Europe: Salesforce Slowly Eating Adecco’s Lunch

🎙️ In this episode of The Chad & Cheese Podcast Does Europe…

Buckle up, kids — it’s a Eurotrip of geopolitical drama, awkward shoutouts, Tesla trauma, and non-alcoholic beer slander. Lieven joins from the safety of his Belgian treehouse (fine, it’s his home office, but let’s pretend), while Joel parties with O'Douls and Chad tries to pronounce révolution without pulling a muscle.

They tackle the big questions:

• What happens if NATO invades itself?

• Is Salesforce slowly eating Adecco’s lunch... with a spork?

• Why are Teslas getting spit on in Belgium?

• And who let JD Vance’s wife handle Greenland diplomacy?

  
  

Also: shoutouts to teenage chatbot prodigies, stern warnings from wine-drinking Europeans, and the existential dread of American isolationism... all delivered with the subtlety of a Jack Daniels tariff and the grace of a Ronaldo dive.

Oh, and if you thought France demanding the Statue of Liberty back was peak satire — think again.

Listen now, before someone sanctions your earbuds.🎧 We out!

PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION

Joel (00:39.722)

Yeah. Three guys who could single-handedly solve the demographic crisis in Europe. Hey boys and girls, you are listening to the Chad and cheese podcast does Europe. I'm your cohost Joel partying like "Le Pen" Cheesman.

Chad (00:53.761)

This is Chad. Viva rev, I can't even fucking say it. Revolution. So wash. Revolution.

Joel (00:58.672)

Have a nice day home.

Lieven (01:02.924)

And I'm leaving. My government warned me against your government.

Joel (01:08.664)

And on this episode, Europe gets trumped and Elond, Adecco feels the sales force and factorial says no espionage here. Let's do this.

Chad (01:24.529)

even I don't know how you I don't know how you put up coming on a podcast with two Americans with everything that's happening. Everything that's happening.

Joel (01:29.52)

He's in the bunker in the tree house. That's how he does it. He's in the tree house drinking Duval. That's how you cope in Belgium.

Lieven (01:36.526)

Actually, I'm just in my home office drinking beer without alcohol, which is kind of...

Chad (01:43.477)

That's a big thing now, especially with the kids. The kids, they like the alcohol-free beer, and that is something that a Gen Xer just cannot understand. I don't know.

Joel (01:47.002)

Kids like it.

Lieven (01:53.71)

No.

Joel (01:53.922)

I will admit that, we've come a long way from O duels. Remember the O duels Chad, like that was the only non-alcoholic and then I Heineken came out with one, they, they are, I do, I do partake occasionally at my age. I'll do the non-alcoholic and they, taste, they taste pretty good. Yeah. I go to soccer again. I go to, I go to the future ball with a non-alcoholic beer and I party and I party, baby. party, speaking of which isn't, isn't there some European football tournament going on?

Chad (01:58.316)

yes, yes, so bad, so bad, yes.

Lieven (02:01.933)

Chad (02:08.001)

It's soccer games. Yeah, it's soccer games.

Lieven (02:16.334)

you

Joel (02:23.716)

Like a UEFA or something, right? okay. My bad. My bad. was wondering if Belgium was in or belt. Yeah. If they were in it or not, if he's getting ready for game time, short answer. No.

Chad (02:25.723)

There is, that's my shout out. me, you push up, push up. Short answer. No. but yes, there, there, there is, there is a giant green elephant in the room that I would, I would like to, I would like to talk about. So can you go ahead and roll that beautiful beam footage? Yes.

Lieven (02:28.898)

this month.

Joel (02:44.496)

Okay, the green elephant in the room. Enjoy everybody.

Chad (03:48.587)

Now he goes on and on and on of all these reasons why. JD Vance is like, Denmark's not treating you well, Greenland. And he didn't, we didn't even go to the, to the healthcare and education part. Right. So, as we talk about leaving, do you like skiing?

Joel (03:50.778)

Leaven's like, things are rough in Denmark. Geez, that's horrible. They got no benefits there compared to us.

Joel (04:11.652)

Not in Greenland.

Lieven (04:11.886)

Actually I'm leaving this Sunday again.

Chad (04:14.785)

The European lifestyle, as he'd said, your body's not broken down in your like mid sixties or seventies before you can actually enjoy retirement. You can enjoy it every single year, about six weeks out of the year. So that, that to me was fairly poignant. What, what do you think? Yeah.

Joel (04:32.889)

What's your take on the whole Greenland thing, Leaven?

Lieven (04:36.11)

This movie was rather enjoyable, but I also heard the comment of some people from Greenland and South saying, just like the Americans treated their Native Americans that good. And we don't think it would be an improvement to be part of America the way you treat minorities and one after the other. And they definitely do not want to be part of America. They want to be independent from Denmark to a certain extent, but they do not want to be part of America.

Chad (05:02.721)

Mm-hmm.

Lieven (05:04.738)

So I think if Trump is serious, serious and taking it, you have to take it by force. then I think some, mean, if he actually wants to land troops there, Denmark is going to react and Europe is going to react. is something I can't imagine.

Joel (05:10.064)

Mm-hmm.

Joel (05:19.984)

What are the NATO rules if a NATO country invades another NATO country? How does that work? What happens with Article 5?

Lieven (05:25.388)

I was thinking about the same thing,

Chad (05:27.777)

And you know, article five has only been used once and that was, yeah, 9-11. That was when all the European, all the other NATO countries came to help our asses. Right? It's never been used before. So, I mean, it just, yeah, it's, I think if they did use it, it would have to be for Greenland, that's for sure.

Joel (05:31.952)

9-11.

Joel (05:46.864)

thought it was, wasn't it weird to send JD's wife? I didn't get that at all. I didn't understand. Was that just a charm offensive? It's, yeah, well, yeah, it's weird. It's all weird.

