Thou Shalt Not Email | 13 Rules for Effectively Managing Email in the World of Business

Show Notes

13 rules for effectively managing email in the world of business and how to avoid passive-aggressive digital demons, keyword warriors and passive-aggressive email poets. 

DEFINITION – A person who behaves aggressively and/or in an inflammatory manner in online text-based discussion media, but at the same time does not behave similarly in real life, potentially due to cowardice, introversion or shyness.

NOTABLE QUOTABLE – “The way it works is simple: While you’re away on vacation, people who email you get a message, letting them know when you’ll be back. And then — the most important part — the tool deletes the email. If the email is important, the sender can always send it again. If it’s not, then it’s not waiting for you when you get back, or, even worse, tempting you to read it while you’re away. So the key is not just that the tool is creating a wall between you and your email; it’s that it frees you from the mounting anxiety of having a mounting pile of emails waiting for you on your return — the stress of which mitigates the benefits of disconnecting in the first place.” – Arianna Huffington

NOTABLE QUOTABLE – “Email Doesn’t Matter. I once lost four hundred unanswered emails in my inbox because my email application crashed. After ward no one sent a follow-up email asking why I hadn’t responded. Later I lost another inbox and only a handful of people followed up.” – Guy Kawasaki

NOTABLE QUOTABLE – “Turn off your email; turn off your phone; disconnect from the Internet; figure out a way to set limits so you can concentrate when you need to, and disengage when you need to. Technology is a good servant but a bad master.” – Gretchen Rubin

NOTABLE QUOTABLE – “To me, emails are a little bit frustrating. I think that the telephone is much preferred because you get the sound of the voice and the interest and everything else you can’t see in an email.” –  T. Boone Pickens

FUN FACT – It takes YOU 23 minutes to recover from distraction – https://www.inc.com/nicholas-mcgill/it-takes-23-minutes-to-recover-from-a-distraction-at-work-heres-how-to-minimize-.html 

NOTABLE QUOTABLE – “Email is like sex: everybody does it, but few talk about what we actually do or how we do it. And those that do tend to do so with missionary zeal, with lots of suggestions about what you should do. we gathered data across 38,000 inboxes and dozens of mail providers. Our data is both limited and biased (especially towards Gmail), but it’s at least a healthy-sized sample, and any significant sampling of the email market will result in a wide range of inbox and folder sizes. What we found was that for a given inbox, there is a 1 in 10 chance it will have 15 unopened items or fewer. There’s also a 1 of out of 10 chance that it will be about 21,000 items or more.” – https://pando.com/2013/04/05/the-truth-about-email-whats-a-normal-inbox/ 

NOTABLE QUOTABLE – “Doing something unimportant well does not make it important.” – Tim Ferriss

NOTABLE QUOTABLE – “In a world of distraction and multitasking, the ability to single task — to genuinely do one thing without getting distracted by push notifications, alerts, email, text messages, social media, whatever it might be — is a super power.” – Tim Ferriss

FUN FACT – “AMERICAN ADULTS SPEND OVER 11 HOURS PER DAY LISTENING TO, WATCHING, READING OR GENERALLY INTERACTING WITH MEDIA.” – Nielsen – https://www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights/article/2018/time-flies-us-adults-now-spend-nearly-half-a-day-interacting-with-media/ 

Email Rules:

  1. Use email as a tool and don’t be a tool of your email
  2. When possible have a quick call versus long email
  3. Use a professional email address
  4. Thou shall not email
  5. Don’t use email to deal with conflict
  6. Don’t correct via email
  7. Don’t connect via email
  8. Don’t email humor
  9. Don’t hit send unless you want to read it again
  10. Nothing is confidential
  11. Watch for passive-aggressive email poets
  12. Be beyond the bait
  13. Stop manic emailing

FUN FACT – It takes YOU 23 minutes to recover from distraction – https://www.inc.com/nicholas-mcgill/it-takes-23-minutes-to-recover-from-a-distraction-at-work-heres-how-to-minimize-.html 

NOTABLE QUOTABLE – “I don’t Twitter, I don’t MyFace, I don’t Yearbook.” – Bill Belichick

FUN FACT – “AMERICAN ADULTS SPEND OVER 11 HOURS PER DAY LISTENING TO, WATCHING, READING OR GENERALLY INTERACTING WITH MEDIA.” – Nielsen 

Business Coach | Ask Clay & Z Anything

Audio Transcription

Thou Shalt Not Email Facebook Thrivetime Show

Yes, yes, yes. Andy. Yes, dr Z. Always ecstasy. When you are next to me, my friend. How are you dude? I tell you what, I just, I just really love being in the man cave. It just, you just can’t help but feeling like a man when you walk in here. You know what I like about the man-cave too is I like, I like the drama free zone. Oh, I love that. Like for, I wouldn’t say every day in a row. Every day you’ve chosen not to be a dramatic person. I mean, you know what I’m saying though. I feel like a second. Does that, do you think that’s actually a conscious decision? He thinks simply the brain is wired to be drama. Just as an example, we had a young lady who worked with one of my businesses for years, years. Now. When you say worked with how, when, what she did, she had been a member of our team.

Okay. Uh, at one of our businesses, I don’t get too much cause it’s still litigious over about five years. Okay. And in certain businesses we’ll go optometry, we could say auto auctions, we could say sleep center, sleep centers, head cuts, certain businesses. J biz. There’s a relationship that occurs with like a doctor or a stylist or something. Sure. Anyhow, it is a certain doctor or a stylist or somebody could say, Hey, I’m doing my own thing on the side and I feel I’m going to be leaving in two weeks. If you wanna follow me to my new place. Ooh, that’s a dirt. You could do that. Now here’s [inaudible], here’s the move that was done. Now this is the move. Is this, Hey, um, I’m being terminated right now due to, um, I don’t want to say what it is because it’s very there and it all come out later.

Sure. But I have just chosen because of some ethical issues to [inaudible] to, you know, cause of ethics. Sure. And I just wanted you to know I’m a single mom and I have to support my kids. So I, if you would follow me to my new place, you know, cause I’m leaving because of the ethics. I don’t want to leave. I love this place. I love my customers. I love my customers, uses the phrase my customers. I hear her on the camera, my customers, I love my customers. You know, I don’t want to leave, you know, but I, I need to do to ethical things. Um, I’m just gonna let you know I need you to, if you can follow me over my new place. So he helped me with my income cause I’m a single, cause I’m a single mom and I need to take care of my kids twice with different men as a result of not no fault of her own, just twice.

That’s just, just the facts. So, um, I find out about this because hundreds of people were getting the same call. Wow. Which means a person had to download our database shirt and call. Sure. So I think probably maybe two dozen calls in or so a guy calls me, Hey, just so you know, I’ve been working with you a long time. I know you’re, you know, I’ve known I’ve done business with you. Um, this call was made, it didn’t sound right. It sounded weird. I wanted you to know if you’ve got this call yet. And I said no, but thank you. And their guy calls me, Hey, just so you know. So I was getting probably seemed like every maybe a hundred calls she made, maybe four or five guys would call me. Sure. So I have to let the person go obviously. Cause I see what’s happening.

Oh yeah. Which PR further perpetuates the lie of that. She’s choosing to leave in two weeks because of the situation. So now perpetuates, like look, she got blindsided now and that’s what we’re called now. He’s, I got blind side, I got blind here. I was trying to leave on the, I take the high road trying to do the right thing. And so when I did, and because of mentoring from, from you and business books, I’ve read and reading Jack Welch and osmosis of being around great leadership, uh, on our Monday meeting, it was brought to my attention this was happening. And they’re like, what are you gonna do? What are we gonna do? What are we gonna do about this? Right? And I said, uh, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa, Johnny. [inaudible]. And I didn’t, I didn’t, I didn’t, you did not break out in song. Oh no.

We’ve got, I’ve got, I’ve got to call a little, I’m not sure. You broke out in songwriter. I didn’t break into Bon Jovi. I could’ve done it. You could’ve done, I could’ve left the room and said, where’s my mind? I got to go find it. I’ve got to find it. I could’ve started crying. That’s another move. I could’ve said she will route the day. You know, you start to make these, you know, you make those kinds of statements. She was rude. That dad does Rue the day. What di, what does ruin look like? I could have said, ah, I know random Shakespeare things. People really don’t know what it means. I could have said the game’s afoot. Right, right, right, right. I mean these are all things you could say, right? Absolutely. We’ll nip this in the bud. I tell it, but I decided to know how to do nothing.

Nothing has in nada. Yeah. Because at the end of the day, this happens about every three months. Sure. With this particular business, it’s part of the game. It’s part of the gang. People move. Why do you think that is? Because, well, there’s 70 some odd people there. The average person’s there about four or five years. And what happens is I get a little notification which happened on this occasion and almost every occasion it happens saying, Hey, this person needs to have their wages garnished because they’re being a deadbeat single dad or mom. That happens. And so you have to then what w w when wages are garnished. Can you kinda explain for the listeners that don’t know what that means? Well, it comes in the form of a court order and so you’ve got a choice. It’s not a choice. And what they do is they go to the employer and they say they force you to take money out of the paycheck before the set employee gets it to compensate whatever debt they owe.

It could be fill in the blank, right? A lot of times it’s auto debt. It could be, um, maybe being a deadbeat parent, it could be not paying. Child support was the, so many things. It could be so many things. So this, I brought it to the person’s attention to privately, discreetly. I said, Hey, with me and one other person present, Hey, we’re gonna have to do some garnishments. Looks like there’s some child support. And so one of the things we need to just knock this out. Sure, sure. Outrage begins. I’ve been here five years. You won’t, you won’t just pay me cash. Oh no, they did not ask that. It’s true story. Why is it that if, if somebody is in the hot seat outrage, they’re always ready to go to the unethical form of whatever it is right away, that’s the default move to get there.

Do they feel like they’re do? Right. Right. And it begins, you just see it happening. And so, but members of my team, um, as recently as two hours ago have said to me, I cannot believe you’re letting her walk all over you. Well you don’t take interesting because it’s kinda like they’re not following the letter of the law of whatever their situation is. And their first instinct is to try to get you as an accomplished to allow them to continue that, that narrative. You don’t, you know what I’m saying? What happens is here’s where it gets crazy. This is where I don’t make it crazy, but this is what most of our listeners unfortunately have done and I have done this. It’s when you send the email of the bold manifesto. No, you know the one where you start typing that bad boy stand you, you start typing that email at about 11:00 PM cause you can’t sleep.

I’ve been there in about 3:00 AM it’s like page three and let me, let me read. Let me just give you an example of the kind of email you shouldn’t send that we’ve all said at one point. Okay. This is on today’s show, it’s thou shalt not email, thou shall not email. None of our listeners we’re talking about other, other [inaudible] talking about me. Or it may be something I’ve done once in the past, maybe something, but something that none of our listeners have done, right? Probably not. So we’re talking about thou shalt not email and the consistent cowardice of keyboard warriors. Ooh. So this is what I would’ve done, I don’t know, 14 years ago. Okay. And I did this before I write an email. I remember I called the DJ manifesto. There we go. Come on. I wrote this thing start and I think about, you know, 10 o’clock, 11 o’clock at night, cause I couldn’t sleep.

