The Eric Metaxas Show - Senator Mike Lee

Episode Date: June 10, 2022

Senator Mike Lee from Utah explains the history and dangers to liberty of court packing, specifically regarding the Supreme Court, and shares his research and opinions from his new book, "Saving Nine."

Folks, welcome to the Eric Mattaxas show, sponsored by Legacy Precious Metals. There's never been a better time to invest in precious metals. Visit legacy p.m.investments.com. That's legacy p.m.investments.com. The Texas show with your host, Eric Mettaxas. Hey there, folks. I like to start the day off, the programming day, by talking to a United States senator. Typically, I fail. Today, not so much, because right now I get to talk to Senator Mike Lee. of Utah, he has a brand new book out, really brand new.

It's called Saving Nine, the Fight Against the Left's Audacious Plan to pack the Supreme Court and destroy American liberty. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Senator Mike Lee, welcome back to the program. Thank you very much, Eric. Good to be with you. Most of us have heard a lot of crazy things, among them, the idea that the left wants to pack the Supreme Court. really destroy America. Let's cut to the chase. They want to destroy America

bypacking the Supreme Court. It's sometimes when we hear these things, they sound so crazy. At least I tend not to take them seriously because I can't bear to take them seriously, but I'm glad that someone like you has taken it seriously. But what led you, a sitting United States Senator, to write a book addressing this threat? Yeah. So, Eric, I started becoming concerned about this, beginning in the fall of 2020, when Joe Biden was debating then-President Trump. And Joe Biden was asked about court packing.

I hoped, I expected, I assumed that the answer would be no, because Joe Biden, as a senator, had always said it's a terrible idea. Basically, every legal scholar, historian, everyone over the last 80, 85 years, has said that court packing is a bad idea. Joe Biden didn't say no. Joe Biden hemmed and hawed so much that I'd worried about it. A few months later, he appointed a commission to look at the idea of packing the Supreme Court. That's when I really started to panic.

Because I realized, we haven't talked about this in a long time as a society, and as far as I could tell, no one had written a book outlining exactly what happened the last time someone tried to pack the Supreme Court, which was Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was the idol of President Joe Biden back in 1937. Now, I realize this story has never been told, and it needs to be told. people need to realize what the dire consequences are. Well, first of all, I myself was unaware that Roosevelt had tried to do this. So let's go back to that. We can deal with Biden later and also hopefully never.

But the question whether this can be done, Roosevelt, who was not nearly as radical as Biden and company, he tried to do this. So tell us what it was that he tried and why he tried. Okay, so I explained in chapters three and four of saving nine that President Franklin D. Roosevelt, as he was moving through his first term in the presidency, was very frustrated because he had all these grand ambitions for his New Deal programs. He wanted to remake the economy by giving Congress and the presidency, sweeping economic and regulatory powers.

Power is over things like labor, manufacturing, agriculture, mining. This was how he was going to become the savior to the American people was by revolutionizing everything. But he had a problem. The Supreme Court pointed out to him that there's nothing in the Constitution

that gives the federal government those sweeping powers. Okay, excuse me. I just have to clarify. I don't get the impression that FDR was a big fan of the founders and the founding vision but to have you spell it out like this, it's a little horrifying to me to think that he had so much disdain, it seems, for the Constitution and the founder's vision of limited and self-government,

that he was willing to do this. I mean, that's just news to me, because that's a very big deal. Yeah, he was bigger than the Constitution as he saw it. And as I explained in Chapter 3 of Saving 9, The ground had already been softened some 20 years or so earlier with President Woodrow Wilson. Woodrow Wilson was the first American president to be openly contemptuous toward the Constitution. Fortunately, the Supreme Court smacked him down, and then he eventually left office, and his programs didn't continue. But the ground had been softened.

FDR picked up where he left off, tried to do this. The Supreme Court started smacking down his programs again, cases like Carter v. Carter, coal company, Schechter Poultry, the court continually reminded the Roosevelt administration, look, you can't treat this as a general purpose national government. It's a limited purpose federal government in charge of just a few things. They had tried to defend many of these under the Commerce Power, Article 1, Section 8, Clause 3, which gives Congress the power to regulate trade or commerce between the states. The Supreme Court said, okay, some of this stuff is commercial in nature, but it's not interstate,

so you can't do it. By the end of his first term in office, Roosevelt was despondent, but more than despondent, he was revengeful. He was angry. He got himself reelected in November of 1936, and shortly after getting reelected, he started plotting, first privately, then publicly, his revenge on the Supreme Court. He attempted to isolate, denigrate, and delegitimize the court as a whole, and especially those justices most determined to stand up for federalism and separation of power. This is when we had originalist judges as a matter of course. We didn't have to work hard to get originalist judges. We just had them on the Supreme Court. So he was plotting against them.

