The I Love CVille Show With Jerry Miller! - Chelsea Miller And Christine Day Joined Michael Urpí & Xavier Urpí On "Today y Mañana!"

Episode Date: November 21, 2024

Chelsea Miller of Naturally You Self Care and Christine Day of Miss Day Delights joined Michael Urpí & Xavier Urpí On “Today y Mañana!” “Today y Mañana” airs every Thursday at 10:15 am on The I Love CVille Network! “Today y Mañana” is presented by Emergent Financial Services, LLC, Craddock Insurance Services Inc, Charlottesville Opera and Matthias John Realty, with Forward Adelante.

Good morning everyone and welcome to Today and Manana. I'm Michael, happy to be joined by Xavier on a beautiful Thursday morning. Good morning, Michael. Good morning, Pops. How are you doing? I'm doing great. All right. Yeah, I'm doing good, too.

All right. It's always a good day when you're on Today and Mañana. Absolutely. Exactly. As always, we are very happy to be presented by Emergent Financial Services, powered by our wonderful sponsors, Charlottesville Opera, Craddock Series Insurance, Matisse Young Realty, and of course, FABBA, the premier Latino business and networking group here in Charlottesville.

I like the way you do that. I really like that. Alex did it once, and it's just like I feel like I've got to keep up the tradition. You've got to keep it up, absolutely. Otherwise, you just never know what's going to happen. And always a big thank you to all our viewers who are going to be watching today. What do we got to do every time? So, yeah, so it's important to like and share. And if you want, you can even subscribe.

Yeah, yeah. See, this is the line that I have to remember all the time. Exactly. We give them one simple line. One simple line. She's got the like, share, subscribe. You know, and half the time you get it right. It's impressive.

It is impressive but yeah we're very happy to be here with you on this beautiful morning we got a nice fall day we're getting very close to Thanksgiving what's next week? it's next week I just have to remember to wish everybody a happy Thanksgiving because we're not on next Thursday

yes oh good thing you mentioned that to be honest I was going to be like yeah we got another show but I got to remember to wish people a happy Thanksgiving because we're not on next Thursday. Yes, oh, you know, good thing you mentioned that. To be honest, I was going to be like, yeah, we've got another show, but I've got to remember to wish people a happy Thanksgiving. Just remember at the end of the show. At the end, exactly. Remind me at the end of the show what's important. Don't remind me of the band. I'll be forgetting by then. We always have that issue whenever we've got to be like, he's like, oh,

remind me of something that I've got to do later. So I'm like, hey, you've got to do that thing later. I say that immediately. And then, of course, three hours later, when I'm supposed to remind him, I forget, you forget. And then it's like, oh. And then it's only after you're supposed to do it. It's like, hey, did you do that thing that you were supposed to do two hours ago? No. Okay.

You know, but I will remember to wish everyone a happy Thanksgiving. That's why I write things down now. Everything I just write. Did you write that down? No, I'm not going to. I don't have a pen first. Why do I have a pen here somewhere? I'm not going to write that down, though, because I want to forget. Okay, well, then make sure you remind me, because now it's on you, because you a pen first. Why do I have a pen here somewhere? I'm not going to write that down, though. Because I want to forget. Okay. Well, then make sure you remind me because now it's on you.

I promise. Because you mentioned it first. There you are. It's on me. You know, but speaking of Thanksgiving, we've got some wonderful Thanksgiving treats in front of us. And I feel like maybe we should kind of move straight into our wonderful guests. We have to. The faster the better.

Absolutely. So we are very happy now to be joined by Christine Day from Miss Day Delights and Chelsea Miller from Naturally You Self-Care. Christine, Chelsea, thank you so much for joining us today. Good morning. Thanks for having us. No, it's our pleasure, our pleasure. So, Christine, I'll start with you. Why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself and kind of how you started Miss Day Delights?

So, I've been baking for a really long time. I think the first thing I baked was a peanut butter cookie. It was one of my favorite cookies. And ever since then, I worked in multiple food industries, hospitality, and then ended up in health care for nine years, but was still doing my baking on the side. And then last year, 2023, it was just too busy. I was really, really busy. So then this year,

I quit UVA in April and, you know, dedicated to my business. So basically, as you were working, you kind of had a little side business of kind of baking treats. So how did that work when you were kind of like still working with people? Was it like friends or family? Yeah, friends, family, people at work, you know, just, you know, cakes here, you know, little pastries on the side. And I would bring it to work also. So, yeah. Okay, like a little taste testing. Yes, yes.

So kind of where did you get, like, your inspiration from, from, like, baking and, like, cooking, like, all these different recipes? So, well, you know, I don't know if people are familiar with Pantops, but there's an everyday cafe there and I worked there for a really long time and we would cook all the time there, but just the thought of, or just the actions of cooking really brings me joy. So the baking, you know, I would bake for friends all the time. How did it feel when you kind of took that plunge? Because that's a big step.

That is a big step. Well, honestly, it's scary. It's really, really scary. I can imagine. But I have a lot of support, and yeah, I'm really glad I did it. Awesome. All right, what about you, Chelsea? How did you start Naturally You Self-Care?

So it's kind of a labor of two loves. My last year of high school and first year of college, I was in cosmetology. So I have my cosmetology license. I was really enjoying, you know, doing hair, mostly styles and stuff. And then I got really into gardening. And I really just started to kind of embrace being outside. I realized how much I love nature and plants and having my hands in the dirt. And so I kind of pulled things together. And, you know, I take the natural ingredients and I can use them if I still do hair.

