SUMMARY BY CHATGPT

The “Friction Zone” in business and life
Key Points:
1. Friction Zone Concept:
o Borrowed from motorcycles, where the friction zone is the area where the clutch is partially engaged for control.
o In business, friction zones occur with customers, suppliers, employees, and government.
2. Common Friction Examples:
o Customers: wrong orders, unhappy with products, or being unreasonable.
o Suppliers: missing items, delivery issues, miscommunication.
o Employees: lateness, underperformance, or conflicting priorities.
3. Core Principle:
o Fairness is key to reducing friction. Always aim to act fairly and make it clear you value fairness.
4. Practical Approach:
o Ask a single question during disputes: “What do you think would be fair?”
o Listen silently and allow the other party to respond.
o Experience shows most people propose solutions that are fair or even easier for you to manage.
5. Additional Insights:
o Setting expectations clearly when hiring employees can prevent friction.
o Avoid legal disputes when possible; fairness and communication prevent unnecessary stress and costs.
o Small gestures (like acknowledging suppliers’ good work) build goodwill and reduce friction.
6. Personal Story:
o Tom shares an example of a slow insurance paperwork process. One helpful employee calmed the situation and resolved it, demonstrating how individual actions can remove friction.
7. Resources Mentioned:
o Automation book: screwthecommute.com/automatefree
o Mentor program: GreatInternetMarketingTraining.com
o Licensed Internet/digital marketing school: IMTCVA.org
Takeaway:
Friction is inevitable in business, but fairness, clear expectations, and asking the right question can drastically reduce conflicts with customers, suppliers, and employees.

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Episode 1046 – Friction Zone
[00:00:08] Welcome to Screw the Commute. The entrepreneurial podcast dedicated to getting you out of the car and into the money, with your host, lifelong entrepreneur and multimillionaire, Tom Antion.

[00:00:24] Hey everybody! It's Tom here with episode 1046 of Screw the Commute podcast. Hey, today we're going to talk about the friction zone. What the heck is the friction zone? Well, you'll find out in a second. All right, let's see. Make sure you didn't miss episode 1045. That was some interesting information on studies about having subtitles on your video and how that can help you. So check that out anytime you want to get to a back episode, you go to episode number subtitles was 1045, and then pick up a copy of our automation book at screwthecommute.com/automatefree. Make sure you get version 3.0. It's the latest one. And check out my mentor program at GreatInternetMarketingTraining.com and my school at IMTCVA.org.

[00:01:15] All right. See, I frequently do podcasts on things I'm working on in my life or in my business. And for those of you that ride motorcycles, you know what the heck the friction zone is, right? For those of you that don't, the friction zone is is where you operate your clutch to ride your motorcycle to control it better. That's all I really need to say. But I'll tell you what, it's been being drummed into my head like crazy because I'm learning to ride a motorcycle.

[00:01:53] It's not one of the automatic motorcycles with no clutch. You got to really. You got to really learn a lot to do this. So the friction zones in my mind day and night now, because if you mess it up, chances are you're going to fall over or do something bad or crash. So I was thinking about the friction zone and how it relates to business, because there's there's four different major places that you run into friction when you're in business. And one is with customers, one is with suppliers, one is with your employees, and the other one we're not going to really cover today is one with the government like taxes and IRS and stuff. And I'm going to give you one question that I pose that knocks out 99.9% of my friction in all these places, employees, customers and suppliers. So let's say let's take customers, for example. Well, what's situation could you run into friction. All right. So one is you just messed up. You messed up their order. You did. You know you. Who knows? You know. Send it to the wrong place. I mean, you messed up. Another thing customers might not be thrilled with is they're just not happy with your product. And they they tell you about it. And the third one is not so common, but it happens depending on the field that you're in. It happens more often than not.

[00:03:26] But the customer is being unreasonable or they're just a rip off. All right. So those are customers. Now let's let's take suppliers. Well suppliers maybe they claim they delivered 50 widgets and you were busy and didn't have time to check them in. And there's only 35 there. And you don't really know if they shorted you or if your new employee screwed up. You don't really know. All right. So that'd be an example of a friction with a supplier. You're missing 15 of their widgets. And then employees. There's all kinds of places you could run into friction with employees. Let's say they want a day off and it's a critical time for your business. That's a friction zone. Let's say they are underperforming. They're not getting their jobs in on time. That's a friction zone. Let's say they are late all the time. That's that could be a friction zone. All right. So so those are the three main ones. So the one thing that I live by I was thinking about doing a movie about it and it's it's one word. Now this isn't the question that I told you I was going to post. That knocks out 99% of my friction, but it is a part of that. And the word is fairness. Everything I try to do in my life, in my in my personal life, in my business, life is fair and sometimes it doesn't solve the problem.

[00:05:07] But very seldom do I have trouble with this because I'm fair all the time, and I let people know that I think it's being fair. And I say, well, you know, do you think this is fair? Those kinds of things. I'll get to the question that I ask in a minute. But let's say you were having trouble with a customer and you messed up. Well, what you do about it shows the what kind of company you really are. You could get defensive about it. You could try to say it's their fault and sometimes guess what? It could be. But you have to decide. Is it worth it to alienate and get this bad reputation or just take, you know, fix the problem? You know, even if they're being unreasonable. Now, if they go all the way to being a rip off. Well guess what? You don't want that kind of customer and chances are they hang out with rip off. So I don't mind pissing those people off because they're going to go tell their idiot friends and their rip off friends about it, and then I won't have to deal with those people. All right. So so that's that's one, uh, philosophy of mine. But for the most part, you know, customers are fine. They might not be fully happy with your product. Well, you have to consider did I overhype the sales letter for it? And it doesn't really deliver like I promised, you know.

