Old Guys Still ROCK

Blair Armstrong (01:04)
All right, right, all right. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, wherever you may be. If this is your first time here, I am Blair Armstrong, our team Armstrong, Co-well banker. I am a global luxury specialist in the world of residential real estate. My world is the Coachella Valley, which is basically Palm Springs to Indio. Hopefully you've heard of that Palm Desert Ranch Mirage, Cathedral City. There's just a bunch of places.

Never heard of that before. Get a map. Look at Palm Springs, look at Indio, all the cities in between. That's basically the Coachella Valley. uh, we are all in a very cold desert weather. We're going to have a nice cool one, I think one Oh seven today. So it'd be nice. Uh, it's a little bit dry, but to tell you the truth, honest to God, for a lot of people that have never been out here in the desert, like one Oh seven, how do you do it this summer?

Brent Wright (01:50)
Woo!

Blair Armstrong (02:00)
So far has been really good because we're having 107 days and like 70 72 degree mornings, which I know that sounds warm to a lot of people, but that's like almost jacket weather right now for us desert rats. So it's been like a godsend summer so far because last year it was one 15, one 20, one 25. It seemed like every day and the lows of like 85, 90 every day. So this has been awesome. So anyway,

Brent Wright (02:27)
Hmm.

Blair Armstrong (02:30)
That was a long drawn out story. To my left, possibly your right, co-host slash really co-host on this. ⁓ Brent Wright of Brent Wright Incorporated has been my good, good friend for almost 30 years. ⁓ We are on episode number 108, but Brent Wright is located out in beautiful, beautiful Eugene, Oregon. And we're going to get to the weather a little bit because as Brent says, that's what old guys do, talk about this. But if you haven't seen this before,

Brent Wright (02:53)
Hahaha!

Blair Armstrong (02:57)
Or if you have just a reintroduction Brent Wright or Brent Wright Incorporated. What is that? So Brent Wright has body shops, detail shops. He is a multiple property owner for rentals, payroll companies. Him and his wife just about two years ago started a wellness center literally 500 feet away from where he is sitting right now. ⁓ And then which we just talked about, he just...

Brent Wright (03:21)
Mm-hmm. ⁓

Blair Armstrong (03:25)
him and three other guys from a coaching group that they belong to called our taste syndicate. Maybe some of you heard of that started actually bought in and revamping a t-shirt company called a busted teas.com. I keep wanting to go the other word, but I getting better. I practice every morning. So bad.

Brent Wright (03:40)
us to tease. Good job, buddy.

Blair Armstrong (03:48)
How are you, dude? What is going on? We talked Friday, but then all of sudden, here we are on Thursday. I don't know what happened, but here we are.

Brent Wright (03:56)
Yeah.

Yeah, and weather wise, we're supposed to be, I think, 77 today.

Blair Armstrong (04:04)
That's

a good top out there.

Brent Wright (04:06)
Yeah, 58 last night at 10 o'clock, which was super cool, beautiful sunset last night, just amazing. I still feel extremely blessed to be able to see that sunset every single night from my vantage point. It definitely feels fruitful every day to end up there at the end of the day.

Blair Armstrong (04:29)
Yeah.

Brent Wright (04:32)
Yeah, we're supposed to be high 80s next week and include one 90 degree day. So it's shifting quickly. ⁓ I always say that summer lasts about a month in Eugene, the real summer, know, the hot days and all those things. And so it's definitely tolerable. ⁓ We will be going to our coast house ⁓ over the fourth.

Blair Armstrong (04:40)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Brent Wright (04:58)
We love to go there and watch the fireworks. They do them over the bay in Florence, super fun. And so we'll be taking a little bit of time off, my kind of time off, not your kind of time off. So, well, we.

Blair Armstrong (05:04)
That's good.

So you'll

be working on four different businesses while you're family sitting on the couch.

Brent Wright (05:16)
No, no. So we'll go down to the beach probably one day. The kids ride their bikes, because again, we live on a hill. So ⁓ they don't ride bikes real well because you ride down like this and then you got to push it back up the same way. they love to come to the shop and ride because we got a nice flat area. They love to go to the Coast House. We do family walks a couple of times a day. Typically, ⁓ we eat well and ⁓

and we relax and ⁓ just have a very subtle relaxing time, not doing all the things that we normally do. So that's a vacation for me.

Blair Armstrong (05:59)
Well, that's a good vacation too. You know, it's what you're 50 miles away from that. So our trip may be a little bit longer depending, but anyway, that's awesome. Well, it's good weather out there too. So let's just get into this, man. I mean, we have, we had a great episode last week. We talked about the breakdown of communication and relationships. then literally the next day you call me and you're like, dude, okay.

Brent Wright (06:04)
Yeah, yeah, 50, 60 miles, yeah.

Hmm hmm.

Blair Armstrong (06:27)
And a lot of this has been happening. And so you talk about that. It's one thing that we really don't talk a lot about is communication and how necessary it is.

