Dave Ramsey (17:00)
L.comEntre he brings up an interesting question. What does it take to level up at the trailblazer stage? Well, the primary problem in the trailblazer stage is that you lack the leaders and a plan to scale your business. And again, scaling your business does not necessarily mean more revenue and more people. It can, but it could mean products. It could mean you build out product lines that are scalable without much more effort, and you could do all kinds of different things there. But when I hit this level, we were probably. Let me think here. I gotta back into this. Probably 200 people, and we were making a lot of money, and we had like 9 million different things going on in the business. It was like all these chaotic silos all over the place. But, buddy, we were getting it done. It was a fun time. And, you know, we're trying to move through and, you know, level up from pathfinder to trailblazer is what it amounts to. And we're stepping into some sweet spot on the income. We've got a lot of very competent people. People around, but were really, it was pretty much chaos. We're like herding cats. And a lady that was one of our top executives at the time and still a close personal friend came to me and said, hey, you're going to see an expense item hit my p and l. And I don't want you to freak out. I want to tell you about it ahead of time. I've hired a guy to come in and run a stratop for us. And I went, okay, there's a whole lot of things in that sentence I don't like and I don't understand what the flip are you talking about? And she said, I hired a guy to come in and lead a stratop for us. You hired someone from the outside to show us how to run a business that's already successful? Well, that's money wasted. That was dumb. No, I hired a guy to come in and lead a stratop for us. What's a stratop? A strategic operations planning meeting. You hired a guy to run a meeting? No, he's going to walk us through our strategic thought. Why don't you just work? If you would work, instead of sitting around trying to come up with letters that go together like Strat op and give other people our money, you wouldn't have to worry about any of this. Why don't you just go work? Working's working out good. There's no substitute for activity. Go get your dad gum. Work done. This is the exact argument I had with her. And she's secure enough in my trust of her and secure enough in her own executive ability to stand toe to toe and argue with me. Which was perfectly fine. I was inviting that. But I was pushing back. Can you tell? Because this idea of strategic thought to an entrepreneur's entrepreneur like me, that's scrappy and has dirt under my fingernails. Cause I'm always clawing my butt out of a hole. I made the idea that we're gonna stop and plan was. Yeah, that was not fun to me. Can you tell? Well, I backed off. It was only. It was not that a lot. It wasn't a lot of money. And it was only one day. So I let her do it. Well, they came out of that thing. And over the next six months, their stinking productivity and revenue went through the roof. And so she comes back to me and said, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah. I love it when you're wrong and you get more money. This is how we negotiate things at Ramsey, okay? So she said, and I'm doing another one now. And I said, I think I want you to do another one. I liked what happened after. I'm not real sure what you people are doing over there, but you could spread this. She said, I'm going to get some of the other departments to do it. And I said, no, let's not get carried away here. But that was the beginning of strategic planning at Ramsey. Because prior to that, we just left the cave, killed at home, and kept trying to cut it up as fast as we drug it into the cave. You know, we got a big enough meat processing plant because we got a bunch of hunter gatherers here. And that's all we were doing, man. We were getting it. We were getting it scrappy and getting it. And that's good because some people don't work enough to get to have any problems, right? So you gotta go get your work done. But most of you that are small business people, you can relate to me. And hard work's not your problem. You don't have any problem with hard work. Chaos however is your problem and inefficiency and lack of productivity. Because we're not operating on a blueprint. It's like we're making, we're going to build a house, but we're going to make it up as we go. Well, that's two rednecks leaning over the hood of a truck with a yellow pad drawing a sketch for the carpenter. What you're going to build there is a freaking pretzel, okay? That ain't going to work out well. But if instead you started with an actual blueprint, which has all the mechanicals in it, the electrical, the heating and air, the plumbing schematics are all in it. It has a full carpentry layout, it has a full roofing layout. All your roof angles and everything is laid out. Then the carpenter's not building something that the plumber didn't expect. So when he gets ready to run the drain pipe, there's actually a chase in there, okay? Because we had like a plan and stuff before we started. And in business we don't do good blueprints. Small business people aren't good at blueprinting and that can get you stuck and keep you from moving into the trailblazer stage. You can get stuck in Pathfinder and not get out. One of the keys that helps you level up is having a blueprint instead of two rednecks with a yellow pad on the hood of the truck. Which is how I was running it, baby. I was just running it out of my hip pocket, pulling miracles out of my ear every time I needed to, and other places too, just to get things done right. So I'm gonna recommend now that you not be as thick headed as I was, that instead you sit down and say, I'm going to make an effective, detailed strategic plan. Now, I just finished building a world class home with a world class custom builder. We had a detailed blueprint before we turned one clod of dirt. We had a detailed schedule before we turned one clod of dirt. We knew that nine and a half months after we break ground that the trim carpenter would be there. And oh, by the way, the trim carpenter put us on his schedule for that month. He didn't accidentally take another job and go, oh, we're going to hold up your project now. No, we went ahead and lined all the subs and all the suppliers up on this schedule and then we pushed the dominoes and a 14 month project was done into 12 and a half months. A massive, beautiful, detailed custom home. You know what the other thing we did? We did A budget to match the blueprint and