. Do you mean all the other episodes? Every single one of them. Pure dog shit. We never said I have a good episode for you because we never did. Until now.

This week we're going to be talking about Lauren Stroll, a Canadian billionaire businessman who is part owner of the Racing Point Formula One team and also has made most of his wealth through fashion brands. He has two kids, Chloe and Lance,

who we're going to discuss more at length in the near future. Andy has done some great research about Lance Stroll. I've done some incredible research. Sean could not join us because he has been exiled to Guantanamo Bay. We wish we were kidding, but if you like Sean, he's off the show. He complained about the drops too much,

and now you know what happens when you complain about drops. So we reported him to leftism for being a Nazi, and just let that problem take care of itself. Correct. So, Lawrence Stroll was born in 1959, July 11th. So, all you July 11th kids, have fun. You got a birthday friend. He's got a net worth of $2.6 billion as of February 2019. And he was born to a Jewish family in Montreal, Quebec.

The son of Leo Strolovich. He changed his name to Lauren Stroll. Self-hating Jew much? Why do people do that, Andy? Why do they just... It's easier to say. Stroll over Strolovich. I did mispronounce it several times before I got to it.

You know, you want to streamline that name if you're going to get fortune gonna get fortune uh fame and fortune the strolovich it's it's too much yeah i guess so um i think we're like strolovich seems like he was more removing a polishness from it than the the jewishness yeah i mean like I will say this, that when it comes to researching this episode, anytime I looked up billionaire stroll, it was a lot of billionaires with young girlfriends

and them having frowns on their faces. A whole bunch of billionaires on the beach, shirtless with mantids, and thin, beautiful women tolerating it for no real reason except for financial gain. I mean, if you have a name like strolovich i imagine that everywhere you go people are asking you why you put that screen door on your submarine so um montreal billionaire laurence stroll he followed in his father's footsteps in making a fortune with the clothing industry the way about how he did this was that in the late 80s, he got the women

and children's license of Pierre Cardin. Now, if you don't know this brand, apparently in the late 80s Are we already going into the Jeffrey Epstein stuff? No, unfortunately no Epstein connections on this one. Not yet. No, there are no Epstein connections. Is there anyone who gets a ladies and children's license?

He gets the license to sell Pierre Cardin clothes for children and women in Canada. And at this time, Pierre Cardin just was selling licenses up the ass. He was the kiss of selling licenses at this point. In the late 90s, according to this article from High Snub Variety, he had 940 licenses with different people uh at the end of his career career in 2011 he was like i want to sell my fucking business for a billion dollars but the reason why he couldn't do it was because some people thought the actual value was closer to 200 million uh the reason why it was so conflicted because nobody knew how much money pierre carden makes based off the licenses so what do these licenses? What's going on with the licenses? Basically, it works like this.

So for the longest time in fashion, you as an individual were going to make a fashion brand. Let's say Andy Palmer is making Palmer shirts. That's his whole fucking thing, right? Palmer hires people to sew up the shirts. Children to sew up the shirts, Children. To sew up the shirts, to put his name on the labels, and all that jazz.

Then he has to hire, he has to find a store that's going to sell it. But for them to sell it, he has to sell them the license. So they can make money on the product and sell it, but they have to buy the license to do that. Okay. So I got,

my shirts are so good, someone needs a Palmer license to sell the Palmer shirts. Precisely. And that's how I make sure that people aren't selling fucking knockoff palmer shirts they want to use the real palmer brand right gotta get that license and so in the late 80s laurence stroll had the license of pierre carden for uh i think it was women's handbags and children clothes so he's selling's selling Pierre Cardin products in Canada, most likely in Montreal in the late 80s. There's a video on YouTube, which is The Business of Fashion Babson Connect Worldwide from 2018,

and it has three people. It is Elle McPherson, Lawrence Stroll, The Billionaire Recovering, and Tommy Hilfiger. And it's actually introduced by Chloe Stroll. And Palmer, would you mind playing how she introduced the whole piece so my name is chloe stroll and i'm a graduate of the class of 2017 badson is a school that embodies clear values and goals for its students in our first year we learned an acronym etna entrepreneur all right so i just want the listeners to remember that voice for the near future when we bring her up again. She's well-practiced in what I assume is handing out the Sorority Sister of the Year Award.

Is this Babson College? B-A-B-S-O-N, yeah. Oh, okay. Yeah, I've heard of them, actually. Yeah. They're founded by this stock millionaire from the 20s. Yeah, it seems like a lot of rich kids go to this school. All three of these people have kids at this school.

Babson? Rich kids? Babson? Yeah. Rich kids going to Babson? What are you trying to imply there? It sounds like a rich kid name. Oh, okay.