And it was just kind of the perfect way to put those together. You mentioned gardening in front of the gardening expert. That's become his little hobby. I'm not an expert, but I just, you know, I just, the reason I like gardening, and I just like to grow things that we can literally eat. Yes. I'm not a kind of gardener that grows flowers and stuff like that.

That's what Mama wants him to do, but that's, yeah. But I just like it because, you know, I always, I just, I'm just still amazed. I just, you just put a little seed in the ground, and then, like, by the end of the summer, there's this big plant producing fruits or, you know, vegetables or tomatoes, whatever it is. And it's just like I sit there and go, wow, how did that happen, you know?

So, Chelsea, I'm going to ask the same question I asked Christine. So kind of how did it feel taking kind of that plunge into kind of like starting your own little business? So it was kind of weird. Like I started it a little bit. So I guess to go back a little bit, I always thought I wanted to be a lawyer. And so I actually started dabbling in this a little bit when I was I was in North Carolina and I was in law school. And when I got there, it just, you know, I gave it the time. It didn't feel right. I turned it into I stayed at the same school and I went to business school, practice a little bit, you bit, had the pandemic to work on things.

And pretty much right after that is when I kind of went into doing markets and actually kind of along the same timeline as her, I went completely out of the regular workforce in May and just took this on full force because I felt like I was at a point where I needed to give it more time to grow to really make it what I wanted it to be. And so you focus on kind of like self-care products and like, you know, bath soaps and stuff. Can you kind of explain, you know, kind of what makes your kind of, you, before we were kind of the show, you were kind of talking about the natural ingredients.

Can you all go into that a little bit? Yeah yeah so i think what's really important for me is just making better things more accessible to more people um it's i think a lot of people get stuck in oh i have to use this but it's not great for you but it's cheap and so that was always really important to me i think a lot of the natural products are a lot of times you see them at just a price point that not everybody can reach. And so just making things that are better for you, better for your home, better just to enjoy, it makes me feel really good about allowing more people to put their hands on that. And that's so important, right, today. I mean, whether it be food or products that you use around the house or that you put on yourself.

I mean, sometimes we don't think about that. We take a cream, we just put it on you, and, you know, you go back and you read what's behind that cream. It's like, you know, it's like it takes you 10 minutes to read through the whole thing. You've got to go to Google. It's like, wait, what is this stuff? Exactly. So it's always wonderful to be able to say, you know, look at the products, look at what you're eating and see what's in there and make sure that that which especially you're applying to your body or the air around you is, you know, is the most natural that you can certainly, you know, in some cases afford, but that you can use, right? Yeah. I think there's been a conscious effort lately among people, and it's really wonderful when, like, small business owners such as yourselves, kind of like whether baking or, you know, cosmetics,

that you can eat stuff and put stuff on your face that you know exactly what it is. Yeah. Stuff that you feel good about. Exactly. You know, like, it just felt like there was such a time when it's just like, you know, even laundry detergents, like, people are just kind of like, why is all this stuff in there? It's like some people have allergic reactions to that.

We felt like we were trying to pull people away from natural foods and natural cosmetics. When in reality, it's like, well, other people have been using, having these methods for like thousands of years before we decided to switch to all this kind of genetically modified ingredients. So I feel like it's nice to kind of go back to that natural kind of living yeah for sure so I know you both are at the markets right so is that where you began to in display your particular products yes yeah um Penn Park well this is my first year ever doing the farmers markets so we met at the Penn Park area but it's it's an awesome market there and just getting around to different markets and getting your name out there is so that's been very very helpful the idea that you

go to the markets and people get to see you and taste your in this case they should they show product or use your products and then they like and then they reach back okay well they can use that product to taste that one. I mean, some of them you potentially could. It may not taste great, but you could eat it. Do you remember the movie Mrs. Doubtfire with Robert Williams? There's a little scene, remember, when he's trying to hide his face from the woman

because he still got the 10-minute stuff. So he sticks his face in the buttercream and the lady goes, what do you have on your face? Oh, it's natural buttercream. It's so good. It keeps you smooth. And then the lady, when it falls, she's like, I know it's on her face. What I do,

though, actually, just recently, Herbatarian Tea, I blended their tea into my cookies and made a shortbread. So it was a chai tea cookie. It was one of their teas that they sell. So people were like, oh, I love your shortbread.

Where did you get your tea? And I'm like, well, their tea is right over there. That's incredible. That's great. I like those kind of... That's great marketing for both ends. Absolutely. And that's really cool. I didn't know that you did that, but I actually use two of their tea blends in my massage oils and a bath salt. Oh, my goodness.

They're great. So you could be bathing in the oil while eating. Yes. And then drinking the tea. Wow. I guess if you really like chai, I guess. Chai I like, actually. I actually like chai.

I like the flavor of chai. I'm not a great tea drinker. Christine, I was going on your Facebook, and I noticed there was a cake that you made. I assume it was a kid's birthday party, but it was this Deadpool Wolverine cake, and it was massively impressive. You might just kind of talk a little bit

of how you kind of came up with that? So my friend Chanel her son Lucas, it's his 10th birthday and he really loves Wolverine and Deadpool so she gave me some ideas or sent me some inspiration pictures usually I like to use my own imagination my artistic ability to create what I want

so yeah, I kind ability to create what I want. So yeah, I kind of sketch out what I think the cake will look, and then I design it. Wow. So you mean you sketch it out by hand, like drawing? Yes, yes. Oh, wow. I usually sketch it out like a little blueprint of what I want to do, because I do 3D cakes also. So I draw it, and then I sculpt it.

