Business Conference | Are You Spending the First 3 Hours of Every Day Responding to Emails? Is Email & Digital Clutter Controlling Your Life? “American Adults Spend Over 11 Hrs Per Day Consuming Content.” – Nielsen

Audio Transcription

Clay Clark is here somewhere. Where’s my buddy Clay? Clay Clark! Clay’s the greatest. I met his goats today, I met his dogs, I met his chickens, I saw his compound. He’s like the greatest guy. I ran from his goats, his chickens, his dogs. So this guy’s like the greatest marketer you’ve ever seen, right? His entire life, Clay Clark, his entire life is marketing. You could be anywhere doing a lot of different things, but you chose to be here.

Some shows don’t need a celebrity narrator to introduce the show, but this show does. In a world filled with endless opportunities, why would two men who have built 13 multi-million dollar businesses altruistically invest five hours per day to teach you the best practice business systems and moves that you can use. Because they believe in you and they have a lot of time on their hands. They started from the bottom, now they’re here. It’s the Thrive Time Show starring the former US Small Business Administration’s Entrepreneur of the Year,

Clay Clark, and the entrepreneur trapped inside an optometrist’s body, Dr. Robert Zunich. Two men, eight kids, co-created by two different women. Thirteen multi-million dollar businesses. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom and we’ll show you how to get here. Started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom, and now we’re at the top. Teaching you the systems to give what we got. Colton Dixon’s on the hoops.

I break down the books. See, bringing some wisdom and the good looks. As a father of five, that’s why I’m alive. So if you see my wife and kids, please tell them hi. It’s the C and T up on your radio. And now, 3, 2, 1, here we go.

We started from the bottom, now we hit it. Started from the bottom, now we hit it. Started from the bottom, now we hit it. Started from the bottom, we’ll show you how to get it. Thou shall not email. Thou shall not email.

Some shows don’t need a celebrity narrator to introduce the show. But this show does. Two men. Eight kids, co-created by two different women. 13 multi-million dollar businesses. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Thriving Time Show.

Now, 3, 2, 1, here we go! We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom and we’ll show you how to get there. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom, now we’re here.

We started from the bottom. Yes, yes, yes, and yes! Dr. Z, it is always ecstasy when you are next to me, my friend. How are you? Dude, I tell you what, I just really love being in the man cave. You just can’t help but feeling like a man when you walk in here.

You know what I like about the man cave too? I like the drama free zone. I love it for, I want to say, every day in a row, you’ve chosen not to be a dramatic person. I mean, you know what I’m saying? No?

I feel like- Wait a second. Do you think that’s actually a conscious decision? You think some people are just wired to be drama? Just as an example, we had a young lady who worked with one of my businesses for years. Is it years?

Years. Now when you say worked with, what happened? She’d been a member of our team at one of our businesses. I don’t want to get too much because it’s still litigious. Over about five years. Oh no, okay.

And in certain businesses, we’ll go optometry, we could say auto auctions, we could say… Sleep centers. Sleep centers. Hair cutting facilities. Hair cutting facilities. In certain businesses, there’s a relationship that occurs with like a doctor or a stylist

or something. Sure. Anyhow, it is. A certain doctor or stylist or somebody could say, hey, I’m doing my own thing on the side and I’m going to be leaving in two weeks. If you want to follow me to my new place.

Oof. That’s a dirty move. You can do that. You can. Now, here’s the move that was done. The move is this.

Hey, I’m being terminated right now due to I Don’t want to say what it is right because it’s very Very and it’ll all come out later sure, but I have just chosen because of some ethical issues To oh no to move not to move on not to you know because of ethics sure oh, yeah And I just wanted you to know I’m a single mom And I have to support my kids, so I if you would follow me to my new place you know because I’m leaving

because of the ethics I don’t want to leave I love this place I love my customers I love my customers I love what I do uses the phrase my customers I hear her on the camera my customers I love my customers you know I don’t want to leave you know but I need to do ethical things I’m just gonna let you know I need you to if you can follow me over my new place it helped me with my income I’m a single mom cuz I’m single mom and I need to take care of my kids

twice with different men as a result of not, no fault of her own. Just twice. Just the facts. So, I find out about this because hundreds of people were getting the same call. Wow. That’s a lot better.

Which means the person had to download our database and call. Sure. So I think probably maybe two dozen calls in or so. A guy calls me, hey, just so you know, I’ve been working with you a long time. I know you. I’ve known, I’ve done business with you. This call was made, didn’t

sound right, sounded weird. I wanted you to know. Have you got this call yet? I said, no, but thank you. And the other guy calls me. Hey, just so you know. So I was getting probably, it seemed like every maybe 100 calls she made, maybe four or five guys would call me. Sure. So I have to let the person go, obviously, because I see what’s happening. Oh yeah. Which further perpetuates the lie of that she’s choosing to leave in two weeks because of the situation. So now perpetuates, like look, she got blindsided.

That’s what we’re called now, is I got blindsided. I got blindsided. Here I was trying to leave on the high road. You’re trying to do the right thing. And so what I did, and because of mentoring from you and business books I’ve read and reading Jack Welch and osmosis of being around great leadership, on a Monday meeting it was

brought to my attention this was happening. And they’re like, what are you going to do? What are we going to do? What are we going to do about this right and I said whoa whoa whoa whoa Johnny was a nine-to-five and I didn’t know you did you did that break out in song oh no I can’t what we’ve got I’ve got I’ve got a call little I I’m not sure you broke out in

song right I didn’t break into Bon Jovi okay I could have done it you could have done I could have left the room and said where’s my mom I gotta go find it I’ve gotta find it I could have started crying that’s another move I could have said, she will rue the day. And you start to make these, you know, you make those kinds of statements. She will rue the day. What does rue the day? What does ruing look like? I could have said, uh, I know random Shakespeare things where people really don’t know what it

means. I could have said the games of foot, right? Right. Right. I mean, these are all things you could say, right? Absolutely. We’ll nip this in the bud, I tell you. You know it. But I decided to do nothing. Nothing as in nada? Yeah, because at the end of the day, this happens about every three months with this

particular business. It’s part of the game. It’s part of the game. People move on. Why do you think that is? Well, there’s 70 some odd people there.

The average person’s there about four or five years. And what happens is I get a little notification, which happened on this occasion and almost every occasion, saying, hey, this person needs to have their wages garnished because they’re being a deadbeat single dad or mom. That happens. And so you have to then, when wages are garnished, can you kind of explain for the listeners

that don’t know what that means? Well, it comes in the form of a court order. And so you have- So it’s not a choice. It’s not a choice. And what they do is they go to the employer and they say they force you to take money out of the paycheck before the said employee gets it

to compensate whatever debt they owe it could be fill in the blank. Right, a lot of times it’s auto debt, it could be maybe being a deadbeat parent, it could be not paying child support. There’s so many things it could be. So many things. So this, I brought it to the person’s attention very privately, discreetly. I said hey with me and one other person present, hey we’re going to have to do some garnishments. It looks like there’s some child support and some other things.

We need to just knock this out. Sure, sure. Outrage begins. I’ve been here five years. You won’t just pay me cash? Uh-oh.

No, they did not ask that. It’s a true story. Why is it that if somebody’s in the hot seat, they’re always ready to go to the unethical form of whatever it is. Right away, that’s the default move. To get their due.

They feel like they’re due, right? Right. And you just see it happening. And so, but members of my team, as recently as two hours ago, have said to me, I cannot believe you’re letting her walk all over you. Well, you know, it’s interesting because it’s kind of like, they’re not following the letter

of the law of whatever their situation is. And their first instinct is to try to get you as an accomplished to allow them to continue that narrative. What happens is, here’s where it gets crazy. I don’t make it crazy, but this is what most of our listeners unfortunately have done, and I have done this. It’s when you send the email of the bold manifesto.

You know the one where you start typing that bad boy? You start typing that email at about 11 p.m. because you can’t sleep. And at about 3 a.m., it’s like page 3. And let me read, let me just give you an example of the kind of email you shouldn’t send. We’ve all sent at one point, okay? On today’s show, it’s thou shalt not email.

Thou shalt not email. Well, none of our listeners. We’re talking about other people. Well, we’re only talking about me. Or maybe something I’ve done once in the past. And maybe something, but something that none of our listeners have done right probably not so we’re talking about thou shalt not email and the consistent cowardice of keyboard warriors

Oh, so this is what I would have done. I don’t know 14 years ago, okay, and I did this before I write an email I remember I called the DJ manifesto there we go come on I wrote this thing starting I think about you know 10 o’clock 11 o’clock at night I couldn’t sleep. I don’t go to bed like at 9 so it’s like 11. I can’t sleep. That’s 11 I’ve never been up this late. It’s crazy. You know I’m up at 11 o’clock, and I’m writing it’s like I Normally, don’t do this, but because you want to start like that. I normally don’t do this

Yeah, but you know what Facebook people do this. I basically I don’t normally never respond to a post or it’s oddly formal Oh, yeah, dear team dear We have an issue that must be addressed and it has been a fortnight since I have encountered such an abomination He was you lose more Syllables right and a fortnight since I have, you know, you but you’re using words. It’s kind of a wedding invitation. You don’t know what the words mean, right? You’re cordially invited to the

betrothed wedding. Choose a box where you check the mark between chicken and steak. And we know that nobody uses the mail system anymore, but sending a text would be tactless. And we’re supposed to do this. And then you’ll handwrite me back something to thank me for the gift. I think they’ll show up and wonder why you’re getting steak and not chicken and throw a fit. And you pay a guy to handwrite it with calligraphy. But the point is, it’s that formal text.

Sure. It has been called to my attention that one of my disc jockeys has violated the non-compete agreements. Uh-oh. C, C segment 2-1. Oh, there’s always a C.

And you start writing and writing, and then you realize, no, no, no, this isn’t effective. So you call your attorney. Oh. And you say, attorney, I want you to craft an email. So your attorney’s like, hey, for a thousand bucks, I’ll craft it. I’ll craft it.

So he’s a crafty man. So he’s out there crafty like MacGyver. He’s writing this. And you know what I’m talking about? It’s like a three-page PDF, right? Oh yeah.

And you hit send. What all caps in there? The first moment you hit it, you feel pretty good. Oh, you’re right. You feel good. Yes.

Thunder. Yes. It’s like the ACDC’s. Oh, yeah Showing them who the boss is Cuz I’m TNT you’re getting into it you’re fired up you say oh, yeah when you said it It’s feeling good cuz he said like it to the morning. Oh, yeah, cuz you know and now I get seven or eight

When you finally wake up a little bit you won’t you have a kiss that what programs will show you how many people open the And you realize, gosh, only like seven of my 80 people have opened this thing. So that’s part of the frustration. But then you realize that those who are easy to be outraged email back with their one page. And they weave in questions and statements in the same paragraph. So they say, there’s two sides to every story, and I would like for you to know, because

the trolls are in control, that I have been here a long time and objectively looking at it I’m unlike an entrepreneur who makes the money off the sweat of the backs of the people and uses other people’s money for profit and gain. Well, the employee has been, and you’re like, wow, this guy’s really articulate. He’s writing the Socialist Manifesto back. Wow.

And now, here it goes. Now you are in an email doom loop, and this is everybody listening to this show who’s ever sent a regrettable email. That’s one way you can start the email doom loop. Or the other is that you love to email, therefore you have no control of your life. You know, it’s funny that you put it those words.

I kind of like them, by the way. The email doom loop. That implies it’s a loop that’s doomed. Okay, let me read you Arianna Huffington, a successful entrepreneur, Huffington Post, she writes, the way it works is simple. While you’re away on vacation, people who email you

get a message letting them know when you’ll be back. And then the most important part, the tool I recommend deletes the email for you. If the email is important, the sender can always resend it. If it’s not, then it’s not waiting for you when you get back, or even worse,

tempting you to read it while you’re away. So the key is to just find the tool. So the key is not just that the tool is creating a wall between you and your email, it’s that it frees you up from the mounting anxiety of having a mounting pile of emails waiting for you when you return, the stress of which mitigates the benefits of disconnecting in the first place.

Guy Kawasaki, the key employee for Steve Jobs back in the day, who’s now a successful venture capitalist and a key spokesperson for Mercedes-Benz writes, Email doesn’t matter. I once lost 400 unanswered emails in my inbox because my email application crashed. Afterward, no one sent a follow-up email asking why I didn’t respond. Later I lost another inbox and only had a handful of people follow up.

He explained during our show, now he just hits delete every few months. You know, I have a friend of mine, I had a friend of mine that we were doing an email deal and I’m kind of like you, Clay. Whenever I pull them up, I may not have that red dot. I’m just trying to delete, delete, delete, get through them, delete, delete, delete, delete.

I looked at my friend and I said, oh, this is so annoying. I’ve got 100 emails almost every morning I’m just going to delete. My friend looked at me and said, I’ve got 12,596 currently that I haven’t even looked at. Right. I probably should just delete them all and start over.

I’m like, that’s so good. So I’m gonna give the listeners. We’re gonna go to give listeners say practical rules for Mastering your email very practical rules. Oh my and I the reason why this is such a big big issue is Articulated very well on a pando daily pando daily pando comm we’ve been featured in there before it is a tech Online publication that covers things like Twitter, Uber, LinkedIn, big tech companies, Silicon Valley. I’m going to read this to you.

I would like for you to break it down for me what this means to you. Email is like sex. Everybody does it, but few talk about what we actually do or how we do it. Those that tend to do so with missionary zeal, with lots of suggestions about what you should We gathered data across 38,000 inboxes and dozens of mail providers. Our data is both limited and biased, especially towards Gmail.

But it’s at least a healthy size sample, and any significant sampling of the email market will result in a wide range of inbox and folder sizes. However, what we found was that for a given inbox, there is a 1 in 10 chance that it will have 15 unopened items or fewer. There’s a one out of ten chance that it will be about 21,000 or more. Anyway, the average person has more than a thousand unresponded to emails.

And what this article is pointing out is that email is like sex. Everybody’s having sex, but few people talk about what you should do or how you should do it because, you know, most people just don’t want to, it’s an obscure idea, but it’s a huge thing. Wow, that’s on Pando, huh? Yeah, so think about this for a second. Okay.