Chad (05:55.625)

No clue. No. Yeah. Yeah. was weird, weird, wild stuff. And we won't even get, we won't even get into the Canadian stuff. So let's, let's hit shout outs.

Lieven (05:55.918)

It didn't work.

Joel (06:03.866)

Weird, wild stuff.

Alright.

Chad (06:10.803)

And Leaven has a special one. Leaven has a special shout out.

Joel (06:13.646)

He does a familial shout out.

Lieven (06:14.592)

Yeah, indeed. My shout out goes to my 14 year old son, Jan Julius van Ibenuizen, who created an AI chatbot. Jan Julius. Jan Julius, yes. It's two words with, so what's it called? A colon in between, a dash, hyphen, I don't know. Whatever. But they're twins actually.

Joel (06:23.298)

Say that again. What's his name? Jen Julius. Is that two words? Two words or one?

Chad (06:26.529)

Jan Julius. Sounds Roman like a Roman emperor. Jan Julius.

Mm-hmm. Yep. Hyphen. Yep. Yep.

Joel (06:37.05)

Little hyphen.

Lieven (06:44.128)

They're twins. we have Ottojan and Jan Julius. And since I'm a marketeer, I needed to come up with some kind of an explanation. So they have one part, one part the same, which is the Jan part, Ottojan, Jan Julius. Because they used to be one and then they split up. And you know how it goes with twins. OK. Anyways, anyways, this is not why I give me shout outs. It's because one of those twins, Jan Julius.

Joel (06:49.9)

Orange Julius is next.

Chad (06:50.16)

huh.

Chad (07:02.816)

Mm-hmm.

Lieven (07:10.476)

He created a chat bot, which is actually so good that House of HR has used it to put it on their homepage. So if you go to www.houseofhr.com

Joel (07:16.633)

What?

Lieven (07:21.792)

And I'm going to repeat this www.houseofhr.com. On the bottom right, you can actually open the chat bot, which was created by a 14 year old. I know so many companies have chat bots and that's not rocket science, but he did something which I really liked. He scraped all the jobs from our companies, added them to the bots and had the bot study on them, them index them. And now you can use natural language to find a job. Like I've been working in construction for 20 years and all my back hurts. Do you have something which might suit me?

Joel (07:24.752)

haha

Chad (07:27.381)

huh.

Lieven (07:51.842)

but which is less fatiguing, something like that. And then the bot will actually know what you mean and give you the right jobs. Or you can ask something about legislation to Belgian labor law and it will know about it because it's an open AI base. So it knows everything. That's cool. It's actually a good bot. And I said, thank you so much, Jean-Julius. This will have a great impact on my bonus. That's why I gave him a shout out. He gets a shout out. I get a bonus.

Chad (08:04.65)

Nice.

Joel (08:13.977)

I love it.

Chad (08:17.729)

Uhhh...

Joel (08:18.394)

Well, don't tell zip, don't tell zip recruiter cause they'll want to like fire, Phil and make Julius the new, zip recruiter chat bot at that rate.

Lieven (08:24.046)

We sell it to all interested companies as long as you're not a competitor from House of HR.

Joel (08:32.848)

There you go. you're a vendor interested in a chatbot, hit up Leaven today for that family connection. Maybe some Chad and Cheese discount coupon. Who knows?

Lieven (08:37.004)

Yeah.

Lieven (08:41.922)

But of course, if you are an American company, you will have to charge some import taxes, but it will still be a bargain. It will still be a bargain. No worries.

Joel (08:46.32)

Ha

Joel (08:50.842)

Very nice, very nice.

Chad (08:51.539)

Alright... Go ahead, Cheeseman.

Joel (08:55.28)

All right. Speaking of failed job boards, let's talk about ad Zuna former, former sponsor of the Chad cheese podcast. Zip recruiter. Isn't the only one feeling the pain of a worsening economy ad Zuna, the UK based job aggregator also doing business in the U S I think that's their second biggest market experienced a ready for this 33 % drop in revenue for fiscal year of 2024.

That's a lot of beer that could buy. they attributed it to a turbulent macro economic environment and reduced recruitment advertising activity. even blamed Ukraine and Russia for part of their lack of, of, of results. The good news is they did implement cost controls. That's Latin for firing people usually, but, they weren't, they weren't specific on that. And they increased some of their cash reserves in light of probably those.

reduced, uh, head count, uh, cost controls that they did. Uh, in November, you'll remember adzuna required France based social media recruitment advertising company, CESA S E I Z A no, no, no word yet. If CESA is going to break them back from the Rubicon or not. That's a little Caesar joke. Everybody. don't know if anybody got it, but yeah, shout out to add Zuna. Hopefully, hopefully better times are ahead this year.

Chad (10:09.824)

Didn't have a Caesar

Chad (10:21.505)

I think it's interesting that they're blaming Ukraine and Russia when to be quite frank, I think the biggest impact that they've seen, this is a rumor kids, but I've heard on the waves from sources that the biggest impact has been no hiring from our government. And they have some government contracts that literally have just gone silent. So all that revenue, when you're cutting heads, we're not hiring, guess what?

Joel (10:29.808)

Mm-hmm.

Joel (10:46.542)

Mm-hmm.

Chad (10:49.225)

Organizations like Adzuna who actually service the, U S government are going to take a shot too.

Joel (10:54.476)

And we don't speak bad about the government, everybody. Don't speak ill of the government. Otherwise, those contracts will never come around.

Chad (10:59.87)

So hence, hence that not being said in that. So, go ahead and let's get to my shout out that, Cheeseman almost, almost ruined. shout out to the Iberian Peninsula who is representing during the UEFA Nations League. That's right. Portugal and Spain will be repping the Iberian Peninsula against Germany and France in the semi-finals. Next match is.

