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- [00:00]
A
But it's, it's. Especially when you're early on in business, you make a lot of mistakes.
- [00:04]
B
Oh, yeah.
- [00:05]
A
And a lot of them are people mistakes.
- [00:07]
B
They are. But a lot of the one I tell the one kills me. Yeah. See if it's going to get here when that guy, when you realize that guy's crazy and you go, you know what's really bad is that he's crazy. What's worse is, is that I hired him.
- [00:20]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or yeah, I've, I've let this happen.
- [00:23]
B
I let this guy in my building. I let this woman in here.
- [00:27]
A
Yeah.
- [00:27]
B
And then I let her do that stuff because I was trying to be nice instead of going, no, sure, you know, and so I end up blaming myself for their, for their misbehavior.
- [00:47]
A
I figured I could just start here though. What the heck is this new book about?
- [00:54]
B
Build a business you love. Yeah, well, you know, we wrote, I wrote a book back in 2003 that became the biggest part of our brand in the money space called Total Money Makeover and it sold about 14 million copies now. And so on the Ramsey show, where we're helping people with money all these years, we used the framework out of that book, which was the seven baby steps. Do this before you do this, then do this, then do this. Here's your clear path to getting out of debt and becoming wealthy and outrageously generous. And so tens of millions of people now have done that. And it's proven, it's a proven process. And you know, about that same time we started coaching businesses, small businesses, showing them what we were doing because they were just going, how do you running this thing? How'd you grow it from a card table in your living room to this national brand? So we had a best selling book called On Tree Leadership come out. And then we started working with these small businesses and we're like, okay, what's the clear path for them? When you run a business, it's different than your personal stuff. And people would always ask, you know, how's the money stuff apply? Well, the money stuff does apply, but it's a little different. And so what we've been working on, and finally after a decade of messing with it, we dialed in the actual clear path that a small business goes through. And there's five stages and there's six things that drive you through the five stages. But the five stages of business is what this book's about. About. And we talk a little bit about the six things that drive it. But you know, like you start out. Like you start out, or I started out. The treadmill stage.
- [02:24]
A
Yeah.
- [02:25]
B
You're doing it all yourself. And you're the CEO, you're the chief everything officer. You do everything. Yeah. And it's really exciting and it's fun because everything's new and it's the honeymoon and. And you work your butt off and you're working 16 hours a day and you don't know what you don't know. So you're real enthusiastic. It's a lot of fun. Everything's good. But you, you know, you are on a treadmill. You feel like a rat in a wheel. Like, are we ever going to get this thing out of the ditch? Are we ever going to get it moving? And, you know, at that stage, I remember it distinctly here at Ramsey. It was many years ago, but I still can remember it. I mean, I would come home at night, just lay back on the couch, and my wife would be going, what'd you do today? I don't know, but I did a lot of it. You know, it's just like dog chasing its tail. I'm trying to nail jello to a tree. This is a. This is crazy. We're. We're running around in circles. And so at this stage, to level up and move to the second stage, you've got to do a couple things. One is you got a time block, meaning you have to start managing your time to set aside time to do stuff more than just put out fires, more than just the crisis of the moment or the flavor of the day or the opportunity of the moment. Because we're real add with our entrepreneurism, you know, and so got to really start time blocking and going. I gotta have to start thinking about something other than Friday.
- [03:36]
A
Yeah.
- [03:37]
B
And then this is also the stage. You start hiring your first folks and you can start delegating pieces of what you're doing. Because at this stage, at the treadmill stage, you're 100% of the revenue and you're 100% of production. And so you really don't technically own a business, you just own your job.
- [03:56]
A
How long did you go before you hired people?
- [04:01]
B
You know, it's weird, not long. I hired the first guy, Russ Carroll, in 1994, was the first team member. And we moved the stuff out of my living room. A desk and a folding table, and we always call it a card table.
- [04:18]
A
How long was your treadmill phase then?
- [04:21]
B
So we moved it into an 800 square foot office with me and him. And so I probably was still pretty treadmill at that Stage. So it was at least a year or two and there were segments of it that kept going for a while. They're still so dependent on me, the revenue so dependent on me. And the problem is if you get sick or you take a day off, you're unemployed.
- [04:44]
A
Yeah.
- [04:44]
B
You know, at that stage. Because there's nothing, everything, nothing is delegated. There's no vacation, there is no, you're it man. And you're really important and that's cool, but it's not sustainable. You. But you will flame out eventually. You can't do that for a decade, you know, so a year, two maybe. And you got to start getting some people on that are producing revenue and producing goods and services so that you can, you know, breathe a little, have a little wiggle room here and start to actually get above the thing. And as my friend Michael Gerber says in the book E Myth, start working on the business, not just in it.
- [05:17]
A
Sure.
- [05:17]
B
You know, and then you know that that moves us to the Pathfinder stage. Once you're doing those things, you level up. And the Pathfinder stage is still really raw. But you probably got maybe a lot of people have about 10 people at this stage. But again now we're still trying to herd cats. Everybody's working really hard. Everybody's missional, everybody's. It's real scrappy and so it's real. Create a lot of creative stuff going on. It's a lot of fun. You know, this is a band of brothers and sisters. We're fighting together to win or there's a villain shows up to take us on, you know, all that kind of stuff. And this is a really, again, I love each of the. I love business and I love running my own business. So the whole thing has been fun. And so the Pathfinder stage, you know, you're just really, you've got to start putting some other things in place. You gotta start thinking about, okay, everybody can't do everything. So we need some role clarity. You gotta start putting in like job descriptions and we call them KRAs, Key Results Areas. This is your area, this is what you need to work on. Yeah, you got to help us with set up chairs. But this is your deal. This is the baby. This is your baby rocket. And you start getting clarity and you start also laying out a clear mission of you can't just all run around all the time. We all have to be. While we're running around, we got to be moving this way. We got to have a mission, we got to have a thing. We're aimed at a vision that we're aimed at. This is when I wrote my mission statement. This is when I. And I meant it. It wasn't a brochure filler. It wasn't something for the public to see. It was like, okay, guys, this is the target. Everybody aim at this target. You know, you can do circles over here, you do flips over here, but when we get done, this is where we'll end up. And so it starts to aim. Everybody with role clarity and mission and values start to be real important. You start to go, this is who we is and this is who we isn't.
- [07:01]
A
But how long did it take for you to get to that point, then.
- [07:05]
B
Up into that pathfinder stage? I mean, we stayed in that pathfinder stage maybe five years.
- [07:09]
A
Yeah.
- [07:10]
B
You don't have to. It's not a certain amount. It's more of a. Okay, if you get these other things in place, you'll move on to the other stages, regardless of how fast it is. I mean, with your all success, you've skyrocketed with some and parts of better for worse.
- [07:25]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [07:26]
B
It's. You know, sometimes the biggest cause of failure is great success. You gotta be real careful with it. But you guys have been. You've done very well and you've stayed on top of it and it. But it feels really chaotic, that kind of growth curve.
- [07:39]
A
It's interesting though, like, especially if you like, I've never doubted that I have that entrepreneur mind.
- [07:46]
B
Yeah, for sure.
- [07:47]
A
You don't. You don't have a lot of appreciation for rules and convention.
- [07:51]
B
Right.
- [07:51]
A
But then you do have to get to a point where you need to implement some process and order.
- [07:56]
B
Yeah.
- [07:56]
A
But you, like, it took me a while to settle into that because you don't want, like, the whole reason you're starting a company is because you don't like how it's done anywhere else.
- [08:05]
B
Exactly. I don't want to be.
- [08:07]
A
I don't want to be corporate America. No, I don't want to be corporate.
- [08:09]
B
I don't want. The worst thing you can say around here is something's corporate. That's like the biggest insult building. And I remember the first time we put in place a policy.
- [08:18]
A
Yes.
- [08:18]
B
And I went, oh, crap, I don't want any policy.
- [08:20]
A
Yeah, I'm the same.
- [08:21]
B
What are you talking about? Insurance policy. No, no, no policies. No policies. And then they said, no, it's just a. It's just we all need to have. And so that is the trailblazer stage, the third stage. Is where you start putting processes in place and policies and procedures in place. Systems. You don't have any systems, so you've got to get the thing. Your efficiency is so low at the pathfinder stage because everything is reinvented every morning. And that's silly. Some of this stuff is repeatable. It's rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat. So you're gonna put some basic things in place, but they don't have to have that corporate ickiness on them. Sure. They can still be like, for instance, our HR policy, okay. The first time we ever said we had an HR policy, okay, it's the golden rule. What Jesus said, treat other people like you wanna be treated.
- [09:06]
A
It's pretty straightforward.
- [09:07]
B
And so, okay, I can do that. One that's way different than corporate America, okay. And I can expect. I expect them to show up on time and work. I expect them to work while they're at work. I would want to be treated that way. I would expect that of me if I was working somewhere. So I can expect that of them. And if their kid's sick, I can pray with them, I can love them, I can help them. You know, I can be there while they navigate that. And if I've got the financial bandwidth, I can give them a little grace and let them not work and take care of the sick kid. I mean, if you just got three of you, you can't always do that. But if you've got a little bit of bandwidth, and we've done a lot of that over the years, poured back into our team, poured back into our team. So that kind of a. That's our type of policies and procedures. But we systematized stuff and said, okay, this is how this works. And if you can begin with the end in mind, as Stephen Covey used to say, then that really did help. And you don't have to have that spirit of ickiness on that stuff. It can be just, okay, what we're going to do is we're going to do it the Ramsey way or the Aaron way, you know?
- [10:10]
A
Yeah.
- [10:10]
B
You know, the dirt talk way. There's a way we do this, there's a way we don't do it. Sure. And that's a system, that's a process. Fair enough. It's built on values, it's built on principles. But there's still a thing that we do and it indicates some tactical things. You know, like around here we just, We've been in broadcast all these years and so time and being on time Is a big deal.
- [10:31]
A
Yeah.
- [10:32]
B
You know, being late when everything's live is a good idea. Hello. And so, you know, one of our things is we always just say, trains run on time. Trains run on time. And so we don't do late. And if you're late, you got a problem, because we don't do late here.
- [10:47]
A
Yeah.