Email, I’m going to give you the rules, and I’d like for you to tell me if you agree. All right. Rule number one. Let’s do it. Use email as a tool, and don’t be a tool of email. Use email as a tool, but don’t be a tool of email.

Could you, did you agree with that? I absolutely do agree with that. I think that and it’s also a slave to the email. You know, so many times, you know, we give out our email address and then we don’t want to change it because it’s kind of like your phone number, your cell phone number, right? You’re like, oh, I got to tell everybody I changed it. I mean, you should clean it up. And so everybody wants it because everybody wants to send you something. Everybody wants to get you on their email

list. So 90%, maybe 95% of emails I get are just push emails. The company gets it and they push that. I go in and sometimes try to unsubscribe, but I think that that… This is maybe my paranoia speaking through, but I have a feeling that when you try to uninscribe that they go, oh, that’s active. They care.

They’re looking. So now let’s distribute that to more people that want to email him. Right. And so it seems like every time I unsubscribe to one, I get five new ones that now want to email me. So let’s talk about this.

I see a lot of entrepreneurs, and they’re almost always unsuccessful entrepreneurs who I see, who will literally have their phone up. I’m going to take my phone out for a second. Phone up and out. Always out and up while they’re having dinner, while they’re watching a movie, while they’re hanging out with family, while they’re doing everything, even whitewater rafting.

and they are constantly trying to look at it. Like whenever there’s a lull of 30 seconds. You know, whenever there’s like a minute or two of downtime. What do you think that is? Is it our addictive personalities now? I think that the phone was designed

to be an addictive device. I know it is. I’ve read the book, Hooked, that explains this. So people want, you know, the designers designed it to be that way. But I see people that this is,

so it’s like right now I’m struggling to find significance as a man because I’m 40 and I’ve achieved my goals and I’m not super happy with where my life’s at, so I need to stay busy and I’m going to check email. That’s what I see a lot. It’s the same reason why people with very little money go out and buy a very expensive car.

It’s like things aren’t going very well in a lot of areas, but I’m going to go drop every, you know what I mean? You see people with zero money at all buy the most expensive car. I think it’s a search for significance. It’s like, I’m going to send one email real quick right now because I’ve got nothing going on so I’m going to send an email real quick or I’m going to get one.

It’s like a thing. You see bosses with businesses with maybe 20 employees or less just bombarding their people with emails all the time. You see this all the time. It’s sad. It is, and I wonder why you think that is.

I think it’s just we’re looking to fill the hole in our soul with something. And email is just a thumb. I mean, I see it. I mean, literally, I see this virtually 60% of the time before I can help a client get out of this loop, where they’ll send emails like this. This is the email.

So an entrepreneur, a business owner will send this to their employee. Sarah, remind me tomorrow to call you about the meeting. Like, why are you sending an email to… and they send like at 7 o’clock at night. Now, poor Sarah, who wants to be a good employee for you, is like, Frick, I got to respond. So she responds, I will remind you tomorrow.

To call me. You see this stuff, do you not? Oh, yes I do. It breaks my heart. It blows my mind. It blows my mind. I guess I don’t know why as much as…

Just put it on your calendar if you want to alert. I mean, we have that facility. You can do it. But it’s kind of like, why is it that this world has gotten so impersonal? Okay, now here’s the next thing. In the next rule, this ties into this impersonal thing.

When possible, have a quick call versus a long email. Now, again, I could call and I could say, hey, Z, quick note, we had this call, it’s actually kind of funny, because you were coming back, I believe, from Vegas, I think, and I said, Z, the office may be flooding,

I’ve moved into Carrington’s building, right now, short term. Oh, I remember this, yeah. And if it does flood, we’re fine, I got all the good stuff moved. And if it doesn’t flood, we’re fine.

So, boom. But I didn’t email you, the weather conditions in Tulsa have changed, and the flood levels. You could have had a very dramatic email, by the way. But people do email.

The flood is coming, and just in cryptically like that. I think people like the drama. Do they? I think they do. And why do you think that? Is it the endorphins that kick off from it?

Is it the stress that it creates? Gossip. I think gossip. I think that’s why tabloids work. It’s like, did you hear that we might have to move because of the flood? Oh my gosh.

And it just goes back and forth. And now this chatting in the office, it’s constantly like, Dr. Zahner, we have a patient up front right now who needs to be seen. What should I do? And then if you were a bad boss, you would be responding instantaneously. What you should do is greet them.

Okay, I’ll greet them. Meanwhile, the customer’s right there. Right. You know what I mean? That’s what I see a lot of bad bosses doing. I do too. And so I guess as far as emails go, when you look at your email, your inbox,

yeah, what percentage of emails would you really say are worthy of being sent? Well, this is what I do is my method. I wake up every morning and I plan out my day. Okay. Then I get my inbox down to zero. Right. So when you’re, when you’re delete, delete, deleting, what threshold do you even read? If you’re paying me, or I’m paying you, I’ll respond. If you’re an employee, I do not, because you should respond. You should send it to your boss.

And I found that if I respond, then you respond again. It’s like killing one fly to create two. That’s not fun. Hit it. Here comes two more. Here comes four.

Here comes eight. It’s kind of like the sailors back in the day that catch these starfish that were eating their clams and mussels and whatnot. And what they do is they chop them up and throw them back in. They didn’t realize they were just creating, every arb they threw back in created another starfish.

They were actually populating the ocean with more starfish. True story. True story? True story. Folks, this just in from our starfish help desk. From our ocean.

Jacques Clousteau here. Jacques Clousteau moment for you. Thank you very much. If you cut off the arms of a starfish and throw it back in, you’ll make a new starfish. That’s nice. That’s nice.

Now, okay, so let me give you the next rule for emailing. Use a professional email address. Let me give you an example. If you’re so successful that you can use a Gmail, you’re going to know. I’ve met a lot of venture capitalists, very successful people, who say, email me. My email is clay at AOL.com.

You’re like, that dude is boss. You know that guy’s not trying to sell anymore. You know what I’m saying? He’s to a level where he doesn’t have to have a fancy email address to wow you. But if you’re like a sales associate for an appliance store in Tulsa. Oh yeah.

Here we go. Have a branded email. Have it like, you know, Carl at wonderful appliances dot com. Don’t have it be like, Carl at 69 in 72 at AOL. Ha ha. You know, like, what was going on, Carl?

What was going on in 1972? Why do you have an email from 72? Do they even have email in 72? You clearly made that after 72. That means you’re a 60 year old who still thinks that’s funny. Come on.

Come on. Stop that. Right? You know what I’m saying? Or Hot Mama. You see that?

I should probably get rid of my email, hotcabs at gmail.com. You know what I mean, though. I know what you mean. On a resume, a potential employee will put hotlegs at yahoo.com. And say, well, that’s what I was called growing up. This is a problem.

This is a problem. You see this a lot, though, do you not? Yes, you know, and I think the whole time suck of the whole email game is not good. I agree. Email is a huge problem. Again, we’re giving you some rules here.

One, use email as a tool. Don’t be a tool of the email. Two, when possible, have a quick call versus a long email. Three, use a professional email address. Four, thou shall not email. Thou shall not email. So let’s do an example.

Do you believe that thou shall not lie? Do you believe that? I think so, yes. So let’s say you’re the President of the United States. Here’s an ethical dilemma. And I’m going to go ahead and tell you what.

I’m going to give you a message, okay? Okay. Because this happened to George Bush. All right. Have you seen the documentary about George Bush reading to the kids when he heard about 9-11?

I’ve heard about it. It’s incredible. I’ve not actually watched it. This is what happened. An advisor came to the president. And again, he wasn’t mic’d.

You can see it on camera, but you can’t see what was said. And George now has been out of office long enough to share it. But an assistant came up to him and said, Sir, we’ve had the towers have been struck by two planes. What do you want me to do? And he goes, Well, what do we know?

They told him this or that or whatever. And he says, I’m gonna continue reading to the kids. I got 10 more minutes here to this elementary kids. And then as soon as I finish, we’ll come out and we’ll figure out the situation. See, they didn’t know anything.

Right, so him coming out into the hall and panicking with you doesn’t help. So I feel like though a lot of times that we have the rule, thou shalt not lie. I agree with that rule 99% of the time. Let me just give you an example.

If I was the president of the United States and I was being transparent in the way that a lot of people think your President should be, this would be my State of the Union address, okay? Hello, my fellow, I gotta get into my George Bush. Hello, my fellow Americans. We’re joined here today to deliver a very concerning message to American people, and I want you to know that we’ve had a very bad thing happen right now, and I’m freaking out, man!

I’m freaking out! Oh, but where’s my guns? Where’s my gold? Condi! Condi! Where’s my guns?

Where’s my gold? Hey, we got our end-time food ready to go? Yee-haw! This is neat! This is pain in the ass! Fire up Air Force One!

I’ll tell you what, I’m glad I can get away, right? Because we can fly that thing to Antarctica, right? Sure, right now! Crawford bomb shelter ready, right? I mean, my American, I mean, George Bush was… I think there’s a difference in lying and not telling everybody…

Omitting the truth, omitting everything. Not telling somebody that you’re protecting them and telling them something that they don’t need to hear. Okay, well, another example. Let’s say you’re George Bush again. Okay, George Bush again.

And you’re going to be attacking Iran tomorrow at noon. I don’t think you have a press conference that says, my fellow Americans. But, you know, CNN asks you, and Fox asks you. These reporters are so clever. President, you feel, there’s always cameras going off everywhere. President, do you feel you owe it to the Americans to be transparent about the date that you

will pull out the troops and when you will be shooting missiles into the Libyan airspace? Well, my fellow Americans, I want you to know, as Commander-in-Chief, we’ll be sending them off at 12.02. And we’ll be removing the forces at 1201. And also I have a rash in my upper thigh that is caused through various reasons, I don’t know.

And I ate a little too much steak last night. My big toe is hurting. My investment in the Rangers has gone up since I’ve been in office. There it is. Where’s Condi? I mean, right?

Right. And that goes to a bigger thing because I think there’s probably exceptions to every rule. I mean, you ask if it’s wrong to lie, yes. Is a rule, yes. But there’s times that it’s in everybody’s best interest in the long run.

Just like, I mean, just like you could say- Misdirection for the enemy. Right, right. But I mean, just like you could say, is it wrong to murder somebody? I’d say yes, but I mean, if they hold- They’re coming after your wife.

If a guy came into your home and has your wife at gunpoint- You’re going to whack him. Unless you’re a wuss. And just say they’re crazy eyed, going, I’m going to kill you or her and the kids. There’s an exception to almost every rule out there. Just a blanket statement is you have to have that filter.

That’s what we’re talking about today. The rule though is thou shalt not email. That’s the rule. Right. The rule is don’t email. You can occasionally break the rule, but don’t email.

Make it your rule. What are you doing? It’s great. This is an example I just ran into probably four months ago. I’m losing my mind. I got a guy who’s a very successful guy, very successful guy.

I’ll just say, so I don’t get myself in trouble. Been a long-term client probably eight years now. Has a ton of real estate agents. A ton. 2,000 pounds. Started working with the guy, had maybe two agents.

Now has, let’s say, 50 agents. Okay. And he continues to email minute by minute updates about things. So if you work for him it’s crazy because it’s like everyone’s reply all and it’s like just listed the Thompson house, just closed the Johnson house, just bought the Wendy’s going to be closing her house, so Susan just closed Good News and it’s constant. And he sends out these daily emails like, the best 17 tips for updating your listing, and no one reads it. So I said, let’s put a program on your computer that shows how many people actually read the email.

In terms of, do they open it, and how long are they actually digesting it? Oh, that’s cool. Nobody does. Nobody does. But he was sending them out for years. Why do you think he was?

Again, trying to fill the hole in his soul. I sat down with the guy and I’m like, listen, you’re making millions of dollars now. You sending out tips to 52 people every day to feel important is not helping your team and you know it. He’s like, you’re right, coach. You’re right.

I’m like, why are you doing it? He’s like, well, on the home front, I come home and you know, I’m kind of not, things aren’t going the best at home and I’m just kind of busy. I want to stay busy. So I’m just up there. But this team is like, stop.

Stop. It’s seriously, it’s it makes you crazy. Imagine if you got a call. Imagine. Imagine you had a door to door salesperson. Excuse me, Mr. Johnson.

Mr. Mr. Zellner. Mr. Zellner. Is Mr. Zellner here? Kind of role play with me on this. Imagine you’re at the Mayo Hotel in your condo. OK.

Dr. Zellner. All right. Can I speak with you real quick, sir? I would say he’s not here. I would answer the question. Okay, I’ll roll play it the other way.

Yes, I’m right here. I’ve got a gift for you. I wanted to let you know, tonight’s special, we have a special right now, it’s a cocktail hour, it just has opened, and I wanted to just let you know. Well, thank you very much. 30 seconds, go by.

Okay, hello? Dr. Zellner, I forgot to tell you, tonight we are serving shrimp scampi free until 6.30. It is 6.27. Thank you. I did not know that. Thank you. 30 seconds later. Doctors, I am so sorry. I won’t be coming back again soon. I wanted you to know

we tonight, tonight’s karaoke night at the rooftop. Oh, well, that’s good information. That’s good intel. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. And it goes on all day. Eventually people go crazy. They do. Just stop it. They do. And then they go, you know what? I don’t answer the door. I don’t open the email.

I don’t care. I hit delete. Right. And this is what happens though. So don’t send emails. Just stop it. So if you’re a boss. Yes. And you need to have some information disseminated amongst your people. How would you go about doing that?

Let’s talk about this for a second. One, there’s the rhythm of business. Everybody out there, you should get daily key performance indicators, as you get about your companies. Yes, yes. They tell you about the daily sales.

Yes. If you’re a pastor, the attendance of the church, whatever. And you should have a weekly staff meeting if you’re a pastor or an organization or a business leader. A weekly meeting where you meet with certain key people. And those key people need to have access to you.