The big Portuguese, next matches, next matches are scheduled for the June 5th with Germany facing my beloved Portuguese and June 4th, June 5th with the France facing Spain. I already got planned out where I'm going to be in my favorite bar in Portugal. Long live Euro Chad kids, long live Euro Chad.

Joel (11:32.452)

Lot of fans.

Joel (11:46.128)

Mm-hmm.

Joel (11:53.872)

Which brings me to events. I want to know when Eurochad is coming back. Because we've been dealing with American Chad for a while, and I'm a little bit over it, frankly.

Chad (12:01.876)

I've got to deal with it 24 seven. So Jesus man. Uh, and so does Julie. Uh, yeah. So we're going to be an unleash in early May. And then after that, we're going to be ejecting back to, uh, to Europe for probably three or four months. And while we're over there, we will enjoy some rec fest. you going to rec fest in, Nebworth?

Joel (12:16.656)

Mm-hmm.

Lieven (12:23.766)

I think I'm in holidays. That's the problem with Europe of course, we're constantly in holidays.

Chad (12:25.663)

good for you. You'll be skiing. You'll be in the app out somewhere. I'm sure.

Lieven (12:33.856)

I guess. What is it exactly? I know us on holidays, but I don't know which holiday. yeah, we're gone, we're gone. I won't be skiing then, but...

Chad (12:37.138)

early July. Yeah. Yeah.

Joel (12:37.584)

July 11th, something like that, July 10th, 11th.

Chad (12:42.026)

You

Joel (12:43.376)

Viva la Euro chat. Who's favored to win that thing at this point?

Chad (12:48.833)

Oh, right. mean, Spain, Spain is the, uh, the current champs. Uh, Portugal has won it before. I believe Germany's won it before. Um, but, uh, I mean, and it's a very, fairly young tournament. Uh, but yeah, I don't know who's favored right now, but, uh, France. Yeah. Yep. We're all just playing. Yep. France and Spain. mean, these are four pretty damn good, uh, pretty damn good teams. Germany's really shit the bed over the last.

Joel (12:54.18)

Yep.

Joel (13:05.217)

Is Ronaldo still? Is Ronaldo playing? Yeah.

Joel (13:13.402)

Yeah.

Chad (13:17.678)

a few years but seems like they're playing pretty strong in this tournament.

Joel (13:23.126)

And is Bruno on Portugal? Okay. My kid loves Bruno Fernandez, the captain of the Reds, captain of the Reds. That's that's man you for the Americans. I'm so I'm so cultured. I'm so cultured. All right, kids. Speaking of cultured, let's talk some Trump and Elon, shall we? here's a sampling of some of the headlines, from this week in America. ready? Tesla sales tank.

Chad (13:26.027)

yeah. Fernandes.

for Dandesh.

You

Chad (13:38.337)

I can tell.

Joel (13:52.374)

in Europe as rival offerings and Musk blowback hit demand. StopElon.EU was launched in protests of Elon's anti-EU propaganda. France is calling for Trump's America to return the Statue of Liberty. I'm not sure how that would work. US tells European companies to comply with Donald Trump's anti-diversity order.

Chad (13:57.409)

Hmm.

Joel (14:16.964)

Not sure how we can force that. There's not a tariff I can think of. Trump brings European wineries to their knees even before tariffs hit. Portugal issues travel warnings for US and that's really just the tip of the iceberg. Chad, what's your take on all the Trump Elon headlines from the past week?

Chad (14:38.113)

Yeah, I think pretty much half of Europe have actually had travel warnings out. Europe is about $155 billion per year for US tourism, kids. that's not a good look. That's not a good look on us. And also remember when we used talk about wineries and stuff like that, Trump doesn't drink. So he doesn't understand the actual impact.

Right. And during the last Trump tariff from 2018 to 2021, Brown Foreman based in Louisville, Kentucky, an American based family controlled publicly traded company and one of the largest in the spirits and wines business. So back in 2018, they decided to absorb the cost of the tariffs. They're going to try to try to make it work. But they ended up with annual expenses of $80 million that they paid on those tariffs to be able to keep.

The price is the same in Europe because they wanted to ensure that Europeans continued to get their spirits, especially the Jack Daniels and whatnot. Melissa Gordon, the CEO of MGX Beverage Company said today's distillers employ about 25,000 people. And that doesn't even include the individuals who work in the world of ingredients, packaging, sales, logistics, those types of things. So there are tens of thousands, if not more at risk.

in the United States alone over these crazy fucking tariffs. And then at the end of the day, talked about idiot boy, frigging Tesla boy. Tesla quarterly sales were down 41.1 % in France, 55.3 % in Sweden, 12 % in Norway, 55.3 % in Denmark, and 49.7 % in the Netherlands. And all of this without tariffs.

Joel (16:16.867)

Elon.

Chad (16:35.989)

This is just, this is just bad optics. This is just shit that makes him look obviously bad where they don't want us to, to buy his car. So this is to me, it's all over the place. I, again, I don't want it to be crazy. I want it to be boring. Can we go back to boring? Can we go back to boring?

Joel (16:39.268)

Mm-hmm.

Joel (16:54.797)

Yep.

Lieven (16:58.4)

Yeah, boring was good. We like boring. Yeah, predictable. Yeah, like a stable growth of 7%. A stable growth of 7 % of my investments were perfect. And now suddenly it's tanking all because of... well.

Chad (17:01.993)

I like, I liked it better than this. I don't like inflation. Like stable. He was, he said he was a stable G. What's that?

Joel (17:03.992)

I like predictable. I like predictable. Yeah.

Chad (17:16.607)

Yes!

