When Business Collides with the Legal Eagles – Ask Clay Anything

Audio Transcription

This program is not an advertisement for legal eagle 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 eagle advice. You should contact a competent attorney for advice on your specific legal issues. CONUS, 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 when 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.

You have questions. America’s number one business coach has answers. It’s you’re brought up from Minnesota. Here’s another edition of ask clay. Anything on the thrive time business coach radio show.

[inaudible].

Yes, yes, yes. And

yeah, I almost ran out of ah, you know, oxygen capacity, their lung capacity. I know your oxygen capacity. You weren’t even getting started. Oh, let me just pull them. They quills got me all dehydrated here, which doesn’t cause it’s causing my right lung to collapse. Must go on your backup like, well, that makes sense now. Okay. I’ve got my cowbell and that’s all I need. Okay. Now we have five questions from Thrivers that are a, what I would call the intersection of where business meets the legal Eagle. Now see, I would like, I’d like to see if you have agree on this idea. Okay. Um, and then we can get into the questions. I work with a great attorney. I love West Carter, great people. I’ve loved winters and cake. Good people. Yes, I am of the opinion though, if the world was filled with only attorneys, there would be no businesses because, uh, typically an attorney has to be paranoid to think of all of the possible risks involved in every venture, right? If you have a good attorney, that’s what her job is to point out the holes in your argument, the errors in your ways or whatever. And so, and I think colleges, if, if they put on MBAs who are not, they’re not attorneys, but people who have their MBA, they’re kind of attorney like, and they some degree, they tend to have a lot of reasons why things won’t work. People have more reasons why things won’t work in the, you know, then the, um, optimistic

view of them working.

So what we’re gonna do is I’m going to ask these questions and when we do the answers to these may be negativeZ , but to make it fun, I’m going to go with question number five first.

You know why people have that more than they are optimistic. Why is that too much Fox news and CNN, I, here’s, here’s my theory, paranoia. There’s only a theorem is not a law, it’s just a theorem. And my theorem is, is that that helped keep them from trying.

I agree. I agree with that. That was that. I agree, right? Yeah. Yeah.

So you know, if you see all the negative things and have seen the negative things and know that the negative things can happen, then she don’t want any part of that.

Want me to do this? I’m going to start with question number two. I think we have five questions. I’m going to go to question number. Don’t hop around here a little back. I’ll come back to it. Yeah. So question number two, a thriver writes, if you have clients that have signed a contract but are using other vendors, is there any way to nicely enforce the contract as an example, Z, if you have a business that says, Hey, uh, we deliver auto parts to your company and in exchange for these everyday low prices, you’re going to agree to buy all your auto parts from us for a year. If I 10 months into the deal, if a business, if it’s some business owner, 10 months into the deal, decides he doesn’t want to keep buying the parts and let’s say the contract is for like $1,000 a month of parts, these small little parts, can you really enforce a contract? It’s $2,000 in value with two months left to go. I mean after legal eagle fees, is it even worth trying to enforce a contract?

Well, financially it’s, it’s the most ridiculous thing you can do and also for your business, it’s the most ridiculous thing to do because now what you’ve done is that person will never, never, ever, ever buy a little part of you again or even a big part for that matter. I mean, what are you doing? Why are you signing that contract anyway? It’s almost like it’s a, it’s a, it’s a recipe for, I remember this one time I had a recipe contact, a contact lens company approached me and said, Hey, we want to do this thing that’s never been done before in the industry. It’s a special deal and we want to pitch it to you. It’s here’s, here’s the nuts and bolts of it and we wanna we want to sit down and pitch it to you and really diagram it all out and show you the beauty of this program we’re going to be.

I said, okay, just call my personal assistant, give me a dinner date or lunch or probably dinner and we’ll set it up. So guess what I received in the mail? A contract? No, an NDA. Nondisclosure agreement. Right. Right away you’re done. I’m done. Because that would prevent you from ever working with any type of Island place ever again. No, it wasn’t so much that. There’s only one reason why you have someone signed an NDA because you don’t trust them. That’s a reason why number two, number two, is that a real partner? You don’t do that to real partner. Number two, it gives you the leverage to then come back and Sue them or spank or hit them in the back of the head with your, with the, you know, metaphorically speaking, sign NDAs. I will not. I don’t, I don’t, I mean I have before.