- [10:48]
B
You don't fit in.
- [10:49]
A
Yeah.
- [10:49]
B
And I don't really want. I don't care. There's traffic. Well, there's always traffic. Get your butt here.
- [10:53]
A
Sure.
- [10:53]
B
I mean, come on. Get up 10 minutes earlier. You know, we got stuff to do. So that's a. That's a tactical outlier or a tactical implication of those principles or policies that came into place. And that was at the trailblazer stage.
- [11:07]
A
Okay. And then once you start to establish where in those. In those early stages, where do you see businesses get caught up the most?
- [11:18]
B
The number one pain point of the people that we coach and the. And us inside this building. And the number one thing that makes us smile so it's sweet and sour. It's the most beautiful thing we do, and it's the hardest thing we do is people hiring the right people. And when we don't, letting them go, have an opportunity to work somewhere else.
- [11:46]
A
Yeah.
- [11:46]
B
You know, and it's just really emotional and painful. And I've been doing this 35 years, and it's still really emotional and painful. Because if you quit doing that, then you start treating people like a number or like a commodity. You're just a unit of production. Your humanity doesn't matter. And so if you love people, and if you quit loving people, you're screwed. Right. But if you love people, prepare for your heart to be broken. You know, prepare for betrayal. Prepare for somebody say something nasty about you after you just gave them a raise, which I just don't understand. You know, I can't. My head can't. I can't get my head around that or, you know, or hiring people. And like, I recorded a thing yesterday. Here we have three of our folks at this month that hit their 25th anniversary with Ramsey, three of our team members. And that was emotional in a beautiful way. You know, I got tears. I got tears in my eyes sitting doing that recording and talking to these people, because I love them. They're some of our best friends, and they've been here 25 years. You know, I mean, that's crazy.
- [12:50]
A
In this vein, though, I've seen a lot of. Because it hurts. I think a lot of people in business, especially entrepreneurs, they'll start To. They'll start to sour on people a little bit.
- [12:59]
B
Oh, yeah.
- [13:00]
A
And they get. They get a little bitter because they are doing. It's like, you have no idea what I'm doing behind the scenes to make this a reality.
- [13:06]
B
Yeah.
- [13:07]
A
And they start. They start to go down this bitter path. How do you. How do you prevent that from happening?
- [13:14]
B
Well, you know, you got two choices, and if you want to live there. The problem is that if you go down that path and it's easy to do, you get pissed off.
- [13:23]
A
It's super easy.
- [13:24]
B
I've been down it get mad. I mean, I get mad. It hurts your feelings. You know what some of this stuff does. And so it's really easy. But then I gotta go. Okay, look, you know, I've had. I mean, we have somewhere around 125 people, around a 12% turnover a year. I got 1100 people. And so in the 35 years, what we've had 3 or 4000 people that used to work here.
- [13:49]
A
Yeah.
- [13:50]
B
And the vast majority of them left to go home because she had a baby and she wants to stay home, be a mom, or they got married and moved to Oklahoma or whatever, you know, or sometimes we fired them, but we did it in such a gentle, kind way that they're still friends, and I still talk to them. I've had people quit that went on to bigger and better things, and I still talk to them and their friends. But, you know, so what I'm saying is, out of three or 4,000 people, I probably got 150 or something like that that are really angry, you know, and. And that I'm kind of still angry at, too. So, I mean, for whatever. Whatever the deal was, you know, I'm talking about, but it's real small percentage. And so if I let those 50 people dictate the 3,000, how I feel about the 3,000, that means my brain screwed up, because those 50 people are, you know, that they don't. They're an irrelevant percentage of the overall picture, but they do. They can suck the marrow out of your bones. Yeah. You know, and you can bring. You can just play their tapes in your head instead of all these wonderful things that happened in their head. Y. You know, and so I. Perspective is the answer to your question. I got to. I got to keep perspective. And it is that the vast majority of the transactions and the. And the interactions we have with team members and former team members is vastly positive.
- [15:21]
A
Yeah.
- [15:22]
B
There's just a few turds, but it's.
- [15:24]
A
It's. Especially when you're early on. In business, you make a lot of mistakes.
- [15:27]
B
Oh, yeah.
- [15:28]
A
And a lot of them are people mistakes.
- [15:30]
B
They are.
- [15:31]
A
But a lot of.
- [15:31]
B
Like the one, I'll tell you the one that kills me.
- [15:33]
A
Yeah.
- [15:33]
B
Let's see if it's going to get you. Sure. When that guy, when you realize that guy's crazy and you go, you know what's really bad is that he's crazy. What's worse is, is that I hired him.
- [15:43]
A
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Or yeah, I've, I've let this happen.
- [15:46]
B
I let this guy in my building. I let this woman in here.
- [15:50]
A
Yeah.
- [15:50]
B
And then I let her do that stuff because I was trying to be nice instead of going, no, sure. You know, and so I end up blaming myself for their, for their misbehavior.
- [16:00]
A
Yeah. But p. In business, this is the stuff I want to talk about because these are some of the best lessons I've learned. But you can't talk about them or you feel like you can't because they deal with people and you, you might have this guilt about it or you don't want to be talking about these individuals. Like, I feel like that's why I.
- [16:17]
B
Talk about them as a metaphor. I don't have to give their name, I guess.
- [16:20]
A
Yeah, that's. Yeah. If you talk them. Yeah. Metaphorically.
- [16:23]
B
Yeah. Because we all know that, you know, every time we say, you know, we've got, you know, we try to get thoroughbreds in the building, but occasionally a donkey makes it.
- [16:30]
A
Yeah, sure.
- [16:31]
B
You know, and you can't win the Kentucky Derby with a donkey. Hello. So, you know, occasionally we have to have a donkeyectomy. And the weird thing is the donkeys know who they are.
- [16:39]
A
Yes.
- [16:40]
B
They and the thoroughbreds know who the donkeys are.
- [16:43]
A
Yes. But sometimes the donkeys don't want to admit it.
- [16:46]
B
No.
- [16:47]
A
But they don't like, they're really good at fooling themselves.
- [16:48]
B
They don't like hanging around. Yeah. They have a. Yeah. They're not self aware. They have this illusion that they're a thoroughbred, but the thoroughbreds know they ain't got it. This guy says, take it easy and he means it.
- [17:00]
A
Yeah. Yeah. If you're looking for another industry event that is a snooze fest, this is definitely not for you. But if you're a leader looking to elevate yourself, your team, looking for like minded individuals that are hungry, then look no further than the Ariat Dirt World Summit, November 5th through the 7th in Dallas, Texas. In our third year, we'll have about 1500 hungry industry leaders from about 500 companies looking to learn, grow, teach. It's going to be fantastic. We also have a world class lineup. We've got Jesse Cole from the Savannah Bananas. James Clear Atomic habits. Kim Scott, Radical candor, Mark Miller, Chick Fil A leadership. Tim Grover who is Michael Jordan's trainer. You will not hear from a lineup like this anywhere else. So check out details now. Dirtworld.com you can use code AARON10 for 10% off any registrations and we'll see you November 5th through the 7th in Dallas, Texas. Yeah, I mean I, I, and I, I, I like talking about this too because we're, we work with a lot of construction businesses.
- [18:11]
B
Yeah.
- [18:11]
A
As do you all.
- [18:12]
B
Yeah, we do.
- [18:13]
A
And I'm not there to tell them how to build stuff. They're pretty good at building stuff. They've got that figured out like they're good moving dirt, building roads. I know the company that built, built this building like Salman. Great, great people. Great people.
- [18:26]
B
Good friends of ours.
- [18:28]
A
What they struggle with is the other side is the people side and you can, you can systematize it but at the same time it's just so dynamic and people are always changing, the times are always changing, the business is always changing. So the goal post every day is different.
- [18:44]
B
And what we've got on the wall stickered right outside this door is what got you here. Won't get you there.
- [18:48]
A
Yes, yes.
- [18:49]
B
Sometimes if you're not growing, you don't keep up.
- [18:51]
A
Yeah.
- [18:52]
B
And, and so what, you know, it was great five years ago, but five years ago is gone. I mean I don't have that choice. I'm an old guy. I mean I'm almost 65 years old. I didn't grow up with cell phones. I grew up with a rotary dial phone, black, connected to the wall. That was my technology when I was a kid. I didn't have a magic wand in my hand that pushed stuff and it showed up on my porch, you know. And so it's a different mindset because it's native to. I've got 450 Gen Zers in here in their 20s and they're awesome but their brains work completely, your brains work completely different than mine. And so if I don't adapt and start to see things at least through a digital lens and try, I'll never be at the same place someone that grew up that way is. But I can at least admit that I need to know that in today's world. And I've got to study it and I've got to listen to the person that does know about it and, you know, bring in that kind of thing. And so everyone has to keep up, including me.
- [19:55]
A
Yeah. And I, I. And that's what I say. And it's on both sides of the table because it's. The old timers are sitting around a lot of times saying, well, these, these kids just don't understand. And it's like. Well, they don't understand, but they also understand a lot of what you don't.
- [20:08]
B
Exactly.
- [20:10]
A
You gotta, you gotta meet in the middle.
- [20:11]
B
They do understand that that tractor you're driving, when they, when you first started driving, it didn't have a GPS because you couldn't spell gps. Yeah, sure. And now you just push three buttons and the dad. Oh, my gosh.
- [20:21]
A
What's. Have you struggled with anything when it comes to adapting to that, that new generation?
- [20:28]
B
No, I haven't, because I learned really, really early that I've got to stay insanely curious all the time or the market is going to Kicked me in the teeth.
- [20:42]
A
Sure.
- [20:43]
B
And so I'm scared of the market. I'm scared of, of not keeping up with the change. Because market disruption 100% of the time is coming. Yeah, it's coming.
- [20:54]
A
Yeah.
- [20:54]
B
I mean, when I started, there was no Internet, you know, and then we get these little computers, and the guy comes and says, we need a website. I'm like, what's that? And then another guy came in, said, we need a podcast later. And I'm like, what's a podcast? I got a radio show that's on 600 radio stations. Why do I want a podcast? Yeah, who listens to. Who listens on their computer? That's dumb. Nobody would ever do that. And he go. I said, well, we could put it up. Even if three people listen, it'll be fun. Let's try it. And we put it up, because I'm insanely curious. And now the podcast is bigger than the radio show, you know, and so, and then, you know, when I started, the first time I ever saw my generation, we thought YouTube was cats chasing lasers. And so.