Joel (17:21.424)

Trump doesn't drink, but he does play golf, which is why maybe you're not hearing a lot of Scottish, tariff talk. God help, God help me if the Scotch tariff goes through. That's not good for me. good news though, LinkedIn, LinkedIn opened up an office in Dublin. So things are looking good. Kids, things are looking up. Don't get too, don't get too sad about all this.

Lieven (17:25.528)

Nah.

Lieven (17:33.358)

I could smuggle.

Chad (17:42.293)

killing me here.

Joel (17:47.76)

Emmanuel Macron recently gave a really good speech, leaving, it was probably big news there. Basically he said that Europe can no longer live on the quote dividends of peace, which basically means the dividend piece after World War II, where America kind of was this nice cover military spin, cetera. Macron saying that's over. He also said that, Europe was going to have to have a major rearmament.

Chad (18:17.419)

Mm-hmm.

Joel (18:18.192)

So go to your history books and go learn about Europe in around 1914. And you may be looking at what is coming to Europe. Globalization is under attack. You look at the Syria or a signal gate here in the U S where we're talking about military plans. I'm sure, leaving, you saw this story over in Europe. One of more, one of the more telling things about that whole conversation was the disdain for Europe. There were talks about.

Chad (18:38.667)

Yeah.

Joel (18:45.9)

I can't believe we're bailing out Europe again.

Lieven (18:48.716)

We were shocked really when I read that.

Joel (18:52.014)

That was the headline. I'm in Europe, if I'm in Europe, the headline for me is the administration of the United States hates us. And it was all there in black and white. So for better, for worse, like Europe's kind of on their own going forward. And I, I appreciate Macron and what's coming out of Germany, in terms of military spending, but we're, to me, we're headed to a place in Europe that is really unstable, really volatile.

Lieven (18:59.822)

It was a man.

Joel (19:21.966)

Russia, Ukraine, Putin's been talking about removing the West from Europe for 25 years. That's a huge threat. I still think China is a major threat. think Trump is like, we want out of the European business. We need to focus on Asia. We need to put everything to Asia, which leaves Europe alone in some respects. Now he hasn't said we're out of NATO. He hasn't totally gone out of the game. But if I'm Europe right now, I'm looking at these headlines.

And I know it's fun to say like, statue of Liberty, want it, we want it back. And like, that's fun to say, but I think we're, I think we're headed for really dangerous times in Europe. I think the largest military in, in greater Europe is Turkey, which is kind of on the south side near Russia. Poland is spending a lot on, on defense. Germany will of course, their nuclear weapons, assume. So I, I'd love to hear from leaving on this cause he lives this every day. And I know that he's a.

historical thinker like that. everything that I see points to a deglobalization, you're kind of on your own now. We're leaving this space. There's going to be a void. We have $34 trillion in debt we have to take care of. And that's just the reality. Whether Europe steps up, I guess we're going to find out if I'm right. Levi, I'd love to know your thoughts because you live in this on a regular basis and I know you have an appreciation for history.

Lieven (20:51.146)

Mm-hmm. And we still appreciate America saving our SS twice, but, I hoped for a chart time. Anyways, the way America let us down. Wasn't necessary. mean, it totally makes sense that you have, your hands full with China and that Europe needs to stand up for itself or whatever. But, the way Trump did is.

It was necessary. mean, he could also just have told us, careful because within five years you'll be on your own. have to reschedule our troops and we have to refocus everything. But he just told Russia, now is the time because in the next four years, Europe doesn't have any supports to expect. Something like that. That's not a way to keep Europe safe.

Actually, things are changing very fast now. Germany for the first time gave up on its anti-debt policy. They're actually going to borrow lots of money to invest in military. So there will be a new, what's it called in English? In Dutch we say wap en wetloop, when they all buy weapons against each other. Yeah, something like that. Yeah. So this is going to cost tons of money, money which could have been spent on so much better ways. So the whole world is now going to...

Chad (21:52.705)

Mm-hmm.

Joel (22:05.838)

Rearmament?

Chad (22:08.008)

yeah, rearm, yeah.

Lieven (22:16.782)

re-enarm itself? Why? Because some stupid people thought this was necessary. It's not. mean, in Europe, if you would have asked us five years ago or three years ago, is Russia a threat? We would have said, of course not. Terrorism is a threat and maybe some fanatics are a threat and maybe the Middle East could be a threat. Iran and North Korea, but not Russia. But suddenly everything has changed. And now with the United States backing out,

Joel (22:35.568)

Mm-hmm.

Joel (22:41.241)

Mm-hmm.

Lieven (22:47.306)

There's actually, it's actually again a possibility that, that they want to take, go back to like the Soviet States, like, Eastern Europe should be part again of the ex Soviet Union of Russia. So we are actually starting to, not going to say be afraid, but it's actually becoming a possibility, which was out of the question a few years ago. Okay. So we don't like Trump. That's clear.

Joel (22:56.356)

Mm-hmm.

Joel (23:13.168)

Thank

Chad (23:13.867)

Yeah.

Lieven (23:17.166)

And I think now I hope they call it the coalition of the welling. think France, it's still a pretty big country. You have Germany, you have England and UK. And like you said, Turkey, I'm not sure if you can trust those, but it's a different mentality. Poland, definitely they're strong, probably the strongest in the whole of Europe because of their constant awareness of Russia being around. You have the Baltics, which are

Chad (23:28.417)

Mm-hmm.

Joel (23:35.3)

Mm-hmm.

Chad (23:44.065)

Mm-hmm.

Joel (23:44.112)

Mm-hmm.

Lieven (23:45.814)

very small but pretty brave I think, the Nordics also. I don't think Europe is an easy target even without the United States and they're going to invest a lot and they're going to do it very fast. But it wasn't necessary. This is such a waste of everything.

