EntreLeadership - #145: Dave Ramsey—EntreLeadership Defined

Episode Date: May 2, 2016

It’s all things EntreLeadership this week, with a lesson from Dave sharing the foundational principles that helped him win. We’re also hitting Main Street with an interview with a highly successful EntreLeader. And we wrap things up with part two of a conversation with the Ramsey family, including Winston and Rachel Cruze, Daniel Ramsey and Denise Whittemore  entreleadership.com/podcast Guide to Running Your Business Debt Free Sponsored by Infusionsoft Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

helping business leaders grow themselves, their team, and their profits. This is the Entree Leadership podcast. Now here is your host, Ken Coleman. We are broadcasting from the Music City. This is the podcast of leaders, by leaders, four leaders. Thank you so much for joining the conversation. Here's what's coming to you. We've got Dave Ramsey teaching the core of everything we do with Entree Leadership,

our Entree Leadership defined lesson. This is Dave teaching at our Entre Master's series. This is our feature of this episode. This really allows you new listeners. People who may not have been with us on the podcast for very long to really understand the core of the definition of the word entree leadership that has spawned a business that is dedicated to you. So this is going to be great. Then we have a Main Street conversation. We're calling this Main Street because we're talking to men and women like you, entree leaders who are making things happen.

Wendy White McCowne is that Main Street leader. You're going to love her story. She's a member of our All Access, which is our online community. And I'll tell you more about that later. But she has a wonderful story. And this is going to inspire you and encourage you and equip you that conversation coming to you after Dave teaches. And then part two of our Ramsey family interview. We sit down with Denise, Rachel, Daniel, and Winston.

The first three are actual Ramsey children. Winston is the son-in-law, husband to Rachel. And we got such great response from the very first part of our first part of our first. conversation. We change gears a little bit and talk more about them personally and their personality styles and how it works in this family-owned business as they are the next generation. So you're going to enjoy that. And of course, we have some free stuff from our entree team, the entree leader's guide to running a debt-free business. That's important. I'll tell you more about that. So that's what's coming up. Now, this is fun because as this episode is airing, I want to point out that

this is National Small Business Week. May 1 through 7, 2016 happens to be the week this year. the 53rd year in a row, by the way, that a president of the United States has declared one week per year as an official recognition and celebration of the Main Street entrepreneurs. So that's really a cool fact. And I want to point out that this episode is brought to you by InfusionSoft. And that's appropriate because they're dedicated solely to helping small businesses win. That's why they help us power this podcast for you. So let's get right to it. As I said, at the top of the podcast, our feature of this episode is Dave Ramsey teaching

the core behind all things on-trade leadership. It is a lesson called Entrae Leadership defined. Here's Dave. I love dealing with business. I love dealing with small business. I love dealing with business leaders. I am one of you. I do this stuff every day, and I'm so excited.

Did you know this? Listen to this. This is very interesting. In the last decade, publicly traded Fortune 500 companies have contributed a net decrease

of 2 million jobs to the economy over that same period of time privately held family businesses primarily small business have contributed a net increase of 18 million jobs you are the freaking economy and you scare Washington to death because you're black and you're white

You're male and you're female. You're Hispanic. You're American. You're European. You are African, South American. You're Democrats. You're Republicans. Your liberals and your conservatives.

They can't pigeonhole you and they can't control you and it scares the crud out of them. You're not predictable. That's why you went in business for yourself. That's why you work for a business like that. Because you believe in floating like a butterfly and stinging like a bee. You're not going to get caught up in or be the cause of bureaucracy. and I'm not either. This company of ours, we started on a card table in my living room 20 years ago.

After going broke and losing everything we owned and hitting bottom, it's stupid with zeros on the end. So I know what stupid looks like and I know what it looks like to bootstrap something from the bottom up and God helping us to lift that. Pretty incredible stuff. Our first lesson, Entree leadership defined. We told you in our opening reception that this is our playbook. It's our handbook.

It is how we win best place to work every year in our organization. It is how we operate every area of our deal. And the way that came about was simply this. I'm going along. There were about 10 of us, and I started realizing Dave leading 10, one-to-one, was starting to be unwieldy. How many of you have around 10 people on your team? Okay, about a fourth of you. Good.

Now, at that point, you start realizing you need other leaders to help you lead. because or maybe before then you do. The Army says one to five, if it's ten different positions, that's almost impossible. If five of them are doing one thing and five of them are doing individual things, you might pull that off. But somewhere around there, you've got to start thinking about leadership. And so I started going, well, I'm a control freak. I mean, nobody does it like I do it.

How am I going to get anybody does it like I do it? Nobody else is going to be able. And so I started mentoring guys that were closest to me to be able to finish my. my sentences in every situation. They needed to know what I would do. Now, not being blasphemous or something, but what would Dave do? In that situation, what would Dave do? Hopefully it's similar to what Jesus would do, but in that situation, what would Dave do? And they got to be able to finish that sentence in order for me to be able to delegate leadership to them. And it was real easy. And man, we knew what the other ones' weaknesses were. We called each other out. In a meeting,

it was an even play and feel. We do get out in there, we go in there and argue and go, man, you shouldn't have done that and that's one of them talking to me. You know, I mean, we would just have at it and we would, you know, it was hillbilly mentoring, right? We just fought our way through it. And so we, but we really got close. We trusted each other. We knew each other.