So last week again, we haven't watched episode number 107, we barely talked about just how to adjust, listening, all those different things. Just go back and watch that episode or listen to that episode, whatever your genre is. Remember, we are on iHeartRadio, Amazon Music, Spotify, YouTube, Apple Music. So go back under those. Our links are out there.

We'll put those in the bottom of our stuff and you haven't done anything yet. Whatever channel you listen to that hit the subscribe button, hit the notification bell. So when new episodes come out, we do that again. This is your first time here. We don't do any advertising. We don't have any sponsors at this time. It may be coming, but at this time you don't have to sit through commercials and listen to some different things going on. There's we're just going to give you straight product of

Brent Wright (07:23)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Blair Armstrong (07:31)
real life applications, what we're going through, what our friends have gone through, what our family has gone through, and we share that with you because we just feel that it's super important ⁓ to know that if you're going through it, you're not the only one going through it. So anyway, Brett, you called me last week and you're like, I'm about ready to blow my brains out. I'm probably not the best words for that, we have this.

Brent Wright (07:47)
Yeah.

No.

I'm struggling,

I'm struggling, yeah.

Blair Armstrong (08:00)
struggling with it with community.

Yeah, you're struggling with communication because there's four. Do you have your gen X your gen Z your millennial in Gen Y. So four different ways of people that grew up four different types of communication and you're running a business you guys are getting along well, but you're still trying to find out how to all be basically have this

Brent Wright (08:10)
Gen Y.

Blair Armstrong (08:27)
different communications but have the same communication sometimes. So explain to you kind of what you were going through and how you're working through it and let's talk that through.

Brent Wright (08:37)
Well, it's not only that, let's start at the beginning. So the real problem is that there are so many ways to communicate nowadays. Let's start out with phone, basic text, ring central, Slack, instant message on Facebook, instant message on Instagram,

WhatsApp.

For those iPhone people, iMessage got my first one of those a few months ago and it doesn't translate well into ⁓ Android at all. And had somebody get pissed off ⁓ that I wasn't responding. It came over as gibberish, I had no way of knowing. I have a friend of mine who is out in the Atlantic right now on a sailboat.

Blair Armstrong (09:32)
Right.

Brent Wright (09:39)
And when he messages me, I didn't know he was sending it on WhatsApp. I'm not even logged into WhatsApp. How might have I known that?

Blair Armstrong (09:46)
Yeah.

Right.

Brent Wright (09:51)
I have no clue. The biggest thing that I'm having trouble with with communication is not knowing the rules of the game. So therefore I fail at playing the game.

And so we'll get into some of that, but ultimately I think the struggle is, trying to discern which channels of communication are we using? There's no universal channel. Teams meetings, have Zoom, I have Teams chat, I have Zoom chat. And now on Teams and Zoom, you can comment and send a chat after the meeting's over.

Well, unless I've logged into that application 100 % of the time, how am I to know that?

And then what's the expectation for response time? Is it standard one hour business? Is it 24 hours? Is it two minutes? Again, I'm not struggling with communication. I'm struggling with the rules of engagement that are assumed instead of communicated.

Blair Armstrong (11:06)
So let's stop there for second because you said a comment last week, you said you have to be everything to everyone. And so bringing this up is this is actually, I know you're people like, well, that's easy. Just do one another. It's not that easy because the way that Brett and I grew up, we had a phone connected to a connected to the wall on a wall. Some time. So if you were, if you were

Brent Wright (11:27)
on a wall.

Blair Armstrong (11:33)
⁓ And the upper echelon of life, had a 25 foot cord that you could walk into another with it and maybe stretch it another five feet. But with that being said is, but that was the way that you communicated or you met or somehow some way you knew you're going to meet up at point A or point B. But Brent just rattled off all these different ways of communication from I, you know, from I chat to slack, which we just came to cover. And I just talked about this morning when we were on our walk.

or not on a walk, but on a hike. Realistically, what I am hearing from you and what Ken and I talked about this morning is now is when you get into these group organizations, and I have the same way here. We have David and I who are on the same team, but we have two other agents.

David and I's communication works really well, but it doesn't spill over to the communication with the other two agents in here. So I'm learning, I'm sending texts and no one's responding. like, what the hell is going on here? So I send an email, then some people will respond and the other people don't respond. like, okay, what's going on?

So finally, we're just trying to figure that out. But bottom line is you have to come into what I'm going to suggest and what Brett probably gonna suggest as well is that when you get into these groups, what type of form of communication works best for you? So you have to communicate, what's the best way to communicate so we can make sure that we're on the same page. ⁓

Brent Wright (13:14)
and I'll throw this in. So not only email, right? But now every email platform has a message board built inside of it. So now you can react and respond. So like in Google, you can actually like or thumbs up or sad face or some other emoji or emoticon on a Google email or on an out.

Blair Armstrong (13:17)
Yeah.

I did not know that.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

I think we have,

Brent Wright (13:43)
on an Outlook email.

Blair Armstrong (13:44)
I think I just got one of those yesterday. But what is, what is this? And I pretty, I'm pretty savvy too, right? Like I'll try stuff out. I, yeah, we tried Microsoft teams for a little bit and they're not that it gets Microsoft teams. And I'm sure that works. And you have, I really liked it because okay. ⁓ you basically have a virtual, ⁓ bio cabinet that you can put documents in and do all these different things. But then it was like, okay.

