The Legal Eagle Wes Carter Answers Legal Questions From Thrive Nation

Audio Transcription

This program is not an advertisement for legal services. Any discussion on the program involving legal issues is intended for general information purposes. No attorney client relationship is established by listening to the program. This program is not a substitute for legal advice. You should contact a competent attorney for advice on your specific legal issues. Cone is business coach Clay Clark. Life tips. No coach client relationship is established by listening to this program. This program is not a substitute for common sense. Please remember to look both ways. Crossing the street is you discover that your clothing is burning. Stop. Drop it, roll. If you get upset with someone about their driving, don’t chase them around through town. Don’t sleep with someone that you just met. Don’t sleep with someone I just met to sleep with someone I just met. Rash, come Prague. Don’t spit into the wind. Don’t get a regrettable tattoo on your face and act like it doesn’t impact your ability to get a job. Don’t show up late for things. Don’t debate politics on Facebook. Don’t go to shell bathrooms. Say Yes. Say thank you. Don’t commit religion at work and drink responsibly. Don’t text and drive or have three wives. Thank you. You smell terrific. All right, Wes Carter. Now that we’ve got all the disclaimers out there, how was that for a disclaimer for you? Am I free?

So that was pretty uh, inclusive of

those are just the issues I worry about. See those are just the issues window into Clay’s mind. I mean this, we had to get the all the legal jargon out of the way because we didn’t want to be inappropriate. Now see, we have seven legal questions for West Carter. How are we going to tee it up here? I am going to ask West Carter the question and then Z, you are going to represent the thrive nation that the business owners out there who are saying what the crap, what the, hey, who the crap does he mean quit talking down to me, quit giving me quit killing my dreams with the facts. So here we go. We have a thriver out there as a company. It’s a a plumbing company based in Kansas City who writes, I’m very new to how unemployment works and I’m looking to promote someone to customer status on my team, a fired them. What are the action steps? What are the action steps? How do I address potential unemployment issues? West Carter,

well unemployment’s handled on a state by state basis, but it’s really not anything you have to do to initiate the process. So once you terminate someone, typically they are going to go file for unemployment themselves and then the unemployment agency in your state is going to send you a notice, a ask if you want to respond and typically you’re not going to fight unemployment benefits unless they were fired for good cause you know you fired them because they were consistently not following established policies that you had set and they were doing something that really they deserve to get fired, not just they weren’t very good at their job.

Now if you see, let’s say that you do a, if you have to pay unemployment, how much does it actually cost you? What happens is, is that you pay a percentage, I believe, of your payroll to unemployment. And it’s a very low percentage, but as people file on you, they can,

and we’ll raise that percentage for a period of time. So it, it depends, it’s kind of like, you know, what is your, what is your car insurance do? If you get a bunch of tickets, there’s a threshold where they raise your car insurance, it might even cancel you eventually. Not that unemployed would cancel you, but, um, they would, they would raise your, your, your, you know, car insurance to get more expensive. That’s kind of what happens. But I always thought, you know, and every states can be different, and West checked if I’m wrong, but I thought the threshold for Oklahoma was that you had to prove that they were willfully harming your business. Yeah. And that’s a, you know, to not, to, to deny them. And so therefore it’s a high hurdle. It’s a high hurdle. And I’ve, oh, and I always preach to people that ask me, say, listen, why fight it? Let them have the last victory. It doesn’t last very long. It’s not a lot of money. It gives them a little something and then they feel like

they don’t, they’re not. And I know, I agree with what you’re saying. I just wanna make sure I’m getting this cuddling. The listeners out there who don’t know, they think, oh well not a lot of money can be relative. Let’s just say you’re paying some guy four grand a month. Okay, 48 grand a year and you have to let the guy go. Alright, you let him go. He breaks all the rules, he files unemployment and you go ahead and say, you know what? I don’t want to fight. Let’s just let him have the last victory. We’ll go ahead and pay. See Are we talking about thousands of dollars a month extra? We have to pay an unemployment or no, no, not hundreds. No, no. Let me think.

Yeah, it’s, it’s not, it’s a, I could probably a googled it up and look, but I, it’s a, it’s a small percentage of your payroll that you paid

for. Not even, I mean it’s not thousands. I’m just making sure listeners know it’s the equivalence of insurance. So your premiums may go up as a result of having the number of claims, but you’re not paying unemployment out of your pocket. You’re not paying, let’s say $1,000 a month for an employment. You’re not paying that worst case scenario. You’re out hundreds of dollars a month. You know what I mean? As your rate goes up. But I mean, you’re not out thousands and thousands. It’s not correct, but you just don’t wanna get in the habit of it

someone then, um, and they may not even go number when they may not even go file number two. Even if they do at some point, if you don’t have anybody fall on you, your, your rate goes back down

eventually. Zohan you have a controversial move as it relates to writing employees up, or shall I say not writing employees up? Correct. Can you please explain why you, I mean, now you’re at a level, we have managers who do things for you, but why are you not a big writeup kind of guy? What do you, what do you really get from writing somebody up? Well, you a document the issue, you say, hey, you’re right. We’ve talked about why do you have to do that? I’m not saying you have to have just west West. Why would you legal Eagle Wes Legal Eagle where it comes in handy. Here we go guys. So you’ve terminate an employee for a legitimate reason. And when they finally claim they alleged you didn’t find firing me because I was late, you fired him because I had a disability and I told you about this disability and he never offered me an accommodation for my disability. And

I sent a conflict brewing here with my doctor’s Eleanor in West Carter. Back to you there. Dr Z took a tennis match here to, to volley doctors on her.

