EntreLeadership - #206: EntreLeadership Summit Bonus 3—Q&A With Patrick Lencioni

Episode Date: May 29, 2017

We wind up our EntreLeadership Summit podcast series with a fascinating conversation featuring Dave and best-selling business author Patrick Lencioni. The pair discuss the three qualities you need to look for when trying to hire ideal team members—and what characteristics you need to avoid. To wrap up, Dave and Pat answer questions from Summit attendees, including how to bust through to the next level, how to develop leaders, and how to stop spending your time putting out fires. entreleadership.com/podcast Summit 18 Registration 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. Hello, and welcome to the 2017 Entree Leadership Summit. As you can tell, and this is day three, folks, and we are doing our Entree Leadership podcast live for you, folks, tuning in on Facebook. I am Ken Coleman and these guys are Pat Lynchioni and Dave Ramsey and we are absolutely thrilled to have you tuning in with us. And Pat, Dave, it has been a spectacular week with

this room full of amazing men and women who care deeply about getting the most out of their leadership. It has been amazing. This audience, we were just talking about it before we went live telling them how great they've been. It's really easy for a speaker. Oh, wow. Yeah. And I was saying that sometimes I think that there's more common core values and camaraderie here than in most companies. It feels like this is a bunch of people that work together. Yeah, yeah. Well, it's interesting that you say that because I know Dave and the team are very intentional about creating an event like this, that they're not just learning, but these people connect with each other. And I've already met several people at this year's event

that met at last year's event or met as a part of our All Access, which is our Entree leadership community of leaders from all around the world that connect online. These people, people dig being around each other because eagles like to fly with other eagles. And it really is a special group of people. So what we're going to do is over the next few minutes, a little bit later, we're going to take questions, folks, from our live audience. I know you're going to get a lot out of that. We have people already lined up to do that. But what I thought would be kind of fun is that at Ramsey Solutions, we love Pat Lanchone. That's why you've been to multiple events and we love your books. And your latest book, Ideal Team Player, has become institutionalized.

at Dave's direction. He loved it. And he said, everybody needs to read this. Everybody gets a copy. And Dave, I want you to just, before we get into some of that, because we're going to talk about that, but why that book, why did it strike a chord with you, Dave, and why take the action that you did around that? You know, Pat is brilliant, without a doubt. But what he did there is what so many times a really good teacher does do. They give vernacular to something you were already observing and then help you dial it up about two notches. It was around our place we were always trying to hire thoroughbreds. And then when somebody didn't work out, we're going, well, you know, they didn't get it. That's what we always said.

That was what they didn't get it. We knew that they didn't fit, but we never could put vernacular to it or quantify it. And when I went through ideal team player, they have to be hungry, they have to be humble, they have to be smart, people smart, if they're missing any one of those three ingredients. And I started immediately. It's a fairly simple construct, you know. But I started immediately going back through the history of. people because all of us at run businesses, one of our greatest joys is our people, one of our biggest pain points is our people. And so I go back through, well, so and so that I love that guy,

but he really sucked. Why was it that he didn't, why was it he couldn't ever get there? And then I go, you know, I just wasn't hungry. You know, that gal, man, she was incredible. She was incredible. She was, she just did not do relationship. She was just not people smart. And ultimately, the frustration will build up and they would either exit on their own or we would have to help them leave and find something else. But when they didn't fit, it's because they didn't fit one of those three things. So what he did is he came along with the hungry, humble, smart construct in the ideal team player and gave us vernacular to what we were kind of already observing,

but it was still an epiphany. It was still an, oh, and I see that. And so when we're talking to someone in an interview, now we go, now they're missing that one. Because if they're missing two of the hungry, humble smart, they don't have any ambition and they're bad with people, but they're really humble. Well, you go, well, this is just a dormant.

they're useless, you know? And you know that in the interview. You don't even bring those people. If they're missing two, it's like glaring. But if they're missing one of them, it gets confusing because it turns them into this different kind of a thing. And I'd love for you to unpack some of that. Yeah, so I think it'd be fun. For people that are watching at home that haven't cracked the book, obviously Dave mentioned those three attributes, take a few moments and walk us through how you define those and what it looks like in an individual. Well, let me do something else for a fact. Let me get a little behind the scenes here. You know what's extraordinary to me? is how well he reads things and knows them.

And I was talking to someone from my company who's out here, it's like, he gets this stuff as well as I do. And when he describes it, I'm like, oh, my gosh, you really read it and you really remember it, and you really apply it. And that's a crazy thing. That's something to do with what makes Ramsey so amazing as a company. You're right.

We just put vernacular around concepts that people observe, but nobody had ever quite described it as simply. And I'm never offended when people say, I think we already knew that. When people come up to me and say, I think I could have written your book. I'm like, I know, huh? You could have.

Because we just... I sold six million total money makeover books, and anybody in here could have written it. So it works. It's a good plan. Write books that other people could have written at work. And so, and when you guys say

that you've adopted it in your company, that makes me very happy. Now, I will tell you this, when we wrote this book, I wasn't sure it was a book. And a friend of mine, Matthew Kelly, I think you might know Matthew. He said, you've got to write a book

about that humble, hungry, smart thing. And I said, is it a book? And he said, yeah. So I started doing it. And I was like, I hope people like this. And it's sold more than any of our books coming right out of the gate. Because I think the simplicity and the application of it is so simple. And so basically what it is is there's three qualities.

If a person has all of them, they're going to slide into a team and they're going to do awesome things in an organization. If they're missing one of them, you either need to make them aware of that if they already work there. And they need to work on it. Or you need to make sure you don't bring people in like that because they're going to be a problem. And the three things are just humble, which means I'm more about others than about myself. I'm not all ego driven I don't need a lot of attention but I'm also not lacking confidence

see humility isn't just I think I'm wrong all the time or I don't think a lot of myself C.S. Lewis once said being humble means thinking not less of yourself but thinking about yourself less so humility if you can find humble people

that's the most important one but that's not enough you're right you're going to bring a humble person in there going to be a doormat they also have to have some ambition ambition in terms of getting things done and wanting to accomplish something that's the hunger part and man we've met people in our lives. And this is the one that if a person doesn't have it later in life, it's hard to

instill it in them later. Well, you and I talked about this. Let's stop there for a second, because I'd love for Dave to speak into this. Dave's got a great video that he teaches on, and he's talked about this a lot on the radio, this idea of being hungry, which is how we say hungry in the South when we're really hungry. But we talked about this when you were first on the Entry Leadership podcast. I want to throw this at both of you. I asked you point blank, can you develop hunger in somebody? And I said, I don't think you can. And you said, well, you can give a person a chance to find that in themselves, but you can't instill it in there. Right.

People ask me, how do you motivate your people? I don't. I don't. I'm motivated people. You had one guy come in and he goes like, I'm burned out. And I'm like, dude, this is impossible. You were never on fire. Right.

It's so good. It's spot on, isn't it? I didn't expect that, though. I kind of thought, well, I can get people to work harder. And you can set goals for them and make them try to stretch just to survive. but they need to carry it with them. And I think you probably get it fairly young in life. I think so too.

