The kiddo and I recently spent 10 days in Japan. We were lucky to catch the sakura blossoms in Kyoto, hike through the orange gates and kitsune statues at Fujiki Inari shrine, shop for hand-forged knives, have buffets of conbini snacks from 7-Eleven and FamilyMart, and try street food from curry patties to sea urchin. 

But our biggest discovery, as my 9-year-old summed it up: “Why is Japan so sanitary, Mom?” 

When I travel, I like to observe what social challenges that a country has invested in solving. From our Japan trip, my takeaway is, why have we not invested in self-maintaining toilets? Not only do most Japanese toilets clean themselves, but they have heated seats, built-in bidets that eliminate a need for toilet paper hoards, and white noise machines. Even the public ones.

Nobody needs to clean a toilet. Do you want to do it? It’s smelly and gross. It potentially exposes the cleaner to chemicals and biological contaminants, thus has a higher hazard insurance and workers comp rating. And, the technology is relatively inexpensive and reliable enough to eliminate the job but for periodic checks (as long as you can hit the bowl, gents).

While I’m still not ready for a default body-temperature seat to greet me in the night, I would be happy to pay a bit more for my next toilet if I never need to clean it again, or it becomes a periodic systems maintenance task.

Japan has a declining population and negative birth rate, which means they need to solve for their fewer working-aged people doing more impactful things. The US is headed that way, both through declining birth rates and more restrictive immigration policy. So I ask you, why are we obsessed with dirty jobs?

Globally, there are lots of dirty jobs. We’re trying to bring some of them back to America through industry tariff protections. No shade on janitorial services, do you aspire to build a company around 1880s-style manual labor? Are you going to take the $5,000 baby bonus and risk your life to birth a child into the prospects of breathing dirty air and contaminants? No way, you want that kid to be doing laparoscopic surgery or designing and operating robots. Once that kid sees a VR headset or a video game, good luck convincing them that they should take a low-skill job. This story is playing out across the world. Chinese kids don’t want to work in dirty, repetitive factory jobs, either. 

If nobody wants the job, why are we perpetuating it? 

It’s time to ask that question for yourself. In every business, we have unnecessary legacy tasks. Where are you protecting unnecessary or dirty jobs? What shouldn’t be anyone’s job?

In my business, I’ve spent the last year identifying tasks and roles that shouldn’t require specialized knowledge or be owned by one person. Where are we overdelivering or doing tasks that don’t add value for us or the client? Where can we automate or refine our systems and SOPs? Where is using a custom or tailored AI agent an accelerating opportunity? 

On the AI front, the base systems are finally reliable enough to be worthwhile. We’ve loaded my content library into a closed ChatGPT and the team can ask lots of questions. In my efforts to un-bottleneck my team, this is the equivalent of shutting off the “Mom, where is my…” question. I no longer have to be the institutional memory. My answers are now: did you ask the GPT? Did you try a Gemini query of our Google Workspace? Did you create a first draft and put it through our corporate voice filter? We still have to review the validity and quality of the answer, but that’s my responsibility as a manager. And it frees us up to ask questions like, what could we do with this extra time? 

So, while I’m ready to rip out my builder-grade porcelain in favor of a self-cleaning Toto toilet with water feature, I’d also love for my kiddo to look at my business and exclaim, “Why are your operations so sanitary, Mom?”

The first batch of Q1 economic data is dropping this week. The TL;DR:

• Inflation was flat

• Consumers and businesses pre-purchased a lot of goods

• The economy shrank anyway

What’s coming up in Q2?

• Big box retailers have warned the Trump administration that shelves will be stocked out by mid-summer if Chinese tariffs are not lifted

• Container ships at the Ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles -- the country’s busiest -- are estimating a 44% drop in ship traffic in the next two weeks, and up to 60% less in Q2.

• Companies are staging Chinese-made goods in interim locations called foreign trade zones, as well as countries like Vietnam and Japan, which appear more likely to put near-term tariff deals in place.

When the GDP measure of the economy shrinks two quarters in a row, that’s officially a recession. While that word got thrown around a lot in 2023 and 2024, we never actually had GDP contraction, just slower growth. The tariff and trade shock that’s happening right now is like April of 2020, and the predictive data is looking more like the George Bush-era recession of the early 1990s. (Track weekly GDP sentiment from the Federal Reserve of Atlanta via its GDPNow report.)

While the impacts of predictable tariffs can stabilize in 6-12 months because the people running supply chains will find the opportunities, we have only stable genius, not actual stability. Even if the administration looks at this data and reverses course tomorrow, we’ll still feel the tangible goods impacts for six months and the impacts on our trade partnerships until trust is rebuilt through reliable leadership decisions.

The administration’s actions, if sustained, will gut the small business community. Large chains like Albertson’s have said they refuse to absorb any costs of tariffs from suppliers. Guess who can stop this right now? Your Congressional leaders. Call them.

This week, I am handing in the final revision for a new book! I will be part of an anthology collection on life and work that is launching on June 24. More details to come next week, but I just couldn’t wait to share this with you. 

If you host a podcast and would be interested in having me as a guest for your episode airing June 23-27, please hit me up at [email protected].

Are start-ups actually Ponzi schemes? I deeply felt this Substack newsletter about building a business for consistent profit generation versus quick growth of asset value for sale. We can learn from both, but if you’re not in a build-to-sell position, be informed and intentional about what you take from the venture playbook.

Yes, your AI agent has been kissing your butt. The most recent version of ChatGPT was pulled due to “overly sycophantic” responses. If your AI agent is a little bit less flattering today, it’s not a you problem. Also, while being polite in your prompts costs AI companies millions of dollars in monthly electricity costs, they still want you to do it. 

Accounting FTW. While I’m not on board with this whole lampshade-as-hat trend, kudos to Gen Z for showing an interest in accounting as a profession and using it to benefit low-income and older Americans at tax time.