It’s like rare though, dude. It’s rare one, every time you were asked, you’d probably have 200 of them signed. Right now it’s almost treat tickets. Can I do, trust me, I’m not gonna tell anyone. I mean, why do you that piece of paper and wait, if I do tell someone, you know, what are you going to do? So this is a lot when entrepreneurs on a pitch, their idea to a big investment company, they’re like, I’m only gonna pitch it unless you make big billion dollar investment. If you’re talking to someone that has the ability to then run, you can run off with it. But I mean with this contact lens come, it’s kind of why, why, why on earth, I mean, if I want to do the deal with you, why am I gonna run around to the left? The other optometrist look at the deal I got.

If you had a company that delivered office supplies and company that delivered printer supplies, a company that delivered a coffee to offices, would you sign contracts with your customers? I wouldn’t. I do month to month. Yeah, let me earn your business every month. Right. They want that contract. And I’ve seen those. I know, and sometimes I’ve had some of my employees that it was arguable whether they had the authority or not, but I didn’t fight it. They bring in some nefarious copying company and next thing you know, I’ve got this copy that we’ve signed a four year lease to it. I’m like, what in the sweet Jesus. Wow. But Jesus, did we do that right? Or, or my favorite one is his, Hey, uh, we need to get some, uh, you know, this bottled water is costing a lot, so we’re going to get one of these Culligan water dispensers, but save money. I’m like, no, go. Okay. You sure? And run numbers. Yeah, I’m pretty sure you know, cause I’m like, why am I buying everybody bottled water to begin with?

It’s, it’s a, it’s a, it’s a thing. It’s an insidious thing. You as a business owner, have a bunch of contracts that you’ve signed. You gotta live up to them if you have money. And if you don’t have money, you just don’t live up to them and people can’t do you.

Well, there you go. But anyways, what I find out is he signs this ridiculous contract for a water cooler thing.

Oh no, I hate that. I hate that contract, John. That I hate those. John knows I hate it. John. I remember I went off of that thing. Oh my gosh. I seriously, when I saw the wet water cooler there. Oh yeah. And I saw that somebody injured you about this thing. I am. I’m about to, I’m not kidding. I went out and I, I don’t regret it at all. I did it. I immediately went out and threw it away even though we’re still paying for, I didn’t even care. It’s such a stupid, no, seriously, cause it’s fifth dumpsters. It’s $50 a month. And so instead of being able to just get water whenever I want, we have employee Z, we have employees standing around going, there’s no water. All of a sudden I’m like the water boy for the company. And I’m like, so get water. Well we need to wait for our guy. He comes by once a week. Ridiculous. No, I sit there. I know what type of glass glassware. Go to the foot out of there, out of there. I probably still paying for that freaking water cooler for two months or so. I’m so mad. I think made me mad. Who signs a contract for water?

Who did sign that? Mother. Do you remember? I do. Okay. No, don’t say their name. A few. I didn’t want to protect the innocent. There it is. Okay. On

unbelief, Z. I found out that person signed that thing. I was like, you did, you pay up front. Well, you pay up front. You know it’s like $400 I’m like, you paid $400 up front for water. I mean, now we have a great deal with a great company called Imperial coffee. Let me tell you how that works. Andrew, tell him what the water machine works. Well, the water machine is a gray box that is hooked up to our water supply and it never runs out, purifies it and makes it cold and makes it hot if you hold down the button for two seconds. Oh wow. Moving the button. Yeah. Yeah, but don’t sign a contract with a big bottled water delivery company. What the crap? Oh no. Okay. So again, if you’re out there and you’re trying to get your customers to nicely, uh, adhere to your contract, they won’t.

And if you forced them to do it and you take them to court, you still lose. If you win. Cause it costs more money to enforce the contract. Yes. And then you lose a client for sure. For the life today. Everyone in Tulsa, how much they hate you. They tell you all the bad news and bad vibes. Oh, let’s go. Let’s, let’s go in order. Here we went to question number two. Let’s go to question number four. Let’s do evens and odds. Okay, let’s go to four here. We’re going to question four. Have question number four from a thriver says what to do if a customer has irresponsibly forced to charge back for products that were received. Well, the best example I could give you as recently I worked with a restaurant has to be, I guess a couple years back and Z. There was a guy who would go to the restaurant and eat food and then sometimes do charge backs and say, can you explain how the chargeback works?