Let me ask both of you, because Dave, I know you're not intimately involved in hiring anymore, but we practice your policies. Both of you answer those. What type of things are you asking people that these folks can put into their hiring questions to see? What would you ask somebody if you were looking to see if a young person or it doesn't matter their age had some hunger?

What type of things would you ask? If they were hungry? Yeah, if you were trying to see, does this person have any hunger? Yeah, that's why I don't do interviewing because I suck at it. You know, I have a conversation with people, and stuff starts coming out. Right. I mean, it just starts coming to top. You go, this guy is really, he likes him some him, you know, and you're going, there's no humble here going on, you know.

Or they're just like, there's no energy level. Right. And you're like, okay, what have you done? And, you know, tell me about a goal you completed. Well, and it's like Eeyore is their spirit animal, you know. It's like, oh, little man came. It's like, you know, he's not hungry. And you can just body language or everything else.

I start to see it. But you probably, there's some good questions in the book. Yeah, I think there are. But those questions are meant to tee up conversations where you use your intuition to see if it's real. There's no checking off the box. Because I love that way you answer that because I was just sitting here going,

I put a bunch of questions in the book, but I'm not sure there's like two of them that I go, well, whatever they're answered. I look for in their eyes. And when you say, tell me about something you worked really hard on, you know if they're if they're just talking in generalities but if they get excited and they're like oh i worked on this project i was up all night oh my gosh i loved it you go okay this guy's got it or this gal's got it whereas if they talk in generalities the other thing i do like to do is ask them

what other people would say about them like if i were to ask your boss or your wife or your friends how you rank on the scale of hunger what would they say it's funny people are going to tell you the truth more when they think they're speaking for somebody else the other thing i like to do is do what I call the law and order school of interviewing. You know, you've ever seen law and order, you know, that show, cacong. Well, you know, here's how it works. You say, they're interviewing and some guy they think they murdered somebody. Did you kill her? And he's like, no, did you kill her? No, did you kill her? And they, okay, I killed her. Like the third time they always admit it. So if I haven't asked the person the same question in different ways three times, if I don't really

probe, I find that they finally tell you the truth. So the first time you ask. If I've got an inkling of something's going on, I'm going to keep going at that. Exactly. Keep drilling down. until that pops up. Exactly. When I pass them off for the next interview, I'll go, hey, I'm not sure about the hunger. Why don't you all push on that one a little? I'm not sure about, I don't know if this person's people smart or not. Don't you all push on that.

See if you think they've got a relational IQ above one. And in the interview notes or whatever, or meet them in the hallway. And I go, I have that German Shepherd moment. I go, really? You know, and I just go, you got to trust that moment. I know you need to check on that because, you know, we have a saying around our place. It's like, I had a funny feeling. And it's like, there's a.

reason you had a funny feeling it's because there's something wrong and so many people go yeah i wasn't sure about them but we hired them anyway don't ever do that yeah so talk about in the construct when one of them is missing who they become right so before you do that real quick on smart because i interrupted you were walking through humble hungry explain just the smart definition because i interrupted you well smart is and i think of dave around this when i explain this i talk about Dave Ramsey's smart. It's like, there's intelligent, but then they're smart. You know, it's like, oh, he's got a PhD, but he ain't smart. And I'm talking smart about people. Yeah. They have common sense, and they just know when you're in a room, they said something that

pisses, make, tick somebody off one of those things. It's okay. It's Facebook. I think that's allowed. Okay, that's right. Yeah, yeah. So, and it's like, do they have just common sense around human beings? And the world is full of really intelligent people that aren't smart. Yeah. And so find smart, common sense, that know how to get along with other people and understand what their behaviors mean. Yeah. They're offensive and don't know it. They're not self-aware about their relational capacities. And that is troubling. So let's start with that one. What if they're hungry and humble, but they're missing that one. Who do they become? You know, they're the ones I have the most patience for if you're two for three, because they're humble, which is the most important one, which means they're not ego-driven.

They're teachable. Yes. And they're hungry, which means they have a work ethic. They just, they're a puppy. They kind of knock things over and they're, and what you have to do with these kind of people is you got to whack them on the nose with the newspaper and go, dude, do you realize what you said really pissed them off? And they're like, oh, I'm sorry, I didn't realize that. Well, I have a lot of time for these people because they're like, okay, what do I need to do better? And so you got to clean up after them every once a while, but over a while they can learn. But their intentions are good and their work ethic is good. So if I had to tolerate somebody who was really missing one, that would be the one I would take. It is easier to have patience with people who are coachable and trying.

Exactly. On anything. Exactly. So that's the, we call them the accidental mess maker. Yeah. Okay. They don't mean it. They have good intentions, but they make messes and it creates a little extra.

Some of you are thinking of somebody in your office right now. Well, the reason that you have so much patience with that is because I'm guessing you see a pattern there where when you do correct them, they're humble enough to admit it. And they get better. Well, but you can teach them that people smart. You can teach them to be aware. There's a lack of awareness, whether it be from. from immaturity or inexperience. The other thing you can do is you can say to the other people on the team,

hey, Fred here is an accidental messmaker. So when he does that, tell him. And in a meeting, we've got one in our office, great guy, and people can go, you realize how that made me feel. He's like, no, what did I say? Well, when you said this, oh, my gosh, I didn't even realize it. But he's humble enough to go, let me know, and I'll admit it, and I'll apologize.

Yeah. And they do get, but you need to see progress over time. You don't want to just have this as a pattern for life. If they see it, realize it, apologize, and they don't get better at it, that's its own issue. But yeah, usually they can learn. So walk through the rest of those combos because you actually do this so beautifully in the book. If you read it, you give us all the different combinations. Walk us through that person who maybe just no humility at all.

This is, so they're not humble, which means they are hungry, so they're hardworking, and they're smart, which means they know how to work with people. that's the most dangerous kind. Because they know how to project humility. They're smart enough to know how to work the room or the interview. They're manipulative. They're manipulative. We call this the skillful politician.

They know how to get through an interview. They know how to go to meetings and pretend like they care about people. And when you finally figure out that it's all about them, there's a pile of dead bodies behind them buried somewhere. This is the one you have to look out for. I would prefer somebody who was only hungry. and what we call the bulldozer, because at least you see them coming. But that skillful politician, we've seen this, they tear companies apart and organizations apart because it's all about that.

And they will, they get promoted. Oh, they know how to do it. They end up in leadership, but they're the nastiest boss in the world. Their followers know it. Yeah, their people hate them. And you should never promote people whose followers don't want to be. They're toxic. Absolutely.

Yeah, it's toxic waste dump. So that's the skillful politician, the most dangerous kind of all. The other kind is the person who is not hungry, but they're really smart with people, and they're very humble. This is pretty dangerous, too. This is what we call the, oh, I'm having a little brain moment there. I know what, this is the, not the charmer, but the lovable slacker. Yeah. Thank you.

The lovable slacker. I was struggling, too. I was like, don't look at me, pay. Don't look at me. I was like, what is it? So the lovable slacker is not ego-driven. They're really good with others. They just don't have much of work ethic.

So I had a guy that was a lovable slacker who worked for me. And we keep them because they're lovable, right? Well, I'm a wuss. That's the technical term for as a leader. I don't like to hold people accountable. You wouldn't like that about me. You know, I'm working on it. So that's why I like to listen to his show.