I want to go to bed like at nine so I was like 11 I can’t sleep. It’s 11 o’clock. I’m here. I’d never been up this light. It’s crazy. You know, I’m up at 11 o’clock and I’m riding. It’s like I normally don’t do this, but because you want to start like that, I normally don’t do this. But you don’t want Facebook. People do this. I basically, I don’t normally do respond to a post, oddly formal. Oh yeah, dear team, we have an issue that must be addressed and it has been a fortnight since I have encountered such an abomination. So he was more a syllables. Right. And a fortnight, as we all know is two weeks. So he’s, it’s read off Fortnite since I have you know, and you, but you, you’re using words, it’s kinda like a wedding invitation. You don’t know what the words mean.

Right. You are cordially invited to the big trove of wedding, choose a box, probably a check the Mach between chicken and steak and we know that uses the mail system anymore. But if sending a text it would be tactless and was supposed to do this and then you’ll hand write me back something to thank me for the gift. Anyway, I think it’ll show up and wonder why you’re getting steak and not chicken and throw a fit and you, and you pay a guy to handwrite it with calligraphy. But the point is, is that formal text? Sure. And you’re like, it has been called to my attention. Then one of my disc jockeys has violated the noncompete agreements. C C segment two dash one or there’s always this and you start riding and riding and then you realize no, no, no, this isn’t, this isn’t, this isn’t effective.

So you call your attorney, Oh you say attorney, I want you to craft an email. So your attorney’s like, Hey for 1000 bucks I’ll craft it of all craft. So he’s a crafty man. So he’s out there crafty like MacGyver, he’s writing this and you know what I’m talking, it’s like a three page PDF, right? Oh yeah. And you hit sin. Show what all caps in there. And the first moment you hit it you feel pretty good. Oh you’re right. You feel good. You’re fun. Da da. It’s like the ACDC zone. Ah, I’m showing them who the boss is. Let me explode yet cause I’m T in T you’re getting into it. You’re fired up. You said when you said that it’s feeling good cause he said it like at two in the morning. Oh yeah. Cause you, you know, in night now, like at seven or eight when you usually wake up a little bit, you will cause programs will show you how many people open the email and you realize, gosh, only like seven of my 80 people have opened this thing.

So that’s part of frustration. Yes. But then you realize that the, those who are easy to be outraged email back with their one page. Oh my goodness. And they weave in questions and statements in the same paragraph. Oh sure. So they say, ah, there’s two sides to every story. And I would like for you to know because the trolls are in control, that I have been here a long time. And objectively looking at it, I’m unlike an entrepreneur who makes the money off the sweat of the backs of the people and uses other people’s money for profit and gain. Oh, the employee has went and you’re like, wow, this guy’s really articulate. He’s writing the socialist manifesto back. Wow. And now here it goes. Now you are in an email doom loop. And this is everybody listening to this show who’s ever sent a regrettable email.

That’s, that’s one way you can start the email doom loop or the other is that you love to email. Therefore you have no control of your life. You know, it’s funny that you put it those words, I, I kind of like him. By the way, that email doom loop de loop that applies. It’s a loop that’s doomed. Okay, let me read you a Arianna Huffington, a successful entrepreneur, Huffington post, she writes, the way it works is simple. While you’re away on vacation, people who email you get a message, letting them know when you’ll be back. And then the most important part, the tool I recommend deletes the email for you. If the email is important to sinner can always resend it. If it’s not, then it’s not waiting for you when you get back or even worse, tempting you to read it while you’re away. So the key is to just find the tool is [inaudible].

So the key is not just that the tool is creating a wall, you and your email is that it frees you up from the mounting anxiety of having a mounting pile of emails waiting for you when you return the stress, which mitigates the benefits of disconnecting in the first place. Guy Kawasaki, the key employee for a Steve jobs back in the day, who’s now a successful venture capitalist and a key spokesperson for Mercedes-Benz writes email. Doesn’t matter. I once lost 400 unanswered emails in my inbox because my email application crashed afterward. No one sent a followup email asking why I didn’t respond. Later I lost another inbox and only out a handful of people fall up. He explained to me our show. Now he just hits delete every few months.

You know, I, I have a friend of mine, I had a friend of mine that we were, we were doing an email, Dillon, I’m kind of like you clay. Whenever I pull him up, I might not that red dot. I’m just trying to delete, delete, delete, get through them or delete, delete, delete, delete. And I looked up my friend and I said, Oh, this is so annoying. I’ve got a a hundred emails almost every morning. I’m just going to delete. You know, my friend looked at me and said, I’ve got 12,596 currently that haven’t even looked at right. And I probably should just delete them all and start over. And I’m like,

that’s so good. So I’m going to give the listeners, we’re going to go give listeners today practical rules for mastering your email. Very practical rules. Oh my. And I, the reason why this is such a big, big issue is, uh, articulated very well on a panto daily panto daily, pendo.com we’ve been featured in there before. It is a tech, uh, online publication that covers things like Twitter, Uber, LinkedIn, big tech companies, silicone Valley. And I’m going to read this to you and I would like for you as the, to kind of break it down for what this means to you. It says email is like sex. Everybody does it. But few talk about what we actually do or how we do it. And those that tend to do so with missionary zeal with lots of suggestions about what you should do. Um, we gathered data across 38,000 inboxes and Doug and dozens of mail providers.

Our data is both limited and biased, especially towards Gmail, but it’s at least a healthy samp, a healthy size sample. And any significant sampling of the email market will result in a wide range of inbox and folder sizes. However, what we found was that for a given inbox, there is a one in 10 chance that it will have 15 unopened items or fewer. There’s a one out of 10 chance that it will be about 21,000 or more. Anyway, the average person has more than a thousand unresponded to emails. And what this article is putting out is that email is like sex. Everybody’s having sex, but few people talk about what you should do or how you should do it because you know, uh, most people, I just don’t want to, it’s like an obscure idea, but it’s a huge thing. Wow. That’s what I’m panto huh? Yeah. So think about this for a second. So email, I’m going to give you the rules and I’d like for you to, uh, tell me if you agree. All right. Rule number one, let’s do it. Use email as a tool and don’t be a tool of email, use email as a tool, but don’t be a tool of email. Could you, could you agree with that?

I absolutely do agree with that. I think that a, and it’s also a slave to the email, you know, somebody so many times, you know, and we give out our email address and then we don’t want to change it because it’s kind of like your phone number, your cell phone number, right. And you’re like, Oh I got to tell everybody I changed it. I mean dah dah dah, dah. I should clean it up. And so everybody wants it cause everybody wants to send you something. Anybody wants to get you on their email list. So 90% and then maybe 95% of the emails I get are just push emails, you know, just, just they, the company gets it and they push out. I go in and sometimes try to unsubscribe, but I think that that, I have a, this is my maybe my paranoia speaking through, but I have a feeling that when you try to an inscribed that they go, Oh, that’s active. They care. They’re looking, so now let’s distribute that to more people that want to email him. Right. You know? So it seems like every time I unsubscribed to one, I get five new ones that now want to email me.

So let’s talk about this. I see a lot of entrepreneurs and they’re almost always unsuccessful entrepreneurs who I see who will literally have their phone up. I’m going to take my phone out for a second phone up and out. I’ll always out in up while they’re having dinner, while they’re watching a movie, while they’re hanging out with family, while they’re, while they’re doing everything, even whitewater rafting, and they are constantly trying to look at it like whenever there’s a lull of 30 seconds, you know, whenever there’s like a minute or two. What do you think that is? Is that our addictive personalities now? I think, I think that the phone was designed to be an addictive device. I know it is. I’ve read the book a hooked that explains this. So people want, you know, the designers designed it to be that way. But I see people that this is so, it’s like right now I’m struggling to find significance as a man cause I’m, you know, 40 and I’ve achieved my goals and I’m not super happy with where my life’s at.

So I need to stay busy and I’m going to check email. That’s what I see a lot. It’s like it’s the same reason why people with very little money go out and buy a very expensive car. It’s like things aren’t going very well and a lot of areas, but I’m going to go drop every, you know what I mean? You see people with zero money at all buy the most expensive car. I think it’s a search for significance. It’s like I’m going to send one email real quick right now because I got nothing going on, so I’m going to send an email real quick or I’m going to get one. It’s like a thing. I mean, you see bosses with businesses with maybe 20 employees or less just PR, just bombarding their people with emails all the time sending, sent you. You see this all, it’s sad.

It is. And I, and I wonder why you think that is.

I think it’s just we’re looking to fill the hole in our soul with something and emails just to thump. I mean, I, I see, I see it. I mean literally I see this, uh, virtually 60% of the time before I can help a business coaching client get out of this loop where they’ll send emails like this. Tell this is the email. So an business owner will send this to their employee. Sarah, remind me tomorrow to call you about the meeting. Like why are you sending an email to [inaudible] and they sit like at seven o’clock at night and now poor Sarah, who wants to be a good employee for you is like Frank, I got to respond. She responds. I will remind you tomorrow to call me. Did you tell me you see this stuff? Do you not? Oh yes I do. I did. It breaks my heart, it blows my mind, blows my mind, I guess.

I don’t know why as much as just put it on your calendar if you want to, if you want to alert, I mean we have that facility, you can do it, but it’s kind of like what, what, why is it that this world has gotten so impersonal? I, okay now here’s the next thing in the next rule and this ties into this impersonal thing when possible, have a quick call versus a long email. Now again, I could, I could call and I could say, Hey Z, a quick note. Ah, I think we had this call. It’s actually kinda funny cause you were coming back, I believe from Vegas, I think, and I said Z, the office may be flooding. I’ve moved into Kerrington’s building of right now short term. Oh I remember this yet. And if it does flood, we’re fine. I got all the stuff move right.

And if it doesn’t flood, we’re fine. So boom, but I didn’t like email. You like the weather conditions in Tulsa have changed. You had a very dramatic email. But people do email that is coming in cryptic. I think people like the drama. Do they? I think they do. And why do you think that? Is it the endorphins that kickoff from it? Is that the, is that the stress, that gossip, gossip? I think if it’s swipe tabloids work, it’s like, did you hear that? We might have to move because the flood, Oh my gosh. And it just goes back and forth. And now this chatting in the office, it’s constantly dr Zonner, we have a patient up front right now who needs to be seen, what should I do? And then if you are a bad boss, you, you’d be responding instantaneously. What you should do is greet them.

Okay, I’ll greet them. Meanwhile the customer is right there. Right. You know what I mean? That’s what I see a lot of bad bosses doing. I, I do too. And so I guess as far as emails go, when you look at your email, your inbox, yup. What percentage of emails would you really say are worthy of being sent? Well, this is what I do is my method. I wake up every morning. Okay. And I plan out my day. Okay, did I get my inbox down to zero? Right. So when you’re, when you’re delete, delete, deleting, what threshold do you even rear paying me? Oh, there we go. Or I’m paying you. Okay, I’ll respond. There you go. If you are an employee, okay, I do not because you should respond. You should send it to your boss. I like that. And I found that if I respond, then you respond again.