Just to listeners out there, know what it means to when you call your credit card company and enforce a charge back, what happens to you as a business owner? Well, you have to eat that. So in other words, if you go and you have your V’s in there through slam your visa down, then you leave and you call your visa company going, Hey, uh, cancel that. That’s a fraudulent, they can make up some things. It was a fraudulent charge. Or they could say was, I never agreed to that. I never agreed to that I was wrong. It’s wrong amount was tip to me much more than they agreed to. Right? They manipulated the number. We know people like that transaction, so they’re like, well, you’re a customer. We don’t upset you and of course we’ll cans are gone. And so then they get all that gets credited back on their account and then the restaurant owners stuck with the $30 $50 a hundred dollars bill.

If you take a lot of credit card transactions and you decide to fight that customer back and forth, there has been times where a credit card company can reserve the right to freeze those funds while it’s in dispute. You know, they say, Hey, we’re gonna put a little hold on that shirt, Z. You don’t want to do that. No. Right. I mean, if it’s like, I would think you’d reach out and go, you know, find out why. I mean, is this a case? I do know the story. He didn’t, he did reach out. They wouldn’t return his call, allegedly. That’s what we know. Was it a one and done kind of guy? Anyway, it’s a, a gentleman who delivers food for a living, you know, food. And uh, when the food arrived, the person like a signed off to the food arrived, but then they just waited a few days and then refuse to pay.

They did a charge back. So maybe they didn’t like the food. Maybe they just wanted their money, but I just find Z there’s a certain subset of our population. I’ll go, what? 5% 3% of the American that just enjoys the charge vet game. Oh, just the joys. The devilry game. Yes. Have you noticed he did something funny with him, with attorneys and now West is not here today and I’d like to get West his take on this. But have you ever been billed from an attorney for something that you didn’t agree to? Yes. And don’t you almost like feel like we have to, I probably have to pay this right? Cause he could Sue me. I mean, don’t you, doesn’t you don’t you feel like that when you get a bill on attorney letterhead, even if you didn’t agree to it, you almost have to pay it now.

You don’t. But I mean, you kind of feel that way, but shame on you. It’s kinda like they figured out that uh, these fake companies that bill you, if they keep it just died or a certain amount, they get paid more often than not. No, it’s crazy. They’ll send you bills for like $31 for, it’ll say something very vague and nefarious. Like it’ll say like for um, office, uh, product delivery. Yeah. I’ll say warning, avoid settlement and collections pay now. Yeah. And it’ll add like $8 late charge and you’re like, crap, crap, this is six months late for this paper delivery charter. 31 30. That’s $39 in Utah. Probably. Great people probably pay that right there. And then they’d build up thousands of these people pay him all the time. So again, Z, if you’re out there and a customer does a charge back and you have a restaurant, do you recommend you hop on the line with American express and argue about it for half an hour just to let him have it?

Or what do you, what do you think? You know, it depends on the size of it. I mean, obviously it’s just 50 bucks, then you don’t, it’s not worth your time. It’s, yeah, it’s not worth your time. $200. You know, you’re here again, you’re, you’re arguing over something. I think $200 probably gets to a threshold. And you go, that might be worth how big of a big of a chargeback for you personally, before you’d get involved before you’re like, I’m going to get involved, I’m going to reverse the charge back. They’re going to charge that charge back back to me. Yes. Well I’d guess depends on the ticket price. I mean sometimes in the car industry we get some squirly car dealers to the auto auction that I get involved girls. And those are tens of thousands of dollars deals and tens of thousands that you get involved in. I mean, I think on the small stuff like my optometric clinic, you know, four or 500 would be a big ticket.

Big ticket. I’m going to probably get involved at that level, but my people probably handle it up to that point. And at some point I may have to get involved just because they’re like, what are you talking to? Y’all are another company. Um, but I think we all have a threshold. We all have a threshold, but for that small amount, but we would all consider small amount, you know, just Hey, don’t go, don’t go, don’t go spit in your life and cause all that. Does it put stress and worry and anger in your heart? You’re just, ah, just, it’s disappointing part in Bon died when I was like 30 the fight back part. Yeah. Think now I’m like, man, yeah man. I mean there’s a point that you would at least make the call and go, Hey, this person won’t call me back. I’m trying to reach out to him to tell him I got maimed.

