← EntreLeadership
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- [00:05]
A
Here's the thing. You can build a successful business. You can grow revenue. You can even hit all your goals and still feel unhappy. I've seen leaders live like this. I've coached many through it. And if I'm honest, I've felt this in seasons of my life as well. If you're not careful, success can start costing you more than it gives you. So. So today I'm sitting down with entree leadership's head coach, John Felkins, and Harvard professor and happiness expert Dr. Arthur Brooks. We're talking about burnout, loneliness, and what it means to build not just a successful business, but a meaningful life. Let's get to it, y'. All.
- [00:47]
B
I am so excited to be here today with Arthur Brooks and Dave Ramsey. We're gonna have a fantastic conversation. We're gonna dive right in, if that's okay.
- [00:56]
C
Right on.
- [00:56]
B
I love it. So we have a coaching program, and we're hearing from people all the time that maybe they're being successful. On the outside, you know, business is going well, but on the inside, it's a different story. And so since we got you here today, just wanted to ask, what's your take on that? Why do you think that is?
- [01:12]
C
Yeah, the modern world actually doesn't treat. Doesn't teach us how to be happier. It teaches us how to be more efficient, how to be more successful outwardly, just as you say. But the truth of the matter is you got to do the work on the inside, too. You have to work on all the different parts of your life so that success is not just in your bank account. Success is in your marriage, successes in your soul, successes in your community. And that's a lot of what I work on is success that wraps around your whole life and not just in the ones and zeros inside that electronic bank account.
- [01:40]
B
Yeah, I think I've heard you talk about those things as the macronutrients of happiness.
- [01:44]
C
That's absolutely right. And those are the enjoyment, satisfaction, and meaning in life. Meaning is what I've been writing about the most, because that's actually what's most missing from people's lives today. And so they can work and work and work and work, and they can be very successful or not, by the way. They can just spend all their time on the Internet actually looking for something that will distract them. The truth of the matter is that the lack of meaning in life is one of the biggest epidemics, psychogenic epidemics, which just means mental epidemics that we're facing today.
- [02:12]
B
How do you think that might be unique with our viewers today, who are all business owners and business leaders.
- [02:17]
C
So a lot of the problem that I see with business owners, business leaders now, to begin with, congratulations. Everybody is watching this. I mean, you're watching all the products that come out of Ramsey World, because this stuff is great for you. I mean, this is like learning how to live your life in an integrated way where body and soul. I really do believe that the trouble is that a lot of really successful people, they've gotten into a pattern of success. Addiction. And again, I mean, that's probably not as bad as pornography addiction or alcohol addiction or, you know, there's a lot of other things that could be worse. But no joke, a lot of people, they don't feel fully alive unless they're actually winning with respect to markets and with respect to their businesses. And it's having a big toll on their relationships. It's a big toll on their f. Actually, how they see themselves as an integrated person. I have to work with people along those lines.
- [03:05]
B
I think we could probably talk about that all day. And I know you're coming to Summit and you're going to speak at Summit, right?
- [03:10]
C
Exactly right. Can't wait.
- [03:11]
B
That'll be awesome. Dave, as you hear all of that, how have you navigated that through your years of building this company? Very successfully.
- [03:20]
A
You know, all the old. In the old days, everybody talked about don't climb the ladder and then realize just leaning on the wrong building, you know? And sometimes when people start a business, they started to make money or they started to succeed. And those making money is a scorecard. And then they climb that ladder and it's empty because they started for the wrong reasons. Money is great. Success is great. Get you some, okay. But it's not gonna. You know, we often say around here, if you eat enough lobster, it tastes like soap, you know, because that's success. I grew up in Antioch, Tennessee. I never seen a lobster. The first time I had one, I was 14 years old. I need some more of that. Right. And so that's kind of a measure of success, dining.
- [04:02]
C
It's a big crawdad.