I love nothing more than hearing Dave tells somebody not to be a butthole on the radio. I'm like, oh, man, I got to listen. learned to do that. So anyway, so you said that at least once, and I was like, he's my hero. So I had this guy, lovable slacker. Great guy, still a friend of mine, but man, he just never did more than was asked of him. And he'd leave work and other people would have stuff to do. He'd never go, hey, do you guys need me to stay late and help out with anything? He'd always be gone. And he was really passionate about his football pool and his family, which is great, and his softball team, but not about work. And so I,

finally realized I had a lovable slacker, so I went to him and I said, listen, you're going to leave this company when you're good and ready, so you let me know. Three years later, he was gone. You are just decisive. I know. It was brutal. It was brutal, really. That's funny. I'm telling you. These people, they frustrate the crud out of you because it's hard to pin them down. Oh, they do just enough. I know. And it feels like, and you like, there's nothing gets done around them, but it doesn't ever seem to be their fault. They deflect the lack of work, and it feels like, oh, that project's just mediocre. And it's because the person running the project just didn't bring it.

Right. They did not have that Super Bowl level of intensity. And I'll tell you, I let one guy go that qualified for that when I read Jim Collins' book 100 years ago, good to great, the chapter, you know, the bus chapter. get the right people on the bus, wrong people off the bus, right people on the right seats on the bus. And he says a phrase in there that I use in money all the time. But he turned around, used it on me, and I went, dead gum, this will get somebody fired at your place right now. You all ready? He said, if you have somebody working on your team that you wouldn't hire again, why are they there?

See, I told you. Now, you can't fire them while you're here. You have to wait. You get home and calm down. But when I read that book, I closed it in disgust at myself because I really, I realized what was going on. And I said, there's no way in the world I would hire that guy again. And I've been putting up with this and putting up with this and putting up with this.

And I couldn't, I didn't have the construct of ideal team player to call it what it was, that he's a lovable slacker. I didn't call it that. But that's exactly who he was. Lovable guy. And I went in the next morning. I said, I don't even know if I'm doing what's right. I may look back in 10 years and regret this.

I don't know. But I own this place and the frustration level is built up. And, you know, I read this book. And, you know, if you want to blame, you can just blame Jim Collins. He told me to do it. And so, you know, here's a big pile of money. And because I wasn't sure I was right. I just baited the guy in severance and sent him out the door.

And he didn't understand. And I didn't understand. And when he left, the air changed in the building. People went, thank God we have a leader. And that's the thing. What we don't do is we go, okay, she's driving me crazy because she's a lovable slacker. What we don't realize is how frustrating it is to the people that are working hard. And they're like, we have to cover for her.

I'm not being rewarded the way I could. We could be doing so much more. The opportunity cost of the lovable sackers is huge. But they don't want to tattle on them because they like them. Anytime I'm an enabler, I'm not helping the person I'm enabling. It feels like I'm being kind. Enablers are always nice. It is not.

But they're basically, when I'm an enabler, I'm just a wuss. That's all I am. So even you can relate to the wussie thing. Oh, absolutely. Because I love people. Right. I don't want to go around just firing people. I need people to get stuff done, number one.

and number two, I love them. And you like this person. And I can look back to that guy right now. I'm talking about. I can see his face in my mind, and I name his wife and his kid's names. I know him. And I like the guy personally.

He's a likable guy. But he didn't get crap done. All right. You know, when I tell one more story about it, Alan Malalley is going to be here at your, he's going to, is that, you know? Yeah. Okay, so Alan's going to be here,

the old CEO for it. I thought I might have been letting something out of the bag in San Antonio, right? Alan, he turned around the Ford Motor Company. This is like the world's largest DM. MV, right? I mean, think about you're taking, and he did a great job. And you know, he almost fired no one. So I think, well, what's going on? You know what he did? And this is something this beautiful. He went and told them, you have to change your behavior, and I'm not going to stop telling you that. And one of the things, if we stay on people, if every day, every week, whenever we

see somebody doing something wrong, we remind them, they're in 98% of the situations, they're going to do one of two things. They're going to improve or leave. And that's a good thing. If they They decide, I'm not going to change and I'm not going to leave. Then you've got to do something. The problem is, is we as leaders don't remind people enough. We tell them the first time, you don't work hard enough. And I said this earlier. And then you see him doing it again, and I go right to my wife and I tell her.

It's the loving, loving demand of excellence. Right. I demand excellence. I love you and I demand excellence. I'm not going to tolerate less. You've got it in you. You're going to do this. And the next morning, you got it in you, and the next morning.

And you make an environment around them where they don't fit in. There's nowhere to run and nowhere to hide. Yep. So good. Now, we're going to take questions just a minute, and so we can have our first question come forward to the mic. But for those that are watching and those here, if they've not read the book,

or maybe they've read a little bit of it, just from you, the author, to kind of wrap that part of the conversation, what do you want them to do with the book? How do they apply? When they look at these three, maybe they see somebody with two out of three trying to move them into three out of three

to be an ideal team player, what do you say to them? How do they use it? You know, this is the book with the most practice, like tools in the back. Clear path. You know, it's just like just think about these things,

answer these questions, do this exercise as a team, it's very easy. The most important thing though is that you need to tee up the right conversations as a team and what you said. So you go into those interviews

and you know what you're looking for. And you go, after the first two, you go, I don't know if this guy's hungry. Probe for that one. It's a very simple construct that anybody can use. So read it, read the back of it and then go for it.

It's easy to apply. I'll add to that too. It's a great, there's some great ideas for the interview process that it sets some interview principles in place to probe those three things out as a part of your screen and I'll tell you we did something else with it we took Jim's level five leader material and we said okay will a level five leader has a will and we said that's leadership hunger and they have level five has a leadership humility and then we use hungry humble smart with that as an overlay

construct to look at our leaders and assess our leaders. And we go from a leader's perspective, it's a different, it's not as a, it's not as primitive a hungry, humble, smart when you're looking at that. I require a different level of sophistication on your hunger, a different level of sophistication on your, your will, you're imposing your will on the marketplace. Yeah, there's a subtle maturity about that. That leadership humility is a different level, but it's within there, but it's a higher level. But it's still, we still use the construct even all the way up to our operating board,

the people that run the whole organization. When we're doing our annual assessments of each other, you know, and that kind of stuff, and we do those brutal things and all that stuff, that's the construct we use to talk about it. We go, you know, this is where you're missing it. And we look at each other and do that. And it's, God, it's brutal, but it works. I'm amazed at when I work with teams, how I'll ask them, I'll do a simple exercise. Hey, you guys, what's your third out of three?

Everybody at the team, I don't care if you're good at all of them or not good at all of them. What's your worst of the three relative to the others? And I'm amazed at how honest they are. I did it with an executive team once and two of the people started laughing. I said, what's so funny? And they go, well, clearly we're not humble. I was like, so you know that. Oh, yeah, I mean, we're all about us.

And so I'm amazed that people will go, I know what I'm not good at. I need you guys to coach me. Yeah. It really is good. All right, we're going to take some questions from our amazing live audience. Tell us your name, sir, and ask your question. Scott Beebe. Guys, thank you.