Well, it was the name of a rich person. I do want to compliment Chloe's presentation here. She's barely looking at the notes. Play the rest of it. Entrepreneurial thought in action. Throughout the next four years, this acronym would constantly be said in order to inspire, encourage, and remind its students that anything can be accomplished as long as you put your entrepreneurial thought into action.

Holding a microphone even though there's one attached to the podium. And getting feedback. Yeah, Babson doesn't teach you how to fucking talk into a microphone. She has less microphone skills than we do on this show. Her face said we didn't practice the feedback in rehearsal.

Later on in that video, the first time Lawrence Stroll tries to speak, his mic pack doesn't work, and so he ends up using the microphone she's holding as well. Babson's may be great for entrepreneur kids, very bad for AV. so in this video lauren stroll later on mentions that in 1989 he was bidding on a car and he's bidding against this guy ralph lauren of polo ralph lauren fame but at that time he was just a dude that wanted to make shirts and it was an american designer who was not respected in the european market so he was already a guy with some money lauren stroll yeah oh yeah well his dad was in fashion and well basically fashion for a long time was either you buy shirts made for peasants or you buy the finest clothes that have ever existed right there wasn't really a middle ground i mean you know people want that

peasant look now yeah that's right well and one thing that we're going to discuss with Lauren Stroll's partner is how he figured out the market demand being via baby boomers. But going back to this Babson video, at one point, Lauren Stroll mentions that he's bidding on a car against Ralph Lauren. And Ralph Lauren wins the bid on the car, but Lauren Stroll gets a license to sell Ralph Lauren clothes in Canada. And that's how you got connected with Ralph Lauren, as you said yesterday, is that correct? Yes, we actually met over buying a car. Him and I were negotiating for the same car about actually exactly 40 years ago.

He ended up with the car and I ended up with the license for Canada. Okay. In hindsight, a good trade. Good deal. Now, at this time, there weren't a lot. Because he sucked his dick after the bidding was over. No, Andy, he ate his butt, okay?

We're pretty clear on the show what happens here. No one's sucking dick for anything anymore. But they eat that butt to get that cash. Business rule number one. You want to make it to the top, you got to give a strong man an orgasm. So then Ralph Lauren wanted to have Lawrence develop his line in Europe. And the way that this happened was that Silas Chow is a Chinese third generation textile and clothing manufacturer whose family owns novel denim and they they in one article it mentions that silas chow's dad and just imagining someone being like wow this denim

it's so novel um silas chow's novel denim why is that so funny? I mean, how often do you see denim and think, wow, that's novel? You could do worse. Sure. First company names. Yeah, I mean. I don't know. I would probably never say that of denim.

No, that's true. That is a paradigm shifting jacket and jean combo. Yeah, I mean, that's a fair point. Novel denim does certainly add an importance to denim that denim has never deserved. Distressed denim, wow. Okay. That's not, oh, acid wash. So Silas Chow's dad and lauren stroll's dad have a connection and when lauren stroll tries to establish the polo ralph lauren line in europe he contacts silas chow to be his business partner

and in 1989 they build sportswear holdings limited and they make uh ralph lauren from an unknown american brand to a mainstream success. They take it from a guy being like, I want my shirts to be cool to we're going to sell your shirts all around the world. And when this happens, they get the eyes and ears of every other American designer to try and back them because they see how much money that they made ralph lauren they later on partner with tommy hillfiger uh steven you got some information on this yeah so in 1989 joe teams up with stroll and forms sportswear holdings like you said and they acquire one of their acquisitions is tommy hillfinger corporation and they eventually spin it off as an ipo on the stock exchange which goes reasonably well uh it's fairly successful ipo that's in 1992 and um joe is a major shareholder he

serves as the company chairman i think it was his his idea to go to Spencer's and tell him, hey, what if you sold a t-shirt that says Tommy's middle finger? Which finger? He was given the bird. And that's how the 2000s were born. So basically, what Lawrence and Silas do is that they acquire these brands. And they acquired Ralph Lauren they acquire Tommy Hilfiger later on they would acquire acquire Michael Kors they would also acquire Asprey and Garand which are where the centuries-old British companies making luxury jewelry and

leather they take a whole bunch of brands that have name recognition and they figure out how to sell them internationally. And one way that they choose to do this is that these brands at one point were luxury brands. So, you know, Tommy Hilfiger and Ralph Lauren were a brand type that Tommy Hilfiger talks in that Babson College panel called Premium. And before this, you didn't have a premium apparel brand. It used to just be cheap shit or fucking expensive shit. There was no middle ground. They created the Gap. And what that would mean is that this is brand name clothes at affordable prices.

