STOP AI SCAMS With One Simple Tactic — With Dale Cardwell (Trust Dale)

Jason Montoya (00:00.89)
Welcome to the Share Life podcast. I'm your host, Jason Scott Montoya. On this show, we explore systems and stories to live better and work smarter. Today's guest has spent over 30 years analyzing exactly how people get burned. As a six time Emmy award winning consumer investigator and a veteran journalist, he saw a recurring pattern of broken trust and decided to do something proactive about it. In 2009, he transitioned from just reporting the news to creating a standard for it.

He is the founder of TrustDale.com, a free research and referral site that certifies companies based on a rigorous seven point investigative standard he developed himself. He's a TV and radio host, a champion for the consumer, and a man who believes that identifying the good guys is just as important as exposing the bad ones. So you probably don't need me to say your name, but I will do this. Please welcome Dale Cardwell.

Dale Cardwell (00:55.746)
Thank you, Jason. It's a pleasure being with you.

Jason Montoya (00:58.604)
So Dale, tell us, let's kind of go back a little bit, know, where are from and tell us who you are as a person and you're a Southeast kind of guy I hear.

Dale Cardwell (01:09.326)
Yeah, I moved around a lot. was born in Kentucky. My dad's a coal miner, retired coal miner. So family happened to move to Kentucky for a couple of years. I was born there, moved back to our native area of Alabama and grew up till I was 13 in Alabama, moved back to Kentucky, got my first job in TV in Hopkinsville, Kentucky. But the defining moment of my life, I had a big brother, have a big brother. He's two and a half years older than me. He's my right hand man today. He runs the publishing side of our company.

Jason Montoya (01:36.751)
Okay.

Dale Cardwell (01:39.363)
But back then he had 40 pounds on me, you know, and would pin me down when we were seven and nine years old and he would drool into my face, you know, and just that big brother torture. And Jason, I developed this passion for the underdog. I just developed this keen sense of wanting justice, not just for myself, but for other people. And it became a defining vein in my life.

Jason Montoya (01:49.198)
Ha ha.

Dale Cardwell (02:06.228)
And so as I chose a career, I didn't realize that a big part of that was just wanting people to experience justice, whether it's they deserve good justice or they deserve bad justice for what they've done. It's kind of driven my life.

Jason Montoya (02:24.119)
Yeah, yeah. So talk to us about that kind of essence of that justice. How do you think about justice and what does it mean? How do you contextualize it? Because justice, who's justice, right? And which definition? So talk to us little bit more about that to of scope it out a bit.

Dale Cardwell (02:44.172)
Yeah, and so I was raised in a Judeo-Christian environment, accepted Christ as my Savior very early in life, and so that was my sounding board. You know, do unto others as you would have them do unto you, which basically meant you gotta treat people fairly if you want to expect to be treated fairly. And then as my faith matured, I realized I've got to care about people that don't necessarily care for me, because that's the standard that I'm supposed to uphold.

Jason Montoya (03:09.699)
Yeah.

Dale Cardwell (03:13.516)
So I've tried to keep that as my guidepost for my 63 years and that's the kind of truth that I apply to other circumstances.

Jason Montoya (03:24.141)
Yeah. And so, you know, how does that develop as you're you're kind of growing, you know, going through high school, starting the college years? I don't know. Did you go to college? How does this play out here?

Dale Cardwell (03:36.601)
So went to Western Kentucky University that happened to be 40 miles from my home in Western Kentucky. Wanted to be a sports announcer. I loved Keith Jackson. I wanted to call college football games. I went to freshman orientation and Doyle Satthwaite, my advisor said, well, Mr. Cardwell, do you have a voice that emanates from your toes? And I said, no, sir, I don't. says, are you a famous athlete? Are you on one of the sports teams here at Western? I said, no, sir, I'm not.

Jason Montoya (03:41.877)
Okay. Yeah. Okay.

Dale Cardwell (04:05.09)
He said, well, it's very unlikely you're ever going to be a sports announcer of any note. And, you know, it devastated me. I went back to my dorm room that night. I cried, you know, but I also cried into my pillow and I said, Lord, use me. Let me do what it is in life that is going to benefit your kingdom. And Jason woke up the next morning and I just had this passion for news. And I'd always been a current events guy, but I mean, I just suddenly burned.

Jason Montoya (04:15.405)
Wow.

Jason Montoya (04:24.505)
Mm

Jason Montoya (04:29.463)
wow.

Dale Cardwell (04:34.422)
for telling people the truth about their circumstances. I remember my first job in Hopkinsville, Kentucky, I was shadowing one of the more veteran reporters and we had to go to a city council meeting where they discussed the Pitchin Plan for city employees. And it was so incredibly complicated and we were driving back to the station to file our report. And the reporter's like, you got that? That made sense to you?

Jason Montoya (04:52.983)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Montoya (05:01.901)
Hehe.

Dale Cardwell (05:03.532)
And I said, yeah, it was fascinating. Are you aware that it's not actually sound and they're going to go broke? And the guy's looking at me like, who are you? And so I just had a passion for getting to the bottom of complicated stuff and trying to share it in a way that people can understand it.

Jason Montoya (05:19.767)
Yeah, yeah. And so I guess a couple of things here. Let's kind of take a step back here because you're in Kentucky, you like sports. Did you end up at the Kentucky Derby a lot?

Dale Cardwell (05:31.235)
You know, Jason, have never I've been to Louisville when it was being run, but I've never physically attended the Kentucky Derby. It's really Kentucky are three states in one. You've got Eastern Kentucky, which is hazard, and it's very mountainous. You've got Lexington and Louisville, which is horse farms. And then you've got Western Kentucky, which is agriculture and coal. Those three regions of Kentucky rarely interlock.

Jason Montoya (05:34.841)
Okay.

Jason Montoya (05:46.745)
Mm-hmm.

Dale Cardwell (06:00.578)
Those people that are in Western Kentucky don't go to the Derby. It's really funny. I think a lot of states are like that, but it's three very distinct regions in one state.

Jason Montoya (06:00.665)
Hmm.

Jason Montoya (06:04.589)
Yeah.

Jason Montoya (06:11.073)
Yeah. So the other part of that is news. what year is it when this is happening that you get this passion for the news?

Dale Cardwell (06:21.81)
That was 1981, my fall semester at Western Kentucky University. Went through the four years, got my degree. Took me a while to land my first job, six months, but which seemed like a lifetime to me. I'll tell you a story that was very formative for me. So got a job at WAKG in Hopkinsville, Kentucky. A town so small it didn't even have a market designation. Atlanta's the ninth largest market in the country.

Jason Montoya (06:24.525)
Okay.

Dale Cardwell (06:51.288)
Hopkinsville, nah. But the distinction was it was on the edge of Fort Campbell Military Post. And Fort Campbell was this giant place where Army personnel came and went and lived. And so as the low man on the totem pole, I came in to work on a Sunday morning, the phone rings. I'm the only guy there, hello. He said, hi, my sister, my sister was engaged to one of the guys that died on that.

military transport flight in Gander, Newfoundland on Thursday, 248 army personnel died on that plane. He sent my sister an audio cassette explaining how frightened they were to fly home on this plane. I don't know if that's news or not, but just thought I'd call somebody. And you know, the hair on the back of my neck stood up because this is when I learned I had an instinct for this. And I'm like,

Jason Montoya (07:44.898)
Hmm.

Dale Cardwell (07:46.359)
my gosh, no, no, that's that's a big deal. So I had to. I had to drive to Bowling Green, Kentucky, which was about an hour away. Meet the young lady at her dorm room. Get the cassette tape, bring it back, follow the story, interviewed the young woman who was engaged to the guy. Long story short, it wound up as the lead story on the ABC evening news CBS evening news. What is it? Who? ABC, CBS, NBC front page of the.

Jason Montoya (08:08.515)
Wow.

Dale Cardwell (08:15.336)
New York Times, it changed my career. And so in a matter of a year, I went from a town that didn't even have a market size to being a reporter at the CBS affiliate in Birmingham, Alabama. And so I learned really early on, I felt very strongly that God had his hand on my life and that I just had to be receptive to where it was that he sent me. And I've felt that way ever since.

Jason Montoya (08:17.997)
Wow.

Jason Montoya (08:39.393)
Yeah, so you got the job at the CBS affiliate as a result of this story? Yeah, wow. Now for people that don't know, what the heck is a cassette?

Dale Cardwell (08:50.702)
A cassette is a forerunner of a DVD. And a lot of people may not even remember what a DVD is. It's kind of like the past version of a thumb drive, right? A flash drive. And you would put your music on a cassette player or it would be pre-recorded music that came from your favorite band. And this young couple would correspond by...

Jason Montoya (08:55.123)
You

Heh.

Jason Montoya (09:02.883)
Yeah.

Dale Cardwell (09:15.04)
sending each other cassette tapes. So they would put it into a cassette recorder, pour their heart out, honey, I miss you, can't wait to see you again. Eject the tape, pop it in the mail, send it to the Mideast, send it back to Fort Campbell, Kentucky.

Jason Montoya (09:17.186)
Yeah.

