EntreLeadership - #146: Leaning Into Leadership

Episode Date: May 9, 2016

What makes a great EntreLeader? Our own Daniel Tardy, vice president of EntreLeadership, joins the podcast to share his story and what he’s learned through the years about becoming a leader others will follow. We’re also returning to Main Street with a special interview with small-business owner Megan Huffman. This EntreLeader discusses her journey to becoming debt-free as well as how she tackled some big financial issues at her business. entreleadership.com/podcast Guide to Running Your Business Debt Free Infusionsoft's Sales Team Hiring Guide 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, and this is the podcast of Leaders by Leaders, four leaders. Thank you so much for joining the conversation. We continue with our Entree Leadership Defined Focus. Episode 145, our last episode, obviously had Dave teaching on Entree Leadership Defend Focus.

find so much of this entire tribe, this entire conversation on the Entry Leadership podcast is focused around this phrase that Dave created to describe the way that he ran the business. And we have passed it down. And we felt like it would be a really fun and affirming and encouraging and enlightening conversation if we took Daniel Tarty, who was the vice president of Entree Leadership to lunch. And we brought some mics. So Eric, the producer was up for it, got Ben the sound engineer. These guys are very talented. and went to a local restaurant and just recorded the conversation as I learned from Daniel about how he's been mentored, how he has risen to leadership,

and how entree leadership plays out every day within the brand called Entree Leadership. And we're going to give away 20 copies of the Entree Leadership book to kind of celebrate you, the Entree Leader. By the way, Eric and I have been working on this with our amazing team. The book giveaways are coming back. That's all I can say. So we're going to start with this episode. I'll tell you more details about that a little bit later.

And then we go back to Main Street. We are doing more and more interviews with Main Street entrepreneurs, entree leaders like you. Megan Huffman, who runs a daycare center, just became debt-free. You're going to love this. In fact, I'll tease this. It is our very first business debt-free scream on the Entree Leadership Podcast. A little commercial on that.

We also have some tools for you that are absolutely free. The Entree Leadership team has this month's tool, the Entree Leadership Guide, to Running a Debt-Free Business. and InfusionSoft has a free sales team hiring guide. And you actually hear from Chad Kirby as he explains what is actually in this tool. So that's everything that's coming to you. Let's get right to it. This is fun.

And let me say this, just as maybe to add some value, what are you going to hear is a conversation that Daniel Tarty and I had over lunch. But I think, you know, we have lunches all the time to have lunch meetings. But try to have as many lunches as possible where you actually just go learn from somebody else. I think the conversation is more stimulating. It's a lot more relaxing. And people will open up to you over a plate of food. So this was really fun.

Hope you enjoy it. This is my conversation with Daniel Tardy. So how many years you've been here now? I can't keep count. Is it 11? 12 years. 12 years. How old were you?

Seven. Yeah, seven years old. Honestly, dude. You're still in your 30, so you were really young. That was 21 when I started. Are you serious? Green. We wasn't straight out of college, was it?

No, I dropped out of college. I mean, that's part of the story. You dropped out of college. Can I tell you something? I dropped out. We are two college dropouts. I knew I liked you. I would guess that your dropout story is not what people are thinking.

Mine wasn't. Mine was intentional. I'm assuming yours was as well. I got married young. So I was part of it. I grew up in an entrepreneur's household. So I was selling door-to-door newspaper sales in high school. Making a killing.

Door-to-door newspaper? You mean just for the local paper? Lubbock Avalanche Journal. This is back when people actually got physical newspapers delivered to their doorstep. Give me the pitch. All right. So here was, it was a little sneaky because I would lead in with a, hey, I'm with the Lubbock Avalanche Journal.

I'm just checking on our customer service in this area. So I learned that if I just started out assuming that they get the paper, it was almost just like this thing of like, why wouldn't you get the paper? And so a lot of them would be like, oh, yeah, it's fine, you know. And I didn't know if they got the paper or not. That was part of the deal. If they said, yeah, it's fine. And then I'm out of there looking for somebody

that doesn't get the paper. But if they didn't get it, they would go, oh, actually, we don't get the newspaper. I'm like, oh, well, we can get you going. In fact, let me just show you. I got a few little brochures on it and everything. And I would kind of like come in if I wasn't actually a sales guy

just to, you know, disarm them a little bit. And I would say, hey, here's the thing. Even if you don't read the newspaper, it's about the coupons. You ever buy groceries? And they're like, well, yeah. And so I would flip to this page that had kind of the coupons. And I said, look, if you just $5 a week, you know, save some money on your groceries, that's $20 a month. Newspaper is going to cost you $8 a month and get you going right away.