Brilliant job the last couple of days. It's been fantastic. Dave, you talked a little bit. you started with how you started your business on a card table in the living room. And then there's been some numbers thrown around for you guys, 600 employees. Robert Herchieck talked about 300 employees. There's a lot of us over the last couple years we've started our businesses, and we're just now hitting the first ceiling and trying to bust through that,

three or four employees, a couple of virtual assistants, and that sort of thing. And also, I went to the Pat Lanchione School of Non-Confrontation as a leader, so I don't tell people their buttholes even though I need to more often. So in this next busting through the level, a couple of questions. Number one, what is the key role that we need as kind of, I don't know if you call it a number two or whatever, and then what metrics do we need to be looking at as we bust through that next level as a small entrepreneur and small business? There's a lot of good productivity studies all the way down in military uses it, even in the Bible in Exodus, that about a one to five ratio is about all you can lead well, maybe one to seven, but certainly not one to ten.

even if they're all doing exactly the same thing. And in a small business, the problem with one to five or one to eight even is all eight of those people have six jobs each. Because when you're in small business, you have very few specialists. If you're the CEO of a 10-person business, you're the chief everything officer. And you've got to do everything. And so do a lot of people on the team. And so you're not leading just one person. You're leading one person who has six different things they do.

Another person who does four different things. So there's a lot of activity going on under your purview when you have like 10 people. So the first thing you've got to do in the 7 to 20 range of people, of team members, you have to start developing your first layers of leadership. And you develop your first three leaders that are between you and the team. And that starts to feel weird, but you start to develop some of that. And those people are the ones you disciple, the ones you mentor. They need to be able to finish your sentences.

What would Dave do if he wasn't here? Can I do that? and it was what you were saying earlier in your presentation today earlier to the whole team about they're freed up because they know the principles, they know the strategies, and it lets them make the decisions when you're not there, and it gives them a lot of dignity, and they'll grow very quickly as leaders in that role. You probably have someone in your mind right now.

Out of seven people, you probably have one, maybe two already, that are your first ones to do that with. Then the next thing that happens is when you get to about the full, 40 to 70 range of team members. You're going to add that next layer of leaders, usually, in a standard org chart process. And the thing I did there that will help you guys is that I did wrong was I waited too long because I didn't know what I didn't know

to hire my first two C-suite positions. An HR director to help me with recruiting and hiring, I probably was several hundred thousand dollars in revenue too late. I should have hired him earlier and several hires too late. It took so much off of us and immediately caused our company to change in sophistication when we were about 60-17 members when I added an HR director. And the second thing I hired was a CFO to help run the money stuff because I'm the money guy and I'm going to handle all the money stuff

and nobody's messing with my money. I'll watch my money. God, it was just horrible. and it just sucked the blood out of your, I mean, suck the marrow out of your bones to screw with those two things every day. I couldn't do anything for HR and money, you know. And when I got those two things at about a 70 person, I did it at like 80 and 100 person is when they both came on board. I should have done it at 40 and 50 people. And I would have had a whole lot more explosive growth because I would have been freed up to do the other stuff that I'm

naturally good at, like John Maxwell was telling us so they find that string. And so But, you know, that thing. So that's a couple of points there. Layers of leadership and starting to add some of your C-suits in there in that under-a-100 team member level that'll help you. It gives you your life back. It also gives you some growth. What do you add to that?

No, it makes sense. I think we're too late in doing that. We scale the company. We have 20 employees, and they're all coming back to the leader. And you're crushing yourself. Your family's frustrated. You're not enjoying your job. You're not living in your genius anymore.

Genius. That's good. I became a fireman. All it is put out people's fires. Right. I just ran all day long with fire extinguisher, and they just brought crap in my office that was a problem. And I would go home exhausted, and I hated the place I owned. And as soon as I got some people helping me make some of these decisions, you know, it was like hiring other people on the fire truck, you know.

And all of a sudden, it's weird. Like when you get an emergency fund, the emergencies quit happening, you know? It was weird. It's like once we kind of got above it, some of these fires, but we were being managed by crisis rather than leading from above and leading with vision. because there wasn't enough of us, meaning leaders in the team. It's a good question. Thank you for being there. All right, next question.

Tell us your name. Hey, I'm Sergio Cruz, and thank you for all that you do. Quick question. I just left my job to start a business. I'm a software developer. Two quick questions. Number one, coming from a job, tithing, I'm a Christian. So tithing, you just take 10% write the check and you're done.

Now with the business, I've been told you do it after, expenses. It feels kind of weird. I wonder to ask about that. Again, I'm just a little baby in this. And then number two, since I'm a software developer, I have a couple of opportunities. I really want to build a product, but I have a lot of client work just to make money and, you know, got those competing priorities happening now. How strict should I be now starting out with my vision and whatnot? Is it okay to try out a bunch of stuff? Should I just stick to what I really want to do? You want to jump on that? You know, the one thing I, I would say is this, always have a strategy and a clarity about purpose. And then if you have to do

something to make money that's outside of that, be purposeful about that. It's okay to say this is off strategy and it's purely to generate revenue to build my business. But it's when you start doing that opportunistically and you confuse it as that's my purpose, then you'll start doing that. You go, I didn't sign up for this. I remember early on when I started my business, a client called and said, we want you to do these training classes. It's not really what you do. And I was like, well, we didn't start the business to do that. And we said, you know, simply, let's have the courage to take that and call it what it is. It's just a revenue play, but we're not going to indulge it. We're going to do it because it's convenient,

and we're going to stay focused. So it really depends on in your mind if you're allowing yourself to get distracted or not. Does that make sense? Yeah. We started some of that. We used to call it, we're just making money, meaning that what we call it was we're buying gas for the car to keep the car running while we go do the other stuff we want to do with the car. And so we, We had some product lines and some things we did in the early days that were that. Most of them died because they didn't have a soul over time. But some of them, actually, we changed the way we looked at them,

and it wasn't because we liked the money. It's because we weren't looking at them properly. And we actually went, you know what? This really is kind of in our core. It is kind of in our DNA, and we stuck with it. Back to the first question. As an evangelical Christian, typically what we evangelicals teach is a tie, the tenth of your income going to your local church.

first thing to remember about that is your Heavenly Father's crazy about you and he's not sitting up there waiting on you to break some rule and be mad at you okay if you're giving you have a generous heart you're a cheerful giver the New Testament says you are well on your way I do not major in the minors nor do I assign Pharisee rules to things in terms of looking at it through a Bible I mean it's not a salvation issue to tithe it's not a God doesn't love you if you don't tie there he loves you less if you don't tie that kind of thing so just take all that off the table, make sure we're not being toxic about the discussion. Now, once we say that,

then tithing is there, and I tithe personally, but I tithe from that kind of a heart that I'm talking about. Now, the scripture that seems to be the most guiding on it is Deuteronomy 28, and it says to give a tenth a tithe of your net increase. Okay. Now, some people interpret that to be after taxes, but for sure you would say it's net profit. And if you think about the context, contextually where that was taught, it was an agrarian society. And so if the wolves killed five sheep

and we had 55 born, new one that year, our net increase to our flock was 50, right? We lost five. We had 55 born, so our net increase is 50. That's our net increase. profit. And so what Sharon and I chose to do off of that, and again, I'm not going to argue with somebody about this. It's only about 4% of evangelicals tithe anyway. If I can get you tithing on anything

or we're ahead. But the thing is this, we tithe off of when we take it home. Because as long as it's at the office, it may get spent on an expense thereby lowering net profit. So we tithe on our taxable income, which is the net profit. that we take home. So when I take money out of the business, the chances of it going back down there's almost zero. So when I move it out of the business account, take it home, and I tithe before taxes, because there's really good Bible studies that argue about both ways. So I tithe on the big one just in case I'm wrong. Wow. You don't live in California, do you? Yeah, you're right. You know what I would say too, and I think you, is God loves a cheerful giver.

says in the Bible, right? I mean, think about it like this. So, and this is a different question. Like, imagine that you see a person begging on the street. Now, I'm not saying you're going to change their life by giving them money. But if you pulled a $20 out of your wallet and said,

here you go, buddy. Or if you pulled a $5 out of your wallet and got on your knee and said, God loves you, and I do too, and I really hope you get better and called them by name. I don't think it's 10 versus, 20 versus 5.