Brent Wright (13:47)
Right? Like how many we...

I thought I was.

Blair Armstrong (14:12)
Am I going to use Microsoft Teams or am I going use text or am I going to call or am going to write an email? And like, there's just so many different options. Um, and it just, and that's what I think that's the biggest thing. What Brent is trying to say here is.

We ha I think from this is going to be mostly mostly business because you we talked about personal relationships last week is setting down like, okay, what is going to be our communication channel and get all the suggestions out there and find the very best one for whatever that's going to be because even with you have clients. How do you, how do you, which way do you like to communicate? Do you like emails? Do you like texts? Do you like phone calls? Now the older generation is going to like.

the more seasoned generation is going to like phone calls or unless they're really savvy at emails.

Brent Wright (15:03)
I have an

89 year old customer who tries to text our landline all the time, because he doesn't understand that there's still land.

Blair Armstrong (15:13)
Yeah, right, and so you just.

Brent Wright (15:15)
and now our VoIP, now our VoIP place, ⁓ two different VoIP places now allow text. And so the AI then allows them to text it and then sends it to you in a text on email that you can reply to and then it texts them back.

My mind, man, it's just like.

Blair Armstrong (15:35)
I've lost my way. Yeah.

And this is where the frustration comes down to. So I sent I sent Brent last week after he was talking. We were talking about this and trying to work through it. And and. Brett is doing his if you don't know, Brent, there's 107 other episodes that kind of peel back a little bit of the onion of bread. It's much deeper than that. But Brett is very categorized.

It's in this box and this box and this box and this box and regimented. So when you take him out, which a lot of us are that way, when you take us out of that zone, which we're very, very good at adjustments can be hard, but the great thing that Brent and I are learning, and I'm sure that some of you are watching or have seen over the last couple of episodes, we're also evolving. like, okay, yes, we need to get better at this. So we can't just say, well, this is the way I am, which we talked about a couple of episodes.

Brent Wright (16:05)
and regimented as well.

Blair Armstrong (16:31)
⁓ like it or like it and if you don't like it then kick rocks. So like okay we have this issue with communication I'm going to try to adjust and I'm trying to explain away but in the same sense is when you're trying to explain to the other people of how that you're trying to adjust on this form of communication you have to the person that so Brent's basically telling me Blair hey ⁓

I'm not really used to this type of communication. Excuse me why I get through this part, but you know, whatever. I have to turn and say, okay, what part are you having a hard time with? And where are you getting hung up with? Well, I'm doing this and this, this. So eventually that he's saying I need help, which is not easy for a lot of type A personalities. I need help trying to understand how to best communicate with you.

So don't get frustrated when I come to you or make me feel stupid because then I'm just going to shut the F down. And, and, and then we're done, which is actually detrimental to potentially a really good relationship. For every part of it, it's a ripple effect that spreads not only to that person that you're talking to, but to the rest of the group. And so that's why, you know, we found that this episode is going to be so big. So if you're still in the corporate world or in the tail end of it, you do have everyone's got.

Brent Wright (17:33)
Mm-hmm, 100%.

to every piece of it.

Mm-hmm.

Blair Armstrong (17:57)
Like the younger generation is very used to having instantaneous boom. I'm messing you were going, going, going, going where Brent will get an email. Okay. I'm going to read this over. I'm going to digest it for maybe two, three, four, maybe 24 hours, whatever it is. And then I'm going to respond to you. That doesn't work with a millennial group or a younger generation because they're, they have been fed that it's just like, got to have this now and go.

Brent Wright (18:21)
It's an eight second society.

Blair Armstrong (18:26)
And so that's just, you know, another part of that, why these apps are like giving you instantaneous information. can pull this stuff to a pull it over. And that was the one thing we were talking about with, with, with McCumber this morning. He's like, I don't work that way. And I'm super, super uncomfortable of trying to figure this out. It's frustration because it takes me out of my, my rhythm. So I told him that's what we're going to talk about today. So here we are now that we.

Brent Wright (18:49)
Mm-hmm.

Blair Armstrong (18:56)
basically drawn out this long part of it. What?

How has, since Friday, has anything changed with you with understanding or communication skills with the hurdles that you have faced on Friday?

Brent Wright (19:13)
Yeah, I'm understanding that it's FUBAR and I don't understand it and I don't do well with it. And I'm ready, willing and able to grow. But again, I need the rules of the game explained to me. And the problem is, is we just identified 22, 23 different ways to communicate. And each one of them has their own lane of what is appropriate or expected.

Blair Armstrong (19:16)
Hahaha!

Hahaha!

Brent Wright (19:43)
And then you have each genre or generational thing, which we'll go into in a second, that has a different expectation on what something means, right? And so in that regard...

I didn't know this. Facebook Messenger, when everybody's ⁓ in a group Facebook message.

What is the thumbs up thing? What does that mean to you?

Blair Armstrong (20:15)
Cool, good job.