I had this dollar bill laminated. I still have it. And I would pull out this dollar bill and I would set it on their front step before I knocked on the door. And I would point down and say, hey, if that dollar bill was on your front step every morning, would you've been down and pick it up? And of course people are like, well, yeah. I said, well, it's really not any different than newspaper being on your front step because all these coupons in here are stuff that you're already buying these groceries

and you're going to save money on it. Why not just get it for the coupons? And then everything else is a bonus like sports and news. Because everybody would be like, oh, yeah, we don't really read the news. And so I realized real quick I was selling coupons. It happened to come with a newspaper. You were selling savings. Yeah, selling savings.

That's brilliant for a kid. Well, I already knew I could sell because my granddad taught me that when I was a kid. My dad taught me, you know, growing up, I was just an entrepreneur household. That's just how it was. And so I was like, I'll sell newspapers. What's the rip? So in four hours, I would get like, if it's $200 before dinner, you know, for a high school kid versus my friends going to work at Sonic.

It's a big money. Yeah. Yeah. And I started figuring out that I was already making more money than a lot of my professors, and I was just going, this doesn't work. I don't get it. I want to learn how to make money, you know. And at the time, that's all I really could think about.

Yeah, of course. There's a lot more to it. 21, yeah. But I thought, I just want to get rich. I want to make money. How's that work? So how do you jump from there to finding Dave and interviewing with Dave's team? Through kind of a friend of a friend.

We came and visited Nashville, knew somebody that was here, and we loaded everything we had on the back of a 15-foot flatbed trailer. We didn't have anything. We were young, broke, stupid. And we drove out here. I didn't even have a vehicle that could pull that trailer. There was a guy from church who had a truck, and he's like, I'll drive your stuff out there for you.

And I get out here. Emily was still at home tying up some loose ends, and I load all this stuff into this little storage unit, and I crashed on the floor at my buddy's house. And I remember that night just thinking, And all day I was excited. I'm like, this is going to be awesome, adventure. You know, and what's going to be out here?

We're just going to be living the dream. And that night I basically had a panic attack. I was like, what am I doing? This is crazy. I don't know anybody. We don't have a job. We don't have money. We got side jobs, and we're just doing anything we could just to scratch it out.

I was actually delivering sandwiches for Jason's deli. Right here in Cold Springs. Wow. And running around, you know. And I was listening to Dave on the radio. And I thought, this guy's legit. And so we had kind of haphazardly been living the principals, but we didn't know there was a plan. You know, we knew to stay away from debt, but we would have ended up there because we,

that's just the natural course of you start getting frustrated with your beat-up car and your, you know, crappy furniture. And you go, well, let's finance some. I mean, we were probably going to, in two years, be just normal like everybody else. But by God's grace, we found Dave in the plan and everything and just never did go. going to debt. And it was Joe Levitt, met Joe at church, and he worked for Dave at the time, still does. And he said, hey, you ought to come on board over here. So he kind of got, you know, got that going. It's 12 years ago. Entree leadership. Did you come into entree leadership?

No, no. This was, entree leadership didn't exist, really. It was, it was something Dave was teaching internally. I started it in our ELP program. So Jack Galloway hired me. And it was just an entry-level sales job. It's funny because on the website it said, I remember specifically the posting said ELP CPA advisor, preferably 20 years experience in sales, you've been a CPA in practice for at least 10 years, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I'm dumb, green college dropout, right? I don't know what a CPA does. I really didn't. Like, but I got in there because Joe made the connection with Jack and I just said, dude, here's the thing. I don't know what CPA is, but if you need me to talk to CPAs, figure out what that means and how to help them, I can sell. And here's my

resume and it's not that awesome because it's just got a bunch of odds-in-kind of jobs. I don't have a degree. I went to Target right across the way here and I got a truck, because I'd heard Jack's kind of a, you know, country truck driving kind of guy. And I got a truck like a four-by-four, like a micro-machine or something, you know, like little hot wheels. And I gave it to Jack and I said, I don't know how many other resumes you've got in your desk right now for this position. But if you're looking at Ferraris and Beamer's and outies and that's what you need because that's the candidate that you're looking for, that's great, but it's not me. But I'm from West Texas and out there, those cars aren't worth anything in a

cotton field where you've got to go out and do real work. You've got to have a truck. And if you want someone that's horsepower and raw and rough and ready, that's what you got. And I gave him that truck and he laughed and I was like this is so cheesy but I was trying to figure out yeah sure and so the story of the truck he's still today he's like you remember that truck yeah well you stood out yeah that's a that's a big principle yeah but you got to be careful because I get stuff from you know applicants these days they mail in weird things and I'm like oh no this is so bad this makes you look terrible but I guess done in the right way you know yeah I think that's the key distinction you didn't mail him something you gave it to him

face-to-face. Yeah. That's a big difference. I mean, it's still cheesy, but... Yeah, no, it's cheesy. But, hey, a little bit of cheese every once in a while. Applied correctly. Learn how to polish that stuff.