- [21:33]
A
Which it was.
- [21:36]
B
Now it's a huge. It's a mammoth part of our brand today. But, you know, if you don't stay insanely curious and go, the market disruption, you're either going to cause it the wave, you're going to ride the wave, you're going to get crushed by the wave. And I prefer to do one of the first two. And that's. You got to be just insanely curious. And so I can automatically. I never joined the Parade of trashing the millennials. I never joined the parade of Trashing the Gen Zers.
- [22:04]
A
Yeah.
- [22:05]
B
There's plenty to trash in every generation because there's always a bomb.
- [22:09]
A
Yeah. I'm not.
- [22:10]
B
There's always an entitled twerp.
- [22:11]
A
I'm not very happy with the baby boomers, you know.
- [22:13]
B
There you go.
- [22:14]
A
Yeah.
- [22:15]
B
They got. We got our issues. Yeah. And so, you know, there's something to trash about everybody. But to throw it all out, throw the baby out with the bathwater is dumb. Because the last. These last two generations, Z and millennials, they're the easiest to lead that I've ever led.
- [22:32]
A
How is that?
- [22:33]
B
Because they're so freaking missional. If they've got something, if that. Those two generations, which you fall into, if you got something you care about, you'll charge the gates of hell with a water pistol, man.
- [22:45]
A
Yeah.
- [22:45]
B
And there's no middle ground. There's only two kinds of millennials. And Gen Z's awesome and sucks. Useless, entitled snowflake or. Absolutely. Game on. I'm going to run this thing down and I'll even argue with you. I don't care who you are. Sometimes maybe a little bit too belligerent and immature, but that's fine. Bring it.
- [23:06]
A
Sure.
- [23:07]
B
Because I. They care. And you can't teach people to care. That's. You know, I had a guy tell me, ask me in a Q and A, he goes, how do you motivate people? Like crap. I don't motivate people. I hire motivate people. And those two generations are highly motivated. Where there's a vision, where there's a dream, where there's. Where there's some missional thing that matters, where what you're working on matters. And, like, you know, what y' all are doing is bringing dignity to the trades. Yeah. And my friend Mike Rowe and I have had lots of discussions about air and off air and the value of that. And so what you're doing is really missional. And your team, if they're not fired up and wired up about it, they should go work somewhere else.
- [23:45]
A
Yeah. Yeah. Which it's. But going back to early days in business, you struggle with that a little bit. Because sometimes it's like, well, is it me? Like, is it.
- [23:54]
B
No. I hired.
- [23:55]
A
Am I failing them?
- [23:56]
B
I heard a guy that wanted a J, O, B, he just wanted to show up. He wanted to come late, leave early, and steal while he's there. Sure. I mean, didn't want to work. I'm just. How much you gonna do for me that's the wrong question. Dude, we're part of a team here. I'm gonna throw the ball, but you're gonna be blocking and this other guy's gonna run the ball and they're gonna go through that hole right there and you need to get dad gum hole open. This is how team works. And so, and you know, if you're just showing up and mailing it in, you don't fit in around here because this is a bunch of fired up people in this building.
- [24:25]
A
How do you, how do you figure out someone's motivator or not?
- [24:29]
B
We talk to them a lot in the interview process. We try to figure out if they're hungry.
- [24:33]
A
Tease it out.
- [24:33]
B
Yeah, there's an old friend of mine, Les Brown, says, are they hungry? Yeah, yeah, you know, you know, have you got something? Is there a motor running in there? Is there something going on? Is there something behind those eyes or are they just kind of glazed over and they're doing the interview process? That's a donkey. Get them out. I don't need that. But you know, they'll leave. For the first time somebody gives them a thousand dollar raise or something, they're not planning on staying. They're here for what they can get rather than what they can give. Sure. And so I want somebody that's fired up and wired up and you have to interview for that and you have to talk to them. And sometimes they're not real loud or gregarious about it. Sometimes it's like burning down there, but they're kind of quiet about it. That's cool too. I like that. Wherever the passion is, we just need to know that they, they have a heartbeat and that there's, that motor's running and they care and they're, they're gonna, they're gonna push stuff around when they get in here.
- [25:23]
A
Well, what do you, what do you ask them? I mean, how do you, how do you tease that?
- [25:27]
B
You know, we just ask them about what they care about.
- [25:30]
A
That's good.
- [25:31]
B
What's, what's a good day at work look like?
- [25:33]
A
Oh, that's a good one.
- [25:33]
B
When you get home and you're tired and it's a good tired, uh huh. Like, you know, when I was a kid, I cut, I had 27 yards to cut when I was 12 years old. And I've always been an entrepreneur. Right. And you get home, all those yards look perfect. The weed eating's done, mulch is done and you're just worn out. That's a good tire. The job is well done. I have pride in it. I have dignity in it. The dirt was moved, baby. And that's, that's, you know, if you don't, if you go. Well, I'm just kind of looking for a job. I got out of college and mama said this is a good place to work. Oh, crap. I don't need you over here, you know. Mama, Mama, that's.
- [26:10]
A
But I think people. I think this is where employers get into a trap too. That is, I need people like I just landed this job. Especially when I'm a small business and I just. I'm the dog that caught the. Caught the car.
- [26:22]
B
Yep.
- [26:23]
A
And I've. I've got to figure this out. I just need people in here as quickly as possible.
- [26:27]
B
The thing is, if you bring the wrong people, you get to do it over.
- [26:32]
A
Yeah.
- [26:33]
B
And it slows everything down. Sure. It's easier to go a little slower and do it right because it just. I mean, God, man, if you just fill the whole place up with graces, you just run a circus, man. It's just like I'm running dadgum beauty parlor over here or something. Just gossips and people run their mouth and everybody's worried about their drama and all. Good God, we were here. What happened to the part where we gonna get some work done?
- [26:58]
A
Yeah.
- [26:59]
B
You know, and so. No. And so every time I've gotten in a hurry and I lowered my standards, not only did I have to do it over anyway because I had to fire them or they quit mad or whatever because I shouldn't have been in here in the first place. Is my fault or our fault, whatever leadership here. So I get to do it over. But it also slows down. All the projects slow down and it damages the brand because the customer's interfacing somewhere with these idiots. And it just. Man, what a mess. And so, yeah, you just, you can't throw bodies at stuff. It's a short term game. I mean, It'll work for 45 days or 90 days or something, but two years from now you'll just go, God, I hate working here and I own it.
- [27:46]
A
Yeah. And I think that, I mean, it goes back to the title of this book, the whole you love underneath build a business. I feel like you can tell when somebody has the right system or not based on how. Like even just their demeanor. Like sometimes I'll be around business owner, they're just stressed out or their phone's going non stop. Like it'll be a big company and they just, they can't sit down and like have a Conversation like this without worrying about their phone. And there's, there's phases of business that's like that or you're trying to get something done. Like I get it. But they're, they're just like stressed out. They're worked up, everything's always on fire. But then I see these other people and they're as cool as a cucumber. But they have the same stuff going on. They just have the right people.
- [28:29]
B
They got the right people.
- [28:30]
A
I want to do that. I don't want to be miserable.
- [28:32]
B
Exactly. Well, you can delegate to people only when you trust their competence.
- [28:38]
A
Yeah.
- [28:38]
B
And their integrity.
- [28:39]
A
Yeah. Yeah.
- [28:40]
B
And the guy with the phone ringing all the time, he ain't got people that have competence and integrity.
- [28:44]
A
No.
- [28:45]
B
So he's the only dog on the hunt. He. Everything comes back to him. He's got a chokehold. He's got a choke point in the business because it all runs up to him and stops.
- [28:54]
A
Yeah.
- [28:55]
B
And he can't take a break and he can't breathe and he is stressed out and he is full of anxiety or she. And it takes a fun out of it.
- [29:02]
A
But I've seen hundred million dollar companies that way.
- [29:04]
B
Exactly.
- [29:04]
A
I have to companies that way.
- [29:07]
B
And so. And I've had even departments within Ramsey that sometimes evolved that way because they got in a hurry. We're growing something and they filled it up too quickly, they're too slow. Just all you gotta do is about. Be about 5 degrees sloppy on the hires and then you get some donkeys in the building and you get instead of, instead of people running races. And so yeah, it has to do with the quality of people. But there's only one way to get the quality people. And let's take time. And it's just so hard because I got this work sitting over here. It needs to be done. I got this project, it's just sitting over here on the shelf because I can't. You know the. In the last decade, the one that we faced was we couldn't get programmers. We're having trouble getting people write code because everything around here is digital. Just about now. Last decade it's all moved that way. And so, you know, it held up everything. And so we're like putting a bounty out there, 2,000 bucks. Any of you people that work here know a programmer. If we hire them and they're good people and they fit, they're one of us. You know, they're a we. This is how we do it. And they're a keeper. You know, we'll give you a $2,000 bounty internally for tech people and 500 for non tech people because, you know, because thoroughbreds know where the thoroughbreds. They'll. They'll bring their good friends and they know what crazy looks like. They'll keep their crazy friends away. So, yeah, we've done every bit of that, but we couldn't. You know, some of his projects were just stalled. It's like this thing should have been done 90 days ago, and we can't. We don't have the labor to do it. It's simple. We don't. Logistically, can't pull it off. And that really is frustrating. But I'll tell you what's more frustrating, being the guy on the phone. Everything comes back to him.
- [30:39]
A
Yeah.
- [30:39]
B
There's no peace.
- [30:40]
A
Yeah.
- [30:40]
B
And you go home at night and you go, I don't want to go to work tomorrow. Wait a minute. You own it. Sure.
- [30:46]
A
Yeah. But I think you're a good example of that because you couldn't be on the radio for three hours talking, Right. Every day if you had. If you had to run everything. It just doesn't work.
- [30:55]
B
Right. I haven't run everything for a very long time.