I a cage fight. I mean, sometimes, uh, sometimes, uh, you know, the write up of not done correctly can, can backfire on you. You very true. So to me it’s kind of like, hey, Oklahoma’s an at-will states. It really important to understand where you may be listening is somewhere around the world. And this I’m giving, I’m giving, I’m giving you advice on the rules and laws of Oklahoma, the state of Oklahoma here in the grid, the great country of Marka. Um, it’s an at will state. You can fire somebody for anything. You don’t have to have three documented late days. You didn’t have to have the fact that they can’t answer the phone and speak clearly. You don’t have to have it and document it. You don’t, it’s an out will state if you just say, hey, you know what, Billy, I don’t want a guy working for by the name of Billy.

If, if you’re writing somebody up in North Korea, I mean, the laws are different. Their laws are different. Let me add one firing, one phrase to your statement, which is true. Here we go. Caveat fires. Anyone for any reason, as long as it’s not an illegal reason, so I can’t fire you because of your gender, your sex, your race.

A real quick, uh, guys are, as the head of the lifeguard crew here is 4.0 uh, Robert T. Come on up. You’re on fire and you, cause you’re white. I hate white people. Just to throw that out there, you’re fired because you’re white west. You’re fired two year. What? You’re uh, what are USB? You kind of like, what’s your deal? Seriously, what is your ethnicity? West? What are you, are you part? Are you printing of American?

I always thought so. But you do the detail employed to avoid the Elizabeth Warren issue. I now just claimed Caucasian.

You’re not even slightly, not slightly. No native American at all. I thought so my whole life til about six months ago. Oh my goodness. Now funny. I say what? I like. Your skin car’s a little darker. You’re hired. You’re, you go. We’ll keep you so you’re fired. I’m Outta here. You can’t do it for that reason, right?

Correct. Well, that’s why when you’re firing someone, folks, let’s go back to the rules. The rules. It’s just not working out and she has no other reasons. Buh-Bye.

That’s great advice. Now, another thing you can’t say is, hey, a old guy. Come on up here. You’re fired. We’re going younger youth movement here, Buddy.

That’s why you don’t, you don’t say anything because therefore you don’t. You don’t paint yourself into a corner, you just keep it simple. It’s just not working out. You’re fired. Buh-Bye. But nothing there. They can imagine why they’re being fired all by one. They can think it’s some legal they can take and whatever they say, but you don’t have anything written down to prove otherwise. You haven’t opened your big trapped to say otherwise. And what you’re thinking is between you and God alone.

Now we have a thriver out there who wants to know. They say, how do I trademark a business name and logo? What does the process look like? How much does it cost west? So to qualify for it, there’s really three types of trademarks. We’ll go these real quick. Common Law Trade Martin means I have not registered with anybody. I just claim rights because I use it, which are very limited rights. You have state trademarks which you file in your state, but our only good within that state’s borders and then the best, the brightest, the most powerful or federal trademarks which you with the United States Patent and trademark office. And to qualify, you have to use a mark. You know, a drawing, a word, a group of words, whatever your, your mark is in connection with whatever kind of good or service you’re trying to protect in interstate commerce, in business, across state lines. And if you can meet those elements, you file an application with the United States Patent trademark office. They process, it takes about six to nine months. You look in, uh, starting out around right around a thousand dollars usually with attorney’s fees, filing fees, everything.

Okay? Now, if you’re out there today and you’re saying, I have a legal question, just email us to info at thrive time, show.com and z’s going to get that email. I get that email. So we get the email and then we say, you know what? We get the email. Let’s wait until Tuesday and let’s ask quest card. That’s what we’re going to do. And then we’ll ask West card move. It is the move. Now this is not substitute legal, actual, you know, having a lawyer represent you. So now that you’ve heard it’s about a thousand dollars, whereas you probably shouldn’t go online and try to do this yourself. Am I correct? All right. That’s absolutely right. Okay, now we have a thriver out there who had, this is our third question. They say this is this. See this question right here is a beautiful question. This right here is tremendous. Well see, I’m trying to hype it up a little bit here just cause gimme gimme a little bit of energy. See I need to know that you want to from the Blue Corner, Click Clark brings the next question. That’s right. Okay, here we go. The thread wants to know, hey, we have an ecommerce retail company and we’re not well known yet and we don’t want someone else taking our name or our logo.