I think we're meant to be a cheerful giver and tithe, but also be invested. I mean, I can give 10% to my church, but I can also go volunteer and find out how I can do things and take an interest in the pastor. So I don't think it's the technicality so much as what's in your heart. But then we can also say, well, this is a technicality. I'll give 1%, but I'm nice. And that doesn't work either. So anyway, I think that's a great.

Thanks for being here, bro. Thank you very much. All right. Hi, my name is Matt Tibbitts. And based off John Maxwell's teaching this morning, I'd love to hear your personal development plan for yourself for each of you, and then how you balance that with leisure. How you balance that with what? Leisure. Just time that you just do nothing with.

Okay. No, no, you go. No, no, you go. You know, fortunately, I'm an ENFP in the Myers-Briggs, so we wake up every morning and look and see what's going on and then decide what we want to do. I'm an E-N-S-P as well. So discipline is not my middle name.

But I'm realizing more and more that, and as I get older, that if I'll just tell you, I guess I'll say this, I'm trying to make my faith not something I do an hour in the morning and an hour at night. I'm trying to make it something I do 24-7 and the other stuff in between. So I'm not sure what leisure is. I have four kids and most of them are still at home. But that's my development plan and everything falls within that. So I don't know if that's the right answer.

I think John would be okay with that. I went through a phase in my 20s and 30s where everything was real structured and I was going to do this much prayer, this much reading every day of the Bible, this much reading of nonfiction, self-improvement, this much work out, this much, this much. And by the time I got to work, it was noon. I mean, you know, it's like I was killing. I was going to get up 3 o'clock in the morning trying to do this much. And so I had to start living under a little bit more grace than that on self-improvement.

And so I formed a different construct on it. it. You know, I don't run a bunch of personal metrics on that to see if I'm succeeding. I know if I haven't read a book in a while, that's a bad idea. I know if I'm not correct the Bible in a while, that's a really bad idea. I know if I'm not exercising, I get fat. And so, because I like food. It's my favorite sport. And so, you know, and so I know these things. And so I have to engage in them, but I don't want to do it in too much in fits and spurts. I like the, you know, Chops idea. I completely agree with John on that.

So, you know, we get up every morning, Sharon, and I spend some time talking every morning. And so every morning I'm doing some combination of those things, but I don't feel this intense pressure that I used to feel to try to measure. I mean, I had a calendar that was like, okay, from 6 to 617, I do this, you know. And then I would sit and I did all that stuff. It was exhausting. Yeah, the late 80s and early 90s.

It was the time management system. And it's like, okay, and I have five minutes of prayer. And I can't do that. Yeah, I did that. myself don't do that to yourself but but yeah you do need to engage in those things the things we talked about the first morning the wheel of life the you know physical social you need to have these things in your life the financial the career the spiritual growth you need to have these things in your life and and and they do overlap those those spokes those wheel do meet in the middle and so you

have to touch these different areas to have a good quality life and so you know but i do also i give myself permission to do things a little bit in fits and spurts if you're training for a half marathon that means you're probably not doing some other stuff. And then after the race, you're probably not going to be training for a while, and it means you are doing some other stuff. So there's a little bit of push or, you know, like in the last six weeks, I've been gone a lot from home. And, you know, this event is our last event of the spring,

and we've been going. And so, you know, heading to the lake house this weekend, baby. And I'm not going to see a single human except my wife, maybe some grandbabies, you know. So you've got to kind of give in touch. right, some give and go so that you can survive. So give yourself a little grace, but make sure you're touching the bases is what I would say. You know, I would say one other thing, too. It's easy to come to a conference like this and get overwhelmed, like, well, this person said this

and which of these am I going to buy into? One of my favorite stories is a friend of mine who worked at a company with me. I worked there for two years. They killed me. They worked us to death. It was his management consulting firm. He stayed for six. And then when he finally left, and it wasn't a good place to work in terms of employee engagement

and anything like this. And they interviewed him. They did an exit interview, you know, the ex-per. And they said, John, what could we have done to keep you longer? And his answer was, anything. You know, pick something. And so, what's a great answer? Pretty well emptied his tank, yeah.

Right, right. He was done. And so the thing is, pick one of these things and move forward on it. And I know we're always looking for that silver, but what's the right system? What's the right bestseller and the prescription? Just move forward and do something. And you will find that it's good. That's really good because I have noticed that discipline begets discipline.

Like when I'm doing really good on my workout regime, I tend to do better in other areas where I'm trying to be disciplined. Or, you know, if I'm doing really good on whatever area of this we want to talk about, it adds the impotence. It seems to be the same grooves in my brain I'm using to create those other positive habits in those other areas. Yeah, I want to add something because in both of their answers, you heard something that I think you need to really grab onto, which is your personal growth, system and plan needs to be tailored to who you really are. So when you hear John stand up here and talk about five things he does every day, well, that's how John does it. Dave is, I can just speak to Dave because I work with Dave. Dave is constantly growing, but it's in different ways. He's got an operating board on his leadership team.

And so when they talk about big stuff, they're all bouncing stuff around. We were hanging out recently on our way to an event, and he turns around to Hogan and I and says, hey, and he's reading this book by Donald Miller, who's going to speak at next year's event? and he knows Don's stuff, but there was one passage in the book. You happen to be reading it on your downtime, and he turns around, and he starts telling us what he just learned. And so what I'm getting at here is if you're a system person and you've got your hour before everybody else in your house wakes up

and you need to fill it, then go at that. But the reality is it's about constantly growing and learning. So that's while you're kind of moving throughout the course of your day. Are you bouncing into good conversations? I know Dave and Sharon are as intentional as anybody I know to to hang out and do dinner with people who challenge you because you're empty nesters. You and I both have kids at home.

I'll just tell you this. If you do nothing else, if you read biographies of great men and women, you will grow. That's just one of my things that I'm rigid on, but I'm not a super disciplined system guy. But I read biographies like crazy. And if you can't learn and grow from people

who have achieved great things, then you have no hope anyway. So start with biographies. One good thing is to identify a few things that aren't going to help you? Like, increasing your watching of television is not something that, you know. Yeah, nobody says that's a good plan. Right.