match the schedule and a cash flow plan so that I had the cash to never have the builder be 30 seconds waiting on money. None of the subs, therefore, were 30 seconds or the suppliers waiting on their money. So they finished the freaking job on time. And any of them that stubbed their toe and acted like they weren't going to knew we were going to replace them post haste. Don't get in the way of my strategic plan. I'm executing this puppy. That's how you run a business, boys and girls. You put a budget in place, you put a blueprint. The tactical steps you've got to take. You put a schedule in place and you say, over the next three years, this company is going from here to there. And Here are the 43,000 steps it takes to get from here to there. We're going to take every one of those steps. And by the way, in March, here's where we'll be. In February, here's where we'll be. In September, here's where we'll be. And you lay it all the way out. It's an effective strategic plan. And out of that, you're writing out your desired future dashboard, which we will show you how to do. And you're going to see the enjoyment of running your business come way up, because your profits, your productivity are going to go way up. And this freaking herding of cats trying to nail jello to a tree every day called anxiety goes way down. This is going to give you joy to your business, but it is taking you to a different level of sophistication that I fought and I was wrong. And so I'm going to encourage you to not take as long as I did to do it, because that is the fourth personal home I have built. Each time I have built a home, we have built it lower, below budget, and faster every time. Because every time I do it now, I get better because I'm really good at putting the blueprint, the schedule and the budget in place and motivating everyone to get through that process. That is a strategic plan. Do that. It fires you up. It energizes your team. Everybody can see where they're going. You know what demoralizes your team? When they don't know what the heck is going on, when everybody's wandering around lost. I don't know. What are we doing next? I don't know. What did you do today? I don't have any idea, but I'm tired. You know, that's a demoralized team because there's no planning. You lay out your desired future. You lay out your details. You lay out your defining objectives. If you lay six defining objectives in place and every one of those are green, the natural byproduct of that should be that the desired future is knocked over. If you knock out all your defining objectives and you didn't hit your desired future, you had the wrong defining objectives. You lay out the six key areas that have to happen, and if those happen automatically, we're going to hit our desired future where we want to be. Then you start backing into the detail of what it takes for each of those six or eight defining objectives. And then everybody gets an owner. You get a single ringable freaking neck on those defining objectives. To where I'm looking at someone going, hello, you're red over there. We want to see a little green. What we got to do. How can I help you get there? Because you're going to get there or I'm going to get there without you. What are we going to do? Let's get this done. And the subs show up on time. In this case, the project teams line up and they start knocking this stuff down. So what must be true to reach our desired future. That's your defining objectives and your desired future you're backing into from strategic thought. Strategic thought is we're looking down from the airplane and we can see the entire garden and how to walk straight through it. You're not down in the weeds. You ever heard the phrase lost as a ball in tall weeds? That's what you are when you're the ball in the tall weeds. You're lost. You gotta get above it and get a freaking weed eater, okay? And that is your strategic thought. That's sitting down, having a strategic thing. So we're going to help you to create a desired future that fires up your team and keeps you moving forward. Click the link in the show notes to get your free strategic planning course and template. See, we didn't even hire somebody to do it. We gave it to you free. And if you want even more support and planning for 2025, you can join Elite by December 15th to participate in our live strategic planning workshop led by our expert coaches. The guy that had that original argument that was living in my body, that did not want strategic thought. Just read this live strategic planning workshop led by our expert coaches. That's how much we now believe in this. Because I learned something new. Because if you keep doing what you've been doing, you're going to keep getting what you've been getting. That's the definition of insanity. Continuing to do the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. If you don't do something to straighten the cats out and get them to walk straight, if you don't do something to get the jello to stick to the tree, you're just nailing jello to a tree and herding cats and your chaos is going to continue, baby. And you guys that are doing this, you know exactly what I'm freaking talking about because I'm reading your mail right now. So live Strategic planning workshop led by our expert coaches. If you Join Elite by December 15, be sure you check all that out. This is the Entrez Leadership podcast. Without our mission statement, Ramsey Solutions wouldn't be the company it is today. A mission statement clarifies who you are and who you aren't, so you and your team have clear direction for all your decision making. To get help creating your own mission statement, download my free mission statement builder@entreleadership.com mission or if you're listening on Spotify or podcasts, just click the link in the description. Hey guys, we appreciate your help around here and we could use it right now because you're my only marketing plan. If you follow this show, click the Follow button, the subscribe button. You leave a nice review. You share it by clicking the Share button or clicking or cutting the link and sending it to a friend saying listen to Ramsey on Entrez Leadership. I would consider that a personal favor. Thank you very much and I know a bunch of you are cause our numbers are up considerably and continuously. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Thank you for doing that. If you want to be part of this program, call and leave a voicemail and the team will set you up to be the caller. The phone number Are you ready boys and girls? 8449-4410-7844-9441-070 Walker is in Minnesota. Hi Walker, how are you?