How do we protect it? Will we roll right back into trademark issues? And now there’s a lot of confusion. They someone that you have you trademark that I don’t need to, I, I have the, I bought the domain name. Um, well did you buy every variation possible variation of that domain name? So, I mean a lot of people think just because they registered a name with the state or they got a domain name that now all of a sudden they can stop people from using their name or that gives them some sort of trademark rights. Really the only thing you can do to proactively try to protect the name, prevent someone else from using it in a similar way is to go down the trademark road. So you can always fall back on those common law trademark rights where I get some rights just cause I’ve been using it, but they’re very limited. You only get rights geographically in the place that you use them. And so if I’m in Tulsa, for instance, I might have common law, trademark rights to a name, but it means me think for Oklahoma City or little rock, you know. So, um, there’s no need to get into those. Leave yourself open to those traps. If you really want to protect the name, you have something unique that you want people not to knock off or use something confusingly similar than you think. You need to look at a trademark.

Now we have another thriver out there who has an ecommerce business z and they are selling physical products, tangible goods, tangible goods, and they want to know what stuff do we need to do legally to be in compliance? Broad question, but a good question. See, that’s a good question. It’s a good question. What stuff do we already have a website up? They got a shopping cart. They can fulfill the product, but talk to us about licenses. Do they need a business license to need to secure a reserve the name, protect the name. Uh, what, what kind of stuff do they need?

Well, we’ll hit a couple of them. Kind of, you’re right. It’s a very broad question. One that’s been coming up more and more is if you’re on an ecommerce site, you need to make sure you’re paying attention to your terms and conditions and your privacy policy. And those are, you know, if I come to your site and use your site, we have an agreement between me, the site operator and you, the site user a where we’re going to fight. What are the terms? Is there a membership? Am I giving you my credit card information? All that stuff. Privacy policy. That’s a big issue right now. If you’re opening up your website, let’s say you’re growing and you start getting, uh, let’s say customers from the EU. Well, the EU has crazy strict privacy rules.

Real quick. Do we have, can you explain what the EU is and do we have to deal with the EU,

the European Union? So we’re talking about Great Britain, at least for right now. Um, can I real quick just want to tee this up.

[inaudible]

we left you guys for a reason. Yeah. And so what you want to tell them to buy our crap?

If you don’t want to deal with them, you can geo block them. You can say you can’t block, I can’t access my website from those countries where I don’t want to comply with your crazy laws. Um, so that’s one thing. Another thing is, uh, you need to be looking at sales tax. Um, you know, when your first small, you’re probably not on a state’s radar. As you grow or someone reports you, you need to be looking at which states you may be required to collect sales tax and pay to the state, which gets into a whole maze of compliance issues from registering those states, registering with their tax people. Um, so that’s one. Um, and then I think just from a general, broad standpoint, one of the things that people assume is that just because I have a, uh, I’m just doing stuff on the website. I got my widget, I’m selling my widget on a website. I don’t need insurance. I don’t need a corporation or LLC. I just not doing business under my personal name. So we still have those fundamental basics of get an entity, look at insurance, make sure you’re doing accounting correctly. Cause all that revenue coming in still obviously has to be reported as income

xe there. So there’s so much there, so much. I just, you know, I just want to do a Chan g o Buck g o book, Fun word. Seriously. I don’t understand why it is block them. It’s so interesting how Europe is so it’s so, ah, let’s see, what’s the word I’m looking for? Bureaucratic. Yes. Yes. Policed. Yes. Ah, regulated. Yes. Stagnant state. Do you recall Europe recently inventing venting a lot of things in, do you remember, did the airplane come out of Europe? No, but that, I mean, I can think of a couple of really great things come up. French fries, French fries. You mean what are some things that are coming? What are some hot tech companies coming out of France right now? Let’s see. Ah, west do you have any over there? Okay. [inaudible] Tech company coming out of Spain.

I know, I know.

Yeah. So I mean, and it’s a good point. People don’t think about it. When I throw my website up, people can access that across the globe and the EU right now with their privacy, which just went into place last year, the new privacy rules and now they’re looking at new rules that I’m reading about on Internet controls and they’re copyright and intellectual property protections that might change the whole face of how we do. Uh, you know, like a, you go to a website aggregator, like getting permission before you can link to someone else’s story. So as those things evolve, if your industries involved in that, you need to keep an eye on it because last thing you want to some, some guy from the EU try to find you.

Hello. You know, what would you say EU? I go, what am I favorite? AH, European observations. One of my good friends, Andy Matheran is from Europe, one of our first employees back in the day, he played basketball, oral Roberts University. He came to oral ops university play Basketball Division One scholarship and he did some work for me over the summers and he pulled in one day to a while to load up his DJ gear z with the biggest SUV I’ve ever seen. The biggest suburban. They would sell them. Wow. Those are big. And I said, uh, why’d you get the biggest suburban in the world? I mean, it was huge and it was like older one, but it was huge. And he goes, well, in Europe you have these little small cars. And I just said, if I ever came to America, I’d buy the biggest vehicle I could.