It’s like killing one fly to create two. That’s not fun. Hit it. Here comes two more. Here comes four. It’s kinda like, it’s kinda like the sailors back in the day, they’d catch these starfish that were eating their clams and mussels and whatnot and what they do is that chop them up and throw them back in. They didn’t, they were just create every art they threw back. It created another starfish. They were actually populating the ocean with foreign star starfish. True story. True story. True story. This is the folks, this just in from our help from our starfish help desk from our Oh shot Cousteau here. Jacques Cousteau moment for us. Thank you very much. If you cut off the arms of the starfish and throw a Bakey and you’ll just make a new store as a nice, it has a nice now. Okay, so let me, so let me give you the next rule for emailing. Alright. Use a professional email address like nothing is, let me give an example. If you’re so successful

that you can use a Gmail, you’re going to know, all right. So I’ve met a lot of venture capitalists, very successful people who say, email me and my name’s uh, you know, my email [email protected] and you’re like, that dude is boss. Cause you know, that guy’s not trying to sell anymore. Right. You know what I’m saying? Like he’s to a level where he doesn’t have to have a fancy email address to wow you. Right. But if you’re like a sales associate for an appliance store in Tulsa, Oh yeah, yeah. We’d go have a branded email habit. Like, you know [email protected]. Don’t have it be like Carl, uh, 69 in 72 at AOL high. You know like what was going on, carpet, what was going, what was going on in 1972 why do you have an email from 72 did they even have email in 72 you clearly made that after 72 that means you’re a 60 year old.

Who still thinks that’s funny. Come on, come on. Stop that right. I mean, you know what I’m saying? Or hot mama, you see that harsh poverty. Get rid of my email. Hot [email protected] you know what I mean? No, on a resume. Oh, an employee or potential employee. We’ll put hot [email protected] and say, wow, that’s what I was called growing up. So I just, this is a problem. This is a problem. You see this a lot though, do you not? Yes. You know and I think the whole time suck of the whole email game is not good.

I agree. This is, email is a huge problem. This is, again, we’re giving you some rules here. One, use email as a tool. Don’t be a tool of the email to when possible, have quick, have a quick call versus a long email. Three, use a professional email address for thou shall not email, thou shall not email. So let’s do an example. Do you believe that thou shall not lie? Do you believe that? I think so, yes. Well, let’s say you’re the president of the United States. Here’s an ethical dilemma. Okay. And I’m going to go ahead and tell you what, I’m going to give you a message, okay? Okay. Cause this happened to George Bush. All right. Have you seen the documentary about George Bush reading to the kids when he heard about nine 11? Um, I’ve heard about it, but it’s incredible. I, I’ve, I’ve not actually watched, this is what happened.

A adviser came to the president and again, he wasn’t Mike. You can see it on camera, but you can’t see what he was split. It was said George now in an office long enough to share it. But as assistant came up to him and said, sir, we’ve had the towers of instruct by two planes. What do you want me to do? And he goes, well, what do we, what do we know? They told them this or that or whatever. And he says, I’m going to continue reading to the kids. I got 10 more minutes here to this elementary kids. And then as soon as I finish, we’ll come out. We’ll figure out situations he did. They didn’t know anything. Right? So then coming out into the hall and panicking with you doesn’t help. So I feel like though, a lot of times that we have the rule, thou shalt not lie.

I agree with that rule 99% of the time. Let me just give you an example. If I was the president, I’d States, and I was being transparent in the way that a lot of people think the president should be. This would be my state of the union address. Okay, ma. Hello ma ma, I gotta get to my George Bush. Hello, my fellow Americans. We are a, a joint here today, um, to deliver, uh, a very, uh, concerning message to American people. And I want you to know that, uh, we’ve had, um, a very bad thing happen right now. And, uh, Oh, break it out, man. I’m freaking out. Oh my. Where’s my goes? Where’s my go Connie condom. Where’s my guns works, Michael. Hey,

did we got our end times food ready to go? Higher up air force one. I’ll tell you what, I’m glad I can get away rat because we can fly down to Antarctica right now. Crawford. But bomb shelter ready. Rad. I mean, uh, I mean, and my American boy, I mean George Bush was, I think there’s a difference in lying and, and not telling the truth and not telling somebody that you’re, you’re protecting them and telling them something that they don’t need to hear. Oh, another example, let’s let me give a number. Let’s say you’re George Bush again. Okay. George [inaudible], you’re going to be attacking Iran tomorrow at noon. I don’t think you have a press conference and say, uh, my fellow mayor, you know, CNN asks you and Fox asks you. Oh yes, these reporters are so clever. Yeah. Yeah. President, you feel there’s always cameras going off of which

my, uh, president, um, do you feel you owe it to the Americans to be transparent about the date that you will pull out the troops and when you will be shooting missiles into the Libyan airspace? Well, my fellow Americans, I want you to know as prick commander in chief, we will be sending them off at 1202 and we’ll be removing the forces at 1201 1201. And uh, also I have a rash I an upper thigh that is caused, uh, through various reasons. I don’t know. Um, and I ate a little too much steak last night and, uh,

my big toes hurt, I think, am I going to count in the Rangers has gone up

since I’ve been in office. Whoa. Whoa. There it is. Where’s candy?

Right, right. And, and I, and I, you know that that goes to a bigger thing because I think there’s probably exceptions. Every rule. I mean, you asked me if it’s wrong to lie. Yes. But yes, but there’s times that it’s, it’s in everybody’s best interest in the long run. Just like, I mean, just like misdirection for the enemy, right? Right. But I mean, just like you could say, is it wrong to murder somebody? I’d say yes, but I mean if they, if they hold to come in and feel like I come into your home and has your wife at gunpoint, you’re going to whack him. And mr a was just crazy. I’d go, I’m going to kill you. Or you’re hurting the kids and we’d get on your wacko. There’s an exception to almost every rule there. So just a blanket

statements is, you know, you have to have that filter, you know? And that’s, so now that’s what we’re talking about today. So the rule though is now shout, not email. That’s the rule, right? The rule is don’t email. You could occasionally break the rule, but don’t email make it your rule. What are you doing? It’s crazy. This is, this is an example I just ran into probably four months ago. I’ve losing my mind. I got a guy who’s a very successful guy, very successful guy. I’ll just say I, I’ll get myself in trouble. But a longterm business coaching client, probably eight years now, has a ton of real estate agents, a ton to start pounds started working with the guy had maybe two agents now has let’s say 50 agents. Okay. And he continues to email up minute by minute updates about things. So if you worked for him, it’s crazy cause it’s like everyone’s reply all and it’s like just listed the, the Thompson house just close.

The Johnson house just bought the Wendy’s going to be closed in her house. So Susan just closed good news and it’s constant and he sends out these daily emails, like an how to the best 17 tips for updating your listing and no one reads it. So I said let’s go, let’s put a program on your computer that shows how many people actually read the email in terms of how well did they open it and how long are they actually digesting. Ooh, that’s cool. Nobody does. Nobody does. What do you put sending them out for years? Why do you think he was what? When, what game? Trying to feel this filled. It’s trying to fill the hole in his soul. I sat down with the guy and I’m like, listen, you’re making millions of dollars now. You sending out tips to 52 people every day to feel important is not helping your team and you know it.

He’s like, you’re right coach. You’re right. Like why are you doing it? He’s like, well, on the home front I come home and you know, I’m kinda not, things aren’t going the best at home and I’m just kinda busy. You want to stay busy. So I’m just updating. But this team is like, stop, stop it. Seriously. It makes you crazy. Imagine if you got a call. I mentioned, imagine you had a door to door salesperson. Excuse me, Mr. Johnson, mr mr Zellner, mr Zell is mr Zoellner here. I’ve got a role play with me on this. Okay. Imagine you’re at the Mayo hotel and your condo. Okay. Uh, dr Zellner are, are, are, can I speak with you real quick, sir? I would say he’s not, I would answer them and say, okay, I’ll, I’ll role play. Yes, I’m right here tonight. Special. We have a special right now. It’s unbelievable. It’s cocktail hour. It just has opened and I wanted to just let you know. Well thank you. Thank you very much. 30 seconds. Go by. Okay. Hello dr Zellner. I forgot to tell you tonight we are serving shrimp scampi free until six 30 to six 27 that I did. I did not know that. Thank you. 30 seconds later. I’m a doctors. I am so sorry. I, I won’t, I won’t be coming back again soon. I wanted you to know we tonight. Tonight’s karaoke at the rooftop.

Oh well that’s, that’s good information. That’s good Intel. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. And it goes on all day. Eventually people go crazy. They do. Just stop it. They do. And then they go, you know what, don’t I don’t answer the door. I don’t open the email. I don’t care. I hit delete. Right. And this is what happens though. So don’t send emails. Just stop it. So if you’re a boss, yes. And you need to have some information disseminated amongst your people,

how would you go about doing that? Let’s talk about this for a second one. There’s the rhythm of business. So everybody out there, you should get daily key performance indicators as you get about your companies. Yes. Tell you about the daily sales. You’re a pastor that the attendance of the church, whatever. And you should have a weekly staff meeting. If you’re a pastor or an organization or a business leader, a weekly meeting, you know where you meet with certain key people and those key people need to have access to you. So was like six people, those five people, whoever your key people are, they need to have access to you.

So what you’re saying is, is that if you have 52 employees, you don’t have to. Yes. If you email all 52 you’re implying that 52 people have access to you is what I’m hearing. Right.

And it creates this weird loop because then one of them crosses what you believe to be the boundary, which is unwritten, that States that you can’t question the boss. That’s what you believe. And then on that reply, all the person you just hired sends this email to all who are concerned. I just want to know is it ethical?

Is, is it, should I report this to the labor? I wasn’t sure if the labor commission needed to be aware of that. Right, right. Happens. Oh, what happened? I know and and I think that the, the main thing is, is that whenever you start a business and you have one employee, two employees, three employees, four employees, five employees, you can deal with that business a little differently and talking with them, you know, you, you should put someone in charge and then that is your contact person and you have a chain or an org chart. An org chart is the organizational chart of you don’t want, every one of your employees have access to you. And if you email every one of those employees and they have access to you by definition, because now you’re saying, Hey listen email, it’s kind of a, there’s an unwritten rule. If I email you, guess what you’re saying? It’s okay. To what

example? Elephant in the room. If you go to EEI, T R lounge.com and you click on clay Clark radio, we pay about a thousand dollars a month to have licensed music that I have personally chosen to play. And it’s mostly RNB. If you like Prince, if you like Michael Jackson, if you like Andre 3000, you’re going to like it. If you don’t, you won’t. We have thousands, literally thousands of people a day. You can see where they’re listening to it live all around the world. They love it, they share it. But we have employees all the time that will want to update the playlist and I shall share with you a few of the songs that I have recently rejected. Okay. Um, do you remember the song by Danzig called mother? Do you mean that song? Ah, signal a little bit for me or platelet. Okay, well let me, let me, let me, this’ll, this’ll be a good one for you. Let me queue it up real quick.

[inaudible] cowbell everything’s better with cowbell. Let me just get through them. Let me get to the lyrics in the chorus because you’re going to understand soon why I wouldn’t play it. Oh, I’m loving it. Show your children not to walk a mile away. Oh, I know the song. Come on now. Why would you

not play this at elephant in the room? You would never play that. Why? Because it’s ridiculous. Elephant in the room, man. Getting the ultimate grooming experience. Don’t want to hear that song. Okay. Let’s do another example here. This is, these are all songs that have been requested by my team at some point. [inaudible] tell me why you would not play this song in your office. Here we go. Okay. Wes Carter, welcome. By the way, any Mike is available, my friend, you just tell me if you would tell me if this will be played. You’re uptown.

