EntreLeadership - #178: Steve Graves—7 Key Strategies for 2017

Episode Date: December 19, 2016

Want to make 2017 the best year yet? Then listen in, because organizational strategist, social innovator and executive coach Steve Graves joins us to share his practical steps for winning next year. Whether you are a start-up, a growing enterprise, or ready to pass the keys to the next generation, this episode is for you.  entreleadership.com/podcast Goal Tracker Tool Infusionsoft's Target Market Worksheet EntreLeadership Spring Events 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 for leaders. Thank you so much for joining the conversation. Unbelievable. I can't believe this year is almost over. And this episode is dedicated to that idea, that the new year is right around the corner.

Our special guest today is Dr. Steve Graves. You've probably not heard of him, but you will be glad by the end of this episode that I've introduced you to Steve. I'll tell you about him. I have a personal relationship with him, and I know he's going to deliver the goods for you, so I can't wait for this. We also have some great resources for you. We're going to bring something back that was wildly popular at the first of this year, January of this year, and that's our goal tracker tool. I'll tell you more about that. And Infusionsoft has some great stuff for you. We're going to announce new events coming out in the spring of 17. So all that coming to you.

then we have a special bonus teaching lesson from Dave Ramsey, teaching our entire company on excellence in the ordinary. So the episode is jam-packed. Let's get right to it. Dr. Stephen Graves is a strategist, an executive coach. He has authored 12 books. I know Steve for many years ago when I worked with John Maxwell. And he was coaching our leadership team at the John Maxwell leadership organization. I knew he was legit the first time he walked in the room, disarming, authentic, very wise. And I allude to this in the conversation, but I bring it up because I think this is so vital. And so I reached out to Steve and I said, hey, I want you to kind of touch on some things that every leader needs to kind of check on, be thinking about, prepare for, create that really

important checklist as we look back on this year and look forward to next year. Because Steve has done this for me and many, many young leaders over the years. And it has always been something that has been wildly valuable to me. And so he said, sure. So he comes up with seven things that we're going to walk you through, that if you do these seven things and you measure these seven things, you got a great chance of having a fantastic year in 2017, both personally and professionally. And so let's get right to it. I think you're going to love this. Here's my conversation with Steve Graves. Well, Steve, this was a great treat. I have had the privilege to know you for a long time and sat under your advice and wisdom and you help so many CEOs and organizations win big.

And here we are literally staring at 2017. It's unbelievable. I know many people are listening in right now and they're going, wow, where did the year ago, just like we are as we think about that? And so we're going to spend some time talking about seven key strategies, not just principles, but these are practical things that you advise leaders on and organizations as they look back for 2016 and just kind of glance and then say, all right, here's what I've got to do to get ready for 2017. So this is going to be fun. The first one you say is get clear and confident on your core, C-O-R-E. I want you to explain that. What is our core when we look at our business? Yeah. So, you know, there's so many things that every business leader can look at. There's so many noises that you can listen to,

so many voices you can hear. And one of the big things is actually picking out what you're going to put your focus on. You know, where you're going to drive energy and resources toward. And so one of the things that I actually have used for years and years is something called a core. And what the core is there's four concepts. And what you want to think of is you want to think of a car with four wheels. They're interdependent. It's like a four-wheel drive vehicle.

There's four concepts that if I'm not watching and I'm not aware and keeping an eye on these four core, ideas, okay, I can have a blowout. And all it takes is one wheel to blow out and I can go on the ditch. Okay. Now, conversely, it takes all four of them to actually be full of air, balanced well, and in alignment for me to be speeding down the HOV lane, you know, doing my thing, running somewhere, you know, trying to get to a meeting. The four ideas are this. My offering, my customer, my financials, and my people. Every single strategy, literally, I had two conversations with two clients earlier this morning, both in New York, and both of them were telling me about things you're working on for the next two years,

and we ran all of their stuff through these four ideas. It's the core. It's my offering, my customer, my financials, and my people. And so the idea would be, is I need to ask myself of next year all the strategies and the innovations and the plans, how have I run those through my offering, my customer, my financials, and my people. And I just need to be really clear about that. I need to be confident about that.

And if I'm not confident or clear, I need to know where I'm not. You know, a leader can actually operate in a confusing, foggy state for a little bit, for a season. But you can't stay there. You've got to be able to come out of it. So those four ideas, you know, and so, for example, for example, I've got to know if I'm trying to scale my business. You know, like if my big deal this next year is to scale, I mean, I'm up off the ground, I'm rolling, I've launched, but it's time to scale. Well, you're not going to scale any business without systems and processes. You have to have them.

And so one of the things I've got to answer this year is part of my offerings is going to have to have more systems and processes. And guess what? I'm going to have money and resources and people to build systems and processes. So that's kind of how the idea of the core operates. Does that make sense? Yeah, it's great. So let's play that out. Because let's say we've got a big idea.

So let's say we're small business and we say, all right, we want to scale. We want to grow by X percent next year. we want to do this and do this. And so you're saying, okay, that's great. Appreciate that. Love it. That's awesome. But you better run it through these four channels, if you will, or funnels of your course. So when someone says, all right, and if you were sitting with them and you said, okay, great, love that you you want to grow 25 percent. But let's look at your offering. I know what you mean by that, but give us an example. What are we looking at? Yeah, totally. So for example, if you want to grow your business and, you know, you have this number that you say 25 percent is our stretch number,

our aspirational top line growth number, then the question is, do you have to alter your offering at all? Or are you simply going to scale the same thing, just more locations, more customers, more markets, more segments, more wallet share, whatever? Or do you have to actually have another offering? So if you're in the restaurant business, you might say, you know what, I think I'm going to start opening for breakfast.