And it’s just interesting because we, we’ve, he, he kind of educates me about what it’s like over there and he’s gone back to visit there recently, but he’s like, it’s so funny in Europe they really pride themselves on being so educated and they really know. And if it’s made in Europe it must be better. And he’s like, but yet they all smoke. Yeah. He’s like, there’s so much smoking. He’s like, it’s just amazing. Just the idea of the overeducated idiots across the pond. So if you’re from Europe out there and you are not an educated idiot, I salute you. If you’re listening to our show them, of course they’re, I’m just saying, I mean it is, it’s brutal doing business over there. It is tough. And I think everybody out there, if you can geo block those people, block them, get them off to your side. No, seriously. Because if they go on your site and buy some crap from you, right Wes, and then they say that you weren’t Akim compliance with their EU stuff, they can see across the pond.

Yeah. I mean there’s fines, there’s [inaudible]. The chances of them coming after a small fish over here may be low.

But if you’re a medium fish, right? As you grow, those are things you have to take into account. And you may, you can just reduce the risk altogether if you want to. Now, here’s a fun one. We had a, an email that came, and this is fun. We had a member of the thrive nation who has a business that’s doing very well and they got an email from a marketing firm. Okay. The email from the marketing firms, check this out. We have a client we’re working with and their former marketing company sends the client an email saying, you have to cease and desist. Stop using on the website we built for you. Oh, because you’re not a, you’re not an active client yet. A cease and desist. Uh, just like I’m telling this Hornet that’s inside the studio to cease and desist. My friend talked silent. I’m running. Andrew, try to hit it while we’re doing the show. See if you can hit the horn it while we’re still recording my friend. Okay, so seasoned assists. Can anybody tell someone to cease and desist in a marketing firm? Send you a letter asking you to cease and desist. I don’t think you should have with a woodblock. You’ve ready? Like a magazine or something? That’s a a dangerous, he was going like serious. Look at acts out there.

Um, no, no, let’s, let’s, let’s focus just on this situation cause it happens a lot. So where I see this is marketing, web design, coding, anything that you’re having someone else write or develop for you, you need to be very careful with your agreement that you have with that company. Because what ends up happening is that when you get in a fight, you fire them, whatever it is or you owe, they claim they owe you, you owe them a bunch of money, right? They say I own that because the default rule is whoever owns it or whoever creates it owns it and I never gave you written permission to use it.

Aren’t we one of the only marketing firms you’ve ever heard of that let’s web let’s their clients have all their materials. There’s no contract to it.

One of the few. Yeah. I mean there’s usually at least a clause in there that you can have it after you pay us for whatever’s left at your final year.

I don’t and I don’t I any clients, if you worked with us for a month or a year or you get to own all your stuff, I do that because I don’t, if I’m, if I, if we’re no longer working with you, I don’t want to talk to you again. Yeah. And you know what I mean? I don’t want to like do constant like w John, you’ve seen this, you’ve got to get on to Mike here, John. I don’t want it. We don’t want to do a deal. We have a client we worked with seven years ago calling us to make a quick tweak to their website. I mean, we don’t want to, right. We don’t want to be be your kind of backup plan who’s hosting your website for you. Right. All right. And we have, you know, x amount of clients that we keep all the time.

And so I can’t, you know, if there’s clients that we had to keep coming back to that we’re actually not getting paid on. Like, you know, all of our time would be spent on clients that aren’t even paying us. Andrew, I think you’re going to get that, isn’t it? Was it a hornet or is it wouldn’t be, what kind of thing is it hornet or a wasp mud? Dauber yeah, a mud mud. Dobber a real thing. Yeah. Really? I’ve never heard of a [inaudible] that’s an issue. I’m going to have to press it. I don’t up on my list. Okay. Now the next question, this comes in from a thriver who says what action can be taken if you know your competition is coming across state lines into your territory and unmarked via vehicles and being unlicensed and offering plumbing services, contracting services. So again, there’s a plumber across state lines across, there’s an electrician across state lines. Okay. They’re coming into Oklahoma to do, to compete with one of our clients and they are not licensed and everyone in that town knows it, but they’re calling them for, you know, for cheap across across the border and they just show up on license.

Yeah. It’s one of those where you gotta take a little bit of a creative approach to it because there’s probably not a good claim that you can bring directly against your competitor, possibly unfair competition. But I think really your there is report them to whoever the licensing body is for that profession and see if you can get them to help you enforce it. Or PR, you know, you see these advertisings where, hey, we’re a Roofer, we’re actually licensed, we’re actually insured. We’re actually bonded. Here’s why we are right. Don’t use some of those guys. Come into, you can’t mention their name. Right? If you see somebody sharing their license in Oklahoma, there we go. Your job, you’re not protected. Um, I think you can advertise around that to address some of those issues as well. Um, and then you’re getting advertising out of it. The government doesn’t charge you anything to enforce their own laws and you’re not spending money on attorneys to go fight on something where you may not have a great claim.