- [30:59]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So as you start to get through these initial first, second, third phase, then what's on the next one is the.
- [31:12]
B
Peak performer number four. And so when you get the processes and systems in place at Trailblazer and you get your second layer of leadership, you're not only leading some leaders, but you're leading leaders that lead leaders. And it's not necessarily a number of people, but usually you're gonna see like 50 plus people in the team at that point. To have three layers of leadership. And so I'm leading leaders that lead leaders. And so that's real delegation at this point. You're not just delegating, you know, tasks, you're delegating concepts, you know, and so that's a very important level of delegation. Then you move into this. When you start doing those two things, systems, processes, and your leadership layers are there. You're going to move into this peak performer. Peak performer is the. It's one. They're all fun for different reasons. This is one is fun because it's so efficient. You're cooking with gas now. You're stacking cash, you'll make more money at this stage than you've ever seen in your life. Life.
- [32:21]
A
Yeah.
- [32:21]
B
And because everything's working, the systems, the people, the leadership, the values are in place, the mission, vision, we're aligned. We're aimed at the Same thing. This thing is working. It's like it's a well oiled machine, you know, and it's cooking. There's very few problems in Peak Performer that you haven't already seen before and you can fix them. You're going to, you're going to jettison the wrong people quickly. Not mean, but we're not putting up with that. And we've seen this before, We've been to this play before. We know how it ends. And so we're going to just keep going. We're going to keep going. We're going to keep going. And you just turn up the speed. Just turn up the speed. Just keep cracking up the RPMs and go, go, go, go, go, go, go. There's only one problem at Peak Performer is you're so stinking good, you start to believe it. Pride. Hubris comes before the fall. And so. And you forget that. You forget to be scrappy. You forget, you start to, you know, somebody does an article and your name's on the COVID of Success magazine. And so, you know, it's like, look at me. And you get.
- [33:22]
A
It's quick to. You can buy into it pretty quick.
- [33:25]
B
I know that's human nature, man. We're all there. Look at me. Are not good. And even my wife said I was good. Oh my God. You know, this is incredible.
- [33:33]
A
Yeah.
- [33:33]
B
And yeah. So, yeah, it's very easy to do. And if you, if you fall into that trap, you'll forget to break things. So no omelets without broken eggs, baby. So you got to constantly be shooting the sacred cows. You gotta constantly be reinventing yourself because somebody that's chasing your tail, coming up behind you, your competitor is already. They're innovating.
- [33:55]
A
Yeah.
- [33:55]
B
And if you go, why? This has always worked this way. It's always good. Not for about 20 minutes. Dude, you better be breaking it before it's broken. You better shoot the sacred cows. We're going to stand on principle, but we don't worship processes. People who worship processes are bureaucrats and corporate America like we're talking about earlier. We don't want to be that, but we don't. Our principles don't change. But I mean, our principles are that we help people change their lives with common sense education and biblically based common sense education and empowerment. That's our mission statement. So I can do that with a book on paper or I can do it with an ebook. I can do it with an audiobook or I can do it with a microphone. Oh, wait a minute. I can do it on Radio stations. Oh, I can do it on podcast. I can do it on YouTube. I could do it on TikTok and Instagram. You know, all these broadcast mediums are there, and when they're not, when they become MySpace and they become irrelevant, we'll let it die off. But we will already be on all the other stuff. So we're platform agnostic. We're on everything all the time. And because we don't know what's going to go next, so. But. And we don't want to be, I mean, around here, the old. The old traditional sacred cows talk radio, because talk radios, however the Dave Ramsey brand was built. But talk radio is in its last stages. It may have another 20 years, I don't know. But it's definitely peaked and it's definitely going down because the number of people listening to Dave Ramsey or the Ramsey show on talk radio is less than it was. And listen to anybody, for that matter, on talk radio, they're listening to podcasts or they're listening to YouTube or they're listening TikTok or X or wherever. Anyway, all that to say you got to reinvent. You got to bust it and break it and bust it and break it and bust and break it and not let your pride not, not, not believe these articles that were written about how smart you are.
- [35:41]
A
But again, that's way easier said than done. And I got. I got totally cop like that first time I was here, honestly, I was on the Entree Leadership podcast.
- [35:49]
B
Yeah.
- [35:50]
A
I started to buy into it. I was like, I'm on the Entree Leadership Podcast. I must know how to do business.
- [35:55]
B
This is.
- [35:55]
A
This is going pretty well.
- [35:56]
B
Yeah.
- [35:57]
A
And that's. You know, we had built this great marketing business for construction companies, and we had. We had raised money at that point, which then gave us all kinds of capital to do all kinds of dumb stuff with. Like, too much capital is not a good thing at all. And so we were. It's like everything was working really well then, at least for me, personally bought into. Well, I know what I'm doing and you don't. At the time. It's. It's like, it's really devious because you don't think you're buying into it. Yeah, it is your mind into it. And then we just got whooped for a few years, and so we're now back at. I feel like we've regressed because we've totally changed the business. We sold the first business, so there's no more marketing company. Now we're a software and events and media company. And so we. We go back in time, but then now we're building those processes again. I'm. I'm excited to get to the point where we're stacking cash, but that's definitely not the case right now.
- [36:53]
B
Yeah, it'll come back, though. It'll come back. And this time. This time, because of the lessons learned, it'll be more sustainable.
- [37:00]
A
Yes.
- [37:00]
B
And so because you're not, you're gonna.
- [37:02]
A
Be looking over your shoulder now 100%.
- [37:04]
B
You're gonna be going, oh, okay. You know, and it's not a being. It's not being negative. That's not the point. It's, you know, Dave, you should be positive. I'm positive. We need to break it before it breaks itself. Or before a competitor comes along and just passes us at 180 miles an hour, we wonder what. Look what happened. And so, no, we have to stay on top of this. And the only thing we know about today's marketplace in America, and for that matter, around the world, is everything changes at light speed. And so whatever you were doing three years ago is completely irrelevant now.
- [37:37]
A
Yeah.
- [37:38]
B
And how you were doing it three years ago.
- [37:40]
A
Yeah.
- [37:40]
B
And so you've really got to break it before it's broken. You really be looking, pretending like you're a startup all the time. You got to the startup mentality all the time. And if you do that at peak performer, you can sustain at peak performer for decades.
- [37:53]
A
How do you. But how do you. How do you maintain that sense of humility?
- [37:59]
B
You get your butt kicked. It'll teach you humility. I mean, that's just what you said. It happened to me, too. It's happened to me a couple times in my life. I mean, I went completely broke and lost everything in my 20s. And that's how this whole thing started, is me talking about common sense on money. Right. But around here, you know, if we hire too fast, we go through a season of bull crap, and it's like, I don't hate. I just don't want to hire anybody else. This is crazy. No, we were hiring too fast. We weren't watching. And so we changed our scripts. We changed how we're talking to the people when we're doing interviews in a recruiting thing. And so, you know, because we really were trying to get those developers in here, but, you know, we. We did some dumb stuff. Not ludicrous, but just. It caught up with us, hit us in the back of the head. And so, yeah, you, You. Those scars will make you humble and not humiliated, but going, I don't want that pain again. So I will avoid that. You know, I won't, I won't steer that direction because every time I do, I end up in a ditch.
- [39:01]
A
It does, I've learned though, it does require some emotional maturity because you can, you can go down again this negative path that is the shame associated with it. Oh, yeah, Like I went, I again, I went down that for quite a while. I'm getting out of it now. I'm just like, oh, this is so much better. Like, why was I beating myself up for that long? But you can be, especially at the entrepreneurship level, you can be really unkind to yourself.
- [39:24]
B
It's pretty typical.
- [39:25]
A
Yeah.
- [39:25]
B
I mean, John Johnson, the editor of Ebony magazine, says the entrepreneurs are the only person who can go from sheer exhilaration to sheer terror and back every 24 hours.
- [39:34]
A
It really is that way, so.
- [39:35]
B
Yeah, it really is. It's that way.
- [39:38]
A
Yeah.
- [39:38]
B
I don't care if you're running an old school business, you got six bulldozers, or if you're running a new digital business that's cutting edge with the stuff, it's still the same exact thing. And a lot of that has to do with self shaming or self talk or those kinds of things. And so, you know, it's a game of failure. I'm at 58 years old. For some reason, my wife decided that we were going to learn to play golf. I'd never swung a golf club in my life.
- [40:06]
A
Oh, really?
- [40:07]
B
And so I've been playing for a few years now. I'm still trying to figure this out. But it's a game of continuous failure. I mean, the best in the world, it's continuous failure. Sure. Yeah. I mean, it's the only thing you do. The only thing, the only difference, the best in the world is they hit a few more good shots before they hit a bad one. You know, that's really all it is. And so, but I was playing with a PGA guy that, that just for fun. And I was listening to the guy. He's a very talkative dude, fun. And he would hit a really good shot and he would say, that's a good shot. That's really good. And then if he hit a bad shot and it goes up in the woods, right, he would say, you don't hit shots like that. And I'm walking down through there and I'm like, I'm listening to you do that.
- [40:58]
A
He's saying it to himself.
- [40:59]
B
Yeah, he's talking to himself out loud, though. I was hearing him say, It. And I'm like, I gotta ask, what are you doing? I mean, that's just because it was consistent. I mean, every great putt to himself, you know, it's like he's. Or you go, yeah, you missed that out to the outside. You don't do that usually. And he didn't usually. It was a true statement, actually. But most golfers get in the idea. They miss that one shot and it's. The wheels can fall off the whole round because of self talk and shaming. And I said. He said, well, sports psychologist taught me that 25 years ago. He's an older golfer and he taught me that 25 years ago. He goes, I was. I was just cussing myself all the time on the golf course. And the guy goes, you wouldn't allow anybody to talk to your friend that way, so quit talking to yourself that way.
- [41:48]
A
Sure.
- [41:50]
B
And he goes, what's the reality? What's real. What's real is, is that you started something very young. You made a lot of money, did really well, you were a great marketer, and you made three bad shots and put it in the ditch. That's the reality of that story. Reality is not. Aaron's a doofus.
- [42:08]
A
Yep.
- [42:08]
B
That's not the reality.
- [42:09]
A
Yeah.