That was my first level of leadership. But the thing was growing too fast. And I didn't have time to use that method, that mentor, that one-on-one mentoring method to grow more leaders because we looked up and there's 45 of us. And now we got three guys and me leading four. Now we've got to develop another layer of leadership. How are we going to do that? We didn't have time to keep doing this because, you know, we get people out of debt.

This is not exactly a niche. A lot of market out there. So the thing is exploding and we're going huge share of the huge market. We've got a tiny share of the market. How are we going to embrace this market? How are we going to go take what is ours and serve the customer? How are we going to build this thing? So we went in doubt what a teacher does is they teach.

So I started a class on Tuesday nights. We close our offices at 5.30. And so we start the class at 5 and it ends at 6. So I give you 30 minutes. You give me 30 minutes if you want to learn leadership from us. And if you want to learn how to do advertising the way we do it, you want to learn how to do personal selling the way we do it, you want to learn how to do hiring and firing the way we do it,

and on and on and on and on the lessons we're going to cover this week. And basically I would sit down at the desk at some point during the day, sometimes the day I was teaching the class. It was pretty loosey-goosey. You know what I'm saying? Because it was just an internal thing. We were teaching our people leadership. But the weirdest thing happened, the first thing that happened was the first day I taught this, a guy comes up to me that works there and he goes, hey, my wife is in the real estate business. She wants to come in and learn this. Can she come? Well, sure. Just print off another lesson. That's not that big a deal. The next time I taught it, three people came up. A guy says, hey, my pastor wants to sit in. Sure. And I look up in a few months and there's more people sitting there that don't work for me than do. Now, I'm not real smart, but I thought, I think we can sell this. So we began a thing called.

Entree leadership back in the day, and all of these lessons were taught in a very short period of time here in Nashville in like three and a half days, and people just crawled home. It was, and we did too. We just were in a puddle when we were done. That was many years ago we taught the first ones. And we've learned, and as we've learned and do things differently, we've changed the lessons. And as, you know, because we're practitioners. We do this stuff every day.

How many of you guys went to, in academic world, somehow formally in college graduated with or studied business in school. Well, if you're like me, when someone says leadership, it's taken me about three decades to recover from management class. You know? Now, I'm not against academia. Don't misunderstand. But when someone says leadership,

I think of dry, crackly old management class that didn't seem to be very applicable. Yes, I learned some things. I'm glad I took the class. but it didn't when I got ready to teach this class I didn't want to call it our leadership class and yet as I've studied and I've read and you've got to be reading all the time and as I've grown as a leader I mean certainly when I started this company at 32 years old I was awful I was awful and that's being kind you know I've got some 32 year old leaders like Daniel tardy they're rock stars they're light years

of where I was when I was 32 light years ahead in terms of their ability to serve and to lead and to understand the kinds of things we're going to talk about this week. I didn't know what I was doing. And so in the next 20 years, as I told you, I got a Ph.D. and D-U-M-B. So when we sat down to put this together, I'm thinking, okay, I can't call it a leadership class, but I got to thinking, what is a leader? And I want you to think in your mind of someone that you think of when you think of a great leader.

You either know them personally or you know them at a distance and you admire them. it could even be a president or whatever but someone you think of in history or current or that you know personally as a great leader and write down one word character qualities of a great leader somebody raise your hand and give me your favorite yes ma'am integrity integrity awesome start yes servant good humble humble very good visionary very good generous I love it look at that list I don't know how you define leadership, but that's how our culture defines leadership. And even most cultures, for that matter, that's how they define leadership. Is that a leader? Say yes.

Well, here's an idea. This class is not about theory. This is about application. You're in here to learn about leadership. So if you purport to be a leader, if you somehow in your mind think you're a leader, this better be you. This is not a game. This is what people expect.

And to the extent you're not this, you suck. This is what people are looking for. This is what you want in a leader. Don't you wish you had somebody in Washington acted like that? Unbelievable. This is who you got to be. And by the way, you're going to hire people in your organization. You're going to put them in a leadership role.

Maybe they ought to be that. Maybe you need to interview for these character qualities. Spent enough T-I-M-E with them to learn that this is who they are. This is not a game. When these things are deficit, you lose people. Nobody wants to follow people that don't have these things. How many of you are like me? You can look at that and say,

there's a couple of those I could work on. Get your hands up. One of them is humble. This is what you're trying to grow. This is what you're trying to be. This is who we are that calls. ourselves leaders. Now are we perfect? No. We started the day off with I make mistakes every day. I made some this morning already. Everybody screws up. Every day, we all do. That

doesn't keep you from these are your character qualities or you are working to grow these in yourself and in the people in your organization you call leaders. Well, you know, what they do on their own time counts. It's your whole freaking life. Only in America have we ever figured out you can compartmentalize your life and think you can get away with it. You can't. It's your whole you. It's you. So your little secret life counts.