I mean, when you're 20, just do anything, you know? All right, so here's what I'm interested to learn. 12 years under Dave, so you've seen so much transformation. You've really seen... You knew the card table story. Yeah, yeah. We weren't far from it. I mean, there's probably 55 people want to start it.

So you knew about the story yet you've been there long enough to really see what it went from pretty cool to explosive. So I think it's great context for what entree leadership really is. I mean, you were there when the term got created, when it was an internal term. That's good. To be able to teach this is the way we're going to do things. When did you and how did you move from straight sales guide to beginning to lead people? Well, you know, some days I still don't know. Like, I just, I've just worked as hard as I could.

Yeah, but there was a point where it was like, all right, we're going to put you in a situation where you're leading people. Well, it starts with results. And this is what I tell anybody who's kind of young and getting started, and they say they're interested in leadership. You've got to be, you know, the leader of the room in your area, or at least the second best, for to even show up on the radar of, hey, here's somebody that has the street cred

to start influencing beyond just their immediate job responsibility, but be able to get other, because it's like, if you got a sales team that's got 10 people and the number one guy, you know, is bringing it all the time, you kind of wanna go, how do we get everybody else to know what that guy knows? Maybe he can share that insight.

And in some ways, even if he doesn't have the title of a leader, he's leading just by activity and by results. So I was getting good results in sales, And I was just, I was super passionate. It's like you were talking about energy earlier. I mean, I was very passionate about the entree leadership material because my granddad started a business in 1956 in Lubbock literally scraped together a couple thousand dollars

and got it going out of his garage. He and my grandma together and he would knock on doors and, you know, once he got an order, he'd go home, take off his suit, put on his work clothes, go install the equipment that he had, and then go back home, put on a suit, give my grandma the paperwork. I mean, literally started from nothing.

And today, you know, that business is afforded, you know, me and all my cousins to have a shot at college. It's funded admission trips. It's currently employing, you know, dozens of families that are still there and their livelihood depends. So like when you grow up in that kind of environment, anything that helps a small business,

like you just instantly latch on and go, this is something that's needed. Because you see all the challenges and the fears and the ups and the downs and the times my dad had to go back to the office after dinner to fix whatever was going on. And you just start to realize, like, the small business owners out there are fighting hard and they're heroes and they're trying to make their thing work because they believe in it. They believe in their customers.

They believe in providing for their families. And, you know, the perception on small business owners a lot of times is that they're, they're just capitalistic and they just want to make a lot of money and they don't, you know. And a lot of them, I mean, we've worked with them. enough of them to know that a lot of them make less than some of their employees do. You know, they just, they believe in what they're doing and they'll do anything for their team. And so I kind of had all that in my DNA and my spirit. So when Dave was teaching Entree leadership internally, it just really resonated with me.

And so that passion, I think, is really what more than anything, I just said, I want the ball. Like if this is ever something this company is going to do more than just an internal training, like I would love to have a shot. driving this ball across the goal line. Whatever that looks like, whether it's a live event or training. This is interesting because that background gives us a great place to have a say. It's easy to hear that the go-getter mindset of the small business owners resonates with Daniel. And just like anything you're passionate about, you don't want to keep it inside.

It has to get out beyond the four walls and be shared. There's just an obvious need because people were showing up and asking if they could sit in the class. who didn't work at Dave Ramsey. There was never like this clear mission statement of like, we've done all this market research and we believe there's an opportunity and there's a strategy to go in and take it down and figure it.

Like it was just super organic. Like people are going, we're starving for content and material like this. And I knew it was true because I'd been through all these, I mean part of the reason I dropped out of college was I just couldn't connect with the headiness of the higher academic kind of business world. You know, I was more of a, just roll up your sleeves

and down in the trenches kind of guy, and I grew up in that kind of a household. And when I heard Dave teach in Entree leadership, it was the first time that like my soul came alive and was going, this is rich. Like I can turn this into something applicable tomorrow. Like I can take this and do something with it. Because it was empowering me to actually be a big,

better team member, you know, real time. It wasn't just, okay, that was inspirational and then over time, maybe that makes me a little bit better. It was like hands on, here's how you do your goal setting, here's how you do time management, here's how you know, communicate with other people based on the personality styles and have more effective conversations when you know what the personality style is and you know what your personality style is. Like that kind of stuff I'd never heard of before. And then all these other entrepreneurs and business owners are coming in, sitting in class while Dave's teaching it just to his team about how to be better team members and better leaders in our company. And so Dave's going, apparently people want this.

