Transcript of What Second-Order Effects From the Iran War and AI Mean for Your Business | Ben Johnston with Kaptus

Right now, I don't see AI making huge changes in the construction industry just yet. Where I see it taking effect first will be maybe in the automation of billing and the automation of accounting services. Maybe the ability to target market more effectively to prospective customers or manage accounts, taking away some of the office busywork. In the not too distant future, you could really see robotics start to come into the picture.

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There's a lot of noise right now around the US conflict with Iran, but the real The question is what it actually means for businesses here in the US. We're seeing rising energy costs, supply chain pressure, AI, and a lot of uncertainty around things and where they go next. Ben Johnston is the Chief Operating Officer at Capitas, and he has a front row seat how businesses are reacting in real time. Ben, welcome to Right About Now. When we look at what's happening with the US and Iran, what actually matters economically? What's overblown? What's real? What's happening here that we need to be informing our listeners about?

Even before the war, it was already sort of a challenging time for the economy, for small businesses in particular, which is what Capitus is focusing on every single day. We had a pretty volatile tariff strategy going on for the last year. Those changes were happening throughout the year and then big changes this spring as well. There's still a lot of uncertainty around that. Then you're operating in an environment with somewhat elevated inflation rates, but certainly elevated interest rates rather relative to where we had been a few years ago. You're in a slowly rising unemployment area where unemployment has risen about 100 basis points from its lows of a couple of years ago. And that's all leading up to the war in Iran, which now is really causing disruption and spikes in, obviously, in energy prices. Gasoline prices are up 30 Natural gas prices are up 10%. And if you're a farmer, your fertilizer prices are up 30% to 50%, maybe more for certain types of fertilizers. There's a lot of additional stress that's now being dumped onto the American consumer and the American small business owner that they have to grapple with, both leading up to this conflict and now that the conflict has taken place.

When you guys analyze this, is it strictly from the small business perspective What has happened thus far, the impact is X. Do you guys do any kind of prognostication of the future effects or where it looks like it's headed? Gas is up. All those things you said are true. What gives you hope and what gives you not hope about where this is headed?

Oh, it always gives me hope when there's so much uncertainty. Let's be honest, ever since COVID the last 5 years, we've been living through a tremendous amount of economic uncertainty. Small businesses have had to react to that. I have found small business owners to some of the most creative and resilient people that you could imagine. They're constantly changing their business models to take advantage of a need in the market, changing their pricing strategies to adjust to changes in demand. They have proven to be incredibly resilient, incredibly creative. People think that oil prices are going to be high for a long period of time. That's going to change consumer behavior. Our small businesses can react to that and start putting lower-cost products into the market, thinking about where the customer is headed, finding more energy efficient solutions, things like that. That makes me very optimistic. On the pessimistic side, I am worried that there's another shoe to drop in this Iran conflict in that we have been living in a world where the supply chain has remained largely intact ever since the start of the war. A lot of the goods that were shipped out of the Strait of Hormuz are still en route.

This week and next week, most of those ships are landing in their ports where they were expected to land. After they land, there really aren't going to be more ships coming in large numbers out of the Strait of Hormuz until we find some solution to this problem. What that potentially means is that a lot of the countries that depend more heavily on petroleum products, but other products manufactured there to keep their economies afloat and produce goods that we need here in the United States 6 months from now when they are manufactured and exported to us, some of those goods may not be able to be manufactured. Some of those people may not be able to live the lives that they have been set up to live. And that potential disruption, I don't think we understand the second-order effects of what may come as a result of that. That's something we need to be prepared for.

This has been going on for multiple weeks now. The trickle-down, like, you don't feel the water leaking in your roof until it gets through 4 layers of wood, but then it drops bomb on you. Are we at a stage where if this thing gets wrapped up over the next few weeks to a month where that genie could go back in the bottle a bit, where you'll have effects, but if things could get rolling, we'll have a short-term impact but potentially still a great year?

Yeah, the stock market certainly thinks so.