Okay. I don’t know if this was playing at winters and King right now. I’m not sure if this is. Here we go. Yeah, let’s do you play this at winters and gang? That’s a no, no. We haven’t done the Marilyn Manson yet. Now that’s, that’s a, that’s a,

does it feel troubled already?

I feel trouble. I feel I need to go take a shower. I’ll be right back. It feels evil, does it not? It’s a, Tim has a definitely a dark flavor. It’s intense. But

people request this stuff. So the reason why I don’t make myself available to the general team via email is because this is the kindness stuff they do. They submit the Hey boss could you play this song? No. Dumber for having heard the request. So let’s talk about email rules West. We’re talking about email rules and I wouldn’t and I would like for you, we’re going to make a rule here. You are not going to share about any business coaching clients you’ve worked with in the last two years. So no one can guess who it is. Okay, we’re going over the email rules cause you’re an attorney. Yes. And you, I’m sure of you probably more than anybody are dealing with. This does point. But we’re talking about email rules and then in the show title is thou shalt not email and the consistent cowardice of keyboard warriors.

So let’s think about this for a second rule. The rules we’ve gone over so far. We have many rules today, but rule number one, use email as a tool and don’t be a tool of your email. So you took your wife recently to go golfing, I believe. Where did, where’d you guys go? We went to the Patriot golf course. You did? Yes. And did you have a good time? A wonderful time when you were whacking the golf balls, were you checking emails instantaneously? I try not to. What happens though, if you look seriously, if you look at an email and it’s an urgent one, no, that’s good. It’s very transparent. If you look at an email and it’s not a good one, what happens? As soon as

my mind switches to work mode, there we go. The golf game goes downhill. My special time with my wife goes downhill. All of a sudden my mind is in work mode and it’s very difficult to get readjusted back to fun time, family time, whatever time you’re in.

So again, think about this for a second. I want to show this is, this is powerful. This is, um, psychology. This is, this is stuff they don’t Z, these are, these are things that they do. People aren’t, are, aren’t taught. Okay. So let’s talk about this. What happens is, is when you get an email, you go into work mode. You mentioned that. Yes. And psychology today recently put out a studio [inaudible] study, and I’ll put this on the show notes, is that the average person is now taking 23 minutes.

Yes. To come out of

like I to come back into golf mode. Okay. So after they, after they’re golfing, right? It’s easy to get an interruption. It takes them 23 minutes to come back into relax mode. He’s people 23 minutes to refocus. Yes. Um, I’m not saying you’re a psychologist Z, but why do you think it takes people an average of 23 minutes when they’re having a relaxed time to, or they’re, maybe they’re drawing a picture, they’re painting, they’re golfing, they’re seeing patients. Why does it take people 23 minutes to refocus when they get a negative email or, or interaction via their digital [inaudible] digital device?

What would their processing they’re, they’re going through the solution of it. They’re trying to figure out why it was sent to try and figure out the motive behind it. They’re trying to fit how they’re going to react to it. They’re formulating the email they’re going to send back, I mean on and on and on and that and that takes a while and I’m 23 I would have guessed longer than that actually.

Does that shock you that it takes people a long time to recover mentally and to get refocused again?

Yes. No, no. It doesn’t shock me. It hurts my little heart to think that people are out there not understanding that when you’re on quality time with your wife on a, we would call that a date night or date afternoon, you know, don’t even be tempted to look because most of the time when you get one of those negatives or you get a, you know, a plea or you get a red alert or you get a, this happened, you know, cause somebody else had some, it’s an emergency, right? When you have an a business coaching client for them it’s like, Oh my gosh, the sky is falling. It’s a fire. Oh it’s a fire and a flood. A fire. Maybe both. Yes. And so you’re like, ah, it’s not this. This will wait until tomorrow. This will wait until later on the afternoon to get back in the office. This will wait and shame on you for looking at it, right? Because now you’re like, now you’re caught in the doom loop. Now you’re caught in that loop of, Oh, I’ve got to think about it. Oh honey, is it my shot? I mean w where did I inc

magazine says this. See ink magazine says it takes 23 minutes to recover from it from a distraction at work. Here’s how to minimize emails, calls and alerts. And it goes on to talk about this refocusing. So again, as a default, use email as a tool and don’t be a tool of your email, cause man, if you turn that on during church, Oh Mao sitting next to a guy went to a local, very big church and the guy next to me pulls up. They said, pull out your app, you know, interact with the Bible. Every church has their own kind of app and this guy pulls out his app and let me tell you the one thing he did, the one thing he never used during the, the service, that app, that app dude, that guy was emailing. I was like, this guy’s like a prophet via email.

This guy’s like, right, his thumbs aren’t working. I was like, are you getting arthritis in those thumbs buddy? I mean he was. I mean just, I mean it was amazing. It was amazing to me. When you’re under 30 you got that thumb going to put, put a book. It was, it was crazy. Now more’s next rule is he wouldn’t possible have a quick call versus a long email. I want to get West has taken on this. Whereas if you had a business coaching client, a call for a client, let’s say about article 27.2 and it’s just a quick question, why is a quick text or a quick call better than an email? In that particular case, it was just a quick thing.

Well, one, you can communicate clearly over phone in ways you can an email. So there’s a back and forth over the phone. So if I send a question and they need to clarify or have a followup question and all of a sudden we’re in a chain of six or seven emails, whereas on your, if you’re on the phone, you can likely get through that in five minutes. And so instead of devoting five minutes of your time to a phone call, now you’re getting interrupted in your focuses on seven or eight emails over the course of the next hour. And it’s just oftentimes much more efficient to have a phone call.

Now this is a stat that comes to us via Nielsen on Nielsen. Famous famously does polling as it relates to media. They said,Z , the average American announcements, 11 hours per day on their division, on their digital device, and half of that is spent on email. Wow. Wow. Half wow. 11 hours a day. Um, is what we’re spending now on media. And a little over half of that for the average business person is spent. Now that that’s a, that’s a really, really large number. When you think about, again, half of your day could be, I mean, I’m going to pull this up, does he? I want you to just to see this right here. I want you to look at with your own eyeballs, I want you to see this article real quick. So say you’re the average American says time flies. You as adults now spend nearly half a day interacting with media Z. Does that make you sad?

It bothers me. You know, because business isn’t done over emails. It’s not, money’s not made you close deals via email on email. No, no, it doesn’t happen that way. What and what happens is that people, and the worst part is that when people get a really negative one negative review, negative email, negative, something negative, and then that takes an exorbitant amount of time. Okay. For them to get on there, figure out how are they going to respond, figure out the right thing to say. You know, they, they may even call someone, they may even talk to someone on, on, on the response of it. I mean you probably have had some people call you and say, Hey, I’ve got this negative thing. What? How do I respond via email for it? Right,

right. Yeah. I’m a send you a draft of the email. Will you review the draft and make comments? And then we’ll look at the email. I mean, am I go through three or four hands before?

Oh, Shaun door. Right? So they may spend two hours on crafting a clever email that may never be read right. And it doesn’t really matter where they get, pick up the phone, make a, make a phone call and have a short conversation. And you know what? Take care of the situation. Because the problem with emails, there’s no emotion in them. So let’s, let’s catch no inflection. There’s no format to recap the rules because when you’re hitting, you’re hitting on these rules. These Z is on [inaudible]. We have not even gone over these rules together. And this is, this is how sync entrepreneurs are easy. You get this. So again, the rule so far, use email as a tool. Don’t be a tool of your email to when possible, have a quick call versus a long email. Three, use a professional email address. Don’t have it like Randy [email protected] as your sod farm address.

That might’ve been funny in high school. Come on, we gotta move on. Don’t have hot buns. [email protected] or D. Hey, don’t, I mean you can’t have these weird, don’t do that. Don’t have [email protected] stop it. I know that it still exists somehow because Timberlake and his guys bought it, but don’t, don’t have a MySpace email. Now the fourth is thou shalt not email as a rule, as a rule. Just make it when possible. Connect with humans. Five, don’t email to deal with conflict, but you just started to hit on conflict, right? Conflict. Don’t email conflict. I want to go with you West and Z conflict. Why? If you have any conflict at all, like as an example, uh, I wanted you to know I’m just, it’s regret. I regrettably, I’ll have to inform you that per this email, um, you are in violation of code statute seven two, 3.275 and I want you to follow the script. Carl, this is an employee of yours, right? And your employee probably doesn’t even know that that statute, that rules in the handbook and now you’re telling them via email, how does that go over with [inaudible]?

Well, there’s a, I mean it doesn’t go over well. I, there’s a couple of problems. One, you can’t break the ice in an email. You know, when you first have a conversation with someone face to face, there’s the hi, how are you doing? How’s the weather that you know, that kind of you’re building, you know, building up, right? And second, like, like Z mentioned, you don’t, you can’t hear the tone. You can’t, it’s almost impossible to diffuse a situation via email or even text. A lot of times the result is you’re escalating the situation because you can’t, you can’t have that emotional connection and say, Hey, I hear where you’re coming from, but this, or you know, you’re doing a good job here. But I really need you to work here. You know, in an email. It’s almost, people focus on the negative portions of the email and it’s very hard, you know, to book and you know, we always book into a compliment, you know, a problem and then a compliment. Um, and it’s hard to do that in

a email effectively. So you know, anytime you’re trying to diffuse a conflict, um, email is not the best course of action. It’s, it’s too direct. It’s too Swift. It’s too, it just, it doesn’t have the nuance. There’s no rapport. NowZ , the next is you don’t want to correct really almost anything via email. Like if somebody spelled something wrong and you email Susie, we really need to correct the spelling. How it comes across is Susie, we gotta correct the spelling or if you’re, if you, if you are somebody who’s North of 50, typically the all caps get stuck on sometimes and you send that email. Have you ever been a part of that laser show where somebody’s all Oh yeah. I mean this happens a lot. I know people who are North of 50 who just keep all caps on as a way of life. That’s how they function. That’s how they function. Or they have a weird wingding font or something going on and they send emails and everyone thinks they hate them all the time.

It just go to rule four stop emails, especially when you have conflict as West said, as clay has said, you, you get no inflection. You get no traction. It it, all it does is, and then they sit there and here’s what they do. They reread it over

and over and over

and they catch your typo. The catcher, you shouldn’t put a comma there. They, they’d catch all those little, if they’re older, they catch all those nuances and then that’s, that’s now that’s a fight. The fact that you don’t even know how to do proper English,

move seven, move seven. Don’t try to connect with people via email as an example. Instead of getting together and let’s have a beer Z. We’ve been to a, what was the the, what’s your restaurant you like? It’s, it’s the owl. Is it the owl? White line? White line. I knew there was an animal involved. White lion, we go there, keeps playing the decor of the white lion. It’s like an old English pub. Why would you want to go to such a place? Cause I feel good there. And they have cheese,

they have cheese trays, they have English style foods. Yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s a fun place.