So it was a little bit of a sidebar thing because we were just a money company at the time. It was all personal finance. But I saw it. I mean, I saw the vision. I knew the market was huge and I wanted to be a part of it. Started as a live event because we do live events good, but there wasn't a big strategy and here's how the event's going to drive this other area. and here's how we're going to do coaching. I mean, it was all super just on the fly in the early days. Which I think is good for business owners to hear because they look at us and go,

man, you guys just have all this stuff together and we don't even know what our strategy is. And the point is like, just start. Just go, grind, get after it. You'll figure out the strategy. You know, you'll figure out the plan. What was the young Daniel Tarty leader like? Stupid, egotistical, dogmatic,

I took everything that I perceived Dave to be and just tried to be Dave. And you're how old at this point when you're really into the leadership role? I don't know. I'm 26 maybe. Yeah, late 20s. And you got this pretty strong leader that you're rubbing shoulders with and you're trying to emulate. That's the biggest mistake I made is I saw other leaders who I respected and I tried to become them because I thought that's what leaders do. That's how they talk.

That's how they act. And I think you have to take cues from other leaders. But if I could go back and tell the 26-year-old Daniel Tarty, hey, knowing what I know now, I would say, be yourself. Like, don't try to be something that you see someone else doing because that work for them. Because it's just, it comes off as manufactured, and people don't buy it, and it's plastic and cheesy and hokey. If I knew that, I would have settled in sooner to just my own style of,

leadership and communicating the way that I communicate and not trying to say magic words that I heard Dave say in a staff meeting that got a reaction but just if I wouldn't say it then don't say it you know and if I would say it then say it even if Dave doesn't say it and just being confident enough and comfortable enough to go I'm here because God's put me in the spot with my strengths and my weaknesses and my style is going to be unique and so I think if a leader can do anything early I would tell 20-something who are kind of getting into leadership or who want to lead. It's find your own voice as soon as you can.

And take cues from other great leaders, but don't try to emulate them so much that you become not yourself anymore. You know what I mean? Absolutely. The substance is what you want to try to emulate, but you've got to filter that through your own style. Somebody asked me on a podcast the other day,

what do you do? I think it was the art of charm. Yeah, yeah. He says, tell me what you're doing in one sentence. And I said, I communicate every day to make people think and feel so that they can maximize their true potential. Dude, I love that you have a succinct.

That's my sentence. So many leaders don't know how to answer a question succinctly like that about what success looks like. Well, I had to develop that sentence. I worked on it. Well, it takes work, and I would tell any leader, like, until you get that down cold, you're just going to always feel like you're floating.

I think that's right. You're always going to feel like you're going to go. I was down at a, there's an event in Orlando, though, Vern Harnish, who wrote the scaling up that we had a great podcast with him. He was quoting Warren Buffett, and it was something to the effect of like, every leader has to define their own scorecard for success. And when he said that, like, it just occurred to me, I don't have a scorecard. I don't know what success is as a leader.

I mean, I know what Dave wants me to do, but how to do it and how to come in every day, like when you're trying to influence things upstream of the actual result, working with and through other people and you can't like when you're in sales it's pretty easy because you can go I brought in this much money I can point to it it wouldn't be here if I wasn't here and it is here because I am here but as you start to grow in leadership you go geez man what do I do what do I do that really matters like all these people are kind of doing the work and you can have days where you just feel like you were just in a tornado all day long and you can lose your sanity if you didn't have a scorecard yeah I had to put it together

at that point. You have to be able to in the moments of life that are insane. And when you get uncertain for a moment, you've got to have something that you can go back to that is your Rock of Gibraltar. Rock of Gibraltar? Rock of Gibraltar. What is that? You never heard of the Rock of Gibraltar? It's one of the most famous land forms in all the world. It's a thing? It's a real place. The Rock of Gibraltar. Where is it? Located in the British territory of Gibraltar. It's off the southwestern tip of Europe, specifically the Iberian Peninsula for those of you who really want to look this up there's a visual of it look at that gigantic unbelievable structure that just comes out and the point is it's always there so for me when days where I don't think I'm mattering I can go back to wait a second what did you do today to communicate to people or organizations to make them think and feel so that they can maximize their true potential love it

That's good. So you know my rock edge of Walter? No, I want you to give me that sentence. I don't know if it's one sentence, but it's five things. That's great. It's not really success. It's like the behaviors that I think will result in success. If I just do these things every day, intentionally.

It's ask the right questions. Instead of having all the answers, it's listen for the best answers. So active listening, you know, if you're asking questions across your team, you're listening for patterns, you're listening for what's not. You're listening for what's not being said. You're listening for who's got a good inside or out of the box kind of way it looking at this. It's the best answer and it's almost never the first answer. Think about our biggest problems and opportunities.

Man, that one's tough for an activator and a doer who likes to measure success by busyness and here's how many meetings I was in today and here's how many emails I answered. Like I just woke up one day and realized no one pays me to answer emails. That's not what I get paid for. I get paid to create results and to empower a team to be responsible for delivering those results to the marketplace and adding value to small businesses across the country. I don't get paid to answer emails. That's just a thing I do. And in a Western world and a very, like, you know, doer society thinking gets undervalued quite a bit.