You took your words out of my mouth, Ben. I was kind of headed there.

I've been absolutely amazed at how the markets seem to view this as a secondary effect, maybe not a primary effect on the US economy. That may have something to do with the fact that the United States is probably in a better position to weather this crisis than almost anyone else out there because we are net energy exporters and we are able to produce not only oil and gas, but we're able to secure a decent amount of fertilizer and other important raw materials. When there's a limited amount of goods in the market, we are able to pay top dollar to secure our access to those goods. The rest of the world doesn't don't necessarily have those luxuries. I'm specifically worried about a lot of countries in Africa and Asia who need to import most of their fossil fuels in order to operate their economies and are heavily dependent on some of the raw materials that come out of the Gulf in order to manufacture their products. Feels to me like the US economy is continuing to charge along under the expectation that we will be able to meet our needs even if they cost more, and that maybe some other impacts from Advances in AI and other technology innovations are actually driving the stock market more than the underlying economic conditions that the average American is living through is driving the stock market.

I do have a lot of concern about what will happen to the rest of the world if there's dislocation and chaos in the rest of the world, how that will come back to roost here in the United States over time.

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Absolutely. We've been noticing repatriation of manufacturing back into the United States for some time now. What that really is, is the growth in the US manufacturing base. I'm not sure that on a relative basis we're actually taking more share of the global manufacturing, but we are doing more and more of it here in the United States. I would imagine that our access to fossil fuels, our access to certain raw materials that others are going to struggle to procure for themselves will accelerate that trend that we're seeing. The higher the cost of oil is, the more expensive it is to import and ship across vast oceans goods that we have been sourcing from Asia and other parts of the world. That just starts to change the dollar-cost continuum as to how much are you really saving by producing overseas if it costs you far far more now to ship those goods back to the United States. If you're going to experience supply chain disruptions along the way, this could produce and help enhance a movement toward greater domestic or nearshore manufacturing here in the United States, which could be a silver lining to some of this.

Yeah, I agree with that, Ben. We actually need some of that back here. Not only like the core of not being dependent outside of our own country, part and parcel with this, and, and key, but it does unlock other things when that returns to— I don't want to say the glory days, but most people, if they're being honest, we threw the baby out with the bathwater a little bit with manufacturing, and we need to get the baby back. There are critical elements to our supply chain and our ability to manufacture core products for national security reasons that we have allowed to escape our sphere of influence and be controlled by those that are not always our friends.

That is position that we can afford to be in for the long run, and we need to work to get those types of critical manufacturing capabilities back here in the United States. There was a But it also probably helps to have an economic imperative that's incenting all kinds of producers to repatriate manufacturing. We've seen that with some of the tariffs that have been put in place. I don't think it was the intention of this war to drive that change. Some of the second-order effects of this war will likely propel more manufacturing back to the United States. Talking with Ben Johnston, he is the chief operating officer at Capita. Capitas. Second order effects. I like that.

I usually say unintended consequences.

I would use that. It sounds more sophisticated. People inside whose only job it is to figure out how people are using AI, how we can incorporate that into what we're doing, how to make things more efficient. Some of the stock market reaction that we're seeing right now is actually really focused on some of the efficiency gains that large publicly traded companies are expected to be inking right now through those efforts. On the small business side, small business owners are really trying to figure out how they can adopt some of these technologies to automate a lot of their busy work. They're thinking about how could these technologies ultimately allow me to reduce costs and potentially reduce headcount in the long run. How will small businesses actually become a little bit smaller from a headcount standpoint over time? A lot of the small businesses that we back are very people-intensive. A third of the small businesses that we back have something to do with the construction industry. Right now, I don't see AI making huge changes in the construction industry just yet. Where I see it taking effect first will be maybe in the automation of billing and the automation of accounting services, maybe the ability to target market more effectively to prospective customers.