Brent Wright (20:17)
Cool, or I'm acknowledging you or thank you, got it. Yeah, quick response, right? All in, good, whatever. Do you know what that means to a Gen Y?

Blair Armstrong (20:19)
Yeah, okay, got it. Yeah. Okay. Right. Right.

Brent Wright (20:33)
You didn't have the time of day to take the time to respond to me in an appropriate way. And basically you're just telling me to F off and my time is not worth anything. So why am I going to message you again after this?

Did you know that?

Blair Armstrong (20:49)
Wow,

no. Because I thumbs up a lot of people. Got it. Cool, man.

Brent Wright (20:54)
Right?

That's like ending the conversation and we're done to ⁓ a Gen Z. A Gen Z is like, we're done talking. As soon as somebody does a thumbs up, that whole group shuts off. We're done talking. That's the end of the conversation. A thumbs up is the end of the conversation to a Gen Z. Gen Y.

Blair Armstrong (21:00)
Yeah.

And hold on,

hold on. It's the end of a conversation in a good way or a bad way.

Brent Wright (21:25)
It's just neutral, it's the end of the conversation. It's I'm done talking and I don't wanna talk anymore, so thumbs up.

Blair Armstrong (21:25)
or both.

Okay.

Okay. Okay, I get it. Okay.

Brent Wright (21:39)
Right? How did, did you know that rule? Either one of those rules. Did you know those?

Blair Armstrong (21:42)
No, dude, I just...

Well, I mean, usually when I get like somebody says something, I give a thumbs up like, yeah, I got it. And then we'll continue the conversation later or whatever. Yeah. I

Brent Wright (21:55)
Hmm to somebody in the in the 32 to 42 year old range that means the conversation is over

from the 20s to the 30s, that means pound sand. You didn't take the time to acknowledge me in an appropriate way.

Blair Armstrong (22:17)
So maybe as I sit here and think about this and I'm going through the stuff that ⁓ I go through here at the office and there's different communication spots like this and then all of us have talks of like, okay, we want to accomplish this, we need this, we need this, we need this, we need this.

And they like, do you want me to send the email? Do you want me to do this? I'm like, no, I'm going to do it. So what I'm saying is, is maybe if you're in a professional group or you're in a board meeting or on a board or you're in a business like Brent's talking about, you have one person that communicates to the group and everything funnels to that person. Basically a PR person, a public relations for that group.

Because what I found is, that instead of having you're trying to meld different chats, ⁓ and to get it to one point. like we're gathering, I'm gathering all this information, which we need to take back to our managing broker. And instead of having four different people respond to one email, it's all coming through for me in a summarization. And then when I get the information back, then I put it out to, this is what's happening. We're going to do a, B, C, D, E, F, G, whatever.

Brent Wright (23:36)
But to certain generations, that could be that you're controlling and manipulating the situation and expecting a response when they might not be ready to respond.

Blair Armstrong (23:48)
Yes, I agree with that. but the step that I missed out is we have to have that communication. Okay, what are you gonna be responsible for in this group?

Brent Wright (23:58)
But the agreements change. That's the funny part. So the agreement and the communication style is a moving target. It's a swinging pendulum that you're trying to aim for.

Blair Armstrong (24:01)
there.

Brent Wright (24:12)
And we know on a pendulum style target, you're only gonna hit 50, 60 % of the time on average. Well, the other 40 % of the time, they're just pissed off at you.

Blair Armstrong (24:15)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, I feel that vibe a little bit for what I do. Cause you know, I'm, taking, no one did anything and all of a I flipped tables over and I'm pressing and I feel there's a little bit of undertone animosity, like, he's just trying to control an issue. So I feel it, but here's the, here's the wrong side. I need to address it because I feel it and it's fine. I understand everything was a lot different. ⁓ four months ago to what it is today, the way how we're approaching things and not just

staying status quo, I need to have the balls enough to go back and like, okay, I've kind of taken the lead on a lot of stuff. Am I offending anybody in any ways? Can I communicate with you better in any way? I'm not trying to be the bull than trying to shop. I'm trying to get some stuff done, but are you comfortable with the way that I'm handling? And if I do need to make adjustments again, right? What I'm telling you right now, everyone, this is... ⁓

This is an epiphany that just came to my mind. So it's not something I thought about. Do I need to make any adjustments to make sure that you feel more included or less included in these conversations that we have moving forward?

No, I need it. Some people are very passive and like, no, no, no, you're fine. Whatever it takes. But you're going to have to address that multiple times because they may say that once or don't know how to communicate that it is bothering them or you know what? I'm just not going to roll for the feathers. I'm just going to do whatever. And then they still get pissed off about it. And later on down the rise, it gets to a point and it boils over and they react.

the wrong way or they say something to you. Like I've asked you a thousand times. If you, if I bothered you, you haven't said anything for six months or a year. And now all of a sudden the same thing I've been doing every day. Now it bothers you. Well, I didn't know how to communicate it back then. So just because you say it once doesn't mean you can't go back and say it again. Right. But it's, that's the truth though. Yeah.