Or I think we're going to start catering. Or I think what we're going to do is we're going to have another location. Well, that's not just like doing more of the same thing. that's your offering is taking a little bit of an adjustment and so then you say what about your customer say well is it the same customer is just going to buy more is that where you're going to get your 25% from or you're going to try to actually add on to your customer group you know one of the interesting things if an organization is more than 20 or 25 years old non-profit or for profit it doesn't matter if you're more than 20 or 25 years old one of the biggest challenges you're

facing is how do you maintain and honor and respect and still leverage you're you're your legacy customer and at the same time how do you reach out recruit and kind of engage the next generation customer those are two different customer groups that might require two different offerings if that makes any sense and so so what you're doing is you're simply running your entire business thinking through these four things because any one of these any one of these could blow out and you have a blow out in any one of the core ideas it could send you to the ditch conversely though again, you have to have all four of them running well to be aligned. Yeah, that's good. All right. Now, I want to stay here before we move to number two. Okay. Because you said something earlier that I think if we're not

careful, it's words and sentences that we've heard before and we understand when we hear Steve Graves say it. But I was talking with a friend of mine who is an entrepreneur and his business is growing and they're going really well. But they're in that, you know, honeymoon out of the startup phase where they got a good concept and it's going well, but now they've grown to a point where, you know, that small team can't, it just doesn't work. And you've got to actually get systems and processes in place. And you said that. You've got to have processes and systems to scale. I'd go back a step and so you've got to have processes and systems to sustain before you can think about scaling. And I think we miss that sometimes, Steve, and you get that. And so I want you to speak to this

because here's where I'm going, Steve. I want you to speak to the importance of, hey, as you looked at 2017, we may have some people listening that don't need to think about scaling and growing, but need to think about reinforcing or creating processes and systems that will allow them to experience great growth maybe two, three years down the road. Am I correct? Yeah, totally. You're totally on top of that one, Ken. I mean, actually, a couple of years ago, I had one of my core clients. I usually keep a client base of a couple of huge global public companies, a number of family companies in the middle and then a whole bunch of gun slinging entrepreneurs on the right side. They're just a blast, just a ton of fun.

Well, one of my family held businesses was about a 60, 80, $100 million business. And you know what? They had grown like crazy for about three or four years. And their strategy for the entire year in that one year, a couple years ago, was to hit pause. Their whole strategy wasn't a growth strategy. It was what you called kind of a reinforcement or a sustainability or a re-trenching themselves. And so their whole strategy that year was to hit pause to let, it wasn't to let their cash catch up with them. They had cash running everywhere.

It was to let their leadership engine catch up with them and to let their systems and processes of delivering their offering. See, here's the deal. An offering is where I say, I'll do this, but I need you to exchange your money or your time. And you buy that from me. Well, I can fool you one time. I can kind of fool you once with either incentives or I can do something to kind of trick the system once. But you know what? I can't do that forever.

And at the end of the day, if what you're doing, if my offering is not really worth it and I'm not really delivering on the promise and all of that, then guess what? You're not going to have loyalty to me. You're leaving me as soon as somebody moves in right next to me. And so your thought is absolutely nailing it. It's crucial that an organization have its systems, its problems, it's private. processes, its leadership developing engine, all those things, your culture, all that stuff. That has to be actually a key part of who you are, not just spinning out this up and to the right every year, every year, every year, every year. I mean, it's very, very common for organizations

to have a slowdown year. And the slowdown year is actually a rebuild year where they're re-fortifying themselves. Very common. Yeah. It's really an eye on the long haul, you know, not just the, hey, we're winning big right now. Okay. Yeah, totally. Go to move forward. folks. So just a quick review, get clear and confident on your core. Your core is your offering, your customer, your financial, your people. Okay. Number two, Steve says you got to craft an energetic vision, then organize for sprints to get there. Okay, we get that, Steve, but what does that look like in a business calendar? What does a sprint look like that would help us achieve this? Yeah. Every sprint has to be tied to something that has energy in front of me. There has to be a goal line.

there has to be a trophy, there has to be a scorecard, there has to be something. There has to be something that says this is what we're doing this whole year for, you know. I mean, just think a marathon runner or anything, you know. And so it's up to leadership to make sure that there's a vision that has energy around it. And the energy around it has to be organic. It can't be something that I'm propping up because I'm telling everybody, because I own the whole company, and I'm just kind of bullying myself through and making people have, it has to hold a its own energy. It has to. You know, I mean, a good vision has its own power source. It just

sets inside it is the idea. Well, once you have that in place, okay, then what happens is you have to organize for sprints. It's just really important, and I've seen this to be so effective, especially in small to medium-sized businesses. And you can set the sprints. They can be weekly. They can be twice a month. They can be monthly, quarterly. But you have to set your entire organization and design against it. I love to say this statement. Every organization's perfectly designed to get the results it gets. Every organization's perfectly designed to get the results it gets. Okay.

Well, you know, if your organization is always logjamming itself because of certain people, guess what? You're to organize that way. If you have to figure out the solution. Well, if you want people to run hard, you have to organize a sprint mentality. And so what you do is you engineer, you design your system for this. Here's what we're going to do, folks. we're going to absolutely for the next month or the next six weeks, here's what we're all going to do.

And everybody runs against that. And then you post the score. How did we do? And then you do another one. But the thing that's holding me, it's this big vision that has energy that's well down path. You know, I mean, look, that's what parents do. To be honest, Ken, you know, any parent, this is how we live. This is what we do every day.

That's right. You know, we have this picture of our kids down path. We want them to be fully engaged, competent, capable adults. you know, on their own. And then we just run these sprints with them. We just run this series of sprints. You know, and when they're little, the sprints feel like they're daily. It's almost hourly, almost maybe.

So that's the idea. Yeah. You know, Steve, I'm listening to you talk about this, and I want to pull something out and make sure leaders catch something. There is a beautiful derivative of what you're talking about here with this crafting a vision and organizing sprints and then publicly posting scores. I love that. Not just because I'm a competitive guy.

But the derivative of this is, is not just moving everybody, everybody kind of sees where we're at and we kind of get some momentum, all that. But there are times where there are people that just shouldn't be in the organization. And when you start posting scores, it kind of separates the people who are really into this. The people who are, okay, I don't like losing, but I'm not quitting. I'm going to get it next month. But there are some people who just don't like scorekeeping. And I think a positive derivative of this, and I want you to verify or disagree with me and help me understand. this, but I think it's important that you can help move people out of the organizations who

just simply don't like to be, there to be watermarks and for you to keep score. Is that right? Yeah, it's totally right, Ken. I mean, I, and I believe this for a long time, that typically your rule on this is you want to hire slow and fire fast. Usually, nonprofits and entrepreneurs do the opposite. What we do is we hire fast and we fire slow is generally our rule, which is not the right answer. The right answer is to hire slow and fire fast. as a general rule. Okay. When you post a scorecard, you're allowing data to begin to build a trend line.

A data point is not a trend line. But once you post it once and then post it twice and post it three times and all of a sudden, guess what? You find out that old Steve over here really is not a guy who either I don't have the ability, I don't have the focus, I don't have the interest and energy. I want to do something else. But now you have a trend line to come and talk to me about. So couldn't agree more. This actually does exactly what you said.