Or manage accounts, taking away some of the office busywork. In the not too distant future, you could really see robotics start to come into the picture. And if you could have an actual humanoid robot that was programmed to do some of the work, even if it's just cleaning up and carrying things back and forth from the truck, doing the busywork that you hire low-level, less skilled people to do. That I could see 10 years from now that starting to have a real impact on the service professions. Certainly if you look at the restaurant industry, you could start to see things like that. We have seen some bigger chains in the restaurant industry looking to automate all kinds of kitchen activities that in the past have needed human employees. It's interesting, but it sort of goes goes hand in hand with something that we are hearing loud and clear from some of our small businesses who are really struggling to find skilled labor in the labor market today. That has to do both with a somewhat tight labor market, with a lot of enforcement action that's happened recently around undocumented labor. The reality is that a meaningful percentage of small business labor has historically been made up by the undocumented community.

That labor has step in to fill some of that labor gap and how quickly will that happen? Small businesses are working really hard right now to think through those questions.

Go get, take a welding class, go be the best AC plumber guy. You probably make 6 figures a lot faster than anything else. AI will come for the lawyers first, or in many cases it already has. That's not to say that senior strategic legal minds are irrelevant. They're absolutely just as relevant as they always have. But your summer associates and your first year and second year associates in law firms are definitely vulnerable because a lot of the jobs that they were trained on, AI is actually actually pretty good at. Now, finalizing and delivering a cogent legal argument that works in front of a court, that's still a human activity. But you're absolutely right, skilled labor— the ability to be a great plumber, root out a problem, get in and fix something back in a crawl space somewhere really efficiently and accurately in a way that isn't going to break in 2 weeks— there really isn't any AI that's going to solve that problem. In the short term, potentially in the medium to long term, they'll figure it out. But those are highly important jobs today. Jobs that we are hearing from our small business owners are increasingly difficult to fill.

On the AI front, I hear the job market and numbers. It's going—

it is and will impact the job market. It's already impacting it. I'm not putting my head in the sand, but I will say I saw something and it made me think. I guess it just depends on how the reported or job cuts. I guess if it's true job— if true unemployment is someone has filed for unemployment versus just someone laid off or that quit. But AI is unlocking a lot, a huge increase in new individual single-person small business applications. Because I know this firsthand, I mean, I had 18 employees 3 years ago, some of it by choice and not necessarily economics or, oh, how can I I get leaner, but more just as I want to manage a lot of people my entire career, just didn't want to do it anymore. It was by scale, but I can operate with 3 people what it took 15 to do in my field of marketing, business, multiple facets of e-commerce and a lot of other things. What I'm getting at, Ben, is the data can say, well, we had all these layoffs, we had all these things, but are those people just becoming solopreneurs?

We've seen a spike in small business creation ever since the pandemic. A lot of people went home during the pandemic, were getting some sort of unemployment check. Tech, or they were just working from home for the first time in their life. They started playing around with new business concepts. We saw that a big increase. We thought it would come down after the pandemic ended. It never really came down. We continue to see that growth that very well could be driven by AI, the opportunities for people to leverage AI to do new things and create new businesses. I absolutely think that's going to continue here as people get better and better at using AI and as the AI capabilities become better and better. That's an important trend. In terms of the unemployment rate, I would imagine that a lot of people are incorporating businesses and playing around. I'm not sure how many people are making a lot of money off these trends just yet. It's very possible that someone is not working, could be collecting unemployment benefits while they're playing around with their new business idea that hasn't take it off yet.

We're not stating facts here, but we're just making logical deductions, right?

We do know that the unemployment rate is drifting higher. That makes sense when you look at some of the layoffs that we've seen from big corporations saying, hey, you know, we don't necessarily need these people anymore. Some of that is probably coming from AI. We're also seeing the percentage of the potential workforce who is actively seeking employment has also been drifting lower as well. It's why is that drifting lower? Are they working on their AI projects and they're not actively seeking additional employment?

Are we headed to this place of zen where people are no longer motivated to work and just they're fine with living somehow? They're off savings or off government savings.