Jason Montoya (09:24.633)
Yeah.

Jason Montoya (09:30.839)
Yeah, there was no emailing or uploading. if you ever for those of you that have seen Guardians of the Galaxy, that he that movie has helped remind people of what I could say is that he puts it in the Walkman. So.

Dale Cardwell (09:44.512)
Yeah, great, great example. know, and landlines were ridiculously expensive back then and they didn't talk by phone because it was so expensive to do so. So they had to find another, they had to find a work around, Jason.

Jason Montoya (09:48.823)
Mm-hmm. Mm.

Jason Montoya (09:55.864)
Yeah, so 81, I was born in 84, so this is three years before I exist. The 80s, like what the hell, like tell us what the news environment is like. How do people get the news? I mean, you got newspapers and some TV, I'm guessing?

Dale Cardwell (10:13.294)
Yeah, back then you had three, I always compare it to being in London and needing to get to New York. There were only three ways to get to New York, ABC, NBC, or CBS Boat, right? So you had three major national networks. You had thousands of local newspapers and you had hundreds and hundreds of local radio stations. And so those were the delivery mechanisms for news and entertainment and information. And so,

Jason Montoya (10:20.494)
Yeah.

Dale Cardwell (10:43.106)
Back then, as I grew up, when I got the news bug, I wanted to be a correspondent for one of the major networks. That was my goal in life. The big dividing line in journalism was the invention of entertainment tonight. I always joke that kids that were in journalism prior to entertainment tonight were in journalism because of 60 Minutes and these shows that showed daylight on dark places.

Jason Montoya (10:52.834)
Yeah.

Jason Montoya (11:01.471)
Hehe.

Jason Montoya (11:07.243)
Hmm.

Dale Cardwell (11:12.77)
But the entertainment tonight generation, which started in 1980, those kids wanted to be entertainment journalists. They wanted to interview famous actors, that kind of thing. So that was the demarcation point for journalism from my perspective. And it became far less lucrative or interesting to be a journalist as the decades rolled on. Today, it's not a great profession for most people.

Jason Montoya (11:21.336)
Yeah.

Jason Montoya (11:25.209)
Yeah.

Jason Montoya (11:41.112)
Yeah, well, one of the things I will say for those in terms of I'm in marketing, digital marketing, online marketing content, writing, creating. And actually, journalists are really good fits for the marketing world because a lot of that writing or storytelling on YouTube or social media, it works well in those environments. So I've seen a lot of companies when they go to hire, they're actually looking for

journalists because they have some of those skill sets that are better than people that are just writers, know? Yeah, so that adaptation. I'm curious, when does cable news become a thing? Cable in general and just also cable news. Is that the 90s mostly?

Dale Cardwell (12:15.8)
Great point.

Dale Cardwell (12:28.174)
It was actually the early 80s when I started noticing that cable started competing with broadcast, but cable news was a little bit later. And so I remember 1979 was the launch of ESPN. And if you're a sports fan, ESPN was Nirvana. Oh my gosh, I can watch 24 seven sports. Another crazy thing that happened, and this is pretty deep inside baseball is that

Jason Montoya (12:35.053)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Montoya (12:48.174)
Yeah.

Hahaha.

Dale Cardwell (12:57.87)
In 1974, 75, a TV station in Nashville called WLAC sent a live truck to the scene of an incident and beamed the incident back to the station live and broadcast it as it was happening. And that was another huge point of demarcation because prior to that day, general managers of TV and radio stations saw news as a public service.

Jason Montoya (13:14.797)
Yeah. Yeah.

Jason Montoya (13:24.976)
and

Dale Cardwell (13:24.994)
They didn't make money off of it. It was something that the FCC told them they had to do, and they did it for the purpose of keeping people informed. The moment that those general managers saw that they could make money off of live reporting, everything changed. And so all journalism, especially TV journalism, started getting driven by, can we get eyeballs on this story? Can we get ratings because we've got our live truck at this event? And so...

Jason Montoya (13:40.355)
Yeah.

Dale Cardwell (13:53.859)
We've seen that evolve over the decades to the point where you don't see a lot of substantive local reporting anymore. Most of it is just live driven.

Jason Montoya (14:02.937)
So tell me what the difference is, why is live, like if let's say it was an event, a live event, and that was broadcast as it was happening, versus recording it and then just broadcasting it later, what is it about it that makes it feel different?

Dale Cardwell (14:20.376)
I think that the immediacy of knowing that something could happen right in front of you, whether it will or not, is hugely magnetic. But the perspective that you get from someone who has experience to watch an event and say, here's what I noticed that you probably would never have noticed because of my experience in this space. So that's what's missing today, is that you have very little perspective on

what you get to see and you know that's really missing is as television stations pardon me as newspapers evaporate across the country you don't have journalists going to city council meetings like i did in 1985 yeah that just isn't happening anymore

Jason Montoya (15:03.161)
Yeah.

And I think the other part of that is it's not just that that content is being streamed, but also having an expert to kind of interpret what's happening before you, right? The combination is a factor here.

Dale Cardwell (15:18.766)
Yeah. Do you remember Jason, a guy named John Stossel? Does that name ring a bell with you? So John. Yeah, yeah, yeah, he used to be on 2020, which was a TV magazine back in the day, and he did this story once and I just thought it was fascinating and this was back in the mid 80s and he said, imagine that we didn't have flights that people could not get in a plane and fly and it's 1985 and this guy.

Jason Montoya (15:24.421)
yeah, that sounds familiar, yeah. He was a talk show host or something? Yeah. Okay.

Dale Cardwell (15:48.239)
says, hey, I've invented this thing and it's a fuselage and it's long, it's made out of aluminum, so it's not very heavy. But here's the thing, I'm gonna attach a couple of motors to it and I'm gonna pour 150, 180 people into it. And because of the power of these two motors that are attached to this, it's going to take people from Los Angeles to New York. And his point was that would never get off the ground today.

Jason Montoya (15:53.579)
Yeah

Dale Cardwell (16:17.748)
Nobody would ever trust that kind of a mechanism to be safe and it could never get approved. And I thought, you know, that's perspective. That's what's missing from a lot of journalism today is that we don't know how we got here. And, you know, there's value in knowing how you got here.

Jason Montoya (16:21.859)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Montoya (16:28.14)
Hmm.

Jason Montoya (16:33.624)
Yeah.

Yeah, and I would add to that that when we don't know, we regress into our lack of knowledge. And so then we have to learn the hard way, right? Yeah, so walk us through what happens as your story unfolds here through the 90s.

Dale Cardwell (16:46.2)
We make the same mistakes over and over. could not agree more.

Dale Cardwell (16:56.844)
So I leave WBMG in Birmingham, Alabama for the CBS affiliate in Raleigh, North Carolina. I'm there for a couple of years. that's when I learned the hard way about what I call the silent bullet theory. I was watching a MASH episode once and the guy is laying on the gurney and he's like, you know, I've become famous because I wrote a book called the silent bullet, which means that if you

Jason Montoya (17:04.792)
Yeah.

Jason Montoya (17:11.756)
Okay.

Dale Cardwell (17:25.006)
get killed in combat, you didn't see the bullet, you didn't hear the bullet coming. And I never forgot that show because when I was in Raleigh-Durham, I uncovered a story that froze a gigantic development in its tracks. What I learned was that the developer had paid off some government officials to make it look like the primary drinking water lake in Raleigh had no tributaries to it.

And the reason they redrew the map was to get the development closer to the lake, because people like to live on a lake. Well, when I discovered the difference between the map that it had the tributaries lopped off and the real Army Corps of Engineers map, it was just as plain as the nose on your face that fraud was going on. It was a huge story. It changed everything. was a really huge development, very expensive development.

you know, I'm pretty proud of myself for rooting it out and exposing it. Well, you know, six months later, I'm out of a job. And, and I'm thinking, well, in my opinion, it was because of that, because I met, I met a county commissioner who was very tied into the community. And, you know, most people that knew me were stunned that I was non-renewed at my station. And she said, well, Dale, you know, I

Jason Montoya (18:31.097)
Because of that or just unrelated? Yeah.

Dale Cardwell (18:52.962)
went to a dinner party and let me just put it this way, you stepped on the wrong toes. And that's when I learned the hard way that there's a price sometimes to be paid for standing up for truth and telling people the truth. And that's a truism that exists.

Jason Montoya (18:58.094)
Yeah.

Jason Montoya (19:08.973)
Yeah, tell us more about that, because I think, you know, sometimes you would think the truth is enough, right? But sometimes the truth isn't enough in the sense that it costs you a lot. Tell us some more about that.

Dale Cardwell (19:21.826)
Yeah, know, a funny story is that when you, had a news director once that told me that the value of your story is directly proportionate to the amount of effort that's put in to try to kill it. And I'll give you an example of that. I did a story also in Raleigh about the outer banks washing away due to just erosion. And this,

Professor at Duke University had discovered this algorithm that discovered that it was washing away much faster. And that was a really big story because on the eastern coast of the US, people are very sensitive to the coastline. And I remember being in a conference room and it's 3.30 in the afternoon. It's the lead story at six o'clock. And everybody's patting me on the back telling me how smart I am and how great it is that I've uncovered this. And a very powerful person called the newsroom,

Jason Montoya (20:07.128)
Yeah.