And so sometimes like just pulling away with a yellow pad, Dave talks about he does a citizen's lakehouse a lot. Just go a couple days, Yellowpad, and just be thinking and listening to, you know, positive inputs like podcast or, you know, books and the prey in and kind of going, all right, I've got to get up above all this and really think about our biggest problems or biggest opportunities. So ask the right questions, listen for the best answers, think about our biggest problems and opportunities, communicate the vision. And I think every leader has to be the one communicating the vision. Because if it's coming from within the ranks, then no one totally buys it if it's not coming from. the general, and then observe the impact of the plan and execution. And go, did the vision and the activity of the team results in what we hoped it would and the right outcomes?

If so, how do we do it more? If not, what do we need to change? And we go back with asking questions again, going, well, why didn't it do that? And it's just a loop and you just, you know, every day. Ask questions, listen, think, communicate the vision, and then observe and see how everybody's doing. You know, if I do those five things every day, I at least can leave the office at the end of the day going, I did all that. Some things were up, some things were down, but I feel like I've made a contribution. And I think that's important that everybody feels like they made a contribution.

And for leaders, it's hard because our job descriptions are just constantly wearing all these different hats and putting out fires. And it can just feel like survival and the urgency and, you know, the tyranny of kind of the grind. And so I don't know what, I mean, I think you've got to find your own thing. As Daniel and I started to really tap into the difficulties of leading a team when you're in survival mode, the conversation part for a while on a topic every small business leader needs to remember. Who you are and why you do what you do when things get tough. There are some days, and let's just be honest. I don't think we talk enough about leading in the tough times, whether it be

personal, medical issues, yeah, team member issues that you had nothing to do with and lightning bolts come your way, you can lose times, you can lose weeks, months of productivity, right? But you don't have to lose your vision, you don't have to lose the mission, you don't have to, you know, just life happens.

You know what's powerful about that? The myth is that your team is going to think, if our leader doesn't know what to do, we're not going to follow them. But when a leader says out loud in front of the team, I really don't know what to do here. You'd think they'd go, well, if you don't know what to do, we're not following you because you're clueless. But the truth is, people go,

we can trust this guy to tell us when he's saying he does know what to do, we can lean into it. Because when he doesn't know what to do, he's going to say it out loud and say, hey, what do you guys think. And you don't have to know what to do all the time to lead. You just have to lead. You know what I mean?

You know what I mean? That's a great point. and parenting has taught me that point, here's the reality. When a leader says, I don't know, but we're collectively, A, we're going to figure it out. B, we'll survive. We'll continue forward. Guess what? All that does is connect with them, like you said, from an authenticity standpoint, they go, I trust.

Here's why. They know when you don't know. Our kids generally know when we don't know. your followers, your team, they know generally when you don't know. So the worst thing the leader can do is act like he knows or she knows. You may fool them, as Lincoln said,

you can fool some of the people some of the time and not all the people all the time. I don't know if Lincoln actually said that. The guy gets attributed with more quotes. But, boy, whoever said it. As a young leader, I thought, okay, I've got to know everything now. And that pressure?

It's unbearable. Gosh. Yeah. So you were telling us a little bit about the young Daniel Tarty when did you begin to see real leadership growth? Because you've danced all around this, but I want to hone in on this.

Like, because leaders need to hear this. Yeah. Over time, you begin to, if you're self-aware and you really want to grow, you begin to get a clearer picture of who you really are and how you really should lead. I didn't really start growing as a leader. I mean, I had all these seeds kind of planted in my mind

from mentors and things I'd read, thought I was a leader. But I didn't figure out, I haven't figured it out. I didn't begin to figure out leadership until I was really broken. And it was teasing right after our oldest daughter was born just about seven years ago. And all this kind of culminated into not a crash, but just this like overwhelming sense of helplessness and feeling like I was not in control but really wanted to be in control of my emotions of how I felt every day.

and I just felt like I was losing it. And it just got my attention. And I think it was that season that really, it humbled me so much and made me realize that I really can't control anything. And it was out of that season that I started to appropriately frame what leadership really is about. And that's making wise decisions even when it's hard that serve the team and the results in the way.

the outcome of the, you know, that's going to drive the mission forward, whether it promotes your ego or not, you know? And so I think prior to that season, there's a lot of ego. It was, I want to be a leader because I want people to see me as a leader. I want to be a leader because it's typically something that's in the spotlight and there's all this buzz about it. And you see it in Dave's story too. I mean, when he crashed financially, that's when it got real. That's when he grew exponentially out of the season of pain. And I think every great leader has a season they can point to where they go, this was one of the most painful seasons of my life,

but I wouldn't change it because it got me to a place where I actually saw things as they are. And it busted my bubble enough that from that time forward the rest of my life, it's not saying. It's about the team, it's about the mission, it's about doing whatever it takes and not approaching it from a kind of an egocentric, like I'm going to build my own empire type of paradigm. Just to bring you the listener behind the scenes for a moment, I recall with Daniel my beginning on the podcast as I was trying to understand both heart and head. Daniel introduced an idea of someone, a mythical character he calls Entree Mike.