And what could one do politically? What was he trying to do? Okay, so he tried to get him, and that's a great point, Eric. Yeah, we just called them judges then. Judges just interpreted the law and the Constitution based on what they said. But what he decided he could do to them was, first of all, to denigrate the court as an institution and his enemies in particular in various ways. He identified the four most aggressive justices in this direction, and noticed the four horsemen of the apocalypse channeling a biblical image. By the way, that group was spearheaded by a man named George Sutherland,

the only justice ever to come from Utah. a BYU graduate, also a previous U.S. senator from Utah. He hated the four horsemen, and so he denigrated them in particular as too old for the job. After he had denigrated them as being too old for the job for a long time, he said, you know, we need some more youthful vigor on the court. So he developed this legislative plan that would have ultimately allowed him to expand the court to as many as 15 justices. It would have, among other things given him the option of appointing one new justice for every sitting justice over the age of 70. And so this wove into his narrative that the court was old and out of touch. It started getting

legislative momentum. Remember that FDR had very substantial majorities in both houses of Congress. And as it was gaining momentum, the Supreme Court started considering another case, another challenge to another New Deal program, legislation creating the National Labor Relations Board. And on April 12, 1937, the Supreme Court decided a case called NLRB versus Jones and Loughlin Steel Company. In that case, one Justice, Justice Owen Roberts,

switched his vote at the last minute, switched his vote, and joined the liberals on the court to create a new majority for a new constitutional doctrine. They effectively amended the Constitution. without following the constitutional amendment process. And had this been a constitutional amendment, it would have been one of the five most significant amendments ever because it radically transformed the power of the federal government.

Overnight, in one fell swoop, it went from being a government with narrow power to broad power because they just reinterpreted the Commerce Clause to mean that Congress and the federal government generally could regulate any activity that affects interstate commerce. From that moment forward, Congress could pass legislation on basically any topic they wanted, as long as they dotted the eyes and crossed the T's. And so at that point, the court packing plan was unnecessary.

It failed legislatively, in part because it succeeded politically within the court. It scared the justices enough that they switched their votes. Owen Roberts flipped the majority, and FDR got what he wanted. So the lasting lesson here, Eric, is that, as I explain in Saving Nine, court packing is dangerous precisely because it's designed to threaten, intimidate, harass, and denigrate the Supreme Court. And it can have the potential to spark the Supreme Court

to decide cases differently in deference to the president. Obviously, it is fundamentally against this idea we call America. It is frightening. I'm glad that you, Senator Mike Lee, have written a book. It's called Saving Nine. We'll be right back with Senator Mike. Lee. Tell me, Eric, why is relief factor so successful at lowering or eliminating pain? I'm often asked that question. The owners of Relief Factor tell me they believe our bodies were designed to heal. That's right,

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for investing in gold. They can help you roll your retirement account into a gold-backed IRA where you still own the physical gold. They can also ship gold and precious metals safely and securely to your house. Call Legacy at 866-5281903 or visit them online at Legacypminvestments.com. Folks, welcome back. I'm talking this hour with Senator Mike Lee of Utah. He has written a book, brand new book called Saving Nine, The Fight Against the Left, Sadacious Plan to pack the Supreme Court and destroy American liberty.

I have to tell you, Senator, I thank God for you and for the handful of senators and congressmen who are vigilant, who understand. what we're facing. When you talk about the idea that Joe Biden and his administration want to do things like this, this is only one example, but these are horrifying. They're dramatically un-American to the point of being anti-American. It seems that, you know, Marxists have taken over our government, and they're trying to dismantle it from within. It's a little bit comforting when you think that, well, we had this with FDR as well. But of course, he didn't succeed too dramatically.