It's a little thing you do when nobody's looking. It's on the list. It's a big deal. It's the whole you. Now let's do the same thing for entrepreneurs. When you think of an entrepreneur, the quintessential entrepreneur, and you maybe know two or three personally or you admire them from afar,

what are the one-word character qualities that address that? What do you think is the perfect definition of an entrepreneur? One-word character qualities. Yes, sir. Unstoppable. I love it. Innovative. Always.

Risk taker. Very good. Yes. Go-getter. Definitely. Look at that. Pretty good definition of entrepreneur. Yes or no?

Is that an entrepreneur? You want these people on your team? That was not real resounding. I got to tell you, having them on your team is a mixed blessing, isn't it? And if you have a whole team and they're nothing but entrepreneurs, you're screwed. You can't get anything done. It's like trying to nail jello to a tree. It's like trying to, it's awful.

It's hurting cats. But you better have some entrepreneurs on your team. And hopefully you've got some of that, some of those character qualities. And I got to tell you, the entrepreneurs on your team, they are not yes people. If you want everybody to be little robots and do exactly what you say, don't hire these people. And by the way, your business will fail. You better put these people in your life. Because they get confused.

They think they own your place. I got people that work here. I have to remind, dude, I sign your freaking check. Slow down here. Because they take such ownership of stuff. and they will drive the lane and put the ball in the hoop, bodies everywhere. They get it done. Do not mess with these people.

And you've got to have them on your team, don't you? They bring the energy. They bring the faith. They're the risk takers. They're observant. They're unoffendable. They're go-getters. They're hungry, as a buddy of mine says.

Hungry. Love that. They got that thing inside of them. You've got to have these people on the team. But when I'm sitting down to get ready to teach this class, I'm like, I don't want this to be an entrepreneurship class. I mean, I want entrepreneurs all in my team, but I don't want a whole team full of them. Because, I mean, and the other one that's not up there is ADD, right?

Squirrel, right? You know? It's like, boom, can't keep your eye on nothing. So, I mean, that's us, those of us that are entrepreneurs. That's who we are right there. So what we figured out was we wanted leaders that had the passion of the entrepreneur. We wanted the entrepreneur that had the polish of the leaders. So we combined the words, thus the word entree leadership.

And that's how we got to what we're doing. But it's a good exercise to put these two together and to start to look at what they're doing and how they're going with it from there. See, a leader is one who guides, rules, or inspires others, according to Webster's. I like our definition better. An entrepreneur, according to Webster's, is a person who organized, operates and assumes risk for a venture. As a matter of fact, the French word, entreprende, which is Hillbilly French, is where we get our word entrepreneur from, and the word literally means risk taker. It's literally

what it means. That's exactly what it is. So we are a risk taker. Now, not a gambler. Risk taker, you took a risk by getting on that bus. It's a calculated risk, and the return means you didn't have to walk. So it's a reasonable risk return ratio. But, but, you took a risk, by getting on that bus. but it was not a gamble, it was a risk. And so an entree leader is the process of leading to cause a venture to grow and prosper. So it's got these elements of the entrepreneur, these elements of the leader, and they're mixed together. So we have someone who's passionately serving. We have someone who's a maverick that has integrity, disciplined risk takers,

courageous while humble. You want to meet these people? I'll tell you where I meet them all the time. Top leaders in the military. Unbelievably humble and unbelievably courageous. And make some of the most difficult decisions sending a young man or young woman into harm's way that you will ever meet. And again, with a calculated risk based on mission preparedness and so on. But just the same. It's a rare class of being. They personify that one. Now let's look at some leadership basics. Organizations are never limited by their opportunity. They are limited by their leader. I had a young man come into the lobby, the Financial Peace Plaza right here, and he walked in and he was body language and the way the tilt of his head and the look in his eyes said, screamed, I'm having a

really bad day. Y'all know what I'm talking about. He didn't have to say a word. You could just smell the stink on him. I said, what's going on, dude? What's up with you? And he goes, man, has I've had my own landscaping business for six years? And he said, I just had to close it. And I just filed bankruptcy. I said, what happened? He said, well, there's nobody doing any building and the landscaping business is just awful in our community. And I couldn't even get, I couldn't get this. I couldn't get that. And he spent five minutes telling me how the marketplace was bad. And he was a victim of the economic downturn,

which we had a legitimate economic downturn in the real estate and building world. No doubt about it. Most people in this nation went through that. And I kind of just put my hand on his shoulder and said, man, you'll live the fight another day, get you something, get in out of the cold, heal up a little and figure out what you're going to do. I talked to him for a few minutes. He just kind of needed somebody to, you know, lay their hand on his shoulder and say he's going to be okay. This was really rough.