Yeah, so it's silly because who's Entree Mike. We just needed a person to represent the people that we're trying to serve. in the marketplace because otherwise it was just a customer ID number in a CRM database and that's so dehumanizing you know and so entree Mike is it's a real person's name because it reminds us we're working with and serving and building things for real people that have fears and hopes and dreams and so it keeps the humanity at play but what I'm most excited about and where entree leadership is going is building a community of on

intray mics that come together around the same entree leadership values. And we're seeing this through our coaching program for small business owners called All Access. But it's not just community. It's content and coaching and community all coming together in a way that any one of those things is good. But it's like, you know, if you think about content, like a book that's had an impact on your life, right? But if you add that great content to an experience you've had with a great coach who, who you're able to process what you're getting from the content out of the book and actually talk through it with a coach

and go, okay, I read the book, but here's my specific situation, what are you thinking that coach is speaking and challenging you, calling you up, holding you accountable, and then you wrap that in this bow of community of other people like you with similar values who are in the trenches as well. To me, that's what Entree leadership is all about. The vision is that we empower small business owners to grow themselves and their teams and their profits

it's through ongoing access to great content coaching and community. And so for a long time, we had great events, and people would come in and they would get good content, but then they kind of go back out on their own. And we were kicking ourselves when we would hear one of them threw in the towel and didn't make it because we're going, they had it. They had everything that it takes. They had a great product. They had a great service.

They even came to our event. What would you miss? And we realized that what we were missing was a system to, to walk with people over time so that they stay plugged in, so that they're not fighting on their own, so they're not isolated, but they have access to this content coaching community day in and day out.

And not only are they consuming it, and they're a recipient of that, but they're able to be a part of that community that's feeding it and adding value to other entrepreneurs and other business owners. And until you're at a place where you can teach what works to other people that are like you or in similar situations,

you know, I believe you don't fully understand understand it at the level that's possible. You know, that's really what mastery is, is you've learned it so well that you're actually able to turn around and mentor and guide and teach other people. So this community of entrepreneurs and business owners is just amazing to see them coming in and learning in areas where they need to learn, but then also bringing their strengths in and speaking life into their peers in areas where they are a master's, where they have figured things out.

And for us to be able to facilitate that conversation and, It's magical, and I'm excited. We're going to have 20,000 members in our coaching program by the year 2020. And we have 1,000 right now, and we've got a lot of work to do to get to that 20,000 mark. But we're going to get there because we're bringing people together who want to be a part of something, who are saying, my thing just as a small business owner is just a piece of this big puzzle called, you know, capitalism and free enterprise and this great American story. And to see these guys coming together and empowering each other is just fun.

It's awesome to be a part of. All right, this is fun. So you're picking the bill up, right? Yeah. Is this an official laundry business? Okay. Is that Ryan? I guess.

I feel like it should be a fringe benefit. It depends on if this makes it to air or not. That all depends on Eric, the producer. And you. I feel like I've done everything I can do. It would be good. I feel like I've done all. It's not going to work.

Now, you heard Daniel Tarty talk about all access. This is where content, coaching, and community all intersect within this amazing online group of leaders. It's called All Access. Now, again, we want you to dip your toe in with absolutely no obligation. And the way to do that is to go to Entreeleadership.com, enter your email address to join our newsletter. This is a great first step because once you join and subscribe the newsletter, we'll let you know about all the free webinars, free articles, other great free resources. And it's a way for you to really get a sense of what you're going to do.

all access could do for you to help you grow yourself, your team, and your profits. Also, I mentioned the 20 books, Entree Leadership that we're giving away for free. This is the number one New York Times bestselling book from Dave, and it's got 20 years of practical wisdom from the trenches, and it's free. We're going to give them away. Here's what you have to do. You go to this episode's post at Entreeleadership.com. It's episode 146. You go to the post for this show. The link to win the book is there. You fill out a few questions. Give us your email and a Twitter handle. We'll tweet the link out to you so you can get involved there and get submitted to win a free copy of Entree leadership. So make sure you take us up on that free offer. Well, this is a lot of fun. I told you at the top of the

podcast that we were doing our first ever business debt free scream. And this is fun. I want you to hang in for this. If you thought, well, I mean, fast forward through this, don't. This is a young woman who really defines Entree leadership. The story is inspiring. But at the end, We had her on her laptop and Skyping in. And so she takes it out into another room with three, four, and five-year-olds from her daycare. And they help her do the debt-free screen. This is great. Listen to Megan, great to have you on the line.