Oh my goodness, wow. So I guess you bake whatever it is, you know, put the dough and all that stuff together. The cake. The cake dough, whatever it is. And cut it. And then you cut it into whatever design. Yeah, with the Wolverine and the Deadpool, that was just a stack cake. But then I used modeling chocolate to do the little pieces.

Okay, that's what I was going to ask because it was like the little swords. So those are modeling chocolate. I try not to use fondant. I know some people are pretty picky with the food coloring, so I try not to use as much. But for the sculpted cakes, I usually just sculpt the cakes and carve them out and then lay the buttercream and then it's designed from there. I don't know if you guys like the

Michelangelo of cakes. But no, it was so impressive. I was looking at it and I was like, oh my goodness, how long did it take you to make that? So it can take a couple hours. A couple hours? I thought it would take a day. I mean, a day or so to prep the cake ahead of time and then you gotta let the cake cool and um obviously has to be cold to carve

um so it is there's different steps oh wow did you did you have to like look up how other people did it like do you have like food network shows that did you like well i do watch food network a lot and they do have, you know, they do do sculpted cakes too. So it's a process. It is a process. Yeah, and you also were generous enough to bring some of your treats here.

I don't know if you want to show it to the viewers right there. Was it pecan bars? So these are the popular items at the market, at the farmer's market. So I do have a pecan bar and a cranberry white chocolate oatmeal.

And they're one of my favorites too. My husband's like, if you have any more cranberry white chocolate oatmeal. He's probably like, stop selling them all. He's like, do you have any leftovers? He goes into the kitchen, he's like, I'm dying for a pecan bar. They're all gone. They're all gone. He sold them all.

My mother, my mom does that too because my brothers, yeah, and the sister-in-laws, every once in a while, I'll be like, they're all gone. They're all gone. You sold them all. My mother and my mom does that too because my brothers, yeah, and the sister-in-laws, every once in a while, I'll be like, oh, she made like something. So I'll be like, oh, let me go have one. I'm like, they're all gone. What happened? So I gave them to your brothers. I'm like, what about me and my father?

What about us? I'm going to chop liver here. It's like they're all gone. It's true, right? That's like, how come I don't have leftovers? Oh, I gave them away. It's like, what? I much, that's like, how come I have leftovers? Oh, I give them away. It's like, what? What's hoping for?

And I know you're also taking Thanksgiving orders. So how does that process work for baking for Thanksgiving? It might be a little too late, but. Well, yeah. So the 22nd is the last day to place orders. What day is today? It's tomorrow. Yeah, tomorrow's the last day.

So we made it to Thanksgiving. Still got time. Yeah, there's still a lot of time. But yeah, I have a lot of pies and, you know, I have treat boxes going out and pecan bars. So, yeah. Nice. What kind of pies? I do – I'm doing apple, sugar cream, and pumpkin.

Sugar cream? Mm-hmm. What's that? Sugar cream, it's a lot of sugar. It's sugar and heavy cream. My kind of pie. It's got milk and sugar, isn't it? Yes. There sugar isn't it yes but it's perfect it's a no no it's like an indiana pie my father um used to make it every thanksgiving so

yeah i don't think i've ever heard of sugar cream pie wow yeah it's really good and you do apple pies apple pie and pumpkin pie okay do you have a favorite pie oh um it is the sugar cream yeah well it's i can erase you the nostalgia oh blueberry too i love blueberry with the streusel on top blueberry is very good yeah and um chelsea i did have a quick question for chelsea okay oh i was gonna ask chelsea well go ahead no okay so ask your question. No, go ahead. No, it's all right. So my question was, so you talked a little bit about how you were into gardening, right? And then, you know, you eventually got into self-care. Do you, like in whatever it is that you produce, the creams, oils, et cetera, do you grow anything in particular to, you know make those products I do as much as I

can I try to use um my own like I do a rose water I use my own roses for as long as I can I grow lavender um rosemary herbs that I put in different things so peppermint mint things like that too yep I do um so you know not a ton right now but i've kind of got plans i've got big plans for next year um but yeah i try to grow as much as possible um and then what i can't or don't grow i just try to make sure i source well of course of course yeah so tell me a little bit so i always always wonder how that works. So you take the lavender, you take the lavender, right? And then do you I do a salve and a wildflower soap through the summertime. And it has dead nettle in it, which is that little purple flower that everybody thinks of as like a weed in your yard. It is so, so great for your skin.

It has a ton of benefits. So I do that and I actually infuse olive oil. So, and there's a couple of different ways that you can do that and I actually infuse olive oil so and there's a couple different ways that you can do that I let it sit like on a shelf for a couple weeks to infuse um so there's a lot of different things that you can do with herbs florals and you can use them directly you can dry them you can infuse them so so infusion basically means you drop them in the oil and just let that you know aroma or whatever it is you just kind of let it sit. You can do like a quick infusion and put it in a mason jar and put it in a pot with like boiling water for a certain amount of time.

Or yeah, you can just do like a shelf infusion. Wow. Wow. So it takes a little time to actually create the products that you're doing. So it's probably a process whereby. It's kind of a good rotation. Like the body oils that i do i infuse those for four weeks before i put them out to sell um and it's a blend of oils

essential oil and then that's what i use the herbarians teas for so i infuse those before i put them out okay okay wow so it's all it's a labor of love i mean it's not just it's not just going out and buying things to come together yeah Yeah, for sure. Wow. And when people kind of come for yourself, do you help people out? For example, let's say I got, like, dried hands. Do you kind of help people kind of recommend, oh, this is the kind of oil that you need to help dry skin? Or let's say you get, like, rashes. Like, oil to help rashes? I do as much as I can.