But it is frightening. And I'm just glad that you're sounding the alarm, that you're aware of this, and that you've written a book, brand new book called Saving Nine. What would Biden need to do to bring this about? And again, this is to me, this is where, you know, when people say, well, it's politics. This is politics in the most negative sense. It's what can we get away with to destroy everything. That's effectively what is happening here. I mean, it's happening across the spectrum, but this is what's happening with the judiciary. Yeah, this is a really devious trick.

And the reason is, Eric, it's an act that is hostile to the Constitution, has the potential sort of like removing the plug from a boat before you launch it to sink the Constitution. And yet, court packing itself is not unconstitutional. It should be, and that's why we've got legislation introduced that would make it part of the Constitution. But as of right now, you can do it statutorily. So all Joe Biden would need to bring this about, and he could pass it in the House of Representatives with a yawn. There'd be no difficulty there. In the Senate, the only real obstacle is the filibuster, which if at any moment they decide to nuke the filibuster or, quote-unquote, recognize an exception to the filibuster in response, for example, to the Dobbs' decision

or otherwise, they could do this on any Wednesday afternoon if they wanted to. That's what makes it so concerning, is that while it's not unconstitutional, it is counter-constitutional, it is fundamentally anti-constitutional. Because our form of government, our constitutional, our constitutional, Republic requires for its existence that we live under the rule of raw, and that in turn requires that we have an independent, neutral judiciary. But this eliminates the neutrality, the independence of the judiciary, and would convert it into a politically controlled body. It would start to resemble the intergalactic Senate in the Star Wars movies, more than a judicial body, and that is terrifying, because it's from there that we lose all of our constitutional structure

structural protections. We lose our Bill of Rights protections. We lose any of these things based on the will and whim of the chief executive in power at any moment. It really is horrifying. We're living at a moment, and I think most Americans, frankly, see this. They see that things have gotten so bad, so quickly that it is possible we could lose America. I think people who have been asleep at the wheel are finally waking up and seeing, you know what? Yes. This could happen. This is not something far in the distance. It could happen now. And they're bad actors, people who really hate the founder's vision of America, who seem to be willing to do anything, including lie. It's disturbing to see. I didn't think I would see it in my lifetime to see people in power, lie, manipulate things, do whatever they can. It must be difficult to be a U.S. Senator. I have to say, I just admire you for being in this.

fight. It is a difficult time, and I'm also honored to do it for whatever reason this is happening. They want to do this. And I see it every day in the news media, in the entertainment media, in academia, and in so many other previously trusted institutions. We're seeing a lack of willingness to engage in truthful discussion. Now, this had long been an interest of mine, starting in college, increasing into law school. It's not really even taught very much in law school what happened in 1937. We sort of brush over that as if it weren't that significant development. But this story hasn't ever really been told. And I decided it needed to be told. The only way we're going to stop court packing from happening. Because it is, right now, it is a when, not an if.

It's almost an inevitability unless we educate Americans on what this really means, why it should matter to them, and why every historical lesson that we have at our disposal tells us to avoid it. I mean, it seems to me that what we have really is many people on the left who don't, they don't merely fail to love America, but they don't like America. There's something fundamental about America that they want to change. They no longer really want it to be America, the America of the founders. And so they don't respect the institutions. They don't respect the traditions of the Senate. They don't respect what we've had. And they really do seem willing to do or undo anything to get their way.

And so when you see Roe v. Wade on the verge of being overturned, as it ought to have been now for 50 years, finally being overturned, they seem to be so bothered by that that they think, well, what can we do so that we don't lose again? It's not an issue of the will of the American people and the machinery that we have been abiding by that we've been operating with for these centuries. They really think that winning at any cost is all that matters, including if I have to destroy the whole thing, if I have to burn it all down. that again, that is new.

We're living in a kind of strange, it's a kind of a civil war in a sense because we've not faced this in our lifetimes. No, that's right. Anytime you have somebody trying to remake the government in their own image, it's very much in their interest to try to commandeer the independence of the judiciary

and bend it to the will of whatever politician is trying to control it. It's what makes it so dangerous. And yeah, I talk about Roe in Saving Nine, and I tell the story about a time when I was 11 years old. My father was serving as President Reagan's Solicitor General, and a busload of abortion protesters showed up one Saturday morning while I was home alone. I tell the story about the argument I had with the woman who appeared to be in charge of them, who introduced herself by saying, hello, little boy, we're not here to hurt you. This is a pattern that we've seen from the left, especially from this far-left. aggressive pro-abortion movement that is willing to stop at nothing. Their message to us that day,