Thank you so much for hanging out with us. Hey, thanks for having me. I'm super excited. Well, this is a great story. So excited to share it. So let me fast forward and get you rolling in here and let our folks know what you're doing. Because in 2015, July, you came. on as a director of a daycare center. You were working for an owner, and shortly after that,

or maybe in the middle of all that, the owner went through some heavy-duty stuff, which caused some big financial problems. Describe that for us. The owner, she lost her husband in 2015, and shortly thereafter was diagnosed with cancer for like the third time in her lifetime, which I can't even wrap my head around. So she had to make kind of a quick exit from the business in order to be able to take care of her health. And so she was looking for something. somebody that could kind of step in and really take over the business. And so I was ready for a challenge at that point. Be careful what you pray for because I told the Lord, hey, I'm ready to take on another big challenge in my career, and he sure sent me one. So you become the director

and the owner is not involved. Still owns the business, but here you are, and you're dealing with some big financial issues. Give us a snapshot of what you were dealing with now taking over as director. Well, it was really interesting how the whole thing came together. So before she would even technically interview me, she wanted me to know what I was walking into. So I appreciated that from her. But I think she almost was trying to a little bit scare me off. But I had spent years in social services before that, so I'm used to working my tail off. So I walked in, and my first couple of weeks time here, I spent begging utilities to please not shut us off.

In fact, I will never forget we had Water Day here over the summer. And that day I got the mail as the kids were playing outside on this big water slide. I got a water shut off notice from the city. So, of course, I was on the phone and explaining the situation. And, you know, people were very sympathetic and really were very wonderful and trying to help and do everything in their power. So that was a huge blessing. But basically, it's just building the enrollment back up because when there was this time of, you know, no leadership, then we lost a bunch of kids. We lost teachers and things.

And so the school was definitely struggling when I came in. And so we had a lot of work to do from day one for sure. Okay, so back rent, utilities, credit cards, a lot of debt. Yes. And you start taking this on. What are some of the steps that you took to start paying this debt off? The playground outside was pretty rough looking. That was one of my first big challenges that I did.

We did some fundraising. We sold chocolate bars, all kinds of things, in order to do a real. rehab of the playground. We spent an entire Saturday out there with a couple of volunteer parents, a couple of my staff volunteered, my family were out there. And so we just overhauled the playground. And that made a huge difference, I think, in the enrollment, because that was definitely a barrier to having new enrollments. And just going classroom by classroom, talking to the teachers, asking, hey, what's been great about this place that we can try and bring back and what do you think should change? Because I was really blessed into coming into having several staff that had been here

multiple years and really cared about the place. So I think using them as a big asset was definitely something that I tapped into. Okay, so I'm hearing you brought in new revenues. You got enrollment up, that brought in new revenues, but that wasn't solely how you beat the debt, correct? Honestly, that was a big part of it because bringing in income, obviously, is huge just to be able to function. There was a couple of, actually multiple times over the summer and into the fall where payday came and I held my own personal check just to be able to make sure that my teachers' checks weren't bouncing. So mainly the big thing that I really did was I hit the road on the marketing and trying to get our numbers up. This is a mountain of problems that you had to work through.

And so what I'm hearing is, is you really got to it, you hustled, you improved the school. And enrollment grew, revenues grow, and you went after the debt really, really hard. And And this is the fun part of the story here, folks, because this is really entree leadership coming to fruition. You tackle the debt. You get rid of the debt. And today, as we do this recording, is your first day as the owner. How did that come about? Well, I'll tell you, it wasn't my plan when I walked in the door.

But she basically told me one day, either, so are you going to take this or am I closing it down? And I had put way too much of my blood, sweat, and tears. into this place to just let it fall. You know, I care about the teachers here, and they've all, you know, jumped on board with, you know, hey, let's really bring this place back to what it once was and what it can be again. And so I talked to my husband and he said, all right, well, you know, I'll back you 100%, let's do it. And so the last few months have been absolutely nuts with trying to get all the different things in place,

you know, negotiations between me and my landlord and between me and the now former owner and things. But yeah, today is actually my first day in the chair owning the place, and it's also my 30th birthday. Oh, wow. Congratulations. Happy birthday. Thank you. What a momentous occasion, 30 years of age. And you are now the owner of a business that you helped rescue, that you led the charge to rescue. And I got to ask you, Megan, has it really sunk in yet that you own a business debt-free? Probably not.