Chad (24:03.233)

Yeah. I think it's interesting real quick though, that's, mean, Russia's never been known for their, their technology. Let's just say that, right? They've never been known to have the best weapons in the world. They just had a lot of them, right? They just produced a lot. It was always about the numbers. They could overwhelm you with the numbers. It wasn't just about throwing a million soldiers at you. was all these, all these T, know, 74 tanks or

Joel (24:03.3)

Yeah. What are your, what are you?

Joel (24:20.538)

Just the most,

Chad (24:32.768)

47 tanks. That's the thing is that France, Sweden, the UK, Germany, they're actually some damn good weapons systems that they've created tanks, airplanes, the Eurofighter over the years. So I don't think again, remember Russia is still three years into the fight with Ukraine.

Do we think that they're going to try to spread throughout the rest of Europe? No, but I would love to see boots on the ground from European countries in Ukraine to just snuff this out really quick. I do think though, and this is a rebalancing to some effect, where there was an over reliance on the US, period. There just was an over military reliance on the US. There were no contingencies in place, obviously.

Lieven (25:22.574)

Sure.

Chad (25:29.045)

Those contingencies need to be put in place and there needs to be a rebalancing. We over here in the US need to have better healthcare and better education, which is what you guys have had for years. So hopefully we can get some rebalancing. I just don't think that this was the way to go at it. Isolationism is a great way to lose intelligence, lose allies and lose wars.

Lieven (25:40.27)

Hmm.

Lieven (25:53.154)

And China is going to be the big winner because they are being so nice to Europe right now. And Europe is easily charmed today. look at the sales of Tesla. They tanked 50%. And it's not because of the electric vehicles sales is down. BYD is going up extremely. My wife has a Tesla. We want to sell it, but nobody wants to buy it.

Chad (25:55.401)

They are. There's a vacuum.

Chad (26:04.33)

Yeah.

Lieven (26:18.24)

If you drive a Tesla in Western Europe, and maybe I can only speak for Belgium and the Netherlands where I'm often, people spit on it. The cars are getting vandalized, which is totally not okay because my wife, for example, we bought a Tesla when Elon was still a very innovative, in my opinion, even nice guy. liked him. Yeah. But suddenly he became the arm stretching fascist, but he's weird.

Chad (26:29.814)

Right.

Joel (26:30.096)

Yeah.

Joel (26:36.078)

Normal dude.

Chad (26:37.185)

Not a kook, yeah.

Chad (26:46.175)

I think that's the best example though. really do. You take a look at Tesla, it had a great trajectory. And now everything that's happening, mean, China's getting, I mean, they're filling the vacuum.

Lieven (26:59.15)

And they're not just copying anymore. China used to be copying everything and now they're running ahead. Their cars are actually better today. Their electric vehicles are better than Tesla. They will be self-driving before Tesla is, I mean, on a global scale. Okay. So, and of course, and this is maybe getting back to our own business in Western Europe, companies are refusing Teslas as a company car.

Chad (27:03.115)

No.

Lieven (27:28.45)

So they are now saying this is not an ethical choice. we take it away from our company cars list. I know in the United States it's different, but definitely in Belgium, a company car is part of your salary. It's something because it's less taxed than the labor. So it's an easy way to give your employees a nice gift. You can get a company car. More than, I think, two-thirds of the white-collar people have a company car. So it used to be a lot of Tesla.

Chad (27:40.427)

Mm-hmm.

Lieven (27:56.994)

And now companies are selling hundreds of Tesla at once because they don't want to be associated with that company anymore. No, of course. Yeah, but it's actually happening. So I don't care. It's not like we'll have a problem with that, but we want a different car. We don't want to drive that Tesla anymore.

Chad (28:01.277)

is why you can't sell yours because they're flooding the market.

Joel (28:14.128)

Livan, there a sense of, I mean, you guys have enjoyed benefits, whether it's retirement age and sort of, is there a fear that if you're spending all on defense, there won't be money? Economically, is the continent worried? Can we afford the benefits and the luxuries that we've had previously if we're spending more money on tanks or not so much?

Lieven (28:37.076)

The biggest losers will be companies like, sorry, countries in Africa, because the money we used to give to, I'm not sure if I should be calling it charity, but you know, development of foreign countries, this is going where they'll be getting the money. You can't sell it to our people that we're going to make healthcare more expensive. We can't cut down on education even more than we already did, in our opinion. But

This culture and development of foreign countries is where we'll get some money. It won't be enough. So definitely pensions are being looked at right now because people are getting older and they live longer and they get far too much. So there was a big strike in Belgium yesterday because the government wants to put a break on the pensions for the government workers. So, and they get a lot really. So...

Joel (29:36.218)

I expect more of that.

Lieven (29:37.738)

Yeah, and we'll have some difficult times for sure.

Chad (29:40.895)

We take a look at a lot of the European countries are their nixing contracts with us countries for buying military, military armaments or vehicles or what have you. That's going to go back to France and Germany and all the countries that are doing that, which I mean, again, the money is going to be spent in Europe as opposed to going across the pond. It's going to create jobs. it's going to do some, some, some really good things, I think for Europe.

Lieven (29:56.29)

Definitely.

Joel (30:01.306)

Mm-hmm.

Chad (30:10.209)

in, in the, in the next few years, I mean, just, just in quick, quick response to what's happening again, still on your borders there in Ukraine.

Lieven (30:17.294)

And it's not only.

Joel (30:18.788)

Yeah. The guy making the Volkswagen can now make tanks and artillery. Yeah.

Chad (30:22.57)

Yeah.