separate and apart from the slogans they were chanting and that were printed on their signs, was simple. It was, we know where you sleep. Look at what's happening right now. This day, this week, these protesters with the same agenda are showing up at the homes of Supreme Court justices. And their message is simple. We know where you sleep. You look at the fact that this individual showed up in the middle of the night at Justice Kavanaugh's home, armed with tools designed to break into his home, armed with a gun and a knife, and he was bent on killing. This is the kind of thing that happens when people lose a grip of what the court is there for, what it is and what it isn't. Incidentally, I have a whole chapter dedicated to that. Chapter one of Saving Nine talks about what the Supreme Court is and what it isn't.

In short, your viewers should read Saving Nine because you'll never lose another political argument again after reading it. Now, I'm not talking here just about another argument about court packing, but another argument that deals with any of the things involving the relationship between the three branches of government or the relationship between the federal government and state government or the relationship between government generally and the people. And see, Eric, that's the part the left doesn't get. The left sees that the country and the government are one and the same. They're not. They're two different things. They also see that right and wrong is necessarily bound up with government. They almost attribute the attributes of deity to government.

But the government doesn't have eyes to see you or arms with which to embrace you or a heart to love you. It knows only force. That's why we've got to be very careful with it. and that's why the independent federal judiciary is so essential. Well, it's interesting. I've only been really awakened to these issues in the last number of years. I wrote a book called If You Can Keep It, where I, for the first time, really understood things

that I ought to have been taught in grade school. Everyone in America ought to understand what exactly it means to be an American, why it is precious and fragile and glorious, and why we want to export these ideas to the whole world. It's just an amazing thing that human beings, two and a half centuries ago, were able to come up with this form of government if we can keep it. The idea, of course, being that laws don't keep themselves, we somehow have to teach this to our kids.

We have to live it. We have to treasure it. And that's really what is at stake. It's what you write about in your book, Saving Nine. We'll be right back final segment talking to Senator Mike Lee of Utah. The book, again, is saving. nine. Don't go away. Hey there, folks. Eric Mettax is here. As you know, our friend, and he's a real friend, Mike Lindell, has a passion to help everyone get the best sleep of their

life. But he didn't stop by simply creating the best pillow. Now, Mike has done it again by introducing his My Slippers. My Slippers, they're unbelievable. I know all about them. But I got to tell you, for a limited time, you will save $90 on each pair of my slippers. They're expensive. You can save $90. This blowout sale of the year won't last order now. He's taken over two years to develop them. The MySlippers are designed to wear indoors and out all day long, made with My Pillow Foam and Impact Gel to help prevent fatigue.

Made with quality leather swayed, call 1-800-978-3057. Use the promo code Eric or go to MyPillow.com. Click on the radio listeners square and use promo code Eric. The offer will not last long, so order now with promo code Eric at MyPillow.com or call 800-978. 3057, 800, 978, 3057. Hey there, folks. Just a couple minutes left talking to Senator Mike Lee of Utah. The new book is called Saving Nine,

the fight against the left, Sadacious Plan to pack the Supreme Court and destroy American liberty. Senator Lee, do you think most Americans understood what they were getting involved in when they allowed Joe Biden to become the president, the president ostensibly. I don't think most Americans are, we're aware, although I think maybe

they are now, many of them, of the radical nature, of the fundamentally anti-American nature of the left. And how folks like Biden, who would have been a centrist some years ago, he's really given himself over to the darkest forces on the left, the most radical forces, doesn't seem to have the ability on any level to stand up against it or to articulate any vision. Do you think people are waking up? I mean, I'm just kind of wondering from your point of view what you see happening. I don't think I've ever seen more buyer's remorse than I have among Biden voters. I think a lot of people anticipated quite incorrectly that he would govern somehow from the middle as a moderate. And they voted for someone who they regarded

is a nice neighborly gentleman who they could imagine having lunch with and enjoying it. I don't think they had any idea the extent to which he had bought off on the radical left's policies that he would be content and, in fact, bent on increasing prices, especially for fuel. I don't think they realized the extent to which he would cause problems and the extent to which he would aggressively pursue angles that are destructive. In fact, just listen to how he handled that debate. First presidential debate in the fall of 2020, when he was asked, would you pack the Supreme Court?