So what Lawrence and Silas do very, very intelligently is they take clothes that were once previously, let costing them, you know, 20 bucks to make potentially, and selling those suits at the same price point, basically duping the consumers to thinking that they were buying a higher quality garment, when in reality, they're buying a premium affordable clothing. So, it's not technically bad, but it cheapens the entire brand as we know it. And now, Stevenven you had some information about apex well actually just to jump back to that yeah like so how did they how did the people who paid three thousand how are they feeling when they see almost the same

suit or maybe even the same suit selling for three to four hundred those people think that they got they're gonna get a great deal because they also bought that back lot when it started selling at three hundred dollars a pop so at first the first move is to sell the current stock that the brand has at a cheaper price and the brands themselves would believe that that's a loss but they're guaranteed because silas chow's end of the factory deal will manufacture the closings that look the same but are a cheaper fabric. I'm guessing what the rich people who are buying the $3,000 things are thinking is like, hey, I wanted clothes made of children, not by children. Are they getting it first and then later when it goes out of style, they sell the remainder of the inventory at $300 to $400? I don't know what the people that bought those luxury brands at a high cost are really thinking.

But I'll say this. People that buy clothes that expensive, they're not connoisseurs of the garment. They just want to wear expensive shit so to them it's not about like oh i bought this suit that's specifically this person from this this area it's no i bought a three thousand dollar suit and but the difference between a suit that's three thousand dollars and a suit said four hundred dollars is really not that much i mean this is pretty demonstrative of that right so you know basically what lawrence and Silas figure out is that we can take advantage of the brand name and then cheapen it by making it a luxury brand to a premium brand without people really even realizing. I mean, the same thing happened with Calvin Klein, who incidentally I have the same birthday as, but that's not the point.

The main thing is that, like, they start... November 19th, 1989. That's right. Calvin Klein and I, same age, same year. Knocked out, same minute. But that's the... I am Calvin Klein. When it comes to fashion, you're rarely buying the clothes itself.

You're also buying the idea of what the clothes represent and so silas and lawrence figure out that there is a market demand which is the baby boomers of america that have very strict uh fashion ideas uh silas chow in an interview with the wharton college talks about this where he says that in he's been writing the baby boomer wave since the early 90s. Basically when they were working with Ralph Lauren, the baby boomers wanted to look like fucking hipsters, laid back and cool.

I mean, it seems like he figured out it's a bullshit market and rich people are dumb. And yeah, that's a long story. Yeah, I mean, basically in the mid 90s, Silas chow was like the baby boomers wanted to like be cool but be seemed like laid back so tommy hillfiger was was what was hot and then in the early to mid 2000s they wanted to seem like they were rich again so they started

buying michael kors shit i mean from silas chow's perspective of course he made all the correct decisions to make himself the billions of dollars that he made but the reality is is that they just made clothes that were okay and the reason why you go to a mall today and you're like man these brands were so reputable and then you're like but this clothes feel like shit it's because of people like lauren stroll and silas chow who took the branding recognition and then cheapened it to make a profit from it. Okay. So they effectively created a new price point. Yeah. With the premium versus luxury.

So at first people are like, this is good shit for a cheap cost. And then they buy a whole bunch of it. And then basically within five to six years, Stroll and Silas via the sportswear holding limited company sell all their shares and move on to the next thing. So by the time the consumers figure out, oh, no, this brand has been cheapened, Stroll and Chow are gone. You know, this reminds me of there was thisflix show about true crime where they would like follow the first episode was pretty cool they followed uh or they traced guns all the way back to like these guys who would make uh off-brand like glocks in the philippines oh really and like uh with fake serial numbers and how they get all the way into the United States is like fake guns. And or is I mean, they're real guns, but, you know, untraceable. And then they had another and it kind of showed, you know, how all these all these different kind of pernicious forces working together.

And then they had another one that was about counterfeiters. And in that one, it's just so i actually i probably have already talked about this on here but you just uh the whole time watching it you just root for the counterfeiters because it's such a bullshit market where it's like oh no there if just anyone can slap a label on these bags and sell them it's cheapening the value of these bags and it's like yeah okay it's sort of like the fake diamonds yeah or just like rooting for people growing diamonds and stuff yeah they can't even tell if it's the real one well it's good well yeah they're like growing real diamonds even it's just they're not you know

it's like oh the value of diamonds was you know because a child soldier point dug it up well and like you know we're talking about uh counterfeit or fraudulent uh bags in this case and it's like what stroll and chow do is essentially the same thing all they have is the license from the brand itself and they've proven to be profitable via Ralph Lauren and Tommy Hilfiger by expanding the brand overseas. And so people are like, oh, I trust you to do it.