And so there's a few things that all of us can go. How funny was it, though, that Monday morning I'm like, you know, the average millionaire can't tell you who got thrown off the island or who can't tell you can't dance? And I forgot Robert was on dancing with the stars. He's up here two hours later talking about being on dancing with the stars. That's on my shoe. Okay.

Thank you for that. Thank you. All right. Next. Hi, my name is Christine and thank you. I feel so blessed to be here and I feel so fed in so many ways from you guys and from everyone in this room. Along with that feeling of fullness comes the problem and the question is that whenever I come

back from these events, my team is like, oh my God, here she comes, you know. You can't go to any more events, yeah. Right. And so pretty much, right? So how do you, my question is how do I go back and start to weave these elements into the team and decide what's important and not lose the momentum and the energy, you know, I would love got it. Very good. What we teach folks to do and what we all do is the same thing. I would take an hour or two of quiet sometime between now and as quick as you can, as soon as you can, and write out

10 to 20 things that you took away when you go back through your notes. It might not eat. It might only take an hour, you know, and just go, okay, here's these 10 things. And then I would look, the 15 things, whatever they are, I would look down that list of things and go, okay, which of these is going to give me the most lift? What's the best one on here that? I'm like, I can't wait to get started on that one. And then let's do that all the way down the list. Prioritize the list of most lift to least lift, most important. to least important, however you want to prioritize, that kind of a thing. And then just, this is how you eat an elephant, a bite at a time.

Don't come in Monday morning and try to do all 20, you know, and go, I'm going to take one a month or one every two months. And, you know, Dave talked about a no gossip policy. I want to institute that. And I'm going to drop the hammer on that. Okay, you do that and six other things, the whole place is going to blow up on you.

So don't try to do all that. It's not, the team doesn't want that. You don't want that. There's no, unless the house is burning down, you don't have to go that crazy. So just pick out the ones that give you the most lift of some kind, whether it's financial lift or relief on a stress point or why do I, you know, whatever it is. It's just this one's really cool and I want to do it first. Whatever. I don't care.

Do one a month or one every two months to where by the end of the year you've knocked out 12 and you will have made a huge, you would transform your whole organization. by the time I see you next year in Dallas, I mean in San Antonio in Texas. But it's incremental. You win death by a thousand cuts. You don't win by events. What do you got? I just, as you were saying this, because I know what this is like, you're overwhelmed. Here's another, here's the thing to think about.

When you write down that list of like 12 things, first of all, go sit down with your people and go, and anticipate their objections. I know you're thinking, like, I wonder what kind of Kool-Aid she drank this year. So when they go, oh, so you. you know we think that. Oh yeah, I know. That takes the air out of the balloon. And then go, here's 12 concepts that I learned at this thing. I want to let you guys ask me, do any of these sound interesting to you? Because if a bunch of your people in the office go, what's this one? Now it's actually them asking you questions. And that's going to be a lot easier to go down

that stream. That's even better. You know, because really, any of them are, they're all good. So maybe find out which one's there and then suddenly it's a pull not a push methodology. That's very good. Thank you for your question. Hey guys, I'm Jay Owen and Dave, you're really great but your team is amazing. They've done a great job

this week. Thank you. My question for you. They are. I know that faith and family are both important to you guys and I'd love to just hear some personal stories about especially when your kids are younger. I have five under the age of 12 and grow in a business. I'd just love to hear things that either worked

really well for you or didn't work really well for you. Because sometimes I feel like the work-life balance is more like a blender. And I just love to hear your stories. Five under the age of 12. Should we all stop and pray for him for just a moment? You know, it is a blender. And I frankly think the blender works better.

The work-life balance, that whole idea of this versus that, I kind of think it all goes together. So what I try to do is be the same person I am when I'm at home and when I'm at work. I don't try to like have these neat boxes. But again, that's my personality. But here's what I would tell you. A guy said to me, you, you said to me,

years ago before I had children. I was married and he was this well-known executive in the Silicon Valley and I was having a meeting with him. He didn't know me that well and he said, hey Pat, do you have kids? And I said, no. He goes, not yet. And he goes, well, when you do, spend time with them because I have a 16-year-old and I don't know him. Okay, so let's get the meeting started. And I was just like, oh wow, I never forgot that. And I have never regretted making a decision that was in the long-term best interest of my family and not my company. So I don't have a specific answer for you. All I know is never feel like that's a bad decision. Okay. And the other thing I would say is involve your family in those things, you know, help. I haven't done that enough. Sure. So.

I have worked my butt off for 30 years and my family's stronger right now than it's probably ever been. And so this idea that somehow you can't get your work done because you're nurturing is complete BS. It's wuss. It's the wussification of America. And so, you know, here's an idea. When you're with your family, try being with your family. Turn off the stupid television, put the phone down. I mean, you know, Daniel and I are out there. We talked about barefoot, you know, we're out there barefoot and on the water in the morning, you know, in the summer. We'll be out there many weekends this summer and doing that. And he's, my son's 25 years old. We like hanging out together. Two guys, two men.

hanging out together now. But that started when he was a little kid on the boat. My kids talk about being on the boat, being on the boat, being on the boat. You know why they like being on the boat? Because you couldn't be interrupted by something else. There was nothing more important than them when you're there because it's that focus. And so wherever you are, be there. But while you're at work, try being at work.

And so we would go through seasons and we'd sit down and talk to kids and go, hey, you know, first time it happened. I remember when Financial Peace came out in the late 90s, first book tour was, I was gone 63 days. You know, I had a week off in the middle of it. And we're like, we're doing this. And they gave us a lot of money for this book, and we're going to make this book successful. And it's going to affect our family from this point forward.

And when Dad gets back from this, we're going to go to Disney or wherever we went. I don't remember. We went somewhere after that. But you guys, there's a carrot for you at the end of this. But in the meantime, you've got to help Mom out, because I don't want to hear a bunch of crap where you're misbehaving from the road, because dad's out here, he's out here harvesting the corn, so you better get, you better take your, your part. And that's how you involve them in it.

So they don't grow up thinking, dad was gone all the time, or mom was gone all the time. They're like, oh, this is what he's doing. It's like, because when you're there, you're there, you know, all in. And, you know, so, but we put on the calendar proms and we booked live events around proms. We put, you know, ice hockey, Daniel played ice hockey, put ice hockey tournament on the calendar. And there was not a live event booked against that. when they were in college. We have University of Tennessee home

football tickets and we'd be down there to watch the game at home games. I still want to go. They're not even there. So we still book our events around those just because by God I want a life, you know. But you have to schedule it and then try being wherever you are. I don't sit at the UT football game and check my

phone and see what's happening on Twitter. You know, I'm watching the football game. You know, so try being where you are and doing that wide open. And like you said earlier do stuff like throw the brick through the TV. That's a stupid. I mean, we've got TVs in our house, but there's stupid waste of time. It's ridiculous. I mean, I know all these things about all these people that make money. I watch them having a great career. Meanwhile, my kids don't

get it, don't even know who I am. So yeah, but it's just focus. And it's just an intentionality about that. I remember Gary Smalley and John Trent used to do marriage conferences when the kids were little. And John said, when you get home, you need to take the sword off. that you're using at work like they did in olden days and put it above the mantle so you don't use that sword on your family. In other words, you've got to leave

the stuff at the door that happened at the office because you use different tool set with your family than you used at the office. But you're coming in wearing this Conan sword, you know, you take that thing off, don't use that on your wife or on your husband, right? Put that thing above the mantle.