So those six people, those five people, whoever your key people are, they need to have access to you. So what you’re saying is, is that if you have 52 employees, you don’t have to, if you email all 52, you’re implying that 52 people have access to you is what I’m hearing. Right. And it creates this weird loop because then one of them crosses what you believe to be the boundary, which is unwritten that states that you can’t question the boss, that’s what you believe, and then on that reply all, the person you just hired sends this email.

To all who are concerned, I just want to know, is it ethical? Is it? Should I report this to the labor? I wasn’t sure if the labor commission needed to be aware of it. Right? Right.

It happens. Oh, it happens. I know. And I think that the main thing is that whenever you start a business and you have one employee, two employees, three employees, four employees, five employees, you can deal with that business a little differently.

And talking with them, you know, you should put someone in charge and then that is your contact person. And you have a chain or an org chart. An org chart is an organizational chart of you don’t want every one of your employees to have access to you. And if you email every one of those employees, then they have access to you by definition. Because now you’re saying, hey, listen, email is kind of a, there’s an unwritten rule.

If I email you, guess what? You’re saying it’s okay to what? Email me back. An example, Elephant in the Room. If you go to EITRLounge.com and you click on Clay Clark Radio, we pay about $1,000 a month to have licensed music that I have personally chosen to play and it’s mostly R&B.

If you like Prince, if you like Michael Jackson, if you like Andre 3000, you’re going to like it. If you don’t, you won’t. We have thousands, literally thousands of people a day. You can see where they’re listening to it live all around the world. They love it.

They share it. We have employees all the time that will want to update the playlist. And I shall share with you a few of the songs that I’ve recently rejected. Do you remember the song by Danzig called Mother? Do you remember that song? Sing a little bit for me or play a little bit. Okay, well let me, this will be a good one for you. Let me cue it up real quick. Danzig named Mother. Cowbell. Oh yeah, everything’s better with a cowbell, you know that.

Let me just get to the lyrics and the chorus because you’re gonna understand soon why I wouldn’t play it. Oh, I’m loving it I’m loving it Tell your children not to walk my way Now Z, why would you not play this at Elephant in the Room? You would never play that. Why?

Because it’s ridiculous at Elephant in the Room. Men getting the ultimate grooming experience don’t want to hear that song. Okay, let’s do another example here. These are all songs that have been requested by my team at some point. Tell me why you would not play this song in your office. Here we go.

Okay. Wes Carter, welcome by the way. Any mic is available, my friend. You just tell me if you would… Tell me if this would be played at your optometry clinic. Okay.

I don’t know if this is playing at Winters and King right now. I’m not sure if this is… Here we go. Wes, do you play this at Winters and King? That’s a no. No, we haven’t done the Marilyn Manson yet.

Now, that’s… that’s… that’s… Doesn’t it feel troubled already? I feel troubled. I feel… I need to go take a shower. I’ll be right back.

It feels evil, does it not? It’s intense. It has a, definitely a dark flavor. It’s intense. But people request this stuff. So the reason why I don’t make myself available to the general team via email is because this

is the kind of stuff they do. They submit, hey boss, could you play this song? No! No! But I’m dumber for having heard the request. So let’s talk about email rules.

Wes, we’re talking about email rules. And I would like for you, we’re going to make a rule here. You are not going to share about any clients you’ve worked with in the last two years. So no one can guess who it is. We’re going over the email rules because you’re an attorney. And you, I’m sure, you probably more than anybody are dealing with this at this point.

But we’re talking about email rules and the show title is Thou Shalt Not Email. And the consistent cowardice of keyboard warriors. So let’s think about this for a second. The rules we’ve gone over so far, we have many rules today, but rule number one, use email as a tool and don’t be a tool of your email. So you took your wife recently to go golfing, I believe. Where did you guys go? We went to the Patriot golf course. You did? Yes. And did you have a good time? A

wonderful time. When you were whacking the golf balls where you check in emails instantaneously? I try not to. What happens though if you look, seriously, if you look at an email, and it’s an urgent one, that’s good, it’s very transparent, if you look at an email and it’s not a good one, what happens? As soon as my mind switches to work mode, the golf game goes downhill, my special time

with my wife goes downhill, all of a sudden my mind is in work mode, and it’s very difficult to get readjusted back to fun time, family time, whatever time you’re in. So again, think about this for a second. I want to show you, this is powerful, this is psychology, this is stuff that they don’t see. These are things that people aren’t taught.

Okay, so let’s talk about this. What happens is, is when you get an email, you go into work mode, you mentioned that. Yes. And psychology today recently put out a study, and I’ll put this on the show notes, is that the average person is now taking 23 minutes to come out of, to come back into golf mode. Okay.

So after they’re golfing, right, Z, and they get an interruption, it takes them 23 minutes to come back into relaxed mode. It takes people 23 minutes to refocus. Yes. I’m not saying you’re a psychologist, Z, but why do you think it takes people an average of 23 minutes when they’re having a relaxed time, or maybe they’re drawing a picture,

they’re painting, they’re golfing, they’re seeing patients, why does it take people 23 minutes to refocus when they get a negative email or interaction via their digital device? Well, they’re processing it. They’re going through the solution of it. They’re trying to figure out why it was sent. They’re trying to figure out the motive behind it.

They’re trying to figure out how they’re going to react to it. They’re formulating the email they’re going to send back. I mean, on and on and on. And that takes a while. I’m 23. I would have guessed longer than that, actually.

Does that shock you that it takes people a long time to recover mentally and to get refocused again? Yes. No, no, it doesn’t shock me. It hurts my little heart to think that people are out there not understanding that when you’re on quality time with your wife, we would call that a date night or a date afternoon. Don’t even be tempted to look because most of the time when you get one of those negatives or you get a plea or you get a red alert

or you get a dishappening, because somebody else, it’s an emergency, right? When you have a client, for them it’s like, oh my gosh, the sky is falling. It’s a fire. Oh, it’s a fire and a flood, a fire, maybe both. And so you’re like, ugh, it’s not, this will wait until tomorrow, this will wait until later on in the afternoon when I get back in the office.

This will wait. And shame on you for looking at it, right? Because now you’re like, now you’re caught in the doom loop. Now you’re caught in that loop of, oh, I’ve got to think about it. Oh, honey, is it my shot? I mean, where did I even…

Inc. Magazine says this, see? Inc. Magazine says it takes 23 minutes to recover from a distraction at work. Here’s how to minimize emails, calls, and alerts. It goes on to talk about this refocusing.

So again, as a default, use email as a tool and don’t be a tool of your email. Because man, if you turn that on during church, I was sitting next to a guy, went to a local very big church, and the guy next to me pulls out, they said, pull out your app, you know, to interact with the Bible. Every church has their own kind of app. And this guy pulls out his app.

Let me tell you the one thing he never used during the service. That app. That app. Dude, that guy was emailing. I was like, this guy’s like a prophet via email. This guy’s like, his thumbs were working.

I was like, are you getting arthritis in those thumbs, buddy? I mean, he was… I mean, it was amazing. It was amazing. I mean, when you’re under 30, you got that thumb going. It was crazy.

Now, next rule is that you, when possible, have a quick call versus a long email. I want to get Wes’s take on this. Wes, if you had a call for a client, let’s say about Article 27.2, and it’s just a quick question, why is a quick text or a quick call better than an email in that particular case? If it’s just a quick thing. Well, one, you can communicate clearly over phone in ways you can’t in email.

There’s a back and forth over the phone. So if I send a question and they need to clarify or have a follow-up question, and all of a sudden we’re in a chain of six or seven emails, whereas if you’re on the phone, you can likely get through that in five minutes.

And so instead of devoting five minutes of your time to a phone call, now you’re getting interrupted and your focus is on seven or eight emails over the course of the next hour. And it’s just oftentimes much more efficient to have a phone call.

Now this is a stat that comes to us via Nielsen. Nielsen famously does polling as it relates to media. They said, see, the average American now spends 11 hours per day on their digital device, and half of that is spent on email. Wow.

Wow. Half. Wow. 11 hours a day Is what we’re spending now on media and a little over half of that for the average business person is spent now that that’s a That’s a really really large number when you think about again half of your day could be spayed

Z I’m gonna pull this up. Yeah, I want you to just to see this right here What you look at with your own eyeballs want you to see this article real quick. It says here, the average American, it says, as time flies, U.S. adults now spend nearly half a day interacting with media. Does that make you sad? It bothers me, you know, because business isn’t done over e-mails.

What? It’s not. Money’s not made… You don’t close deals via e-mail? On e-mail, no. Oh, really?

It doesn’t happen that way. And what happens is that people, and the worst part is that when people get a really negative one, negative review, negative email, negative, something negative, and then that takes an exorbitant amount of time for them to get on there, figure out how are they going to respond, figure out the right thing to say. You know, they may even call someone, they may even talk to someone on the response of

it. I mean, you probably have had some people call you and say, hey, I’ve got this negative thing. How do I respond via email for it, right? Right, yeah. I’ll send you a draft of the email.

Will you review the draft and make comments? And then we’ll look at the email. I mean, it might go through three or four hands before it actually goes out the door. Right. So they may spend two hours on crafting a clever email that

may never be read. And it doesn’t really matter. Where they could pick up the phone, make a phone call, have a short conversation, and you know what? Take care of the situation. Because the problem with emails, there’s no emotion in them.

So let’s continue. There’s no inflection. There’s no voice. I’m going to recap the rules, because you’re hitting on these rules. We have not even gone over these rules together. And this is how in sync entrepreneurs are.

Z, you get this. So again, the rules so far, use email as a tool. Don’t be a tool of your email. Two, when possible, have a quick call versus a long email. Three, use a professional email address. Don’t have it like randy69 at AOL.com as your sod farm address.

That might have been funny in high school. Come on. We’ve got to move on. Don’t have hotbuns47 at cowboy.com. You can’t have these weird… Right.

Don’t do that. Don’t have an atmyspace.com stuff. And I know that it still exists somehow because Timberlake and his guys bought it. But don’t have a MySpace email. Now the fourth is, thou shalt not email. As a rule, as a rule, just make it when possible, connect with humans.

Five, don’t email to deal with conflict, which you just started to hit on. Conflict. Yeah. Right. Conflict. Don’t email conflict.

I want to go with U, S, then Z. Conflict. Why? If you have any conflict at all, like as an example, I wanted you to know, I just regret, I regrettably have to inform you that per this email, you are in violation of code statute 723.275, and I want you to follow the script, Carl.

This is an employee of yours, and your employee probably doesn’t even know that that statute that rules in the handbook And now you’re telling them via email How does that go over Wes? Well, there’s I mean doesn’t go over well. There’s a couple problems one You can’t break the ice in an email. You know that when you first have a conversation with someone face-to-face There’s the hi. How are you doing? How’s the weather that you know that kind of you’re building, you know, you’re building up, right.

And second, like Z mentioned, you can’t hear the tone, you can’t, it’s almost impossible to diffuse a situation via email or even text. A lot of times the result is you’re escalating the situation because you can’t have that emotional connection and say, hey, I hear where you’re coming from, but this, or you know, you’re doing a good job here, but I really need you to work here. In an email, it’s almost people focus

on the negative portions of the email, and it’s very hard to bookend. You always bookend a compliment, a problem, and then a compliment. And it’s hard to do that in an email effectively. So any time you’re trying to diffuse a conflict,

email is not the best course of action. It’s too direct, it’s too swift, it doesn’t have the nuance, there’s no rapport. Now, see, the next is you don’t want to correct really almost anything via email. Like if somebody spelled something wrong and you email, Suzy, we really need to correct the spelling. How it comes across is, Suzy, we got to correct the spelling!

Or if you are somebody who is north of 50, typically all caps get stuck on sometimes. And you send that email? Oh yeah. Have you ever been a part of that laser show where someone actually sent an all capped? Oh yeah. I mean, this happens a lot.

I know people who are north of 50 who just keep all caps on as a way of life. That’s how they function. That’s how they function, or they have a weird wing-ding font or something going on, and they send emails and everyone thinks they hate them all the time. Just go to rule four, stop emailing. Stop emailing, especially when you have conflict.

As Wes said, as Clay has said, you get no inflection, you get no traction. All it does is add, and then they sit there, and here’s what they do. They re-read it over and over and over and over, and they catch your typo, they catch your, you shouldn’t have put a comma there, they catch all those, if they’re older, they catch all those nuances and then that’s the fight. The fact that you don’t even know how to do proper English. Move seven. Don’t try to connect with people via email. As an example, instead of getting

together and let’s have a beer. Z, we’ve been to, what’s your favorite restaurant you like? It’s the Owl? White Lion. I knew there was an animal involved. White Lion. We go there. Keeps playing the decor of the White Lion. It’s like an old English pub.

Why would you want to go to such a place? Because I feel good there. And they have cheese? They have cheese trays. They have English style foods. Fish and chips.

Have you been there before? I have. Yes, it’s a fun place. I go to the White Lion. I’ll tell you, I went to the White Lion three times. All three was Z.

I go there one time, and we’re meeting with some radio executive people. And you ordered a really nice spread of cheese. And you had a… And a couture mint. A couture mint. You had some wine with it, you know.

Yes. And I go back to the restroom and this guy says, do you know Dr. Z? Do you know Dr. Z? And I said, yeah, I know Dr. Z. Because he’s a waiter up there. Oh, okay.

But he’s kind of like, do you know Dr. Z? Because I think you’re kind of a big deal in his mind. He says, do you know Dr. Z? I said, yeah. And he knows we’re not the same age. So he’s like, well, how do you know Dr. Z?

I said, we do a radio show together and some things. And he says, when he plays soccer, he’s intense, dude. That’s what he says. What? I’m serious. And I said, I know, when was the last time you played competitive intense soccer?

How many years ago? It’s been a couple, three. So he’s not playing old man’s league indoor. Now I want to ask you if this is true. I’ll ask you on the show right now. Okay.

We’re on the record. All right. Have you ever been intense with a referee that made a bad call? Yes, I have. So this is what he says. He’s like, he’s intense with referees.