And then they take it and then cheapen it and then resell it to people and then sell off their shares. That's a real shame when they bust those shops in little flea markets. Right, right. They're selling the fake ones. Well, I bought a pair of New Balances,

and they are the model number 997, I think, is the technical New Balance number. But then I bought the one that's 997. I just bought some 998s. I bought 997Rs, and there's 997Rs and Hs, and those two are made in China, supposedly. I bought 911s. I bought 911's I bought 998 X's

Why are we focused on these stupid numbers? That's several letters ahead of you I'm trying to fucking talk about how I'm just flexing my big dick bro. You got no big dick in this conversation. Tower 7 look it up Tower 7 shoes look it up anyway so yeah basically Lauren Stroll and Silas Chow have taken advantage of the

market of fashion being bullshit. And with Silas Chow's familiar, by the way, none of these people would make this money unless their families were directly in fashion. So, yeah, it sounds like they were rich to start with and then just got more rich. Yeah, basically. But Cho's grandfather already owned textile factories. Yeah. in fashion so yeah it sounds like they were rich to start with and they just got more rich yeah basically chose grandfather already owned textile factories yeah so and like in that babson uh panel literally all three of them tommy hillfiger al mcpherson and uh laurence stroll laugh at the fact that none of them would have gone to babson for young people who are going into industry

and what would what would you share with them that is a must that they need to do? That's a very interesting question because all three of us haven't been to school. I mean, did you go to university? There's no way I would have been accepted into university. With all due respect to the Babson crew, I was not a good student, so I started my business when I was 17. There you go. And Lawrence, as you said, had started his very early. And I left school when I finished and had aspirations to be a lawyer and found myself running different sorts of businesses throughout the last um time as a model but which i love when people that a college is saying these guys are smart immediately go we

would have never been here like i i feel every time that when that happens that every person in that audience should be like i guess i should just get up and get the fuck out of here. If I want to be like you, why am I sitting listening to you? That's kind of, I mean, I only know about Babson just because they actually do have kind of a cool statistics and like math and statistics department. And a great public speaking department, apparently. In my case, it was human rights she tapped the mic this thing this is the voice of someone who's never had to convince anyone of anything in her entire life you think this is bad wait till you hear her hit pop song coming up in a moment

oh good um do you want to talk about uh apex real quick ste? They eventually, as we know, he sells all his shares in 2006 to a UK private equity firm called Apex for $1.6 billion. Apex ended up selling that brand four years later to US retail

apparel giant Philips Van Housen for $3 billion know i'm sure that we could probably get into apex and they very likely this is i mean it's a private equity company so they probably laid people off you know yeah of course loaded them with debt and then sold them for three billion dollars to van hausen um tommy hillfinger ended up generating worldwide sales revenue uh recently i think is in 2016 of 6.5 billion making it one of the top 10 u.s fashion brands so pretty good exit strategy for cho and also the private equity company Apex.

Right. You know, like, to make their brand seem as successful as it can be, Lawrence, or Stroll and Chow decided to lease the first three floors in one of Trump's building in 2002 to display their stores. I mean, you know, this entire... Everyone you think that sucks that has money and is in fashion and in New York is somehow connected to Stroll and Chow. Between Donald Trump to Epstein to fucking Dershowitz, to all of them. Fucking, they're all somehow connected to the fashion world. And it's because that shit goes hand in hand, baby.

You can't have models without money. If you ever want to know, by the way, if you're in New York and want to know how poor you dress, walk into any store within about two blocks of the Trump building and just look at how the people attending that store look at you. Oh, yeah. Because it's just this look of like

you shouldn't be here and I need you to get out because you're going to make the customers uncomfortable. Your mere presence is reducing our brand to gap levels right now.

I just want to look at like the green uh or the chess set where everything's a handcrafted vase i mean like the fashion world is bullshit but like the uh ceo of abercrombie and fitch a few years ago was like we don't donate our clothes eventually because we don't want abercrombie fitch to be on homeless people we burn them instead. Right. They like slash things up before throwing them away or shit like that. So no one else can use them.

That's the level of fucking brand protection. I mean like IP protection aside here because even that's bullshit but I don't want my shirt to be on a person that needs a shirt because if a poor people if a poor person's wearing my shirt then my company's gonna look bad it's it's the height of of just the the complete

bullshit of um fashion right um and when it comes to fashion like even his wife claire ann stroll uh she has a brand called calends uh she sells like hooded cashmere sweatshirts and track pants uh guess how much her shit costs steven you want to give a guess how much of what uh a cashmere sweatshirt sweatshirt and track pants and track pants just just throw out a number, Steven. $400. What about you, Andy? What do you think? $83.