Dale Cardwell (20:16.546)
got a hold of the news director and said, he's completely wrong. And if you air that story, not only are you going to have egg all over your face, but you're probably going to wind up getting sued. And so the news director comes to find me and gives me this information. And now I don't have a friend in the newsroom. What is the old saying that victory has a thousand parents and failure is a bastard?

Right? Well, you know, I had to spend the next two and a half hours proving my premise is correct or the story would have never aired. You talk about a lonely existence and that's what that's the price you pay if you want to move truth forward. And again, as Alan Griggs said, the the opposition to the truth is directly proportional to the impact that it has something I've never forgotten.

Jason Montoya (20:46.649)
Yeah

Jason Montoya (21:13.815)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, are you familiar with Brene Brown? Have you heard of her? Yeah, she has this concept called Into the Wilderness. And it's this idea that sometimes you have to go into the wilderness by yourself while you're group, you're essentially isolated from your group in order to tell your group the thing they don't want to hear or the thing that somebody in that group doesn't want them to hear.

Dale Cardwell (21:19.863)
I have.

Dale Cardwell (21:38.925)
Very true.

Jason Montoya (21:40.26)
So she calls that braving the wilderness is what you were doing there is that loneliness. So how do you get through that lonely? How did you or how do you kind of embrace that loneliness because it is risky, it is costly. What holds you together in those moments or historically or?

Dale Cardwell (21:43.886)
You

Dale Cardwell (21:59.311)
You know, I don't want to sound like this, you know, do-gooder, but it's my faith. It's my faith. You know, and my dad really put it really well one day. He and I were going to an auto parts store to do something with a car that my wife and I depended on. And I asked him, I said, why, why are you showing us so unshakable? Why have you, you know, followed this faith all your life?

Jason Montoya (22:06.029)
Yeah.

Dale Cardwell (22:27.67)
And he said, it's only thing I have. And I'm thinking, okay, I get it. I get it completely. When everything has been stripped away and you have nothing and you're kind of worn out on depending on yourself because yourself, you feel like got me in the mess that I'm in, then if your faith can't carry you through, you're in a big world of hurt.

Jason Montoya (22:30.391)
Yeah.

Jason Montoya (22:51.2)
Yeah. Yeah. There's a story. think it's, um, Peter with is one of the disciples of Jesus and all everyone departs because Jesus says some things that are kind of wild. And, um, Jesus looks to Peter and says, you know, you want to join them. And he says, to whom shall I go? Like where else am I going to go here? So what do I have to work with? have you or nothing.

Dale Cardwell (23:12.558)
Good, great point, yes.

Jason Montoya (23:15.043)
So that's, think, what would you encourage people, how would you give people encourage, how would you help give them the courage they need to stand in those types of moments? Because we all have them.

Dale Cardwell (23:30.915)
You know, it's funny, I usually read through the Bible every other year. And what's interesting is that every time I do it, I learn something new. It's a new perspective. And it's because I'm maturing. I'm a different person than I was two years ago. And what's fascinating is listening and reading the passages in the Old Testament where the king of Israel is up against a formidable opponent and the judge or the

Jason Montoya (23:36.238)
Yeah.

Dale Cardwell (24:00.846)
The prophet is saying, look, you've got to stop depending on yourself. The only reason you're going to get through this is that because you're going to depend on his power. And if you start depending on yourself, that's when you're going to be in big trouble. And you read these stories over and over again about the children of Israel depending on the Lord, falling away from the Lord, depending on the Lord, falling away. And it's human nature. It's what we all do over and over again. So it gives you a really good perspective to read those stories.

Jason Montoya (24:09.113)
Yeah.

Jason Montoya (24:23.257)
Yeah

Jason Montoya (24:30.795)
Yeah. So do you feel like there's a direct connection between your faith and the work that you do?

Dale Cardwell (24:38.03)
Oh, without a doubt, without a doubt. Because as I say, I used to stand there at six and 11 every night telling people how rotten the world was. And I'd say, you know, Margaret was taken for $10,000. They believe this guy took her money. The police are trying to find him. It's highly unlikely they ever will. Don't let this happen to you. Dale Cardwell, Channel 2 Action News. And what I realized after doing that hundreds of times is that I noticed this pattern.

Jason Montoya (24:39.779)
Yeah.

Dale Cardwell (25:08.066)
Well, she hired a person who told her a story that was too good to be true. She hired a person without checking his references. She hired a person without knowing the difference between a real online review and a fake review. She hired a person who did not have a findable office so he couldn't be found after he had her money. She hired a person that didn't carry liability or workers' comp insurance, and that's why he could undercut his competition's price by 50%.

And then she didn't do any kind of a lawsuit search to see if this person gets sued frequently and successfully in state or small claims court, which is really easy to do and most people don't do that. And then finally she would hire a company because they gave her this pretty piece of paper that said guarantee, but she didn't read the guarantee until she realized that the thing that went wrong is excluded from the guarantee. And I thought, wow, these people are making the same seven mistakes.

over and over and over. So instead of telling them once again how Margaret messed up, I'm going to reverse engineer this and I'm going to find companies that can meet a seven point standard. And once I identify them, the true secret sauce, Jason, is that I would sit down with the owner or the decision maker and I'd say, look, I know that you're delivering excellence for your

consumer, I can prove that you are, but here's the catch. I want you to put me in charge of conflict resolution in the event someone feels as though they've been taken advantage of. Up to $10,000. So that means you're going to pay a person 10 grand if I think you didn't do what you promised you would do in your written agreement. A couple of crazy things happened. I would have

Jason Montoya (27:00.594)
hehe

Dale Cardwell (27:01.8)
Six of those owners or decision makers would look at me and say, well, you I can kind of see how that would work. You'd probably send me a lot of leads, but wait a second. Who do you think you are? My daddy started this company. I'm not going to put anybody in charge of my customer service. And then four out of the 10 would say, well, that's a no brainer because you're not going to get any complaints. That's the difference between us at ABC company.

is that they just tell people that they're great. And the consumer has to experience them before they find out they're not. We're losing tons of business to that company because they can outspend us in marketing. But you can be a tiebreaker for us because we're happy to put you in charge of a $10,000 make it right guarantee. And so Jason, I kind of fumbled into the business plan. Started with 10 companies back in 2009. Pretty soon I had 50 companies. Pretty soon I had 100.

Jason Montoya (27:34.52)
Yeah.

Dale Cardwell (28:00.974)
Pretty soon I had 200. And the common denominator are humble human beings that can accept the fact that they are wrong from time to time, but that they work quickly to remedy what it is that they did wrong. And so that's my business model. I work with people that are driven by humility, but excellence at the same time. And at the end of the day, those are your most successful companies in the long run.

Jason Montoya (28:01.443)
Yeah.

Jason Montoya (28:17.688)
Yeah.

Jason Montoya (28:30.433)
Yeah, no, think that that's a good point, one of the things I think about is, we all make mistakes, but it's how do we respond when those mistakes happen? And how do we reconcile those situations, rectify them?

Dale Cardwell (28:39.15)
True.

Dale Cardwell (28:45.998)
Yeah, so some companies are intimidated by business plan. They're like, I don't want to have to pay out $10,000 to someone over a dispute. first of all, we have generated, my platform has generated $2.6 billion in commerce in North Georgia in 15 years. I know that because I can measure how many leads have come through my website and my certified services guide that we mail.

to 600,000 homes every year. And so what I call the completion to complaint ratio, how many people use our platform every year compared to how many people write me and say, hey, that didn't go the way I expected it to go? 99.7 % of the contacts we send to company result in a good outcome. So after all these years, I've literally had to pay out the $10,000 make it right guarantee eight times.

eight times. And each of the eight times, the consumer could demonstrate harm and that the company failed to deliver what they had promised in their written agreement. Now that's a pretty good track record considering tens of thousands of transactions that have taken place. But what people don't realize is that I've also sent out about a quarter of a million dollars in gift cards to people because Joe the plumber showed up 15 minutes late for his appointment.

Jason Montoya (30:01.507)
Mm-hmm.

Dale Cardwell (30:14.658)
things that, because I expect and demand excellence from the companies that I represent. And when they fall short of excellence, it's one thing just to get the job done, but if you don't wow your consumer, your customer, they're not gonna tell their neighbor about the great experience they had. So we want our companies that I work with to wow their customers so that the word of mouth tells their story.

Jason Montoya (30:40.279)
Yeah, yeah, and I think there's also, know, trust Dale. Part of it is trusting you to mediate in a way that's fair, right? I think you can have the assumption that, well, if there's an issue, you're just gonna side with the customer. But I think what you're saying is you're gonna side with whatever's true and good, right?