I almost thought, well, should I even fight back? No. Seriously, as a business owner, you just do it so much. I mean, it’s become like a battleship over time. I went does, but you know, you have to, you have a threshold that you get involved. Okay. That God draw the line and it’s your business. You know, it’s so funny now in, in our local quick trips here now locally, their policy is if someone comes in and grabs stuff in dashes, they don’t even chase after him. Yeah. So safety first, bro. Let’s go chase it. Grabbed, you know, six hot dogs in a fountain drink and ran out the door. They don’t even call the police chase after him. It’s not worth it. It’s not worth it now. Okay. Now question number is here. We’re going in order here, two, four, three. As we like to say that the entrepreneurship, uh, here is to two, four, three, boom.

You know, so, uh, question number three. Okay. If someone works, uh, someone performs work, if someone performs work that the business owner has specifically told them not to do, do you still have to pay them? Example? Uh, you say clay, no matter what, don’t make copies of those receipts anymore because I don’t want you to, our new policy is we don’t make copies with the new system we have at charges. The customer, it takes record of it and puts it over here, puts it over there. The point is, do not photocopy receipts anymore. Okay? Okay. Let’s pretend we have an accounting firm. And I, you told me that and I go, okay, okay. And then the next day you come back to work. And you’re like, man, how was your day? And I suppose I was up all night. I was here till like two in the morning copying those receipts.

How would you handle that? Is it an a player? Let’s say? Let’s say for the sake of this argument, because I know the situation, this is a C player based upon daily work ethic. I’ll see what, I’m glad you, I hope you enjoyed your night, but that was policy. I told you yesterday we’re not going to copy receipts anymore. So the hours that you stood up for copying receipts are on you. I would have probably spent the evening a little bit differently myself, but I mean, Hey, if you want to copy receipts, you’ve got your receipts until your head explodes and then here comes to see player, this is the C player and they go, is it ethical to not pay me? I’d hate to have to report you to the state authorities. Go ahead, report me. I mean, I didn’t tell you to do that. I didn’t hire you to do that to him.

You can do that all you want, but I’m not going to pay you. Here’s where I see this is where it gets so mad. See, when somebody asks, is that ethical to not pay me? What are they doing? They’re passive aggressively attacking you and at what point would you fire this person? Well, if that continues on, if there’s a history and they’re a C player, I’d fire him. Right. You know as soon as I get replaced. But you wouldn’t fire them until you had a replacement? Well, of course not. Then I, then I got to go do the work. Do you have you do you have a, an Epic firing? I know you had the one where the person really, really tried to take advantage of you by, you know, trying to request a raise after another member of your team had quit. Do you have a, a firing that was a good public hanging that’s far enough in the past, but we could change the gender of the person involved.

Changed the business involved. But do you have one where it’s like, is this still vivid, seared memory into your, into your skull? Where you go. You know, Jack Welch talks so much about public hangings where if somebody really is doing a crime against humanity, you gotta you gotta fire me yet. I just said, did you ever tell you you ever have one of those where you just let it go or no? Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. Before I had the replacement done. I mean, when I fire someone, I don’t have a replacement for him. You know, it’s, it’s hot. It’s a hot mess. And uh, did you end up, uh, regretting that decision

or was it good teaching moment for the team? Oh no, I loved it. Oh, something very liberating. I think it’s about cleansing your colon. Oh yeah. It really is. This town needs an enema man. Reference it for you. Bloody Batman. Batman. This town needs an enema. Yes. You guys, Robin, great. Get one. So here’s the, here’s the story. Okay. I had a weird addition of Batman. I won’t say names, but then it’s back to the oral Roberts story. Dude. Dude, dude, dude, that’s dude power snap button, man. But man, DOH, DOH, DOH, DOH, DOH, DOH, DOH, DOH, DOH, DOH, dah, dah, dah, dah. I had a manager who I had actually juiced into the business to a few points. In other words, they owned a little piece of the business and they were the manager. They had gotten an earn those sweat equity over some years.

Okay. Right. And so then their story around town was that they own the place that I was as silent investor and that they were the man. They were the man, they were the man. And of course most people would believe them because why? I wasn’t around the office very much cause I didn’t want a baby. I own this place. I don’t own this place, man. And Batman O. And, G, he just [inaudible], he’s a passive investor, a passive company to a reputable man. That’s me. And so he just got more and more and more of his personality into it. More and more of his culture and DNA and his culture and DNA was, was much different than mine. I found out he’s more of a profane in your face, yell, holler, scream, emotional drama, drama, drama, drama and just over the top explosive. And then when I found out that he was stealing from me, I said, well here’s the thing, this works.