Solid guesses, both of you, but it's more than $1,000 for these pieces of clothing. That's what his wife does. She's like, I saw a need in athleisure, which is a huge new growing market between Lululemon and Under Armour. I own Lululemon stock in my fake stock market game.

That's right. You can play with us on Best Brokers. Join us as we lose money in the stock market. It's an emerging market, and people who are so bored at their jobs that they run marathons and do yoga so you're thinking yourself all right yogi these people cheap and american clothing brands but are they really that's the fight that desk body market yeah that's exactly

what it is though yeah and you know uh in that uh uh wharton uh piece with the silence cho he talks about like you need to know where the uh middle class of america shopping and then you can make a dickload of money and where is this theoretical middle class in america currently they're running from their demons and they need some comfortable clothes to do that right they're lonely as fuck and they need to wear some shit to run around a whole bunch. Because capitalism makes you think you have excess energy when really you have shame.

They're all being poisoned by their food and they're fighting the uphill obesity battle. What I was doing research for this episode, I found one article that was a link in Bing that talked about Gucci being looked at for sweatshop use. And then when you try to click it, immediately the link was gone.

And then so I tried to copy the text over from that post and then try and put it in Google and in DuckDuckGo and a whole bunch of this stuff. And the post itself is, Gucci accused of running sweatshops in China. Sweatshops in Huang Xiaoming was the first Asian face of Gucci in 2008. Gucci stands accused of running sweatshops at its flagship store in Shenzhen. Conditions were allegedly so bad, two women had abortions after being forced to stand up to dot,

dot, dot. Now, if you try and look that up in Google, literally you get dummy bullshit links, like links that when you click, it's like random words and numbers, like all China sweatshop allegations on the internet have been scrubbed.

And the thing that's so frustrating is that although I couldn't find any specific instances where novelim, the company, the textile company that Silas Chow belongs to, I know that you can't have a billion dollar fashion empire in China without having some of your factories deal in these ways. It seems like a brand transition from Gucci Gang to Gucci Triad. Now, although I cannot say that Gucci Triads, I'll see you later. Although technically novel denim has not been accused of anything we're about to mention, Stephen looked at some

other denim practices and the reality is if you're making denim in China, you're dealing with this shit that steven's about to mention well so uh one fashion trend obviously is uh the distressed jeans look right where they just like deliberately make it look old and bad because that's good now of course and um wait that's still good? I thought that died in 2005. It came back, though. Oh, it came back.

Now it's a vintage. Especially in Asia. Sure, that makes sense. Is it a big thing where the crotch is worn out? Because I think I'm already ready for that one. I hope that becomes a fashion. But the way that most sweatshops in southeast asia and china accomplish this is through what's called sandblasting where they just have people who use they just manually use these machines these sandblasting machines to distress the clothing by shooting sand at it

really fast velocities right and so you know it fucks it up in a pleasant looking way. That sounds like a fun job, actually. Yeah, but it's actually, it can be poisonous because the sand can get in your lungs. Right. And so if you have this like silicate particulate matter, it's like virtually impossible for it to get out of your lungs once it gets in there that sounds fun with breathing protection yeah like even with like the the little bullshit masks they have often enough it doesn't yeah it still gets in yeah if you're fucking hurling sand

so fast that it's damaging fucking genes i mean genes were developed because they were strong enough for fucking miners of gold. Like, that's how it became popular in the U.S. Incidentally, those, like, gold mining and stuff, like, silicosis, which is what the condition is called, is one of the oldest, like, workplace-related diseases under capitalism. Like, they're diagnosed as problems for factories. So China's ripped jeans is a throwback to the labor conditions that are dealing with the gold miners. Yeah, so what was I going to say? I lost my train of thought.

That was just too funny, Steven. My throwback capitalism joke was just so good. So the factories, the types of factories that would be supplying novel denim with these distressed jeans are probably doing some sandblasting. What if they get kind of frisky one day

and they have a sandblaster fight like you would with hoses but then it rips off one guy's face? These things, they shoot out pretty fast, though, so it's not just like a leaf blower or something. I'm just saying, you know. Yeah, no, it ripped your face off. Yeah.

Yeah. It shred them. I mean, that's probably happening. Not on purpose. Just some horsing around at the office. I don't think. Oh, I know what I was going to say. I looked up the weight in the report.

They have some wage rates. And the Sandblasters actually get paid more. But I think it's because they keep losing people from poisoning. So there's a hazard premium to it. So they get paid the equivalent of, I think it was 5,000 yuan per month, which is like $800 a month, which is pretty good, actually, for laborers in China. Sure. Mainland China.