[00:06:41] So that's your fault again, you messed up with suppliers. Like if those missing 15 widgets, you call them up and you say, hey, look, we only counted 35 and you said you delivered 50, and you have to see how they react. Are they a fair company and, uh, are they can they provide proof that they delivered them? But you don't have to get pissy about it now, especially if they want to keep you as a customer. You know, they might say, oh, sorry, we had a new driver online. Or you can say, sorry, we had a new guy and didn't know how to check things in. So we're not positive that we got shorted. But you know. So you'd be fair about it. It's again, it's fair, as is the key. And with employees, first of all, when you hire them, you should set the expectations so that whenever if they're late all the time and you have to let them go or you come down on them for being late, you remind them of when they got hired that they agreed to be on time. See? So if you never said anything about it, and you get one of these Gen Z people that thinks time is flexible. All right, well, you never set the expectations. So again, that's kind of your fault. All right.

[00:08:04] I'm not saying you have to keep them forever. Put up with it. I'm just saying it could have that friction zone. Could have been avoided. If you set the expectations right off the bat, maybe they wouldn't have taken the job. Maybe you're better off if they wouldn't have taken the job. If they know they're late all the time. All right. And there's a million situations that can come up with employees, that's for sure. Let me get to the question that I ask in all of friction zone things that I get involved with. And, you know, I have to deal with all of these customers, suppliers, employees, you know, so so if you're in business and you've never been in the friction zone, you just ain't been in business very long, right? Because you're going to get there, trust me. But the question I, I exact question I say in this, I would say to the person that I'm in the friction zone with, I'd say, what do you think would be fair? What do you think would be fair? And then you know what I do I shut up, I don't say another word after I say the word fair. What do you think would be fair? Silence. And I let them think about it and respond. I don't say another word. Not one word. All right. I let them come back, and I can't tell you the number of times.

[00:09:26] I mean, remember, I've been in business. I keep forgetting the amount. It's since 1977. So what is that? 30, 48 years or something? I don't know, but in all these years, long before the internet was around, I've been in business. I can't tell you the number of times. And I don't mess up a lot because I'm extremely conscientious about my business. But in all those years, I can I don't think I can remember a time when I asked that question, what would you what do you think would be fair in our situation, whatever it happens to be that the person came back with something more than I was willing to do to fix the situation. Almost always, it was the same or less for me to fix it, because most people are fair, and especially if you bring it up about being fair, they don't want to be thought of as not fair. All right. So so that that concept of fairness is just taken away. Most of my friction zones, I wish it could take away the one on the motorcycle, because I fell over my first practice session because I guess I didn't learn my lesson good enough. So that's it. Now there are going to be times if you're in business long enough, and I've had it a couple times where the impasse was just that you had to go to court.

[00:10:53] And that's a whole different set of, uh, podcast tips for going to court. You don't want it to get to that. I mean, nobody really wins in that so much because it eats up your time. It eats up your psychic energy, legal fees. If you're if it's a big enough deal, you got to get a lawyer. You can't try to do it on your own. So if you can avoid that, it's going to put you way further ahead. I mean, I can't I mean, I think the most I ever spent on legal fees was just getting a trademark screw the commute at one shot that I ever had to spend legal fees. In the 48 years I've been in business, it's going on 49, I guess, because this is the almost the end of this year. So yeah, you want to stay out of court, that's for sure, if you can. And by being fair and then asking that question will get you out of almost all of it. Okay. So there you go. So be fair. Do a great job in your business. Take care of your customers, employers and and suppliers. It's not uncommon for me to give a supplier some kind of gift for doing so good in their jobs. Taking care of my business. See? So all this stuff adds up to to having a good reputation. Less stress in your life, less fighting.

[00:12:13] One more thing I had to call this, um, collision place four times to get to, uh, over the course of a month, to get a two seconds worth of paperwork from them that I needed for insurance. Finally, this morning, right before I recorded this podcast, I got a lady named Joy on the line, and she started taking care of me like, no problem, I'll do it. I'll have it to you by 1015 this morning. And I told her, I said, look, your parents named you, right? You are joyous. I was getting ready to get the lawyer involved and and just jump all over you guys for taking a month to do this. And she just calmed it all down. She took that friction away with her voice on the phone and yes, Mr. Antion, I'm sorry. I'm going to take care of this for you this morning. I'll do it personally. So she took care of that friction zone and kept them from getting a lawyer. I would have blown it up on social media, the name of the company and my email list and podcast and everything. So if she comes through, you won't hear the name of the company. But if she doesn't, that's a different story. All right. So that's my story and I'm sticking to it. Make sure you check out my school. Hey, it's the only licensed, dedicated internet and digital marketing school in the country, probably the world.

[00:13:34] It's certified to operate by the State Council on Higher Education in Virginia. And you don't have to be in Virginia because it's quality distance learning. And I got to tell you, when you hear these people calling themselves schools and universities, most of them, I mean, unless it's a big entity, they're lying. They're just making it up. Those are real terms that I had to go through licensing for three years to get the license to be able to operate this school Legitimately. You see, there's no scrutiny on those people. I have to recertify every year where they check my curriculum. They do background checks and financial checks and everything under the sun. So don't get sucked in by these idiots that are just calling themselves schools and universities when they're really not. Check it out. It's going to save you a couple hundred grand and wasted four year education where they make you take classes you'll never use, and they just keep raising the fees for no real reason. And some of them have $50 billion in the bank, and they're still raising the fees every year on the kids. See. So don't get stuck in that. Get a real skill in as little as six months. And we've actually had people making money long before they graduated. So check it out at IMTCVA.org and I will catch you on the next episode. See you later.