It provides some tremendous data for me to know what to do with the individual contributors and performers in my team. All right, folks. Number three, test bravely, love that, and pivot often. All right, you've got to unpack this because this is really rich. Yeah, well, here's the deal. I have a bias. The bias that I believe is that we live in what I call a strategy 3.0 world. strategy 2.0 is the old world where I would simply craft this long-term vision.

I would reach out in the future and I would imagine where I want to be 10 years some now. Or if you were FedEx, FedEx actually had a 100-year plan years and decades ago. And so you would reach out to this future state. You would paint the picture and then you simply reverse engineer. You put your head down and all you do is execute slash out-execute your competitor. Well, that was a great idea and a great plan about 20. 20 or 30 years ago, maybe even 15 years ago. Okay.

In today's world, there is so much competition, there's so much innovation, there's so much global intelligence that's taking place, that what I have to do is I have to learn how to compete a lot faster. I have to learn how to be agile, and I have to learn how to adapt and pivot. So, in order for me to be able to do that, I have to basically make sure that I'm really testing my ideas. You know, the old idea where I figure out everything and then I finally come out and say, okay, guys, just so you know, what I've been doing the last year and a half, hold up in this closet over here is figuring out where we need to go next, you know, what our next big idea ought to be. Okay.

That is such an old strategy 2.0 model. The new world is literally iterating on itself nonstop. That's how Silicon Valley lives. That's how it lives. That's how retail is. That's how Amazon works. That's how Google works. And so in a small business format, it still works the exact same way.

You get you two or three big ideas that you know you want to test. You put some money against it, some people against it. You throw time, money, resource against it. And you say, okay, you know what? We're going to do this. We're going to try drilling. You know, we're going to test them. And then what we're going to do is as we get data, we're going to pivot.

I had a client a year ago who was trying to figure out their global solution a lot better. And I said, listen, you know what I would do if it would be? I would quit trying to do these perfect, isolated test where you're basically trying to do this one oil drill one at a time and just get out there and start drilling some, man. Every wildcat and oil group I know of, you know what, they hit some, they miss some. But if you're not drilling a few of them,

you're not going to hit every one of them. And so just test boldly. I mean, put some resources against them. Test it. And then when you get the data, pivot, pause it, double down on it, try it again? Because then what's happened is this. You then have moved an idea is so much closer to being able to go to market than ever. Does that make sense? Yeah, absolutely does. And I think a key

point here that you would advise folks is when you test, plan to test. So that way, you know, hey, this could strike it and man, we're celebrating. If it doesn't, we plan for it. So it's not the end of the world. We didn't break the bank or the company on this, if you will. And now we're going to pivot. We're going to see what we learn from it and then move forward. Yeah, absolutely. You know, it's back to that statement we said earlier. Every organization is perfectly designed to get the results it gets. If you really want some innovation happening, you have to resource it.

You have to put money against it and time and energy. Otherwise, it's not going to happen. And the old world of me being able to weather that not happening wasn't a big deal. In the new world, there's somebody out there sitting down right now. And they're trying to figure out how to compete in my business, in my space, with my product and service offering. And I'm not even thinking about them. That's right. You know, so what I have to do is I have to be much more agile.

I have to be much more adaptable and a lot faster. And the speed has to be quicker from me having an idea to where I can test it out. All right. Number four is it's just a warning. It's vigilance. You say we need to watch our cash and culture. Yeah. I mean, you know, Ken, this is the one that I repeatedly go back to.

You know, I don't four or five small businesses myself, along with my coaching. executives and business owners, and I do this myself. Of all the things going on, it's up to me to make sure that I have a really good eye on my cash and on my culture. And it's up to me to say, you know what, both of those things are really in a healthy state or, you know what, it's not very healthy right now. And to the degree that my cash is not healthy, I better have me a plan, man. Because it's not, businesses don't go out because people aren't working hard or because there's not a good idea. They go out most of the time because of cash. There's just not a good plan to cash myself forward to whether the turn or whether the market or whatever. And so

the business leader, the business owner has got to make sure that there's a system in place. I have a mechanism in place to actually be looking at my cash and looking at my culture. And I can't outsource either one of those. I can't. Now, it's very possible as a business owner for me to be in a season where I'm not as operationally involved as maybe I was in a previous season of my life. And that's fine. That's okay. But if I still own the business, I've got to make sure that there's a mechanism in place that I can get a really quick eye on my cash and on my culture.

And I know whether those are in a healthy place or not. Yeah, that's good. All right. Number five is feed the lead dog. I think that's fairly obvious, but I'm going to let you unpack that in your vernacular. You know, Ken, it's this. I mean, we all know the story and the image of kind of the whole iditarod, the dog sled teams. And what they do is they basically, they find a dog out front that basically is going to be kind of the dog that carries the weight of leadership, that carries the weight of saying, hey, you know, let's go this direction.

Let's take this risk. At the end of the day, every leader really only has a pretty simple job. it's your job to figure out where we're going and not going at what speed at what risk it's my job if i own the business if i own the business or if i'm the CEO or if i'm the president of the business it's my job as long with whoever else is the co-owner with me to figure out i'm going this way not that way i'm going there not there at what speed i don't want to be too far behind the market or too far ahead of the market bad news either on either one of those okay at what speed at what risk? Do I really want to risk the whole farm on this one? Or am I not risking enough on

this one? Okay. Well, so what I want to do is this. I need to find those people in my organization that are what other people, you've heard of the people use the term carrying the water. Well, you know, not everybody carries the same amount of water organizationally. It doesn't mean they're not all great people. It doesn't mean their value and worth under God is not the same. You know, this has nothing to do with their significance. This has to do with their organizational role that they're playing. If you don't know who your lead dogs are, figure that out, make sure you know. And the number two, make sure you're feeding and water in those dogs, man.

And I don't mean to be, you know, I'm not trying to have a bad image going here. But it's very common, it's very, very common for us to overlook those people who are really carrying the heavy weight of delivering on the promise of our organization. You know, and what you want to do is this. You want to feed them. Do not starve them to death. Do not starve them and don't keep them away from water because here's what will happen. They'll start looking at themselves and their spouses say, man, what's going on?

You know, you're doing most of the work. You're doing all this. And all of a sudden you have a disgruntled employee who's not just another employee. They're your key person, man. And so I'm not saying you have to overpay them, but just make sure you're not starving them. Yeah. Reward them. Now, this is very interesting.

When you talk about rewards and staying with this analogy, I mean, it's, I think it's true, Steve. that your top producers already have a strong appetite, right? Whether they come by that naturally, whether it's been developed in them, they already have a stronger appetite than the average performer. That's a fact. Now, when we feed top performers right or feed them well, then it's just like any nutritionist will tell you, you treat your body like a machine, right?