Yeah, a job that can rip your face off. You get paid slightly more. Yeah, so it's actually pretty dangerous. Yeah, I am not surprised by that. You know, I wouldn't mind emailing Matt from Asia Tours about what Silas' reputation in China is. I will say that we will do another episode about Silas and the Chao family empire because he has a daughter who he is planning on letting her inherit all of his business connections, and she's already on the way to becoming a fashion magnate herself.

And in that Babson interview, Lawrence Stroll would like his daughter to take up the fashion mantle because he's currently now sold all of his fashion assets and is going into a more reputable industry, private equity. Lawrence Stroll decided that

the fashion world wasn't cutthroat enough he wanted to go into private i want to profit off of ambulances oh uh one more thing on the silica silicosis uh so they in mainland china the ccp ccp doesn't allow like they they have like official nationwide unions that you're automatically enrolled in that just have this distant, unaccountable leadership. Sure. So they've been trying to get them to recognize the silicosis problem,

but it's slow going because they don't... Wait, so they have the AFL-CIO over there? No. Sorry. The AFL-CIO... I zinged the AFL-CIO there oh sorry that whoosh uh they just have like you're right it is kind of like the afl cio in that the leadership is largely unaccountable to rank and file members wishes so they you can't have they've outlawed independently created and run trade unions for the most part in mainland China.

So like the exact groups that would have a chance of effectively organizing around this issue, you can't do it there. Hmm. Yeah. Really? Yeah. So this entire, this thing you're mentioning with the silica sand like they can't fucking take that out because you can't organize well they don't it just makes it harder because they're a communist nation um that is built on the foundation of worker rights and so

uh it's it's it's really just redundant to have any kind of effective um you know labor representation right but i mean you have like this huge nationwide trade federation that in theory represents the workers but in practice like i mean you're not going to be able to get get a hold of those leaders to fight individual cases of silicosis in these sweatshops as easily as you would if you were able to form your own union. Makes sense. Now you're thinking to yourself, oh, Yogi, come on. Just because Chinese people are having their face

blown off by sand, this family can't be that bad, can they? Well... I was thinking that. Yeah, me too. I will say this. Lawrence Stroll has a yacht that's 200 million euros. Oh, you mean $240 million?

That's right. Incidentally, in 2015, there's a very sad Daily Mail article about how Canadian billionaire Lawrence Stroll, behind Michael Kors, will be asked to review safety procedures. You know, because he just kind of made a mistake. And what was that mistake? A British deckhand 22-year-old drowned while it was in route to pick up katherine zeta jones that's got to ruin your fucking day you know that that big test that you have to do picking up katherine zeta jones with your yacht yeah i mean it's very stressful because it's like i got to

pick up katherine zeta jones and now this fucking kid drowned off my boat. She doesn't want to get on the boat after that. Yeah. You know she's afraid of ghosts. The British employee, Michael Hanlon, was 22 years old. He died because he was locked out of the 62-meter yacht after returning from a night out with friends. Supposedly, he slipped to his death from the boat while trying to climb up an unofficial emergency entrance on the upper deck which i

don't know how the fuck that fucking happens but he was in regular contact with his mom well yeah here's how that fucking happens what you're about to say here yeah he was in regular contact with his mom and his mom says that leading up to when he had died, he had hardly had any sleep. He was just completely overworked and exhausted. His last messages to me were that he was looking forward to getting some sleep. Well, it's a happy ending then. Wow. So because of Laurence Stroll, this British deckhand who had only been working as his dream job for two weeks,

drowned because they had to go pick up katherine santa jones and michael douglas got throat cancer from eating her out too much these are all real news stories so you're thinking yourself just just it's it's it's definitely um uh an example of like uh you know one one of those things where people, rich people expect the people around them to work harder than anything that's reasonable. Even if they're not getting paid, you know, maybe they're the guy working on the yacht, this kid, you know, maybe he's getting paid 50% more than someone who works on a ferry. Okay, sure. But because it's on a billionaire yacht, the expectation is you will work yourself to death. And if you're not working yourself to death, you're getting as close to death as possible for my benefit and it and that's just the the mentality

is they think that they're so important that anyone they pay has to like risk their lives to wait on them hand and foot especially these yacht based billionaires yeah the crews they hire yeah well what people actually don't know and this was an article in the new york times is that katherine zeta jones pussy has a lot of silica in it and so michael douglas may have had a point when it came to eating her out with all of that micro silk op it's silica but he was consuming let's stop bad mouthing katherine Zeta-Jones pussy, okay? This is not about Catherine Zeta-Jones pussy. This is about a dead child.