I try to make sure I have a little bit of something for everybody. So there's a couple of things that I have that are really good for sensitive skin, for eczema, for people that deal with rosacea or their skin gets irritated really easily. Oatmeal oats is really good for that. So I do like a bath soak. My niece and nephews, they all have super sensitive skin, and two of them have eczema. So they love the oatmeal bath salt it's just it's really good and calming for your skin um the and that's another big reason that i like i like to keep the ingredients simple and clean um because that's stuff that most people

can bear and most people's skin loves yeah do people ever come to you and ask you questions about hey i have this issue yeah definitely and and again you questions about, hey, I have this issue. Yeah, definitely. And again, you know, there's some stuff that I haven't dealt with personally, or I don't know somebody with that issue. So I try to recommend as well as I can. And always, you know, tell people to give something to try. Most people that have like, you know, really heavy irritations to things they'll know, um, or allergies, stuff like that. But yeah, I, I try to just, I try to put something out there for everybody cause I think it's really great stuff. I think it helps a lot of people. And I have a quick question about oils. Cause sometimes people like put oils,

is there a problem with putting oil too much on your skin or on your hair? Um, I think that's kind of a debate uh because it's it's pop it's a popular thing now to do um i can't think of what it's called but basically using oil on your skin to pull the oil out of your skin um i haven't quite wrapped my head around that just yet um but i think it i think you have to either try it or just kind of know because everybody's different. Try and stuff out, you know, different oils. Lighter oils are going to be better if you want something on your face. Heavier oils are good, you know, for foot creams.

So, yeah, just either trying it out or, you know, if people, the more that people can tell me, the better I can help them. So if somebody's just kind of getting into this, teenagers, young teens, young adults always love how my booth looks and it grabs their attention, certain colorful things. But sometimes at a younger age, you don't really know what your skin is like yet. And it also changes. Yeah, it also changes sometimes. I remember it. It's just, well, can you get me to help the pimples go away?

Right, yeah. yeah it also changes sometimes you know it's just well can you give me to help the pimples right yeah and there's some things that I think are pretty um I just I guess kind of general across the board most people can use them like a toner that I do that's really great for acne um so yeah some things are definitely very useful some things are more specific what areas of self-care do you have you seen in your experience that people neglect maybe the most? Oh, I think more than anything, like the mental aspect of it. Like that's a big thing I talk about with, for example, the bath teas. They have benefits when you are kind of sitting and steeping, essentially, in the tea.

But it's also, it's calming for the mind. I think that's a big thing, the self-care, not just for the physical appearance of it, but for the relaxation of it. So I did have a question. So you know how in the summer a lot of people constantly put the sunscreens, right, to block the sun and not get eventually I guess melanoma um and i always like one of the things that i'm always concerned about like i said you read what's on there and you go is that any good for my skin i mean what you know where are the benefits of it right

um are there any oils or anything that that one can use in lieu of that um So I'll answer this lightly because I haven't gotten very deep into it. But carrot seed oil is one that's really good in natural sunscreens. That's not something I've made yet, but I've looked into it a little bit. So I know that's one that's really good. Outside of that,

I can't answer that question very well. But I know that's one that is is meant to be really good and a natural way to kind of help that but yet stuff like that it's it's really easy to you know it's easy to just grab the sunscreen off the shelf but things like that your skin absorbs so much so it's definitely important to think about what you're putting on yeah yeah because I always wondered about that. It's like, you're on the precipice of going into conspiracy theory area. Right.

Yeah. There's been a lot of time. Well, it's like, you know, because skin cancer has kind of been on the rise. So some people have been like, Oh,

this, you know, everything's a carcinogen. Yeah. So again, I don't know. I just, I love a good conspiracy theory

I was just curious and I know this was probably the wrong thing but when we were young a lot of you know you walk around and a lot of people had that baby oil and they just put all this baby oil on them right and you'd be sitting there and it's something like this and it looked like they were just cooking you know frying and I'm looking like

I'm not sure if that's really any good for you right I mean I was young I didn't put anything because I could care less you were like the top guys you played volleyball, you put all the oils I didn't have that but you know I just went to the beach to have fun and go

in the water and get dry and go in the water again, that's why I didn't think there was stuff in the sunburn, but over time, we recognized that probably wasn't good for you, and they've created everything else, but I always wonder, like I said, you read the back of this, what am I putting on myself? Is there anything that's better for me? Maybe it doesn't block the whole sun, which the sun's always been there for billions of years,

so I can't imagine it's not bad for you but is there something that can help you protect if you're gardening all day like I do? Right yeah well it's nice to actually see you use products that like for example you could actually cook and eat like for example coconut oil or olive oil I mean both of those you use in baking or you can use in cooking you know so it's like it would make sense to be able to drink it but also kind of put it on your skin. And it's an antiseptic, right? It's antibacterial or whatever. Oh, my gosh.

Coconut oil is great for so, so many things. Yeah. And olive oil, too. I've heard like a lot of people kind of go into the benefits of olive oil as well. I don't know, anti-inflammatory, something like that. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. And, I mean, that's's i think it's just so

that is something that's so important to me just having things that people know like you said talking about the ingredients on the back of things and you don't even know what probably over half that stuff is or you know you'll see um a lotion that you'll pick up off the shelf and it's like oh it has cocoa butter it's so for you. But then when you look at it, cocoa butter is like the next to last thing on the list. Exactly. It's like, where's that cocoa butter? It's like when you used to do the lemonade thing and it's like five other ingredients and then the lemon juice is like, but this is lemonade.