Okay. Another question from a thriver is I have a deadbeat employee and they’re not doing their job. So I fired them. They weren’t doing their jobs. I fired them. I can see they’re saying, okay, dead beat employee that into their jobs, we fired him. Now they’re calling my current clients and trying to steal them. Yeah, I know they have no money, but should I still sue

for the principal? Well, a lot of that pins on if you had a contract with this deadbeat employee, um, so absent a contract, they’re not under any obligation not to compete with you when they leave. So if they’re just an employee, there are no, there’s no agreement, there’s no contract. When they leave, they can call up your people and say, Hey, I’ve got a new business. You want to come work with me. Now there are limits to what you can do there. I mean, you can’t lie. Um, you know, there’s a claim called tortious interference with contract, which means you are illegally interfering with my contractual relationship with this other person. But it’s very hard to prove. Um, they’ve all, the other guy says, no, they called me, you know, they, they called me and I answered the phone and so I didn’t do anything. Um, so that’s why it’s very important if you have someone on your payroll, especially in a sales position where there’s a high, they have those relationships and there’s a threat where they could walk out the door for a better paycheck from one of your competitors that you want to try to lock those up with, with contracts.

Now the next question we have from a thrivers, they said, what says this is, can you take legal action? The question is, can you take legal action on a contractor who has your product and will not send it back? Uh, John, I’m not aware of this situation for this question. Do you know any context for this one? No. Okay. But the question is can you take action on a contractor who has your product and will not give it back? John, do you need more detail about this question? No, I don’t. Um, but I w you know, we get a lot of times questions about people that pay for somebody to make a product say overseas. And so they pay this company that’s overseas to make a product and they never, they hold onto it. So they hold your money and your product. So a company like in China, we’re supposed to, you pay him up front 40 grand to make your product and never make the product. What, what are you going to do?

Well, again, I’m going to China and those agreements like, you know, let’s say split. Yes. Have a contract to manufacturer in China. Your first move is to, to have that contract governed by US law. And then you’d have to sue them in the u s good judgment and then try to somehow enforce that judgment against them. Use that money to get that money. Right. So, you know, anytime you’re dealing with a foreign entity and the sourcing, the piece of paper is very hard. Let me ask this. Yeah.

You’re a law firm over the years has represented no TD Jakes. Craig Rochelle. Yeah. Jill hosting huge names. Yeah. Um, let’s just say that brother, Jake’s brother Craig, Rochelle, brother, Joyce Meyers, they all come together. It’s always that Joyce, I’m so sorry, brother. Theme sister. Very believable. Sister Joyce Meyers, super jerk. Clay Clark. We’re all teaming up together to, we say, listen, the Chinese are copying our books and they are so, and you know this happens by the way. We do Chinese, we’ll copy even Christian books. They will copy the book. What they’ll do is they’ll buy the book on Amazon, they’ll scan the whole thing and they’ll make a replica. These homies will do it in a week. It’s so cheap. Yeah. They’ll sell them on Amazon for like a dollar. They did that with the Jordans. They did it with shoes. Even if we had all the money in the world to throw at it. Could you honestly sue the Chinese when and actually

make them stop? I mean, does it pumping, had assets here in the states, possibly those assets maybe you might be able to collect against assets they have in the states. Uh, the move there usually is online. You can do take downs and you know, there’s, there’s an international body that kind of helps govern these kinds of things. Um, so online you actually have many more options as opposed to just some shady companies sitting on your stuff and not sending it to you.

Okay. Well, we have a listener out there who’s 70, 71 year old woman, they’re Wes legal Eagle 71 year old woman who’s been working for over 30 years as a salesman for a manufacturing company in Pennsylvania. Ken Accompany insist that she has to sign a severance agreement to get her severance package. What if she refuses? How can they reduce their legal exposure if she sues the company after being released?

So probably not, um, unless, you know, here’s a caveat. If I have a practice of policy that I pay everyone severance on their way out. Yeah. Um, and part of that practice or policy is not to require a severance agreement. You may have an enforceable contractual right to severance payment. Normally there’s nothing like that. Severance is optional and if it’s optional, I can put conditions on that. So I give you a soft landing and a check on your way out the door on top of what I owe you. Cause that’s the key, the severances on top of what I would otherwise have to pay you. And to do that, I’m entitled to make you sign a severance agreement. And one of the reasons I painted that money is so that we tie this off with a clean bow. You’re not going to sue me, you’re not going to bring a claim, they’re not going to talk bad about me. Um, and I have that peace of mind on buying that piece of mind from you. So that is how the employer limits its exposure. Hopefully providing a good benefit for the employee as well. But, um, almost always, um, if severance is optional, then they have a, they absolutely have a right to ask for you to sign a release in exchange for the payment of that severance payment.

Now. Okay. My final question, this is me asking you here. All right, my final question. I’m going to go around the table here. John. Question number one is I lead into my question. Okay. I look like a good trial attorney. I want to soften them. Me here. Wes, I want to build rapport with my jury here. Okay? Okay. For Jonathan Kelly, have you in fact purchased a house ever? Uh, yes. Okay. Okay. Houses a little more. Well, more than what I was looking for. They’re you just please answer the questions. Uh, Andrew, uh, Mr Andrew. Mr Andrew bloomer. Yes. Have you in fact purchased a house in the past? In fact, I have. Okay. Mr Wesley Carter, attorney at law, have you in fact in the past purchased a house? Affirmative. Okay. So we have three yeses. We have three. Okay. So we could say, so far our witnesses all are saying that they purchased houses. Um, 6% west that that is the question. The 6% 6%. John, that is the question. Uh, Andrew, that is the question. Let’s you use the John, Jonathan Kelly. What real estate agent did you use? Do not say her name. Is it the same real estate agent legal Eagle or if you in west Carter used the same real estate agent to your knowledge, did you use the same real estate agent? Uh, I don’t know who you use, but I doubt it.

