What's More Important, Justice or Productivity?

Business Brain the Entrepreneur Show Episode 443 for Wednesday, April 26, 2023. Greetings, folks and welcome to Business Brain, the show by, for and about entrepreneurs. We really take our business brains here and apply them to all kinds of different scenarios in our lives. In your lives, when you send them in, it might be a business scenario, it might be a personal scenario. It's our lives. So it's all one. And we try to get a little bit of perspective through the business Brain. Sponsors for this episode include thinkific.com businessbrain, where you can go to get one month of Thinkific plus for free. Well, talk more about that in a moment here. For now, here in Durham, New Hampshire, using my business Brain, I'm Dave Hamilton.

And out in sunny California, I'm Shannon Jean. I like that comment about Business Brain. You know, we changed the name of the show not because we have these giant business brains. People always say I have a big head, but that's another conversation altogether. But that we all should be using the skills we've acquired in our business lives and applying it to all areas of our life, like you said.

Yeah, no, it's, it's, it's. We, yeah, we, we sometimes are good with our business brains, but even when we're bad with them, we know the value of applying them regardless. And that's what this, that's what this show's about. So.

And, and it's a collaboration two ways here, right?

Absolutely.

We're, we're trying to teach you some stuff. We hope to learn from you. We learn from you all the time. Your feedback at BusinessBrain show really helps us. And, and we want to keep that going.

Absolutely. We have a scenario from one of you about that was sent in here about the rental from hell. And this definitely is worthy of filtering through the business brain. This actually happened in sunny California, Shannon. And I believe it's still actively happening. Two folks, a couple who are actually planning to get married, at least it says so in the article, decided to move out of LA and rent a house in La Quinta, California, which is like between like Palm Springs and like Coachella or something, like a little community or whatever, they wanted to get out. They, they wanted to plan their wedding. They, one of them wanted to write a book, the other had some other stuff to do and this was going to be a great place to do it. So they found this house. They rented the house for, for whatever reason. The way it worked out, they actually paid the full 12 months rent up front, plus security deposit was about 4 grand a month in rent. So it was like $52,000 they paid upfront. And after they moved in or as they moved in, they realized something. And I'm not sure that this matters, but I'll throw it in. Since it seems to be at the peak of this article on Business Insider, you can of course get the link it Business Show Co. You could at Business Show Co. Really, the URL we like to use these days is businessbrain show, but the other one still works. The property is owned by a guy named Frank Ferrer, who has since 2006 been the drummer for the band Guns N Roses. I'm not sure that that's relevant, although maybe it is in. In at least in the terms of this, the way business Inside paints, it's.

Been attempted to make relevant. Correct.

Correct.

Yeah.

They wound up having all kinds of issues that the garbage disposal was draining into the dishwasher and it was potentially making them sick. They had all kinds of leaks in the house that actually damaged some of their stuff. The pool filter thing didn't work and was causing the pool. Like there were all kinds of issues. One of the locks on the doors didn't work. The heat didn't work. There's a laundry list of problems that happened over time. Right. While they were living in this house. They, the. The management company that works for the. The owner of the property management company was not as responsive as they could have been. And the, the renters of the house had to go and get some of these things fixed themselves. They were put without a home for a little while because, you know, there was no heat in, in like December or something. And all of this is terrible. All, all of this sucks. Like to have to deal with this. It sucks even worse when you've got a landlord or a management company that's being less than responsive to these sorts of things. I, I had to deal with something. I'll say similar, although there's no world where anyone would agree with that as the right term for like five days in an Airbnb where there were all kinds of problems with this Airbnb and the management company, tried as they might to help, finally just stopped responding to us because the owners of the property were not responding to them. So they really had nothing that they could do for us. So I like it sucked for a week to have to deal with these sorts of things. I can only imagine what this poor couple went through. So all of that is fine. I mean, it's not fine, but it is the facts. They have sued this landlord and are, you know, using the press as, as they can. Evidently we're now part of this, Shannon, to bring attention to this so success. But they were given the opportunity to have their last, almost the last half of the lease bought out from them to just move out at one point and they decided not to because they wanted to get to seek some accountability here for the property owner. They, they, they wanted it. There's some version of justice seeking in here and trust me, as a fellow justice seeker, you know, I feel this. I, I've been here and, and they've continued to stay there, I believe according to the article on a month to month lease because that's what happens when a lease expires in California. It turns into. According to the article and are staying there while still pursuing this accountability.

Yeah.

And so what I want to do, Shannon, is maybe put our business brains on this and, and see, see if we can come up with perhaps a, a good way to look at this if, if that works for you.