And he said, well, I can't say yes, because if I do, people will attack me. That shows a degree of malice of forethought. That shows that he was thinking about it. He wanted to do it. He just didn't want to admit it. But he kind of admitted it. Not all of us realized that's what he was doing. So, yeah, I think there's a ton of buyer's remorse out there with very good reason.

Well, I don't know if you've seen 2,000 mules yet, but I mean, I think these are the most basic things that everyone in America ought to be concerned, whether it's even possible that corrupt individuals was trying to steal an American election, not from Donald Trump, from the American people. It starts there. In other words, if you're dealing with people who want to win at all costs, who don't have any virtue, any principles, all they want to do is win, you have to recognize that in dealing with them. And when you're talking about packing the Supreme Court, it's just one version of the same thing. There are people who simply don't want to let the American people govern themselves. They don't like the decisions the American people have done. And whatever they need to do, Some of it is really horrifying, and what you talk about in the book Saving Nine is a classic example. They are undoing America, and folks like you are sounding the alarm. I know we've just got a few minutes left. What else do you say in the book Saving Nine that we should touch on today? Well, I talk a little bit about the fact that over time you've seen the Supreme Court demonstrate that it's not infallible. It's made plenty of mistakes.

We've seen liberal judicial activism. Roe v. Wade is a great example of that, and Roe v. Wade was very wrong. You also had conservative judicial activism. In Chapter 3 of Saving 9, I talk about a case called Lochner v. New York, in which five conservative justices on the Supreme Court in 1905 invalidated a New York state law imposing minimum wage, maximum hour provisions into laws governing employment contracts. with bakery employees. They struck that down.

That was a good example of conservative activism. They sort of made up a constitutional principle that wasn't really there, and that caused other problems in the court. By the way, when Roe v. Wade came along, they were using the same legal doctrine, even though Lochner itself had been undone. They used a similar doctrine called

Substant of Due Process, which I explain in the book. But the point is this. Saving Nine is full of lessons that every American should know about, but no Americans essentially are taught in school, not an elementary school, or junior high or high school, not in college, not even in most law schools. But they're in there. They're objective facts, and the American people can learn more about our Constitution and how we can protect that system, how we can oppose and win in this battle to pack the Supreme Court.

So I'd encourage all of your readers. who want to learn more about this country, how its government works, and how we can save our Constitution. They should read Saving Nine. Senator Mike Lee, I know you're out of time. Congratulations on the book, Saving Nine, and thank you for your service. God bless you, sir. Thank you, Eric. Hey there, folks. Eric Metax is here. As you know, our friend, and he's a real friend, Mike Lindell, has a passion to help everyone get the best sleep of their life.

But he didn't stop by simply creating the best pillow. Now Mike has done it again by introducing his my slippers. My slippers. They're unbelievable. I know all about them. But I got to tell you, for a limited time, you will save $90 on each pair of my slippers. They're expensive. You can save $90.

This blowout sale of the year won't last order now. He's taken over two years to develop them. The my slippers are designed to wear indoors and out all day long, made with my pillow foam and impact gel to help prevent fatigue. Made with quality leather swayed call 1-800. 178 3057. Use the promo code Eric or go to Mypillow.com, click on the radio listeners square and use promo code Eric. The offer will not last long. So order now with promo code Eric at Mypillow.com or call 800 978 3057. 8057. 8700, 378 3057. It's not for you. I can finally see the fight. I'd be sad and not for you. Hey, folks, it's that time of the week where we get to talk to the Talbot's Pete and Seth Talbot. You may know them.

as the business geniuses behind relief factor, but they're right here. I don't want to make them feel too good about themselves. Welcome, guys. Listen, every week now we're doing 10, because you represent the Talbot group and you're trying to help businesses, we're doing 10 questions, 10 typical business questions.

And recently, it just has been me and the young man, Seth, here. Yeah, my favorite episodes for the record. Because you've been in Maui getting a tan. That's obviously your business strategy is to look as tan as... Well, I was going to be there, but Skype would not work. Right. And Elbin had trouble with the Skype. Right.