- [42:10]
B
Yeah. Did you do a couple stupid things? Well, welcome the human race, you know, I mean, come on. But, but you know that. Same here, dude. I mean, this morning, you know, I've just been here a few minutes and I can do that. So. But, but, but I'm also a world class leader.
- [42:24]
A
Yeah.
- [42:25]
B
I'm really good at this.
- [42:26]
A
Yeah. Well, you've had some practice, but I missed some shots to that point. In the construction industry, there's a lot of businesses that are really good. They've been around for a while. They know they're really good. And oftentimes it's the first generation leading the company. Somebody like your age, you know, 60s, and they're making more money than ever before. Their balance sheets nice and fat, they're winning work. Life's grand. However, there's things that definitely need to change. Definitely need to change. But there's no. At their level, there's no real incentive for things to change. But then the next generation comes along and they get really frustrated. Especially when it's usually dad won't get out of the way. It happens. All because there's a lot of family businesses in the construction industry. So how. What do you tell those people? That they know something needs to change. They're not the ones in charge. They're kind of in charge, but they're trying to. They see where the world's going, they're trying to get the business there, but there's other forces at play.
- [43:31]
B
Yeah, well, that's the fifth stage. Okay, well, the legacy stage. Yeah, and the legacy stage involves what's our succession plan look like? And advice. First to the second gen that's frustrated is quit talking about every little idea you have to your dad. He's sick of listening to it. You're driving him crazy. Some of your ideas suck, too. Okay, so give yourself. Breathe a little bit and instead reframe the conversation. Dad, you got us here, and you're smart enough to know what got us here won't get us there. And so. And so your first rule when you're Gen 2 is start every conversation regarding the other generation with honor. Pay honor. Pay honor. Pay honor. Pay honor. Pay honor. Pay honor. Pay honor. You and I live in Nashville, and it is. Country music is the only genre of music that 100% of the upcoming gin pays honors to the old guys. Yeah, they look and they go, man. Johnny Cash. Sure, man. Dolly Parton. Yeah. You know, and whether they're in their Loretta Lynn, you know, whether they're in their presence or not or, you know, if you're, you know, you got a big hit and you're filling up a stadium in that world, you still tip your hat to Ms. Loretta because she's the reason you got here. You're standing on the shoulders of giants. So pay honor. Pay honor. Pay honor. Pay on her. Because it's real, number one. Number two, it's a proper way to start a conversation with your elder. And they got things. And so. Okay, Dad, I want to learn from you. And you know that we've got to do some things different. And if we don't develop a game plan to systematically hand off this company, you're going to kill two things that you love. This company and your kids. So there's the thing for the old guys, that's me. As we've studied family businesses, and I coach a bunch of them, and I've done a lot of research on this. The hardest handoff, emotionally, not technically or financially, but emotionally. The hardest handoff, not. Not tech. It's not hard. It's not very sophisticated. But. But emotionally, is from Gen 1 to Gen 2, because Gen 1, that starts it, that bootstraps it. They got dirt on their fingernails. They've done stuff nobody else has done. They paid a price like nobody else in the building has paid. They got the scars and they got the scars, they got the calluses. And they're no bs. They don't want to listen to your crap. They won't put up your whining. They're just, you know, shut up. Okay? But the very thing that allowed us, me, Gen ones, to get the thing to where it is is this incredible stubbornness. And that very thing will kill the things you love. It'll kill your kids, and you'll kill your business. And so if you do not develop a game plan for succession and start announcing it from the rooftops. Because here's the thing. You, 65, you're 70 years old. No one wants to come work there because they think the whole thing is going to fold up like a Walmart tent as soon as the old man dies.
- [46:56]
A
100%.
- [46:57]
B
You can't attract talent and keep talent. Customers are worried about what happens if the old man dies in the middle of the job. Do these other farts know how to run this thing? They worried about it. The customers are worried about it. The vendors are worried about it. Am I going to get paid? You know, everybody's worried about it except the Gen1 guy sitting there fat and happy.
- [47:20]
A
Sure.
- [47:22]
B
But, you know, you have to get above your little personal feelings if you're Gen1 and start saying, what matters more than my feelings is I love my son and I love the people that work here and I love the work that we do. And I have a responsibility, a stewardship responsibility, to get above this, be noble, and began a process that is emotionally painful for me to turn it over. I'm just, I'm in the middle of going through it.
- [47:50]
A
Yeah. Yeah.
- [47:51]
B
My son, My son Daniel runs 80% of Ramsey right now. And when he came into the president's role, I'm CEO, he's president. When he came in the president's role four years ago, it was 50. 50. We're clicking it along now. It's 80. 20. I only run 20% of Ramsey right now.
- [48:05]
A
Yeah.
- [48:05]
B
Maximum. Now I do all the on air stuff, so it looks like I'm running the whole place, but I'm not.
- [48:11]
A
But at some, at some point, it.
- [48:13]
B
Would kill my son if I not kill this place.
- [48:15]
A
Yeah.
- [48:15]
B
And the us, the team members all through here, most of them like working for Daniel better than they like working for me.
- [48:21]
A
Sure. But that. Yeah. It's just so interesting because it creates this resentment with the second generation too, when the first won't get out of the way.
- [48:30]
B
Well. And if the first doesn't get out of the way, one or two Things is going to happen. They're going to die, and the whole thing's going to fold up like a.
- [48:34]
A
Walmart tent, which I've seen.
- [48:35]
B
Or Gen 2 is going to get so frustrated. They jet.
- [48:38]
A
They leave.
- [48:39]
B
Yeah, they leave. They become a competitor sometimes. And it fractures the family. It fractures the family. It fractures the business. It fractures everything. Just because the old guy won't deal with the crap. Because I will tell you this, when I start doing this, it's emotional because I've been working on 16 years to date. Sixteen years ago, we started talking about this. How are we going to have the other people sitting here at the table, the Ramsey personalities? And I remember in 2021, we made the decision to flip the Dave Ramsey show to the Ramsey show.
- [49:20]
A
Okay.
- [49:20]
B
That's a part of the handoff. Right? Because it's not. Dave ain't going to be here someday.
- [49:24]
A
Yeah.
- [49:25]
B
I don't care what we do. Dave's not going to be here someday. 100% of us going to die. So. And we talked about it in our leadership team. And I'm like, I convinced the guys. I said, I don't think we do a big announcement. I think let's just go on the air and change it. Change the graphic and change it. See what happens. Dude, nobody noticed. Hurt my feelings. So. Pissed me off. Nobody cared. I got 680 radio stations. Four weeks later, two of them called and said, did y' all change the name? Yeah, we changed the name. Four weeks.
- [50:06]
A
Yeah.
- [50:07]
B
And you know, three people in YouTube out of. Out of 32 million put in there. Is Dave retiring? Nobody. I was the only one that cared. And I was like, ted gum. I am planning to be less important and damned if it isn't working. Oh, God, it's killing me. So I will tell you, you guys at home, you Gen one, it's hard. It's emotional. When I started saying I'm planning to be less important, the earth started moving under my feet as soon as I started talking about it. And it's because I'm used to being the dog.
- [50:36]
A
But how have. How have you. How have you processed that? How have you allowed for that loud.
- [50:41]
B
And just say it and go, okay, what's more important than Dave's little feelings? Yeah, you know, I can joke about it, but it's a real feeling. But what's more important. What's More important is 1100 people that work here. What's more important is that my son can step into this. That Rachel Cruz, my daughter, who's a Ramsey personality, can step in and be as good or better than me on any stage in any set of medium in America. And she is, and the other Ramsey personalities too, for that matter. Then I left and I went to Cabo for six weeks and when I came back we were reviewing the show and the ratings went up while I was gone. That really pissed me off. But what that means is the brand handoff was working. Right. So my plan's working. I should be happy. And so up here in the Noble Dave, I'm very happy because intellectually and spiritually that's the proper thing to do. I'm being a good steward, I'm being a good dad, I'm being a good grandpa, I'm being a good manager of what God has given me. But down here, little boy Dave has still kind of got his feelings hurt that all this stuff is happening and everybody's better than me now and oh well, I'll just have to deal with it.
- [51:47]
A
But it is amazing how you can be at that level in life and business and still have those very simple human emotions. Like, man, I just want to be special.
- [51:54]
B
Almost four year old emotion. I mean, it's nuts and I don't live in them. I don't sit around talking about it, but I mean I just share the story because it's a very real thing that everyone that does succession planning goes through. And if you're not working on your succession plan, you're already late. The more gradual the succession plan, the higher the probability of success. The plan where the old man grabs his chest, falls back into the grave with having a heart attack and tosses the keys out as he dies. Those don't work, those companies don't, they don't survive.
- [52:24]
A
But, but taking it even from the company to the individual, that's a lot of how, that's how a lot of people go out of the world financially too.
- [52:32]
B
Yeah.
- [52:33]
A
Just here's the disaster that is my life, especially financially.
- [52:37]
B
Yeah.
- [52:38]
A
To the whole family. And you just watch the family deal with a death. Especially, especially an unexpected old man or.
- [52:45]
B
Old lady didn't have the courage to deal with their own crap.
- [52:47]
A
Yeah, it's courage, but it's, it becomes a disaster.
- [52:50]
B
Oh, it is generation horrible.
- [52:52]
A
And it's, it's terrible to watch because they're grieving.
- [52:54]
B
The business doesn't survive.
- [52:55]
A
Yeah.
- [52:56]
B
The thing you worked your whole life building for the last 30 years doesn't survive because you were a four year old.
- [53:04]
A
Yeah.
- [53:05]
B
And that's gen one.
- [53:06]
A
I feel like that's representative of. Honestly, a lot of the construction industry, it's everybody.
- [53:12]
B
I think it's just not just construction.
- [53:13]
A
Yeah, yeah. But I mean I look at just construction and construction is a little insulated from a lot of the technical. It's not insulated long term, but it has been insulated from a lot of the technical technological changes. We're still moving dirt, putting concrete in the ground, pouring concrete, etc. So I think they've gotten away with that old school way of doing business longer than a lot of other industries have.
- [53:38]
B
Yeah.