Dale Cardwell (30:59.49)
That's exactly right. And a couple of the difference makers for us, most companies have it in their contract that you first must go to our mediation or our arbitration clause before you can file a suit against me. A lot of companies put that into place so they don't get sued. The dirty secret of that is that most of those mediation boards are controlled by the industry that that company is a participant in. So first of all,

If it happens in Atlanta, you're not going to want to fly out to Los Angeles to sit before a mediation board to tell your story. So they know that people aren't really going to pursue those paths, but it keeps them from being sued. And so what I say to consumers and to companies that I work with is we generally solve a problem within 72 hours. You're not going to have to go through a mediator. You're not going to have to go through an arbitrator. But what you do is when you get to my customer service department,

you de-escalate the tension on both sides. It's almost always a communications issue. And so all of a sudden you've got a consumer who's mad, but they're talking to someone in my organization that's not mad. And they're like, okay, look, just tell me what happened. And they'll tell you and they'll say, can you send me a copy of your agreement and circle the provision you did not receive that you're so upset about. And Jason, a magic thing happens at that point.

Jason Montoya (32:00.973)
Yeah.

Jason Montoya (32:11.15)
Yeah.

Jason Montoya (32:25.113)
.

Dale Cardwell (32:25.932)
the consumer reads their contract for the first time. And they're like, my gosh, that's the option he offered me and I declined because I was going to save a little money. Well, oops, I guess I shouldn't have declined that option. And then sometimes the consumer circles that, they send it to me, I call the company or my customer service folks call the company and say, it says right here that they were going to get this. And the photographs show that they didn't get it. Can you please explain to us how

Jason Montoya (32:53.56)
Yeah.

Dale Cardwell (32:55.01)
That didn't happen. And then on the other side of the equation, the company goes, oops, oops, my sub, my employee didn't tell me that. He was so worried that I was gonna jump all over him that he didn't tell me the whole story. And so, but when you have a mediator in the middle that's intentionally trying to find a resolution, it just goes so much smoother.

Jason Montoya (33:02.541)
Yeah, we met.

Hmm.

Jason Montoya (33:20.375)
Yeah, and it sounds like you're really offering this solution that it kind of alleviates a lot of the problems that these companies have to deal with themselves. Like you're solving a lot of the problems for them that their customer service would have to resolve, but you can do it in a more kind of mediation standpoint so it's less emotional. you're also preventing, if you weren't in place for situations where you're not in that

relationship, those clients might go to a small claims court or some kind of lawsuit and you're gonna have to deal with it then, which is gonna be a lot more involved,

Dale Cardwell (33:58.755)
Jason, I wish I could hire you because that's part of the value that I bring to a company. I call it Yelp insurance. That when the consumer realizes they've got a path to resolution, they're not gonna fire off that one star to Google and burn a bridge. They're not going to send an angry email to Yelp because they know that that's burning a bridge. That they're not going to get what they're after ultimately anyway. So they will send me an email and say, hey, this didn't go right. Can you help me out?

And so companies value that. They're like, OK, if someone complains to Trustdale, it's not automatically made public. So this is a great way for me to preserve my reputation while somebody calms down and we work it out. that's part of the, it's hard to measure the value of that, but it's incredibly valuable if it preserves your 4.9 versus a 3.7, right?

Jason Montoya (34:43.438)
Yeah.

Jason Montoya (34:50.04)
Yeah.

Jason Montoya (34:54.681)
Yeah, yeah, I think, I don't know if this is a good analogy, but if you kind of like, you're going into the jungle, you know, you can go by yourself with the machete and try and like survive, or you can go with like an armed entourage that's gonna protect you against the tigers and snakes. You know, it's your choice, but you know, if it's worth it, know, hire the guard to go through the jungle. So I'm, I guess I'm curious, you know, how does,

you're doing this investigative journalism, you shift to building an actual platform and in a directory to be this mediator. And so that's kind of the evolution to go from exposing the problem but actually trying to protect some of the people that are getting trapped in the jungle, right? So how does that evolve, I guess, dive into that?

Dale Cardwell (35:45.12)
Mm-hmm. So.

Dale Cardwell (35:50.987)
So another great question because early on there was this electric company that had a great reputation and everybody I talked to they said, Dale, you need to call so and so the president of such and such electric company because they just do it right and they don't cut corners and even if it costs them more. And so I called this guy and Jason, he would not call me back. I just could not reach him. And finally, I had a mutual friend reach out to him.

and say, you really need to call Dale back. He admires what you're doing there and he has a good opportunity for you. So the guy calls me, returns my call and he says, Dale, I'll be honest with you. I thought you were gonna swat me. I thought you were gonna expose something that I'd done and I had no idea what it was that I had done. And so early, early on, a lot of companies thought that I'm this sickle. What is it? Coming after them with a sickle?

Jason Montoya (36:43.993)
You can't read them. Yeah.

Dale Cardwell (36:49.588)
And because I kinda had the reputation at WSB of being a truth teller. And so I had to fight through that and say, no, I'm not here to smack you. I'm here to be your champion if you deserve to have a champion. And so it took a while for people to get over the hump of thinking that I was going to represent their best interests along with the consumer's best interest.

Jason Montoya (37:05.57)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Jason Montoya (37:15.159)
Yeah, so you went from the Grim Reaper to the Helper.

Dale Cardwell (37:21.494)
Yeah, yeah, that's true.

Jason Montoya (37:24.535)
Yeah, And exposing the bad guys versus helping the good guys, kind of that idea shift. So does that continue in the sense as you launch this business, do you continue to do both for a while or how does that play out?

Dale Cardwell (37:43.215)
So we have had a 30 minute television show for 16 seasons over the past 16 years. And it's called Trustdale Investigates. It was called Trustdale TV early on. So I get hundreds of emails from people wanting me to fix their problem. So I have an unending content flow of people that have put themselves in a pickle and they want someone to help them out of it. And so I just have a heart for those people. I just want to fix things.

Jason Montoya (37:48.215)
Yeah.

Dale Cardwell (38:12.384)
And it's pretty easy these days, Jason, for me to, and my team, because I've got a whole team that helps me do this. It takes us 30 minutes to figure out, okay, was this an unintentional mistake? Was it an intentional harm that this person thinks they're never going to be held accountable for? And, you know, and do we stand any opportunity of resolving this for this person? And so,

The good news is I have 200 some odd companies that do it right. So I often involve them into the solution, especially if it's someone that was taken advantage of intentionally. I've busted this person that had a website called order any car.com. And the premise of the business was you go on order any car.com, you will find a make and model that is pleasing to you and

miraculously the price is two thirds lower than you're gonna find that car anywhere else. And all kinds of photographs of the car. You meet the person that's the broker. You pay for the car up front, sight unseen. The car's not there. They're gonna deliver it in one week. It's a really successful business if you never have to deliver the car. And so, you know, this person that owned and managed OrderAnyCar.com, you know, was doing this left and right. And here's a

Jason Montoya (39:25.208)
Yeah.

Dale Cardwell (39:35.321)
dirty little secret in most states today that most authorities don't want you to know. They're not gonna put a nonviolent person in prison. This person has been caught doing this a half dozen times. Every single time they show up in court, they are released on bond, they abscond, they don't come back for their trial, and then they are on the loose for another two to three years until they get pulled over for a broken tail light.

and you find 10 outstanding warrants on this person for selling cars that they never deliver. They go back to jail, someone bonds them out, and now they're out again for another three or four years. I've told this story over and over again. The state correctional system of Georgia will not put this person in prison. I've, you know, I called it Georgia's Untouchables. And law enforcement doesn't really want people to know this.

Jason Montoya (40:05.038)
Yeah.

Dale Cardwell (40:34.638)
that you can get away with nonviolent crime. But that's something that I feel like I need to make consumers aware of. And so my point is AMCO is one of my long time participating companies. They're just, they're all locally owned franchises. They're good people that run them. And so I'll go to AMCO and I'll say, well, you guys helped this lady that was burned into buying this car. One of the occasions she actually gets the car, the car,

is a piece of junk that doesn't resemble the photographs at all. Amco takes that car, does a complete makeover, metamorphosis, and now the lady has a car and her children can ride to school and back safely because of the generosity of a company that I know does it right. So that's a wonderful, that's a wonderful thing that I get great fulfillment for being able to have a part in.

Jason Montoya (41:08.729)
you

Dale Cardwell (41:30.788)
So that's part of what we bring to our TV show is we solve problems for people.

Jason Montoya (41:30.989)
to facilitate the.

Jason Montoya (41:36.109)
Yeah, so you're helping solve it for that individual and you're finding a partner that's willing to do that piece of the puzzle,

Dale Cardwell (41:44.172)
because they just, it makes everybody feel good when they do something together that lifts people. You know, that's just a human trait that I hope will never go away, right?

Jason Montoya (41:52.343)
Yeah.

Jason Montoya (41:56.024)
Yeah, yeah, I've actually, I've worked on two episodes of Extreme Makeover Home Edition. And they come in and do that. And there was actually, there was an episode in the set, the one I, so when I was in Arizona, did, worked on episode there. And then when I lived in Atlanta, I did another one. And what had happened in the one in Atlanta is that the house, this is a very rare thing. They normally wanna start from scratch with the house.

just because of the nature of trying to build a house has seven days, but this house had been started and then they had an issue with the builder and they kind of were stuck and her son and her daughter had died. It was like a really tragic situation. And so, they, they decided to do this house and then finish it. And so, it was pretty neat, you know, to watch that.