Brent Wright (26:25)
Yeah, yeah, so the hard part that I'm having is not only is it a moving target ⁓ on a regular and continual basis, it's even more problematic than that, that it is proposed that I'm the one who needs to change, that everyone who is communicating with me is doing everything the way they need to do it, but.

I need to change the way I'm communicating to them. Now there's an age old saying, the person receiving the information is always correct.

So if you take that age old saying and apply it to the situation, I do need to be the adaptable one and figure out a way to communicate to them. I'm just having such a struggle because there's so many different ways.

and so many different players in the ways and so many like.

I use a saying, explain it to me like a 92 year old woman who knows nothing about what you're telling me.

I had somebody tell me this week that that was offensive and that did not create a safe place for them to think about how to deliver that message to

Blair Armstrong (27:56)
I get frustrated when I hear that stuff, dude. And this is, is, this is going to totally come off the wrong way, but stop being fricking soft, dude. Not in whoever it is. It's just the whole society is like, that's offensive or that it grows some effing ovaries or grow some balls and stop being offended by everything. It's a learning experience. We've been, that's like this safe word. It's like get a coloring book. That's offensive.

Brent Wright (27:58)
What in the heck was that about?

Blair Armstrong (28:25)
I'm sorry I use the right words to it. I didn't mean anything derogatory about it. I can't be politically correct every single time that I speak. I'm trying to paint a picture of what, when Brett says what he says, yes, I understand that, actually I don't understand. You're saying it's offensive to you. Why in the world would that be offensive? He's trying to paint a picture of someone that doesn't understand.

Brent Wright (28:51)
Cause I use, I use, yeah,

I use analogies and acronyms to try to convey a message, right? More, more analogy type stuff. tried it.

Blair Armstrong (29:01)
But it

puts a picture in somebody's head though, right? But it puts a picture in somebody's head. A 92-year-old person is typically not technology savvy, regardless of your background of being in computers and stuff like that. There's different types of technology along the way. So if your grandma is coming up to you and don't understand it, are you going to be an asshole about it? Are you going to teach her how to do it or show her how to do it by step by step? If you have a 75-year-old dad who

Brent Wright (29:14)
video.

Blair Armstrong (29:30)
doesn't understand that stuff and he's old school, are you going to be a jerk off about it? Are you going to go ahead and say, no, I mean, probably going to make fun of them. Like, I can't believe you don't know how to do that, but at you're going to show them how to do it. So don't take offense when someone says, explain it to me. Like I'm a 75 year old man or a 92 year old grandma or whatever to it. ⁓ Like maybe throw some jabs at it and have some fun with it. But in the same sense, be offensive.

Be offended by it? Come on, Chick, whatever. Grow up. I just, I'm tired of this, this softness of this. I'm offended.

Brent Wright (30:05)
So you.

Well, you said something last week and this week. It's, if you push me to a point that I feel like I can't produce a result, I'm just gonna shut down.

I said that last week and I was told, seriously, you're gonna go there? So you're just gonna check out because it's not comfortable for you. No, that's not what I said. What I said was, is I've tried two or three different ways to produce a result and it's not been fruitful. Likely our interactions might not be fruitful going forward.

Blair Armstrong (30:38)
Yeah.

Brent Wright (30:53)
So I'm just going to avoid the interactions.

And we said last time, last week, that that probably wasn't the best way to go, to check out, right? Because you gotta try to be everything to everyone. But at what point, at what impasse is it that you decide that my energy is more fruitful focused somewhere else?

Blair Armstrong (31:07)
100%.

I think, ugh.

Blair, Blair three years ago.

Brent Wright (31:34)
Peace out, ninja.

Blair Armstrong (31:37)
And I just talking to this with this lady that I collaborate with, ⁓ Shelley Gordon from Gordon property management. And she takes care of all of our, she brings this in, investors. She handles the property management side. handle the real estate side. And we were talking about communication and.

Brent Wright (31:42)
you

Blair Armstrong (31:59)
how this podcast has helped me evolve. Because years ago, I'm like, this is who I am. We've talked about this a thousand times in these podcasts. This is who I am. Like it ⁓ or like it. I know I said that beginning show ⁓ and kick rocks. And now we're sitting there when we talk about this stuff. One of the things that again, this year, first episode, second episode, fourth episode, or you followed us all.

Brent Wright (32:16)
and kick rocks.

Blair Armstrong (32:29)
107 episodes up to this point. What you constantly hear us say is this has forced us to be accountable to ourselves to not saying you should do this. Yes, you should do this. But now this is us looking ourselves in the mirror like shit. Now I have to hold myself accountable and become better. So we're constantly evolving. Now, one thing is if you watch this episode or you know, you're

Brent Wright (32:49)
Mm-hmm.

Blair Armstrong (32:58)
you're doing these things that we're telling you to do and a person that you're around pushes back on it, you have to let them know, again, involvement of speech, I am going through these changes and I'm trying to figure out how this works because 45, 50, 60 years of my life, I haven't known how to do this. So I understand it may be weird way of a new communication.

from me and I'm just using the example if you're talking to somebody else or your spouse or your business partner or a millennial or whatever is into it. But I'm learning how to, I'm constantly evolving and this realm that I'm in right now is completely new to me and it's going to take a little bit of time to get out there. But what Brett said, if you go ahead and make me feel like an ass about it, I'm gonna be like, I'm gonna get triggered and I'm gonna turn my 98 degree temperature down to 65.