And you feed yourself well. you create a healthy appetite and an even stronger appetite. I mean, if you talk to anybody about weight loss, they're going to tell you, well, eat four to six small meals a day. I think that's pretty universal. Why? Because you're trying to get that metabolism, that appetite functioning properly, the right foods, and then creating what is essentially a stronger metabolism.

I think there's a principle here, correct? Yeah, totally, totally true. And there's a general rule, Ken, we usually know who's carrying the water. we know who the lead dogs are. We know who the people are that are really carrying the weight organizationally. And all we're saying is this, whatever else I do, just make sure that I actually am taking care of those people, proportionate to the level of organizational value they're contributing. Yeah. Recognition is huge.

It's not always reward. Recognition sometimes is just as, if not more valuable than the reward. Oh, yeah, totally, totally. I mean, you know, every year a whole bunch of people will do all kinds of surveys. and every year, every single year. And every year we find out that money is usually the second big motivator. It's not the first. It's always the second.

I mean, it's not way down the line. It's always number two. But the number one thing that motivates people relative to their work and their career is, am I really making a contribution? And as it being noticed, and do the people around me are they affirming what I'm doing? You know, I'm really a contributor is the idea. Yeah, affirmation is a super drug leaders, figured out and use it. All right.

We're going to keep moving here. This is important. We're going to look at personal growth here. Lead and manage yourself. This is important. But again, sometimes it's the last thing that high achievers, you know, they may be going for a season. They forget about themselves and they get overheated. And this is not what we want.

Yeah. Yeah. You know, I shifted probably five or six years ago, Ken, in most of my work, I've really brought some focus and attention to the idea of leading and managing yourself. Because what happens is, is the natural. gravity, the gravitational pull of the organization, most organizations, they're going to get out of me what it is they're paying me to do. It's up to me. It's up to me to make sure I'm managing myself. It's up to me to be leading and growing myself at the same rate that the organization

is getting its contribution from me. What I did is I first thought about this when I was remembering, maybe it was two Olympics back, and I was watching the synchronized swimmers. And if you just picture the synchronized swimmers. They both, actually, they look alike most of the time. They're same size, same body style, same everything. The divers, I'm sorry, the synchronized. They walk up the steps at the same time. They walk out to the platform.

They walk out in spring. They stand there, and then they spin. And it's just like one beautiful motion. Well, what happens is, is there's two people. There's actually two people doing something, but there's only one scorecard. When the judges give the score, they don't say, hey, synchronized diver on the left. You get to stay in the person on the right. go. They don't do that. There's only one score. And at the end of the day, a leader's real score

is not just what I'm doing to lead you and what I'm doing to contribute to the company. It's what I'm doing to actually lead me and manage me because that's how I win over time. Most leaders end up changing their address throughout their life. You know, I mean, look how many times entrepreneurs are going to be doing something different 10 years from now. And what you want to do is make sure that you're grown who you are as a person, as a leader. Just grow the constitution of your own individual person, not just a superficial attachment thing here or there. And so that's the idea of growing who you are as a person. And actually, you know, Ken, on that one, something that's happened in the last few years

is something called reverse mentoring. And that's a huge thing. You know, any person that's a baby boomer, any leader that owns a business that's a baby boomer, there's a really good chance that they're practicing reverse mentoring all the time with their kids or grandkids because their kids and grandkids are showing them how to operate in a digital social world. Well, just keep that mindset going in your whole business. Just say, you know what, I'm going to learn from these millennials.

I'm going to learn how to do some things. I'm going to learn how to take more risk or I'm going to learn how to do whatever. That's good. All right. Final one here as we look at seven things that you need to be doing for your organization for 2017. Don't be a lone wolf. I love this. Great analogy.

We get it. But unpack it. What does it mean to us? Well, you know, the good news about sole proprietors, And the good news about entrepreneurs is this. If it wasn't for that group of people, we wouldn't have a lot going on. Because that's the group of people that have the wiring, the calling, the passion, the energy, the resources to go, what I call from zero to one. That's the group of people that take us from nothing to something.

They take us from the empty whiteboard to a full whiteboard, or they take us from just an empty lot to a building that's absolutely cranking out all kind of productivity. Now, the downside is that often that same skill set doesn't really know how to work alongside other people as well. And so I might be more wired as a sole proprietor to actually just get stuff done. And it is just easier if I do it myself in the audio and all that kind of, you know, you've heard all those statements along the line. But there's some real downsides of me living a life of a lone wolf. And what I've got to do, and I'm not saying you've got to split up the ownership of your company and partner. I am saying, though, is that make sure if you're a lone wolf wiring, if you're a person that kind of bends and leans toward being a lone wolf wired, make sure you figure out how to build

some kind of community somewhere, somehow, into your overall system. We just win. We just all win more and better when we have a group of people around us kind of in some kind of community. And so the reason I make this such a big deal is because it runs against a grain. a little bit. The very wiring, the fact that I can get stuff done by myself, I don't need a big group of people around me, cheering me on, I can just go get it done. That's awesome. That's awesome. Well, I've got to make sure that that doesn't just continually feed me into a place where all of a sudden I really find myself as an isolated, very lonely leader. I work with a lot of CEOs. I've worked with hundreds upon hundreds upon hundreds of CEOs in the last three decades, just hundreds

upon them. I've worked with guys who are managing and leading $100 billion companies all the way down to $10 million or a million. One of the things that happens is this, leadership can become really, really lonely. But it's part of the task. It's part of the job. You know, being a business owner or being a CEO or being a president of a company, because, you know what? You're doing things that nobody else has to really think about and do. So that's the offset. I just got to make sure that I don't live my whole year. as a lone wolf. Find me some community somewhere. That's the idea. Yeah, that is absolutely spot on. Steve, four, I let you go. And you've talked so much to us here that is so applicable from a

corporate setting, from your organization, and then a lot of personal stuff as well. And I want to kind of end our conversation on a personal challenge from you. Several years in a row, I had the opportunity, and I think you just did it because you were very, very kind. And I don't know if you offer this on your website, but this is how I'm teeing it up, folks. But for years, at the very end of the year, I would get an, it's essentially a worksheet of things that Steve would ask several young leaders, guys that he was pouring into, and I was blessed to be one of those. And you would kind of walk us through a series of questions, I'll put it, as a form of reflection and looking back on the current year with a mind towards improving and planning for subsequent

years to come. And it was a wonderful exercise, always challenging. I know you can't reveal it all now. If you do offer on the website, talk about it. But I want you to summarize the experience that it creates and maybe give us some things that we could do and why it's so important. Yeah, yeah, great. Thanks, Ken. Thanks for isolating that. Yeah, you know, years and years ago, I started, and what I tried to do is this. And I don't even remember who urged me to do this, Ken, actually. It was, I didn't cook it up myself. Some friend or mentor actually urged me to do it as well. But I try to take some time during the holiday season, some time between Thanksgiving and the end of the year or the first week of January sometime. And I try to take some time where I

basically do two things. I look over my shoulder at the year that has gone by, the year that I've just lived, and then I try to look forward to the year coming up. And I try to look over my shoulder first, and I try to say, you know what, what really worked well in the last year? Where did I have a lot of momentum? Where did I have some tailwinds? What am I proud of? What am I not proud of? What needs to be changed? You know, what needs to be added? What needs to be stopped? You know, Some people do the start, stop, continue. Start this, stop, that continue that. Some people do different things.

