Forever winding one's career is similar in many respects to the stock market.
After my chat with President Biden on Tuesday regarding his fresh tariffs on China, I received two calls that left an impression.
The first was from a longtime friend, who promptly reminded me that 12 years ago, I had no heat in my place and was rationing London broil bought with my mom's BJ's Wholesale membership card. Now, I'm in a fitted suit (bought myself and not at BJ's), standing next to the president.
I was like, "Damn good point; I'll reflect on that this weekend once we get all the news out. Gotta go!"
The other message came from a family member I haven't talked with much in the past two years. This was more of a gut-check personal conversation, so I am not going to divulge details, but let's just say it was a good flashback to how I arrived at this particular life moment.
Agree or disagree with the president's policies, the office commands the utmost respect. This is the most powerful individual on the planet. It was an honor for the Yahoo Finance team to be invited to the White House and to see how the gears of government turn each day.
And for me personally, it was validation that with sacrifice and focus, once unimaginable goals could be achieved.
To that end, I owe you — the loyal Yahoo Finance community — some insight into our presidential interview beyond the headlines.
First up is sharing the interview structure, which hopefully answers some of the questions I have received on social media:
We were allotted a short period of time with the president. It timed out to about three questions. That's all the time we had — he has a country to run.
The president walked into the Diplomatic Room where we were set up. We said hello, shook hands, and briefly talked about Corvettes (the president has a green '67 Corvette his father bought him as a wedding gift). A mic was put on him. We immediately did the interview. Not a second of time was wasted.
After the interview, we said our goodbyes to the president and made our way to the Rose Garden for the press conference. The president made his way almost immediately to the ceremony in the garden to discuss the tariffs before it rained.
No questions were shared in advance of our interview with the president.
Given the allotted time, we decided to focus on the tariff news, as it was most important to markets and to you, the passionate Yahoo Finance investing community.
That's really about it with regard to logistics! If anything else, I could tell you I bought a new tie, shirt, and pocket square for the day. I also shined my own shoes (it's relaxing — give it a try).
The second takeaway is the importance of one exchange between yours truly and the president.
I asked him why households aren't feeling wealthy as the stock market trades at record highs and the unemployment rate still sits below 4%. The president acknowledged that "people are just uncertain."
He vowed to stay the course on job creation, adding it's "going to take a little more time" to get households feeling better.
That uncertainty among households underscores how close the presidential election will likely be this fall. You couldn't have two more wildly different people in the running to be the country's CEO. Different policies. Different human beings. Different from start to finish. Each individual has wins and misses in their columns.
My takeaway here: Today is the day to call up your financial adviser and spend time working through asset allocation going into the election. Anyone who tells you it won't cause outsized volatility is very wrong.
Before you go do that, here is a rapid-fire recap of our day inside the White House.
Brian Sozzi is Yahoo Finance's Executive Editor. He is also the host of the "Opening Bid" podcast. Follow Sozzi on Twitter/X @BrianSozzi and on LinkedIn.
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