Seriously, dude? You know him? He’s like, he’s intense. And I said, thanks for the update. And he goes, is he like that to work with us? I said, no, he’s a really nice guy.

He’s like, why here? With the referees, he’s intense. He’s intense. Now, let me say this. If I had emailed you an email, assuming that you read it, and said, I met a guy last night at the White Lion who said that you are intense in soccer and that you might or might not have gone off at a ref.

Is that true? Question mark. One, there would be no rapport. Two, it’s a stupid thing to waste your time. Three, it might cause you to go, dude, that referee is always a jerk to me. Whatever.

That referee was a former patient who was mad about the prices There’s a price story to it and then now we go back and forth But instead I asked you directly and you were like, well, yeah, I play soccer and you know Occasionally I get really into it and this is what I do and I you played at the college level, right? It’s your passion, you know Just and I get it, but I’m saying sending an email would not have been a good way to have that conversation

No, it’s it never it never is I mean it never is there’s a few business things. Hey, I’ve got to email this to get it digitally signed. I’ve got to do this. This is the latest, you know, you’re closing. This is your closing report.

I mean, there’s other things you could do to email that are business, but they’re not having nothing to do with personal. It gets crazy. Wes, you had a hot take. Well, I was going to say there’s two comments real quick. There’s a flip side to this too, which is when you’re doing it on a professional level,

sometimes people try to make a joke over email. You guys are reading my notes. This isn’t compressive. They bomb and someone’s like, why aren’t you taking me seriously? This is a true story that’s happened years back. I’m not saying anything recent, but I want to share with you.

I would like for you to please help me here because this happened and thankfully I didn’t have to call you about this. When you talk, there’s a talk to text feature where you can talk, Z, and it transcribes what you’re saying. Oh yeah. And people use that now to email while they’re driving. So a guy sends a text to a member of my team.

This is back, there’s an email. This is like 2009, early Make Your Life Epic, my first probably 40 clients early on. And Z, you don’t have to guess what it was. This is kind of a quiz show here, Wes. He meant to, it was like early transcribed text kind of stuff. It might have been 2011, it wasn’t super recent, but it was early enough where you could transcribe

stuff. And it said, I really appreciate you, you’re very sharp and articulate, and you had beautiful shoes. Something like that. What? He’s trying to compliment her shoes, okay?

He’s a young guy, trying to compliment one of our new team members about her shoes. But it didn’t transcribe as that. And it goes across the bow. And within seconds he replies, I meant shoes. Now it’s kind of funny because I’m at 16th and Boston at this point. I’m downtown and we knew each other well enough.

And this lady who’s in her 40s, late 30s, she says, some guy just texted me on the team or emailed me that I have beautiful, not shoes, but it rhymes with. And then he sent me a bat in his back. But how do you want me to handle that? And what did you tell her? I was like, and I looked at her face and she just starts laughing. And she was like, I know it messed up, whatever, but that now it’s awkward. Can we go? So we got together, the three of us, and I’m like, Hey, I know you didn’t mean to say whatever, but Wes, what would have happened if that person did not view it that way?

If they were offended by it, what could happen? Well, I mean, there’s a lot of potential. I mean, that’s… I mean, it was bad. I was like, no. Yeah, sexual harassment.

Is that her manager? I mean, we’ve gotten into all kinds of fun conversations about that. It happens. Is it the threshold of sexual harassment without her saying, that’s offensive to me and please don’t do that again? Or is it just the first pass makes it sexual harassment?

I think it depends on how egregious it is. I mean it’s a beautiful and it meant to say shoes it rhymes with it was not shoes true story and I just remember going as a boss I mean because now you have two employees doing this right say let’s say he is a supervisor of her let’s just go that’s an area okay and he says that he’s doing the voice thing and does he’s driving his car and yeah hey Teresa you had I just want to comment doing a great job and by the way he had beautiful shoes. Beautiful shoes.

And then he sends immediately back, oh my gosh, I meant shoes. As a boss, and let’s say that comes to me, and two of my employees have this and they come to me, how does a boss handle that? I think you admonish the person sending the text saying, hey, you need to be more careful. You make sure everybody’s on the same page, that that was not the intention here. This was an auto-correct feature so you can get that on the table.

And you’re right, sexual harassment is usually unwanted advances and it’s tied to some favor at work or some adverse thing at work. There’s also hostile work environment, which means even without that, if you’re in an environment where that happens

regularly or too much, then it could support some sort of hostile work environment claim. So I think that one’s one of the easier ones. But what happens if that guy doesn’t catch it? It lays out there for a week.

And it was like a laugh out loud thing where I was like, ah. No, this is the real stuff that’s happening out there in the real world, okay? And so he says that, and he’s driving, doesn’t even double check it. Doesn’t go back and do it, okay? Now is it her responsibility then to raise the red flag and say, don’t do it? Because now all of a sudden, let’s say she all of a sudden gets involved in it, and they

go back and forth a little bit about her shoes, not her shoes, okay? And then all of a sudden, a year later- They’re offended. They’re no longer together. They’re not talking. Her work goes down, and she gets released from the business, and then all of a sudden

she goes, oh, by the way, my boss has been telling me for the last three months, or the last six months ago, how good my quote-unquote shoes look I’m suing you for sexual harassment I mean so where is the boss as the person that this is good buck stops with me right we’re now all of a sudden does that how do I get involved in first if you don’t know about you can’t right but then again it’s kind of like that if they’re involved in this back and forth back and

forth silliness because that’s what it is a silliness yes at what point do you then you have to take it serious because now since she’s fired now. She’s mad She finds an attorney which I know it’s not you Wes No, some of them out there that would look at those text messages and says oh my gosh Yeah, your boss is telling you that you’re we know it’s not shoes, but we’ll continue to say Quote shoes and by the way the most sincere guy ever who’s

Super nice guy. He doesn’t work for anymore, but just see just like a choir boy. It was like, you know what I mean? If you got an email from a guy like that, you’d be like… Well, choir boys can appreciate shoes also. Okay, so as a boss, now all of a sudden you get a shakedown letter from an attorney. You know nothing of this.

It’s back and forth between these two. She gets released. She’s mad, finds an attorney. You get a shakedown letter saying that she’s been hostile work environment, sexually harassed, she’s got text messages to prove it. How do you handle that?

Well, I think there’s no good way to handle it at that point. You’re going to have to defend the claim, report it to your insurance, go through the whole process. The way to handle it’s up front. So, one, hopefully you have some sort of sexual harassment policy so you can point to the fact, hey, you are obligated to report this if it happened.

On her end. Right. You should have let us know. We can’t address it two years later. Okay. But one of the dangers there is she claims or he claims later on, I felt obligated to

participate. So he says that it’s an accident and turns into a little bit of a flirty conversation, you know, going back and forth. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. And then someone plays the victim later on saying, well, they were my manager or supervisor, I felt I was intimidated.

I felt like I had to participate in the conversation. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. And so, I mean, as soon as you hear of any banter like that, you really have to nip it in the bud because everyone’s having a good time and joking around until they get fired and they’re looking for a reason to come after you.

Right. It’s all fun and games until someone gets poked in the eye, right? Right. Exactly. Exactly. So business owners, you’re listening out there, sometimes you get blindsided.

I have been that business owner before. Not fun. Of two employees that starts off some harmless, maybe a voice message that got whatever, and then turns into this, you know, whatever you call that. Right. You know, flirtations or whatever.

And then of course she says, well, he was above me in the org chart, so I felt, I mean, all that weirdness and plays in a part. And I didn’t want to report him because, you know, I didn’t want to be targeted. I was afraid of retaliation. I was afraid of retaliation. Now all of a sudden you’ve got a hot mess on your hand and these things happen.

So here again goes back to just don’t email. No, it all comes back. The reason I’m betting on this is because some people out there are in a situation, unlike you and Maisie, where they have to email because they’re in a culture where their boss will not listen to this show. Their boss is dysfunctional and their boss spends their entire day emailing

uh… and some people are in a situation where you can control it and so I’m trying to get both sides of the rules here so rule number eight if you’re scoring at home the rule number ocho is don’t email humor just try to stay out of there it’s hard enough to deliver it in person but just just stop

nine, don’t hit send unless you want to read it again. Now this is something I’ve done. It’s a move. If I want somebody, if I want to know who’s a spy, I will send something in confidence. It doesn’t matter. So Wes, this is a move. You’ll go, hey, let’s keep this private, but, and it’s something that doesn’t even matter. It’d be like, we’re going to be moving the desks around soon. We’re going to change the org, not the org chart, but the way we’re organizing the floor plan. I just want to make sure we don’t tell this coder or any other coders because I don’t

want to create a dystopia. I don’t want to create any friction right now. They’re doing a great job coding. I just don’t want to tell them. I want to keep them focused. And then I’ll send it just to see who on my team is going to send this to the coders.

So then the next day, coders are like, you’re moving my desk? What in the world? Are we moving our desk? Why wasn’t I told? I’m crying out loud. What is going on here?

So you go to the digital mole and you say, hey, did you send the email? No. That’s a good way to check for a mole. But if you hit- Digital mole. Seriously, but if you hit send, you’re going to read it again, are you not, Wes?

Absolutely. I mean, one, if it’s professional, you should be reading it for typos, you know, anyway, because you get going, you want to read it. But also you want to recheck the tone, how it’s going to be received by the other person, because sometimes you write an email and we read it back. It sounds harsh even to yourself. You’re like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, I should reword that a little bit. So yes, you definitely want to check it twice or three times

before you hit send, because once it’s out there, you’re not getting it back. And Clay, I want to go back to the Ocho. I want to go back to the humor. Let’s do it, yeah. More times than not. The whole thing about the beautiful shoes, by the way,

is just to get the story, this woman was very conservative and never wore bright shoes. And she wore these really bright red shoes with high heels. And she never does that. Sure.

And so it was kind of a joke. That doesn’t mean you have to say something about them. But he sends the email, hey, great, whatever, thank you so much. And you have great, you have beautiful shoes. And it’s a joke that everybody who was there would say, oh, that was funny, I get it, ha-ha.

But it did not come across that way. And let me tell you, it branded him as a weirdo in the office. And I felt bad, but ultimately the reason why he had to leave, he pulled me aside about six months and he’s like, it’s just too awkward. Like I just, like everyone thinks I sent that and I didn’t, and I didn’t mean it that way. And it was just awkward.

And so I helped them find another job. It was awkward. It was awkward. And going back to Ocho, number eight, going back a step, on the humor, more times than not it’s an image. It’s a picture of something.

An emoji. That you think is super funny. And yet someone sees that and is super offended or not. It’s always a political thing. It’s always anti-Obama, anti-Trump, kind of Charlie Sheen, super sexual.

Or something about a bowel movement or something weird. I mean, it’s just like, it’s a picture, an image, it’s a cat video that’s inappropriate. Hey, did you see, I know you didn’t, but I’m going to ask you anyway, did you see Adam Sandler in Concert Live? Oh, stop it. This is a true story.

Have you seen him with? No, I have not seen him live. Concert Live? Is that a movie? Or just live? He performed at the casino live here on the Riverwalk.

Vanessa got me tickets. It was amazing. He gets out there and he’s like, alright, it starts off as, ladies and gentlemen, Adam Sandler will be up first, but before he begins, we have other people who he’s friends with who are contractually bound to be here. So the first guy coming, there are guys who cannot get a gig now.

So it’s like Norm MacDonald, and I guess Adam is a way to keep these guys relevant, features them in his movies with his Netflix deal, and they travel with him. So he’s like, hey, I’m Norm MacDonald. I didn’t have a lot going on, so I came out here tonight and I got a couple jokes. He pulls out a notepad or something, he’s like, joke one, and he tells it and it doesn’t work, and he’s like, I got two more.

Joke number two, you had to be there, folks. It was. And he does it too. It’s pretty funny. Third comes out and he’s like, whoo! You know, Norma Dunn.

Third guy comes, there’s that next guy, it’s Rob Schneider. And he’s like, Tossa, you can do it! And everyone’s going, whoo! And he’s like, you know, guys, listen. You know how sad it is that my entire career can be summed up by that phrase? Yeah.

And he’s like, I’m actually a good actor. Like, I can, did you guys see me in such films as, and no one’s seen like any show. He said he knows it. Oh yeah. Or what about my key, you know, character, actor, and no one’s seen it?” And he’s like, you didn’t do it!

So he comes out. Well, David Spade comes out. I don’t know if he is high or he pretends to be high. He probably was high, but he pretended to be high. He comes out there and he’s like, hey Tulsa, Joe Dirt, thanks for making it possible. And everyone’s like, you know, the only thing I regret about coming to Tulsa was the trip,

the connecting flight, and just being here. And it looks like he’s being high and kind of attacking the crowd. I don’t remember what he goes. And I did send a regrettable text to Adam. It’s a comedy show, so you can say whatever. But he sent a picture of his stuff to Adam Sandler.

And so Sandler, he’s like, so anyway, Adam, I’m sorry, but we’re all cool, right? He walks off and everyone’s like, what is that? So now, Sandler comes out and he’s like, guys, here’s the deal. David and I have a complicated relationship, but he texts me when he needs me. He’s one of my good friends. He sends me, about every fifth or sixth text, or every once a week, he’ll send me a picture

of that just to test our circle of trust. Just to see if I report him. Just to see if we’re still in union. He’s like, I don’t want to see it, David. Stop it. David comes back, I say, hey, I just sent you something.

Then Adam’s like, you do that, but I have to check it, because it could be about our flights, it could be about our next performance. I have to check it. Stop doing it. I’ve got to look. For them, that kind of stuff is okay.

But a moment, if those guys had a thought… It’s an act. You didn’t realize it’s an act. I realize it’s an act, but also if you look up the character of the dudes he hangs out with, their whole life is a little crazy. Like Russell Brand, if you look up the things he’s done, a little…

Crazy. Yeah. All I’m saying is, think about Antonio Brown, the craziness that guy lives in. You gotta… So again, this goes to text, this goes to email, but specifically email. Don’t send the email as a rule.

Just don’t. Just don’t. Now, the next move, move number 10. Nothing is confidential, even if it says the privacy policy. Yes. So let’s get into that, Wes.