- [04:03]
A
Yeah, it's a. Well, it was. Hey, man, we were eating fancy. It was Red Lobster. I'm just saying. But the truth is that if you get enough money and you buy all the stuff around it and you have enough success and it gives you all the things you thought it was gonna give you, but the latter. But it's not coming from something. You're just going to something, then you end up with this emptiness, and you end up with this burnout and you end up with how quick can I get out of here? Feeling. Because it wasn't what it was supposed to be. Because success or money is not designed to give you meaning. It's not designed to give you hope. It's not designed to give you happiness. Meaning does that. And so if the whole thing is birthed out of meaning, I'm doing this to serve. I'm doing this so that people don't have to go through the things I went through in business, like this podcast. I don't want people to have to do the stupid things I did. I'll tell you what they were so you can miss out on those. But that's a meaning. I love small business people. That's meaning. And then when the success of entree, leadership or our other brands is born out of meaning, then the ladder's leaning on the right building and you don't get tired or you get tired, you don't get burnt out.
- [05:18]
B
Yeah.
- [05:18]
C
Yeah. It's funny because you know the. The story that we all know, the three wise men, they were. They were following a star, but what they wanted was the stable in Bethlehem. Money is like the star. You really want the stable in Bethlehem. You got it. You have to understand that the star isn't the point, because if you're going just for the star, you're going to keep going and going and going and you're never going to make your number.
- [05:40]
B
Yeah.
- [05:40]
C
And so you have to understand that it's just a proxy for something else. You want to be an admirable person. You want to be a successful person, because that person you believe is a person of merit. What is mean to be a person of merit? So when I talk to young people, which I do all the time, I teach at a university, and I say, don't think about the number in your bank account when you're 35. Think about the person you want to be at 35. And inevitably they talk about something else. They don't talk about their careers. They say, number one is always, I want to be happily married and I want to have a good family. That's number one. Always. Always, always. Number two is I want to be in touch with my faith. I don't know what it is. I've been gone for a long time. I want to be in touch with my faith. And number three is I want to have a successful business. But all they're thinking about is number three is what it comes down to. And so it's really important to be Pursuing what is most important to you, to actually be the person that you want to be, as opposed to a person that has a lot of lots and lots of ones and zeros in that bank account.
- [06:34]
A
And you can have a wonderful marriage and a wonderful faith walk and work your butt off at work. Yeah, this thing of I have to give up work to have, quote work life balance. The great mythology that's out there floating around generation now. But, I mean, I've worked like an animal most of my life, and my wife is not mad about it. You know, matter of fact, sometimes she said, would you go to work?
- [07:01]
C
I may cook you for better, for
- [07:02]
A
worse, but not for lunch. And my kids are not all in counseling. You know, they didn't grow up in a house where their dad abandoned them.
- [07:09]
C
Right, right.
- [07:10]
A
But they also knew dad was getting up and coming to work.
- [07:13]
C
Yeah, that's work life integration, not work life balance. Your work should be part of your life, and your life should be part of your work. Because the point is that work and life are not separate if you're doing it right. Work life balance says that you've got life, life, life. And work is a separate thing to pay for your life. That's wrong. That's a big problem, because that's what's gonna lead you to burnout.
- [07:33]
A
Yeah.
- [07:34]
B
Work didn't come after the fall.
- [07:35]
C
No. It's funny because it's really. It really depends on your orientation toward the work, per se. So you'll notice that Adam and Eve, after they got, you know, all the unpleasantness with the snake and the apple, et cetera, they were doing farming, and by the sweat of their brow, and it was no fun. But before the fall, they were doing farming, and it was awesome. And that's what it came about. So there was work life balance after the fall, and there was work life integration before.
- [07:59]
B
I think I remember you talking. I think it was that ark. You talked about those four things again, and faith. And you said something really interesting. And it was that when we have faith, that transcends us. It's something bigger than us. It kind of, this is my word, not yours. But it was like you were saying it right sizes you. It addresses your narcissism. But here's the tension that I think I see sometimes. We coach people, we tell people, you gotta have a mission and you gotta be clear. You gotta cast a vision. You gotta express your values. There's a lot that flows from the leader to the organization. And I mean it in a good way.