Yeah, I, I have a lot of, I have many thoughts on this. You wouldn't, you might be surprised or not, but it, you know, obviously it sucks. It's a terrible situation and, but there is that and I'm sure we've discussed it here on the show, this, this sense of justice versus moving forward kind of thing. And, and I think there is a balancing act with there and that's kind of this tightrope that I think that this discussion has to, you know, balance on.

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I will acknowledge this, like, this is awful. However, as someone who is a, an admitted justice seeker, I love the idea of people needing to be accountable for their actions and so many people don't want to be. I totally understand that part of the tenants chosen direction here. However, I was given a piece of advice, maybe, I don't know, probably close to 20 years ago by you, Shannon. And it was as I was getting involved in my first legal proceeding that wound up turning into a lawsuit. I, I filed the lawsuit in, in that case and you told me, you said, because I'm like, oh man, I'm, I'm right on this. You know, I like. And you said, yeah, okay. And we didn't know each other. We hadn't known each other that long. It was, you know, we were early on in our, our partnership with deals on the web. And you said, hey man, I'll tell you one thing. Lawsuits are like spiders. They get into every aspect of your life whether you want them to or or not. And that has stuck with me since then. And it proved itself true not once, not twice, but three times because I've been involved in three lawsuits. I had justice served once. I was able to serve justice on, on, on someone with a lawsuit at one point. And the fascinating thing was, was my attorney's reaction when that happened. That was, it was super informative because there were three attorneys that were working on this on my case. Every single one of them was shocked. There was probably close to a hundred years of legal experience amongst the three of them and every one of them was shocked. They told me justice has almost never served. You know, the quote, unquote, best outcome that any of the three of them ever expect is a decent payout. That's it. That's the version of justice that you're going to get. You're never going to see somebody be held accountable. You're never, unless you consider the payout accountability. And in some ways it is. But you know, they were just shocked that it actually worked. And I had to like I, as we all should, you know, I used their expertise, but I guided that, that, that lawsuit because I knew how to get this person that I wanted to. Well, it was a company that was, that was, had wronged us and so we were going to wrong them back and we did get a bunch of money out of them and also sort of wrong them back in the process or made them face their own wrongs. If I had not done that, I don't think it would have worked out that way because my attorneys would never have bothered. It would almost have been malpractice for them to, to, to pursue justice when they know that that's not going to happen. We, you know, proved them wrong. But so like I, the lesson that I have learned that I would love to share with the folks that are going through this and, and anyone out there, especially if you haven't yet been involved in anything like this, you get to pick justice seeking or productivity and you only get to pick one because while you're out there seeking justice, you are going to be like non productive at your business. And this can go on for years. It's a massive distraction. To your original point, some 20 years ago it is.

And it's massively expensive. And yeah, even, even if you get the money back, the guarantees of anything.

Well, the cost of time. Yeah. Is exactly. Yeah.

And if you haven't been through anything like, like this, you know, you, you just don't know until you experience it. And hopefully you'll pick up tips from a couple people that have a good attorney will try to do anything unless you've really been grievously wronged or you know, stolen somebody, you know, there's, there's certainly cases where you're like, oh, I have to go and fight and do this kind of thing.

And I, oh, sometimes your, your back is in a corner. The first lawsuit when you told me that I actually believed you. But the, it was about a piece of software that was critical to the way we used our business and would have cost us about 500 grand that we didn't have. And so, but it was something that, at least in my opinion, I felt like we had earned because of, you know, the, and I could go into the details but, but I won't. And, and so it was like, well, we either fold up shop or we file this lawsuit, you know, it was back against the wall and, and we did. And it, in the end, it worked out fine. The attorneys got paid, nobody else got paid. But we were able to run our business and get the software that we needed to run. So, like, it worked out as best as it possibly could. But I would never have called that. That one was not the one that ended in us, you know, getting justice. But we got what we needed, so we had to do it. But it was a massive distraction and definitely hurt us in terms of just distraction time.

Yeah, yeah, I'm, I'm just a huge fan of having gone down this road a few times of, you know, mitigate, mitigate, mitigate. How can you. You're in a crummy situation. How do you get yourself out of it and move on and keep on the path of being productive, building success, keeping a positive framework on things and optimism because these kind of things suck you into negativity. And that has it. It's priceless on the opportunities that you miss when you're sucked into this negativity and you're not out there looking for new deals, new whatever, new business, trying to figure things out. It's all encompassing, or at least it can be. And it does take out a chunk of your time every single day because you have to do it. And then, you know, you're paying someone else or a group of other people crazy amounts per hour to represent you. Mitigation is trying to, you know, minimize the pain and move on and don't make that mistake again. Don't pay the rent in advance for a year. You know, when you start to have problems, maybe there's something else you can do when it comes. Come and offer you a way to mitigate and give you three months or whatever rent. Take it and get on with your business, your book, your whatever.