I go to the white line. This is what I tell you. I went to a white line, uh, I’ve been there three times, all three of Z. I go there at one time and uh, we’re having, we’re meeting with some radio executive people. Okay. And you ordered a really nice spread of, uh, of cheese and you had tremendous [inaudible] some wine with it, you know? Yes. And I go back to the, uh, restroom and this guy says, do you know, you know dr Z, you know dr Z? And I said, yeah, I know dr Z. Cause he’s, he’s a, he’s a waiter up there. Oh, can he’s, but he’s kinda, you know, dr Z. Cause I think you’re kind of a big deal in his mind. He’s, you know, dr Z? He said, yeah, he knows we’re not the same age. She was like, well, how do you know dr Z?

I said, we do a radio show together and some things, and he says, when he plays soccer, he’s intense dude. This one, he says, I’m serious. And I said, I know. I know. When was the last time you played competitive intense soccer? How many years ago? It’s been a couple. Three. So he’s played old man’s league indoors. No. I want to ask you if this is true. I’ll ask you on the shell right now and we’re on the record. All right. Have you ever been intense with a referee that made a bad call? Yes. Yes. I, so this is what he sees. Like he, he’s intense with referees and he’s seriously, dude, you know him. He’s like, he’s intense and, and he, I said, thanks for the update. And he goes, is he like that to work with? I said, no, he’s really nice guys.

Like why here with the referees? He’s intense. He’s a tit. Now let me say this. If I had emailed you an email assuming that you read it. Oh yes. And said I met a guy last night at the white lion who said that that you are intense when soccer and that you might or might not have gone off at RF. Is that true question Mark one there would be no rapport to it. It’s a stupid thing of waste of your time, right? Three, it might cause you to go, dude, that referee is always, Oh my gosh, whatever. That referee was a former patient who was mad about the prices. There’s probably a story to it and then now we go back and forth. But instead I asked you directly and you were like, well yeah, I play soccer and you know, occasionally I get really into it and that’s just what I do. And you’ve played at the college level and it’s your passion, you know, just, and I get it, but I’m saying sending an email would not have been a good way to have that conversation. No, it’s, it never, it never is. I mean whoever is there is a co

business. Things have got an email this to get it digitally signed. I’ve got to do this. This is the latest, you know you’re closing. This is your closing report. I mean there’s other things you could do. The email that our business but they’re not having nothing

now it gets crazy. It was West. You had a hot take.

Well I was going to say there’s two comments real quick. There’s a flip side to this too, which is when you’re dealing on a professional level, sometimes people try to make a joke over email.

Oh you guys are reading my notes. This is impressive

bomb. And someone’s like why aren’t you taking me serious?

This is, this is a true story that’s happened far. It’s years back. I’m not saying anything recent but I want to share with you, I would like for you to please help me here. Cause this happened and thankfully I didn’t have to call you about this. When you talk there’s a talk to text feature where you can talk cause he and it transcribes what you’re saying. Oh yeah. And people use that now to email while they’re driving. Right? So a guy sends a text to a member of my team. This is back, there’s an email to mirror. This is probably, this is like a 2000 maybe nine early might make your life Epic. My first probably 40 business coaching clients early on and Z. You don’t, you don’t have to guess what it was. I’m just spinning. This is kind of a quiz show here. Wes. He meant to, it was like early transcribed text kind of stuff.

It might have been 2011 12 it wasn’t, it wasn’t, it wasn’t super recent, but it was early enough where you could transcribe stuff and it said, I really appreciate you. You’re very sharp and articulate and you had beautiful shoes, something like that. You what we had Brayden, he’s trying to comment her shoes. Okay. He’s a young guy trying to compliment one of our new team members, better shoes. He’s like, you have great shoes, but it didn’t transcribe this, that and it goes across the bowel and within seconds he replies, I meant shoes. Now I’m, it’s kind of funny cause I’m at 16th in Boston at this point. I’m downtown and I, and we knew each other well enough. And this lady who’s 40 she says, wait 30 she says, some guy just texts me on the TV or emailed me that I have beautiful, not shoes, but it rhymes with, and then he sent me back this back. But how do you want me to handle that and what did you tell her? I was like, and I looked at her face and she just starts laughing and she was like, I know it messed up, whatever, but that now it’s awkward. Can we go? So we got together the three of us and I’m like, Hey, I know you didn’t mean to say whatever, but less what would have happened if that person did not view it that way? If they were offended by what could happen?

Well, I mean there’s a lot of potential. I mean that’s a, I mean it was bad. So harassment is that her manager, I mean we’d gotten into all kinds of fun conversations about that. It happens. Is it the threshold? Was sexual harassment without her saying, that’s offensive to me and please don’t do that again. Or is it just the first pass? Makes it, makes it sexual harassment? I think it depends on how egregious it is. I mean

it was a beautiful, and it meant to say shoes, it rhymes with, it was not shoes. True story. And I just remember going

as a boss, I mean cause now you have two employees doing this. Let’s say, let’s say he is a supervisor. I’ve heard, let’s just go that scenario. Okay. And he says that he’s doing the voice thing and does that, he’s driving in his car. Hey Theresa, you had, I just wanted to comment, doing a great job and Oh by the way, he had beautiful shoes, beautiful shoes. And then he sends immediately back. Oh my gosh, I meant shoes. How I as a boss, and let’s say that comes to me and two of my employees have this and they come to me. How does the boss handle that? Oh, I think you, you admonish the person sending the text saying, Hey, you need to be more careful. You make sure everybody’s on the same page, that that was not the intention here. This was an auto-correct feature. So you can get that on the table. Um, any right sexual harassments, usually unwanted advances and you know, it’s tied to some favor at work or something. First thing at work, there’s also hostile work environment, which means even without that, if you’re in an environment where that happens regularly or too much, um, then you know, it could support some sort of hostile work environment claim. So you know, I think that one’s one of the easier ones. But what happens if that guy doesn’t catch it and it just, dude, it lays out

and it was like a laugh out loud thing where I was like [inaudible]

ah, this is worried. This is the real stuff that’s happening out there in the real world. Okay. And so he says that doesn’t even, and he’s driving as even double checking just to go back and do it. Okay. Now, is it her responsibility then to raise the red flag and say, don’t do it? Because now all of a sudden, let’s say she all of a sudden gets involved in it and then go back and forth a little bit about her shoes. No shoes. Okay. Yeah. And then all of a sudden, um, you know, a year later

they’re offended. They’re no longer together. They’re not talking her work.

It goes down and she gets released from the business and then all of a sudden she goes, Oh, by the way, my boss has been telling me for the last three months or the six months ago, how, how good my quote unquote shoes look, I’m suing you for sexual harassment. I mean, so where, where is the boss as the person that’s, this is good buck stops with me. Right? Where, where now all of a sudden does that. How do I get involved with that first? If you don’t know about it, you can’t. Right. But then again, it’s kinda like the, if they’re involved in this back and forth, back and forth, silliness. Cause that’s what it is. It’s silliness. Right? Um, at what point do you, then you have to take it serious because now all of a sudden she’s fired. Now she’s mad. She finds an attorney, which I know is not you, Wes.

Several of them out there that would look at those text messages and says, Oh my gosh, your boss was telling you that you’re, we know it’s not shoes, but we’ll continue to say [inaudible] purposes. Yes. Air quotes. Shoes. Yeah. And it wasn’t the way the most sincere guy ever, who’s super nice guy. He doesn’t work for any more. But Jay Z, just like a choir boy, it was like, you know what I mean? If you got an email from a guy like that, you’d be like, well, choir boys couldn’t appreciate shoes also. Okay. So as the boss, now all of a sudden you get, you get a shakedown letter from an attorney. Yeah. All right. You know nothing of this, right? It’s back and forth between these two. She gets released, she’s mad, finds an attorney, you get a shakedown letter saying that she’s been hostile work environment, sexually harassed.

She’s got text messages to prove it. Um, what, what do you, how do you handle that? Well, I, I think there’s no good way to handle it at that point. You’re going to have to defend the claim, report it to your insurance, go through the whole process. Um, the way to handle it up front. So one, hopefully you have some sort of sexual harassment policy so you can point to the fact, Hey, you are obligated to report this if it happened right, you should’ve let us know. We can address it two years later. Okay. Um, but the one of the dangers there is she claims or he claims later on I felt obligated to participate. So he says that it’s an accident and turns into a little bit of a flirty conversation going Rob. Oh yeah. And then someone plays the victim later on saying, well they were my manager, supervisor.

I felt I was intimidated. I felt like I had to participate in the crime. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. So, I mean, as soon as you hear of any banter like that, you really have to nip it in the bud because everyone’s having a good time and joking around till they get fired and they’re looking for a reason to come after you. Right. It’s all fun and games. So someone gets poked in the eye, right? Right, exactly. So business owners, you’re listening out there, sometimes you get blindsided. I have been that business owner before. I have two employees that starts off some harmless, maybe a voice message that God, whatever, and then turns into this, you know, whatever, whatever you call that, you know, flirtations or whatever. And then of course she says why he was above me and the org chart. So I felt odd. I mean all that weirdness then plays into part and I didn’t want to report him because you know, I didn’t want to be targeted. I was afraid of retaliation, I was afraid of retaliation. And now all of a sudden you’ve got a hot mess on your hand and these things happen. So here, getting distracted, just don’t know. It all

comes back. And I, and the reason why I’m saying I’m betting on this because some people out there are in a situation, um, unlike you and Maisie where they have to email because they’re in a culture where their boss will not listen to this show. Their boss is dysfunctional and their boss spends their entire day emailing. Um, and some people are in a situation where you can control it. And so I’m trying to get both sides of the, kind of the rules here. Sure. So rule number eight, if you’re scoring at home, the rule number Osho is don’t email humor. Just try to stay out of there. It’s hard enough to deliver it in person, but just, just stop nine don’t hit send unless you want to read it again. Now this is something I’ve done and I move. I’ll see if I want some buddy.

If I want to know who’s a spy, I will send something in confidence that doesn’t matter. So West, this is a move. You know, you’ll go, Hey, let’s keep this private, but, and you’ll see it’s something that doesn’t even matter. It’d be like we’re going to be moving the desks around soon. We’re gonna change the org. They’ve got the org chart. But the way we’re organizing the floor plan, the phone, and I just want to make sure we don’t tell this coder or any of the other coders because I want, I don’t want to create a dystopia. I don’t wanna create any friction right now. They’re doing a great job coding and I just don’t want to tell them. I want to keep them focused and then I’ll send it just to see who on my team team’s going to send this to the coders. So then the next day coders are like, you’re moving my desk. What in the world are we moving our desk? Why? Why wasn’t I told, Oh for crying out loud, what is going, what is going on? Say you go to the digital mole and you say, Hey, did you send the email? No, no. That’s a good way to check for a mole. But if you hit digital mall seriously, but if you, if you hit send, you’re going to read it again. Are you not with,

absolutely. I mean, one, if it’s professional, you should be reading it for typos, you know, anyway, because you get go anywhere to read it. But also you want to recheck the tone, how it’s going to be received by the other person. Because sometimes you write an email and we read it back. It sounds harsh, even to yourself. You’re like, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa. I should reword that a little bit. Um, so yes, you definitely want to check it twice or three times before you hit send, because once it’s out there, you’re not getting it back.