- [08:35]
C
There's Dave's fingerprints all over this place. This place is amazing.
- [08:39]
B
It is amazing.
- [08:40]
C
Yeah, it's amazing.
- [08:42]
B
But how do you balance that not becoming? I think you said boring because everything's about me, but also lead effectively and cast a direction for people to follow.
- [08:55]
C
So transcendence is a really important concept. You know, people who have faith, faith in something more important than themselves, something more beautiful, something bigger than themselves, they tend to be a lot happier. And part of the reason is because it is boring to think about yourself all day long. Me, me, me, my money, my television shows, my lunch. It's just tedious. And so when you think about, for example, God and things and stand in awe, it's really important. But that's not the only way to transcend. You transcend yourself by serving other people. What's the point of Ramsey Solutions? It's not the greater glory of Dave Ramsey. I've been here long enough. I've done the shows here long enough. Have enough exposure to the people. This is about the people that Ramsey Solutions is serving. That's the whole point. That's the reason people want to work here. That's the reason that people are happy here is because they have a service mission and they're transcending themselves. So that's one of the things I talk about. You want to be happier, transcend yourself vertically by standing in awe of the divine, and transcend yourself laterally by serving other people, by putting other people before you. And in that way, you can actually be smaller as a leader and at the same time be a leader.
- [09:58]
A
It is a paradox because at the core of our society is really hedonism in that we're taught, if I am served, then I must be the greatest, and the truth is the greatest. And the people having the most fun are the ones serving.
- [10:17]
C
Absolutely.
- [10:19]
A
But it's a paradox because it feels like that that's backwards. You put a towel over your arm, how may I serve you? That's a different spirit. It's a different mentality. And if you're not careful, you can read into that, that that's somehow diminishing. It's not. It's actually elevating.
- [10:37]
C
It really is. And Mother Nature doesn't tell you that, because Mother Nature lies constantly. Mother Nature tells you that you will be happy once you're successful enough and people are serving you and people are bowing the knee before you. And the reason is because we're biologically situated in such a way, our brains have been evolved in such a way that you will have a greater likelihood of passing on your genes and surviving another day during the late Pleistocene, 250,000 years ago by having more animal skins and buffalo jerky and more mates and the whole thing. But guess what? We don't have to live that way. We actually can live in the space not of our animal impulses, but in the space of our moral aspirations. That's a great thing. Thing about having this prefrontal cortex that's the supercomputer that transcends the cognitive ability of any other animal. My dog Chucho can't get beyond his animal instincts. He can't be. I want to be a better person, said my dog. Never. But I actually. I can do that. And so I can say, okay, what are my animal impulses? My animal impulses are to, you know, to drink instead of to work, or even if I'm going to work to store up more money than I need or to actually get people to do my will. Or. Or I can stand up to that, because I know. I know that I will actually be a better person and a happier person if I do something that's counterintuitive. And that's the beautiful part about being, in my view, made in God's image.
- [11:58]
A
You know, it also occurs to me that we shouldn't be just talking to the person, the leader out there in this regard. Quit trying to create an environment with foosball tables and compensation packages and avocado toast and. Oh, there we go.
- [12:18]
C
Whatever.
- [12:19]
B
What's that?
- [12:20]
A
That's a thing in Nova Challenge. Free food or whatever it is. Right. Quit trying to create an environment that is all on the exterior for your team to make them happy. It's not going to. Now you can do all those things. We got a foosball tape and we got some free food. We got all that arranged, and it's pretty good. But the point is, that doesn't create the happiness. Happiness is created by serving. And then those things are just kind of part of the environment and the culture.
- [12:50]
C
Yeah. Yeah.
- [12:51]
A
You can't fix this from the outside in.