Right. Yeah. Well, it's the same thing with the baked oats. I bake everything from scratch. Wonderful. Organic flour, sugar cane. Organic. Wow.

Awesome. That is great. And Kerrygold butter. That is the best butter. You can tell the difference when you eat the cookies. I remember when we, because I know even now Costco sells it, but when we used to live in California and the first time we saw the Keurig butter, it was like, Kerrygold. Kerrygold, yeah.

And it was... I never remember the name. You say Keurig. That's the coffee thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Keurig. You were close. I was close.

I got the K part, right? I know when I go by it, I know exactly. But you open the butter and it's beautiful. The color was so... It's like yellow, right? As opposed to like

some of the butters you open is like they're like white and you realize how good that is for you you know well even their packaging is pretty gold and silver salted and unsalted I know the gold it's the salted butter

and a toast organic toast but so absolutely it's been a pleasure having you both on before we let you go where can people find you? Hold on, hold on. Can I taste one of these? Oh, you want to taste it?

Yes, of course, of course. There's the pecan bars and then the cranberry white chocolate. I'm going to do the cranberry white chocolate. I love cranberries. Thank you. Would you like to try it? I've been staring at this the whole show and I said, wait a minute. Why should he get all the time?

Thank you so much. I tried peiquant. Oh, wow. That's delicious. Good stuff, right? I can taste the caramel. No, that's delicious. The power of suggestion.

Very good. Yeah, so I'll have those on Saturday. Wow. So, actually, that will lead into my next message. So, wait until people get these delicious treats. Yeah, so people can reach me on Facebook through Miss Data Lights and the same thing through Instagram. Miss Data Lights. And you're also at the market, is that every Saturday?

Every Saturday. Every Saturday. From 9 to 1 on Water Street. On the Water Street sign. On the Water Street. And they're next to each other, right? Yes. We're usually pretty close. So you can find me in a couple places.

My website is naturallyyouselfcare.com. I'm on Facebook and Instagram at naturallyyouselfcareco. And on TikTok at naturallyyouselfcare. You have a TikTok? Yes. So what do the videos look like? Is it you making the oil? and on TikTok at Naturally You Self-Care. You have a TikTok? Yes. Wow. So what do the videos look like? Cool.

Is it you making the oil? Yeah, it's usually kind of, you know, I did one recently, like an ASMR style of unboxing of some new candle jars and lots of ingredients and little kind of behind-the-scenes things. So do you sell candles also? Yeah. Oh, okay. Candles, wax melts.

I do a little bit of everything. Everything. All right. Good to know. Those are great. Certainly like now that Christmas is coming. Great Christmas presents. Lots of great stocking stuffers.

That's fantastic. Wonderful. All right. Well, thank you so much. Thank you both for coming on. Thank you. Thank you for coming. Thank you so much.

And the best of luck to both of you because I know this, you know, you start a new business and you're nervous, but I know you both are going to do very, very well. Thank you so much for having us. No, it's been our pleasure. Good luck. All right. Take care. Thank you. This is good.

I know. I know. I was eating and then I was like, oh, wait a second. I have to say goodbye. Let me quickly eat. You have to say goodbye. Oh, you have to say goodbye to him. Yeah, exactly. If you don't have to say goodbye, let me quickly eat. You don't have to say goodbye, you have to say goodbye to them. Yeah, exactly.

If you don't want to say goodbye to them, you don't want to go, you can go. But I know you had a couple of finance topics you wanted to discuss a little bit before we kind of close out. I'll let you finish chewing, because I know you just took a bite just as I was asking you. But I know you, last week we had covered something, you know, because obviously post-election people have their thoughts and their concerns, and I know you kind of talked about what to expect, potentially. You also talked about real talks. I wasn't sure whether there was something in that area more you kind of wanted to talk about and discuss. Yeah, so just to kind of, like, expand on some things because, you know, obviously, every time

there's a change in administration right there's the expectations that there's going to be something different right and historically it's you know you know that has occurred but I think you know the more I look into what this administration is doing, the more I realize that there's going to be drastic changes, right? The issue is you don't really know what the consequences of those changes are going to be. However, it's always good to begin to prepare for those events, right? So to give you an example, right? And you actually brought this up, right?

So we talked a little bit about tariffs, right? Yeah Tariffs is an interesting one because tariffs seems to like I think people don't have a very generic sense of what tariff is. It's like, oh, well, you know, you kind of put an attack on a good or, you know, basically, essentially. And I think there's been a lot of scare about tariffs was interesting as I saw an interview on CNBC at one point with, was it Harry Lutnick? Yeah. Howard Lutnick. Howard. And he was talking about tariffs and he says the idea is that first of all they are a negotiating tool. You say hey I want to put a tariff on this good and then the other people will be like oh well I don't want a tariff on that good that I'm trying to export to you here. I'll take down

a tariff that I have on one of your goods, and then already you kind of reduce both. But he made a good point about cars, and he says you go to Europe, and you don't see an American car. They're all European cars, but mostly BMWs or Mercedes-Benz, I think, are the two really big ones. Yeah, there's a lot of those Fiat's and things like that.