Andrew Bloomer, maybe you’ll be more forthright in your answers to have you, have you, did you use the same real estate agent as Mr. West McCarter? Uh, no. Not that I believed and not that I know better qualify them. Good job. These are attorney skills. Not to the best of my knowledge. So, okay, so you three gentlemen have eat but you each paid at the end of the day on closing when you closed on the house. Yep. Did you Mr Wesley Carter pay 6% commission to the realtors involved? Yes. Andrew, did you in fact pay a 6% commission to the realtors involved? Yes, I did. Mr. Jonathan Kelly, did you in fact pay a 6% commission to the attorneys involved? Guilty as charged with attorneys? The question I would have, Mr. West Carter is right now there is a lawsuit, a brewing, yeah, a major lawsuit is a brewing and that you can read about in Forbes and this, this lawsuit, it’s, it’s a, it’s alleged collusion and the lawsuit is a, you can learn more about it in Forbes.

We’ll put a link to it on the show notes. This is not my opinion to find the article. You can go ahead and do a quick search for lawsuit. Alleges collusion and plated commissions among realtors. Wes, the same law firm that represented the suing of the big four tobacco companies and they won by the way, almost $25 billion for the consumers who would have loved the piece of that contingency. So let’s talk about this real quick here. So the same people that took the lawsuit and sued major tobacco in one are now saying that it is in fact collusion, that all realtors are charging the same fee to buyers and sellers. Now I would like to ask you, what does collusion mean first? Well, what does collusion mean to you, Mr Weslaco?

Well, I mean generally it’s your competitors in the same market and you’re agreeing to price fix. Um, and as opposed to engage in a free market competition system.

So you’re saying like that would be like every disc jockey company agreeing to charge the same price. Every photography company agreeing to it, they’re saying we’re all going to charge the same price. That way the consumer can’t possibly get a better deal somewhere else. Is that correct, Mr. Wilson? Correct.

And they usually, you’re doing it in a way where you discourage competition. Um, and uh, someone who wants to come in and undercut you. You say, okay, there’s three of us a and B, we’ll price fix and half c comes in and tries to mess with this by charging a lower price. We’re going to team up and put him out of business.

So do you think right now that the case has merit, do you think that it will actually, what is your prediction based on your experience? This is not you saying, yes, this is going to happen. You can’t, you know, how do you think it’s going to happen then? What’s your opinion?

I’m not intimately familiar with the exact, how they’re framing their arguments. You know, I haven’t read the pleadings but I think the theory of it has some possible legs to say, you know, you can’t create a monopoly or an anti competitive environment. Uh, because we’ve all agreed this is what the going rate is. Um, now I think there’s, you know, there’s some holes in that, but I think it’s got enough to get some legs. And

let me read an excerpt to you just to give you a little more look at it. This is what it says here. It says the law citizen Forbes, it says home sellers from across the nation are claiming that the National Association of reach or realtors compensation policies, which require all of the member brokers demand blanket, non negotiable buyers side commission fees when listing a home on the multiple listing service is a violation of antitrust law, a Realogy holdings, home services of America, remax and Keller Co, Keller Williams. Have all been named in the suit.

Yeah. And that’s where it gets down to is really antitrust. You can’t do something that’s going to stifle an, you know, unnecessarily stifle competition, um, to control the entire market. I think where the strength, their argument is, is the MLS listing because that is the primary place in the entire country that people utilize for buying and selling homes.

Let’s say. Put your home up on Zillow or realtor.com that kind of thing now. Okay. So this is where now, now we’re getting into it here. West. So West, if you were going to buy a house, are you going to stay in the house you’re in for a long time? Are you going to move eventually or do you think we’ll probably move again in the near future. Okay. By the way, do you like the rocks back there and you see those rocks either your backyard’s looking spectacular? Nope. Okay. So Andrew, are you going to move in the future? Uh, not in the near future. Now John, you can move in the near future. No. Okay. So you guys, let’s say you do move though. Okay. In a company that I have a company that I have, I’ve started with Mr. Glenn Shaw from Shaw Holmes is a company called Sam Adams.

Really? Where we want to revolutionize the real estate industry. I see what you did there. So we’re doing is we’re charging people a flat fee of $1,000. So imagine you’re out there wanting to buy a house and you’re looking for a real estate agent. You’re going, well, should I pay 3% of, you’re paying 3% to buy a $300,000 house. It’s a $9,000 commission right there. Yeah, Sam Adams, it’s $1,000 if you didn’t know me and you heard it was $1,000 flat to have somebody help you buy your house, would you legal Eagle would you, I mean would you check out a service like there’s one company called DOR down in Dallas for five grand. We’ll do it. To my knowledge, nobody else is doing it for $1,000 would you, would you look into it? I would certainly look into it now, John, would you look into it for $1,000?