You own this percentage, you get this percentage of profits and you’re taking a much larger percentage. Well remember that one time that we were going to think about whatever and I’m like, yeah, there’s no thinking about there’s no whatever year, there’s nothing. You are you, you wear two hats here. One, you own a little piece of the place too. You’re the manager and the manager hat. Give it to me right now cause you are fire fired Gonzo. It’s just not working out. Two words to start with B but by Oh that Z the Z. When you said that, you know they say [inaudible] Oh yeah, now he was in TIG. He was like, I am an owner. I said, yeah, you’re a minority owner and I’m the boss and see you later alligator. In fact, after a while crocodile, Oh man, you just unloaded. I mean, that’s a big guy. That’s, that’s the, that’s a double barreled shotgun right there. Now think about it now, Z. Now here, here’s the final two questions we have. Okay. Question number five. We to wait to go in order. Here we

go. Two, four, three, five. We always say no. We liked in Debbie show with the boom two, four, three, five, you know, no. Okay. It’s easier to follow that way. So a number five. Question number five, how do you avoid legal eagle issues? When employees want to cross train and you don’t pay them? Okay. Example, employee says, Hey, I really, really, really want to learn photography, but I work in a search engine. If the org Oregon, the search engine department, Hey, I really want to learn how to do a cap like accounting, but I work in the lens grinding department. Hey, I want to learn how did it run the titles and the cars. But I work in automotive repair. I want to put in an extra time on my own to come work for free. You need to learn these new skills so I can get promotable. I can work in the company, I can be the guy. How do you handle that? Well, do you have a clock in clock out system? Uh, in this particular case, I don’t know those details.

Okay. Well, let’s say if you have a clock in clock out system and say, okay, if you want to do this in your own time, that’s fine. I have no problem with that. And that might, you know, that might lead to more promotion, right? Might lead to you getting ahead in this organization quicker than slower. But if you want to do that on your own time, you need to clock out when you’re do your job, I’m paying you. And then when you clock out and you want to come up here and shadow the accounting team for a little bit, if they’re okay with it, then you could do that. But I’m, you know, I’m not going to pay you to do that. Now they call us, of course you want to pay them to do it then then pay them.

Well, the question is, you know, is, is how do you avoid legal eagles issues? I would say this, it’s E there’s certain people a certain make and model of a litigious person and you’ve seen enough of them. And I have to say, I’m going to just tee up a few examples of litigious people. If you don’t want these people in your organization, okay, but let me just say how you know, if somebody’s litigious when you’re interviewing them, this is what they’ll say. Um, I have a question, um, by some of the company ethics here. I was going through your operations manual. I noticed that you said, and here that you says you have X value and X value. Next value. Are those values ethical or they’ll say, are we recycling here at the office? Cause I just was curious what our carbon footprint is.

No, seriously, I’m going to go, I’m going to go, I’m going to go a step farther and I’m telling you what, listen out here, if you’ve got two ears to listen, listen to this. Okay. And that is you tick off a person enough. I don’t care if they’re sister, mother Teresa, they’re going to think lawsuit. They’re going to think litigious. It’s the culture we live in, the environment we live in, and I can tell you what a litigious person looks like and that’s anybody on the street that you tick off enough or you wrong enough or they feel like you’ve wronged them enough. I don’t know anybody that doesn’t feel like they were wrong that didn’t look at me and go, you think I should Sue him? I mean, you think I should. I mean, do you, I’ve got a case here I don’t like I’m an attorney. And I’m like, Oh, what happened again? You know? Well, they said I was her best employee ever. And then a month later they fired me. I mean, what does that wrongful termination lawsuit, I think it probably is. And you’re like, what are you talking about? I mean, you know, they, they don’t want you there. It’s an at will state, go get another job. Why are you going to on move on?

But the litigious person wants to be a victim and not a big door and they feel bitter instead of wanting to make things better as a result of being fired. They go on to that relationship by suing. There’s a, there’s a, there, there is a definitely a, you know, a, um, a measurement to that. In other words, some people are more that way, but I’ll tell you what, even the nicest person that’s been your best employee, you do enough wrong to them or enough wrong happened and that will cross their mind. I’m not saying they’re gonna follow through with it, but it will cross their mind. I promise you on that. So I mean, I’ve had some of the best employees have been with me in a long time and, and you know, you talk to me, get to know them on a personal scale and you’d think they’d ever be litigious.