And he says you want a Y, it's because Europe puts 100% tariff on American cars. So, of course, no European is going to buy an American car for double the price. I mean, that would be insane. Right. He goes, so if you went and you said, you know what, Europe, I'm going to put 100% tariff on any European cars that come here. There's either two things going to happen. Europe's going to come back and say, well, okay, let's renegotiate here.

Because they're not going to want that because they export a lot of European cars to happen. Europe's going to come back and say, whoa, whoa, whoa, okay, let's renegotiate here. Because they're not going to want that because they export a lot of European cars to America. So they'll look to renegotiate, and then maybe you can get a drop in the tariff imposed on U.S. cars going to Europe, and now suddenly, okay, maybe U.S.

manufacturers can sell more cars in Europe. Or the reverse is that Europe says, no, we're not getting our tariff, so the U.S. says, fine, we'll put 100% U.S. tariff. Well, now, what happens? American consumers are going to try to buy a Mercedes-Benz or, like you said, BMW and be like, oh, man,

this is twice the price. I'm just going to go buy a Ford or a Chevy. And what happens? You're now indirectly also helping U.S. manufacturers. So it's not always an entirely bad thing. Exactly. So it's not always an entirely bad thing when it comes to tariffs. Exactly, exactly. And that's exactly, you know, we kind of made that point a little bit yesterday, and Alex was alluding to the fact that, you know, when you look at tariffs, right,

you have to think about, first of all, what is it that we're importing, right? Typically we're not importing food, right, in the sense of the essentials that you need to live on, whether it be, you know, chicken and eggs and bread and milk, et cetera. Right. So the expectation is that that should stay where they are. Right. We shouldn't see any more inflation in that sector unless energy prices go up. Right. Because energy prices drive everything. But on everything else, you know, you sit back and say, there's no way that, you know, basically this administration said they're going to

impose a 60% tariff, increasing tariff in Chinese goods. There's no way they're going to do on every single piece. It's just, again, it's a negotiating tool, right? And it's interesting to say about cars because, you know, we do have a friend that lives in Greece and he's always told me that. So what they do is they call it a value

added tax. He says, you go buy a particular car, and even some European cars, depending on which ones they are, there's an enormous tax. The car's worth $50,000 and then there's like, and he used to tell me this and sometimes I said, that doesn't make any sense, but it's the tariffs that they're costing.

There's another $50,000 to $60, dollars in value-added tax and you go that's that's ridiculous how does that happen those are the tariffs right that's how they that's how they you basically sit there go yeah I can that's a car I'd like but I'm not paying another 60 thousand dollars in taxes right in order to own that car because I can buy something else that doesn't have that tax right so tariffs is an area where I think over the long run, it's going to be very beneficial to the U.S., right? Because we need to be able to compete on an even ground. And I've always talked about this,

and that is the one area where the U.S. has an enormous disadvantage is labor costs, right? Because we have laws here that says you can't pay somebody below minimum wage. You have to pay them at least this, right? And higher. When you go to China and you go to Vietnam and you go to India and all these other countries, right? There are none of these laws. I mean, they can pay 50 cents per hour. So you sit there and you go, there's a huge difference there because that labor is so cheap that they can produce more things cheaply. So if we're really worried about, and this is something that the UN always thinks about, we're really worried about people and how they live, then the right thing to do is say,

well, in this case, because of the fact that you're charging on a labor cost so little, we're going to impose a tariff because what you really should be doing is paying your people more. And that should be good for their country, and it's good for our country because then we come back and say, well, we can also now do this at the same price, right? Because when you talk about global trading, it's resources that you want to look at. In other words, let's say somebody has, you know, oil, right? And somebody else, you know, you're, you're has no oil, but in Saudi Arabia, we have oil, gas. Those are things that's like, yeah, they don't have that resource. So how do

we trade? What is it that they have that we don't have? And that's where the trading begins to say, you know, we can help each other because we need some of that resource that we don't have, and you need some of our resource we don't have. But when it comes to labor, I've always felt that to be an unfair practice because you're using people to underprice products, right? So I think tariffs in the long run are probably beneficial both to the country we're charging the tariff to, assuming they do the right thing, which probably beneficial both to the country we're charging the tariff to, assuming they do the right thing, which is not hard to say, and also to this country, right? So, again, when you think about the markets and the impact, you look at, you know,

and that's one area, and the other area that I think is going to be very beneficial to companies in this country is the reduction in some of the regulations. Yes, because regulations have a tendency to really choke off the small business. You regulate a large business and they're so big and they make so much money. They can say a couple of million, no big deal. Just, you know, pay it. Well, think about it sometimes, too. It's like the law is so tricky. It's like, well, big companies can afford to pay, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars for a good lawyer to figure out what they've got to follow versus your small business. You're like trying to figure out yourself.

And then it's like, you know, someone goes, oh, you didn't do this right. Oh, you didn't do that right. Exactly. So I think deregulation in some areas will be very beneficial to the small business community right and so i think from a perspective of you know going forward what are the areas of the marketplace that are going to benefit um i really do think and it may not be listen it's one of the things it may not be in two months six months or even year it could be a little longer.

But I think the small corporations, small businesses are going to do well if that truly happens. So yesterday we were talking a little about this is not about all of a sudden changing everything you have in your portfolio. It's like decorating a house. When Christmas comes or Thanksgiving comes or Fourth of July, you decorate your house based on the time of season, right? This is the same thing in a portfolio. So you still have the portfolio structure that you think is necessary and has the appropriate risk for a particular client. But on the side, you begin to say, tactically, is there something that we should be doing in order to potentially improve the returns of this portfolio based on what we think is going to happen? And again, nobody has a crystal ball. But, you know, if you begin to see what's going on, you say, these may be areas that will benefit, right? Just like what we do when the Fed says, I'm going to cut rates or I'm going to increase rates.