I would do Andrew. Absolutely. Now here’s, here’s what the National Association of Realtors says this is, they said this is, this is the value they bring for the 6% west. They say one, we help you determine the fair market price that you should be offering. Okay. Do you believe that you could figure out the fair market price of a house up a house without a realtor? Do you think you’d have to have a realer to figure that out? What do you think? You’re a very smart guy. I don’t know maybe. Oh, right. If you could get the right information in your hands. I think it’s just a matter of doing some comparisons. Do you feel like having access to realtor.com would give you an idea of what the recently sold houses would be? Or do you think no. You think no. No. I think I could get pretty close.

Andrew, do you feel like you need to relearn a realtor to figure out what you should be paying for it? I mean, Kelley Blue Book for cars. I mean, do you think you need a really good, all the information? Something, the Internet probably not know John. Do you know, I mean they have the different, you know, zestimate on Zillow, they have those different estimates. You can also get somebody out to appraise the property and you can just do that. Now the second, the second thing that the National Association of Realtors says that realtors do to help you, is it helping negotiate? So I want to ask you this question John, have, cause we’ve worked, we’ve coached with realtors. You’ve seen us, we’ve coached him. Yup. Have you ever met a reelers that we’ve met so far that has helped their client get a better deal? Uh, not that I was aware of.

No, I haven’t. I have yet to, I worked very close with these people. I’ve yet to see one who, who was like, man, I’m gonna Negotiate this for you. And why, why, why, why do you think Andrew Son would not be motivated to negotiate a lower deal thymic commission? Uh, probably because they would make a lot less money. Now maybe West has had a different experience. If he had a realtor who helped him negotiate down the lowest deal possible. And maybe that is an outlier West, what? Say You well, I can always speak with personal experience, right person. I did the negotiating and then just relayed that to a realtor who communicated my counter offer to the other side. Now, now realtors also that the third piece of value that realtor said they offer is that they say they can help you find the properties. I don’t know.

Last time I bought a house including the house we’re in now in the one across the street and the other house. And I basically found them myself by finding a part of town I wanted to drive in or live in. And then I would go online and find it or for flip houses I would just drive around looking for tall grass and nice neighborhoods. That’s how I did it. John, did you help your realtor find the houses or did they send you a list of all the houses that were available? Um, so we went through a couple of different realtors and all of the ones, all of the houses we went and saw are the ones that we found. And so how we did it was very similar. We’d started online and we say, okay, we don’t want to live in these areas, so what’s available? And then we just kind of narrowed it down from there, then drove the neighborhoods and then went and looked at the house west. What do you think?

That’s kind of how I use a travel agent. I decide when I want to go exactly the resort they want to go to and until the travel agent make it happen.

Andrew, did you suggest to the property to buy or did your realtor do it for you? Uh, I, my wife and I definitely found out the property or the property that we ended up buying ourselves. Interesting. Now the fourth claim, the National Association of Realtors says why they charge 6% Wes is, they say they help you market your houses. Now I want to make sure everyone listening out there gets this idea for Sam Adams West. I want to be fair. Here we go. If you listed your house with Mason, uh, legal Eagle, I’m going to charge you $1,000. Okay. Thousand Bucks to listen. This what I’m gonna do, I’ll talk to you in Darcy. I’d say, Darcy, here’s, I’m gonna hear it. Here’s what we’re going to do. Got It. Step one, we’re gonna take great photo video and 3d tour drone the whole deal. Make a flyer. Sounds attractive. Now here’s the deal. I will take those photos and videos as many times as I need to till you’re happy. So great. As great as defined by you. Okay? Then I’m going to put your property up on mls. Well, I’m gonna put the sign out there. How I’m going to sit back and wait.

Yeah.

I’m just being honest because every other realtor that I know, that’s what they do. They just say they’re out marketing all day, but I don’t know anybody. I’ve never met somebody. Maybe you have who’s bought a house because they saw it on Facebook on a Facebook ad, or they saw somebody sending out mass emails to 21,000 contacts saying, you should buy this house. Everyone that I know who’s decided to buy a house that I know. And I would like for you three to break the mold if that is true. They have found out what part of town they want to live in ahead of time and they drive around looking for signs or they go online looking on realtor.com or Zillow or something, which does that how you bought your house or did a realtor send you a big massive email newsletter of all the houses that are available and it just tickled your fancy a certain way and you bought the house?

Um, no, I, you know, not to go against the grain here, but now I want you to go against your, I believe when we bought our current house we bought, you know more than one. Just turn it up. Here we go. The number realtor had a friend that was about to list a house.