Lieven (30:22.636)

Yeah, it's going to happen, but it's not only on military, a very stupid example. I got, I got five calls a day from mostly American companies trying to sell house of HR some technical shit. Yeah. Yeah, whatever. And, I always, refuse and always nice. And now I actually can say, I'm sorry, given the way your government is treating us, we cannot be sure that's the.

Joel (30:36.57)

software.

Lieven (30:51.516)

that we have a relationship on the long-term. will not invest in software. are from an American company. You must understand that. And they all react very shocked. But for me, it's kind of a joke. was going to, wasn't going to buy it anyway, but people start to react like that. Why would we trust American companies? What if Trump comes up with something else after the import taxes? What if he wants to, to text some digital solutions, whatever. So people are getting anxious. So.

Chad (30:55.009)

Mm-hmm.

Joel (31:17.402)

Yeah.

Lieven (31:19.636)

looking local and buying european will become a thing again

Joel (31:24.004)

I get it. I get it.

Lieven (31:26.798)

And if we can flip them the bird we will.

Chad (31:27.073)

Big breath big breath

Lieven (31:35.262)

Nasty, nasty. well. And by the way, I know something about recruitment. I've been in the business for over 20 years, but my father was a wine merchant. So I've been drinking wines for over 35 years. When I was 12, I went to Bordeaux with my father to taste wine and to select, yes. So I grew up with wine and the whole wine taxing thing.

Chad (31:39.179)

waiting for a.

Chad (31:50.507)

Okay.

Chad (31:56.371)

nice.

Lieven (32:04.632)

We don't like it either, because we used to send our very expensive wine to the United States, or the really inferior wine. What does he expect from us to drink it ourselves? No way. I will just, yeah. No, no, but it's a problem. If you touch Frenchman's wine.

Chad (32:16.797)

yeah, no, no.

Joel (32:22.658)

Okay, I'm gonna take us to the break and then we'll come out.

Chad (32:26.337)

Okay.

Lieven (32:26.914)

Okay.

Joel (32:29.646)

All right. So much going on. let's take a quick break guys. If you haven't, subscribed to our podcast, please do so and leave us a review while you're there on your favorite podcast platform of choice.

Joel (32:45.626)

All right, Chad, have you seen the new Salesforce ads with Matthew McConaughey?

Chad (32:54.177)

I don't think I have. I don't think I have. No, I have not. That's for sure, yeah.

Joel (32:55.504)

about AI anyway with Woody Harrelson. No, when he tries on the outfit. Well, you need to watch more TV, my friend, get off the tick tock and watch some, watch some old school TV. Anyway, stop, stop, stop the sex Chad for God's sakes. anyway, Salesforce is in the news in our space, this week in, in Europe, the Deco group and Salesforce are launching a new company.

Chad (33:05.953)

Stop taking those walks and enjoying the nice fresh air.

Joel (33:24.57)

To help businesses integrate human and digital talent, the company will leverage data workforce insights and Salesforce's agent force to enable strategic workforce planning and management. The goal is to create a comprehensive suite of capabilities for data-driven decision-making, simulation, recommendation, and oversight of integrated human and digital labor workforces. Chad, your thoughts on this new company that has yet to be named, I might add.

Chad (33:56.193)

Feels like a Trojan horse. mean, is there, is there a threat that Salesforce will learn what's necessary and then either just acquire a Deco or kick them out or kick them to the curb? I mean, I understand this is a new company, but why hold onto the old baggage of a Deco and traditional staffing when they are not going to make the pivot that they need to make. And if they learn from they, Salesforce learned from a Deco.

Joel (34:16.24)

Mm-hmm.

Chad (34:26.017)

Much like we've seen the Chinese learn from VW on how to make cars and now they're killing it in the car industry. Why wouldn't you just turn that around? I mean, not to mention you've got that, but then you also have, you know, the, the direct hiring companies building their own agents on platforms like paradox fountain, gems, smart recruiters, and many others. Then you have the other threat.

of EOR companies like Rippling and Deal who are poised to transition into staffing and employee lifecycle platforms. This seems to be a vital thing that a Deco needs to do, but they feel like that the Titanic. There's no way that they can turn away from the iceberg. I don't see them turning into a digital company and I don't know why Salesforce would carry their baggage for them. just doesn't, other than the data.

But then after they have that, what the hell do need them for?

Joel (35:20.132)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Joel (35:28.89)

So Deco is the second largest global staffing firm. So this is kind of a big deal. This isn't a little bitty company, you know, taking a new initiative and Salesforce of course is a, a very large software company, that's global. Levin is particularly interested in, in this move and, and, interested to hear what he has to say, but these are two really big companies getting together and creating a new company, a new organization. think that's really, really interesting. Salesforce is also partnered with Deloitte.

Chad (35:32.481)

No, it is big.

Joel (35:58.62)

for, so I assume sort of a similar initiative. So Salesforce has figured out like this whole digital workforce thing is going to be a reality and we want to be on the forefront of that. So we're going to go partner with as many staffing companies as possible. It sounds weird to say, could I hire an, a Deco to, provide me with digital employees? It's not that nuts. Like, Hey,

Chad (36:26.453)

No.

Joel (36:27.266)

I need a team of digital marketers. need to post shit on social. Like to me, this is a move to the future. It's a bet on the future to say like, there will be companies that need workers, but they don't want human workers. They want a digital workforce. And we want to be a solution that they can go to and say like, well, we have these people you can hire.

But if you don't like that, we have this digital workforce that you can hire. And if it's not going to be us that disrupts us, it's going to be somebody else. So I like the move. I agree with you, Chad. There's no record of a Deco killing it with acquisitions and innovation and digital shit. So the, you know, the jury's still out on whether or not this works. But in theory, for the second largest staffing company to partner with Salesforce, to create a solution where companies can have digital workers like

Sign me up for that. That sounds like something that a lot of companies are going to be interested in.