Those are kind of like expectations that they may do it, most likely, but we're not 100% sure. But if they say they may do something, then how do you begin to transition your portfolio to take advantage of the fact that the Fed is either increasing rates or lowering rates? So again, there's just a lot going on. You know, again, when you look at this administration, that's actually good for the dollar, makes the dollar strong. But in reality, I know that both, you know, Trump and Vance, et cetera, would like to keep the dollar lower because it makes imports cheaper. So it's a balance there. So which way is it going to work out? What you're proposing is good for the dollar, right, which makes the dollar stronger. So do you basically position your portfolios to take advantage of that,

or are you going to go into the marketplace and begin to lower the value of the dollar? I won't mind a stronger dollar. It makes vacationing easier. That's right. Let's get that euro below one. Well, I said there was the American dollar to the Canadian dollar. It's like, yeah. And I remember we had gone to Canada, what was it?

14 years ago, something like that. And I remember at that time, the Canadian dollar was worth more than the American dollar. I don't know if you remember that. I was like, what? Well, I don't remember that because I can't remember a time where the Canadian dollar was actually more than that. It was in the 90s.

Now it's in the 70s. That's a huge difference. I mean, the Canadian dollar was actually more than that. Okay. So it was in the 90s and now it's in the 70s. That's a huge difference. Okay. Yeah. I mean, the Canadian dollar has taken a real beat. Yeah. And so again, so the thing about investing is, you know, what can you do on the margin to improve the returns of your portfolio, right?

And that's what you want to work on. You want to say, what's going on? What's happening? And how do we want to position our portfolio to take advantage of this in small steps, right? Because again, nothing's happened yet. Nothing's going to happen until probably February, March. But you also want to readjust before things happen

because you don't want to necessarily be too late. At the same time, you don't want to react. You kind of want to attempt to anticipate at least. But look what happened. Right after the election, the markets took off and then they came back, right? Because they realized, wait a minute, we thought this is going to be

the, this is what's the expectations. In other words, this administration's elected and boom, this is, the economy is now going to really flow very strongly. Well, it's not going to happen tomorrow. It's not going to happen next month, right? It's going to take a little time.

And the more that they come across and say, you know, this person is in charge of here, that person is in charge of there, you now begin to represent yourself. Well, what's he for? For example, RFK, right? Pharma silica is taking a hit. Why? Because we know that he's anti-big pharma, right? Vance, when you think about it, is anti-big tech.

So those companies have taken a hit in the expectations that they're going to do something, right? Are they really going to do something to impact those? It's hard to say. So what I'm saying, sometimes you have to take a step back and say, that's the initial impact of what happens, but you've got to think about long-term what do you think is going to happen, and then again, take little steps to reposition your portfolio. That's my suggestion.

That's your two cents. Two cents worth. I assume that going forward, yes, there are going to be some changes. It'll be interesting to see how they impact the markets. Listen, we've also discussed this too. The market just kind of seems to become its own entity. It seems like no matter exactly how the economy is doing it's just going to kind of stay steady i mean i don't know if you feel that way but just feels like to me it just it's kind of become that way because i remember there was a

time when there was a couple years ago remember we had two straight quarters of negative gdp but it didn't really like the market really wasn't taking that big a hit like it wasn't like reacting like a recession it would have some down days or a down month, but then it just kind of trickled back up, and then you look and say, okay. I mean, in the end, the past four years, it's been up, has it not? Well, remember 2022, it took a dive, right? It did take a dive, yes. And think about it.

You go back historically and look at when markets really took dives, one of two things happened, really. Either there was a black swan event, or interest rates began to either go up or down, right? I mean, if they go down, they basically, markets love that because cheap money, interest rates go up, market doesn't like that because of the fact that. So, so those are, so that's why we say monetary policy is so much more

critical to what can happen in the market because the cheaper the money, the easier it is to quote unquote borrow and invest, right? The more expensive, you know, I'll give you an example. So closed-end mutual funds, which is an area that we like very much, right? Most of those funds are leveraged, right? So leveraging costs money. And it costs money because it's based on interest rates. The lower the interest rate, right, the cheaper the leverage, the better that close-end mutual

fund was going to do. So those are things that we look at and say, where are interest rates going? Where are they? And what kind of leverage does this particular fund have? And again, it's a leverage of the fund. It's not your leverage. So when you buy it, you're not leveraging their leverage. So the returns are going to be leveraged one way or the other, right? But the point being is that that costs money. So interest rates are a key component of what the cost of money is to leverage, right? Across the board, hedge funds, everybody that leverages, interest rates are key. Do you anticipate any changes happening to the Fed that could affect interest rates? So I think... Because I only say this because, you know,

I don't think the President has the power to fire the... What's Jerome Powell? Yeah, he doesn't have the power. He doesn't have the power to... I think the Fed chair has to be resigned, or the board maybe has to vote him out.