Dale Cardwell (42:43.318)
Yeah, it's just life changing and it's just there's very little that makes you feel more fulfilled than making a difference in somebody's life under those circumstances.

Jason Montoya (42:52.503)
Yeah, yeah, because I mean, I imagine your heart drops just hearing the story after story after story, especially because you can't help everyone too, right? So how do you reconcile just the mass amount of tragedy that you see?

Dale Cardwell (43:09.762)
That's why I wrote the book. I mean, I just, knew I could not help everybody. And, you know, in most states, the curriculum in high school, there's no consumer education. You know, they'll teach you how to perform algebra, but they won't teach you how to write a check, which nobody writes checks anymore, but they won't teach you the fundamentals of knowing how to deal with a bank. They don't teach you the fundamentals of purchasing a car. That's a tragedy.

Jason Montoya (43:11.811)
Yeah.

Jason Montoya (43:29.269)
Hehe.

Dale Cardwell (43:38.595)
because those are real life skills that people need. And so I tell parents, get a copy of my book, go to Amazon, order it or come to TrustDell.com because it's a great primer to give a young person or a young couple and say, are the obstacles that you're going to encounter when someone's trying to take advantage of you. And instead of having to memorize each way they will take advantage of you.

Recognize the emotional triggers you're going to feel when someone's setting you up. You know, I call it when you're playing defense and your doorbell rings and there's a person standing there and he's like, Hey, I'm from acne roofing company and we over purchased shingles because we've been working in your neighborhood for two weeks. Have I got a deal for you? If you will write me a check right now, we will take these shingles that are on the back of the truck and we will reroof your house for 50 % less than the going rate.

Jason Montoya (44:11.192)
Yeah.

Dale Cardwell (44:36.002)
They show you a contract with a person they claim is two streets over. You believe it because why is this person gonna knock on my door, ring my doorbell and tell me a lie? Human beings want to believe good things from other human beings. They said, we'll be back in the morning at 7 a.m. to start your re-roof. You get up at six, you're drinking your coffee, you're ready for your doorbell to ring and it doesn't ring. And now it's 8.30 and you're like, my gosh, what's going on? So you take the card that the person gave you.

and you call the number on the card and it says DDD. The number you have reached has been disconnected or is no longer in service. And then you go to the website on the card and you find out that it's been spoofed. It's not the website that you thought it was. Someone has made an AI copy of that website. So now you call the police because these people have $3,800 or $7,200 of your money.

The police used to come to your house and they would fill out what they call an incident report. now it's done over the phone. And the consumer, the homeowner would say, thank you, thank you so much. At least I know these people are gonna be held accountable for the theft that they just perpetrated. And the person on the phone says, no, no, you have a business dispute, right? I'm sorry, well, you have a contract, right? They gave you a one page contract?

Yeah, but they had no intention of fulfilling the contract. Well, that's for a court to decide. And so they send you to magistrate court where folks newsflash, it doesn't work. The bad guys know how to manipulate the court system. The first thing they're gonna do is they're gonna get delay after delay after delay. And the court to your amazement is going to grant these delays because all they wanna do is clear their docket. They just wanna get as many of those cases off their docket as they possibly can. And you're like,

wow, that seems like they're in the league of the bad guy. And so that's a long story, Jason, for me to say, I'd rather you read about what could go wrong than to have to call me to try to correct what has gone wrong. Because I can't correct what has gone wrong every time. And as you say, I can't get to everybody.

Jason Montoya (46:53.207)
Yeah, it reminds me of the Apostle Hall says, test everything, hold on to what is good. And that's kind of the core of your book. Now, this is a book you wrote before and you did an update or is this a new book?

Dale Cardwell (47:02.37)
great verse. Yes.

Dale Cardwell (47:11.758)
It's an update. So I wrote it back in 2019 and it was called Don't Get Scammed, Get Smart, Seven Steps, Steps to Become a More Savvy Consumer and finished it in November of 2019. I'm thinking I'm done. You know, I've done my part. And then this crazy thing happened called COVID. And, you know, after six million people died across the planet, two point something million in the United States, I stood and watched all these scams move to the Internet.

and that people were completely defenseless because it was now going to move at light speed. And I thought, okay, I thought I was done, but I'm not. So I had to come back and I wrote a whole new chapter, refreshed every chapter based on what COVID has brought forth. And so the update is called, Don't Get Scammed, Get Smart, Seven Steps to Outsmart Today's Most Dangerous Post-COVID Scams. Romance scams, fake.

Jason Montoya (48:07.777)
Hmm.

Dale Cardwell (48:09.39)
check scams, government loan scams, that salt of the earth, real circumstances that people are encountering every day because it shows up on their social media platform. So it shows up in their email address. They get an email solicitation to their business address that they're thinking, okay, there's no way these people would know how to reach me at my job. So it has to be real. And then you find out

It's not real. Sextortion scams. My dad called me up a couple years ago and said, Dale, I'm really embarrassed to tell you this, but something has frozen my computer. It's I had to turn the volume down because it's going baa baa baa. And I said, tell me what happened, daddy. He says I was on Facebook and there was this there was this piece of you know, there was this message said, hey, she was a real looker back in her day. Click here to learn more about the path of

Marilyn Monroe. And he clicks on it, of course, and it takes him to this setup where they're depending, the bad guys are depending on shame, right? Either shame or greed and speed. And most people fall for one of those three things, shame, greed, or speed. And thank goodness I was able to walk my dad through that. And 90 % of those scams can be cleared by simply rebooting your computer.

Most of them do not have the ability to take control of your computer. 10 % do, but you generally can solve that one with just rebooting your computer. I'm on a mission to tell people, please don't pay the extortion.

Jason Montoya (49:52.152)
Yeah. Yeah. And on the most extreme examples, you have these ransomware stories of these major corporations that are locked out of their systems and having to deal with that.

Dale Cardwell (50:04.062)
I've got a great example. My general manager has a colleague that's the CFO of his business and he authorized a wire payment inadvertently because he thought that it was really the voice of the owner of the company asking him to do it. And they lost tens of thousands of dollars through a wire transaction because of AI. And not taking the normal safeguards you should take.

Jason Montoya (50:13.441)
wow.

Jason Montoya (50:26.305)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, when it comes to money, like it seems like you should just have like a default testing mode. Don't just send money. Confirm pause button. That's what it is. Push the pause button. So is there anything more about your story that you think is worth highlighting that we haven't already covered?

Dale Cardwell (50:41.718)
A pause button. Everybody needs a pause button.

Dale Cardwell (50:54.788)
goodness gracious. know, some of the prompts that you sent me in advance of our meeting, I thought about those. You know, tell me more about the importance of mentoring. You know, I have a guy in my life, his name's Billy Corey, and most people don't remember this. I ran for the United States Senate in 2008, and I didn't take PAC money. I didn't take special interest money because I believe that's a big problem of our system is, you know,

Jason Montoya (51:14.893)
Okay.

Dale Cardwell (51:22.702)
We don't tell the politicians what we want them to do. The people that pay for their elections tell them what to do. And so I lost and I was devastated and I didn't want to go back to conventional reporting. And Mr. Corey, he's the guy that I sat in his office and said, why don't you parlay your trustworthiness into a business? And so he's my mentor at the time. He's still my mentor. He's the kind of guy that's going to teach you to fish. He's not going to give you five bucks to buy a fish.

Jason Montoya (51:50.488)
Yeah.

Dale Cardwell (51:52.655)
You know, so how should we think about and use systems? Systems are a miracle, right? But you've got to determine what are good systems and what are bad systems. I'm a big believer in reviews, reading reviews and getting references. know, people, know, Jason, if I asked you how many references should you get, almost everybody says three because that's what they've been conditioned to say. But I say get 20 references.

because any company worth its salt had better have at least 20 happy customers to share with you over years of delivering excellence. Then you take that 20 list and then you choose three to call. You're really going to improve the odds of getting a valid picture of how the company performs when you choose the three to call.

Jason Montoya (52:37.466)
Okay.

Jason Montoya (52:43.481)
Mm-hmm. And are you dealing with certain types of businesses or is it all kinds?

Dale Cardwell (52:52.064)
It's 90 % home services because that's where most people, but I mean, I have CPAs on my side. I have attorneys on my side. I have a celebrity chef on my side. You know, and it's anything that takes a difficult decision where you don't want to waste your money and you want to have some validity that you're making a smart decision. That's our guidepost.

Jason Montoya (52:54.155)
Okay.

Jason Montoya (52:58.189)
Yeah. Okay.

Yeah.

Jason Montoya (53:07.149)
Okay.

Jason Montoya (53:15.991)
Yeah, so if you think about mentoring then in that sense of this is something that has really helped you, in a lot of ways what you're doing as a business is mentoring people, right?