Chad (37:25.035)

But Salesforce doesn't need them though. That's the thing that I don't get because they've got agentic already built into their system and how many hundreds of thousands of companies do they already have in their platform? So I mean, that's the thing is I don't know why they understand. That's why I need leaving to weigh in. Why does Salesforce need a Deco right now? Or will they be shedding them along the way?

Lieven (37:47.34)

Well, maybe, and I think probably because Adecco is paying the biggest part of it. But I think HR has a very specific domain and HR has their own suppliers and people and employees are part of HR's responsibility. So I think it does make sense for Salesforce. They have IT as a client mostly, and maybe some marketing, but they don't get in touch with HR. They don't know human resources that good, Adecco does.

Chad (38:10.059)

Mm-hmm.

Lieven (38:16.608)

If they team up, Salesforce has the technical knowledge and Adecco has the clients and they can come up with a proposition. Makes sense. But problem is.

Chad (38:22.112)

Mm-hmm.

Lieven (38:29.174)

Stuffing is a complex business. If you hire human beings and you have to sell those humans to other human beings, it's complex. It doesn't have to be that way with technology. You can't copy humans. You have to find them. You have to hire the right person. You have to sell the right person to your client. It's difficult, but you can very easily copy software. So if you get one perfect digital marketeer, and with digital, mean really a robots marketeer, you can copy that robots.

Chad (38:40.779)

Right.

Chad (38:47.509)

Mm-hmm.

Joel (38:57.232)

Mm-hmm.

Lieven (38:58.734)

in 10 minutes, 100 times. So why would you have to use a staffing company which is specialized in mass? Because Adaco is offering massive solutions of massive employees. They put 300 people at work in one company. This isn't Adaco's way of thinking. But I think they were doing an exercise, which we at House of HR used to do a few years ago. We had an exercise, how can we kill accent jobs?

Chad (39:05.601)

huh.

Lieven (39:25.9)

I became up with now jobs at a platform, the digital platform, hiring and matching people totally without human interference. And I think they did the same thing, something like that, a strategic exercise. How is AI going to impact the world of work and how can we react? Okay, we are into staffing. We're into putting the best person at the best place. We're into talent and maybe they say, maybe talent doesn't have necessarily has to be human. Talent can be technology as well.

Chad (39:32.799)

Mm-hmm.

Chad (39:48.971)

Mm-hmm.

Lieven (39:55.426)

So we're going to provide both hybrid teams consisting of both humans and technology robots. And that's a good way of thinking. But I think if people can get rid of clients, can get rid of article, they will get rid of article because they always think it's too expensive. Why do they have to make money on the people we put at work? And okay, they have some trouble finding them and make sense, but they won't accept it with those technical.

Joel (40:00.333)

Mm-hmm.

Joel (40:17.732)

Mm-hmm.

Lieven (40:24.718)

profiles, I think. So I think this is not going to last very long, even though I love the idea. And I definitely believe that hybrid teams are the future. And if we deliver humans, why couldn't we be delivering digital employees? Problem is the clients will be able to develop them themselves. If my 14-year-old can develop a chatbot and some basic agentics, he will be able to do the same when he's 21, but to a much better scale. So this is only going to get

easier to copy and to develop.

Joel (40:54.02)

Yeah. I mean, the other, the other angle of that is, you know, Salesforce owns Slack and we know that, we know that people hate having multiple tabs open with multiple solutions. if they can, if they can integrate this thing into Slack where your digital workers are within Slack and you manage them in Slack, like everything else at your company, like that would be, that would be kind of a killer to the idea of like, well, anyone can do it. Cause not anyone has Slack. Like there's, aren't many.

Chad (41:13.057)

That should be too easy. Yeah.

Chad (41:22.113)

That's good for you.

Joel (41:22.608)

platforms like that. I think there are some unique qualities to this that aren't easy to replicate.

Lieven (41:26.531)

Thanks.

Chad (41:28.455)

Here's the thing that gets me though, is that HR is always slow to adopt, right? Salesforce already has connections with the CRO, the CFO, the CMO, and the CTO. So if I can start to talk to my CRO about, look, why don't we put these agents in place to be able to make your Salesforce faster, more productive, more efficient. As matter of fact, you'll probably need less salespeople. That's where you're going to sell it.

Lieven (41:38.029)

Hmm.

Chad (41:56.533)

You're not going to sell it to the HR person. They've got those contacts already. So to me, again, this, this, marriage just doesn't make much sense unless it's a data play upfront. It's a Trojan horse. They kick a Deco to the curb. And the next thing you know, they're selling this shit direct to departments.

Joel (42:11.397)

Yeah.

Joel (42:16.43)

I do agree with that Salesforce is a potential wolf and sheep's clothing on this one for sure. But love the commercials Salesforce love, love the commercials. All right. Keeping, keeping within Spain. That is a Spain Jersey, right? Portugal, Portugal. It's a Spain colors. All right. The golden, the golden red. There's no green. I Of course, Chad gets the custom, the custom fucha ball Jersey.

Chad (42:19.391)

Yeah. Fuck yeah.

Chad (42:25.825)

I'm gonna go look it up. I'm gonna go look it up. Shit.

Chad (42:35.051)

This is Portugal. Ronaldo. This is a custom, so it's, it's off. It's off.

Joel (42:46.672)

Well, anyway, Barcelona based factorial has secured $120 million in non diluted funding, sorry, diluted funding to boost sales and marketing, to be repaid for, from new customer profits. That's usually Latin for we're coming to America, everybody, amid HR industry drama. Hello deal. Hello. Rippling lawsuit, factorial aims to grow.

Chad (42:49.557)

Ahem.

Chad (43:10.07)

Mm-hmm.