So I think he's got two more years. He's got two more years. But I don't know whether the president could kind of pressure the Fed chair to resign. I don't know exactly what's – Yeah, I'm not sure. If there were a change, let's say, in the Fed chair, how that would affect how you view interest rates. Do you think they would suddenly come down dramatically? So I think every single president would like to see interest rates come down because it helps, let's face it, it always helps the economy across the board. Presumably the Fed chair is always apolitical,

which I don't think when you look back that since Volcker, I'm not sure that's been the case. And I think I mentioned this on yesterday, I don't think the Fed is going to lower rates in December for the specific reason that there is a new administration, so they're going to sit back and try to figure out what is it that they're going to do, how is that going to impact the markets,

how is that going to impact inflation, because in essence, inflation is not what it was a year and a half ago or two years ago, but it's still higher than, first of all, it's still higher than 2%, and it's still there. So, you know, why lower interest rates at this point? And also, anyway, so politically, you know, whether or not they want to lower rates or increase rates is questionable. And, you know, they lower rates 50 basis points the first time and then 25, right? And you always wonder, why did I do a 50? I mean, most people's like, you do 25 and then another 25.

You give it time to see what the impact is on the market. You do a 50, that's a big impact on the market. And you have no idea what that impact is going to be. So, you know, again, I think the Fed doesn't always do the right thing. Not that I know always what the right thing would be to do. It's not easy because it's a huge economy. But I don't think, I think given where things are, I don't think they're going to cut rates in December and then take a step back and see what goes on.

I guess we'll find out. But you're right. If the new administration had their choice of being able to, and again, I don't think they can do that, but I don't know enough about that. If they had the choice to get rid of the Fed chair, I think every administration would say, I'm going to put my guy in there, and I'm going to tell my guy, lower rates. Trump avoided power. Yes, he did.

But it wasn't his first choice. He appointed a lot of people. That wasn't his first choice. But I guess we'll see. We'll see what happens. I think anything's on board, I think, these next four years. So we'll see what happens. I think anything is on board, I think, these next four years. So we'll see what happens. I always say, in a way, this is fun because it is change.

And I think change brings life into literally everything, in my opinion. But particularly in the markets, when there's change, it livens something, it creates opportunities because anytime there's, call it, you know, volatility, chaos, right? Anytime there's that in the marketplace, that's when the opportunities pop up, right? If everything is normal and goes up little by little, there's no opportunities. You've got nothing to talk about. But when there's volatility, that's when things sometimes get out of whack, and you look and you show there's no reason why that sector should be down or whatever, and that's when you can take advantage of things.

Well, a philosopher or someone once said the only constant in life is change. It's change, yeah. Exactly. Nicholas would know who that was. That's why we like to change who's hosting today, manana. That's why the only constant is change. But thank you so much, Pops, for being on the show today. No, it's been fun.

Yeah, it's been a good show. We had two fantastic guests. Sadly, we will have no guests next week. But that's because there's also going to be no show because it's Thanksgiving. So to all our viewers, again, I always have to send out a little apology. Xavier and I are not on Facebook and Instagram, so to those who liked or made a comment,

I do thank you for your comments and your likes. And to all our viewers, I wish I was able to kind of be able to monitor that, but if you have any questions, you can put them in the chat, and I'm sure Nicholas will probably watch or answer whatever questions or recommendations you may have.

But, yeah, so there's going to be no show next Thursday, but definitely a big happy Thanksgiving to all our wonderful viewers who watch. Thanksgiving is always a great holiday. I love Thanksgiving. It's just, I don't know why, it's like the perfect springboard into family gatherings that you have up and through Christmas. It starts the holiday season and just kind of lasts until New Year's. Well, it's what somebody once said.

Christmas is great, and I love Christmas too, right? But Christmas comes also with the kind of gift-giving, right? And sometimes that puts a little stress on people. What do I give them? And things of that sort. Thanksgiving is none of that. It's granted there's i mean i just don't even want i just don't get you anything but that's yeah that's the easy part but that doesn't happen to everybody right some people do want to give me stuff that's the issue right so the but thanksgiving

i mean other than the person cooking right but some people love to cook so that's that's good you just sit there and you just enjoy a meal meal that typically every year is the same kind of meal, but you look forward to it. Yeah, you have the same meal every year. And like you said, you just share a good time with family and friends. Yeah, I think the problem too is Christmas holidays can get so crazy because it's like, you know, a lot of people travel. They do for the Thanksgiving holiday,

but I just feel like Christmas, like you said, I've got all these presents. Whereas Thanksgiving was just like, okay, no, we're just going to go to Grandma's house or go see this family. And then you just go and, like you said, just eat turkey and stuffing and pumpkin pie. And then, okay, that's

it. And you just kind of relax. And I think you enjoy the day more than Christmas can sometimes get overwhelming. That's a perfect word. It gets a little overwhelming. Christmas gifts, and it's like when you've got little kids, it's like wrappings everywhere. It's like, I've got to clean up all these wrappings and boxes.

And they want to open the toys right away. They want to play with the wall. And the Lego's here, and there's Legos there. Exactly. And then who's cleaning up? Then you go, oh, we've got to cook. We've got to eat today. Yeah, it's hectic.

But, you know, the holidays are always to eat today. Yeah, it's hectic. But, you know, it's always the holidays are always a fun time. Yeah, it is. And we always have a fun time doing Today and Manana, which is always presented by Emergent Financial Services, powered by our wonderful sponsors, Maticion Realty, Cratic Series Insurance,

Charlesville Opera, and Faba. I'm always happy to be hosting. I'm always happy you're hosting too. Yeah, I know. You don't like hosting. But I'm always happy to have Judah behind the camera, always making us look good.

Thank you, obviously, to I Love Siva and Jerry for having us here. We look forward to seeing you in two weeks. But until that time, happy Thanksgiving and hasta mañana Thank you.