Okay. I’m going to go back to the [inaudible]. I’m gonna come back to the queue. Let’s do it. Yeah. More times than not. The whole thing about the blue beautiful shoes, by the way, is just get the story. This woman was very conservative and never wore bright shoes, and she wore these really bright red shoes or high heels and she never does that. Sure. And so it was kind of a joke to say something about them, but he sends the email, Hey, great, whatever. Thank you so much. And you have great. You had beautiful shoes and it’s a joke that everybody who was there would say, Oh, that was funny. I get ha ha, but it did not come across that way and let me tell you, it branded him as a weirdo in the office and I felt bad. But ultimately the reason why he had to leave, he pulled me aside about six months and he’s like, it’s just too awkward.

Like I just like everyone thinks I sent that and I didn’t and I didn’t mean it that way and it was just awkward. And so I helped him find another job and it was awkward. It’s awkward. And going back to Osho number eight, going back a step on the, on the humor, more times than not, it’s an image. It’s a picture of something in emoji that you think is super funny and yet someone sees that and is super offended or not. It’s always a political thing. It’s always a anti Obama anti-Trump kind of Charlie Sheen’s super sexual kind of bowel movement or some. There it is and it’s just like, it’s a picture, an image. It’s a cat video that’s in a pro. Hey, did you see Isaiah? I know you didn’t, but I’m gonna ask anyway. Did you see Adam Sandler and concert live? Oh, stop it.

This is a true story. If you do see him with, no, I have not seen him live concert live with he has a movie or no, is it just like performed at the casino live on the Riverwalk. Vanessa got me tickets. It was amazing. He gets out there and he’s like, all right, it starts off his ladies and gentlemen, Adam Sandler will be out first. But, but before he begins, we have other people who, uh, he’s friends with who are contractually bound to be here. So first guy come in and all guys who cannot get a gig now. So it’s like norm McDonald and I guess Adam is a way to keep these guys relevant. Features them in his movies with his Netflix deal and they travel with him. Sure. So he’s like, Hey, I’m OD norm MacDonald high, uh, didn’t have a lot going on.

So I came out here tonight and, uh, I’ve got a couple of jokes. He pulls it like a note pad or something and he’s like, ah, joke one. Uh, so when he tells him it doesn’t work, and he’s like, I got two more a joke number tonight. He had to be there folks. It wasn’t, he does it too. She was pretty funny. Third comes out and he’s like, woo, you know, normally done. Third guy comes, there’s that next guy, it’s Rob Schneider. And he’s like, DALSA you need everyone’s going woo. And he’s like, you know, guys, listen, you know, sad. It is that my entire career can be summed up by that phrase. Yeah. And he’s like, I’m actually a good actor. Like I did. You guys see me in such films as, and no one’s seen like any show, he’s a, he knows it or what about my key, uh, you know, character actor.

And yet no one has seen. And he’s like, Oh good. So he comes out. Well, Adam, uh, David spade comes out. Oh yeah. And he, I don’t know, B is high or he pretends to be high. He probably was high, but he pretended to be high. He comes out there and he’s like, Hey tossa ah, Joe dirt, thanks for making it possible. And everyone’s like, is he insulting us? And he’s like, you know, um, the only thing I regret about coming to Tulsa was, uh, the trip, the connecting flight, um, and just being here and he looks like he’s being high and come and tacking the crowd. I don’t remember what he goes. And I did send a regrettable text to Adam. It’s a comedy show, so you can say whatever, but he is sent a picture of his, of his stuff to Adam Sandler. And so Sandler, he’s like, so anyway, I add him, I’m sorry, but we’re all cool, right?

Everyone’s like, what is this happened? So now Sandler comes out and he’s like, guys, here’s the deal. David and I have a complicated relationship, but he texts me when he needs me. He’s one of my good friends and he sends me about every fifth or six texts or every once a week he’ll send me a picture of that. Just just a test, our circle of trust just to see if I report him just to see if we’re still in union. And he’s like, it’s just, I don’t want to see it. David stop it. And David comes back, guys, Hey I just say something. And then Adam’s like he can’t you do that but I have to check it. Cause it could be about our flights, it could be about our next performance. I have to check it, stop doing you gotta look. And so for them that, that kind of stuff is okay.

But a moment, if those guys had part of that, you didn’t realize that’s an act. I realize it’s an act. But also if you look up the, the, the character of the dudes he hangs out with their whole life is a little crazy. But like Roche brand, I mean if you look up the things he’s done, I mean a little crazy. Yeah. It’s all I’m saying is like that you think about Antonio Brown, the craziness hit that guy lives in. You got to. So again, this is where this goes to text, this goes to email, but specifically email, don’t send the email as a rule. Just don’t, just don’t. Now the next move, move number 10, nothing is confidential. Even if it says the privacy policy. Yes. So let’s get into that West. So let’s talk, because legally I can’t share it, right? Legally you shouldn’t share it, but someone’s going to share it.

Well, yeah, I mean you can’t stop them from sharing it. You can Sue them and try to get damages later. If you want to spend $30,000 to go after a person that probably doesn’t have money to pay you after their win. Um, but yeah, you got to remember any kind of confidentiality agreement, nondisclosure agreement. Sometimes it’s just a piece of paper and that’s, no, that’s all it’s good for. So do not ever rely on those, um, to ensure that sensitive information or you know, comments you want to make that you wouldn’t want the public to read in a newspaper. Those kinds of things don’t ever rely on that. The reason, this is about seven years ago, one member of our team sent an email maybe eight years ago. This is a good one. Z says, Hey, I just want you guys to know this particular designer does terrible work and the word Ryan was, ship does ship work.

Shipping work does not do great work. This person does shift work and I do not and I don’t want them touching my files. Again, exclamation point, sin and their email, when they start started typing their name, I guess it filled in their name, say sent it to the person on the team, they didn’t want to send it to. Oh yeah, that’s a mat. Didn’t go well. That’s a move. And that’s only happened like once a year as a way to remind me that I’m alive every year since emails come out. It’s, it’s constant. Uh, we had one employee on my team Makena and the DJ business, the whole thing was, it’s not HR compliant, but the move was, this guy was a youth pastor and he’s a nice guy and he would occasionally get on Facebook during the day. And one of the employees working for me was a manager and he was like 22, 23.

Okay. So imagine you’re a youth pastor, almost 30. And you DJ on the side. He comes to work and he’s on Facebook, which he shouldn’t be. And the manager was mad at him. Crazy story. This is real stuffed up. So the manager would log into his Facebook page occasionally and post things like, dear family, uh, I regret to inform you that I’m wasting time at work, sinned. And then everyone would see it on Facebook. And the guy realized that this guy doesn’t check his own Facebook posts. So the next couple of weeks, and he comes to me, he’s like, clay, I can’t get this person to stop email. Stop going on Facebook. What do I do? And I said, just write them up. And again, kind of an immature manager. I was probably not the best boss at the time. And he says, okay, I’ll write him up. And he keeps, it just keeps happening.

It’s about four or five weeks. Then they’re physically almost fighting and Vanessa had to break them up. Like one guy had a chair and he was like, I’m going to hit you. And I’m like, what’s going on? Well apparently he wrote like a two page Facebook post that announced to his family that he was gay. He’s a youth pastor and his friends just doing it to deviling? Yes, cause he’s on Facebook so he just logs in and says, dear family, I regret to inform you as a youth pastor for the last five years I have been living a dual life and he just flipped two pages. Oh wow. And he had said this would be like in 2000 maybe 4,005 whatever it was. And the guy doesn’t check his Facebook, he just goes there to post, but he doesn’t see what people are writing. Well.

By the time his wife calls him at the office, this is like when cell phones were kind of still not super popular. Eh, everybody in the church has formulated an opinion. Pastor has called for his resignation. I mean it’s like cook, cook, cook, cook, cook, cook. And it’s funny now cause it’s so far off, right? It wasn’t then and probably still not now, but it was crazy. And these guys are like fighting. He’s like, yo see why ain’t getting it? And I get, I say nothing is confidential. You gotta be careful even keeping your email account open because your Facebook. I see people, I see this is millennial jokes all the time. I see millennials do this to each other all the time. We have a lot of millennials in our office. I see this constantly. Well they will. They will if you leave your phone out and it’s unlocked.

I see other employees that have done, usually every couple, every four or five months, someone will go on Instagram and post something crazy and make it look like it’s being posted from them or we’ll email their contact. Something crazy. I’ve seen this crap happen a lot and it’s kind of like practical jokes in college they would, this is a practical joke, but if you’re a young employee, you’re 25 it’s not a joke anymore. Z, talk to me about just confidentially of email cause you know if someone could send an email from your account and make it look like it’s from you, if you’re not careful and gets you in trouble, we can play those games. We had a big shock at one of my businesses about three months ago at my auto auction business. Shuck a con and you know it, it would, it would, it’s always the guy that acts like he’s the most tech savvy. Right? It’s always that guy. Oh, falls into the hole. I mean it just, it’s Murphy’s law. It’s whatever you want to call it. Right? He’s the most tech savvy. So what they do is it’s nefarious, but they send out these emails to get you to click on to, they can a worm

or a virus into your system to hold you hostage, to come in and take over your data, download your data, get your information from your, you know, your banking account, your people that you’re doing business with. And then they send you an email. I’ve got all your stuff held hostage. I’ve, I’ve, I’ve got you, and now pay me some exorbitant amount and I’ll release it to you and never bother you again. That’s, that’s the move, right? Yeah. I mean you see it all the time, but what it takes is somebody on your team click on that email that they send, did they send it trickery? They send it like, Hey, you just won. Or Hey, you

for your team to log on to that bad boy

do is they hack into somebody else’s. Yeah. And then from that, somebody, here we go, that sends emails out. So you look and you go, Oh, it’s from Betty Sue and Betty Sue’s a good friend of mine and Betty’s who’s always sending me good cat videos. So I’m going to click on this and see the today’s cat video, right? And they’d click on it and next thing you know, here’s the virus into the business, because now they’re on there. They’re at work, which I know is crazy that they’re in their personal, no at work, no, no, no cause personal and business email. We’re going to use it for the same thing, right? So, um, so then they click on it and next thing you know it’s on your servers at business, we caught it quickly. We were able to stop it before it got to the point of bad and we lost a days worth of data because of, because would shut it down, just clear out that day and then go back where a heartset was. But it was some serious stuff.

Not good, not good. Now here’s, here’s email to have fun. Three final email tips here for everybody. And I’m going to go with Z than West and back to Z. Okay. All right, so here we go. And by the way, if there’s any final email tips you guys like to share, feel free to do that. We put a bow on it, but here we go. Tip 11 watch for passive aggressive people. Watch for passive aggressive email poets, watch for these passive aggressive email people, these people who are kind of wordsmiths and if you read the email you can sense the dissension starting and they sent it via email. So as an example, I remember one guy sent me an email years ago, this was the email it said as a Christian boss, I am glad to see that you only cursed twice in today’s meeting. And I would like to bring up two concerns I have about the culture reply all, send to many people.