So you're thinking to yourselves, well, what will the Stroll Empire be? And I'll have you know, ladies and gentlemen, Chloe Stroll, oh, she's not just a poor public speaker who graduated from Babson seven years ago she put out a song what was this music about? this is Chloe Stroll

it's called Surrender it's a cover of the classic 80's rock band mommy's all right daddy's all right can you come and save me from my misery oh it's uh if you're wondering what the video looks like it's um again a rich girl who's never had to convince anyone of anything doing a Britney Spears impression. And if you're wondering, the

fathering style of Lawrence Stroll is clearly if I buy you a pony, will you shut up? Well, when it comes to equestrian values, he does have a son who he's paid his son's entire way into a Formula F1 racing

career. Yeah, his son was what is it, Lance Stroll. That's right, Lance Stroll. By the way, these names, not good. Not that Strollvich would have been better with Lance, but Lance Stroll, Chloe Stroll. They sound like they're bad Incredibles. Why do rich people have to name their kids Chloe in a way that is as not...

It's clearly spelled Chloe. What? Like, Ch-O-L-E-E-L-O-E. Oh, C-H? It's C-H-L-O-E. Like, that's, those are three consonants, like, a pair of consonants and then another one that can't be pronounced together. I see.

You take that H out, you move that E in front of the O, and then you get Cleo. And everyone knows everyone loves Ms. Cleo. It's just Chloe is spelled wrong. Anyway, they got this dumbass son, Lance Stroll, who is apparently being accused of being a pay racer, which means his dad spent something like $80 million. And I didn't go too far into Formula One racing politics.

I didn't dive very deep into it because it's a weird world, but apparently racing fans are pissed off at this phenomenon of pay racers, who are basically people who have bought their way into the league, which instead of meritocratically, I guess... Racing your way to the top. Yeah, racing your way to the top. Aren't each of those cars that cost like a million dollars oh hey hey minimum i'm sure some of those people proved to other rich people that they were good enough to race not were the fastest sperm from a rich person's nutsack to be a good racer well yeah it's like saying he you have to at least he paid his way into being the driver yeah yeah yeah and you have to i mean i'm i think

his dad paid like 80 million to to buy i think a team um and this kid his kid started go-kart racing when he was 10 which i don't know if you guys knew a go-kart kid but uh the kid on my block got a go-kart and he's like and only I can drive it it's like you already hate that kid you had a go-kart kid friend friends at that point it was kind of stretching no not multiple no he was just like hey I bet I could beat you in a race around the block in like any way I can and I'm like um what do you mean he's like i got a go-kart and it's like oh can i drive it no it's like oh you suck um no but so this guy he's like racing go-karts from the age of 10 and he uh won some races which is probably something you can do when your dad's a billionaire and

you can just spend all day driving around on the go-kart track at your house and um from there he started doing formula 3 which i guess is uh shittier formula 1 um when he was like 17 he started doing that and eventually he got into uh formula 1 racing and uh if you look up lance stroll online uh the autocomplete would be like lance stroll bad driver lance stroll uses blue shell yes yes like well it's funny you should mention that because in 2018 he was uh doing some practice runs for some french race and uh he smashed up his car on the curb like there's the the picture there's no i i couldn't find any video of this uh wreck but there's a picture of the crane holding up the car and one of the wheels is uh i think formula i don't know much about formula one cars but i don't think the

wheels are supposed to hang um yeah not from the vehicle in a way that doesn't allow you to drive the fucking car yeah yeah and his his quote was oh man yeah i i had a lot of trouble on this in playstation as well he's like that curve always always gave me grief in the playstation oh man that he really that wow yeah that was his actual quote which pissed off off racing fans, to which I say, why are you, what do you expect? Like, these are multi-million dollar cars. No one's going to, like, do a rags to riches racing story. I mean, maybe some people are. Yeah, and it's pretty indicative that, like I mentioned earlier, that since his dad got that first Ralph Lauren deal because they were both bidding on a car and his dad likes cars.

His son was like, can I go go-kart racing once? And his dad's like, looks like you're going to be an F1 Formula racing driver. And the kid, like even in interviews, is so apathetic in every fucking video. Like I know that being a race car driver must be difficult for various reasons. But your emotions aren't monotone when you're being interviewed about a dream job. Someone made a, um, 10 minute compilation of him,

uh, saying, you know, in an interview, 10 minutes of this, you know, you know, you know,

you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know,

you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know you know you know you know you know you know you know you know you know you know oh man that is fucking hypnotic and then uh the first uh top comment is my favorite part when he says you know my favorite part when he say you know yeah uh his dad in uh 2018 bought the f1 team force india which was in financial troubles and so he paid 120 million dollars for it so when he bought that the creditors were be paid were to be

paid in full all 405 jobs at the team were saved and now lance stroll is the driver of that team yeah imagine you work for that team this guy pays 100 million to keep it afloat right and then you say no your son can't drive a race car for our team yeah like it the stipulation was his son who just has like almost no experience gets to be a driver well his son has lots of experience um but it it's it's all it's it's a f3 or whatever yeah it was an f3 like he he won some junior championships but again clearly like he grew up where you know most kids aren't like i should i'm gonna give racing a try and then just have that uh you know anything other than a bike or illegal drag racing.