- [12:53]
C
Yeah. What you create in your organization is a lot like how you create things in your own life. If you actually think that having the watch in the car, in the house, in the suit is going to make you happy, you're going to be bitterly disappointed. It's what you do on the inside as opposed to the exterior. Circumstances that you create will give you happiness. And the same thing is true for your company, for your organization, for the people that you're stewarding, for your family, for your marriage. You need something that will create interior happiness. You need interior peace. And then there's some exterior stuff that's kind of fun, but that's the least of the matter.
- [13:23]
A
You know, a couple years ago, we did a thing that proved that theory out. I just thought about it. We bought $10 million worth of bad debt.
- [13:32]
C
Nice.
- [13:33]
A
You can buy it for nothing. I paid like $259,000 for it. Bad medical debt, bad medical, car debt, car debt, distressed loans and a few credit cards. But I bought it for two and a half cents on the dollar. Okay. But there were 8,000 accounts. I got 1,000 people. So each of them, their Christmas present was to get to call eight people and tell them their debt was forgiven in Jesus name.
- [13:53]
C
Oh, my goodness.
- [13:54]
A
They didn't get a present. Their present was. They got to do that from us. That was our gift to the company that year.
- [14:01]
C
That's what you did with the distressed debt.
- [14:03]
A
Yeah.
- [14:04]
C
You forgave it.
- [14:04]
A
Every bit of it. Every bit of it. And everybody got eight accounts.
- [14:07]
C
It's completely biblical.
- [14:09]
A
People were.
- [14:10]
B
It was so fun.
- [14:11]
A
The point is that people didn't get anything that work here. All they got was the opportunity to participate in this. And there was people cheering and crying all through the whole building. As you walk through here. They get ahold of somebody and talk to somebody and they. I can't believe. And is this real? You know, and all that. And it was just. But it's interesting that they weren't actually given something and it generated more happiness than most of the time when I've given them something.
- [14:37]
C
Wow.
- [14:38]
B
It was fantastic.
- [14:41]
A
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- [15:57]
B
so let me dig in a little deeper, because one of the subsets of this sense of, like, it's going good on the outside, but it's tough on the inside. A subset of that is loneliness. We talk to a lot of people and they really feel isolated. What would you say to that?
- [16:13]
C
They are very clear on this. I mean, there's a reason that the Cigna, the health services organization, has something like 50 researchers doing work on loneliness right now. Because it's a big problem for the healthcare system. I mean, it's actually leading to depression and anxiety. And these are expensive maladies. And it's part of the mental health crisis that we see, what we call in behavioral science the psychogenic epidemic, which simply means tremendous suffering with no known biological origin. That's a lot of why I'm writing about meaning in life, the reason I have this book out called the meaning of your life, because that's a meaning crisis. Loneliness is fundamentally about not knowing what the meaning of your life is and the isolation that actually comes from that problem. You will isolate yourself when you don't know the meaning of your life, when you're not seeking, actively seeking the love that you need and not giving the love that actually you could. That's what it comes down to. And so all the ways that you can actually find the meaning of your life, they come down to that.
- [17:05]
B
Okay, so you don't have the meaning. Then you're not reaching out like you need to, to build community around you. That's the way that I hear what you're saying. Right. Is there advice about how to do that? And I'll throw it to both of you. Like, how have you done that over the years, Dave, to not get just on an island by yourself, just even tactically?
- [17:24]
A
Well, I realized that you become who you hang around with. And so I thought, you know, I'm going to have to be really intentional about what I read, what I watch, you know, my activities in the church. I'm going to have to be really intentional about what I'm putting in here, because what I'm putting in here is what's going to come out. And that includes the group of guys that I run with. My income is going to approximate theirs, My language is gonna sound like theirs, and hear that on the golf course and you know, all that. Right? And so I thought, you know, I've gotta be intentional. I've gotta pick this out. I can't just let it happen to me. It's not gonna be just who happens to live across the street, becomes my best friend. Right. Who's gonna run with me is gonna be a man I'm gonna choose that has these character qualities, and I'm gonna gather them. And we started a thing we called the Eagles.
- [18:13]
B
Yeah, that's what I was gonna ask
- [18:14]
A
you about back in the day.
