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This is Scott Becker with the Becker Business and the Becker Private Equity podcast. We try and bring you one to two business and market insight episodes a day. We also bring you typically an interview with the business leader. This right now is a is a market insight episode. We hope you enjoy it. Today's discussion is Starbucks, Amazon, Apple and Epic. So we're going to talk briefly about these four companies and tie some of it together. But bear with me on this. First is Starbucks. Starbucks is moving in the right direction on customer experience and that is showing up in terms of their results. Both their sales are up and their Stock is up 17% year to date. This is the best quarter that Starbucks has had in a long time. And what I could tell you is I'm a regular Starbucks customer. And it seems like in reality Brian Nicole, who took over as CEO and he has things moving in the right direction. When I go to Starbucks in the morning at the one that I go to, there's often samples out. The staff is incredibly friendly. It's a rockstar Starbucks in terms of attitude and customer experience. And I wonder if this is what's happening throughout Starbucks, throughout the country. The improvement in service, of positivity, of how they treat people seems to be through the roof. It's a lesson for all of us in business and leadership. And again, this is due to the team there, but it's also due to leadership of Brian Nicole who came over from Chipotle to lead Starbucks. And is Starbucks moving in the right direction again? Starbucks up 17% year to date. The second company we'll talk about is Amazon. Amazon just announced that's cutting another 16,000 employees. It had cut 14,000 a few months back, trying to get back towards higher profits and losses or higher earnings, better margins. It is heavily in the retail business, which is not a great business, even the online retail business. It also makes a lot of its money through the cloud business, but it has to be more efficient. It's closing a lot of its fresh and go stores, leaving it more where it's in brick and mortar. More in the Whole Foods category and getting rid of some of these other things that have low margins, probably more than time to do that stuff. But also getting rid of a lot of employees. The stock market will like that. The people who lose their jobs will not like that. That is one of the great dichotomies in American business today. What could be good for the Fortune 500 company may be very bad for the employee who is trying to make a living and get by. But Amazon, up about 7% year to date, taking some strong actions to try and get its P and L back where it should be. Third is Apple and Epic. And I'm going to tie these two together more than anything else. Apple, of course, is in a challenging spot. It's down 7% year to date. But that's not really the story when I think about Apple, when I think about Apple and I think about Epic. Epic, for those that are not living in healthcare, is the biggest electronic health records company in healthcare. Its founder is a woman named Judith Faulkner. And what's happened with Apple and Epic and what they have in common is this incredible ability to, to constantly be improving. Epic starts in an area, gets the most viable products going in an area and then improves, improves, improves around it till it's module, till its specific areas are so good in so many areas. They've just done an incredible job over a long period of time of sticking to constant improvement. Apple the same, you know, you're always getting from Apple an update. The iOS system is updating, this is updating, that's updating. Sometimes we love the updates, sometimes we don't. But what I can tell you is that constant effort and improvement, that itself was inspiring and keeps it a great company again. Yep, was I think right now the third or fourth largest market cap company in the world. Epic is the biggest deliverer of electronic health Record Services, EHRs, an incredibly driven organization towards constant improvement. Just to take a step back, as long as we're talking stats for a second, Amazon is the second largest employer in the United States and the second largest company after Walmart by revenues. So again, today's discussion is a quick roundup around Starbucks moving in the right direction. Amazon trying to find its P and L. Apple doing okay, releasing earnings shortly. But the real story in Apple and Epic that we're tying together today is their incredible efforts at constant improvement. Thank you, thank you for listening to the Becker Business, the Becker Private Equity podcast. We hope you find this helpful. Please text Scott Becker at any time with your comments on the podcast that text number for Scott Becker, founder of Becker Business Media, founder of Becker's healthcare partner McGarr woods is 773-766-5322 and if you give me comments, what I'm really looking for here is do you prefer a one company episode where we just talk about Starbucks or Amazon or something about that, or, or is this roundup we touch on three or four companies, something that you like? If you comment to me and you're one of the first three people to comment and send me a text with your comments in that and some commentary, we'll send you a $50Amazon gift certificate. That text number is 773-766-5322. Thank you for listening to the Vector Business and the Vector Private Equity podcast. Thank you.