Two days later, a guy walks into my lobby, and this guy is bouncing off the walls. There's so much spring in his step, you think he's a slinky. You know what I'm saying? He's just going nuts. And just bap, pap, pap, pap, b won't shut up. It's like he's up on Red Bull or something, you know? And I come out there and I'm, hey, how's it going, David? Life is awesome.

Dude, what are you on? What's the deal? I'm high on life. That sounds like the 70s. used to have a poster that said that. I said, what's going on? He said, man, business is unbelievable. He said, it's awesome.

I'm making more money than I've ever made in my life. And I said, do you live here? Yeah, I live right here. I live right down the street down here. Really, what do you do? I'm in the landscaping business. I went, really? That dude?

And then it hit me. It's all about leadership. John Maxwell says, everything rises and falls on leadership. Are the economic variables real? Oh, yeah. They're real. But is the way we choose to react to them the answer?

It's everything. I'm not saying it didn't get dark and bad out there. It did. There were some tough times. Some of you've been through some tough times in the last 36, 48 months. But the real world is you're here looking at this because you really believe that saying right there. organizations are never limited by their opportunity.

They are limited by their leader. When I figured out that I'm the problem, it was really invigorating to me. Because that also means I'm the solution. And I can control the bald guy in the mirror to a certain degree. I can make choices and decisions to impact my organization. I can't control all the variables out there. there. But I can choose how I'm going to act, react, and implement things into the marketplace, how I'm going to treat my team, how we're going to respond. And I came out during the recession,

I said, we choose not to participate in the recession. And all these people came on, like Ramsey's full of crap. He's all these bloggers, you know, Ramsey comes out and says he's not going how can you not participate in a recession? Of course you participate in the recession. You miss the point, you goober. It wasn't that there wasn't a recession. It's that while all my competitors died and got out of the way, I'm going to go take their market. share. That's participating in a recession in a way you really don't want to say it because then you're a freaking evil capitalist. Because I asked my guy who's standing here bouncing off the walls, I said, man, another guy was in here and he said, he just went out of business in the landscaping thing. He said,

it's bad out there. How are you doing so well? He said, because all those guys got out of the way. I'm last man standing, baby. I'm the glass guy on the island. I got a lawnmower. You know, that's where he was. It's a mentality isn't. it. Every one of our business is just about, we're hit by that. Some of us more than others. You better find out what's up because the market moved. It's a leadership breakdown when you fail in those situations, including here. We're no exception. You're the problem with your organization if you're a leader. That's the bad news. The good news is you're the solution. You get to fix this thing, man, you get to decide.

And let me just tell you, people are dying to be led. Again, that was Dave teaching at our Entree Leadership Master Series. I want to point out that you can sign up for our Master Series at Entreeleadership.com, all of our Entree Leadership events, information there at Entree Leadership Defined. And all access is really how you go to the next level. You're sitting there listening to that lesson, and you dive into this podcast on a regular basis. And you're thinking yourself, how do I go to the next level? If you're really loving what we're bringing to you, all access is the way to do that.

And interestingly enough, you can get the full lesson and so much more. Webinars, everything you could possibly imagine to help you go to the next level, and you dive into community. It's not just content. It's community. And this is huge. And so if you want to learn more about all access, which is our online community, go to ontraeleadership.com. Best way to kind of dip your toe in without any kind of money. Just, I want to check it out.

I want to learn more about what All Access can do to change my business. Go to Entreeleadership.com and enter your email address to join our newsletter. It's absolutely free. It's right there on the main page, Entreeleadership.com. And I'm telling you, this is a risk-free way to find out why All Access is so popular with our tribe. So go check that out. Speaking of which, our Main Street conversation is somebody who is in All-Axcesses. Access. Wendy White McCown. Not only is she an all access member, she is somebody who is taking it to a

whole other level and she's winning so big. In an area and in a business that, quite frankly, when I first heard this from Eric the producer, I was like, really? She's in the salon business. Now, there's not a lot of high margins in the salon business, but Wendy and her team have figured it out. They're doing it the right way. So we hopped on the phone with Wendy, and we got a bit of her story. This will equip you. It will encourage you and empower you. So listen, as Wendy tells us a bit of her story. Well, Wendy, I'd love for our audience to get to know a little bit more about you and your business. So let's talk about your business first. What are you guys doing? Well, we have a salon here in Louisiana. We've been in business for 20 years. And we're doing

very well. And we've learned through entrepreneurship how to just get our employees to think like owners, which has been amazing. This is amazing because we're talking about a hair salon here. And I don't know if the average person who goes and gets their hair cut understands the unique business model of a salon. And so I'd love for you to just explain that real quick before we go any further because you have really grown this thing and that ownership part. How does it work with you owning the salon? Do you have women or men that have their own little business within your shop? How does that work?

Well, that's a great question. You know, a lot of salons work like booth rental where they just, you know, people just rent a space and everybody's kind of doing their own thing within the business. You know, we didn't want to do that. We wanted to have a business for everybody work like a team. But at the same time, they felt like little many owners. So the way it works is our stylists are commission employees. So the harder they work, the more they make.

