This is John Batchel, a conversation with colleague Jean Marks about his conversations when he travels America speaking to associations, most recently contractors in Wisconsin.

How's business? It's not bad. It's not good. It's somewhere in between. Waiting, waiting, waiting.

Gene reminds, this is optimism.

However, need facts, not yet.

Here's Gene Marks on the conversation he hears everywhere.

More of this tonight.

Everywhere I go, it's what I hear.

It's everywhere I go is that,

and everybody's waiting for the good to come, you know?

And I do hear a lot of optimism among the people I talk about that the good is coming.

These tax, you know, the tax incentives and the big beautiful bill will be good.

The tariffs will settle down.

We have a pro-business government in Washington and less regulations, you know. But then again,

John, I deal with small businesses and, you know, we are inherently optimistic. So sometimes overly

optimistic. So you have to take that with a grain of salt. But right now it's okay.