- [53:39]
A
But it, it's gonna, it's already catching up with them from a workforce standpoint. But I think the industry's in that legacy phase right now.
- [53:46]
B
The industry. Yeah. Yeah. There's going to be a bunch of them handed off in the next 20 years. Yes, that's true. And a bunch of them won't survive it if they don't do it with a plan. It has to be a plan. You have to start it now. And I'm not suggesting you put an incompetent 22 year old in as the president just because he has an idea.
- [54:03]
A
Which I've seen that too.
- [54:04]
B
That's, that's, that's, that's just an arrogant 22 year old. No, thank you. It's not what I'm saying. But we stage gated everything we've done. Meaning you didn't. Daniel did not move up through the, the process here over 14 years except by competency. As we taught our kids growing up, they had to work twice as hard and be twice as good just to be respected. Because people automatically assume boss's kid's a doofus. And so you can't be that kid. You gotta bring it, you gotta be better, you gotta be smarter, you gotta be wiser. He's a completely different personality than me, by the way. Completely chill, easygoing, not wired up like me, all that. And so people get used to that and you know, but he sat in our leadership team for the last eight years, you know, at various levels and never reported directly to me until the last four years.
- [54:54]
A
Interesting.
- [54:54]
B
Yeah, he always reported to another leader here and so he. That way we didn't get daddy stuff involved because I don't use my dad voice at work.
- [55:02]
A
Well. And I don't. That's, that's one reason why I don't envy second gen because that's a hard place to be.
- [55:09]
B
Yeah.
- [55:10]
A
A hard place to be. And, and I've seen it make people or break people.
- [55:13]
B
Yeah. So again, I'll go back to that start with honor. But the other thing you Remember is you need to talk to your dad. If we're talking about a lot of dads, it could be a mom, but you need to talk to your. Your family member that started the whole thing at work, not only with honor, but you need to talk to them only like you would talk to a CEO if you worked somewhere else. So you don't come in all belligerent and throw a teenage fit and roll your eyes. Dad, you're so dumb. You know, if you start that crap, you should be fired. Because you know, you wouldn't get to do that anywhere else. Nobody else would put up that junk. I mean, if you roll in here and you don't, you're not one of my family. And you roll your eyes and you go, dave, you're an idiot. Yeah, I am, because I hired you. You know, it's like, I think I can fix this, right? So we real careful, we learn. One of the things we learned is to wear what we call hats when we're at work. I'm the CEO, Daniel's the president. Rachel Cruz is a Ramsey personality. Rachel gets paid the same as John Deloney, or the same as Ken Coleman, or the same as other Ramsey personalities in terms of percentages. She may sell more books or less books, or she may get more speaking fees, but she gets this same exact comp plan that they're on. It's not special for the kid. And she has to bring it because people automatically assume. And to her credit, she always has. And Daniel too, to their credit. They always have. But then so. And we even changed it to where they don't say dad here, they just say Dave. Now everybody knows I'm their dad.
- [56:44]
A
Sure.
- [56:45]
B
But if they're in a meeting and Rachel said, my daddy, that tilts the room, right?
- [56:49]
A
It does.
- [56:50]
B
The whole room changes. Instead she says, david ain't gonna go for that. And everybody goes, you're right. David gonna go for that. And you know, I'm gonna have to talk to Dave because I. Somebody's going to have to get him to come. Not do, you know, whatever. But she's not doing that as a daughter. She's doing that as a leader here, or Daniel is as a leader. And so we have good, healthy arguments, but they're respectful and they're within roles. And so you have to talk to your father like he's the CEO and founder of a very large business that started from nothing. He deserves honor, but he also deserves to hear ideas. But how would you couch that? It's a non belligerent, non Entitled methodology. And if he absolutely can't get there, then you've got a father problem. You don't have a, you know, succession problem. But most of the time, people approach it wrong.
- [57:43]
A
Yeah. And it was, interestingly, in February, we went to Japan.
- [57:47]
B
They're very honored that.
- [57:49]
A
The whole honor thing, the professional world. Whoa. Like. Like big time.
- [57:57]
B
And nuanced to the point that all Americans stumble around in it all the time.
- [58:00]
A
Yeah.
- [58:01]
B
Horrible at it.
- [58:01]
A
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. But I was. I mean, they. We went to this. Yeah. This guy was this owner of a big quarry, and he was in his 80s, and they were talking about him like, I mean, he was a God. Yeah. Like he walked on water around the place. Because he did. Like he was. And you don't talk until he starts talking. Like, even everybody would. Would wait until he would sit down and. And before, you know, if he laughed. Oh, okay. We can all laugh. And. And it's. It's on that extreme. Extreme end of the spectrum. But I really appreciated it because it's.
- [58:31]
B
Like, well, there's a lesson to be learned. We wouldn't do it that way because it doesn't fit our culture.
- [58:34]
A
It's different.
- [58:35]
B
But the lesson to be learned is there's value to honor.
- [58:37]
A
Yeah.
- [58:38]
B
And a lot of. I mean, I grew up hillbilly kid, redneck kid. And that's an honor culture. And for that matter, construction is an honor culture.
- [58:49]
A
Big time.
- [58:49]
B
Yep, it's an honor culture. And so, I mean, you chew a, you know, a foreman out in front of his crew, he'll probably quit the next.
- [58:58]
A
Or just hate you the rest of the time he's there.
- [59:00]
B
Well, until he gets to somebody else. By Friday, he'll be gone. I mean, it's like his brain left. I don't know if he left or not, but, you know, you lost him. And so you can't violate honor code. And yet, because it's family, we think we can. You think you can get away with it? And so. No, you can't roll your eyes at your daddy.
- [59:20]
A
Sure. Yeah. But that. I talked to a lot of younger people in the construction industry that struggle with this, too, and I, I. That's one of the big things I tell them, is like, just keep your mouth shut. Just, Just, just. Just work. Just build trust with one another.
- [59:34]
B
Well, I don't mind bringing up an idea, but you need to not start out with, yeah, you're an idiot.
- [59:38]
A
That's what I mean. Yeah. You don't, you don't start out with, I say that well, because that's I'm speaking from experience there I was that punk kid.
- [59:45]
B
Yeah.
- [59:45]
A
For quite a while. Like, hey, you dumb dumbs don't know what the heck's going on here. And they didn't appreciate it very well.
- [59:51]
B
That's a classic. You know, in white collar world we talk about that's just college. They come out of college and they know everything.
- [59:57]
A
Yeah.
- [59:57]
B
It takes them about three years, figure out they know nothing. You know, and so you got to get the college knocked off of them. But the. Because you got all these ideas and you want to. You just learned all this stuff and you're really excited about it. And so. But even the, you know, Gen 2, you know, entrepreneurial rule around Ramsey is is that we have a new idea every morning and 90% of them suck. We don't know which ones suck till we test them. And we don't know which some of them suck until we actually put them in the marketplace sometimes. We made all of our money, brand impact and success on about 10% of our ideas and we didn't know which ones they were going to be. We just try them. We try everything, but only about 10%. And that's true of all these ideas you got trying to get your dad to do.
- [60:44]
A
Yeah.
- [60:44]
B
About 90% of them aren't gonna work. Sure. And he probably knows more in his little finger about which ones aren't gonna work then you'll know in the next 10 years.
- [60:52]
A
He's probably already tried a bunch of them.
- [60:53]
B
Yeah.
- [60:53]
A
Himself.
- [60:54]
B
Well. Or had something that felt just like that.
- [60:56]
A
Yep.
- [60:57]
B
You know, I was in a. We were renegotiating a contract with a large vendor and that I've been doing business with for many, many years. And I was in a meeting with the guys that were working on it and I said, okay, guys, here's three times that I was in a situation just like this and here's what happened. And I don't want that result. So let's approach this differently than we did these other three times over the last 30 years. This is a. I've been. In other words, I've been down this road before and here's. And you know, to their credit, and I appreciated it, they said that's a good learning. That helps me frame this whole discussion differently by having that so the Gen one can share the track record, share the history, share the scars and go, let's try not to do that again.
- [61:43]
A
There is. And from both perspectives, there is something beautiful. Like in my 20s, I don't know, I feel like turning 30 was the first birthday. That was all that significant for me in my life. Because when you turn 20, you don't care. You're not 21 yet. I just want to go drink. And when you turn 21, you're busy drinking or whatever. I wasn't. But that's how most people are. And so you get to 30, though, and there's something beautiful about just not knowing any better and just kicking in. If there's a door, I'm just going to go kick it in.
- [62:10]
B
Yeah, there's a value.
- [62:12]
A
Yeah, there's an immense value to that. But then at the same time, I'm now, like, just getting the first lick of experience and wisdom, and I really like it. I'm like, oh, this is more efficient. This is much more efficient.
- [62:29]
B
Less flailing around. Yeah. Like, I'm not burning as many calories to get the same work done.
- [62:34]
A
Yeah, I'm really liking it because I'm like, well, maybe let's ask a question or two about what's behind that door. We might still have to kick it in.
- [62:42]
B
You know, I think Daniel would say that if we. If he was sitting here, he would say, I pay honor and I ask a lot of questions. Some of them are leading questions. Some of them are actually statements hidden in a question. But he's asking a lot of questions. Well, what if we did this? What do you think would happen? And instead of going, you know, we're stupid. We got to fix this. This is a broken out, equated system. You know, insulting the current thing very seldom gets you where you want to go.
- [63:06]
A
Well, and. And you can't make somebody do something.
- [63:10]
B
No, that's true.
- [63:12]
A
You just. That's. That's what I watch people, A lot of people struggle with. I've struggled with it, but, like, once you recognize that I can't. I can't make Dave do anything. No, I can. I can influence him. I can. I can lead him. I can ask him questions. I can help him get somewhere, but I can't miss.
- [63:30]
B
Dad, how can I help make sure that this company becomes what you want it to be. Take it to another level. And that, you know, when you're 90, you're looking over here with pride. What have I got to do to do that?
- [63:45]
A
It's kind of thing.
- [63:46]
B
And how can I help you get there? What's.
- [63:49]
A
What's. And this is all. That's. This is, like, best case scenario.
- [63:54]
B
I feel like that's the only case. But the other case is it falls apart.