- [18:15]
B
Explain that with me.
- [18:16]
A
It was every Wednesday at a Bible study. And it started. We did study the Bible and then we started reading books. And a lot of times we just sat around, shot the bull, talked politics, talked marriages, talked churches that were falling apart, the guys that were in there, whatever was going on. We did life together every Wednesday morning for 14 years. And several of those guys are gone now. I spoke at one of them, being inducted into the hall of fame just two weeks ago. But that group of guys, it was an intentional act is the bottom line of the discussion. It didn't just naturally occur. Naturally occurs is you end up with people that are three notches down and you're just spending all your time trying to help them with their struggles. And that's okay. That's part of the service. But that's not how you build community and fight loneliness.
- [19:02]
B
And that's not pouring back into you either. No, no, that's a big difference.
- [19:06]
C
And again, this is how do you find the meaning of your life? That's literally the subject of this new book. And I'm largely writing it not just for people my age, but largely for the people the age of my students. My students are on average, 28 years graduate students in business at Harvard University. And they're struggling. And it's a weird thing because the meaning crisis is especially afflicting people who would seem to have the most going for them. And so what this book is, it's a six part plan to find the meaning of your life in six months using science. The first part is getting free is getting clean is getting clean from the biggest addiction that's holding almost Everybody in their 20s back from finding the meaning of life. And this is the addiction. How do you actually use technology? How do you manage your technology and not be managed by your technology? And then after that, you have to live in a way that's an integrated life based on the relationships of the people around you. I talk about how do you fall in love? How do you find God? How do you find your calling? How do you find beauty? How do you ask big questions? And last but not least, how do you suffer? Because, you know, a lot of people, young people today, they're being told that if they're sad or anxious that they need to eliminate that, which is quite wrong. You know, the truth of the matter is that, you know, suffering is going to find you, man, and you can actually suffer and not grow by trying to eliminate it, or you can suffer and you can grow. And I talk about all of this neurophysiologically, neurologically, how does the brain process these things? And these are the methods for living in kind of a new old fashioned way.
- [20:31]
B
I love that. So as we think of, we got all these people, so you're talking to 28 year olds, you've got all these students. Right. And I'm not going to say our ages, but we've got people that are out of school.
- [20:42]
C
Yeah.
- [20:42]
B
They're running businesses, they've been at this a while. They're, they're struggling with the reality of being a couple of decades down the road. What do you do to unwind some of that? And then, and then, Dave, I'll go to you next. What, how have you done that over, over the years? And what would kind of be the last prescription y' all would give folks watching today?
- [21:05]
C
So one of the biggest problems that I see for people who would, who are most likely to be watching us are people who are successful and serious about their lives. But they have bad hygiene for meaning. And the reason is because they have bad habits. Now the biggest habits, they are paying attention to the things that matter less and not paying attention to the things that matter most. I can tell you what matters most. Your faith, your family, your friendships and serving other people. Those are the big four. You want to find meaning in your life, those are the big four. I didn't put money, I didn't put power, I didn't put pleasure, I didn't put fame on there. Once again, those are just proxy goals, intermediate goals to getting the things that you actually want. And so what I put in place, I mean I'm a scientist, I put actual scientific based protocols on how to do that. I have a four part plan for repairing your marriage. What do you actually do that will biologically actually turn back the clock in the brain of you and your spouse so that you will love each other more and find more meaning in your relationship. And that's what we actually need to do. We needed to tighten this stuff up. Look, if you come to me and you're like, ah man, it's like my.
- [22:12]
A
So on the friendship part, what would you do? What's the four part plan for friendship, successful people?
- [22:16]
C
The Problem that they have is they have a lot of friends, but they're not real friends. They're deal friends. And we know the difference between real and deal. Deal friends are useful. And so it's actually tightening it up so that you're doing the work to have more people who are useless in your life. Now everybody's useful in their own way. I don't mean worthless, by the way, but I mean, this is what Aristotle, he talked about.
- [22:37]
A
I don't need something from you.