And which is typical, a lot of salons work like that. The difference, the thing that we've really learned from mantra leadership that we've pulled into our salon is we want our support team, the people. who don't do services, our managers and our front desk team, to also work on a commission. So they make a percentage of the profit. So the busier the salon is, the more professional it is, the more that we can charge, you know, all those different things go into effect. That affects the revenue. So at the end of the day or the end of the month, they make a percentage of the profit based off of how hard they worked as well. So there's a lot that goes into a salon.

It's so funny. It's a lot of moving pieces. But, you know, it's neat because through entrepreneurship, we've got these principles down and we've developed something even called a three-day work week where our people, they're so efficient and they work so hard, they work three days a week. We're open six days, so we have two teams. Wow.

It's been so successful that we're now able to help other salons with the same principle. The same thing that Entral Leadership has done for me, we're able now to do the same thing on a salon level to other salons across the country. I want to lock it on something you say because this is great. You've got people, two teams that are essentially working three-day

week. Now this is, I want to lock in on this because that doesn't mean that they're, they're working the same essential amount of hours that they would maybe in a five day week, or they're making the same amount of money, but they're doing it in three days. Is that correct? Am I understanding that right? That's exactly right. You know, the younger generation, the millennials, they don't want to work all the time. They want this flexibility. And that's why a lot of people leave to go booth rent or do their own little thing in a little building or a salon that there's not that teamwork. But we've developed it in, in our salon environment, in a commission environment that they can do very well.

They work three days a week. And we started this about three or four years ago. No one makes any less than they made working five days a week because they've all learned how to be about 95 to 100 percent booked while they're working while they're working. And so we only have seven chairs in our salon. It's not a huge salon, but we have 14 hairstylists. So they're at maximum capacity. The stations are fully booked every day.

Therefore, you know, our revenue went up. expenses didn't go up a lot and this allowed us to pay our support staff more because there's a big turnover in the salon industry with support staff and managers leave in because they don't make enough. So because we were able to make a higher profit, we were able to share this with our support team who now they're thinking like little owners. I mean, I don't have to be at the salon every day, although on there a lot, but they're thinking like me. They want, you know, like Dave Ramsey says, you know, profits happen when revenue goes up and expenses go down. So that's what they're doing. I love this.

So you've been in business 20 years. At what point in the history of the business did you come in contact with Entree leadership? That was back in 2008. So that was about seven, eight years ago. And we had been in business about 13 or so years at that point. And the salon was good. It was busy. But, you know, there came a point where we needed to hire stylists to take the overflow and hire managers to handle all the phone calls.

And this is the area that I was very weak. I didn't really know how to grow people. So my husband and I went to Entry Leadership back in 2008, and it helped us so much in so many areas with learning how to run debt free, which we kind of did that before. We did run debt free, but we didn't have the emergency fund that we've learned and that we now have. Do you mind me asking, because I think we have a lot of small business owners

who are sitting in here going, okay, I love that she got a hold of this emergency fund idea. But what was it for you? How many months did you, what was a fully full? funded emergency fund for your particular business? We have about a year, an emergency phone for about a year, saved up. Thank goodness, you know, about a year ago now, it was last May, May of 2015. A drunk driver hit our salon going about 100 miles an hour with this car. Thank goodness it was early morning, like 5.30 in the morning, no one was there yet.

But when this happened, it was just a total wreck. It was a total mess. And because we had an emergency fund and because we have such a great culture, with a three-day work week and this great management team, it was no issue. I mean, everybody got there. Within an hour, we had construction crews there, people, you know, hauling all the debris out. And within two days, we had a fully functioning temporary location opened the 48 hours later. And then within four weeks, we had our salon rebuilt and we moved back in. And we didn't have to wait on insurance because we would have been waiting a while. And, you know, we could have waited

on insurance because we had the right insurance and we had enough to be closed and just collect the insurance. Having cash allowed you to just say, we've got to keep moving forward on the business. We'll get the money back, but we have the cash to keep rolling. Exactly, because we knew if we would have closed. Clients are going to get their haircut somewhere. We've worked too hard over the past, you know, at that point, 19 years to have our clients go elsewhere. So we were able to open. The clients respected us. The community respected us. I mean, it was just, just thank goodness we had an emergency fund. Very, very grateful that we've learned that principle.

I don't want to ask you to give us exact figures, but maybe some percentages. I think this would be great for our listeners, those in small business specifically. What did you, what was your formula as far as how much you would set aside, if you will, to build that year's worth of emergency fund? That's a good question. I would say it's probably about like maybe 4%. Okay. So it can be done even at a small percentage like that.

Yes. Yes, that we're saving. Yes. Wendy, this is so wonderful. It's so exciting to hear you. you talk about the wins in your business and then how you're sharing those wins to help other people win. It really is modeling the way for all in the Entree Leadership Tribe. We thank you so much for hanging out with us and being a part of our tribe. Thank you very much. You have a great day.