Then all of a sudden something happened to them at the grocery store is that something happens somewhere in their life. They’re like, I think I get a lawsuit there. And you’re like, what are you talking about? You know? Well, I, you know, I mean I did dah, dah, dah, and you’re like, just call the owner of the establishment, whatever and ask him to tell him what happened and have him make it right. You don’t need to go get an attorney and whatever, you know and they’re like, Oh yeah, okay, maybe I’ll try that first. Now, question number ones, he has to go, here we go. Logical. How can today’s show here we’re doing the Benjamin buttons. [inaudible] asks about a no brainer. He says, when it comes to coming up with a true no brainer, the lawyer for the state chiropractic association told me that I could not legally give away anything of greater value than $15 I want to do a free exam like dr Breck, one of your show sponsors and a free adjustment for new patients. I want to do it. How do I find a lawyer that will help me work around their rules entrepreneurially, but that will make sure that I don’t lose my license over this

Z.

Now recap me that once again, these says, when it comes to coming with a truck coming up with a true no-brainer, the lawyer for the state chiropractic association told me that I cannot legally give away anything of greater value than $15 and they’re mentioning dr Breck. He was on the show quite a bit. Dr Breck is a chiropractor in Tulsa and he does his first exam, x-ray and adjustment for free, and that’s what he does. I says, I want to do a free exam and a free adjustment for new patients. How do I find a lawyer that will help me work around the rules from an entrepreneurial perspective? Well, then don’t give it away. Just charge a dollar for it.

Yes, he got the entrepreneur mind works. Don’t give it away. Charge a dollar for it so you’re not giving it away. You’re not giving it away because you can’t give away something that has greater value, so you’re not giving it away. You’re just selling it for less than the value that someone might put on it. That’s not giving it away, is he? How often has the ethics of your no-brainers been called into question by fellow optometrists? Every single time. So give an example maybe to where the ethics, the state board was consulted and maybe just a couple where you know, you were victorious but people questioned your ethics on it. Oh, he’s this you? Uh, I, I had a, uh, when I first started off I had two pair of glasses or a pair of glasses, a pair of contacts or two pair of contacts for $99 plus the eye exam and everything included. So I had the board call me,

send me a letter and call me up. Ah, yeah, I saw dr Wallner. Please pronounce her name. Oh yeah,

dr Oz. Zoner ah, this is another board here. I’m very, very turning information right here. [inaudible]

and, and they, uh, they said to me, ah, you know, with your price breakdown, uh, sorry to you to always passive aggressive, sorry to report to you that we’re going to have to report this pricing structure to Medicare and Medicaid and all the federal insurance plans. And you know, just, I’m not sure what’s going to happen with all of that. And I, I, I’d done my research, I’d done my research and I said, well, okay, you can pull it all you want. Um, I’ve already kind of let them know. But I’ve also found out that the rules and regulations that a coupon generated exam does not change your normal and customer price of an exam. So, you know, you can do that, but good luck. And I really don’t like the way that you’re being and the way you’re treating me and what you’re saying right now cause you’re really, it’s threatening and it’s not. Right. And why don’t you spend your time actually improving optometry in this state instead of trying to pick on guys like me, have a nice day click. And then they said to you, they said, uh,

uh, we’re going to have a potential one eight, seven here at your clinic,

Chekhov, whatever. What eight seven is, please cut for murder on CV. Just be out there. I just know a lot about police codes, police coats. Yeah. And then and then, and then I did something that just blew their minds. Actually I had an ophthalmologist on staff and I was doing LASIK eye surgery. This is, this is a verified fact, both our bonus book, for those of you who are, I don’t know how many years ago, and tell some 1520 years ago, my wife can vouch. My wife was at least like 2000 or 2000 ish ish when this happened. It was hot, but it was like a controversial thing. It was hot, hot. I know I had big billboards that said LASIK $1 call for details. They had the phone number and every item I burned down phone lines.

Is this ethical Yom? And by the way, we’re calling to say they’re trying to mystery shop. You going, ah, yeah. I want to see, I want to send it for that dollar a LASIK. Um, and what’s your name sir? Um, Dr. Smith. Okay. Dr. Smith, are you an optometrist? I am a no, I’m not a, I mean I wasn’t, I mean what’s the deal?