And actually, I don't use the same model or the same toolkit every year, but the idea is simply this. I'm going to look over my shoulder at the year behind me, and I'm going to basically do an assessment. I'm going to do a scorecard. I'm going to take some evaluation. I'm going to look at it and say, how did it go? And then what I'm going to do is this.

I'm going to look forward, and I'm going to ask myself, if I could really place some bets. You know, if I could really put some energies and some resources anywhere, where do I really want those things to be? You know, sometimes it might be relational things. I need to double down on some relationships. You know, sometimes it could be financial. It could be, you know, I just need to get my financial house in order. There's nothing more important this next year than me really getting some stability to my financial world. Entrepreneurs are up and down with our finances.

We are. We know that. That's what makes us great. But, gosh, it can be tough to live with. And so maybe my thing this next year is to bring some financial stability. So then I say, great, how am I going to do that? And so what I'll do is this. I'll just spend and I'll just carve out.

And this is not just some, you know, three-minute yaw-ya thing. This is where I'll take, man, I might take a half a day or an evening or a Saturday morning or something. And I might go off to the river. I love to fly fish. I might go off to the river and stand on the river for two hours and then go stand on the bank with a pad or my computer or something. It just takes some notes. But what I'm doing is this. I'm doing what every business owner understands,

which is there's a difference working in my business and on my business. Okay. Every year, I'm just working in my business. I'm just like showing up and doing, I'm just, I look like a man that's just going crazy every day. That's what we all do. We're just in our business working hard. Okay. Well, this is the time for me to stop and say, I'm going to work on my business in life.

And I'm going to think about it. I'm going to look over my shoulder and then I'm going to look forward to the year ahead of me. So that's the idea. It's really good stuff. Great encouragement here. from Steve folks. And Steve, I know you've got tons of resources that'll help small business owners, Stephen R.graves.com. That's Stephen with a P.H.E.N. Steven R. Graves.com. And Steve, give us a sample of things because you're offering our listeners, and we're grateful of this.

40% off of anything they purchase on your website through January 7. We appreciate that. The discount code is on-trade leadership. I'll remind you about that in just a minute. But, Steve, tell us some of the things that they can get that will help them win in 2017 and beyond. Yeah, great. Thanks, Ken. Two things. One is, is every week I write a weekly article, weekly blog that's free. And then I also have a group of short books that I've written around some of these topics. I have three big themes that basically harness all of my thinking and writing. One is strategy, one is leadership, and one is impact. Those three things, usually one of those three themes or some combination of those three themes are going to drive my weekly article or my weekly blog and then also the books. And you'll see some books on there that some of those. those, you know, not all I'm going to help you, but some of those could be really helpful for entrepreneurs. Yeah, I like that. I got to tell you, really good strategy.

Executed by great leadership is going to be a huge impact. You like that? You like what I did there, Steve? I love it. I love it. You brought it all together. I'm paying attention. I'm paying attention.

I'm taking notes. Hey, Steve, you've been a friend for a long time, and now you are a friend to the Entree leadership audience. I know that they're better for it. I'm better for it. We appreciate you hanging out with us. Thanks, Ken. It's been a lot of fun. Thanks so much.

Hey, we want to thank Steve for his time and also this special offer for you podcast listeners. I'm always looking to get the goodies for you. And so the website again is Stephen. That's S-T-E-P-H-E-N-R-Graves.G-R-A-V-E-S.com. Stephen R-Graves.com. He's offering you all 40% off of any of the resources at his website from now until January the 7th. simple. If you get anything, just make sure you type in the code, Entree Leadership, at checkout,

and you'll get the special offer. And one other note, Steve says something at the very end of our conversation about not being a lone wolf and how important it is to not allow that to happen, to become isolated. And really the antidote to becoming a lone wolf to becoming isolated is community. And we don't talk a lot about it. We don't pitch it a lot because it's such an amazing community. and when people get a wind of it and they check it out, I'm talking about all access, our amazing community here within the Entree Leadership Tribe, people just, they get in it and they go, man, this is unbelievable. And this is an ever-growing community.

And we want you to just check it out. We call it all access, as I said. And in this community, we're talking about world-class coaching from our team with weekly sessions, direct access for you to talk to our coaches on a one-on-one situation. The community comes alive in these mastermind peer groups. There's so many online business tools, I dare not list them. But this is an amazing, amazing opportunity for you to just kick the tires. So go to entreleadership.com slash all access.

Entreeleadership.com slash all access. And if nothing, I'll sign up for the free newsletter and learn about how this community can help you. Because this is a monthly deep dive designed to make you better. And it's working big time, folks. So there it is, all access. It's the next level with what we're doing here. So I want you to check that out. And I thought when Steve mentioned that, it just made me think that that's why all access matters so very much.

Hey, folks, I mentioned that we were going to bring back one of our most popular resources that we've given to you for free this year. It's the gold tracker tool. We debuted it, gave it to you in January of 2016. And because we're looking at a new year, we thought, let's bring this back. because there's so many of you that have joined the conversation since then, even if you heard about it and you didn't take us up on it, you really need to do this. Folks, again, when we give you stuff,

let me just tell you something right now. We're not asking you to buy anything. So if you hear me talk about these things every month that you've never taken us up on it, why wouldn't you do it one time? You listen to me, interview these people every month. You keep coming back. So it means you don't think I'm a buffoon. So why wouldn't you try out some of these resources?

I'm not just doing this. Like, this stuff works. Our team uses this stuff. The goal tracker tool. I mean, this is something you have got to be thinking about if you haven't already. And if you started right now on goals, plug them into this tool. It's only going to make it better. Here's what we know about goals.