Now, one thing I want to point out that Wendy shared in that story was the importance and the impact of a fully funded emergency fund. Did you catch that? I mean, that's an amazing story. When you're a storefront and a car crashes through your store, I mean, that's about as bad as it gets. They didn't miss a beat because they had the cash and the ability to say, all right, we're going to keep going. We're going to keep serving. Insurance will get us our money. They never missed a beat. It's so important, and it leads to our entree leadership tool that's absolutely free this month.

It's so important. The entree leader's guide to running a debt-free business. Wendy can't build an emergency fund. She can't be that agile in the face of crisis without being debt-free. Being debt-free allowed her to build that emergency fund, which changed the game for her. So our tool this month, the Entree Leader's Guide to running a debt-free business, is about as important a tool as we'll ever give you. Let's just be honest.

Cash is king. Certainly to the small business. So it's a PDF download. We give you business case studies that are debt-free. So again, this isn't theory. This is real. Here's how you get it. You text the word.

Now it's three words. We've put it together, all right, no spaces. The word to text in is be debt free. Be debt free. You text that to 3344-44-text the phrase, be debt-free. Or you can go to entreleadership.com slash podcast. Click on this episode. That's episode 145.

And the link for the Entry Leader's Guide to running a debt-free business is there for you as well. So make sure you take this tool and use this. This is a game changer. And we have stories that will prove it and also help you figure out how to do it. Up next, part two of my conversation with the Ramsey family, specifically Rachel Cruz, her husband Winston Cruz, Dave's son-in-law, Daniel Ramsey, who is the youngest of the Ramsey children, and Denise Whittamore, who is the oldest. And this is really important for those of you that are in a family business. There's not a whole lot of textbooks out there. There's not a whole lot of case studies. There's not a whole lot of real conversations like you're about to hear where we talk about

the dynamics of personalities, the differences there, the fact that you're all family members and you are running a business and you are the future leaders of the business, all a bunch of intricate stuff here, and we unpack it for you. This is a great conversation as we think about small businesses. So, because so much of you are in family businesses, here is part two of our conversation with the Ramsey family. Okay, this is great fun, and we got Denise in with us this time, and so real quick, let's reset if people are listening for the first time. Denise, oldest Ramsey child. How old are you now? I'm 30. 30 years old? Yes. Oh, my gosh. Daniel Ramsey to her left. He is the youngest

Ramsey child. Daniel, how are you? 24. 24. Rachel Cruz to his left, the middle Ramsey child. And, well, you know what they say about middle children. It's all true. Is it all true? It's all true. How old are you? I'm 27, but by the time this, I don't know when this

is going to air, so I might be 28. Oh, that's very soon. Oh, I got to make sure I have that on my calendar. You know, when you're in your late 20s, you got to grab it in a year just to make you seem older. Yeah, absolutely. And then to her left, rounding out the table, rather, is Winston Cruz who married in. He is one of the son-in-laws and involved here at Ramsey Solutions. How old are you, sir? Uh, just recently 30, actually. Just, I am in the club. You were in the 30 club.

That's right. You guys, you and Denise are officially adults. Good to be here. Yeah, that's exciting. Okay, so we wanted to get you guys back together because one of the tensions that we hear from our audience, and we know this to be true about research with family businesses is the most difficult part of family businesses are the actual family members because, you know, after they leave the office, they're still family. You've got all these unique relationships, unique history, all sorts of things kind of thrown in there. And one of the things that I see as an outsider come from the family side of things, but an insider here at Ramsey Solutions is there is great relationship here. And so I want to spend some time talking about that. And let's start with

the uniqueness of each of you. So Denise, you run the family foundation. That's very important and work, obviously, for the legacy of all things Ramsey, decided not to be involved in the company. And so I'd love for you to share what led to that decision and how does that fit you more uniquely than maybe a role in the business side of things. Yeah. Well, I was working in a nonprofit right out of college right before really starting the foundation. And about three years after college, my parents approached me and just said, hey, just an idea

we had. We were just wanting to get our giving more organized and had just talked to other friends of theirs that had started a family foundation and really was just looking into the possibility and just thought with my personality, you know, and my ministry background in the nonprofit work I was doing, I would be a possibly good fit. And they just wanted me to pray about it and think about it. That was about six months before I came on board and actually started. We decided to have the foundation separate from the company just because it is the family foundation and it's not the company's foundation. So I am involved here as far as being a board member and future owner, but that's about my extent. Yeah. And you're happy with that. And I want to focus on that because you run the

foundation, that's the family foundation, yet you sit in on the board meetings. You're an operating board member feature owner, as you mentioned. So maybe contrast for me that role as an operating board member. You're involved, but you're okay with just that role in a future owner. Why is that versus be involved in the actual business? Well, I'm fortunate to be able to do the foundation from home. So I'm able to be a mom and also be able to be involved in ministry. So I kind of, I'm blessed to be able to get the best of both worlds, really. But I also do want to be part of the company at some level. And so being, you know, a future owner and being able to sit in the board meetings and seeing how the other board members interact and just learning from that, you know, for the future. So when our time comes to