- [63:58]
A
It does.
- [63:59]
B
It gets so there's no Middle ground.
- [64:00]
A
It gets so messy. Like, I didn't come up in a family business, but.
- [64:05]
B
Their family business is never more functional than the family. If the family's cray cray, the family business is cray cray. Yeah, you can't fix. You can't go to the office and fix it. Doesn't work.
- [64:15]
A
No. No, but it's. I think this is where things can get messy to those personal relationships, because this is where. I mean, one of the biggest struggles I've had in business was I had no issues with my father my entire life. Great relationship, Started a company. It. For whatever reasons, things started to go sideways. And I think it was partially. He's an attorney, so he was giving me, you know, legal advice, this and that. I was being a punk. Like, this is dumb. This doesn't apply to me. So on and so forth. You represented blackrock. It's just me. Like, this is. This is not the same. And I was. I was a punk for. For a very long time. And then a little over three years ago, he just decided, I don't want to talk to you anymore. Hasn't spoken to me since. Which, I'm sorry, it's. It sucks. But I. I don't talk about it for sympathy or anything like that. Like, it's been a. But it's been one of the biggest lessons I've had to learn in business because it's like these things that you just don't expect at all. Like, you can tell me all day long how hard business is, but until you're in the fight and you get your. You just get knocked in the. You know, whatever, you're. That. That's when you realize, wow, this is just way out of left field.
- [65:32]
B
Yeah.
- [65:32]
A
Yeah. But it was partially, too. Because I started, you know, speaking and doing a lot of what I'm doing. And it's interesting, too, how you can. Like, I feel like the goal of the kids should be to lap the old man, but when you lap the old man, sometimes it's not appreciated. But there's a lot of confusion that comes into play. It's like, well, isn't this the point? Like, I'm starting where you left off. So this is what I'm supposed to do. I'm supposed to go like, why'd you work this hard for this? I can go take it here, and I'm supposed to take it here, but I want to do it together. I don't just want to do it on my own. Or else what's the point of all the work you put in.
- [66:13]
B
Yeah. So it's painful.
- [66:15]
A
Yeah, really painful.
- [66:16]
B
But. Yeah. Yeah. And, and you know, I guess my advice to Gen 1 or to your dad and you know, my age group is you need to get joy from different things. You get joy from the continuation and you get joy from the success of the next gen instead of joy from your personal.
- [66:35]
A
Yeah.
- [66:35]
B
Success.
- [66:36]
A
Yeah.
- [66:37]
B
And if you're resetting, you're resetting where you're getting your joy from because otherwise you get mad when they lap you or you, you know, or it hurts your feelings when you change the name of the show so badly that you stop everything because you're afraid you're not going to be important anymore. And being important is more important than making sure your kids in the business are okay.
- [66:58]
A
It sounds silly, but that happens.
- [67:00]
B
Oh, it happens a lot. It happens more than not. That's why we talk about it so much and that's why we covered legacy in this book. It's the same exact thing because it's just a, it's a big, big deal. And I mean the science of family business and the art of family business is a relatively untouched area.
- [67:23]
A
It's not talked about. Yeah, yeah. It really isn't talked about. Yeah, yeah.
- [67:27]
B
And I would say of all the things that we teach in entree leadership, the two areas we get the most stuff on is hiring and firing. Talking about earlier and this family business discussion.
- [67:40]
A
Okay. One thing, I don't know when it was, I was listening you talk to somebody and you made, you made a joke. Like in business, you guys have never been better, bigger, you've never been helping more people. But then you look at the United States and the debt right now and where everybody is financially and me as a 30 year old, I'm not super optimistic with where things are going. So how do you see especially this next generation coming in? Because we're, that's why I made the, the comment about the baby boomers before. It's like they, they're kind of leaving us a little bit of a mess. And when I say a little bit, it's like it's a pretty big mess from a financial standpoint as an individual, you know, what can I do about that?
- [68:31]
B
Well, when I was in my 20s, a guy wrote a book called Bankruptcy 1988. He was predicting the bankruptcy of the United States due to debt. And he had all these charts and graphs in the book about the debt is up into the right. It's hockey sticking. And compared with the debt we have today was a joke obviously, but he Was very, very sure. The book was very convincing that out that the United States was going to have an economic calamity and collapse in 1988, which now obviously looking back on. And so I think common sense says that continuing to spend more than you make is not a sustainable idea. Obviously. I'm shocked, honestly. All these years, the number of books that I've seen and the number of experts that I've seen predict that it's all going to be over soon and how many. That they've all been wrong. I'm honestly shocked that we have this big a debt and it's had almost no impact.
- [69:44]
A
Yeah.
- [69:45]
B
That's discernible.
- [69:46]
A
Which is.
- [69:47]
B
It's very. It's kind of shocking. It should have.
- [69:49]
A
It's unsettling.
- [69:50]
B
Yeah, it is just like. And it should be unsettling. But it's. I mean, it is having an impact because it is messing up the money supply, it is affecting interest rates and it is creating more instability in the general economy, but not to the point that there's this. That houses are falling down and people are losing. I mean, we're kind of going along fairly normal and there's this monster in the closet, you know, kind of thing. So I vowed that I was not going to write in it End Times book, no matter how worried or old I got. So I'm not gonna. I'm gonna keep with that vow. And I don't think there's an End Times thing coming. What can we do as individuals? We have to control the controllables. I can't control what the idiots do in Washington other than vote and other than yell at them.
- [70:38]
A
Sure.
- [70:39]
B
And I do both. And. But, you know, the answer is that the people of America become as a group, discussed it enough that they're willing to, as a group, sacrifice. Because guess what? As soon as we start cutting the budget, a bunch of listeners to history here aren't going to have a road project.
- [71:04]
A
Yep. Yep.
- [71:06]
B
Count on it.
- [71:07]
A
Yep.
- [71:08]
B
You know, and I mean, anybody, if you're doing government work, just. I will go with the territory. And the politicians all say, well, you can't mess with grandma because Grandma needs her check.
- [71:21]
A
Yeah. And Grandma votes every time.
- [71:23]
B
Yeah. And everybody's got their own little special interest.
- [71:27]
A
Yeah.
- [71:27]
B
And. And yet we stand back and throw grenades and say, oh, they need to fix that, but don't mess with my part. Sure. You know.
- [71:34]
A
Yeah.
- [71:35]
B
Kind of thing. And so, yeah, it's. There's going to have to become a consciousness that says, yeah, it's going to hurt. And I'LL have my part that hurts, and you'll have your part that hurts because we have got to rein this thing in. But I don't even see that in the culture today. I see people worrying about it, but not enough to actually go, I'm going to vote these Congress. I'm going to vote my congressman out. Mm. I know, I know. I went to school with his son, but I'm still gonna vote him out.
- [72:09]
A
Yeah.
- [72:09]
B
Because he keeps voting for the same stupid butt stuff over and over and over again. Yeah. And so you. You're gonna ha. That's the type of thing that's gonna have to happen. So you can vote and you can yell at them, and you should do both. That's okay. But then I'm gonna go about my business because I can't control that. It's like, you know, how do you get ready for a hurricane? I can. I can go about my business, and then three weeks later, you know, the hurricane will be a history, and I. Cause I don't know, you know, how do I get ready for the unknowable? You can't. So all I can do is do what I can do. And so I control the controllables. It's like when we're going through Covid, you know, we had entire business units just evaporate here.
- [72:49]
A
Sure.
- [72:50]
B
Obviously, we weren't doing live events, you know, so, like, $20 million just didn't happen, you know, that kind of stuff. And I was like, okay, how do you survive this? I can't control that. I can be mad about it. I can be. I can be in disagreement, but it really won't matter. Nobody's going to come, you know, I can't. There's not. And in some states, we'd all get put in jail, you know, or whatever it was. Right. So I just got to. I got to. Okay, what are the things I can control? Well, I can't control my dad, and I can't control the government, and I can't. I can't make other people do stuff. All I can do is go, this is how we're going to react in this environment, and this is how we're going to do. But it does lend itself. The discussion lends itself to the Ramsey biblical financial principles. Lots of cash and no debt. Because as soon as there's a ripple in the economy, it'll take you out. If you're leveraged, you're sitting on seven figures of earth moving equipment, and the earth being moved, you're screwed. You know, your great plan how much money you were going to make with that dozer is gone because it's going to be the very thing that bankrupts you. So grow a little slower and grow in a sustainable way. I can control whether I go into debt because I'm just going to choose not to grow that fast. I can control piling up cash to buy the next piece of equipment with cash. I can control piling up cash to survive the next ripple in the economy. I can control tight accounting systems and really watching my processes so that we're not wasting money just because times are good right now, because next summer there might not be good. And so, you know, being uber conservative with your financial principles, in other words, those are things I can control. I can control how I treat people. I can control how I treat my team. I can control compensation, choosing to or not. These are things, but I can't control the other stuff. And so I'm not going to burn a bunch of calories on it.
- [74:49]
A
Sure, yeah. Yeah, it is. It's interesting, though, because everybody that I talk to is nervous, but the market is seemingly better than ever, and there's more work to do than ever, than ever than ever before.
- [75:02]
B
Probably getting ready to get even better.
- [75:04]
A
That's what it seems like, especially in construction, with manufacturing and everything like that. Everybody's talking manufacturing.
- [75:09]
B
I think we're going to think about them.
- [75:10]
A
Well, you have to. You have to build it. Like, we can talk about it all day, but that's just big projects to me.
- [75:14]
B
Yep.
- [75:16]
A
But it's. It's similar to people. It's easy to get over your skis. You can. You want to go after those opportunities, especially if you've been going back to business owners. You've been starved for so long or whatever it is, and you've been through all these hard times, it's like, man, I want to make hay while the sun shining.
- [75:33]
B
But again, it's the ability to delay. Pleasure is a sign of maturity. And so when I go a little slower in my higher, I don't have to deal with the drama. When I grow a little slower and I'm paying my way as I go, then I don't have to take those penalty steps backwards because it's going to rain. Dave, you should be positive. I'm positive it's going to rain, and then the sun's gonna come out. I'm positive of that. And then it's gonna rain again. I'm positive of that. You know, and these are cycles, 100%. But for some reason, when things are going Good. We think that that's perpetual. It's not. It's cyclical, always cyclical. So I mean, I'm not predicting another Covid. That's a once in a lifetime event, I hope.