They have to be specific. They've got to be measurable. They've got to have a time limit. They've got to be yours for heaven's sakes. You've got to own them. And they need to be written down. So this goal setting tool is going to help your, team get into this process. They've all heard the word goal. They've probably written goals down

at some point in their life. But have they ever really truly practiced goal setting? It's going to help you cast a vision. It's going to help your team get into the process. So they have some ownership, some skin in the game. They have some experience with this. So here's the deal. It's a free resource. It's so practical and it's absolutely free. All you got to do is text the word goal. We just smashed them together. Goals, 2017, text it to 33444. 3344. Or if you'd rather, just go to the show notes at entreleadership.com slash podcast.

That's where this episode is. And you can simply click on the link and you can get it. You've got to take advantage of things like this because it's so simple. And I know that when I get something like this, it's like extra accountability. I've downloaded it and now I want to try it out. I want to kick the tires. So do that. Just text the word goals, 2017 to 33444 or go to this episode on Entreeleadership.com.

Show notes, click on the link. Hey, InfusionSoft is bringing you some great stuff. As always, this month's tool, how to identify your target market. Again, looking forward to 2017, you've got to know who your customer is. And so they're going to help you with tremendous clarity. Here we go again. There's that word popping up. Clarity, clarity, clarity.

They've got a great worksheet that again walks you through a proven process. Pinpoint your ideal customers' pains. Establish why your customers actually buy from you. Then begin to build that target customer. Infusionsoft.com slash target dash worksheet. Infusionsoft.com slash target dash worksheet. And if you can't remember that with all the dashes and the slashes, guess what? Eric, the producer has a link for you in the show notes.

It's just two clicks. And quite frankly, you need to be spending just a little bit more time at the Entree Leadership podcast page. If nothing else, to share it with all your friends. We're working hard for you, and we want your friends to get the benefit of this show as well. All right, and I also told you, this is very exciting. I said that we were going to tell you about our spring 2017 entree leadership events. I really enjoy hosting these.

We will be out on the road in Los Angeles, California, April the 11th, Dallas, Texas, May the 10th, Chicago, Illinois, May the 12th, joining me, Dave Ramsey, Chris Hogan, Christy Wright, and we have a podcast listener discount because we love you people. It's $10 off if you just simply type in the code podcast at ontraeleadership.com, Dave Ramsey.com. Just go to our events page, a couple ways to get there. Again, use the word podcast as your discount code to save $10 off. So, Entreeleadership.com slash E1D.

Entreeleadership.com slash E1D. We would love to see you out on the road. Speaking of Dave, we acknowledge that many of you have joined this tribe and listened to this podcast. You don't know much about Dave Ramsey. Quick intro, the guy is the day-to-day CEO of this organization, Ramsey Solutions, which boasts now over 550 team members and growing. In fact, it's probably way higher than that. I don't even know how it is, how high it is at this point.

But this is a guy who also hosts the third largest radio show in America. It is the largest independently owned nationally syndicated radio show. Started from a card table in his living room. Started selling books self-published out of the trunk of his car. Millions and millions of lives have been and are being changed. So that's a brief introduction of the man. Dave Ramsey.com for like to learn more. But he is the day-to-day CEO, as I mentioned, and we have a staff meeting company-wide.

Everybody in the buildings come together in our conference room once every week, Monday morning. And from time to time, Dave will retouch our core values, which are splashed all over multiple walls around the campus. Recently, he taught about excellence in the ordinary, faithfulness to quality in the little things. This is a fantastic message, not just for you, but for those you lead. So feel free to share it, however you like. Here it is, Dave teaching on excellence in the ordinary. Most people fail because they won't be excellent. in the ordinary. It's not the one big thing. They won't do the death by a thousand cuts.

You don't gain weight off of Thanksgiving. Anybody that understands nutrition, understands that you blow in your diet, your eating plan, or whatever you're on over the weekend, does not cause you to be fat. One Thanksgiving does not make a fat person. Thank goodness. This is great news this morning. but not saying no to that and that and that and that and not having an off button for food and just eating crap just to be eating crap so I got so big those little stuff and you know how I reversed it and lost 31 pounds since July 4th I reversed it it was the little stuff it wasn't like I missed two meals I'm there you know no bread for like 24 hours I did it's not how you

do it, is it? It's not how you build wealth. Very few people bill wealth by singular financial events. And the ones that do usually don't keep it. The divorce rate and the bankruptcy rate among lotto winners is fourfold the national average. Actually, you're 10 times more likely to file bankruptcy if you win the lotto than the average person is. Isn't that nuts? And your dysfunctional family, when you win the lotto becomes really dysfunctional. That's why you're we find athletes and we're all just shocked. Chris Hogan and I aren't shocked because we met with them. All these NFL

athletes, they make $10 million. They've got a $10 million signing bonus. They got nothing. They're living in their car. It's not because they got a concussion. It's because one financial event or two large financial events does not make you wealthy. The average person that builds wealth does it. Excellence in the ordinary.

Excellence in ordinary. You do your 401K every month for 30, years and you wake up and there's two million dollars in there. Tadda! All these billionaire call-ins, that's what they all tell me, over and over and over. We do the millionaire theme hour. If you hadn't gotten to hear it yet, I know you're working. If you hadn't gotten to hear the millionaire theme hour, you can listen to it on the podcast.

It's always, yeah, I made 85,000 household income. Highest I ever made is 145,000 household income. And I started putting into my 401k when I was 26 and I never stopped putting in. and I put in the entire time and I'm 57 and I have $2.5 million in there. That's who calls in. Very few people call in and go, you know, my grandmother left me $400 million. It doesn't happen very often. 88% of America's millionaires are first generation rich in case you hadn't heard.

Nine out of ten started with nothing. And they build wealth, excellence in the ordinary. It's boring. It's not cool. you're not going to be on the cover of a magazine. You're not going to be featured in whatever. But we're always looking for some way to shortcut the process. We're always looking for some way to be successful

without doing the stuff it takes to be successful. It's the little stuff. It's the little stuff. The big play sometimes makes a football game, but usually everything, there shouldn't have been a big play. Usually, even in a simple 60-minute game, it's the little stuff that causes you to win. And everyone in our culture seems to worship the explosion. We all want to celebrate the big thing.

You want that one thing. We want that one thing. You know, I kept looking for somebody to discover me. You know, I had the financial peace book, and I got it in the trunk of my car, and, you know, we sold 35,000 of them. Nobody would talk to us. Couldn't even get bookstores to take them. selling them in video stores, video rental stores. And then finally it started selling a little bit, and some of the bookstores called and said they would carry the book.