That's okay. We could blame Albin. And so, no. But the important thing is you're here now in New York City. And we are... Okay, I'm just going to jump to the question for business guys. What do you do when you feel overwhelmed, overloaded, and over your skis? Now, you get this question a lot.

business people. They don't even, they know what the problem is. They just know something's wrong. Yeah, we run into business owners a lot who have, through grit, tenacity, obviously quite a bit of intelligence and some strategy have developed something. And then they find themselves way, way over their skis. And I was with a gentleman just recently who has a successful company, you know, eight figures, but said, I'm bad at this job.

It's a generational company in the Seattle area. It's been around for about 40, 50 years. And he said, I don't know what to do with it. And I don't, I want out. But because the company's not run really, really well, he knows that he's going to not get a lot for it. And so that's why he reached out to us specifically. So he's like, what do I do? Yeah.

And this isn't because these business owners are stupid. They just literally, they have some success and they're on a roller coaster. and they built what they built, and now they don't know what to do. They don't know how to sustain it sometimes, or maybe it's failing, or maybe they just don't know how to scale it. They want to go to the moon. They just literally don't. We just had a guy come to us that we're now working very closely with.

He took it to, like, a very successful business, but he couldn't take it to the moon, and he knew it. He said, come on in. Help us. Take it to the moon. Yeah, that's pretty common. And that's the thing is that there's so much effort and time and blood, sweat, and tears. And there's something that they're really good at, typically.

When you take something, be it from a company business or whatever, you grow it, you typically are deep in one area and you don't have enough experience or the resources, frankly, to hire the talent around you you need to fill out for growth. And so those are relevant to both situations. The first one I was mentioning was the provider back in the Seattle area. it's a good company, but he just knew that there weren't enough. The operations were pretty wobbly. Systems weren't in place.

But he loved vendor relationships. He loved taking care of his customers. But actually running the business, he hated and he wasn't very good at. So we're looking at how we can basically create a job for him so that he doesn't have to leave. Because he thought it was kind of a binary thing. Either I just I leave or I sell or I just kind of go down and flames. I said, well, actually, we can we can partner with. you to figure out how we can be executive spackle around where you really want to be.

Executive spackle? You hear it here first. No one's ever said that before. And there's a reason for that. No, that's very funny. So you, uh, okay, yeah. So, so you're, you're figuring out where he can fit into his own company. He doesn't have to leave.

He doesn't have to hate his job. We said, well, why don't we figure out what job you would want to keep? Because he has, when he came to us, he's like, I want out out. You know, he's late, late 60s. And he's just, he is dog tired. And so I said, well, actually, what job would you want if you could have it? And he was, well, I'd want to go and talk about the things you love. And it was actually showing up at his customers' locations to show them new opportunities

and to discuss what they're looking for. And I said, well, you could do that a couple days a week. So how would you like to be able to do that? Because those relationships actually are some of the most critical in the valuation of a business, by the way. Right. because if anybody comes in and tries to buy you, they're going to lose all that. So let's figure out a way for you to want to do that for the next five, ten years.

And then we come alongside and build up those systems, be it sales and operations. We're major gaps for this guy. Sales operations with some obvious finance help so that we could reduce the owner dependence in the business and make sure that we put the right systems in place so that instead of operating at like a 4% margin, we can get them up to the 10 to 12%

that he should be for his specific industry, thus tripling at least the valuation of the business. Okay, so I have to ask the stupid questions. So this is what you guys do. This is what the Talbot Group does. You come in as executive spackle. Well, it depends because some people look at us as marketing. We can help you with obviously fixing, you know, your website, your sales pipeline, your marketing department.

But because we've gone to scale. But you're like business diagnosticians. Yeah, we come along. Yeah, we come in and tell you kind of, we, deconstruct the business. It's a matter of pulling into pieces. You look at the Lego ship that's been built. We're good at taking those pieces apart and looking at, okay, how would we rebuild this if we were starting from scratch? And how do we build this so it maximizes value, reduces owner dependence, and scales effectively and profitably so that you're not just having

a nice, cute little family business, which is great. And that's awesome to have that. But most people, when they get to that level, realize that they run into a ceiling. And again, and they feel a bit over their skis. You know, sometimes people get to the point, business owners get to the point where they think they know it all, they think they're supposed to know it all. A book that I've always appreciated is called Your Opinion Doesn't Matter. You know, Proverbs, and it's written to business owners and ministry developers. The subtitle of the book is only the opinion of the consumer matters.