Yeah. Plan your wedding plan, your like, you know, like there were so many things reading this article. It was like. And again, I get to read it as an objective third party. I have no skin in this game. Right. You know, and so looking at it, it's like the answer is so obvious to me. And yet simultaneously, I completely understand why these people are choosing to dig in. Right. And, but, but unless they are independently wealthy, you know, the. Or have a ton of disposable income that they are able to continue earning while digging in like this. It, like justice is, is. Is a, is an expensive game.

Very.

Yeah.

Yeah. And there's no guarantee, you know, so it's like that there's that phrase about revenge, you know, it's like you're eating the poison, thinking it's going to hurt the other person. It doesn't. It doesn't work. You know, and you're bitter and angry and pissed off and. But, you know, these other people are not, you know, you got some famous guy turning around the world, making tons of money, having a time of his life. You got a broker or a property management like us. It's just one little problem. I'm moving on. They're not worrying about it at night. You are.

Yeah. So I remember with, with one law, by my most recent lawsuit, where someone sued me, the only time thus far, let's hope it remains this way, the only time I've been sued. And I already knew, like, I had learned these lessons by this point. Right. You know, but when somebody sues you, you don't really have a choice. You know, you kind of have to engage at some level or, or if. Unless there's a path out and, and you can find a path out. But in this case, I chose to engage. I don't want to say I was forced to. I chose to. And I probably should have just walked away in the end, by the way. Yep.

Hindsight. That's hindsight, you know, But.

But this, this person who sued me, shaner attorney, clearly spent a ton of time trying to figure out how they could use this lawsuit to hurt me. Like, they, they actually waited until they knew that I was on vacation with my family to call my attorney and demand all of our discovery and thinking, oh, he's going to have to like. And I heard this after the fact from some people that were sort of, you know, I don't. Playing both sides is the wrong term. In touch with both sides. Right. You know, trusted people. And I was told, oh, yeah, no, they planned that intentionally, thinking that you were going to have to fly home early from your vacation with your family. And I'm like, what an awful thing to do. And that didn't happen. My attorney had all the paperwork. He was playing a game as well. And he's like, well, they haven't given us their discovery and they were the ones that sued us, so they have to go first. So I'm just sitting on it until they go first. And they never did give us discovery, which was super bizarre. But. But he was like, yeah, I mean, you know, he called me while I was on vacation. He's like, they're demanding this. Can we send it to him? I'm like, well, did they send it first? And he's like, no. I'm like, well, no, then. And that was it, you know, but it, it was just fascinating. And those things happen, right when, when, especially when you're the one doing the suing, you, you know, it can be. If you're like me and you seek justice, it can be very easy to like, focus and hyper focus on that. So. Yeah, yeah, don't do it.

Yeah. As a business owner, this kind of conversation I, I often had to have with employees, especially like in the customer service department where you're just, you know, my goal is to take care of the customers quickly as possible, make them happy and move on. But you get, you know, certain people that, and, and you have to admire their loyalty to the company. But they would often have thought, hey, we can't let them get away with this, you know, this kind of thing. It's like, no, no. Yeah, we can.

Yeah. Because we're gonna choose to.

Yeah, let's go. And then we're gonna go on to the next thing and make some more money and build the business and, and not let this person take up hours or days of our time and make an angry enemy that's gonna go online and do all this stuff. And I just know, I mean, I remember them to this day. Awesome employees, but boy, they just would not give up. Like, no, we can't let them do this. Yeah, just move on.

We're going to watch.

Yes. We're going to go. We're going to use the two tokens customer service method and we're going to solve this problem. And then tomorrow we're going to come back and be ready to do something else.

That's it.

Mitigate, man. That's the key phrase for me.

Mitigate. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, man. Well, thanks for listening, folks. FeedbackusBrain show if you want to send in your thoughts about any of this stuff or if you have your own stories to share, things you kind of want to run through the business brain because we're happy to dissect stuff. So send them in Feedback. Feedbackusinessbrain show and if you're email is featured in an episode, you're entered to win a MacBook Air here in2023. Thanks for hanging out with us. Check out thinkific. Com businessbrain and keep living that charmed life. We'll see you next time.