Dale Cardwell (53:30.668)
That's very true. I haven't really thought of it that way, but it's true. We have ongoing conversations with lots of consumers. You know, it's so funny. I'll go to the grocery store and someone will come up to me and say, my gosh, I'm so happy to meet you. I want you to know I read your three for Thursday blog every week. My wife and I would not make a consumer decision without consulting you and taking a look at your website. And Jason, I may go.

three months without running into that type of a person again. And like I say, I would love, I'd love to know what they're drinking. I'd like to know what's in their water. And because my goal is to connect those people and create a community of trust where people are going to say, look, life's tough enough. I just want to have a, I just want to have a network of trustworthy people. And something you mentioned at the top of the show, AI is forcing us into smaller and smaller truth circles.

Jason Montoya (54:02.126)
Yeah.

Jason Montoya (54:07.417)
haha

Dale Cardwell (54:29.346)
When someone can call you or appear to you in a video chat and look just like your brother and sound just like your brother and steal money from you, that's when your truth circle's gonna start shrinking. And we've got to be prepared for that. We've got to be prepared for how do we make smart decisions when our truth circle is now a tenth of what it was a year ago.

Jason Montoya (54:41.805)
Yeah.

Jason Montoya (54:52.289)
Yeah, yeah. So would you, is there any kind of a system or mindset that people can do, tap into for that type of dynamic shift?

Dale Cardwell (55:01.262)
Absolutely. And so I say that whether it's a personal matter or a business matter, I want you to have a safe word so that it's two o'clock in the morning, your phone rings and it's someone claiming to be your grandchild. This happens all the time. Grandma, I'm in jail. Please don't ask me to explain why. Please don't tell mom and dad. But the attorney says I need $2,000 wired to this.

phone number, this bank account by 9 a.m. 90 % of the grandparents are gonna get out of bed and go do that. And so what I say is have a safe word already established with your family. And you need to say to Billy, Billy, what's our safe word? And of course, Billy's not gonna know the safe word. And so that gives you the confidence and the courage to hang up and call Billy and find out that Billy was not the person on the other line.

I want you to do the same thing with your business relationships, especially people that you pay money to. Be on record with a safe word. that's the one. Now, the bad guys may figure this out at some point, but right now they haven't figured out how to figure out what your safe word is that's communicated privately because they can't figure out all the company you do business with. That's my advice right now with AI is just have safe words.

Jason Montoya (56:04.909)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Montoya (56:27.149)
Yeah. Yeah.

Dale Cardwell (56:28.758)
because we're on a wave and we don't know where it's going yet, Jason.

Jason Montoya (56:33.921)
Yeah, and it's simple enough that it's just a single thing versus like, there are probably more complex ways you could navigate that, but you're trying to give people like a quick, simple way to navigate it. Yeah, yeah. So what about, when you think about just living better and working smarter, what advice would you give us or give others about how to do that?

Dale Cardwell (56:44.696)
that they'll actually use.

Dale Cardwell (56:59.262)
You know, I thought about that a lot and I kind of beat myself up and what am I guilty of and what do I need to do better? And that's be present. Be present in the moment. I'm a planner and I'm the guy that's always trying to figure out, okay, how am going to get from here to here to here? And so I'm guilty of not being present. I've got a six year old and a four year old, two granddaughters and they're the apples of my eye. And I love...

Jason Montoya (57:19.694)
Yeah.

Jason Montoya (57:27.768)
Yeah.

Dale Cardwell (57:28.47)
nothing more than to be in their presence, you know, and they're just so funny without trying to be funny, you know, so that's, be present is the strongest piece of advice that I can give. Consider the other person, consider what is best for them while you're considering what is best for you. And you know, the Bible teaches us to go beyond being fair. You know, you've got to treat your enemy better than yourself. And that's a tall order.

Jason Montoya (57:31.053)
Yeah.

Jason Montoya (57:34.84)
Yeah.

Jason Montoya (57:52.311)
Yeah.

Dale Cardwell (57:57.975)
especially when you discover someone's trying to harm you intentionally. those are some thoughts on that.

Jason Montoya (57:58.031)
Yeah.

Jason Montoya (58:01.816)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, well, I think it's James says, don't let the world corrupt you, right? And so I'd be curious what your advice is to prevent cynicism and jadedness because in your line of work, that's very difficult to do.

Dale Cardwell (58:26.666)
It is and you know and sadly I think a lot of people are born with a specific mindset of do they see the negative or do they see the positive and I did a I busted a scam many years ago where you you get a call and they're they're like Mr Montoya we have a warrant for your arrest you were subpoenaed to be a witness in a trial today at Gwinnett County over a traffic accident that happened in Lawrenceville.

in 2024 and you're like, my goodness, how do you know I don't even know what you're talking about? Well, I'll be honest with you, we're getting a lot of false warrants issued, but we can settle this. But what I need you to do now is get in your car, come down to the sheriff's department and you need to give us 200 or it's $2,000, but we'll immediately spit out an invoice that you take to the clerk's office and they'll reimburse you. You would not believe how many people.

Jason Montoya (59:01.369)
You

Dale Cardwell (59:24.322)
have fallen for that, right? And so what I, so Shannon Volkanov, who was the public information officer of Gwinnett County, she's the one that when the people realized they'd been burned, they would go see her and say, what am I gonna do about this? And she did this over and over and over with people that had come to the sheriff's department and put $2,000 into an inmate's account thinking they were giving it to the system, right?

And she said a truism that's never left me. said, good people expect goodness from other people. And later, Malcolm Gladwell wrote about it and said, imagine what world we would be in if you were cynical and suspicious of everyone you encounter. So it's. It is it is, and so he says, it's better to live in a world where you trust people, trust, but verify. And so I've been struggling.

Jason Montoya (01:00:06.807)
Yeah. Is that his book, Talking with Strangers? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Jason Montoya (01:00:15.98)
you

Dale Cardwell (01:00:19.53)
lately with this idea that some people just, you I see the, I see the sky as blue. Some people see the sky as gray and it's a mindset that it's really difficult to change a person's mindset. I see opportunity, they see restriction. And so my advice is try to see the opportunity, try to see the silver lining in things and pursue

goodness, pursue what's going right and focus on that and not on what could go wrong because that's a swirling hole.

Jason Montoya (01:00:50.51)
Yeah.

Jason Montoya (01:00:55.801)
Yeah, I have a little principle that I developed called the glass box principle. And so you have a black box, which is you don't know how it's working and you have a glass box, which is clear so you can see how whatever's inside of it's working. And so essentially the principle is effectively test the untrustworthy and wisely probe trusted authority, including yourself. And the idea is that

Dale Cardwell (01:01:03.426)
Okay.

Jason Montoya (01:01:24.897)
The reason you test, you obviously wanna test the untrustworthy, but that's an easy thing. But part of the reason you wanna test it, because sometimes the truth comes from the most unexpected places, even your adversaries. And then the flip of that is we wisely trusted authority, including ourselves, just because we trust them doesn't mean what they're saying is true. Maybe it's not malicious, but it might be an accident or some other reason. And so that's a principle that I've kind of developed over the years.

Dale Cardwell (01:01:54.479)
I like that, I'd love to borrow that if I can. know, Jason, I'm also a big believer in the 80-20 rule. And the 80-20 rule applies to almost everything as you go through life. In consumerism, you don't do your homework. You take your brother-in-law's advice and you hire the painter he hired. 80 % of the time, it's gonna work out. Now, you may not be thrilled, you may think you paid too much.

Jason Montoya (01:01:57.176)
Yeah, yeah, I'll send it to you.

Okay.

Jason Montoya (01:02:15.289)
Mm-hmm.

Dale Cardwell (01:02:22.078)
and it's gonna be a little aggravating, but it's not gonna be a disaster. 20 % of the time, when you don't do your homework, it's going to leave a mark. You're gonna like, my gosh, I can't believe I was this big of an idiot. Maybe 5 % of the time, it's gonna be a tragedy. You're gonna have to get your house painted again and pay twice as much to have your house painted because you made a bad decision the first time around, right?

Jason Montoya (01:02:22.841)
Yeah.

Dale Cardwell (01:02:50.35)
But that's what I always say. I have a colleague that I work with and she's one of my favorite folks. She came to me five years ago and said, hey, I need to replace my water heater. And I know that we've got great companies on the site, but there's this guy in my neighborhood that everybody just raves about. He's a handyman. And I asked him to quote it and he's literally 40 % less expensive than any of the companies on our site.

And she said, do you mind if I give him a shot? I'm like, well, first of all, it's your house. You do what you want to do, but let's have an experiment. I said, let's go ahead and put him through the paces and compare side by side what would happen with a Trustell certified company and what would happen with his handyman. OK, so first of all, he's not a plumber. So if something goes wrong and he's not a plumber, then that's a risk she's taking. Second of all, she has a slow leak in her water heater, so it could burst at any time.

Jason Montoya (01:03:45.561)
Hmm.

Dale Cardwell (01:03:45.871)
So most people that are handymen in your neighborhood are not available 24 seven. They're usually backed up because if they're good at what they do, they're busy. So she's sweating it for two weeks waiting for this guy to make time to come replace her water heater. Then I say, you need to get a copy of his liability insurance certificate. So she emails him and says, hey, can you send me a copy of your liability insurance certificate? So of course I will, sure, no problem.

Jason Montoya (01:03:55.146)
Yeah.