Brent Wright (33:26)
Bye-bye.

Blair Armstrong (33:54)
And I'm out and I will go chase somebody else that will give me a little bit of time a day. And that relationship will, which would be more fruitful than this one. That's the easy way. That's the easy way. And that's what we've come to the society. And this is really what we talked about last week, which spills into this week is that that's the easy way. Well, I will go find somebody that will relate to me a little bit better instead of like talking through the hurdle.

Brent Wright (33:57)
Right.

Blair Armstrong (34:23)
which is very hard for guys, I get that. Women do it a lot better than guys do. They're better at communication than guys, I get it. But that is the hard part that what Brett and I are telling you about is like, we're evolving. We don't like to be failures at stuff. We know that we will fail, but when our failures is gonna become successes, so we're gonna work it through it. But when we're asking for help, even though it doesn't make sense to you,

Brent Wright (34:42)
Thank

Blair Armstrong (34:51)
treat us like a 78 year old man, an 85 year old man, 105 year old man that's never seen technology or woman that's never seen the technology before in their life or been in that situation before and explain this to us how it's worked because I promise you guys like Brent, guys like me, once we figure it out, we will elevate to where you are now to a higher elevation. I promise you that because that's the way our brains work. Like, ⁓ I get it.

Brent Wright (35:14)
Yeah.

Blair Armstrong (35:21)
Now I'm like, now I'm going take all this stuff that I've learned over 56 years or 50 something years. And I can like, I'm going to take that old wisdom. I'm applied to this new wisdom. And now I'm going to elevate your wisdom to another level. Right. For the most part, uh, it's just, you know, all right. We're just talking about it for, for your golf heads out there. This is not, Brent is going to be on this conversation. He's done. Chuck it out. He's out.

Brent Wright (35:37)
Yeah.

Check it out.

Blair Armstrong (35:51)
But my golf swing goes sideways and I'm trying to figure it out. I go back to my ⁓ golf pro here, the club. I'm like, I have no idea what's going on. And he'll go down and I'm trying to figure it out. I'm on the driving range. I can't figure it out. And he's like, he throws 10 balls down and he goes, okay, hit these 10 balls, which literally takes me dude, two minutes.

He goes, okay, do this, this, and this. Okay. Okay. Now hit this ball exactly where I want to go. And, and I use that analogy because when you talk to somebody that has wisdom and you get stuck, it's just a little tweak of stuff to help you get better. Now on the same sense, that golf pro that just helped me.

is going to take my situation and apply that to somebody else's situation that's having the same situation that I did. And it helped him get smarter. And that's why we have to have this constant. You're always going to have the wise one in a certain situation ⁓ that's going to be smarter in certain senses. But if you combine that wisdom, everyone in wisdom grows.

Brent Wright (37:08)
And another thing too that's super important to me, I don't know where this lands with you, but if I become...

If I make a decision to try to grow in an area and I become extremely vulnerable and start talking through that discussion and you either don't acknowledge it or make fun of it.

That is going to lay a very difficult foundation for us to build off of.

I don't want to say I'll give up. I don't want to say I'll tell you to kick rocks. I have done both of those in the past.

But what I can say is that there are only so many times that I'm going to continue to try before I'm gonna try to find a fruitful scenario somewhere else. And I don't think that that's wrong. If you only give one try, that's weak. If you only give two tries, probably not giving it enough. If you give it three tries and it still isn't fruitful and then you have a conversation about it and then it becomes not fruitful after that.

I think it's okay to adjust. What are your thoughts?

Blair Armstrong (38:26)
Depending on what situations you're in, ⁓ I think there's certain friendships and certain relationships that are more personal ⁓ that's okay with. I think that there's ⁓ business relationships that are okay with. Your belief, my belief ⁓ with marriage, it's a whole different realm to me. That is a covenant, that is a contract between ⁓ God and me and that

person that I'm married to. So I think that even if it happens 50 times that you're not communicating with, you still have to fight through that and get through that point. As Jesus said, forgive or seven times 70, which bottom line is. So there are certain situations. I think that is not a black and white answer in my realm. I think that there are certain situations that, yeah.

Brent Wright (39:21)
Yeah.

Blair Armstrong (39:24)
this communication is no longer going down the path that we need to, ⁓ that's business. ⁓ A marriage or a personal relationship that's been giving you fruit, if you may, for a long time, I think that that is something down to the point that you've got to figure it out. You've got to get your Bactean and Band-Aids out and knowing that you're going to go through war.

Brent Wright (39:42)
Mm-hmm.

Blair Armstrong (39:51)
And there's going to be some, there's going to be some blood and some tears and some sweat. But at the end of day is it's, it's worth the, it's worth the squeeze, right? The juice is worth the squeeze.