And oh my gosh, bookstores are carried. Now we're okay. Now we're okay. I kept looking for that one thing that was going to be our breakthrough, that was going to be our moment, that was going to get easy all of a sudden, that this thing was just going to happen, that this thing was just going to happen. That we would go from here to the top of the mountain in one leaf. I was kept waiting to be discovered. It still hadn't happened. First year I was doing the radio show.

And again, nobody was listening. It's 100,000 watt station, but it's operating on 10,000 watts because the station didn't fix the tower. And so the tower was running on nothing. So you kind of had to be like really close into Nashville here. And every time it rained, we went off the air because they had no lightning protection on the tower. It gets struck by lightning. We'd be off the air. It was ridiculous.

And, you know, it was just a hodgepodge, baling wire and duct tape holding this whole thing together. and you know nobody's listening to this little radio show on this station and and so I'm driving home and my phone and my car rang and I picked it up which means it was connected and this guy on the other in the line goes hey Dave this is Chris Clark I do a thing on Channel 5 news in at night called open line where we take a segment of the news and have people call in live and ask questions of a guest and I'd like for you to come on tonight and do open line with me. Well, I first about drove off the road because I'm like, freaking Chris Clark is on my phone.

And then I thought, no, this is one of my buddies messing with me. And I'm like, yeah, sure, Chris, you call me every day. This happens all the time. Sure, it's Chris Clark. And I start dogging him because I thought it was one of my buddies. I said, look, you know, you're going to have to do better than this. You've got to come up with something better than this to pull one on me. And he goes, Dave, no, this is really Chris Clark in Channel 5.

And I'm like, yeah, sure it is, sure it is. And he goes, I'll tell you what, hang up and call Channel 5 and ask to speak to Chris Clark, and I'll tell the receptionist puts you straight through, and then you'll know it's me. I'm like, sure, I'll do that. No problem. I'm going to step in that. Yeah, right. Because when I call, they're going to say, no, Chris Clark is not available.

I know what's going to happen. But I'll play. I'll play a long. So I hung up, caught me straight through. It was him. Just a little embarrassing. I'm so sorry. I had no idea.

You don't understand. All my buddies are practical jokers. I'm so sorry, Chris. He goes, I know, I know. I got them like that too. Don't worry about it. He was pretty cool. So he goes, can you come down tonight?

I'm like, yeah. You know, does a one-legged duck swimming in circles? I'll be there, buddy. I mean, you know. The Chris Clark calls me to be on the Channel 5 News in Nashville, freaking Tennessee. baby, I am there. I hung up. Called home, I said, Sharon, it's happened. All this hard work's paid off. We've been discovered. I'm going to be on call everybody, put it out, put out the word, tell people at the church to pray. I'm going to be on Channel 5 tonight, and it's going to be awesome. And we need to

get some extra books ordered because we're going to sell so many books. It's finally happened. I've been discovered. And so I went home and back then I wore a tie and everything. They had suspenders matching, you know, whole bit. You got the suit on, man, I'm ready to go. I go down there. I'm all powdered up, like way too much makeup. And I go in there. And I was so ready.

I was so ready for my moment. And I went on there and opened line, and they opened up the lines. And people started calling in. And they were saying, hey, I listen to your radio show, man. It's awesome. Thanks for doing it. All these positive things. And I answered all the questions perfectly.

Nailed it. Boom. Nailed it. We go off, Chris goes, that was really good. You want to do it again sometime? No, anytime. Anytime. Then turns out they open up this thing on cable TV, and Channel 5 gets, somehow, they were smart enough, they got another station, Channel 5 Plus, which kind of like Wayne's World.

C-SPAN, but not that good. Right? And so OpenLine apparently has an entire hour on this with Chris Clark. and so he asked me come back down to do the news and then stay after and we would do open line on channel 5 plus now we're in now buddy i'm in the family the channel 5 family and me we're just like this buddy bf we are discovered and um sad thing is is that nobody really cared i mean i got some people at the church i watched you man that was really good i like watching you on there it's good they already had the book well he sold a few books i mean

like, I don't know, 60 or 80, but I still wasn't discovered. And then I went down and started doing a thing over at Fox, and then I went down and did a thing over at Talk of the Town. And then I went down and then I went on the Today Show, and I thought that was going to be it, and it wasn't. And then we did 60 minutes, and I thought that was going to be it, and it wasn't. And then Oprah called, and I thought, well, for sure, that's it. It wasn't.

I'm getting old, y'all. I'm still waiting. But I'm pretty sure we're not going to be discovered by one singular event. Are those things all good? Yeah, they're all great. I'm glad I did every one of them. I've done some wicked weird stuff on media. I'll just tell you, man.

So many people are unusual human beings. I'm glad I did every bit of it. Because every bit of it led us to where we are today. And I didn't turn down any media for, I don't know, 15 years. Now I turned down all media. you. But just about, although Meg's got me going up in the morning to tape a Rachel Ray segment. But, you know, I'm pretty sure that seven minutes is not going to change my life, though, or your life. But we'll go do it, and we'll do it with excellence.

You know, you bring it every day. 20, coming up on 25 years this summer on the radio. And you'll turn on the microphone without energy. And you know what? If I got hay fever and I can't talk, nobody really gives it rip. And if I'm really feeling kind of sick, nobody cares. Or if I just came out of a meeting where somebody I love here quit and my heart's broken, nobody on the radio gives a rip.

They just want to know if they can get out of that or how to get their husband on board. They just want to know dot, dot, dot. And I'm not mad about that, but it's excellence in the ordinary. Every day for 25 years. And then you're an overnight success. And I'm not talking about me. I'm talking about you. The things we have done here, the reason this place works,

the reason we are at the level we are is because when those students walk through, they don't just see people working. they see people doing work that matters with excellence and joy. They see people walking with energy, smiling, glad they're here. That they see something different and they can't put their hands on it because they have teachers at school who are good teachers, but they have teachers at school who mail it in. Remember having a teacher that mailed it in?

That was burnt out and should have quit 10 years before and just was tried to get to retirement. Those students see those teachers. We had them in college. They're called tenure, right? We had them. They're just there because they're stuck. When those students walk through here, they don't see that.

They see people doing excellence in the ordinary. They see people writing Java code with joy, which is weird in my mind. But they do. Ruby. They see people doing design, and now they want to be a creative artist. Do you think that that student wanted to be a creative artist? creative because that student saw people doing creative work in a cool environment? No.