The morning when you get ready to go back to work, you take it off, strap in and let's go. You know, but we're not using that weapon on my family. So you just kind of, some things like that over the years have helped me, but I resist this idea that, you know, you somehow can't get your work done, because I've done it, and I've met other people that do it, and my kids don't resent our business. They don't hate their father because he worked hard, and, you know, that's just a bunch of crap. It's just the wussification of this culture. Well, it's interesting. We were backstage today talking about this.

Neither of us golf. Now, I think golf's fun. I actually love to watch it. I would play it more if I had the time. I play once a year. that's the extent of it, so I suck. But you know why we don't golf? And he was very, because that's not something I can do with my family. So there's big things that other people might do, and it's great to golf. But I said, four hours that's not work and not family, I can't do that one. But I've got a buddy mine golf for these kids all the time.

Well, it's fine. Now that my boys can golf, I may start, I'm still going to suck, but I may do it more. So good. You probably will. You never learn it. Hi, my name's Caitlin Lockett. I wanted to know what the best advice would be for someone who's 24 years old stepping into a leadership role for the very first time.

Ooh. Just flashback to your 20s. You know, the first thing that comes to mind is get very comfortable being vulnerable. Like, it is so liberating. I talked to a guy, was it here? It was here, and he said, I'm not the, yeah, there was a wonderful guy here last night I talked to and he said, I'm becoming a manager and all the people I manage are way smarter than I am. and I'm afraid they're not going to listen to me.

What should I do? And I said, get really comfortable with them being smarter than you. And make sure they know that you know, that they know that you're smarter than them. And so the worst thing you can do as a leader is feel like, oh, I have to prove something. Humility is the most attractive quality. People will follow you and let you lead them if you know who you are. So whatever weaknesses you have, work on them, but let people know you're aware of them. You have nothing to hide, and leadership gets so much easier.

And most of us wait until we're in our 40s or 50s to realize. that. So do it now. That's my, that's my biggest. If you flipped it and you were on the other side of this and you had a 24-year-old walk in to lead you, what would you want from them? You'd want that. You'd want to say, hey, there's an elephant in the room. You got a 24-year-old leader. Let's just call it. That's weird. That's just weird. And I'm a little uncomfortable. You're probably a little uncomfortable. The kids, when they were teenagers, they had this dumb saying. They said, if there's an awkward conversation, they called it awkward turtle. And they would do their hands like it was a turtle upside down, you know, like a turtle couldn't get flipped over. And they, you know, if it's something,

they would say, awkward turtle, and meaning they're getting ready to enter an awkward conversation, you know. And it's just awkward turtle moment. And you just go, this is what's going on. We're going to do it anyway, and we got to figure it out together, and I don't have it all figured out, I'm going to have some opinions, you're going to have some opinions, so let's just work together, and that humility and authenticity and just saying what it is out loud, what happens is, when you shine a light on the obvious stress points, it diffuses the, it just runs the demons out. They don't hide in the light, all the confusion and all the egos and all that kind of stuff. and if there's some old mean guy and he's like,

I don't know if I can't either. We'll just have to work this out together. We'll just figure it out. You know, I hope you can because it would be bad for you if you can't, but we're just going to have to figure this out together. And maybe you can show me some stuff and, you know, and help me as we go along. But I can tell you this.

The one thing you need to do is you need to stand up after you've done all that and go, we're going to do it. You need to make a declarative statement that has some strength under that humility. that just not I'm weak and humble, but I'm strong and humble. Warren Wersby says meekness is not weakness, it's power under control. So you want to be meek. It's power under control.

And it's just like, it's obvious. This is a weird situation, but we're doing it. So let's all strap in and figure this out. I don't know how we're going to fix it, but we're going to do it. And you'll get there. You know how I know you'll get there? because you're smart enough to have even asked the question in the first place. Yes.

And what Dave and Pat just spoke to is going to be huge for you in your posture. They gave you some great stuff, but be okay to ask, what do you think? I think you'll earn a lot of respect with older people on your team that you are now leading. If you look at them and be okay not knowing the answer and look at them and say, what do you think? And get some collaboration. And then, as Dave said, be clear, make your decision. but I think it's okay to ask, what do you think? I think they'll respect you for that.

Always hand out the credit and keep the blame. Thank you for your question. Next. I think this is our last question, is all we have time for. My name's Brandon Kermines, and my heart's about to explode. So I'll get to my question quickly. We've never lost a patient. In the conference, I've been thinking about leadership qualities in general.

And I work for an organization. I'm also on a church staff, and I want to grow as a person. But the number one challenge that I continuously go through is when I look at situations, I always add up all the risk. And then that risk turns into fear. And then I'm afraid to make that transition to make a decision and make something happen or set there. So sometimes I'll wait.

So the question that I have is, what do you do or how do you climb the walls of challenges or push through? Because I imagine in my mind, Dave, running through the office just straight through the barrier, right? And saying, I'm just going through it, right? And so what do you do or what, what is your thought process behind that that I could learn from and take with me? I want to clarify, the thought process behind what? Explain it. I mean, behind seeing a wall of total fear, being afraid to go through it, looking at all the obstacles saying, I don't know if I can make it, I don't know what's on the other side. How is this going to affect my family?

How is this going to affect our team and just pushing through all of that to actually get there to where that dream does become the reality? And it's not just setting back there because I thought about that when we were in one of the sessions, I was like, my problem is, is I'm a dreamer. But if I don't turn that into something tangible, it's worthless. You know, I mean, I don't want this to sound trite or self-important or anything, but it starts in prayer because humility, the antidote, fear comes from pride. I mean, and Jesus said in the Bible, do not be afraid, right, all the time. And so you submit and you go, okay, I just want to purify my intentions and do the right thing for my family, for you, God, and for the people around me. And if you really purify your intentions, that fear is going to go away. And then a little bit of exposure therapy, you know, go, I can live through this.

You know, rather than prevent the fall, fall down, and get back up and you realize you can actually survive that. But, I mean, I can only tell you what I do. and if I didn't have faith, I don't know that I could do it. I mean, I don't think I could. That's the best answer is the faith underpinning and the prayer underpinning. But what I honestly do is I do two things, or I do several, but two of them come to mind. One is I ask myself, what's the worst thing that can happen? And usually death is not on the table.

And so we can take that one off. That lowers it, you know, what's the worst thing? you know, so-and-so's feelings get hurt. I'm embarrassed. I look foolish. I, and you kind of start to look at those worst things that can happen, and you go, I look at myself when I'm looking at those, and my heart's beating in that situation. I look at myself, I go, Dave, you're a wuss.

You know, you're worried about that? Really? Because if you, because what happens is these fears that don't have names are big monsters in the closet, But when you roll them out on the table and give them all names, they're little tiny stupid stuff usually in my life anyway. And it helps me to do that. The second thing I do is from a business risk standpoint, I try to do stuff gradually enough with enough gradual wisdom that I don't have to just jump off the house and hope there's water in the pool. You know, we go down and put the toe in the water, check the temperature, look around what's going on, you know, survey. it, do a focus group, a test group, try to do a small launch and see if there's any interest

and check a couple price points. We don't move, take a whole section of our website and just change it one day. We split test everything all day long. Our website is continuously has 60 billion split tests going in all the different areas of our company because we don't change anything until we've tested it. We don't launch Christy's book without having looked at 27 covers and 14 different versions of Christy's head on there, you know, and had all our customers look at that and done a Facebook check on it and all that kind of stuff. We get input back and we all look at it and we argue about it and we didn't just launch it and go, God, that was a bad cover.