The long term, we'll just have to see how robust the economy continues to be and how much consumer spending there is available to consume all of these new concepts. Concepts that are being created. Because at the end of the day, small business revenue is made up largely of consumer spending. It's the health of the American consumer that's going to determine the health of America's small businesses. We keep a very close eye on consumer spending, inflation rates, share of wallet for the American consumer that is truly discretionary spending when we think about how small business health is going to trend there.

As we close out a little bit on all this, Ben, how much of that is real versus headlines? I know there's impact. I know that maybe the way someone spent when they still had COVID checks coming in is different now or even 3 years ago. But how much is consumer spending truly changing? Why do we keep trying to get talked into a recession?

Consumer spending has been remarkably stable. That's one of the reasons that we're not in a recession. When you are spending— when the government is spending $1.7 to $2 trillion more than they're taking in in revenue every single year, then and you are stimulating the economy to a point where so far you've not let the economy go into a recession. We are borrowing a tremendous amount at the federal government level. That money is fueling the economy. If we were running a balanced budget, we would have slower economic growth. It's hard to imagine that you could pull $1.7 trillion worth of spending out of the economy and not experience a recession. There doesn't seem to be much will on either side of the aisle to truly grapple with the debt crisis that is looming out there. The other complicated factor is there are very, very few countries in the world that don't have very similar-looking balance sheets to us, at least of the large countries that are out there. So I'm not sure there are a lot of other countries that are doing this a lot better than we are. It does seem to be a trend that will ultimately need to be grappled with either through inflation or through reduction in overall spending that could hurt the economy.

That could be a whole other episode there. Defense spending's of other things. I'm like, is that really fueling the economy? I guess it is, but it's not.

I don't know. Some of the overspend. Anyone who's employed by an industry receiving these funds is fueling the economy in some way.

Truly saying here that it is fueling our economy and a lot of it is. If I'm a small business listening listening to this show, any guidance, any tips, any last thoughts? Keep a very close eye on your operating margins, especially in challenging times like this. If you're going Businesses have to pay more at the pump for their fleets. Their customers have to pay more at the pump to get to work every day. Keeping a strong understanding of who your customer is, what they're able to pay, is going to be incredibly important as you think about your product lineup and how you're going to price that product. Keep a number of different financing options available. Certainly your primary bank is going to be incredibly important if you need capital quickly to advantage of an opportunity, you may want to look outside of the banking system as non-bank lenders tend to cost a little bit more but everything that they want to achieve. Should they invest in either learning or bringing on people to learn quickly AI, or can they turn a blind shoulder to this? You want to be learning about it. The beautiful thing about AI is that it gives you a tremendous amount of opportunity to learn for yourself.

100%, if you have someone you trust who really knows the come up evolution of AI and wants to be your partner, it would be wonderful to bring them on, come with some amazing new business models and ideas. If you're just a naturally curious person that loves to read and do research and play around with things, getting a good subscription to Claude and ChatGPT and Gemini and plumbing the depths of online knowledge, that's going to tell you a tremendous amount as well.

Ben, drop some details for Capitas and yourself where people can follow everything you guys are doing and get in touch. Or just to have all those details?

Please visit us at Kapitus.com. That's K-A-P-I-T-U-S.com. You can learn about all of our products for small businesses, from working capital to equipment finance to lines of credit, and you can apply right there or get in contact with a customer representative who can help you really think through your capital needs and what your goals are for growing your business. We'd love to talk to you and love to power the American economy through small businesses.

Yeah, it's been a pleasure having you on. I look forward to doing it again. I do too.

It was a lot of fun. Thank you very much.

Hey guys, you want to find us? Ryanisright.com. You find all the highlight clips, the full episode links to Capitus and Ben Johnston, who we appreciate for coming on. Look, we're about the facts here, not the fear. Facts over fear. It's not about fearing what's happening, it's about having the knowledge. Partners like happening in here on Right About Now to keep you informed. See you next time on Right About Now.

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