Like you're not going to be like, I'm going to give that a try and suddenly have that available to you. Yeah. And also, if you do that, you don't have to then spend the rest of your life doing it because your dad is an insane, passionate extremist and wants you to fucking be an F1 racing driver instead of a human being. I don't even think it's his dad being an extremist on him. It's just, you know, if I get you a pony, will you shut up? He's clearly just giving his kids whatever they want,

and he gave his daughter a pop career, and he gave his son a racing career that they're both bad at. There's another Daily Mail article from 2017, and it's about Kimberly Garner, 27 27 looks sensational in a tiny black bikini as she cozy's up to f1 driver lance stroll 18 on 200 million super yacht in italy so lance stroll is like hey dad can i take the yacht and his dad's like sure and this uh 27 year old's like i wouldn't mind being naked around you for a ride on your yacht.

And the best thing is that in the comments of that article, you got people being like, you know, since he's been fucking a lot more, he's been driving a little bit better. So I feel like maybe, you know, if he gets his dick out of his pants a little bit more, he might be winning some more races. And you know what? They're not wrong. I mean, I get it. You take a bit more risks when you have a fun life if you know what i mean

um but yeah when it comes to uh land stroll we will come back to silas cho and his um textile family industry novel denim and to see what if any if not several labor violations that they've contributed to and there's a video Lance Stroll making poutine from this year in Montreal, and that Canadian fuck can't even make good poutine. He is very bad at it, and to be fair, he's 20 years old. Oh, man, that's an indictment. Yeah, seriously, if you're Canadian and you like this family, you're an American to me.

You know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know. We're only 51 seconds into it. And that's after I played it for a while before this. Are people linking to specific times in the video? Here, I'm going to skip to about four minutes, 54 seconds in. You know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know. Yeah, if you look at Lance Stroll and the immediate Bing results, it goes 18 points, 12th place. Average start position, 16th, 11th place.

Average finish position, 10th, 7th place. Zero wins, least in league. Yeah. He has one collision related, did not finish. And with that, this has been Grubstakers. My name is Yogi Pollywall. I'm Andy Palmer. I'm Steve Jeffries.

Thank you very much for listening, and you'll come back next week, and so will we. Everybody, this is Robert Kubica. I have an announcement for Lance Stroll. Daddy's Cash, on the team with Daddy's Cash. Mommy, Daddy's Cash. Lance Stroll with Daddy's Cash. We'll be right back. Daddy's cash, Lance Stroll with Daddy's cash. Daddy's cash, boy, he got no talent cash. Daddy's cash, ain't no hope for Arken's ass. Mr. Kupica, the Polish Vito Corleone. Arken's son, come here to Uncle Kupica.

Let's fuck with Stroll, he earns his lonely daddy's heart. So he can get his cars and clothes. But daddy can't buy talent for him. Daddy's cash is all he knows. Mr. Stroll, sister Stroll It's the troll, William's hope Let's suppose you could drive Single podium could grow

Teenage boy, difficult You're dumb and think you're in control But other paid drivers like Sergey Know they suck so they don't hold on I'm all conscious, I'll jump on This dumb song, let's jump on Lance the rapper, engineers They get no chance to gather

Information from this crapper. That is tech, so that don't matter. Paris penis has some cash as well, so here I am at last. Got no seat, but it's okay, guess I took dump inside this car. Total pick me up, replace the pot as soon as contracts are. How's it feel? Stroll to take over the car of number two. Paris be prioritized like yo, that's Ferrari's over you Daddy's cash, on the team with daddy's cash

Daddy's cash, Lance throw with daddy's cash Daddy's cash, boy ain't got no talent cash Daddy's cash, got no hope for Atkins ass Daddy's cash, on the team with daddy's cash Daddy's cash, Lance throw with daddy's cash Outro Music We'll be right back. Keep Kevin in his race and incidents. He'll trick him with rage incidents if he don't take it damn easy. Kevin is scared of spiders. Romain is better driver. Wintersteiner. I'm a Drano, man.

That has the fibers. I grill the grit with my spit. Kiss that brown spit. Yes, good night. I lie about the fuel tank to give Kevin a better ride. Ha, Ha. You get back. Suck my boner.

Signs and Nando off the throne. Bring the grit girls to my home. I'm on Tinder with my phone. Ferrari is in my car. All the money is in the jeans. We'll be right back.