Here we go. Here we go. I was never acknowledged in the meeting for my feedback about the product development and to a core decision was made while I was skiing. You know what I mean? That kind of thing. And if you’re somebody who doesn’t like emails like myself and you are quick to delete them, like done, done, done. You don’t see something. They don’t have the courage to say to your face occurring via email. You see what I’m saying? Cause people are more courageous via email. If you notice that they’re kind of little more poetic, little more courageous, a little bit crafty, little more crafty. A little keyboard warrior, keyboard, warrior. I might be person can old meek, but the keyboard warriors, can you talk to me about looking for those passive aggressive poets where you go, Oh wow, this person just quit mentally right now they’re saying to my face, they’re all in. But this right here, I could see that this is a, you know what I mean? You’ve seen this before. The beginning of the end,

I, I see this all the time and I had a person who owns a business, 50 50 partners with somebody else and they wanted to continue having face to face meetings and dealing with the day to day of the business and their partner said, Oh no, we’re not going to have those anymore. Everything needs to be done via email, via email. I’m Monica, I have any more meetings with you because they can get, they can get a little heated. We can maybe argue at them. I don’t know that we remember everything that’s said. I didn’t really say it that way and you’re quoting me differently now and so let’s say from here on out, every meeting we’re going to have every meeting, every communication we’re going to have is via email and it’s really a sad situation because now all of a sudden you’ve gone to this, so now six, seven email blast back and forth. Now most of the emails are centered around, you know, taking one little thing that was said and spending a whole email on proving how that wasn’t correct or misspelled or did you really mean this? All the passive aggressive stuff you can do while you’re at home having a glass of wine on your lap.

I’ve seen this with you as much, but I’ve just seen this with attorneys. I say as much, I haven’t seen this at all with West, but I see this with attorneys where a business coaching client will come in and go, my attorneys sucks. I’m like, your attorney sucks. Why do they suck? Look at this email. You don’t have like one air and like a man, you know, a massive, very articulate and attorneys by the way are humans. And if it’s like a 25 page document and the word and instead of a or whatever it is, you know, uh, if the word the is omitted, you know what I mean? See, it’s like one air, people go, it’s an, it’s unprofessional. So I want to go into tip 12 be beyond the bait, the be that be beyond the bait. Here’s the bait. And I’m sure this has never happened to you, just other attorneys.

I thought you were more professional. What are we paying for? If you’re going to spell something wrong, I don’t know. I’m sure you’ve never had this kind of conversation, but you know what I mean? You’re, you’re working with a dentist or a lawyer or maybe a dentist, a doctor, a some professional. And you spell one thing wrong and that’s what they go for and that’s, and that’s what they focused the message was, we’re asking you a critical thing. Hey, we need to make a decision on this. The clock is ticking. We must make a decision because of this litigation, this thing. And they respond. I thought it was more professional. I’ve lost confidence. I’ll need to review this. You ever had that West?

Yeah, I mean of course I make mistakes. Sometimes you miss, you miss typos, you must do those things. My favorite though is probably when you’re dealing with other attorneys and so this is a move you see sometimes, Oh here we go. It the passive aggressive. So you’ll have a 30 page document, you know, we’re doing a $20 million purchase agreement and the other side will send it to their attorney for comments and the comments come back with optional grammar correction. So you should have had a semi colon and not a comma there or [inaudible]. I don’t think, you know, I think you want to not just put us, but you need to put print. These parentheses are Brown. The S in case it’s singular or plural. And that’s when we attorneys say to our business coaching clients, that’s just an attorney trying to earn the hourly billing cause they couldn’t find anything else to point out and they wanted to justify their existence. Um, but that’s a good way, you know, where, or instead of, you know, reaching out and calling the other side as a colleague and saying, Hey, I think he’s got a typo here. It says 2018 it should be 2019. Um, you point that out in an email to the bank, the attorneys, all the business coaching clients just to say, Hey, case you forgot what year it is. It’s 2019 so you might get your stuff straight. That kind of stuff

fall into the bait. Now you’re going back and forth BB on that now, but the tip 13 Z, stop manic emailing. You know, where you’re clearly [inaudible] out of control and you’re just sending emails over and over and over. And this is what I see in my inbox virtually every Monday. Hey, I noticed an error on my website. Trust me. I know. Listen to this. I built your website 10 years ago. Okay? I built your site in 2008 nine seven eight nine whatever year it was. You’re not a business coaching client. You live in Florida. I know there’s this air on your site. They’ll say, here’s an air on the site and I need this fixed. Well, I don’t know who you’re hosting your site with, whatever. So it’s, this is sent usually Friday, like at let’s say five 30 then it Friday at five 45 Hey, I respect, I expect a response. This is my whole business we’re dealing with here Saturday morning. Hey look buddy, this is my third email. Unprofessional. Saturday at noon. Come on man. Now, little curse words worked away and you’re such a, you’ve always been up Sunday morning. This is the [inaudible] all time. It’s so funny. I found the passwords, my bad. They’re in Dropbox like you said. I’m sorry. I see this all the time. Time I see this man at collide arc of like crazy, crazy.

I’m good and I’m good. Do you see this West? I mean, do you see this? You do. You see that? And that’s the thing about it is people that for some reason they want to send to you while they’re processing what it is they need to do. And I’m not sure if I, if they spent the time on going to Dropbox to get in the password and fix it themselves, they would have never had to do that, but can’t log onto Facebook. I need the password. I still can’t log on. I can’t find, I can’t find it. Oh, I found it. I had the caps lock on. Sorry. Oh, I didn’t have it. Yes. Oops. And why? That is why. That is why that is. Clay is something that we need. It’s something, it needs to be eradicated. Something that needs to be exterminated, something that needs to be fixed. And that’s why we do the show.

That’s why we do this, because it’s what we do in this show. And I’m going to read for you. If we help one person eradicate it, we’ve done our job. I’m going to read notable quotables from very successful people and then Z, I’ll give the floor to you. And then to West and we’ll put a little bow on today’s show. So here we go. Bill Bellacheck. When asked about his social media, his email has Facebook, just his digital device, how he handles it. He said, I don’t Twitter, I don’t to my face and I don’t your book. Thank you bill. Bill, check six NFL championships to you on the Patriots and two with you on the giants for a total of eight. He’s doing well. Tim Ferriss, bestselling author of the four hour work week writes true freedom is much more than having enough income. It’s about having time to do what you want.

Well, if you don’t have, if you have all the money in the world, but you sit there and like spend your whole day even on the beach emailing all day, do you really have time freedom? I mean, Tim Ferris also says doing something unimportant well does not make it important like that. I see a lot of people who get their inbox down to zero and they respond to every email. So I’ll just tell you with my life and I’ll turn it over to Z. I had a listener, I can try to give you old examples. Ones that are longer than two years ago, so I don’t get myself in trouble was what’s the statute for verbally sharing too much candor on a radio. Shows it two years. Is it three years? Is it seven? Is it 12? I probably like five to be safe. Okay, we’ll go five.

That’s good. That’s good. Why couldn’t do it for the show? Okay. I can do one. Okay, here we go. I did public speaking years ago. Um, we used to travel around speaking and I did a conference speaking of it for a major company, fortune 500 company and the event planner who booked me a nitro, said it’s the best event that we had in a long time. Thank you. Is it Caesar’s palace? It’s a great, great event and a very happy paid very well. It was about a $10,000 event. A great 200 people there. Good job. One woman, uh, sent me an email that said something like you preaching about the importance of, you know, running checklists and systems. We’re not a bunch of robots. You’re just a jerk and you know, big old one. But I got all these take cues from people. I got claps.

Oh yeah. But I got one email. Oh sure. And uh, it couldn’t stand it. Well actually I was to a place in my life at this point in my life, I got towards her. I didn’t, I didn’t care. Okay. So I just hit delete. But back to my DJ career, which my DJ career, most of it didn’t happen on social media, but there was a website called [inaudible] dot com not.com was Kellogg, a review site for wedding businesses or unlike wedding wire, that kind of thing. And people would write on their best DJ ever. The bright people who paid me would always say, I love the DJ, cause I always, my goal, I am, I wrote, my rule was I’d meet with the bride and groom, clarify their expectations. And as long as the bride or the person paying me was happy, I was happy. Sure.

But as you know, and when you’re deejaying, this is what happens at every show. Uh, Hey man, I’ll tell you what I used to DJ back in college. What kind of speakers you get? Sure. Jamie, you were, I’ll tell you what, Sherwin Vega, I mean that’s the only real thing out there. You’re trying to save some money or what? Cause rockin field of sound quality. Uh, well do you have a request? Well absolutely. I want to play a golf Brooks, the dance. I’m like ah, the dance. Yeah. Well the bride wanted us to keep it kind of upbeat. No country on the list. You said. Well I’ll tell you what. You play the dance play the Dane. Well the bride is the one paying me. She said don’t play the dance. Wow. You, you ain’t going to play the dance. No, no I’m not gonna put it now they’re getting these people who have had like seven beers cause it’s like 11 o’clock at night at a wedding.

They’re from out of town. They’re pretty emboldened. Or the lady would come up and go, could you play Dolly Parton? I will always love you. Cause that’s the better version than Whitney a man we’ve already played at once. For you via request, but could you play it again please? We really, I mean, so you didn’t, then they would go on to wedding wire or the knot and just complain. And I used to at a young is a young man. I felt the need to respond to every complaint tactfully. So I would be like at two in the morning after I got a round of applause and a tip going, Karen, the bride wanted to play no country. And that’s why we didn’t thank you for your feedback. I appreciate you Carl. Thank you for the intensity and the directness of your passion for Garth Brooks. And unfortunately the bride requested no Garth Brooks and so, and it would never get done because you’re teaching for 200 people, four of which felt the need to write a comment almost every show, every show, and then you have no time freedom. So I learned as a default, thou shalt not email, thou shalt not comment, just get out of here.

Yup, you’re right. And the thing about it is, I don’t know why, and West could probably answer this, why people would say what they would say to an email and never ever said to your face, that’s the thing that gets me, is that people will will call you out though. They’ll criticize you, they’ll fuss it stuff. They’ll, they’ll try to, you know, give that passive aggressive less.

Oh wow. See another in-vitro coming in,

another habit, another one’s passive aggressive intro by clay. Wow. And, and they’ll do that behind their keyboard and then they hit sinned, finish their beer and go to bed and think they did a really good thing. And yet it leaves a trail. It, it leaves a Mark. And if you weren’t dumb enough to read it, I don’t, I just hit delete, delete, delete anymore. You know, it’s kind of like, Hey, if it’s important, they’ll come back, circle back around. They’ll call me though. They’ll get to me somehow or another if it’s super important, you know? But I just, I always kind of questioned that. Go, why did they, was it, is it a release for them? They feel like, okay, I’ve released it, I’ve said my piece and that’s good. And I know I can go to bed. I mean, what, why are they doing that, clay? I mean, Wes, well I think part of it’s a little cathartic. Um, I think some of it though is just a lack of courage. Um, I find in my office sometimes, you know, someone will tear into my assistant who’s usually female

tear into her. I mean, you know, they usually you’ll go ladies maybe five or under ish.