take over, I feel prepared. That's so great. And then I throw this to you, Daniel, and Rachel, are from this contract. You both have chosen to say, hey, I want to be involved actively in the business. Now in the last podcast we talked in detail of how you are involved. And Winston, you jump in on this, too. I'll throw this to all of you. The unique dynamic of the fact that when you leave the operating board meetings, you're still family members, you're vacationing together, you're seeing each other all the time, and your future owners. How does that dynamic? Does it exist outside of this conversation within the board? I mean, how much does that happen? Conversations about the actual business. We try to keep family time, family time as much as possible, especially Denise's husband,

Bill, is not involved in any of the business. So it's probably extremely boring for him. And even mom, to an extent, if we sit there and just chat about people in the company and like things that are happening and whatnot and they're probably like, okay, you know, so we really do try to respect the time we have as a family. But naturally it's going to bleed over because, you know, what five of us out of the seven are actively involved. And so I think those conversations are fine, but we just try not to let it dominate the conversation constantly. And I think, you know, a big thing with us is having mutual respect for each other, each other's thoughts and opinions. And then also having quality time outside the office, which I'll be honest, our season of life, it's hard.

because, you know, we have a little baby Winston and me and Denise has two kids. Daniel's like living up the single life in Nashville. Living it up. It's hard to get that quality time, but I think that's important. But again, our season and life, it's tough to do that. But I think it is crucial to have those relationships outside of the office. Let's talk about the uniqueness of each personality here. We're not going to break down your personality profiles, but Denise kind of started out for us where she kind of said,

this is where I'd like to be. And yet she still has a role. It seems to me that there's something that Dave has fostered and you all have accepted to where everybody says, hey, we're very comfortable being who we are. I'm comfortable being Winston. I'm comfortable being Rachel. I'm comfortable being Daniel. I'm comfortable being Denise.

What do you think has led to that where everybody's been able to choose something that fits who you are yet still be involved? What do you think that did Dave intentionally foster that? I think for me, it wasn't just an immediate success. when I looked at the company back, you know, six years ago, and I saw it as an opportunity, but I needed my passions, talents, but also to be an in-law, as an in-law, my dignity. I wanted all of that to align. When I say maintaining my dignity, I mean, I want to do something where I have the opportunity to fail

and not just come in and ride a train to a successville. So for me, it was a pinball process. It was, I'm going to try this for a little bit, and it didn't get, honestly, the first thing that I did didn't take off, you know, out of the dirt, so to speak. So now I'm doing something that I still love to do, which is real estate. I'm passionate about it. I'd like to think that I've learned a lot over the past six years with Dave, applying those talents to it, and then I can still fail. I can mess up big or I can succeed big with Dave, and so I would say, Dave allowed that to happen, but the opportunity and those other couple of things needed to align for me

to get to this point. It was not a perfect, you know, match from the start. art. Yeah, and I definitely had Rachel and Winston and really Denise, too, to all kind of pave the way for me, you know, being the youngest child. A lot of those processes were defined and reformed and made up on the spot. So for me, I came in with our family having experience already transitioning that and making, you know, getting the awkwardness out of the air or whatnot. So for me, I've had the experience that has been the most natural. You know, while I was still in school, I applied for different positions throughout the company. And, you know, really throughout college learned what my strengths and weaknesses are.

And still am learning those things today much more so than I was two years ago when I first started. But when I was applying for these different positions, I came in and had actual interviews and meetings and got offered some positions, didn't get offered some others. And really, through those interviews, through those meetings, learned of what, you know, further I was passionate about, what I was excited about. And ultimately ended up in a sales role where I get to work with marketers, talking to business. a strategy all day, which is what I'm passionate about. I love talking strategy. I love thinking big picture. I love sales where it's a very measurable goal like Winston talked about, the opportunity to fail, the opportunity to win, the opportunity to prove myself. You know, I come into work Monday excited about the opportunity to go do those things.

Yeah. And not to make it oversimplistic, but I think for business owners that are in a family business, not to take common sense out of it, like putting us, you know, around, in a square hole, so to speak, is stupid. Like, if you have a child who's not good of details, they shouldn't be an accounting. You know, some of the time I've talked to family businesses, and they've almost unplugged the common sense. Like, well, you know, this accounting is a great position, and she'd be so, you know, this is a great opportunity for her.

I'm like, but she's horrible at math. Like, don't put her in accounting. And so just don't take common sense out of it. And so I think that's huge. I mean, Daniel gravitates towards sales. Denise gravitates her heart towards ministry opportunities. You know, I love doing speaking and writing and media. So it's like it's very natural fits.