Let’s talk, because legally I can’t share it, right? Legally you shouldn’t share it, but someone’s going to share it. Well, yeah, I mean, you can’t stop them from sharing it. You can sue them and try to get damages later if you want to spend $30,000 to go after a person that probably doesn’t have money to pay you after you win. You got to remember, any kind of confidentiality agreement, non-disclosure agreement, sometimes

it’s just a piece of paper and that’s all it’s good for. Do not ever rely on those to ensure that sensitive information or comments you want to make that you wouldn’t want the public to read in a newspaper, those kinds of things. Don’t ever rely on that. This one’s fairly recent. This is about seven years ago. One member of our team sent an email maybe eight years ago. This is a good one, Z. Says, hey, I just want you guys to know this particular designer does terrible

work. And the word rhymed with ship. Does ship work. Shipping work. Does not do great work. This person does ship work. Oh. And I do not want to. And I don’t want them touching my files again, exclamation point. Send. And their email, when they started typing their name, I guess it filled in their name.

So they sent it to the person on the team they didn’t want to send it to. Oh yeah, that’s a move. That didn’t go well. That’s a move. And that’s only happened like once a year

as a way to remind me that I’m alive. Every year, since emails come out, it’s constant. We had one employee on my team, not gonna name the DJ business, the whole thing was not HR compliant, but the move was this guy was a youth pastor, and he’s a nice guy.

He would occasionally get on Facebook during the day, and one of my employees working for me was a manager, and he was like 22, 23. Imagine you’re a youth pastor, you’re almost 30, and you DJ on the side. He comes to work, and he’s on Facebook, which he shouldn’t be, and the manager was mad at him. Crazy story.

This is real stuff though. So the manager would log into his Facebook page occasionally and post things like, dear family, I regret to inform you that I’m wasting time at work, send. And then everyone would see it on Facebook

and the guy realized that, this guy doesn’t check his own Facebook posts. So the next couple of weeks, and he comes to me, he’s like, Clay, I can’t get this person to stop going on Facebook. What do I do?”

I said, just write him up. And again, kind of an immature manager, I was probably not the best boss at the time, and he says, okay, I’ll write him up. And this keeps happening. So about four or five weeks in, they’re physically almost fighting and Vanessa had to break him up.

Like one guy had a chair and he was like, I’m going to hit you. And I’m like, what’s going on? Well, apparently he wrote like a two-page Facebook post that announced to his family that he was gay. He’s a youth pastor. And his friend just threw it into Devlin. Yes, because he’s on Facebook.

So he just logs in and says, Dear Family, I regret to inform you as a youth pastor for the last four years I have been living a dual life. And it just took two pages. Oh, wow. And he had sent, this would be like in 2000, maybe four, five, whatever it was. And the guy doesn’t check his Facebook.

He just goes in there to post, but he doesn’t see what people are writing. By the time his wife calls him at the office, this is like when cell phones were still not super popular, everybody in the church has formulated an opinion. The pastor has called for his resignation. It’s funny now, because it’s so far off, right? It wasn’t then. Probably still not now, but it was crazy. These guys are fighting. He’s like, you don’t

see what I got. They’re going. Again, I say nothing is confidential. You got to be careful with even keeping your email account open. Because your Facebook, I see people, this is millennial jokes all the time. I see millennials do this to each other all the time. We have a lot of millennials in our office. I see this constantly.

Well, if you leave your phone out and it’s unlocked, I see other employees that have done this, usually every four or five months, someone will go on Instagram and post something crazy and make it look like it’s being posted from them or will email their contacts something crazy. I’ve seen this crap happen a lot. It’s kind of like practical jokes. In college, this is a practical joke.

But if you’re a young employee, you’re 25, it’s not a joke anymore. Zeke, talk to me about just confidentiality of email. You know someone could send an email from your account and make it look like it’s from you if you’re not careful and get you in trouble. People play those games. We had a big shock at one of my businesses about three months ago, at my auto auction

business. Shocker con. And, you know, it’s always the guy that acts like he’s the most tech savvy, right? It’s always that guy that falls into the hole. I mean, it’s just Murphy’s Law, it’s whatever you want to call it, right? He’s the most tech savvy.

So what they do is, it’s nefarious, but they send out these emails to get you to click on so they can put a worm or a virus into your system to hold you hostage. They come and take over your data, download your data, get the information from your banking account, your people that you’re doing business with. And then they send you an email, I’ve got all your stuff held hostage. I’ve got you and now pay me some exorbitant amount and I’ll release it to you and never bother you again.

That’s the move, right? Yeah. Right, well, I mean, you see it all the time. But what it takes is somebody on your team to click on that email that they sent. And they send it trickery.

They send it like, hey, you just won, or hey, you’ve been selected. All it takes is a member of your team to log on to that bad boy. Or what they do is they hack into somebody else’s, and then from that somebody else,

that sends emails out, so you look and you go, oh, it’s from Betty Sue, and Betty Sue’s a good friend of mine, and Betty Sue’s always sending me good cat videos, so I’m going to click on this and see today’s cat video, right? Yep. And they click on it, and the next thing you know, here’s the virus into the business, because now they’re at work, which I know is crazy that they’re in their personal email

at work. No, no, no. No. Really? Because personal and business email, we’re going to use it for the same thing, right? So then they click on it, and next thing you know, it’s on your

servers at business. We caught it quickly. We were able to stop it before it got to the point of bad. And we lost a day’s worth of data because of that. Because we’d shut it down, just clear out that day, and then go back where a hard set was. But it was, it’s some serious stuff. Not good, not good. Now here’s emails. I have three final email tips here for everybody. And I’m gonna go with Z, then West, then back to Z. Okay. All right, so here we go.

And by the way, if there’s any final email tips you guys like to share, feel free to do that. We put a bow on it, but here we go. Okay. Tip 11, watch for passive aggressive people. Watch for passive aggressive email poets.

Watch for these passive aggressive email people. These people who are kind of wordsmiths. Since the dissension starting in a Sent the emails as an example. I remember one guy sent me an email years ago. This was the email it said as A Christian boss. I am glad to see that you only cursed twice in today’s meeting And I would like to bring up two concerns. I have about the culture

Reply all sent to many people. Here we go. Here we go. I was never acknowledged in the meeting for my feedback about the product development. And two, a core decision was made while I was skiing.

You know what I mean? That kind of thing. And if you’re somebody who doesn’t like emails like myself and you are quick to delete them, like done, done, done, you don’t see something they don’t have the courage to say to your face occurring via email.

You see what I’m saying? Because people are more courageous via email. Have you noticed that? They’re kind of a little more poetic, a little more courageous, a little more crafty. A little more keyboard warrior. I might be in person, kind of a little meek, but the keyboard warrior is in.

Can you talk to me about looking for those passive aggressive poets where you go, oh wow, this person just quit mentally right now. They’re saying to my face, they’re all in. But this right here, I can see that this is a… You know what I mean? You’ve seen this before, the beginning of the end. I see this all the time.

And I had a person who owns a business, 50-50 partners with somebody else, and they wanted to continue having face-to-face meetings and dealing with the day-to-day of the business. And their partner said, oh no, we’re not going to have those anymore. Everything needs to be done via email. Via email. I’m not going to have any more meetings with you because they can get a little heated.

We can maybe argue at them. I don’t know that we remember everything that’s said. I didn’t really say it that way and you’re quoting me differently now. From here on out, every meeting we’re going to have, every communication we’re going to have is via email. This just in. And it’s really a sad situation because now all of a sudden you’ve gone to this so now Six seven email blast back and forth now most emails are centered around You know Taking one little thing that was said and spending a whole email on proving how that was incorrect point poor point or misspelled

Or did you really mean this? All the passive aggressive stuff you can do while you’re at home having a glass of wine on your laptop. And I see this with attorneys. I haven’t seen this with you as much, but I’ve just seen this with attorneys. I say as much.

I haven’t seen this at all with Wes, but I see this with attorneys. Where a client will come in and go, my attorney sucks. I’m like, your attorney sucks? Why do they suck? Look at this email. You don’t have like one error.

And like a massive, very articulate. Attorneys by the way, are humans. And if it’s like a 25-page document and the word an instead of a or whatever it is, you know, if the word v is omitted, you know what I mean, Z, it’s like one error, people go, it’s unprofessional. So I want to go into tip 12.

Be beyond the bait. Be beyond the bait. Here’s the bait. And I’m sure this has never happened to you, just other attorneys. I thought you were more professional. What are we paying for if you’re gonna spell something wrong? I’m sure you’ve never had this kind of

conversation, but you know what I mean? You’re working with a dentist or a lawyer, I don’t know, maybe a dentist, a doctor, a subprofessional, and you spell one thing wrong and that’s what they go for. And that’s what they focus on. The message was, we’re asking you a critical thing. Hey, we need to make a decision on this. The clock is ticking. We must make a decision because of this litigation, this thing, and they respond,

I thought it was more professional, and I’ve lost confidence, I’ll need to review this. You ever had that Wes? Yeah, I mean, of course I make mistakes sometimes. You know, you miss typos, you miss doing those things. My favorite though is probably when you’re dealing with other attorneys.

And so this is a move you see sometimes. Oh, here we go. It’s a passive-aggressive, so you’ll have a 30-page document. You know, we’re doing a $20 million purchase agreement, and the other side will send it to their attorney for comments. And the comments come back with optional grammar corrections.

So you should have had a semicolon and not a comma there. Or I don’t think, you know, I think you want to not just put S, but you need to put parentheses around the S in case it’s singular or plural. And that’s when we attorneys say to our clients, that’s just an attorney trying to earn the hourly billing because they couldn’t find anything else to point out and they wanted to justify their existence.

But that’s a good way, you know, where, or instead of, you know, reaching out and calling the other side as a colleague and saying, Hey, I think you just got a typo here. It says 2018, it should be 2019, you point that out in an email to the bank, the attorneys, all the clients, just to say, hey, in case you forgot what year it is, it’s 2019, so you might want to get your stuff straight. Yeah, right, that kind of stuff.

Silliness. And if you fall into the bait, now you’re going back and forth, be beyond that. Now, but tip 13, Z, stop manic emailing. Clearly, clearly out of control. And you’re just sending emails over and over and over. This is what I see in my inbox virtually every Monday.

Hey, I noticed an error on my website. Trust me, I know. Listen to this. I built your website 10 years ago, okay? I built your site in 2008, nine, seven, eight, nine, whatever year it was. You’re not a client, you live in Florida, I know.

There’s an error on your site. They’ll say, there’s an error on the site and I need this fixed. I don’t know who you’re hosting your site with, whatever. So this is sent usually Friday, let’s say 5.30. Then Friday at 5.45, hey, I expect a response. This is my whole business we’re dealing with here.

Saturday morning, hey look buddy, this is my third email, unprofessional. Saturday at noon. Come on, man. Now little curse words worked their way. You’re such a… You’ve always been a… Sunday morning, this is the email. I see this all the time. It’s so funny. I found the passwords. My bad. They’re in Dropbox, like you said. I’m sorry. I see this all the time. I see this manic, like, arc of like crazy, crazy… I’m good. Do you see this, Wes? I mean, do you see this?

Is he talking about this? You do. You see that. And that’s the thing about it. People, for some reason, they want to send to you while they’re processing what it is they need to do.

And I’m not sure if they spent the time on going to Dropbox to get the password and fix it themselves, they would have never had to do that. I can’t log on to Facebook. I need the password. I still can’t log on. I can’t find it.

Oh, I found it. I had the caps lock on. Sorry. Oh, I didn’t have my caps lock on, sorry. Oops. And why that is, Clay, is something that needs to be eradicated, something that needs to

be exterminated, something that needs to be fixed, and that’s why we do this show. That’s why we do this show. That’s why we do this show. And I’m going to read for you. If we have one person eradicated, we’ve done our job. I’m going to read notable quotables from very successful people, and then Z, I’ll give the

floor to you, and then to Wes, and we’ll put a little bow on today’s show. So here we go. Bill Belichick, when asked about his social media, his email, his Facebook, just his digital device, how he handles it, he said, I don’t Twitter, I don’t my face, and I don’t your book. Thank you, Bill Belichick.

Six NFL championships to you on the Patriots and two with you on the Giants for a total of eight. He’s doing well. Tim Paris, best-selling author of the Four-Hour Workweek, writes, true freedom is much more than having enough income. It’s about having time to do what you want. Well, if you don’t have all the money in the world, but you sit there and spend your whole

day even on the beach emailing all day, do you really have time freedom? I mean, no. No, you don’t. Tim Paris also says, doing something unimportant well does not make it important. I see a lot of people who get their inbox down to zero and they respond to every email. So I’ll just say with my life, and I’ll turn it over to Z, I had a listener, again I’m

trying to give you old examples, ones that are longer than two years ago so I don’t get myself in trouble. Wes, what’s the statute for verbally sharing too much candor on a radio show? Is it two years? Is it three years? Is it seven?

Is it twelve? I should probably go like five to be safe. Okay, we’ll go five. That’s good. I couldn’t do it for the show. Okay, I could do one. Okay, here we go. I did public speaking years ago. We used to travel around speaking and I did a conference speaking event for a major company, Fortune 500 company, and the event planner who booked me, Anitra, said it’s the best event I’ll be having in a long time. Thank you. It was at Caesar’s Palace. She had a great, great event.

And she was very happy. Paid very well. It was about a $10,000 event. Great. There was probably 200 people there. Good job. One woman sent me an email that said something like, you preaching about the importance of

running checklists and systems. We’re not a bunch of robots. You’re just a jerk. You know, a big old one. But I got all these thank yous from people. I got claps.

Oh yeah. But I got one email. Oh sure. You couldn’t stand it? Well, actually, I got to a place in my life, at this point in my life, I got to a place where I didn’t care, so I just hit delete.

But back to my DJ career, which my DJ career, most of it didn’t happen on social media, but there was a website called The Knot.com. The Knot.com was kind of like a review site for wedding businesses, or like WeddingWire, that kind of thing. And people would write on there, best DJ ever, the bride, people who paid me would always say, I love the DJ.