And like they couldn’t handle it. They couldn’t handle it. So upset about the fact I had a deposition with the board of optometry’s, uh, attorney, just trying to dig around and find out what, what’s going on cause they had so much upward but was so upset about it. Which you know, you have a really hot ad when you do that by the way, which was really fun. I knew it was simple. You get one identity, regular prize, you get the second I’d done $4. It’s not rocket science, it’s a problem. We were just opening up that division. I want to generate some buzz and some, some business and so I did it, you know, and I mean, Hey, it was my profits. I was given up. But that’s a marketing, you know, sometimes you spend money to eventually make money. My final question I have for you, how do you know if your no

brainer is good enough to work as they, I mean, how do you know if your no brainer is truly past the threshold of captain conservative where it doesn’t work at all? How do you know it’s really hot enough? Here’s how you know, okay, this is old school. Can I go school. May I go old school. You can go old school. Okay. Here’s what you do. You place the ad and then you sit and you look at your phone and you count. Mississippis

old school, Mississippi, Mississippi, Mississippi, Mississippi. We get to a billion Mississippi and the phone has rang 1 billion Mississippi.

Because your voice is probably chorus by now. Yeah. When you get there and the phone hasn’t rang, it wasn’t hot enough. Now, now let’s, let’s, let’s role play a hot deal. Here we go. Let’s let’s you ready to once that ad, come on now doctor, are you ready to sign on the line? Sign up for this hot billboard ad. No brainer. You had a launch. Those ads. I’m going to make you bed. You’re going to watch those ads. Here we go. Here we go. Let me get, let me get the ads ready. I’m going to upload them here. I’m going to put the ads. Old school baby. Here we go. The ads up here.

Here we go. They sick. Boom. $1 [inaudible]. Okay, start to ring. Oh, you didn’t get to miss ring [inaudible] transformers. We are best to get a tour out to your place right now. Block is on fire. Boats are out by [inaudible].

See let’s, let’s role play a super conservative. Okay. A suit. Kind of a conservative. Yeah, no brainer. One. That’s kind of a no brainer where you go. It’s just effective enough to make you not kill yourself. Right. Here it is. I’ll give you one for LASIK. Let me get this

sounds billboard now. Well, I’ll tell you what is it? Surgery is the best place to get it. So come and get it. The ads right now, they at most professional been around since 1987 we had 18 trucks and my wife and I been running it for years and then you have your phone number and really, really small prints. You’ve got a photo Maseo came. Your address is just barely discernible. You can almost see it as you’re driving by at 65 miles an hour. Oh, I think that said LASIK can most professional that they say was the best player, not really. Most for federal change right now. Let me turn around and drive there right now. Or is that [inaudible] metaphorically

speaking? I don’t want to say it some. Most professional, I just want to say it’s one of the professional Tom trip places. You could see people doing that all the time. They say, no, I drive by. I see ads, I see stuff. I’m just going to try to make an ad with a client. You’re going, Hey, you got to say you’re the best used to say the highest reviewed optometrist in town. Okay. And okay, there’s no call to action. That’s like saying I’ve got the best products, but I’m saying you put on the ad, you say $99 right? $99 for your first exam or up top, you know, glasses. Yeah. Now it’s changed. And then underneath that you put, you know, total note Tulsa’s best eyecare, Tulsa most previewed or whatever. I mix things up. But the main thing though is what your call to action.

If there’s, when you see an ad, when you see a commercial, do you feel the need to pick up the phone and make a phone call? And if you don’t, there’s a couple of things. One, you don’t need that product that aren’t [inaudible] call to action to show strong. I don’t want to upset my competitors. You know, I need a gas powered pencil sharpener. I don’t really need it. But sure. It looks good. I often walk to work to avoid injuries in car accident. I’m tell you what, I don’t need a six wheels skateboard. Fear the internet because it’s not going to get you out. Pretty sure touching the ground at the time they sold me on that. I was going to use Facebook, but then I thought, I don’t want to waste my time on all these trends. You know what I mean? I’ll tell you what I [inaudible] on my space cause it seems like a really, you know, I never get into deals from advertising anyway, so they’re all word of mouth.