It wasn't it at all. It felt the spirit. Felt the spirit of somebody actually loved what they were doing, smiling, engaged. And that student said to themselves, this looks like fun because that creative is having fun. That's excellent in the ordinary. And you know what? The weirdest thing is, that's a decision. You can decide.

All you can do is decide. You decide to be excellent. in the ordinary, every day. You can decide to be excellent in your eating habits. Every day. You can decide to be excellent in your marriage. Every day. It's a decision.

No one controls your attitude. No one makes you mad. No one makes you sad. Things happen and you decide how you're going to react to them. No one makes you afraid. No one makes you angry. You decide to be that. It's a decision.

Decide. You get to decide. And the difference is where you'll be in 20 years. Because you set the trajectory of your life up. It has nothing to do with this place. This place is the platform with which you're working today. And I hope you're all here 20 years from now. We wouldn't have hired you if we didn't think you were awesome. We didn't want you. If you didn't think you were awesome, we wouldn't have kept you. And so we want you here. We're glad you're here. But while you're here, decide. because it says more about you and your personal brand and the trajectory of your life than it does this place or the leadership team here or the culture here or the external environmental variables that somehow we blame our lives on

but when you go QBQ and you decide it's me I got to decide you know when I lost weight it wasn't when Sharon wanted me to because she wanted me to a long time before I started bless her heart zero body fat poor woman you know it's just unbelievable putting up with me

but it wasn't one she wanted me to lose weight it was when I decided change you get to change you can decide change and you got to decide every morning again

that's the pain every morning again I can decide what my attitude is I got to decide what my trajectory is I got to decide whether I got my foot on the gas I got to decide whether I'm playing to win. I got to decide whether I'm really plugged into work that matters. I got to decide every morning.

That's what excellence in the ordinary is. It's what causes it. And when you decide to live your life that way, it takes you on a different trajectory. And here's the thing. This stuff doesn't work linearly. From where someone is to living, quote, unquote, a successful life is not a straight line.

And from where someone is to putting their life in the gutter is not a straight line. it's a curve. The little stuff builds up, builds up, and then it's critical mass, and it goes up, or the little stuff that's negative builds up, builds up, and it goes down. People that lose their family due to an addiction and lose their job and trash their life due to an addiction didn't happen one time when they got drunk. It wasn't one time.

Very few people lose everything on one event. But it builds up, and there's critical mass, critical mass. It wasn't one visit to a porn site. It was one visit that led to other visits, and all of a sudden you're a porn addict. All of the sudden, not really. It's not really? All of a sudden. It was a lack of excellence in the ordinary.

It was the little things that bite you and the little things that make you. This is so scary, y'all, because it requires such a level of diligence on a daily, basis in our personal lives. It's easier to believe that one thing would make us or break us. It's easier to believe. It's an easier path to go, ha, I've been discovered, and here I am on the stage all of a sudden. No, you don't find it. All the success data tells us otherwise. Malcolm Gladwell in his book, Outliers, which if you haven't read it, is a great book on success. But he said one of the reasons, one of the chapters is, one of the reasons people are successful is 10,000 hours of perfect practice and not practicing negative things and not practicing improperly, but practicing and adjusting, practicing and adjusting, practicing and adjusting. That's how you become Peyton Manning.

That's how you play a guitar like Brad Paisley, world-class guitarist. Yes, funny, great songwriter, great promoter, good businessman, world-class guitarist. You play until your fingers bleed. You don't hit a ball like Gary Player. You don't hit a ball like Tiger Woods. Accidentally, one time. He's a natural. No, he's not.

There's no such thing. There's no such thing. None of the household names that you know are because of natural talent. It's natural talent plus 10,000 hours of practice and adjust. Practice and adjust. Practice and adjust. practice and adjust. Those of us that love firearms.

It's amazing to me that the more I shoot, the more accurate I can shoot. Well, duh. Ready, aim, fire. But too many people don't ever fire, and two people don't practice to where they can hit what they're aiming at. And they don't walk this idea through of excellence in the ordinary. We're faithful in the little things. And scripture says when we're faithful in the little things,

blessings are going to pour. are going to be given more to manage. And don't be asking for more to manage until your faith phone the little things. Because God is really clear. He says no. No, it's in the parable of the talents. He told a guy no. Actually, apparently God does not believe in wealthy quality.

Because he took money from the guy that had the least and gave it to the guy who had the most. Not based on what he had, based on whether or not he chose to manage it well. And that's the parable of talent story if you haven't read. it go pick your scriptures out. That's what we're talking about here is being faithful and little things. So this is the time of the year. And again, I'm not asking someone to fake it. I'm asking you to just make a decision. That's different than faking it. I can just decide. I'm going to have fun today. I'm going to be a grouse today. I can just decide. Isn't it funny how we suddenly decide that? And I can just decide when a customer comes in contact

with me and they are frustrated. It's the holidays. They're overburdened. They don't have enough money to do their Christmas the way they want. None of them do. And they come in contact with us. They've got to mean something that's different. That's how you win the Super Bowl. No one gets to the Super Bowl and goes, what happened? That was amazing. They just called me up and asked me to come. No, they started playing when they're six years old, throwing that ball, catching that ball, blocking for the guy that throws the ball, whatever. They start playing when they're six years old. I don't accidentally win the Super Bowl.

No one is surprised when they finish. It's a lifetime quest for those athletes. It's excellent in the ordinary. Time after time, step after step, cut after cut. Never stop deciding to control your destiny. One step at a time. And right now during the holidays, these folks need us. They need to feel our heart.

They need to feel our spirits. Some of them are hurting. Some of them are scared. And they're all faking like they're not. But when they come in contact with this place, they're going to have a different experience. Good stuff from Dave Ramsey there. And also want to thank Steve Graves for being a part of the show today and giving you some great content. Don't forget, he had a special offer for you at his website.

So make sure you check that out. And again, the resources from our Entree Leadership team and InfusionSoft, a lot of goodies for you as you prepare to finish well in 2016 and start off to a hot, fast, very effective start. In 2017, it's all here. And again, everything you would need. If you want to just go back and find it all, you don't have to rewind. Just simply go to Entryleadership.com slash podcast this episode and you just click on the links and they're there for you. Hey, folks, the time is now. The time is now to begin thinking, hey, what do I want to be doing? How do I want to be growing? Who do I want to be helping? All those big questions for next year. If you haven't started thinking about it, it's not too late, it's the good news. And now is the time. Hey, listen, we're here to help you. And we appreciate you very much. On behalf of Eric, the producer and the entire Entree leadership team, thank you so much for listening. We'll talk with you again very soon.