My rule was I’d meet with the bride and groom, clarify their expectations, and as long as the bride or the person paying me was happy, I was happy. But as you know, when you’re DJing, this is what happens at every show. Hey man, I’ll tell you what, I used to DJ back in college. What kind of speakers you got? Sure.

JBL. I’ll tell you what, Sir Winn-Vega, I mean that’s the only real thing out there. You trying to save some money or what? Because I can feel the sound quality. Well, do you have a request? Absolutely, I want to play Garth Brooks, The Dance.

I’m like, The Dance? Yeah, well the bride wanted us to keep it kind of upbeat, no country on the list. You said, well I’ll tell you what, you play The Dance. Play The Dance. Well, the bride is the one paying me, she said don’t play The Dance. Well, you ain’t going to play The Dance?

No, I’m not going to play The Dance. Now, again, these people live out of like seven beers, because it’s like 11 o’clock at night at a wedding. Oh, sure. They’re from out of town. Oh, yeah.

They’re pretty emboldened. Or the lady would come up and go, could you play Dolly Parton’s I Will Always Love You? Because that’s the better version than Whitney. Ma’am, we’ve already played it once for you via request. But could you play it again? Please.

Really? I mean, so you, then they would go on to Wedding Wire or The Knot and just complain. And I used to, as a young man, I felt the need to respond to every complaint tactfully. I would be like at 2 in the morning, after I got a round of applause and a tip, going, Karen, the bride wanted to play No Country, and that’s why we didn’t. Thank you for your feedback.

I appreciate you. Carl, thank you for the intensity and the directness of your passion for Garth Brooks. And unfortunately, the bride requested No Garth Brooks. And I would never get that, because you’re DJing for 200 people, four of which felt the need to write a comment almost every show. Every show.

And you have no time freedom. So I learned as a default, thou shalt not email, thou shalt not comment, just get out of here. You’re right. And the thing about it is I don’t know why, and Wes can probably answer this, why people would say what they would say in an email and never, ever say it to your face.

That’s the thing that gets me. Is that people will call you out, they’ll criticize you, they’ll fuss at stuff, they’ll try to give that passive aggressive lesson. Oh wow, another intro coming in. Another passive aggressive intro by Clay. And they’ll do that behind their keyboard and then they hit send finish their beer and go to bed and think they did a really good thing and yet

It leaves a trail. Yeah, it it leaves a mark and if you were dumb enough to read it I don’t I just hit delete delete delete anymore. You know, it’s kind of like if it’s important They’ll come back circle back around. They’ll call me though. They’ll get to me somehow or another if it’s super important, you know But I just I always kind of question that go why did they was it is it a release for them? They feel like, okay, I’ve released it, I’ve said my piece, and that’s good, and now I can go to bed?

I mean, why are they doing that, Clay? I mean, Wes? Well, I think part of it’s a little cathartic. I think some of it, though, is just a lack of courage. I find at my office sometimes, you know, someone will tear into my assistant, who’s usually female,

just tear into her, I mean, you know. Are they usually younger ladies, like maybe 35 or under-ish? Well, there’s a mixture. I think… Should I get a make and model of a typical assistant? You know, no, they vary in age, but for some reason…

Female….they feel comfortable just to tear into them. You know, you’re horrible, you drop the ball, you’re a piece of work, you know, horrible service. So I pick up the phone and call them, and they’re like, Oh, attorney Carter, how are you doing today? I’m so happy you called attorney Carter.

They’re just overflowed with, Oh sure. Ooey gooeyness. And I’m like, well, I’m calling because you called my assistant three curse words in an email, you know, a little bit earlier and I wanted to see what the problem was. Oh, there’s no problem. You know, that was just, I was in a bad mood and I’m like, okay, well, um, if that ever

happens again, you know, we’re not going to be representing you and that’s not acceptable. And all of a sudden, they’re just, they’re crowd blocking backwards and backwards. So I think, you know, you get the, you get the courage that you don’t have to look anybody in the eye. You don’t have to worry about someone retorting and firing back at you. And you just get a little bit extra courage than you do looking at someone in the eye

and talking to them. You know, I have a friend of mine, what they do is when they’re crafting one of those kind of emails, they, they don’t, they don’t hit send and they don’t hit, it’s not actually addressed to the person they’re going to send it to. They address it to themselves in case they actually do hit send in a moment of whatever. Then they sleep on it.

They get up the next day with a fresh mind, fresh look, re-read it. Nine times out of ten, they won’t send it, or they may change it substantially to tone it down and really make a point that maybe needs to be made without all the extra energy that they have right then because they’re so mad. Napoleon Hill taught me something years ago in one of his books. He was talking about, the best-selling author, talking about if you have something really intense to say, as a general rule, write

it by the water’s edge. And if you can find it in the morning when the tide comes in, you should say it to the person. So it’s kind of a, obviously if you put on the water’s edge, the tide comes in, it’s gone. It’s gone. And so I don’t live near a body of water by that, but I’ve done this at least probably you know 50 times. I’ll write something out with a pen to get it out and I’ll set it on fire.

And usually in the morning I’m like, what was I even thinking? And I have done it every time. I have made mistakes, but I do want to share two final little nuggets and Wes I’ll give you the floor to wrap it up here. Gretchen Rubin, bestselling author, New York Times bestselling author, has been on Oprah multiple times, kind of a happiness expert, studies what makes people happy, what makes people

upset. She writes, turn off your email, turn off your phone, disconnect from the internet, figure out a way to set limits so you can concentrate when you need to, and then disengage when you need to. Technology is a good servant, but a bad master. T. Boone Pickens, who recently passed away, he writes, to me, emails are a little bit

frustrating. I think that the telephone is much preferred because you get the sound of the voice and the interest and everything else that you can’t in an email. And again, I could give you notable quotables all day, but the world’s most successful people clearly are in favor of sending less emails than the average person and when sending them being more thoughtful about them.

What would be your final advice today as we’re sharing with 13 hard rules for effectively managing your email and specifically thou shalt not email being the main rule. Well, as a good attorney, I’m going to insert here one caveat, exception, exclusion. Because sometimes, in my profession, probably some of you know… Because you’re an attorney.

I’m an attorney, contractor, something. You’re sending an email because you want a record of it. And so the retort or the response from a listener is going to be, well, I want to make sure I can go back and prove it later that I notified them or that whatever happened. So the move is have the phone call.

There we go. Follow up with a short email. We get all the benefits of a phone call, the repertoire, the- Per our conversation. Right, exactly.

I’m just following up on our phone call. We discussed that you will be the one taking care of this, period. You don’t have to worry. You’ve gotten all of it out, you’ve sorted it out, but you can still make that record later on down the road if you need to.

This is good. So that’s kind of a little move to get the best of both worlds. Well, Wes, we like to end each and every show with a boom. Are you psychologically prepared for a boom? I am ready. If you’re out there, and Wes, you can edit what I’m going to say here.

You can say, you can’t say that, or you can throw in the caveat here. I know that everybody out there, if you own a business, statistically it is very probable, likely, almost a certainty, if you’re doing more than a million dollars a year of gross revenue, you will get sued at some point or have a legal entanglement. Am I off? No, it’s highly likely. Okay, Z, do you agree with that? If you are doing more than a million bucks a year of

revenue… Unfortunately, I agree with that. that the worst time to find an attorney is when you need one. The worst time to be looking for an attorney is when you need one. It would be like, this is a crude analogy,

but it’s the best one I’ve got here. It would be like getting to your wedding night and determining you need to find a bride. Like, Z, it’s midnight, I’m married, I’m not sure who to, but let me find that bride. I mean, it’s a weird time.

It’s a weird emotion. It’s a weird panicky thing. The worst time to look to see if you have fire insurance, fire insurance is after a fire. You know what I’m saying. A little proactivity.

So what I would encourage you to do, is I would encourage you to do what I did years ago. I would encourage you to go to wintersking.com, wintersking.com, and to schedule a consultation. Why? See if you like these guys. But while you’re waiting for a response,

or while you’re on hold, or you’re waiting to call them, go read the reviews and look at their client roster, who they have represented. I believe, and correct me if I’m wrong, you have represented Pastor Craig Rochelle, your firm has. You have as the largest,

it’s the largest evangelical church in America. There’s 100,000 members of this thing. I mean, it’s huge. Joyce Meyer. Yes. You guys have represented her at WintersKing.com, am I correct?

Absolutely, for a very long time. Brother T.D. Jakes. Bishop Jakes, absolutely. By the way, I am very bitter and frustrated that he’s not been on the show yet. We are going to make it happen one day, Clay.

And when I say bitter and frustrated, I mean I am excited and anticipating it to happen. There you go. I just rephrased it. I sent an email to you, verbally, somehow. So all I’m saying is you guys have represented some big people, business owners, a lot of business owners, and you represent me, which is probably the kind that you’re least proud

to represent. So you represent all spectrums of people. And my wife engages with you, I think on the daily or maybe every other day. Pretty close, yeah. Because there’s stuff going on. And Z, is it important in your mind to have a relationship with an attorney that you like?

Absolutely, and that’s why you want to go and visit with some, because you want to figure out who you like. Because when you need one, you don’t have that time freedom of having a lunch or having a free 15 minutes or having the… just to go and meet them and say, do I like this person? Do I want them to be my knight in shining armor? And so, when you’ve been served something it’s panic and there’s time you know

you got to respond by this you got to do this and so you a lot of times you just take the first one that’s available and that may not be the best choice. So I ask you right now on a scale of one to ten how happy are you with your attorney if you if you say a ten they’re the best I’ve had multiple great relationships and interactions with these people they’ve been with me in my time of need it’s always been good stick with your guy stick with your your lady but if on a scale of 1 to 10 you’re ranking them, you know like a 7, because a 7 is kind of like when you give something that you don’t like but you want to be nice.

You want to be nice. In Oklahoma, you’d say, how was the movie? If the movie was terrible, you’d say, what was a 7? Now if you’re in Boston, you go, it’s like a freaking 1. It’s freaking negative 2. It’s the worst movie ever.

It’s a freaking negative 2. It’s an abomination. I’ll tell you what, I’ve had bad lobster better than that. It’s like the Eagles. So you want to make sure that you are being honest on a scale of 1 to 10. How happy are you with your current attorney, 10 being the best, 1 being the worst?

And if it’s not a 10, I’d encourage you to go to Winner’s King and schedule a consultation. And Wes, can I say these things or am I somehow infringing upon some kind of legal rules by telling people to check out your website? Well, you know, I mean, if it’s not us, call somebody. I mean, we’re happy to always take new clients, but the point I think that the listener needs to get is you should have an attorney you love that you

enjoy working with that you don’t dread going to because that’s when things get bad. So just plan ahead in advance and find someone that works well with you that you can deal with. Can we say that on the radio? An attorney you love? Can you actually ever love an attorney, Wes?

Is that even possible? Oh yeah. That’s blowing somebody’s mind right there. I mean, that right there, I mean, it’s like metaphysical. I feel like, you know, the love attorney. So here you go.

If you’re out there today, again, capstone thought, go to Winner’s King, check them out, see if they’re a good fit for you. And thou shalt not email. Remember that, thou shalt not email. Okay, we got, you gave me, we gave you 13 rules today for effectively managing your email in the world of business.

But rule number one, above all, above all else, when possible Z thou shall not email only when it’s your last source of communication and then for like professional stuff that you need you have to send you know because I remember back when the fax machine was like we send that kind of stuff and now it’s the email move but if you’ve got nothing else other than pertinent data to send that someone’s expecting, they’re wanting, they’ve asked for, don’t send it. And above all else, if you’ve got a personal

angst, write it out. I like that, the old school. I mean, I would get a big old Indian tablet, you know, with a number two pencil. Oh, nice. Oh, that was nice. What about a stone tablet with a chisel? Sharp that sucker up. By the time you’ve finished grinding that in there, you’re done. Now you’re worn out. You’re like, I only got the first sentence. Dear Trevor, dear…

And then sit on it, sleep on it, and if you still feel like you need to communicate, then pick up the phone and call, or schedule a coffee, or schedule a time. You know, hey, I need 10, 15 minutes of your time to talk about something that’s, in my mind, very important, and it’s an appropriate person that you’re talking to, you know? Like you said, Clay, a lot of times, someone will email you that should have gone through a supervisor or gone through a manager or gone through somebody else, and that email is just wasted on you because one, you’re

going to delete it and not even read it, and two, they’re not going to get done but may need to get done. So always go through the proper channels. Try to email last resort, only if it’s data or personal stuff. For goodness sakes, folks, do not have a long conversation vis-a-vis texting, email, Twitter. This is not the way to communicate and I know right now our society today today

I was so frustrated this morning I got I got to add this in right now out of it I called some people needed me to do some stuff, and I called them nobody answered the phone. I was just like Boom shunda, you know answer the phone We got to get this thing you know and I don’t want to take the time to type it out and then render it Then I get it right to do this or that

Just pick up your phone you know and so you leave a message and then they call you back and then you get handled, you know. But I’m kind of old school. Talk it out. Talk, hear their voice, get the thing settled, get the thing done, and then move on in life. This endless communication of, what did you mean by that and what’s this?

The endless email thread. The endless email doom loop, and I like calling it the doom loop. It is a doom loop. So we’re giving you practical ways to get back your day, get control of your life. I mean, because when you said that earlier, that 11 hours are spent on screens, and half of that is emailing.

The email equivalent. What are you doing, folks? Jack Assery of the highest order. Hopefully it ends for you today. And Z, we like to end each and every show with a boom. Wes, are you ready?

I’m ready. Z, are you ready? Absolutely. And remember, these mics pop now. It’s a hot mic. We’ve got to back up as we say the boom.

Here we go. 3, 2, 1, boom! Thou shall not email. Thou shall not email. I feel like you’re really singling me out here. I email all the time.

I forward Chuck Norris jokes. I manage my employees’ fee… I’m not even kidding. I’m not even kidding. I’m not even kidding. I forward Chuck Norris jokes. I manage my employees via email. I provide criticism to my employees via email. I deliver feedback to my employees via email. I try to lead my team via email. I try to deal with legal situations via email. You’re so harsh. I just do everything via email.