Brent Wright (40:02)
Kind of goes back to.

the communication part, letting somebody know that this is going to be war and this might not be easy, but I'm willing to dig in. It's a commitment level.

Blair Armstrong (40:08)
Mm-hmm.

Brent Wright (40:24)
And I think that a lot of times nowadays, people's commitment level is about as long as their attention span.

Blair Armstrong (40:35)
It's like, yes. And it's a massive, and this is I was telling to Shelly Gordon yesterday. It's like guys become very complacent because that's how they grew up with, or that's what they've witnessed on reality TV. And, know, it's me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, I, know, I did it. It's yeah. I'm trying to find the thing that you sent to me yesterday from for Sella.

Brent Wright (40:55)
It's Al Bundy.

email.

Blair Armstrong (41:05)
It's on the email.

about this.

Brent Wright (41:27)
I got it. Can I read it?

Blair Armstrong (41:28)
Okay.

Yeah, do it.

Brent Wright (41:32)
Conversations are not battles. You will always struggle to connect with others if you think of conversations as battles to win. They aren't. They're opportunities to understand. And when you quiet your mind and truly listen to what the other person is saying, you'll quickly realize that most of us want the same things. We've talked about this in the podcast before. Security, happiness, success, love, respect, peace, justice.

The difference isn't in what we want. The difference is in how we express it and how we think it can be achieved. Ask questions, listen, try to see things from their perspective. Look for common ground instead of differences. Focus on solutions instead of being right. You don't have to agree with everyone. In fact, you shouldn't. But when you start to approach conversations with curiosity, the outcome will be far greater.

Blair Armstrong (42:29)
And that is a good summary of what we just talked about. Ask questions, listen, try to adjust, do those different things. But it's a two-way street. There are no.

Every conversation has a yin and yang and it's constantly switching who's going to be the yang and who's going to be the yang. Ask questions, listen, answer, listen, adjust, doing this stuff. And it all goes back to, as far as it was to say is that when you said something and we posted this as a clip that you've got to be everything to everybody. And somebody told me like, that's impossible. It's not impossible. It just takes a lot of work to be that way. Because when you are,

Brent Wright (42:53)
Yep.

Mm-hmm.

Blair Armstrong (43:16)
to expand that what you just said ⁓ last week. You have to be everything to everybody. You have to understand what they're saying so you can be that to that person and they're gonna have to be that person in anyway. So Jesus, which we were supposed to be an example of was everything to everybody. The sinners, the tax collectors, the prostitutes, the drunks, the blind, all those different things. The rich, the poor.

Brent Wright (43:44)
The rich, the poor, pick something, right?

Blair Armstrong (43:47)
everything into it. And our faith is to, I need to be like him. He is my ultimate mentor. How do I be like him? Then we get into social media and everything that's thrown us eight, you know, maybe we call it 10 second Tom, right? Like I need this instant, this message ⁓ right away, or I'm going to forget it. But it is, it's constantly learning how other people work.

And even though that Brent, we talked about how frustrated Brent was in this communications trying to adjust and trying to figure it out and you're not coming through.

Brent Wright (44:26)
Well, it feels

like I'm failing. That's the problem. I wasn't frustrated at the individual. I wasn't frustrated at the conversation. I was not frustrated at the group. I'm frustrated with myself because I feel like I'm failing. I feel like ⁓ it's a game I'll never win. Have you ever played those board games and they're like four and a half hours in and you're like, yeah, put it away. We're never gonna win or lose. I just felt debilitated.

Blair Armstrong (44:31)
Right.

Yeah

Yeah.

Brent Wright (44:55)
mentally and emotionally debilitated. Like, I'm trying to adjust here guys as fast as I can, but the rules keep changing.

Blair Armstrong (45:06)
Yeah. So what we have told everybody how we feel when those things happen, if you're this younger generation or you have an employee, you've got to like, hopefully this is a trigger that there has to be more communication in your side and trying to say, where is the disconnect? How can I help you? Because I need, I need you to help us get better.

And if I'm not helping you get better, gonna, this thing is gonna, we're gonna burn this thing down. And it's not gonna be good for anybody. And so when you have a business mindset or a person, again, ⁓ you have somebody that obviously you connected with, like I worked with this, my God, this dude's smarter. my God, this girl's so smart. can't wait to do stuff with it. But the stuff that I'm doing, they're not connecting with. I've got to figure that out because

That's what attracted you to that person or to that business in the first place was the wisdom that alluded to them. They just may, and sooner or later, their wisdom is gonna be better than yours and sooner or later, their wisdom is gonna be less than yours. And so that's what Brent said. It's constantly changing. So everyone, I think the big thing for this week or to try to get this wrapping this up here a little bit is...

Stop being so knee-jerky. Stop being so reactionary. Know that everything is a process, and that process may be a day, it may be 30 seconds, it may be 30 years. But constantly invest, invest, invest. There is no quick thing to it, and as much as society wants to make believe it's like instantaneous information, I could do this, I get that.

