Beth Benike
speaker
87 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Apr 2025
last heard Apr 2025
Beth Benike’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
right now, there's no expertise in the U.S. to set this up for me. Right. Now we have to talk about the cost of importing the raw material.
And the tariff on top of that. Then we have to talk about the downtime I have. So I told you I got two to three months worth of product in my warehouse right now. It will take 12 to 18 months if I had the money, if I had the expertise to get this set up. Now that's just one production line. I actually have eight products. And with one production line, I can do 100 units per day.
I sell more than that.
So I would have to buy multiple production lines for that one product. Now I have eight other products or seven other products beyond that. So just the pure cost, okay, let's scratch that idea.
Financially, logistically, and in the end, my product is going to probably have to be three times more expensive for the consumer. So I guess I'm better off paying the tariff because that's less.
So let's scratch that idea. Let's say magically we find a factory in the U.S. that has the exact machinery, the clean environment, and access to the raw material, which is still imported and tariffed. And they're willing to work with me. Awesome. Let's do it. The first step is to create molds.
That process takes four to six months in itself for one mold and costs me somewhere around $100,000 to $120,000. Wow. So you tell me... How am I supposed to do this? How am I supposed to do this? And now you're cutting off all my income.
When you cut my legs out from under me with no notice, and I can't even save money or seek investment or come up with any kind of plan, I can't even sell the products I've already paid to have made in the US because I can't afford to bring them into the US. Nobody can afford to this quickly move to the US with manufacturing. We don't have the infrastructure. We don't have the raw materials.
We don't have the expertise.
You know, it's just none of it makes damn sense. My husband's a farmer. We grow corn and soybeans. He's out planting today. Minnesota is really good at growing crops. We have great soil. We have intelligent farmers. We have great equipment. China is really, really good at manufacturing. I love my team in China. We send each other gifts. They send me videos. They love making my products.
We have a great relationship. I would love for every country to do what it is best at and be able to thrive on what they're good at. I honestly don't think that we can bring manufacturing to the U.S. and be good at it. We already have hard enough time with the businesses that are currently here finding good workers. Who's going to work in these factories?
It reminds me very much of basic training in the military. When you go through basic training, they break you down and then they build you back up and you're stronger because of it. In theory, that's a great, difficult, but great way to do things in certain circumstances. However, this is not short-term pain. This is immediate death to thousands of small businesses.
I'm not okay. I'm scared for my friends. I'm scared for myself. They don't understand. This is certain death for us. It is certain death for so many of my friends and myself.
Not in the literal sense of—actually, no, I'm not going to say not in the literal sense because the very first thought that came to me when he announced the 104% tariff was at least I have life insurance so that there's a way my family can still have a home. And I immediately caught myself.
Yeah, no, you, it's a good place.
Yes, because there's nothing more important to me than my family and my kids and them having a place to live. And even though this was not a mistake I made in my business, so two years ago, I made some business mistakes just because I'm a new business owner and entrepreneurship is hard. And so a couple years ago, I got into a dark place and I sought help and I got help.
And since I went through that two years ago, I made sure that I have developed a network of people to reach out to, people I can talk to, people I can commiserate with, people I can lean on, medication that I can take should I need it.
I am afraid for all of the small business owners that are doing this on their own, who don't have someone to lean on or the coping skills, because this is like the biggest tsunami that just came out of nowhere and crushed our entire country for small business owners. I am okay. But now I'm worried about everybody else who doesn't have that.
I'm not even allowing myself to consider that. I'll find a way. Because I refuse to be a victim. Yeah, I refuse to be a victim. I refuse to quit and I refuse to fail. And I'm not going to teach my kids to be a victim or to give up. I'm going to show my kids that you just have to adapt and overcome. There's always a way. There's always a different thing you can do. You're never stuck. It's hard.
It sucks. But it's a great lesson for them to learn as well.
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