- [76:18]
A
Yeah, I hope so.
- [76:20]
B
But. But you know, thank God Ramsay was sitting completely debt free in the middle of that or we'd have been taken out.
- [76:27]
A
Yeah, yeah. If we wouldn't, if we weren't, if we were two more years down the road, it would have taken us out for sure. We were small enough where I was like, we can just go over here real quick. But if, yeah, a few more years, we would have been toast. Why? From an individual standpoint, like all the stuff you talk about is pretty straightforward. It makes sense. Like it's like you talk about, you're like, yeah, yeah, no debt, you know, no credit cards, this and that. Why is that still the norm though? The credit cards, the debt, the overspending. That seems to still be standard practice.
- [77:03]
B
Well, we've got a couple things that have occurred. Perfect storm from a consumer standpoint. And it bleeds over into business. The first thing that happened is that banks figured out in the 50s that there was a lot of money to be made. And debt is today the most aggressively marketed, most well funded marketing plan of any product on the planet. You put all professional sports together, they spend 10% of what? Visa, MasterCard and American Express. Just three credit cards. Yeah, just the three credit cards. Not to mention car loans, not to mention other debt. Debt, Debt, debt, debt, debt, debt, debt, debt. And so that continuous drumbeat of marketing has normalized it to where you say, if you say I'm debt free, you're my automatically weird.
- [78:02]
A
You are? Yes.
- [78:03]
B
You're weird.
- [78:04]
A
Yeah.
- [78:04]
B
And that's why when somebody says I paid off my house, I call them weirdos and it's a compliment. And so it's. But they've normalized their product, which if you think about it, is absolutely brilliant marketing. They're very good at what they do. And I mean, you put all. I mean you can't compare it to any other industry. Automotive, professional sports. You think of all the big industries out there, construction, you know, you put it all together, there's no one spends even half on their marketing. What the debt people spend on their marketing, it's just crazy. So that's thing one, they're very good at selling their product. And debt is a product, a very profitable product. Thing too is we've gotten increasingly more and more short term thinking and the cell phone has hurt us on that it's actually rewired some of our, some entire segments of the population's brain to where we now have the attention span of a gnat. We cannot play through even the end of a TV show. Sure. You know, we can't, can't finish a book, we can't finish a meal, we can't finish a conversation, we can't stay with something long enough. It's just nuts. And short term thinking is I want it, I want it now. It's an immaturity, it's an emotional immaturity. And so short. The more that someone's, for instance, we've seen there's some good research out there right now. The more time that someone spends on social media, the higher their debt level is interesting. Not only because they're sold stuff on social media, but because it's rewiring their brain. Because a TikTok or Instagram feed or reel is a very short, It's a quick thing. It's a quick hits, quick hits, quick hit. You can't watch a two and a half hour movie but we can watch a one minute clip or a YouTube short, you know. And so those quick hits. And so if that's the only thing you're feeding your brain, your ability to think long term has gone or it's largely gone and you have to reset that in your brain and it has to become a spiritual and an emotional exercise, psychological exercise to say, okay, wealthy people think in decades, poor people say, thank God it's Friday. Short term thinking always leads to a lack of wealth. And it always, then if I don't have wealth then I want a car, I just go get a car and I put it on payments and if I'm going, if I'm, if I'm scrolling through and I, you know, I can hit prime and just click on Amazon and stuff shows up at my door that I certainly didn't need. And I even forgot I bought and it showed up at the door. Oh, that's kind of dumb. You have that regret thing going on. But that's all just this is like we're entertained by purchasing and now you've even got the whole thing's gone together and you got stuff like Klarna. So like I bought a T shirt the other day and it came up, do I want payment on a freaking t shirt? 3 easy payments of $6 on a t shirt. And I just, I about lost my stuff, man. But all that is, is just, oh yeah, yeah. And it's a real problem. Whole segments of Gen Z are getting. Got themselves into a mess. Mess with this. But you know, the short term thinking, inability, short attention span, rewiring of our brains, emotional immaturity versus long term thinking combined with the most aggressively marketed product in the world, it's just normalized it and it's. It's a disaster for folks. The good news is there's great hope because you can redo both of those things instantaneously. I mean, you can get the credit cards out and cut them up and you can get on a budget, live on less than you make and sell so much stuff the kids think they're next and you can get out. And we've helped tens of millions of people do it, but every time I get one out, they put three in. So sure, I. I'm losing ground.
- [82:06]
A
Yeah, yeah, it's. Well, but even what you said about people thinking you're weird, like when I tell people, yeah, I don't have a credit card, they look at you like.
- [82:13]
B
You'Re like one on them.
- [82:14]
A
Like they're concerned. Almost like, hey, you need a credit card, how are you gonna buy something? It's like you're really okay. Yeah.
- [82:21]
B
Thing called money.
- [82:22]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's. And then you have, in the trades, you have the complexity of it's top. Oftentimes not a lack of money. Like you just have these young kids making more money than they've ever had before. And then it's. It's same thing though.
- [82:37]
B
They just, you know, the construction business is. Is the stupid truck.
- [82:41]
A
Pickup truck. Yes, yes.
- [82:42]
B
They've seen too many Chevy commercials with Silverado going through a mud puddle.
- [82:46]
A
Yeah, they got me on that one too.
- [82:47]
B
They put a $97,000 truck on a job site and a backhoe backs into it the first day. You know, it's just dumber than crap.
- [82:54]
A
Yeah.
- [82:55]
B
If you really know the construction business, the guy with the junkiest trucks probably got the most money.
- [83:00]
A
Yeah. So from a business standpoint, I guess to wrap up here from a resource perspective, what do you all have to offer businesses?
- [83:10]
B
Well, this book, build a business you love is helpful. The entree leadership book is helpful. Entre leadership podcast. Obviously a lot of folks tune into that. Appreciate that. We have a whole series of coaching processes. We've got advisory groups that people get in small groups that we lead them. But they're able to have accountability and encouragement because lonely sometimes run the businesses.
- [83:35]
A
Lonely it is big time.
- [83:37]
B
And so getting in a, you know, getting with a group of guys in your industry, they might be one in Phoenix and one in Abilene and, you know, one in Atlanta. But there'll be industry specific, that kind of thing. And so that you're sharing the same types of problems and concerns. So you can go, yeah, I ran into that two weeks ago. I fired the guy. And I was really glad I did. You need to fire that guy. That's the kind of stuff happens every day in those groups. So those advisory groups are amazing. We've got one on one coaching in detail and a lot of the people going through some of the big family business stuff are willing to write the checks to have one of our coaches really spend some detailed time with them. That's the more expensive product. And then we've got Entree Leadership Elite, which is the digital product, which has got tons of tools in it. Like our weekly reporting tool is vastly popular in that. So people can file a report just on their phone and go, this is how. This is what's going on. And then each of the leaders get all the, all the reports of what's happening. And it's really good communication inside the team. That's just one piece of Entree Elite. But Entree Elite's a really robust leadership digital tool.
- [84:40]
A
And then there's the event as well.
- [84:41]
B
And then we have Entree Leadership. Yeah, that's right. Summit. Yeah, Summit is the big. All the big name speakers. We just had one and it was, you know, John Maxwell and Jim Collins.
- [84:51]
A
Yeah.
- [84:52]
B
And so on. And then Dave Ramsey and we have. I was there. And we had. And then we do the master series, which is our team teaching it.
- [85:01]
A
Okay.
- [85:01]
B
And it's real meat and potatoes. It's real hands on. And so it's. It's really intense. Four and a half days. Okay. And the other one's more, you know, fireworks and pyrotechnics and all that really good material. But this is our stuff is just us teaching you. Like we've been talking for the last hour or so.
- [85:20]
A
Okay. And then if I'm an individual with seven credit cards, I know I need to get off the drug.
- [85:27]
B
That is probably just jump on the EveryDollar app, Every Dollar app. And that's a budgeting app, the world's best one. And we've got some tools that are developing in there that will lead you through the process of getting out of debt and some video clips that'll start teaching you to supplement what you can get on the podcast and on YouTube and those kinds of things. And it'll guide you right through it and help you get your spouse on board. Where the two of you are working together, which is absolutely vital. For those that are married, that is a big deal.
- [85:56]
A
Yeah.
- [85:57]
B
And so, yeah, that. That tool does that beautifully. Going through Financial Peace University, which is the class. Catch one of those. And. And all of that's@ramseysolutions.com. everything we're talking about.
- [86:07]
A
It's interesting. And not to go down to a whole new tangent, but how. How many relationship problems start with money?
- [86:15]
B
Oh, number one, cause of divorce.
- [86:17]
A
It's wild.
- [86:18]
B
Yep. It is so wild because it exposes our differences that we've never gotten aligned on.
- [86:24]
A
Yeah.
- [86:25]
B
It's okay to have differences, but we need to get aligned on them on how we're going to do generally. You got a spender and a saver, got a nerd that likes the spreadsheets and a free spirit that doesn't. And, you know, and you need both of those. Larry Burkett used to say, if two people just alike get married, one of you is unnecessary, so you need both. But getting them aligned and getting the horses, pulling the wagon the same way, that. Okay, yeah, I'm going to go come at this from a different angle than you, but we're still going over that hill with this load. We're still going to go become millionaires. We're still going to retire with dignity. We're still going to build up a war chest. So when times are bad, we're okay.
- [87:02]
A
Yeah. I mean, business is the same way, too. You've got people like to spend. People that like to save.
- [87:07]
B
Exactly.
- [87:08]
A
Yeah. Well, thanks.
- [87:11]
B
I appreciate it. A lot of fun. Yeah.
- [87:12]
A
This is great.
- [87:12]
B
Thanks for hanging out with me. Yeah. Or let me hang out with you or whatever we do.
- [87:15]
A
Yeah, I guess I'm hanging out. Well, maybe. Maybe both.
- [87:18]
B
I got to hang out with you in my place.
- [87:19]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We'll take it.
- [87:21]
B
It.