Or you can just say screw it, I'll let AI take over and then everything that you worked for means nothing. Because it'll just go away and somebody else will take your place better. So this is a great way to go ahead and not only help yourself get better, but help other people's get better. Remember what Brent and I always say, gauge, equip, empower. And that is.

both sides of every single business relationship and personal relationship and society relationship.

Brent Wright (47:38)
Yeah, I think it's human nature. ⁓ Kind of going back to what I said about, feel like a failure. When we feel like we're failing, we might become agitated, aggressive, ⁓ backbiting. We might rebut pretty aggressively. It's just.

Blair Armstrong (47:45)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Brent Wright (48:05)
It's human nature and that's what we're fighting here guys on every aspect of this. It isn't.

We came out of the womb. The first thing we wanted to do was communicate. What do all babies do as soon as they come out of the womb? They cry, they scream, right? They want somebody to pay attention to them, feed them, make them comfortable, because they just got ripped out of a really comfortable spot, right? And so the first thing we learn, the first day of our existence, we learn, ⁓

Blair Armstrong (48:21)
Yeah, cry. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Brent Wright (48:41)
out of the womb, we learned that life isn't fair, it's not gonna treat us well all the time, and that we have to learn how to squeal a little bit to get what we need and to figure out different, better, and more fruitful ways of communicating that benefit others, not just ourselves.

Blair Armstrong (49:08)
Yeah, yeah. Sometimes I feel like we go too far, but I think that there's certain things that are triggers to it. I saw something today is like, I want my leader to go out and do something, but this person is all over social media. Instead of complaining about what the leader is not doing right now, why don't you go out and become that leader?

And Brent's really good at this. I'm really good at this is having servant leader leadership.

When you came out of that womb, you were picked to be a leader because your DNA is different, your blood is different, your eyes are different, your hair is different. Everything about you is different from every single human that walks on this planet. And you're going to have a choice to be a leader or a backseat driver. Become a leader, become a servant leader. And there's plenty of top to have plenty of leaders on there because with

with being a good leader, you're going to help the other leader become better. And it goes back that way. So that's why Brent said, you know, too, it's a societal issue that we can sit there and complain through keyboard warriors or memes and stuff like this. And this person's stupid. I can't believe they think that way. Well, maybe it's time for us to sit down with that person, figure out why do they think that way, understand that they were, and then communicate your thoughts. And I

guarantee you there is a common thread in everyone's thought and everybody wants the same thing. We just don't know how to communicate.

Brent Wright (50:51)
Everybody

just wants to be heard and validated. The problem is there's so many ways to be heard and validated nowadays and so many different perceived or acceptable ways to be heard and validated.

think we need to decide.

which lane we're gonna live in and stick with it.

Blair Armstrong (51:21)
Yeah. All right, guys, this is what we need you to do this week is I'm pretty sure there's a golden nugget or two that are in there for you. communication hurdles are you having right now? Personal business, societal, whatever that may be. That you're having and how are you working through it? So leave that in comments, either YouTube, Spotify.

⁓ Apple podcasts, whatever it is, whatever there's a comment section, leave that comment in there. Facebook, Instagram, we don't care. What hurdles are you having communication wise and how are you working through it? Leave those in the comments. And it's not for Brent and I, it's for to start this revival of communication and figuring out how everyone has a common thread and working through some stuff. So if there's stuff that you don't understand,

stuff your partner doesn't understand, whatever that is, is how that you're going to take that and work through it to make it better. That's what we need for me today, besides sharing the show and hitting like, but whatever. ⁓

Brent Wright (52:34)
By the way,

I love that ding that comes on when I get that notification. That's, I'm like, hey. ⁓

Blair Armstrong (52:37)
Alright, you're the first person who watches it, man. I love it. Hey, we made her famous.

So I think that you had final words, but do you have any more final words?

Brent Wright (52:49)
Man, just keep on, and I'm saying this to myself too guys, keep on keeping on, keep trying, keep putting it out there. It's tough, it sucks, it's not easy, but if it was easy, everybody would do it. They say it's lonely at the top, we've talked about that. It's not lonely at the top. Pull others up, talk about it, learn, grow.

Be kind, be respectful.

teach others. I have learned so much from people half my age over the last month. It's not even funny.

It's painful, it's painful. And I know I'm growing because of it.

Blair Armstrong (53:33)
Yeah.

Right.

Brent Wright (53:40)
Does it make me feel better? Does it take the frustration away? No. Does it make me feel less like a failure? Not at all.

Keep going.

and go make a damn difference while you're doing it.

Blair Armstrong (53:58)
All right guys, have a great freaking week. We love you guys, thank you for all your support. Keep supporting those channels whatever they are. I know that we keep pushing this, but it's because of you that we're on episode 108. So help us get to 109, know, the power of one more. But anyways, have a great, great week. If there's anything that you need, reach out to Brent, reach out to me. However, which way that we have to it, we're super easy to find.

But go make, I said, Brian, I think it's a big deal. It's time that we start getting out of this black cloud that seems to follow us every day through the big media and start working together and learning how to communicate again the right way. say it one more time, have a great week, stay safe, but most of all, God bless, guys, and we'll see you next week. Take care, God bless.