And so talking about the diagnostics that we do when we step in. Proverbs talks about the wisdom of many counselors, so people need to be able to feel comfortable reaching out to somebody that's done it before. We've done it. We're doing it with others now. And that's sort of our goal. That's our first love. We love helping people.

And businesses grow, build, and scale. And I think the key is people have to trust who they're working with. And the reason you're here now is because I trust you. And I would encourage people. And we appreciate that very much. Well, but it's key, though, right? I mean, it's anybody. I mean, even I, if I'm going to hire an agent, you're like, well, are they going to really help me?

Or are they going to help themselves? I mean, that's always the question. That's the question. If people want more information, they can call us at 866 Talbot. Or they can simply go to our website. We've got a video and some interesting things there. Talbot group. Talbot group.com.

Two T's on the end of Talbot. Talbot group. Or the number is. 866 Talbot. Holy cow. 866 Talbot. We'd love to help. Great to see you.

You have lucked out. Lucky you, because I'm going to share, I was thinking of calling it rant of the week. Oh, no. Yes. Like where I get a bee in my bonnet, perhaps not literally, but a be in my bonnet metaphorically, and I say, I've just got to share this with the group.

Okay. I've got to share this with the group. So I'll represent the group. Yes. You represent the group by being here, but everyone listening, I'm thinking of you as my encounter group. It's kind of like a 60s Gestalt therapy thing. And I just want to share some stuff. I want to get some stuff off my chest.

I'll bring the fondue. And I'm going to bring, yes, and I'm going to get some stuff off my chest. Okay, number one, now listen carefully because everything I say is simply true. I've noticed this that there are certain habits that people fall into culturally. One of them, I've shared about this before, but I want to hit this again. And so everyone listening has no excuse. Are you ready for this? You ready, folks?

When somebody says thank you, more and more people respond incorrectly. When you say thank you, people say, no problem. Yeah. Let me just say, I know it's not a problem, and I don't need you to tell me that it's not a problem. Okay? That's the wrong response. Young people especially are guilty of saying, no problem. Like if you're my waiter

and I say thank you and you say no problem It's like yeah it's no problem You're being paid for this and I'm probably gonna tip you So no problem is not the right response If somebody says thank you Your response ought to be You're welcome right This happened to Ann and I

We were out to dinner and Nass and me And there you go another problem But yep the woman said no problem And I said to Anne That's one of Eric's bugaboos It's become This is the thing is like I was saying Suzanne last night, a lot of people's talk is just chatter. They're not really thinking about what they say.

It's just kind of this automatic blah, blah, blah stuff. And the no problem is one of those. Like, no problem, no problem. No problem is wrong. The response is, you're welcome. Thank you. You're welcome. Or you're quite welcome. I like that one. Or my pleasure. Okay? You've got some options. But no problem is a problem. Okay, that's the first part of my rant. The second part of the rant, and this, I find this hilarious. Listen, I'm a cultural observer. I've noticed these things, and also because I'm a writer, I notice words.

I notice this, that you go to a hotel or you're in a restaurant, usually. And it's people who are serving you somehow. And they've picked up on this idea that things are more elegant if they use the future tense. So they say, thank you, sir. Now, the elevators are going to be down the hall and to your left. And I'm thinking, they're going to be, you mean they're not there now? They say, yeah, no, the elevators are going to be. It's like, no, no, no, you mean the elevators are?

Because they're there now. They were installed 25 years ago. The elevators are down the hall. But people say going to be, right? Or they say, I'm going to be your server for the evening. And I'm thinking, no, you actually are now. You're standing here now talking to me in the role of my server or my waiter or waitress, whatever it is. But they say, I'm going to be today.

Or they say the special tonight is going to be, like it's 8 o'clock at night. Yeah. The special is going to be or the special is going to be on the left side of the menu or the video. It's like, no, no, it is. Ladies and gentlemen, it is welcome to the present. We're here now. And we want you to acknowledge that. So don't say the elevators are going to be down the hall.

You say the elevators are down the hall. Don't say, I am going to be your server. You are my server now, right now. But I've noticed this. When you go to restaurants, you can notice especially young people, they fall into this trap of thinking it's somehow a little bit more upscale, a little bit more elegant to use the future tense. That, ladies and gentlemen, is wrong.

Yeah, thank you. Okay? It's going to be wrong, and it is wrong. Right now. Don't let it happen again. Thank you. No welcome.