I feel like you’re really calling me out. You know, during the holidays, people often ponder, they sit back and reflect about the year that has gone by and did they get closer to their goals? Did they move further away from their goals? And a lot of people think to themselves,

you know, self, I wish I was self-employed. I want to start a company. I wish I owned my own business.” But then people, oftentimes, I’m sure our listeners don’t, they get overwhelmed with all the options. You know, should I start this kind of business?

Should I start this kind of business? Should I reinvent the wheel? Should I start this? Should I go to this seminar? Should I go back to college? Should I invent something?

Should I patent something? And inevitably, most people never do make the jump into being self-employed because I believe they’re ultimately overwhelmed by options and they often just end up being kind of paralyzed by all the options that exist. And so on today’s show, I really want to drive home the idea that everybody out there can begin figuratively bowling with, it’s almost like bowling with a bumpers.

Running a franchise is like bumper bowling. It’s basically like bowling, but you’re much more likely, or much less likely to throw gutter balls because the safety guards, the safety rails have been put up in place to ensure that you are going to become successful, or at least you have a statistically much higher chance of being successful if you are, in fact, the franchisee, as opposed to being somebody who reinvents the wheels and starts their own company.

And here to talk about it is the franchise brand developer, Matt Klein with Oxifresh, how are you sir? I’m doing well. Good intro. I’m looking forward to it. So Matt, I got to ask you, you know, a lot of people, they say, hey, I’m interested in buying an Oxifresh franchise. What are those initial questions that people ask you when they’re pondering about becoming an Oxifresh business owner? Yeah, how much it costs, what our advantages are, how can I run this company? Do I have to clean carpet? What’s the infrastructure in terms

of employees? What do we provide in terms of support? If I’m paying this amount, what am I getting for that? So a lot of just leading questions at normal, every conversation I kind of go through. So the first conversation is really about the infrastructure of the company, supporting backbone, how much it costs. The why is very important. Why would we go with OxyPressure? I think that’s an appropriate question. I can take that in a lot of different ways, but that’s what it is in the beginning, just very kind of

elementary questions about the business. And let’s say somebody is saying, you know, I don’t want to waste my time or your time, and they’re interested in looking into an Oxifresh. How much money does somebody need to bring to the table, or how does the payment work if somebody’s interested in buying an Oxifresh franchise? Yeah, the franchise fee which is due at the time of the franchise is $47,000. That $47,000 gets you your protected territory, seven-year agreement, entire equipment set up for carpet and upholstery, about

three months worth of product, plus the training where I’ll fly you to Colorado and you’ll spend about a week with us. All that’s included in that initial. Now, I still want you to have about $25,000 operating capital after you’ve invested the $47,000. That could be in any form, right? It could be a line of credit, credit, it could be a key lock, it could be cash, you just want to have an operating budget after that.

Now when somebody buys an Oxifresh franchise from you, walk us through the step-by-step process that happens from the time that somebody says, I do want to buy an Oxifresh until they’re up and actually running a successful company. What are the, what’s the steps, what’s the step-by-step process of becoming an Oxifresh franchise owner? Yeah, the first step is to come out to Colorado, meet the team, see the company culture, spend a couple days letting us train you on kind of everything Oxifresh, most importantly all

the field stuff, right? How our employees go about their day, how they communicate with customers, how they take payment, how they actually clean, all that. Once you get back home, assuming you’re a franchise at that point, you’ll be put on an onboarding checklist and our team will take you through about a 30 to 45 day onboarding checklist. Everything you need from vendor relations,

to insurance, to getting your Google pages up and running so you can start getting reviews, all of that sort of stuff, okay? Once you get done with the onboarding and you’re kind of ready to start your business, you’re gonna be put on a six month coaching program,

which is a proactive coaching program. We talk to you weekly about how we hit our goals, what the next set of goals are, just keeping you on track so that we can look back and say each week was productive. And then from that six month period,

we are not proactively reaching out to you every single time, but more reactively, like what do you need? How can we help, right, as we go forward? Now, somebody who buys an Oxifresh franchise, or somebody who’s thinking about it,

they might be thinking, what are the character attributes or the skill sets needed to be successful? You know, again, let’s just say somebody’s watching this show, they have the money to buy a franchise, they have the credit to buy the franchise, maybe they wanna open up a franchise for themselves

or a family member, what skill sets are required to become a successful OxiFresh franchise owner? Yeah, so outside of like actually having enough money to invest in it, you certainly wanna have like, you know, I don’t know if you don’t need skills in our industry specifically at all,

but you would wanna have, you know, like motivational skills. Like I don’t think you can be a very good business owner if you just don’t have self motivation, right? If you’re not the one pushing yourself to get your own goals done,

I think that mirror test is very important, right? If you have a hard time getting out of bed and you have a hard time trying to complete tasks on your own. I don’t think taking on a business is very smart, but self-motivated competitiveness I think is a term that should be put into small business probably above anything else. If it doesn’t just burn you up to be the second or third best company in your industry, then

I don’t know, you’ll just continue to be the second or third or fourth best in your industry. Somebody’s got to be the more aggressive owner there. Owner there you know in terms of I think personal skills like your communication is so important right especially if you have a team of people That are leaning on you to for guidance right like a lot of people that I hire. They’re young they Are very productive But they maybe need a little coaching in certain areas of their life

Or whether it is motivation or time management skills or just the soft skills of being able to talk to someone in you know Conflict resolution like all these sort of things, they’re not just gonna come to you day one and have all these skills. So as an owner, being able to kind of guide these young people through some of their,

their kind of inadequacies is very important to long-term success. Now, buying a franchise is something that the federal government is heavily involved in the franchising space. The Federal Trade Commission, you know,

regulates many aspects of the franchise industry. So you can’t hop on a show like this and make a financial claim about how much money somebody can make as a result of buying one. Because somebody can really become as successful or as unsuccessful as they want to be. They ultimately own the business.

They own the business vehicle, but it’s up to them where they drive it. Could you brag, though, on a couple of locations or territories that you can think of off the top of your head that are maybe doing well and maybe share what it is that allows them to have success. Yeah, I mean, Sean out there in Jacksonville, Florida, you know, former service member, I mean, he’s never been a guy that’s made excuses.

I can’t say that his road was completely paved with gold, right, but he’s always put his head down, he’s always tried really hard. You know, he’s calling me, he’s asking me for advice and giving me also solutions. I mean, he’s a guy that from day one has tried

as hard or harder than anyone else in our franchise. That’s why he went from one territory to five. That’s why he’s one of our top performing franchisees. You’ve got Mike Burton and his partner up there in North Dakota and Wisconsin. Extremely diligent, very hardworking, right?

They are, you give them a task and they will do it. I mean, I think that’s one of the biggest things like, you know, you could have a room full of people. If you say, tell all of them to go out and get five of their friends to give reviews. The people that do it at that moment

are gonna be more successful faster than the people that wait a week. And so Mike and his team, they, if you put something in front of them, they’re gonna be extremely good. They’re gonna do it very quickly

and they’re gonna ask what’s next, right? I think that’s a extremely good gift to have. We got people in like Wichita, we have people in St. Louis, we have people up in Seattle area that are extremely diligent as well. So I say this all the time, I don’t think what we’re doing is very hard, but I do think it takes hard work to be successful.

Other things I want to ask you about owning an OxyFresh franchise is I know a lot of people get super excited about the concept of owning a franchise, but then there’s kind of these moments of truth where they go, ah, it’s not for me. Or it is for me. There’s a lot of energy behind, oh, I mean, I should go to oxyfresh.com and request information. I too should buy a business.

I’m excited. End of the year, I’m going to do it. New year, new me, let’s go, here we go. And then there’s that hesitation. There’s that moment of pullback where people say, no, it’s not for me. Then there’s that moment of, for some people, they say, oh, it is for me.

What is that tipping point or that aha moment that you often encounter when talking to a potential franchisee? About them backing away? Well, the moment where people go, you know what, this is a great fit for me, or I’m out of here.

Like, what is that moment of truth for a lot of people? Because the brand, I mean, you have over 500 locations. You guys have been doing this for well over 15 years. What’s that moment where people go, I’m out or I’m in? What is that big aha moment that people have? Okay, so minus the scenario where I’ve been talking to the husband for like two months

and then they decide to tell their wife that they’re actually just going to look into a franchise, that scenario is the aha moment because now you know the wife and the husband are not on the same team, right? Like this kind of happens a lot where they’re trying to regurgitate our conversation so the wife is like, you’re an idiot, this is never gonna happen,

like that happens sometimes. So take that out of the equation, which does happen. You know, I think, like I said, I think the mirror test is really important. I’m very honest with people. I’ll be like, hey, you know, who have you been?

Like what have you done in your life? Like, you know, think about your past experiences with your coworkers and your bosses and your jobs. Like are you the one who climbed the corporate ladder? Are people leaning on you for extra work? Or are you the one in the corner

kind of getting through their day and not exceeding expectations? I mean, if you’ve struggled in working in corporate America all the time, you’ve always had bad bosses and you never had a good experience, I don’t know if cutting your teeth with a new business

is the right thing, right? Where I see people kind of check in is when you get to the end and we start talking about how they’re going to afford the franchise okay and and at that point that’s when things get real because if you say you want to do it and you have the financing and we bring you out to Colorado then you can basically make

that decision for those that you know the biggest the biggest thing that people to take people away from running a company like this is their inability to either have the money to do it or the financing to do it. It’s the biggest determining factor because if they don’t have the money and it’s too risky and maybe they don’t have great credit, I mean, they need to wait a while. They need to rebuild and get themselves to a financial spot where they can take the business,

right? Well, let’s pull that back just a little bit here. So, you know, you talk about the money, that we have the money or we don’t. I believe, and maybe I’m incorrect, I believe, you know, 95% of people are needing some kind of financing, typically, to buy a franchise or an oxy-fresh. At least the people I know that have bought franchises, they always need some kind of financing.

Do you find the same thing? Are most people coming to you, asking for you to recommend a financing solution? Do you help people find the financing or not so much? Yeah, certainly. We don’t have in-house financing, but we certainly will help because, you know, just be, also by the way, just because people have the money to buy a franchise, most people will still get a loan so

that they can actually keep their money and then have a business loan, right? So even if they have money, I’m still typically having someone go through some sort of financing process. And so yes, depending on what you’re looking for, there’s a bunch of different companies from rollovers to HELOCs to secure non-secure lines of credit, SBA, like there’s all sorts of ways to get funds So yeah, I mean, it’s a pretty big part of our process

And it is probably the biggest hurdle for those that do not they’re not in a place to financially get assistance that way Now man, I’m gonna go here to thrive timeshow.com forward slash oxy fresh Thrive time show.com forward slash oxy fresh. That’s where people can go if they want to request additional information. That’s thrivetimeshow.com forward slash oxyfresh. I’m going to go through here. Let me pull this up real fast here.

I’m going to go through what I believe to be some of the most desirable, most important benefits for all the listeners to know. One, if you buy an Oxyfresh franchise, you’re buying a proven turnkey marketing system. Two, you’ve got a history of success. The brand’s been around for over 15 years. Three, low startup costs. Four, it’s cutting-edge carpet cleaning

technology. Fifth, and perhaps one of the most important things that I see, is you guys offer turnkey marketing systems, turnkey marketing as I mentioned, but you also offer a turnkey call center or scheduling center, a group that actually schedules the appointments for the franchisees, so the franchisees don’t have to spend their day answering their phone, scheduling their own appointments. Tell us about that Matt for anybody

out there that doesn’t know about the OxyPress call center in Denver, Colorado. Yeah, it’s really important right I mean most people don’t think about this aspect of business but if you if you’re forward-thinking and you’re wanting to be successful right and let’s just say you exceed expectations and you go from having one employee to start and let’s just say you’re getting like three to five calls a day. It’s very simple. You can handle and manage that. But just fast forward like three

years from now when you’re getting 30, 40 calls a day, right? Like who’s going to be handling that? Is it going to be you as the owner? If that’s the case, you can’t do anything else because you got to be by your computer or by a way to answer questions and look at the schedule and book jobs and answer questions. But let’s just say you are poor thing enough to hire someone. To me, hiring an actual team to answer the phones is harder than hiring someone to clean the carpet.

Cleaning the carpet is extremely simple. It’s very repetitive, right? It’s an easier job. But hiring someone to answer the phones, use the software, train them on that, speak the language of the industry and answer all the questions, that is a harder job. And actually, you have to hire at least two or three people, not just one, because you

don’t want to answer phones just eight hours a day, right? You want to answer phones like 15 hours a day, right? And so for us, it’s very important because when you become a franchise, you start getting jobs. From the very first moment you get a call, that person who’s calling your company is going to have an expert that’s going to be answering the phone, explaining us as a company,

giving accurate quotes on your pricing structure, and placing that customer on the schedule that you previously assigned that is open. And so, I’ll have days where I’ll book 20 something jobs in a day and I won’t have anything to do with that process. So I could be working on my company, working at my job, doing other things, and my business is still fluidly working.

It’s imperative. So Matt, for people out there, again, they’re going to thrivetimeshow.com forward slash Oxifresh. I’ll pull it up on the screen here. ThriveTimeShow.com forward slash Oxifresh. Final 30 seconds, Matt. Why should everybody out there

who’s looking to kickstart next year and to maybe enter into a new career or to create an opportunity for themselves to earn multiple income streams, why should everybody look at Oxifresh in a world where there’s a lot of different franchise opportunities.