And it hasn't always been perfect, like Winston said. But overall, we've been able to find positions that meet our strengths. And I think we weren't forced into positions, number one. And we weren't forced into doing something on a database that we are not good at naturally. And even now, this policy of, you know, Daniel's sitting, not talking for a year. Then he gets to start talking. And then, you know, that's right, in the board operating board room. And what's interesting, you know, I'm curious, are you,

Are the four of you beginning to, as you sit there and observe mostly? Are you beginning to see areas down the road where you go, hey, I might be real interested as an owner, an operating board member being really involved. You touched on it a little bit about what you love. But do you begin to see now the value? And then you're saying, this is a space that I want to be very involved in the future. I think we can lean certain ways for sure. But I also want to give any children out there who are listening, who are not.

family business permission to say, hey, I have no idea what the next five years is, right? Like, I can have twins in the year. Like, I don't know. And say I don't have any interest in this particular part. Totally. Or, yeah. I mean, I mean, who knows? And so I think, yeah, naturally, you see things that you're like, okay, I think that's the direction that I could lean or that's what I could give value to. But overall, too, I've given myself permission a lot of the time to say, hey, you don't have to have everything planned out. And yes, you need a plan. Don't hear me that. say that, but to give yourself permission to say, hey, I have no idea what the next 10 years is going to bring because we are fairly young and we're not 60 in our dad's 80, you know, kind of thing.

And just taking it month by month and just seeing, you know, what you do like and enjoy and are good at. Let me say this too. I think along the lines of giving people the permission to think about this, as we talk about personalities and your natural strengths and finding something that fits those two things, you can be a good leader with any type of personality. I don't think there is a leadership prototype personality when leadership really is just the influence of people. And you can influence people in good ways and influence people in bad ways.

But as long as you're treating people well and influencing them in the right way, that's really true leadership. It doesn't put you into a certain category of personalities. So what you do is more, what are you naturally good at, what are your natural strengths and your personalities, your tendencies.

but to go into a leadership role in the future, that's not as much, oh, well, I'd be a better leader because of this personality trait. So, you know, that's something that I would throw in there as well. Before we let you guys go and put you on the spot here. It doesn't have to be long, but I want you to think in terms of your generation and a business, so you guys would be the second generation, okay? And also first generation. If our listeners who were in family business were able to sit here in this room with you

and you were going to give them one piece of advice, whether, again, it's for the second generation, or maybe it's for the first generation about what's working here or maybe some landmines that you all have learned that we've avoided and stepped around just from each of you. What advice would you give to either second generation or first generation? Communicate. Have open communication and do it in a gentle way, but speak what you're feeling. That's good. I would say be honest.

Be honest with not only how you're feeling, be honest with what you're good at, your strengths, your weaknesses. Be honest as the owner that it's hard to let go and transition. I think honesty and being true to what you are feeling is huge. Because if you're not true to that, you're going to get five years on the road and you're going to be in a place that you don't know how you ended up. I just imagine life being miserable if I was in a role or position or something that I was pressured into because I felt obligated. Right, because of the family thing. Absolutely. And I think, you know, I guess my advice would be do what you love, do what you're passionate about.

If you're not passionate about the family business, you need to have that conversation. Better sooner than later. My first thought was communication and early and often check-ins. And my second thought was do what you love. I mean, that's exactly what Daniel said. So don't do something just because there's an opportunity. You're going to spend too much time in a 40, 50-hour week, giving your life away to something. You really just don't enjoy it.

It's not worth it. It's not worth the opportunity. You're going to look back and regret it. Interesting. A theme from all four of you. We could have put your opinions inside of a hula hoop here. And what I'm taking away, as somebody who's listening and to you, the listener, I think you need to be dedicated, not obligated. And if you get into an obligated state of mind, it's unhealthy.

If you're dedicated, rock on. And I think that's what we have here. All of you are dedicated, but I don't see any obligation at all. So, hey, Winston, Rachel, Daniel, Denise. Are you going to tweet that? Dedicated, not obligated. Be dedicated, not obligated. Brilliant.

That should be the title of the podcast. That's why I'm here, folks. That's why I'm here. Hey, guys, thanks. This is always fun to get the Ramsey family in the studio. We should do this more often. Good to see you guys. Thanks, Jim.

Thanks. Okay, big thanks to the Ramsey family for hanging out with us and sharing what they've learned and what they're learning, what works, what doesn't work in this unique role of family business. Hey, the summit event, it's right around the corner. May 22 through 25. Dallas, Texas, beautiful Omni Dallas Hotel is our venue. The speaker list is unbelievable.

Dave has invited Seth Godin, Jim Collins, Dr. Henry Cloud, Pat Lynch, Chris Hogan and Christy Wright of our Ramsey personality roster, and special guest, the 43 President of the United States. President George W. Bush is going to be there. Everything you need to learn about the event, Entreleadership.com slash summit. Entreeleadership.com slash summit. Would love to see you there. We appreciate Wendy Whiteman-Cown and the Ramsey family so very much for joining us on this podcast. On behalf of our producer, Eric Anthony, and the entire Entree leadership team, thank you, the audience so very much for listening.

We'll talk with you again very soon.