Oh, so a real, in this case, I’m going to give 1.11 mega point to the realtor who was a relationship. It wasn’t a marketing thing as much as it was a relationship, but that may be, that might’ve been right place. Right time. That’s a real order. That’s a real, that’s a point. That’s why it’s 6% John. That’s why [inaudible]. John, what about you did, did you, I mean, did you get to some marketing stuff that he’ll, the only marketing thing that I, you know, uh, experienced was they would do open houses and then sometimes they would knock on neighbors doors inviting them to the know the, which makes a lot of sense. I mean, your next door neighbor would like to buy her house, right? Well, all they do is, yeah, your nosy neighbors just go through rifle through your stuff. Right. That’s all they’re doing.

I don’t know anybody who sold house as a result of an open house, but again, I could be wrong. I just have yet to meet anybody who’s done it that way. I don’t know. Yeah. And I don’t think we’ve ever done any open houses on the houses we sold. And I know that most builders that I know who do open houses to do them, to get leads to represent buyers. But, and you have to find something to do all day besides being in your house and you already bought the cookies. You might as well clean your house to get to the enth degree. Okay, Andrew, talk to me about it, man. What’s your, what’s your take on this situation? Have you ever bought a house as a result of a realtor marketing to you? I’m going out there with a megaphone running up and down, putting flags out everywhere, making cookies servant to the neighbors.

You know, networking. No matter what. If you get reached by a realtor from an email or a text or a phone call or something, no matter what, you’re going to see it on Zillow cause everyone looks on Zillow. So no matter what, you’re going to see the house, it’s not because of the text that you saw the house, you’re gonna see it on Zillow. So now to my final legal question as I wrap up this west, I’ve got a seven minute voicemail today from a realtor in Tulsa, was this seven minute voicemail of John at least, you know, and he was, he was very upset about the ethics of wonder where we were going here. He was very upset about the ethics of a $1,000 flat rate real estate company. The ethics of it. I think that was the, the core mixed with and with the yelling.

Yeah. John, was it more yelling or was it more of a softer? It was, I would say it was a passionate pash honking and talking, talking about compassion. And I chose not to listen to the remaining six and half minutes of it did just want to get a little, you know, put your toe in the water and move on. Um, legal Eagle I mean, is there any rule against leaving seven minute voicemails? Was there any rule? Can we, is that a rule or we can we do this? Is it still America? Could you leave a taunting seven minute voicemail? You can leave nasty voicemails if you like. As long as you’re not threatening physical violence. Uh, think you’re proud, they’re probably safe. Okay. Well if you’re out there and you’re losing a listing to Sam Adams yet again, just feel free to leave us a voicemail. But go go eight minutes, John.

We don’t want to go seven. Yeah, I mean come on one up and we’ve got a kid or capacity of our voicemail system. We keep them or hard drives are bigger. It’s incredible. Yeah. Just keep it in the voicemail. Cause if you start telling third parties that you may be exposing yourself to some legal claims, can I take those voicemails and put them up on Youtube and optimize them? Hmm. That’s a good question. Interesting question. Because who owns the copyright to those they create? Where does it, where do you draw the line between, you know, passion, uh, you know, complaining and slender. Like if there’s there dropping some, some, you know, choice. Where did they drop the choice? I’m just wondering if someone, if someone’s a sailing your character in a way that calls, you know, you’re fraudulent, you’re cheat, you’re unethical, unethical and that could affect your business reputation and that could quite possibly rise to the level of some sort of defamatory.

If I were to take those voicemails as they pile in here and optimize those to come up top and Google where it’s like, why to realtors love Sam Adams? So much question mark. And then you just hit play and they’re playing. Can I do that? Is that, I know I could technically do it. We might want to have an off air conversation. Just curious marketing ideas, just things I’m thinking of because I feel like the consumers are loving it right now. It’s something that realtors are hand. Okay. Just, just toe in the water. All right. Now thrive nation. If you’re out there and you want to have a conversation about with a potential attorney, um, you know, I can’t say once, I can’t come on the show and say legal Eagle is the best attorney. Use Him. We can’t do that. No, we cannot. I can say that.

I do pay you. You pay me a law. I can say that I enjoy paying. I can say it’s a blasty blaster pay. I pay illegal work not to be on the show. The show’s just, yeah, I mean I do, I do pay you the benefit of our thrivers out of I do pay you and right now I’m paying you to finish a franchise disclosure document. You are and I pay you to look at contracts and uh, I’m very happy to pay you. You do good job. But your, your I everything I referred to young lady who’s going through some divorce stuff to give you a call. I tried to refer you cause you do a great job on all of it. And uh, so how do people get Ahold of you? Do they call your cell phone or how do they get ahold you?

Yeah, no, they can call and save your number. He calls at our office. It’s (918) 494-6868 it’s a nine 184-NINE-FOUR-6 eight, six eight or you can check all of us out at the firm. On our website. Winter’s king.com winters king.com once you to winters like a burger, it’s cold winters and then king, like this is a very regal show. Winter’s king.com check them out. Winters, king.com and the guys would like to in each and every show with a boom. And Are you ready psychologically, John, I’m ready legally. Andrew, are you ready? So ready in a, in a subconscious way. Are you ready to go? Here we go. Dice. Here we go. Three, two.