What makes Oxifresh a great opportunity for folks? Yeah, I think you should certainly just go down the exploration road because it doesn’t cost you anything. What I’ve also learned is that most people don’t even realize the flexibility and ownership. Most people think if they have a job, they can’t own a company. They might think maybe they don’t have all the money to buy it,

so they can’t get funding for a company. Or they’re just maybe not confident in their own skill set but they don’t realize we’re plugging a lot of the holes for them so they can focus on their kind of core, you know, experiences there to be good. Like, you’re not committing to anything financial,

just committing to exploring it. What I’ve learned is that I’ve had a bunch of people that are not ready to buy a franchise right now but they know what franchising is, they know what it takes, they know the time commitment and sometime in the next couple years they will call me back and say,

hey, I’m ready to do this, right? And I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. I just don’t think people realize the options that are out there. Everyone thinks that a franchise is a million dollars and it takes real estate,

and a bunch of team members and employees, where we’re very much the opposite of that. So again, folks, if you’re looking to create time freedom and financial freedom, I would encourage you to reach out to Oxifresh today. Again, that domain, one more time,

that’s thrivetimeshow.com forward slash Oxifresh. Matt, I will put a link to that page on the show description. Matt, I’ll give you the final 15 seconds. Why should everybody reach out to you today? Reach out to figure out if you’re capable of running a company to make more money.

I think everyone, everyone would like another five, six, $10,000 a month, especially in times like this where we don’t really know coming off all the stuff that happened to us. Having more income is better than less. The options are out there, you just don’t know that they’re there. Matt, your beard is looking incredible right now.

Is this a new thickness you’ve achieved here? Are you adding oils to the beard? Are you doing anything different? It’s a new thickness. It appears, again, it just could be the camera, it appears to be thicker. Is it different?

Are you trimming it differently? What do you what are you doing that? Think it’s just long sleepless nights with my daughter. Maybe that’s the key That’s the key long sleepless nights with your new you up with your new young daughter Matt Klein. Thank you so much, sir Have a great day. All right Wait Clark is here somewhere. Where’s my buddy play? Play is the greatest I met his goats today, I met his dogs, I met his chickens, I saw his compound.

He’s like the greatest guy. I ran from his goats, his chickens, his dogs. So this guy’s like the greatest marketer you’ve ever seen, right? His entire life, Clay Clark, his entire life is marketing. Okay, Aaron Antis, March 6th and 7th, March 6th and 7th, guess who’s coming to Tulsa, Russia? Ooh, Santa Claus?

No, that’s March March 6 and oh you’re gonna be joined by Robert Kiyosaki Robert He is best-selling author of rich dad poor dad possibly the best-selling or one of the best-selling Business authors of all time and he’s gonna be joined with Eric Trump. He’ll be joined by Eric Eric Trump and Robert Kiyosaki in the same place in the same place Aaron Why should everybody show up to hear Robert Kiyosaki. Well you got billions of dollars of business experience between those two, not to mention many, many, many millions of books have been sold. Many, many

millionaires have been made from the books that have been sold by Robert Kiyosaki. I happen to be one of them. I learned from the man. He was the inspiration. That book was the inspiration for me to get the entrepreneurial spirit as many other people. Now since you won’t brag on yourself, I will. You’ve sold billions of dollars of houses, am I correct? That is true.

And the book that kick-started it all for you, Rich Dad Poor Dad, the best-selling author of Rich Dad Poor Dad, Robert Kiyosaki, the guy that kick-started your career, he’s gonna be here. He’s gonna be here, I’m bummed.

And now Eric Trump, people don’t know this, but the Trump Organization has thousands of employees. There’s not 50 employees. The Trump organization, again, most people don’t know this, but the Trump organization has thousands of employees. And while Donald J. Trump was the 45th president of these United States and soon to be the 47th president of these United States, he needed someone to run the companies for him. And so

the man that runs the Trump organization for Donald J. Trump, as he was the 45th president of the United States, and now the 47th president of the United States is Eric Trump. Eric Trump is here to talk about time management, promoting from within, marketing, branding, quality control, sales systems,

workflow design, workflow mapping, how to build. I mean everything that you see, the Trump hotels, the Trump golf courses, all their products, the man who manages billions of dollars of real estate and thousands of employees is here to teach us how to do it? You are talking about one of the greatest brands on the planet from a business standpoint. I mean, who else has been able to create a brand like the Trump brand? I mean, look at it, and this is the man behind the business for the last, pretty much since 2015.

He’s been the man behind it, so you’re talking, we’re into nine, going into ten years of him running it, and we get to tap into that knowledge. That’s going to be amazing. Now, think about this for a second. Would you buy a ticket just to see Robert Kiyosaki and Eric Trump?

Of course you would. Of course you would. But we’re also going to be joined by Sean Baker. This is the best-selling author, the guy who invented the carnivore diet. Dr. Sean Baker, he’s been on Joe Rogan multiple times.

He’s going to be joining us. So you’ve got Robert Kiyosaki, the best-selling author of Rich Dad, Poor Dad, Eric Trump, Sean Baker. The lineup continues to grow, and this is how we do our tickets here at the Thrive Time Show. If you want to get a VIP ticket, you can absolutely do it.

It’s $500 for a VIP ticket. We’ve always done it that way. Now, if you want to take a general admission ticket, it’s $250 or whatever price you want to pay. And the reason why I do that and the reason why we do that is because we want to make our events affordable for everybody.

I grew up without money. I totally understand what it’s like to be the tight spot. So if you want to attend, it’s $250 or whatever price you want to pay. That’s how I do it. And it’s $500 for a VIP ticket. Now, we only have limited seating here.

The most people we’ve ever had in this building was for the Jim Brewer presentation. Jim Brewer came here. The legendary comedian Jim Brewer came to Tulsa. And we had 419 people that were here. 419 people. And I thought to myself, there’s no more room.

I felt kind of bad that a couple people had VIP seats in the men’s restroom. Oh, no, I’m just kidding. But I felt, so I thought, you know what, we should probably add on. So we’re adding on what we call the upper deck, or the top shelf. So the seats are very close to the presenters, but we’re actually building right now, we’re adding on to the facility to make room to accommodate another 30 attendees or more.

So again, if you want to get tickets for this event, all you have to do is go to Thrivetimeshow.com, go to Thrivetimeshow.com, when you go to Thrivetimeshow.com, you’ll go there, you’ll request a ticket, boom. Or if you want to text me, if you want a little bit faster service, you say, I want you to call me right now, just text my number, it’s my cell phone number, my personal cell phone number, we’ll keep that private between you, between you, me, everybody. We’ll keep that private.

And anybody, don’t share that with anybody except for everybody. That’s my private cell phone number. It’s 918-851-0102, 918-851-0102. I know we have a lot of Spanish-speaking people that attend these conferences.

And so to be bilingually sensitive, my cell phone number is 918-851-0102. That is not actually bilingual. That’s just saying one for a one. It’s not the same thing. I think you’re attacking me.

Now, let’s talk about this. Now, what kind of stuff will you learn at the Thrive Time Show workshop? So, Aaron, you’ve been to many of these over the past seven, eight years. So, let’s talk about it. I’ll tee up the thing, and then you tell me what you’re going to learn here, okay? Okay.

You’re going to learn marketing, marketing and branding. What are we going to learn about marketing and branding? Oh, yeah. We’re going to dive into, you know, so many people say, oh, you know, I’ve got to get my brand known out there, like the Trump brand. Right?

You want to get that brand out there. It’s like, how do I actually make people know what my business is and make it a household name? You’re going to learn some intricacies of how you can do that. You’re going to learn sales.

So many people struggle to sell something. This just in, your business will go to hell if you can’t sell. So we’re going to teach you sales. We’re going to teach you search engine optimization. How to come up top in the search engine results. We’re going to teach you how to manage people.

Aaron, you have managed, no exaggeration, hundreds of people throughout your career and thousands of contractors, and most people struggle with managing people. Why does everybody have to learn how to manage people? Well, because first of all, you either have great people or you have people who suck. It can be a challenge. You know, learning how to work with a large group of people and get

everybody pulling in the same direction can be a challenge. But if you have the right systems, you have the right processes, and you’re really good at selecting great ones. And we have a process we teach about how to find great people. When you start with the people who have a great attitude, they’re teachable, they’re driven, all of those things, then you can get those people

all pulling in the same direction. So we’re going to teach you branding, marketing, sales, search engine optimization. We’re going to teach you accounting. We’re going to teach you personal finance, how to manage your finance. We’re going to teach you time management. How do you manage your time?

How do you get more done during a typical day? How do you build an organization if you’re not organized? How do you do organization? How do you build an org chart? Everything that you need to know to start and grow a business will be taught during this two-day interactive business

workshop. But let me tell you how the format is set up here. And again, folks, this is a two-day interactive 15. Think about this, folks. It’s two days. Each day, it starts at 7 AM, and it goes until 5 PM.

So from 7 AM to 5 PM, two days. It’s a two-day interactive workshop. The way we do it is we do a 30 minute teaching session, and then we break for 15 minutes for a question and answer session. So Aaron, what kind of great stuff

happens during that 15 minute question and answer session after every teaching session? I actually think it’s the best part about the workshops, because here’s what happens. I’ve been to lots of these things over the years. I’ve paid many thousands of dollars to go to them.

And you go in there, and they talk in vague generalities, and they’re constantly upselling you for something, trying to get you to buy this thing or that thing or this program or this membership. And you don’t, you leave not getting your very specific questions answered about your business or your employees or what you’re doing on your marketing. And what’s awesome about this is we literally answer every single question that any person

asks. And it’s very specific to what your business is. And what we do is we allow you as the attendee to write your questions on the whiteboard. And then we, literally, as you mentioned, we answer every single question on the whiteboard. And then we take a 15-minute break to stretch.

And to make it entertaining when you’re stretching, and this is a true story, when you get up and stretch, you’ll be greeted by mariachis. There’s going to probably be alpaca here, llamas, helicopter rides, a coffee bar, a snow cone. I mean, you had a crocodile one time. That was pretty interesting.

You know, I should write that down. Sorry for that one guy that we lost. The crocodile, we duct taped its face. It was a baby crocodile. And we duct taped. Yeah, duct taped around the mouth so it didn’t bite anybody. But it was really cool passing that thing around. I should do that. We have a small petting zoo that will be assembled. It’s going to be great. And then you’re in the company of hundreds of entrepreneurs. So there’s not a lot of people in America today.

In fact, there’s less than 10 million people today, according to U.S. Debt Clock, that identifies being self-employed. So if you have a country with 350 million people, that means you have less than 3% of our population that’s even self-employed. So you only have three out of every 100 people in America that are self-employed to begin with.

And when Inc. Magazine reports that 96% of businesses fail by default, by default you have a one out of a thousand chance of succeeding in the game of business. But yet the average client that you and I work with, we can typically double the size, no hyperbole, no exaggeration, I have thousands of testimonials

to back this up. We have thousands of testimonials to back it up. But when you work with a home builder, when I work with a business owner, we can typically double the size of the company within 24 months. Yeah. And you say double? Yeah, there’s businesses that we have tripled, there’s businesses we’ve grown 8x, there’s

so many examples you can see at thrivetimeshow.com. But again, this is the most interactive, best business workshop on the planet. This is objectively the highest rated and most reviewed business workshop on the planet. And then you add to that Robert Kiyosaki, the best-selling author of Rich Dad, Poor Dad. You add to that Eric Trump, the man that runs the Trump Organization. You add to that Sean Baker.

Now you might say, Clay, is there more? I need more. Well, OK, Tom Wheelwright is the wealth strategist for Robert Kiyosaki. So people say, Robert Kiyosaki, who’s his financial wealth advisor? Who’s the guy who manages? Who’s his wealth strategist?

His wealth strategist, Tom Wheelwright, will be here. And you say, Clay, I still, I’m not going to get a ticket unless you give me more. OK, fine. We’re going to serve you the same meal both days. True story.

We cater in food. And because I keep it simple, I literally bring in the same food both days for lunch. It’s Ted Esconzito’s, an incredible Mexican restaurant. That’s going to happen. And Jill Donovan, our good friend,

who is the founder of Rustic Cuff. She started that company in her home, and now she sells millions of dollars of apparel and products. That’s rusticcuff.com. And someone says, I want more! This is not enough!

Give me more. OK, I’m not going to mention their names right now, because I’m working on it behind the scenes here. But we’ve got one guy who’s given me a verbal to be here. And this is a guy who’s one of the wealthiest people in Oklahoma and nobody really knows who he is because he’s built systems that are very utilitarian, that offer a lot of value.

He’s made a lot of money in the, it’s the, it’s where you rent, it’s short term, it’s where you’re renting storage spaces. He’s a storage space guy. He owns the, what do you call that? The rental, the storage space? Storage units.

This guy owns storage units, he owns railroad cars, he owns a lot of assets that make money on a daily basis, but they’re not like customer facing. Most people don’t know who owns the mini storage facility, or most people don’t know who owns the warehouse that’s passively making money. Most people don’t know who owns the railroad cars, but this guy, he’s given me a verbal that he will be here, and we just continue to add more and more success stories.

So if you’re out there today and you want to change your life, you want to give yourself an incredible gift, you want a life-changing experience, you want to learn how to start and grow a company, go to Thrivetimeshow.com. Go there right now. Thrivetimeshow.com. Request a ticket for the two-day interactive event.

Again, the day here is March 6th and 7th. March 6th and 7th, we just got confirmation. Robert Kiyosaki, best-selling author, rich dad, poor dad, he’ll be here. Eric Trump, the man who leads the Trump Organization. It’s going to be a blasty blast. There’s no upsells. Aaron, I could not be more excited about this event. I think it is incredible and there’s somebody out there right now you’re watching and you’re like,

but I already signed up for this incredible other program called Smoke Your Way to Thin. I think that’s going to change your life. I promise you this will be ten times better than that. It’s like I picked the wrong week to quit smoking. Don’t do the smoke your way to thin conference. That is… I’ve tried it.

Don’t do it. Chain smoking is not a viable… I mean, it is life changing. It is life changing. If you become a chain smoker, it is life changing. It’s not the best weight loss program though.

Right. Not really. So if you’re looking to have life changing results in a way that won’t cause you to have a stoma, get your tickets at Thrivetimeshow.com. Again, that’s Aaron Antis. I’m Clay Clark, reminding you and inviting

you to come out to the two-day interactive Thrivetimeshow workshop right here in Tulsa, Oklahoma. I promise you, it will be a life-changing experience. We can’t wait to see you right here in Tulsa, Oklahoma.