Dale Cardwell (01:04:13.144)
She gets all the way up until the night before he's coming. She's waited two weeks, scared to death that her water heater's gonna burst. And he finally sends her the certificate and she discovers it's expired. So the guy has not had liability insurance in more than two years. And so he went in and she went ahead and allowed him to do it. It worked out. She saved 40%. But the next day I said, was that worth the stress you've gone through for the last two weeks?

Jason Montoya (01:04:26.166)
Dale Cardwell (01:04:43.872)
And she said, absolutely not, absolutely not. You know, cause your neighbor's gonna brag to you about saving 40%, but they're not gonna tell you the bad side of it. Or they're not gonna tell you two weeks later when it breaks and it's a tragedy and it's gonna cost them twice as much. They're not gonna tell you that portion of the story. So, you know, it's like you say, test, test through the glass box and test the opaque box. I love that.

Jason Montoya (01:04:54.371)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Montoya (01:05:00.397)
Yeah. Yeah.

Jason Montoya (01:05:11.671)
Yeah, and part of that is, I think what you're implying with that story is you pay for it. It's just, may not be all money. You might be paying for it in stress or time or some other factor.

Dale Cardwell (01:05:24.77)
without a doubt, and you've got to measure what is valuable to you.

Jason Montoya (01:05:28.663)
Yeah, so I would like to read a quote from you because this is another thing that came to mind. This comes from Joe Zimhart and he's an expert on cults and people that get sucked into cults and he has this really great quote that talks about skepticism and pride and so I wanna just get your reaction to this. So he says, there is someone who knows how to apply skepticism properly.

Dale Cardwell (01:05:30.721)
I would like to.

Jason Montoya (01:05:56.174)
That's different than being a skeptical person. When people say they are skeptical, it means I don't believe everything I hear or I'm not easily fooled. When a con artist hears that, they'll agree. They'll say, you're one of the most skeptical people I know. And before they know it, the skeptic is buying snake oil. This is the type of ego or narcissism that a con artist can feed into from a person who claims they are skeptical. So what are your thoughts about that?

Dale Cardwell (01:06:22.306)
That's a beautiful quote. I could not agree more. You you need to keep your skepticism close to your vest. Skepticism is a good quality to have. It's not something that you want to tell people that you have. Skepticism is applied in measured doses, skepticism is born out of experience. And so if you've had experience, and you can apply that experience across...

a broad spectrum of consumer interactions, wow, it serves you really, really well. I also say defer to older people. my goodness. I've saved so much money calling my mom and dad, you know, and I'm a consumer investigator and I still have saved, I'll never forget before my trust ill days, you know, I took my car to a shop and the guy says, yeah, your problem is all of your calipers are seized on all four tires, all four,

tires. And I called my dad up and I said, okay, he says the calipers, which is what presses your brakes together for folk. People are not familiar with automobile jargon. They're all seized and he's, he wants to replace all my calipers and all the disc brakes. And my dad says, Dale, it's so unlikely that all four of your calipers would seize at one time. He says, if you can hang on, your mom and I are coming down there next weekend. You may have to drive on

squeaky brakes or whatever, but just hold on. My dad got there, we took the tires off. There were no seized calipers. And then you have to deal with the fact, Jason, that people will do this intentionally. That there are people that are willing to do that intentionally. But I kept my skepticism to myself and shared it with my dad, not necessarily with the person who was trying to sell me four new calipers and rotors and disc brakes.

Jason Montoya (01:08:12.024)
Yeah.

Jason Montoya (01:08:16.685)
Yeah, and I think that also the important part of that that we need to keep in mind is that we're all susceptible to that in terms of like we can be, we can have like all of these tips and tricks and do them and then like we can prevent 90 % of them, but if we're so prideful that we think we're invincible, that's probably the point where we get scammed.

Dale Cardwell (01:08:44.344)
So if you don't mind, I'm gonna share another story because in my book, I tell the story of Dale getting scammed. And this happened about 10 years ago. I published this book, I've published it not only in Atlanta, but Nashville and Tampa. It's a regional book that goes to many cities. And I was publishing it in Tampa and this guy drops by my office here in Atlanta one day and he says, hey.

Jason Montoya (01:08:47.288)
Yeah, go ahead.

Jason Montoya (01:08:52.13)
Yeah.

Dale Cardwell (01:09:10.582)
I live in Tampa, I own a publishing company. I've noticed your book in circulation. Congratulations. What a great business model. But I think I could probably print and distribute your book for far less money than you're paying now. He said, what are you paying? And I told him, and he said, yeah, yeah. He says, I own my own press, da da da da da. You know, I can beat that price by 50%. I'm like, wow, that's great. He says, in the meantime, he says, how many cities are you in? And I told him and he says,

Why aren't you in 50 cities? I think together that we could move your business model across the country. And the next thing I know, Jason, we're hiring attorneys and we're coming up with a contract that is worth millions of dollars, right? He's going to pay for the printing and distribution of all these books in cities across the country.

And all I'm going to do is take a fee for certifying the companies, putting them through the seven point standard and managing the call system of how they reach the companies and the consumers. And I'm thinking this is amazing. And so he says, hey, as a benefit, an extra benefit to you, a good faith thing, I'm going to go ahead and print and distribute your book in Tampa this spring.

at 50 % less than what you've been paying, just as a good faith gesture. And I'm like, wow, that's great, Jeff. Thank you so much. That's wonderful. He says, okay, you're gonna wire me half the money today, and then you'll wire me half of the money the day the book is mailed through the US Postal Service. So said, okay, good enough. I mail him, I wire him half of the money. And then the day that it's mailed through the US Postal Service, I wire him.

the second half of the money. A few days go by, Jason, and we discover that our call counts are 50 % below the norm. For some reason, we're not getting the response from consumers that we normally get. And so I call this guy up and I'm like, our numbers are way off and I don't know why, but can you help me get to the bottom of it? So he takes a couple of days, he calls me back and says, Dale, I have some really, really bad news for you.

Dale Cardwell (01:11:26.744)
but apparently the postal service lost half of the books that we printed in mail. They just lost them between the warehouse and the distribution centers. And so what Jeff didn't realize is that my brother's a pretty sharp guy. And in Tampa, we distributed the book to Sarasota, Clearwater, and Tampa. And what my brother discovered is that we were getting zero calls from Clearwater and Sarasota.

but our calls from Tampa were 100 % as strong as the previous book. So it becomes very obvious that 50 % of the books were not mailed to a specific two zip code designations. So now we can tell it's not a mistake. Long story short, Jason, I discovered this guy committed. He set me up and we created a contract and the bird in the bush was this multi-million dollar deal.

when at the end of the day, all he was doing was trying to steal $40,000 from me. And what a valuable but brutal lesson to learn. I took my eye off of what I should have had my eye on because I saw the promise of making all this money when all he wanted to do was steal $40,000 from me. What a valuable lesson to learn.

Jason Montoya (01:12:30.233)
through the Tampa situation

Jason Montoya (01:12:46.905)
Mm

Yeah.

Dale Cardwell (01:12:51.424)
I hate that I lost the money, but I won't make that mistake again. But I tell that story because I want people to know it can happen to me too. No matter how sure you are, if you're not taking those steps, hitting the pause button and going through a process of validating that person. You know, Jason, I didn't do a background check on him. I was so certain that, hey, if he's going to help me make all this money, there's no way he's going to steal money from me for peanuts, pennies on the dollar. He did.

Jason Montoya (01:12:52.768)
Yeah

Jason Montoya (01:12:59.992)
Yeah.

Jason Montoya (01:13:18.393)
you

Yeah, it reminds me of this kind of visual that I have where I think about, you know, we're protecting our house. sitting, we're kind of sitting in the kitchen looking at the front door with our shotgun. We're like protecting our house. And then all the while, like the robber's coming through the back door. He's coming through the window upstairs. Like we're so focused on what we want to protect, which is usually where we got exploited before.

Dale Cardwell (01:13:36.046)
you

Jason Montoya (01:13:48.088)
that we miss the other options that we can be exploited in another way. So when you think that you've shared a lot of stories and you use stories and you tell stories and you find stories, how do you think about stories and how do they shape you and how do they shape the work that you do?

Dale Cardwell (01:13:53.486)
Perfect analogy, yes.

Dale Cardwell (01:14:10.762)
It's funny, I follow a guy named Professor Scott Galloway and he has a podcast called The Prof G Show. And he says one of the most valuable tools in our economy is the ability to tell a story. And he says, no matter if you're an electrician, you're a carpet cleaner, you're a podcast host, the ability to tell an engaging story is a skill set that's very valuable. And I got my...

Jason Montoya (01:14:17.4)
Yeah.

Jason Montoya (01:14:24.184)
Yeah.

Dale Cardwell (01:14:38.796)
gift of storytelling from my grandfather, guy named Marvin writings. And he just could hold people spellbound and it just held him in the palm of his hand telling them a story. so first of all, it's a gift that I inherited by no effort of my own. But I have tried to define it over the years and figure out, you know, be brief when you can be, make your points.

Jason Montoya (01:14:42.894)
Yeah.