A business, by the way, that you're not. you know can work and has been working. I mean, the future is bright for you. Oh, yeah. I've gone from probably six employees to 15 to 16 employees now, and I'm getting ready to have to hire again, just to make sure that I'm staying within my regulations and ratios. Well, Megan, this is also exciting because this is the first time that we have ever done a debt-free scream on the Entree Leadership podcast, a debt-free business. And so you were the first leader to do this. So first, thank you for doing this and I'm told by Eric the producer that you have a special group of young people from the Little Rascals Christian Daycare Center that you're going to how what's going to happen right now

I think I know what's going to happen but I want you to tell our listeners what you're about ready to do okay well right now I've been doing the interview in my office closed door away from the craziness and so I've got my threes, fours and fives out here in the comments and so part of why I even contacted you guys was I saw this as a huge learning opportunity any kind of cool teaching opportunity that we can come up with. I am totally on board. So screaming, they can do. All right, Megan Huffman, the brand new owner of Little Raskles Christian Daycare Center,

paid off over $100,000 in about nine months. She's there with her three, four, and five-year-olds. Megan, let's hear a debt-free scream. All right, here we go, guys. Ready? One, two, three. Yes, there it is. The voices of innocence and the passion from the little ones,

hard to replicate that. Megan, that is so, so amazing. We're so proud of you. Thrill to hang out with you. And please pass our appreciation on to your team and the little ones for making this a special moment on the Entree Leadership podcast. I definitely will. I'm so glad that we were able to do this. And like I said, now I get to go have an awesome teaching moment with all my kids and talk about what the heck that just meant. Well, folks, this is the perfect, perfect, perfect resource to give you this month, especially when you heard that phone call with Megan Huffman, who is debt-free. Can you imagine the future that young lady has in front of her? And that guide this month is the Entree Leader's Guide to Running Debt-Free Businesses.

The Entree Leader's Guide to Running a Debt-Free Business. You can actually do this. So, it's a PDF download. It features case studies of how they became and how they run debt-free. So this is not a bunch of mumbo-jumbo. This is like a actual playbook. It's a PDF very easy to get. A couple ways to get it. First is you can text all one word, be debt free.

Be debt free. You text that to 33-4-44-text the phrase, be debt-free. And you can get the PDF. The other way to go is entreleadership.com slash podcast. Obviously this episode 146, we'll have a link in there. for you. You want to take us up on this because again, can you imagine? I want you just for one moment to stop. You're listening to this podcast. Who knows what you're doing? But I want you for just one moment. If you're running a business, you're a leader in a business, how would it change the game

if you were debt-free? If you had a huge emergency fund or just an adequate emergency fund, how would it change your decision-making? What could it be like? I think when you ask yourself that question, I think you pretty quickly realize that it's worth it. So take us up on this. The Entree leader's guide to running a debt-free business, text the word be debt-free to 33444 or go to ontrae Leadership.com slash podcast. Click on this episode 146 and we have a link there for you. We love our friends at InfusionSoft. They continue to give you great resources. Their entire mission, Eric the producer and I went out there, met the people, great people. Their entire mission is to help you, the small business leader.

to help you win. So they've got a great tool to help you with your sales team. This is huge. So I talked to Chad Kirby. He was in studio and I said, Chad, explain to us what this resource is and how this will help people

in such a vital area of their company. This is what he had to say. Chad, every organization, I don't care what you do. Non-profit, for-profit, you've got to sell something. You're selling something. Finding good salespeople.

It's so crucial. Not always easy. No, it's one of the greatest challenges that entrepreneurs face because they have to attract the right person to sell the product because everything they've worked for. Everything they've built comes down in the selling of that product. And if it's not sold in the right way, Ken, then it can destroy everything, including their brand, including everything they've worked so hard to build. And so the question that the entrepreneurs have is, wait a second, then how do we? I get that right salesperson because I'm ready to take that next step and hire them, but what do I do

to make sure I get the right one? And so what we've done is we've created an e-book that is a sales team hiring guide and it walks you through what you need to do to make sure you get that right sales individual. And so it has things, Ken, like seven things to look for in a quality resume, five questions to ask on a phone screening interview, five questions to ask references about those individuals. And these questions and this guide will take you through the process to make sure you get that ideal candidate. Our thanks to Chad Kirby and so folks, we want you to dive in on this resource. Go to infusionsoft.com slash sales guide. Infusionsoft.com slash sales guide or you can click

the Infusionsoft link in this episode's show notes. Well, it's unbelievable. I'm looking at my calendar right here, Eric, and the summit event is upon us. May 22 to 25 at the Dallas Omni Hotel. And it is going to be unbelievable. 43rd President of the United States, George W. Bush, joining Dave Ramsey, Sethcote, Jim Collins, Dr. Henry Cloud, Pat Lynch, and Chris Hogan, and Christy Wright,

Entreeleadership.com slash summit. To learn more about the event. It's going to be an absolute blast. everything better in Texas. That's what they say. It's what Texas people say. So we'll see. It's going to be a great, great event.

On behalf of our producer, Eric Anthony and the entire Entree leadership team. Thank you so much for listening. We'll talk with you again. Very soon.