There’s a, it’s a mixture I think trying to get a make and model of as typical assistant. Um, you know, no, they, they vary in age, but for some reason, uh, they, they feel comfortable just to tear into them. You know, you’re horrible. You’ve dropped the ball, you’re, you know, a piece of work, you know, horrible service. So I pick up the phone and call them and they’re like, Oh, attorney Carter, how are you doing today? I’m so happy you called the attorney Carter. They’re just overflowed with, Oh, sure. Ooey gooeyness and I’m like, well, I’m calling because you called my assistant three curse words in an email, you know, a little bit earlier. And I wanted to see what the problem was. Oh, there’s no problem. You know, that was just [inaudible] I was in a bad mood. And I’m like, okay, well, um, if that ever happens again, you know, we’re not going to be representing you and that that’s not acceptable. And all of a sudden they’re just, they’re crab walking backwards and backwards. So I was, you know, you get the, you get the courage that you don’t have to look anybody in the eye. You don’t have to worry about someone retorting and firing back at you and um, you just get a little bit extra courage than you do. Looking at someone in the eye and talking to them,

you know, I have a friend of mine and what to do is own, they’re crafting one of those kind of emails. They, they don’t, they don’t hit sinned and they don’t hit, it’s not actually addressed to the person they’re going to send it to. They address it to themselves in case they actually do hit sin in a moment of whatever, and then they sleep on it. They get the next day with a fresh mind, fresh look, reread it. Nine times out of 10 they won’t send it. Or they may change it substantially to tone it down and really make a point that may be needs to be made without all the extra energy that they have right then. Cause they’re so mad. Oh,

and he’ll taught me something, uh, years ago in one of his books he was talking about to the bestselling author talking about if you have something really intense to say as a general rule, write it by the, by the water’s edge. And if you can find it in the morning when the tide comes in, you should say it to the person. So it’s kind of a, obviously if you put it on the water’s edge, the tide comes in, it’s gone, it’s gone. Um, and so I don’t live near a body of water by that, but I’ve, I’ve done this at least probably, you know, 50 times. I’ll write something out with pen to get it out and I’ll set it on fire. And usually the morning I’m like, what wasn’t even thinking? And I have done every time I have made mistakes, but I do want to share it to find a little, little nuggets in West.

I’ll give you the floor to wrap it up here. Gretchen Rubin, bestselling author, New York times bestselling authors, been on Oprah multiple times. I kind of a happiness expert, studies what makes people happy, what makes people upset. She writes, turn off your email, turn off your phone, disconnect from the internet, figuring out a way to set limits so you can concentrate when you need to, and then disengage when you need to. Technology is a good servant, but a bad master T Boone Pickens, who recently passed away, he writes to me, emails are a little bit frustrating. I think that the telephone is much preferred because you get the sound of the voice and the interest and everything else that you can’t in an email. And again, I can give you a notable quotables all day, but the world’s most successful people, um, clearly, uh, are in favor of sending less emails than the average person and when setting them, being more thoughtful about them. What would be your final advice today as we’re sharing with 13 hard rules for effectively managing your email? And specifically thou shalt not email being the main rule.

Well, as a good attorney, I’m going to insert here one caveat exception exclusion. Uh, cause some, sometimes, uh, you know in my profession some probably some of the, you know, you’re an attorney, I’m an attorney contract or something. You’re sending an email cause you want a record of it. And so the retort or the response from a listener is going to be, well I want to make sure I can go back and prove it later that I notify to them or that you know, whatever happened. So the move is, have the phone call, there we go follow up with a short email. You get all the benefits of a phone call, the, the repertoire, the conversation. Right, exactly. I’m just following up on our phone call. We discussed that you will be the one taking care of this period. You don’t have to worry, you know, you’ve gotten all of it out, you’ve sorted it out, but you could still make that record later on down the road if you need to. So that’s kind of a little move to get the best of both worlds.

Well, West, we’d like to add each and every show with a boomer. Are you psychologically prepared for a boom? I am ready. If you’re out there, I’m in West, you can edit. What am I, what I’m going to say here? You can say you can’t say that or you know, you could throw in the caveat here. Um, I, um, know that everybody out there, if you own a business, statistically it is very probable, likely almost a certainty. If you’re doing more than a million dollars a year of gross revenue, you will get sued at some point or have a legal entanglement. Am I, am I off?

No, it’s highly likely.

Okay. Is he, do you agree with that? If you are doing more than a million bucks a year of revenue. Unfortunately I agree with that. Okay, so I can say that the worst time to find an attorney is when you need one. The worst time to be looking for an attorney is when you need one. It would be like, this is a crude analogy, but it’s the best one I’ve got here. It would be like getting to your a wedding night and determining you need to find a bride like Z. It’s midnight. I’m married. I’m not sure who to be. Then we find that bride, I mean it’s a, it’s a, it’s a, it’s a, it’s, it’s a weird time. It’s a weird emotion. It’s a weird panicky thing. Um, the worst time to look at to see if you have fires, insurance, fire insurance is after a fire.

You know what I’m saying? He just a little, little productivity. So I would encourage you to do is I would encourage you to do what I did years ago. I would encourage you to go to winter’s king.com winter’s king.com and to schedule a consultation. Why? See if you like these guys, but while you’re waiting for a response or while you’re on the phone on hold or you’re waiting to call them, go read the reviews and look at their client roster, who they have represented. Um, I believe, and you correct me if I’m wrong, you have represented pastor Craig Rochelle, your firm has, you have as the largest, uh, uh, it’s, it’s, it’s the largest evangelical church in America. There’s 100,000 members of this thing. I mean it’s, it’s huge. Um, Joyce Meyer. Yes. Uh, you guys have represented her at winter’s king.com and my correct. Absolutely. For a very long time.

Uh, brother TD Jakes, Bishop Jakes. Absolutely. By the way, I am very bitter and frustrated that we have not been on the show yet. We are going to make it happen one day close. And when I say bitter and frustrated, I mean I am excited and anticipating it to happen. Yes, there you go. I just heard that raised her hand says I sent an email to you verbally somehow. So all I’m saying is you guys have represented some big people, but business owners, a lot of business owners, and you represent me, which is a, you’re, you know, probably a client that you’re, you’re least proud, represent. So we represent all spectrums of people and uh, my wife engages with you I think on the daily or maybe every other day, pretty close because there’s stuff going on. And Z, is it important in your mind to have a relationship with an attorney that you like?

Absolutely. And that’s, and that’s why you want to go and visit with some, because you want to figure out who you like because when you need one, you don’t have that time freedom of having a lunch or having a free 15 minutes or having the just to go and meet them and say, do I like this person? Do I want them to be my Knight in shining armor? And so, you know, when you’re, when you’ve been served something, it’s panic and there’s time. You know, you’ve got to respond by this, you got to do this. And so you, a lot of times you just take the first one that’s available and that may not be the best choice.

So I asked you right now on a scale of one to 10 how happy are you with your attorney? If you, if you’d say a 10 they’re the best. I’ve had multiple great relationships and interactions with these people. They’ve been with me and my time of need. It’s always been good. Stick with your guy, stick with your, your your lady. But if on a scale of one to 10 you’re ranking them Z, you know like a seven cause a seven is kind of like what you give something that you don’t like, but you want to be nice. You want to be nice in Oklahoma you, you’d say, how was the movie? The movie was terrible. You’d say, what was the this happen now if you’re in Boston you go wait. It’s like a freaking was negative. It’s negative to Obama nation. I tell you what I’ve had, I’ve had bad lobster better than that. I was, it’s like the Eagles, you know. So you want to make sure that you are being honest. On a scale of one to 10 how happy, how happy are you with your current attorney? 10 being the best, one being the worst. And if you’re, if it’s not, if it’s not a 10 I’d encourage you to go to winters King and schedule a consultation and a West. Can I, can I say these things or am I somehow infringing upon some kind of legal rules by, by telling people to check out your web?

Well, you know, I mean I, if it’s not us, call somebody. I mean, we’re happy to always take new clients, but the, the point I think that the listener needs to get is you should have an attorney you love that you enjoy working with that you don’t dread going to because that’s when things get bad. So just plan ahead in advance and find someone that works well with you that you can deal with.

Can we say that on the radio there an attorney you, I mean, you love, I mean, is that, can you actually ever love an attorney West? Is that, is that even possible? I mean that’s blowing somebody’s mind, right? I mean that right there. I mean, it’s like a physical, I feel like you know the love attorney.

So here you go. If you’re out there today, again, capstone thought, go to winners King, check out. See if they’re a good fit for you and thou shalt not email. Remember that thou shalt not email. Okay, we got you gave me, we gave you 13 rules today for effectively managing your email in the world of business. But rule number one above all, above all else, when possible, Z thou shall not email

only when it’s your land. When’s your last source of communication? And then for like professional stuff that you need, you have to send, you know, because I remember back when the fax machine was like, when you send that kind of stuff and now it’s the email move. But if you’ve got nothing else other than pertinent data to send that someone’s expecting, they’re wanting, they’ve asked for, don’t send it. And above all else, if you’ve got a personal angst, write it out. I liked that. The old school, I mean, I would get a big old Indian tablet who, you know, with a number two pencil, Oh, that was a nice sharpen, but a stone tablet, sharp sucker up riding. Now you’re worn out. You’re like, I only got the first sentence.

And then sit on it, sleep on it. And if you still feel like you need to communicate, then pick up the phone and call or schedule a coffee or schedule a time, you know, Hey, I need 10, 15 minutes of your time to talk about something that’s in my mind, very important. And it’s, it’s a, an appropriate person that you’re talking to, you know, um, like you said, clay, a lot of times someone will email you that should’ve gone through a supervisor or gone through a manager or gone through somebody else and that email is just wasted on you. Cause one, you’re gonna delete it, not even read it. And two, they’re not going to get done what may need to get done. And so always go through the proper channels, try to email last resort only if it’s dad or personal stuff. And for goodness sakes, folks do not have a long conversation vis-a-vis texting, email, Twitter.

This is not the way to communicate. And I know right now our society today, today, I was so frustrated this morning, I got up, I got to add this in right now. I called some people needed me to do some stuff and I called him, nobody answered the phone. And I was just like, Oh my goodness, phone Shunda you know, answer the phone. We got to get this thing, you know? And I don’t want to take the time to type it out and then render it. Did I get it right to do this or that? Just pick up your phone, you know? And so you leave a message and then they call you back and then you get handled. You know? But I’m kind of old school, talk it out, talk, hear their voice, get the thing settled and get the thing done and then move on in life. This endless communication of what did you mean by that? And what’s this email thread? Let’s email doom loop. And I like calling the doom loop is a doom loop. So what given you practical ways to get back your doom loop, get control of your life? Yes. I mean, because when you said that earlier, that 11 hours are spent on screens, 11 hours a day. Half of that is email mailing the email equivalent. What are you doing folks?

[inaudible] of the highest order. Hopefully it ends for you today. And Z. We like to end each and every show with a boom West star. You’re ready? I’m ready. Z, are you ready? And remember these mikes pop now it’s a hot mic. Hot. You’ve got a backup. As I said to him. Here we go.

Great.

No shout, not Ybor. Oh, shout nah.

I feel like you’re really singling me out here. I email all the time. I forward Chuck Norris jokes. I match my employees via email.

I provide for the system

boys via email. I deliver feedback to my employees via email. I try to lead my team via email. I try to deal with legal situations via email. You’re so harsh. I just do everything via email. I thought your voice.

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