- [22:38]
C
Yeah, if all of the things that you're doing for me in the outward world, like for business, it all went away, I'd still love you. That's what Aristotle called an atelic friendship, where the telos is the reason for something. An atelic friendship is usually something that is based on a love that we have in common. So my closest friends. My closest friend is my wife. And we love God together, We love our kids together, we love our grandkids together, and we love each other on the basis of this glue that is these shared loves, and that's really what it comes down to. So number one is write down the 20 people that you're spending the most time with each week and put R and D after their name. That's not Republican and Democrat. That's real and deal. And if it's all Ds, you got work to do and busy people don't have any Rs in there because it takes time. I mean, it's like. My buddy is like a really close friend, you know, Frank Hanna, you know, from Atlanta. He's a merchant banker in Atlanta. Super close friend for many years. I love him so much. We spend time. He doesn't get money by spending time on the phone with me. And we talk on the phone and we don't talk about business. He's like. He talks, Asks. Asks me about my faith journey, and because we're both committed Christian men, he asked me about what's going on at home. And, you know, and that's what we talk about. But that takes time, and a lot of people don't feel like they have time.
- [23:51]
A
The guys that I selected for the Eagles group initially, and now I've got a different group of guys. Some of them are overlap, but they're all real. Yeah, they're none of them on my payroll. They're none of them I do deals with. They're not in any of the spheres of business that I do at all. They're useless. They're just love them, you know, I just like them, and they're all players. They're accomplished people. They're accomplished in the length and quality of their marriage. They're accomplished in the length and quality of their faith walk and in their business world. So, I mean, I wanted to get some guys we were doing, when I started that stuff, we were probably doing 50 million. And I said, I need to get some guys around me that are doing 200 million or I'll never do that. I need to know because they know stuff I don't know. And I need some things that I'm reaching up a little bit into the conversation instead of down in the conversation all the time. And so I wanted quality people that were just going to look around and go, that was pretty dumb, you know, and that love you enough to say that. And you got enough relationship to say that. And so that's who I picked. I went and picked people that were my definition of success, which is faith walk and marriage. And, you know, in their space, whatever their space was, they were a player.
- [25:05]
C
And by the way, who are not just thinking about what you might not be doing wrong, what you might be doing wrong in business, but if they see a moral lapse, are willing to talk about that, too. It's like, Dave, what's going on in your marriage? I sense something's up. Or what do you mean that you're golfing every Sunday morning? Why are you golfing every Sunday morning? I mean, holding you to your own moral standards. Only your real friends will do that.
- [25:27]
A
In my case, they would be listening to the show and go, you were mean to that woman. You need to get off the caffeine.
- [25:36]
B
It sounds like through all of this there's just a whole lot of intentionality. This stuff doesn't happen by accident, does it?
- [25:42]
C
Well, it really doesn't. Because the truth of the matter is that a lot of people are Ramsey fans who are big entrepreneurs. And the ultimate enterprise is the enterprise of your life. If you don't take it with the same business like, seriousness that you do your business, then you're going to get something by accident is what it comes down to. So treat your life like a startup, and then you'll get an enterprise that's worth caring about at home and not just at work.
- [26:07]
B
I think that's a great note to finish on. Thank you very much, gentlemen. That's been a fantastic conversation.
- [26:12]
C
Thank you.
- [26:12]
A
Good to see you, my friend.
- [26:13]
C
You too.
- [26:15]
A
Well, I love that conversation. I hope this conversation hit you between the eyes in a good way. And if you want to hear more from me and Arthur we'll both be at our Entree Leadership Summit Conference this May, along with other world class speakers. This is your chance to learn from the best in the industry on how to transform the way you lead and level up your business. So register by clicking the link in the description and plan to join us at Disney's Coronado Springs Resort, May 17 through 20. Trust me, you're not going to want to miss this one. And if this episode helped you, be sure to like subscribe and share this with someone else. Another leader who needs to hear it. I'm your host, Dave Ramsey and this is Entree Leadership.