Joel (43:14.298)

Drama free. We'll see how that goes in case you missed it. Factorial raised 120 million back in 2022 at a $1 billion valuation, which means we get to play the unicorn sound bite. We don't get to do it often anymore. Chad, your thoughts on the factorial news this week out of Barcelona.

Lieven (43:26.498)

That's been a long time.

Chad (43:30.113)

We don't get to do this often. We used to.

Lieven (43:31.777)

No.

Chad (43:40.897)

Yes, 419 million in total funding from Crunchbase. So backstory to the listeners, just in case you don't know, Rippling is suing competitor Deal for corporate espionage. Yes, we're talking about toilets, cell phones. can't, you can't, all of this happening in Ireland. Anyway, it's, it's, it's not a great look for either brand, especially when you have an ass clown like Parker Conrad running one of them. Anyways, is

Joel (43:58.266)

Banana in the tailpipe, everything.

Chad (44:09.535)

the rippling deal drama too much for the market. I mean, we actually heard when we were at transform, some companies were saying, wait, you know, we have them both. talking to them, but we're kind of, we're going to put them at arm's length right now. Is this the perfect opportunity for a company like Factorio to rock up some of that market share from these two of the fastest growing unicorns in the market rippling and deal? Is this factorials chance?

To actually get there and crunch base is predicting that factorial gets acquired, not IPO. So all of that makes for a wonderful story. Now it'd have to be one of the, one of the bigger, one of the bigger acronym companies, ADP, SAP, Salesforce. Anyways.

Joel (44:46.554)

Hello.

Did their crystal ball say who was going to buy factorial?

Joel (44:56.272)

Salesforce. Salesforce.

So this, it's an interesting story. these guys came out of COVID. They had a free version, which would apparently went bonkers. they, went to a pay. Yeah. Cause there was like, need to like hire remotely and manage these people remotely. So they had this free service. So all these SMBs signed up. now they have a paid version, obviously 13,000 businesses. They've grown six fold, in the last year. And I agree that, that the deal.

Chad (45:07.915)

Mm-hmm.

Chad (45:13.249)

60,000 users.

Chad (45:18.047)

Yeah.

Joel (45:33.336)

rippling drama creates an opportunity for them, but I'm not sure they even need it. I, I think this, I think this market is shuffling pretty nicely. I mean, if you're looking at job sites, you could almost sort of say rippling and dealer or monster and career builder of old and, and factorial is like Craigslist and all the small guys, all the SMBs there, they're all Craigslist made a lot of money, dude. Don't, don't,

Chad (45:51.435)

Mm-hmm.

Chad (45:57.864)

it's so good.

Joel (46:02.788)

Don't punk on indeed or punk on Craigslist. But if they can crack the global SMB market, they don't need to be the enterprise level deal rippling solutions provider. They can have a really nice lane in that space. I generally hate SMBs, but when you talk about a global opportunity, I hate SMBs a lot less than I do now. So I think that factorial is in a really great spot.

Chad (46:02.881)

No, I I know. I know, I don't know. Yeah, no, no, yeah.

Lieven (46:06.392)

Mm-hmm.

Joel (46:31.95)

I mean, dealer rippling could be like, if rippling goes public, get some cash, they could come in and get factorial and provide SMB services and integrate that with rippling deal could probably do the same thing. So I think this is a really exciting space to watch. Aside from Trumpism and tariffs and global conflict, the global marketplace for work is really interesting. It'll be fun to watch over the coming years. Leave on your thoughts.

Lieven (47:01.614)

I disagree with you on the SME, like or not liking. I love SMEs. I think each it's for an SME, it's much easier to grow than for a huge company. So, it's a fact. mean, it's just you, you don't lose time with those. I see that at Hours of HR, we used to be very small company. Now we're medium sized and we are 3.8 billion, something like that. Yes, I know. know.

Joel (47:04.581)

Yes.

Chad (47:12.693)

Tell me about that, tell me about that.

Joel (47:28.556)

stop. stop. We're just a mom and pop organization in Brussels.

Lieven (47:31.214)

When I started, it was only 400 million. Anyways, but, um, but it's, we are still a collection. can't say it like that, but of 52 very well organized small companies. And it's much more fun being part of a small company than of a huge enterprise in my opinion. And they are going much faster and they can change direction much faster. And for me.

Chad (47:47.265)

Mm-hmm.

Lieven (47:58.476)

It's easier to make a small company big than to keep a big company big because communication lines are getting longer and more difficult and to be innovative in a big company is very frustrating. You have to sell your great idea to your boss and the boss probably will steal it if it's actually great and try to sell it to his boss, cetera. It's frustrating. So, Amis don't have these problems, they have other problems by the way, but in these troubled times, it's very good to have 13,000 as Amis as a client.

I think it's much better than having 1000 large companies because if you lose a few, it's less troublesome. So I think they're doing the right thing and 13,000 companies plan starting at $8 per user per month. You might make some revenue and you can only grow because those small companies probably will grow faster, will add more users and they won't like changing software because it's just too big of a hassle.

So I think if this was a buyer-sell, I would probably buy them.

Joel (49:00.122)

Levin likes it small.

Lieven (49:02.326)

Yeah, if it can grow Joel, if it can grow.

Joel (49:04.048)

But, but, oh, it, yeah, it can grow. Uh, loves the small businesses, but he loves the big dad jokes, which brings us to this episode's dad joke with a European vibe. What do you get when you cross a Spaniard and an Iranian? What do you get when you cross a Spaniard and an Iranian?

Chad (49:08.799)

He's a grower, not a shower. The dad joke.

Joel (49:34.411)

Oil of Olay.

Lieven (49:36.718)

Yes Joel, thank you so much. We out.

Joel (49:39.264)

We out!

Chad (49:40.395)

We out.