You hear that kind of stuff all the time, don’t you? You do. And so if you’re out there and you’re fighting that, I mean, uh, is he, I got some advice for you. Okay. Break it. Z, when you were in school, what was a swirly? A swirly. Yeah, when you were in school. I mean, do you remember like what it was like, you’re like, Oh man, let’s give Brian a swerve as I think you put your, what’s your finger is thinking someone’s ear or is that as something, well a lot of times you know,Z , you remember that you have the, you have these kind of things that um, you would do where it’s kind of like back in the eighties and nineties when you could do these kinds of things without going to jail or permanently wrecking someone’s soul. If there was a guy at youth group who is causing a lot of problems, you would, you would say, and everyone’s name was Matt or Brian or, or, or John.

There’s a lot of them, similar names back in the day. This is before, you know, again, before you could offend somebody to the point where you get sued as a 12 year old the rest of your life. Sure. But if you had a certain kid at church camp that was really getting out of line yet to, you had to go to moves, you could do. Okay. One of which I participated in multiple times, either when I did not. Okay. The first one is the swirly is where you grabbed the guy by his feet. Put his head in the toilet. Yes.

Shut up Brian. Shut up Brian. You shut it Brian. You shut up. You shut up Brian. I’m going to deal with this right now. He just put his face shut up. Right? And then you take them out. I don’t know if I grew up in a weird Pam and then you waterboard him for three weeks. But anyway, you know what I’m saying? Now you see you give them a swirly, right? Okay. Smartly. Then the more aggressive move, and this is all my fault, cause that’s not aggressive football like late nineties you could do this like late, early, early nineties you could still get away with it when vanilla ice was on the radio, you could do this or, yeah, it was pretty much, you could do anything. When vanilla says on, you’d give that kid a wedge. You can explain the basic form, the form and the function, the, the, the details, the, the really, cause you gotta hang them from, from something.

Well that, that’s the ultimate wedgie. I mean there’s different levels of wedgie, but are when you, when you grab a, the top of the underwear on the backside of an individual and you pull relentlessly, and the idea is to make it as uncomfortable as it’s not a cut. It’s like, ah, thank you ma’am. Thank you for the flock. You pull it towards the uncomfortable and then if you could hang them by that, that’s one shows I’ve got pretty strong underwear. Oh great. That’s it. Where do you buy that? Wow. It pass the test was there organic, yeah. Must be all natural made out of him.

But so these are, these are the kinds of things you need to do to yourself. If you’re not going to do a no brainer and you’re gonna run an ad, right? It’s less painful. It’s, it really is less embarrassing. Just do it to yourself. Just totally yourself. [inaudible] Z. Give me one more example of something that’s not a no brainer that you see all the time. I’ll go first. You go second. Okay. Okay. I see so many plumbers, so many plumbers that say professional service since and they make up a year. Oh yeah. And John knows this crap. I love to put on cards just to make fun of things and I’ll have them, I’ll put on print pieces and cards. I’ll put conceived 1980 because that’s when you are. Yeah. And this is kind of funny and people are like, Oh wow, this is not a no brainer.

It’s just whatever you see these plumbers are like established in 1987 like, I don’t care how old school you, I really don’t care how in tune you were. What? I don’t care that you started your business the same year that the Oakland A’s and the San Francisco giants went to the world series. That doesn’t matter to me. Yeah. Your words like you know, premium and best and and guaranteed Damien best guaranteed here, guaranteed to be the best. 100% of your premium situation. Premium. Yeah. Those words like that are just like, you get lost in that. Everybody uses them. Oh, just everybody. Just like you know, everybody’s the best you, everybody. No one’s going to put up there. We’re just, okay. You’re the new commercial series. We’re just okay. Or you know the best average plumber and the County or one of them. We’re in the middle of average plumbers in the area.

We get a 2.5 ratings every tub up. This one for service call for service call. I don’t like for service. There’s a call to action for service. Call this number. Yeah. I’m like, you remember that light? Like, Oh, like you’re like, Oh, I thought I’m just going to call that number and just have a conversation with this one for a blast. Blast will match anybody’s prize. Your shirt, why does it matching anyone’s price? Not a move. You want to beat their price, right? Right. Then I got to find out what their prices are. The [inaudible] now you’re just causing me more work. Thank you, but no thank you Z. This day quilts really taken our show. I think too. I didn’t level certain low points and high points. It’s really been an incredible show here. This is probably going to be the most, either it’s gonna be the most watched or the most burned podcasts that we’ve put out to get gets. People can burn a podcast, digital podcast with these downloaded, it’ll burn their smartphone devices. Like, I’m just playing. I’m going to burn out and burn it. All right. We’re going to end with a a a five, three, two, four. One.