Jason Montoya (01:14:47.373)
Mm.

Jason Montoya (01:14:51.341)
Yeah.

Dale Cardwell (01:15:07.958)
the way you need to and be humble and listen. Be willing to listen to other people. Listening is 50 % of a conversation and that's something I always try to maintain.

Jason Montoya (01:15:21.751)
Yeah. What other words of wisdom or anything else you want to share that you haven't had a chance to yet?

Dale Cardwell (01:15:29.304)
Gee, I've learned recently, it's hit home to me that the amount of respect that a child gives a parent is directly proportional to the investment that the parent made into the child over the years of raising that child. And as Kirby Smart, the football coach of Georgia, his dad passed a couple of years ago and someone asked him and says, wow, what a wonderful.

Jason Montoya (01:15:43.094)
Okay.

Dale Cardwell (01:15:55.757)
gift to still have your parents at this stage of life. And he says, it is. And he says, but I'm also very cognizant of the fact that the end is on its way. And so there's a flip side of every coin. But I think to lean on the people that have come before you, they have mass experience that you don't have. Don't think that you can do it by yourself.

Jason Montoya (01:16:11.245)
Yeah.

Dale Cardwell (01:16:24.14)
because you're better together.

Jason Montoya (01:16:26.743)
Yeah. What else?

Dale Cardwell (01:16:31.706)
goodness gracious. Like I always say, I get multiple estimates. You I can't tell you, had a buddy call me and he had hired a company that I recommend and he said, Dale, you know, I'm pretty certain that they charged me more than I should have paid. And I said, how many estimates did you get? He says, well, I just got one because you say that they are a great company.

And I said, how many years have you known me? And he says, I've known you 20 years. I said, how many times have you heard me say, get three estimates? He says, I've heard you say that many, many times. And I said, why didn't you get three estimates? He said, because I just didn't want to go to the trouble of getting three estimates. And it's something you said earlier, Jason, that was a price he was willing to pay, the time. He valued his time more than he worried about paying 20 % more than he should. But.

Jason Montoya (01:17:19.481)
Yeah.

Dale Cardwell (01:17:23.872)
No matter how trustworthy the company is, if they know they're not competing, then it's going to impact the price. And so that's why some of my companies, they get tired of me telling consumers to always get multiple estimates. But that's a magical thing happens in our economy when you have people compete. They recognize that the price has to come to equilibrium and people get torn up and worn out trying to figure out how to get the best price.

Jason Montoya (01:17:44.142)
Yeah.

Dale Cardwell (01:17:53.003)
It's really simple. Get three people to compete for your business. It's really simple. But people want to make it more complicated.

Jason Montoya (01:17:56.346)
Yeah.

Jason Montoya (01:18:02.733)
Well, and it kind of sounds like, if you do care about convenience, like this person, and you value just going with it, you kind of have to be okay if you're gonna pay a little bit more, right? And so if it really matters that you get the best deal, then you're getting the best deal by doing that work, right? Yeah.

Dale Cardwell (01:18:25.292)
Yes, so a good friend of mine taught me a lesson many years ago. name is Buddy Wofford and he says, Dale, there's no such thing as good, fast and cheap. You can have two of the three, but you can't have three of the three because you're gonna sacrifice either good or fast or cheap. And I thought, wow, what a great truism.

Jason Montoya (01:18:33.752)
Yeah.

Jason Montoya (01:18:42.594)
Yeah.

Yeah. And so if then the next time you just have to make the decision to pick the ones you want and make the decisions that line up with it.

Dale Cardwell (01:18:53.718)
and prioritize what's important to you.

Jason Montoya (01:18:57.229)
Yeah, yeah. So what are you doing now? Like who, if someone's interested as a consumer or as a business, where do they go? How do they learn more about this system they can perhaps be a part of?

Dale Cardwell (01:19:03.362)
Cough

Dale Cardwell (01:19:14.51)
So there's a really, you can find me actively or passively. So active is trustale.com or this will likely land in your mailbox at some point. So that's a pass.

Jason Montoya (01:19:25.817)
If you're in Atlanta or all of Georgia, what's the distance? Okay.

Dale Cardwell (01:19:30.51)
It's pretty much Macon North. Haven't really gone below Macon, but we still have a presence in Tampa and Birmingham and Nashville and a small presence in Dallas, Fort Worth. But our focus is Metro Atlanta and the North Georgia market. So you can be intentional and just visit trustdale.com. But because I have...

Reciprocal links. So if you go to superiorplumbing.com and you see that they are endorsed and recommended and embedded by Consumer Investigator Dale Cardwell, you'll see my image. And if you click on that image, it's going to take you back to Superior Plumbing's page on trustdale.com. Well, Google crawls the web constantly, as you know. And Google recognizes that I've got these reciprocal links with hundreds of companies.

But because nothing's for sale on trustdell.com, I'm making recommendations, but I'm not selling anything. You can't pay me for my recommendation. And so Google says, wow, that's a valid referral. So that makes my partners show up much higher in a generic Google search. Plumber near me, roofer near me, electrician near me, most trusted electricians in Atlanta. Then you can find me accidentally.

Jason Montoya (01:20:33.101)
Mm-hmm.

Dale Cardwell (01:20:53.922)
when you see a company that says, company has seven offices across metro Atlanta. This company is Trustale certified. Now the challenge is, as Google works, someone may click on that company and go directly to their website, depending on the fact that they saw that they were Trustale certified. But I have no record that the person found that company through my recommendation. And so while the company gets the benefit of that Google

Jason Montoya (01:21:04.569)
You

Dale Cardwell (01:21:24.25)
path, I can't prove that they came from me. So that's one of the challenges that we work with every day now at Trustale. The game, the board game is constantly shifting as you know, Jason. You just try to stay on top of it as best you can. One of the things that we're doing right now, we're doing podcasts every week with our partners. We're doing these 15 minute vignettes.

Jason Montoya (01:21:37.421)
Yeah.

Jason Montoya (01:21:41.411)
Mm-hmm.

Dale Cardwell (01:21:49.801)
We generally open with a tragedy, something that happened to a consumer because they didn't follow the correct path to hire someone. And then we bring one of our experts in and we say, did Mary go wrong? And why would that not have happened with you all? And so it's news you can use in a 15 minute segment that people can listen to on their drive to work or whatever. Google also ranks those kinds of podcasts

Jason Montoya (01:22:05.869)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Jason Montoya (01:22:15.47)
Yeah.

Dale Cardwell (01:22:19.032)
higher and higher when people are searching for how do I get, how do I find a company that can put blinds in my house? So that's one of the initiatives we're working on right now. The board game is always changing, so you just gotta have to try to stay up with it.

Jason Montoya (01:22:26.968)
Yeah.

Jason Montoya (01:22:35.351)
Yeah, so if they go to trustale.com, can get all the links to all the things, right?

Dale Cardwell (01:22:41.346)
Yes, generally they'll find why the company meets the seven point standard. They can check the transparency of my research, watch a short anywhere from one minute to two minute video about the different benefits of using that company. And all they have to do is call the number on my site or send an email from my site and they're automatically registered for the $10,000 make it right guarantee. You don't have to do anything else because I can see that that's how you found that company.

Jason Montoya (01:23:10.796)
Okay.

Dale Cardwell (01:23:11.68)
If you find that company through a business card at the bottom of a fishbowl in a raffle and it didn't come through Trustdale, that consumer can still go on my website, click on the top that says register your purchase and just say, hey, I'm Jason Montoya. This is my phone number. This is my address. I hired these people. I paid them $10,000 for this service. And you're automatically registered for my guarantee, even though you didn't come through my website. So that's kind of how it works.

Jason Montoya (01:23:39.447)
OK. Yeah, yeah. Anything else about your website or the things you're doing online or your book that you want to share?

Dale Cardwell (01:23:48.366)
It's just, I appreciate the interaction. I appreciate you sharing this with your audience. I'm on a quest. I'm on a quest to keep people safe and to try to eliminate the pitfalls of what they go through every day. Life's tough. Life can be tough. So if you can create a community of trust and join our community of trust, then that makes me happy. That makes me fulfilled.

Jason Montoya (01:24:15.073)
Yeah, I have a client that I posted one of their blog posts. We published one of their posts and I found this quote from, it's John Wayne's actor, but it's a movie he's in called Sands of Iwo Jima. And he says, life's tough, but it's tougher if you're stupid.

Dale Cardwell (01:24:33.24)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Montoya (01:24:40.185)
So it's like, it's already hard. Don't make it harder on yourself is what you're saying. Cool. Well, thank you, Dale, for sharing your life with us and your story and your wisdom. We appreciate it. People, you can check out his website at trustdale.com and he's got links to social media and YouTube and other channels there. He's got the directory you can search.

Dale Cardwell (01:24:40.814)
That's a truism.

Dale Cardwell (01:24:47.555)
Very true.

Jason Montoya (01:25:07.639)
I'm Jason Scott Montoya and this has been another episode of the Share Life Podcast, an inspirational people interview with Dale. We'll see you on the next one.

Jason Montoya (01:25:18.65)
All right, recording is stopping.