Now, we know we're going into it. So you could take the risk out by breaking the elements down into small parts and not just taking the whole thing at once. It keeps you from doing original Coke, if you're old enough to remember that one, you know, or Coca-Cola did one of the most biggest marketing fauxpaws in history, they launched something that they hadn't tested out. And it was like they looked stupid because they were. And so, you know, you go back into that and do that.

So that's a couple of things I do. And then it does come down to the reason we walk around and breathe is the thrill of the ride. So at some point, you've got to enjoy the thrill of the ride, too, is part of it. But it's not because I've got like this innate unbelievable courage. I really don't like risk. I've been broke. I know what it looks like. I don't want to be embarrassed and look foolish. I like it when people like me. I'm like anybody else, you know. But, and I do suffer from one advantage. And that is having gone broke completely in my 20s, I lost what the Bible calls your fear of man. I do not, it does not handcuff me. I don't spend much time worrying about what people think. I pretty much do it in spite of that. If a whole bunch of people are pissed about it, this probably means I'm right on track.

I'm a hillbilly. I'm just going to get in a fight, you know? You overcome the pride part? I guess it was pride. It was just my need to buy something. I drive nice cars now, but not because I care if you like them because I like them.

I like driving really fast, too fast, and get tickets and stuff, you know? But I do that because I like the stinking car, not because I need you, you know, the 16-year-olds that are visiting the office taking a field trip and they're like, that's a really cool car, yeah, that's why I did that. So the 16-year-olds would like it. What? You know, people are that shallow and I used to be.

Well, and that's the thing. When you get to that point, realize what other people think of me, are you really afraid of failing or are you really afraid of other people knowing that you failed? Right. And when you sort that out, it becomes a lot easier. Yeah. Dave just broke that down so beautifully for you. Jim Collins in an interview, he talked about that.

He said, what people are really afraid of is not risk. They're afraid of the ambiguity. People are terrified of the ambiguity. What Dave just gave you was a master. Last year's summit. Yeah. You just gave a master class in breaking Jim's answer down. When you start to look at it, like let's say you're going to go whitewater rafting.

You go through a little bit of training. The guide tells you do this, do this, this could happen. But you know you might break an arm or leg, right? You know that. That's the risk. You're aware of it. When we have no idea what it is, and Dave just broke it, it down for you. So begin to lay out, okay, if I go this way, this could happen on the negative

side, but this could happen, the thrill. We could actually win and win big. So have you mitigated the risk? And that's what Dave's so great at with anything we do. Dave walks not eliminate, mitigate. It's really, really, there's a clear difference there. And I think Collins is so right. Start to deal with the stuff that's ambiguous and that's what you're terrified of walking in a cave where you can't see this far in front of your face. You did that with Daniel. You told me you were in Israel and you get one of these dark places and it starts to freak you out you can't see this far that's the ambiguity but when you begin to identify what could happen I think yeah I had a guy one time he said when your kids were teenagers and they he said

he said when they when they drove off in the car the first time I was petrified weren't you and I went no because I've been riding around with them for two years teaching them to drive and I had mitigated the risk and so, you know, I didn't freak out. It wasn't vague to me. It's like they're not great drivers, but they're good enough. I'll let them leave the house, you know. And at some point, I want them to leave the house. So they need to learn to drive.

So there's some stuff that goes with this or some motivation. But I mean, but I didn't, I was like amazed at this guy's childlike fear about his own kids driving a car. And I'm like, dude, did you not teach them how to drive? And he's like, I don't know if I did enough. Well, apparently not because you're scared. They're not smart enough to be scared. You have to teach them to be scared. So, you know, in terms of the risk of a car, obviously.

But great question, sir. Very good. I want to say, I watched this video last night. I don't know where I found it. This woman, 82-year-old woman who survived these death camps in Hungary after World War II. I didn't know this. After they liberated Germany, some of the other countries started doing death camps going after Germans. Like, she was just a German ancestry, and she lived in this town in Hungary, and so they put her in a death camp, and it was horrific.

And she survived it, and most of her family didn't. So she's 82 now, and she's doing things to stand up for the unborn. And they arrest her, and the cops try to intimidate her. And she's like, you don't understand. I'm not afraid of dying, and there's nothing you can do that I haven't already experienced. So I'm not sure what you think you're going to do by trying to intimidate me. And the cop was like, yeah, you're right. you know she's faced that fear yeah yeah yeah once you've done two tours in vietnam going on the

sales calls not much exactly and i was just like i want to be like her she just wasn't fearful she was joyful peaceful and was okay with everything so good thank you for your question and i want to say a big thank you to all of the questions from our live audience i want to say a big thank you to the facebook live audience for hanging out with us we appreciate you so very much it's been great. We'll talk with you again very, very soon. All right, folks, I told you that we were going to reveal our speaker list for Summit 2018. It's going to be in San Antonio, Texas, May 20 through 23 of 2018. Of course, Dave Ramsey is the guy putting this event on, so he will be on the stage, teaching, as always, back with us again.

Marketing guru and just honestly, maybe one of the most intelligent people on the planet. I think that's fair to say. He's been a guest on this podcast many times. Seth Godin back with us. And then a frequent guest, Master Storyteller and CEO of Storybrand, Donald Miller, going to be with us. And then two heavy-hitting CEOs. One, the CEO of Southwest Airlines, Gary Kelly, the CEO of Chick-fil-A, Dan Kathy. Former CEO of the Ford Motor Company, Alan Mulally, world-renowned economist from the Reagan era, Dr. Arthur Laffer, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

And then, of course, Chrissy Wright and Chris Hogan from our team. Now, we've got early bird pricing. We always give you the best pricing, and that's going to end on Tuesday, May 30th. So make sure you mark that on your calendar. Get it in your budget. Tuesday, May 30th, the price goes up. Here's how you get your discount and your ticket. Text one word.

Of course, you know we make it more than one word. It's Summit with 18 on the end of it. So text Summit 18. Summit 18. Text that to 33-444. That's 33-44-4. Or if you'd rather go click on the last. link in this episode. Show Notes would love to see you there in beautiful San Antonio, Texas.

Well, it's been a great week. I would be lying to you if I told you that I was just, you know, not impressed. It was such an incredible crowd. I will tell you, I've never seen a group like this, so hungry, so eager to learn. Great community on display throughout the entire event. People talking to me all the time telling me they had just met this person and you would have thought that they had known each other for 25 years. Great community, world-class content. Can't wait to see what's going to come out of this gathering. So it is time to say goodbye. Thanks for hanging out with us each day as we brought you a daily podcast. I want to say a special thanks to Chris Wright and Eric the producer. Great, great work this week that worked hard to push

this stuff out. So on behalf of the entire Entree leadership team, thank you, the listener. We love you. We appreciate you. And I promise you. We're going to talk to you again real soon.